'Come on, Pater,' he reproved. 'Your studio's a proverb in porcelain; Chalice Veronica is quite without taste among plastic furniture; and Captain Truck's a hero on Morpheus' — his eyes glittered ironically at Truck from underneath his hatbrim — 'whether he likes it or not. But he's also come all the way from Earth on your invitation; at least tell him why you asked him here.' He winked broadly. Truck looked away.
'In these days of rapid and convenient travel,' said Pater thoughtfully, 'to come from Earth does not necessarily denote any great strength of character. Honesty does, however, despite its determination to undress all over my living room — do you imagine that I care in the least what the artist's motives are, Captain?' He showed his white teeth at Himation across the table. 'As for why, you Philistine, you conjuror: out of courtesy. What else? Since we're going to steal the Captain's birthright from General Gaw the Bearded Lady, I feel we ought at least to tell him first.'
Tiny Skeffern understood even less of his surroundings than Truck, and found even less to say. He groaned and drank his thin astringent wine. He was wondering where he could steal a decent guitar. 'Take it easy, Truck,' he said.
John Truck got to his feet and gripped the edge of the table. He stared at the head of Bacchus on the wall, then at Himation the anarchist. 'You brought me here,' he said bitterly. 'You can take me back to my ship.' His gaze passed on to Pater, (but could only see filmy images of Alice Gaw's eyepatch and the eager gray face of the hermaphrodite pusher king). 'I'm sick of saying it,' he whispered. 'You can stuff your bloody Centauri Device. You can stuff it!' He walked back along the narrow corridor and stood in Pater's studio, resting his forehead on a cool wall. He heard Tiny hurrying after him, determinedly gave his attention to a print that seemed to depict an old man standing under a tree by a chasm. Tiny went away.
After a while, though, Pater came in.
He mounted the dais and considered the easel. He took up a fine bristling hog-hair and dabbed it at his canvas. The result of this he considered lengthily. 'Captain, I don't want the Device,' he said, his voice echoing slightly in the tall room. 'All I want to do, dear boy, is take it from General Gaw. You understand? If she wants it, if UASR want it, badly enough for them to fight openly in the street for the man who can make it work — if they are prepared to do that, then I don't care for either of them to have it. You see?' He sighed. 'You don't.'
Truck ignored him, but he had abandoned the print despite himself and was staring at the busy shoulders of the white linen suit. Painting unconcernedly, Pater went on:
'I certainly don't want you. I may have gathered my following from "rag pickers, knife grinders and tinkers," but at least they're decently dressed; you, on the other hand, look like one of Veronica's tramps. You have no aesthetics and less education. You fail even in your responsibility for this thing dug up on a dead planet by a lunatic. Ah! So far, you have saved the Galaxy immense pain solely by your own selfishness! If Gaw gets her hands on it, and if it's what she thinks it is, some vast new atrocity will eclipse Centauri itself; yet you've made no attempt to ensure it won't happen — all you've done so far is to run away from people you don't much like.'
He swung round from his palette, an awful contempt distorting his face (for an instant, Truck glimpsed the brilliant carnivore beneath the skin and understood that, against all odds, it was a moral animal); caught Truck staring at him; laughed.
'What could you and I possibly have in common?'
He frowned.
'I sense in you something I'll never possess. A strength, a vast and implacable iconoclasm. We live in a sick charade of political polarities; of death, bad art, and wasted time — all in the cause of ideologies that were a century out of date in their heyday. I sense that you of all people have it in you to end that, and make me as obsolete as Earth (for I'll be redundant if IWG and UASR give up their corpse's grip). Ridiculous, isn't it?'
He left the easel.
'So: a deal then, Captain, after all! If I take the tiling from the Bitch of All the Galaxy and give it to you instead, will you accept your responsibility for its final disposition? Take it, dear boy. You are the last Centauran, and I'll only lose it somewhere if you don't.'
And he held out his hand.
They returned to the sitting room, where Pater poured more wine. Himation left them soon after that. He glittered at Truck from under his hat and said: 'Well be moving out soon, so I'd better go and arm the Atalanta. But well meet again, Captain, I hope. If not, good luck. Bore him, Pater, and I'll make you vanish in filthy smoke.' He swept out, cloak billowing; and as his long legs carried away down the corridor, they heard him intone,
' "Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light… " '
'He's good at that conjuring stuff,' said Tiny Skeffern, belching reminiscently. 'I'll give him that.'
The Interstellar Anarchist smiled. 'He's my son,' he told Tiny quietly, 'but despite that the best cruiser captain I've ever had.'
'Christ,' said Truck, rolling some wine round his mouth. 'This ethanol's some rough old stuff.'
Pater winced.
SEVEN
The Interstellar Anarchist, an Aesthetic Adventure — Part Two
'She's transferring the Device to Earth, Captain — a decision taken against the advice of her staff nearly three days ago, when she thought she had you safe in Albion Megaport. She is most anxious to effect an introduction between the two of you.'
It was some hours after the conversation in the studio. Truck had bathed, eaten, even slept a bit, and was now nearing the end of Pater's guided tour of Howell (which he did in fact insist on calling 'Versailles').
'But it seems the Device will not abide the dyne fields for more than a second or two at a time, so a journey that should have taken hours is still in progress. They send the transporter into Dynaflow drive and — pop! — out it comes again, for no reason that can be discovered. They have gained a few light days. In it goes again — and so it goes on. A comic process with a real attraction for us.'
Pater stood, ridiculously neat and dapper, beneath the great ventral curve of a ship named Driftwood of Decadence, which had squeezed itself into one of the massive repair silos of the asteroid like a wasp in an apple. To his white suit and green carnation he had added a fantastic low-crowned hat of cream straw. Here at the rim of Howell, away from the generators at the core, the artificial gravity was a little feeble: Pater bounced in it as if perpetually embarking on an entrechat, thumbs stuck into his waistcoat pockets.
'To keep pace with its charge, the Fleet escort must spend a lot of time out of Dyne. If we catch the convoy there, they can be embarrassed — we are lightly armed, but these vessels are quicker in ordinary space, and more maneuverable, than anything IWG or UASR has ever been able to field against us.'
Truck squinted the bright length of the Driftwood of Decadence. Turquoise arabesques glimmered mysteriously down her side; the smell of hot metal drifted about her like musk of a sleeping, barbaric priestess; the light of plasma torches exploded soundlessly off her hull to fill the silo with a ceremonial aurora. Pater — whom he had grown to like despite his incomprehensible humors and affectations — regarded him with a quizzical smile. He scratched his head. He was on the stony verge of some revelation.