Adventures in the Liaden Universe Part 43

"Ah. And something more of your friend-Bell-if you please? For I do not believe, despite our abundance of Dons, that we have any scouts named Bell."

Cyra bit her lip. "He is a Terran-an artist. Last night, the apartment house he lived in fell down, and-"

"Now I have the fellow!" Captain sig'Radia cried, and grinned with every appearance of delight. "What we heard on the Port is that he knocked down a prepared, on-duty proctor, barehanded. Quite an accomplishment, though I don't expect the proctors think so. No sense of humor, proctors."

"It must be unpleasant," Cyra murmured, "after all, to be knocked down.""Oh, wonderfully unpleasant," the Scout agreed happily. "Especially with the rest of your team looking on."

"Yes," Cyra bit her lip, wondering how possibly to explain the cycles, and the tragedy of Bell being without his paints now. "If you please, Bell-it is very bad ..." She stammered to a halt.

"Complicated, eh?" the Scout said sympathetically. "Come, let us be private."

She took Cyra's arm as if they were long friends, and escorted her out of the main room and down a hall.

"Ah, here we are," the Scout said, and put her palm against a door, which opened willingly, utterly silent.

The lights came up as they walked down the room to the table and chairs. Cyra looked about, marveling at the size of the chamber, her eye caught and held by a projection on the front wall-a planetscape, it was, showing a sun and a great-ringed planet in the distance and a close up portion of bluish-green atmosphere- Cyra gasped, recognition going through her like a bolt, though she had never seen this painting, but the composition, the eloquence the work-it could only be- "That is Djymbolay, is it not?" she asked the Scout captain, her voice shaking.

The woman looked at her in open wonder. "It is, indeed. How did you know?"

"My friend Bell painted the original of that." She used her chin to point.

The captain looked, face very serious now. "I see. You will then be comforted to know that the original is safe in the World Room." She looked back to Cyra, her smile crooked.

"And your friend Bell is by extrapolations no more nor no less than Jon dea'Cort's glorious madman.

Allow me to see if the Scout is within our reach."

SUMMONED, JON DEA'CORT arrived quickly and heard the tale out with a grin almost as wide as Bell's could be, when he stood at the height of his powers. When all was said, he looked to Cyra, and inclined his head.

"Your Bell, he is at what stage in his continuing journey?"

She blinked against the rise of unexpected tears and made herself meet his eyes squarely. "He is painting.

Please-"

He held up a hand. "Yes. You were right to come to us." He looked to captain sig'Radia, who lifted an eyebrow.

"A change of custody, I think," he said to her. "Certainly, they will insist that he be heard, and fined, but he must be got out of the holding tank at once and allowed to paint before drunk-and-disorderly becomes cold murder."

Cyra sat up, horrified. "Bell would not-" A bright glance stopped her.

"Would he not? Perhaps you are correct. But let us not put him to the test, eh?" He grinned suddenly, scout-manic. "Besides, I want to see what magic flows from his brush this time."* * *

THEY GAVE HER A room, and a meal, and promised to fetch her, when Bell was arrived. She ate and laid down on the bed, meaning to close her eyes for a moment only...

"Cyra?" The voice was quiet, but unfamiliar. "It is I, Jon dea'Cort. Your Bell is safe."

She sat up, blinking, and found the Scout seated on the edge of her bed, face serious.

"Is he well?" she demanded. "Is he-"

He held up a hand. "Would you see him? He is painting."

"Yes!"

"Come then," he said, and he led her out and down the hall to a lift, then down, down, down, perhaps to the very core of the planet, before the doors opened, and there was another hall, which they walked until it intersected another. They turned right. Jon dea'Cort put his hand against a door, which slid, silently, open, and they stepped into a large and well-lit studio.

Bell was at the farther end of the room, his easel in the best light, and he was working with that focused, feverish look on his face that she had come to know well-and to treasure.

The Scout touched her hand, and tipped his head toward the door. Cyra followed him out.

"Thank you," she said, feeling conflicting desires to sing and weep. "He will crash-sometime, often, he knows when, but in a strange place, with this interruption-I do not know. Someone-someone should pay attention to him."

"Surely," the Scout sand amiably. "And that someone ought to be yourself, if you are able?"

She hesitated for a moment, thinking of the shop in Low Port, and then inclined her head. "I am able."

"CYRA?" SHE LOOKED UP from her work, smiling, and found Bell gazing seriously down at her.

Having gained her attention, he went to a knee, and raised his hand to her face. She nestled her cheek into the caress.

"Are you sorry, Cyra? To leave your home, to be rootless, companioned to inconvenient Bell, and in the sphere of Scouts..."

She laughed and turned her face, brus.h.i.+ng her lips against his palm, and straightening.

"What is this? You will be painting tomorrow, my friend; do not try to tease me into believing that you are on the down-cycle!"

He smiled at that, and touched a fingertip to her nose before dropping his hand to his knee. "You know me too well. But, truly, Cyra ..."

She put the pliers down and reached out, placing her hands on his shoulders and gazing seriously into his eyes.

"I am not sorry, Bell. Did you not say that you would take me away? You have done so, and I am notsorry at all."

He had kept the other part of that pillow-sworn vow, as well, and the portrait of herself that he had completed in Scout Headquarters remained there, on display in the reception area, with other works of art from many worlds.

"I have the original," he had said to Jon dea'Cort. "Take you the copy, and let us be in Balance."

And so it had been done, and now they were-attached to scouts, spending time on this research station, or that surveillance s.h.i.+p, while Bell painted, and sketched, and fed his art. Cyra fed her own art, and her jewelry was sought after, when they came to a world where they might sell, or trade.

"We do well," she said, leaning forward to kiss his cheek. "I am pleased, Bell."

He laughed gently and leaned forward, sliding his arms around her and bringing her on to his knee.

"You're pleased, are you?" he murmured against her hair. "But could you not be-just a little-more pleased?"

She laughed and wrapped her arms closely around his neck, rubbing her cheek against the softness of his beard.

"Why, yes," she said, teasing him. "I might be-just a little-more pleased."

He laughed, and rose, bearing her with him, across their cabin to the bed.

-Standard Year 1293

Shadows And Shades

Adventures in the Liaden Universe #8 Sharon Lee and Steve Miller 2002.

ISBN 1-58787-214-5.

"Naratha's Shadow" originally appeared in Such a Pretty Face, edited by Lee Martindale, Meisha Merlin Publis.h.i.+ng, 2000

Dedicated to Andre Norton, Grandmaster of Science Fiction

Naratha's Shadow

For every terror, a joy. For every sorrow, a pleasure. For every death, a life. This is Naratha's Law.

-From Creation Myths and Unmakings: A Study of Beginning and End

"Take it away!" The Healer's voice was shrill.

The scout leapt forward, slamming the lid of the stasis box down and triggering the seal in one smooth motion.

"Away, it is," she said soothingly, as if she spoke to a child, instead of a woman old in her art.

"Away it is not," Master Healer Inomi snapped. Her face was pale. The Scout could hardly blame her.

Even with the lid closed and the seal engaged, she could feel the emanation from her prize puzzle-a grating, sticky malevolence centered over and just above the eyes, like the beginnings of ferocious headache. If the affect was that strong for her, who tested only moderately empathic, as the Scouts rated such things, what must it feel like to the Healer, whose gift allowed her to experience another's emotions as her own?

The Scout bowed. "Master Healer, forgive me. Necessity exists. This ... object, whatever it may be, has engaged my closest study for-"

"Take. It. Away." The Healer's voice shook, and her hand, when she raised it to point at the door.

"Drop it into a black hole. Throw it into a sun. Introduce it into a nova. But, for the G.o.ds' sweet love, take it away!"

The solution to her puzzle would not be found by driving a Master Healer mad. The Scout bent, grabbed the strap and swung the box onto her back. The grating nastiness over her eyes intensified, and for a moment the room blurred out of focus. She blinked, her sight cleared, and she was moving, quick and silent, back bent under the weight of the thing, across the room and out the door. She pa.s.sed down a hallway peculiarly empty of Healers, apprentices and patrons, and stepped out into the mid-day glare of Solcintra.

Even then, she did not moderate her pace, but strode on until she came to the groundcar she had requisitioned from Headquarters. Biting her lip, feeling her own face wet with sweat, she worked the cargo compartment's latch one-handed, dumped her burden unceremoniously inside and slammed the hatch home.

She walked away some little distance, wobbling, and came to rest on a street-side bench. Even at this distance, she could feel it-the thing in the box, whatever it was-though the headache was bearable, now. She'd had the self-same headache for the six relumma since she'd made her find, and was no closer to solving its riddle.

The Scout leaned back on the bench. "Montet sig'Norba," she told herself loudly, "you're a fool."

Well, and who but a fool walked away from the luxury and soft-life of Liad to explore the dangerous galaxy as a Scout? Scouts very rarely lived out the full term of nature's allotted span-even those fortunate enough to never encounter a strange, impulse powered, triple-heavy something in the back end of nowhere and tempt the fates doubly by taking it aboard.Montet rested her head against the bench's high back. She'd achieved precious little glory as a Scout, glory arising as it did from the discovery of odd or lost or hidden knowledge.

Which surely the something must carry, whatever its original makers had intended it to incept or avert.

Yet, six relumma after what should have been the greatest find of her career, Montet sig'Norba was still unable to ascertain exactly what the something was.

"It may have been crafted to drive Healers to distraction," she murmured, closing her eyes briefly against the ever-present infelicity in her head.

There was a certain charm to Master Healer Inomi's instruction to drop the box into a black hole and have done, but G.o.ds curse it, the thing was an artifact! It had to do something!

Didn't it?

Montet sighed. She had performed the routine tests; and then tests not quite so routine, branching out, with the help of an interested, if slightly demented, lab tech, into the bizarre. The tests stopped short of destruction-the tests, let it be known, had not so much as scratched the smooth black surface of the thing. Neither had they been any use in identifying the substance from which it was constructed. As to what it did, or did not do ...

Montet had combed, scoured and sieved the Scouts' not-inconsiderable technical archives, she'd plumbed the depths of archeology, scaled the heights of astronomy, and read more history than she would have thought possible, looking for a description, an allusion, a hint. All in vain.

Meanwhile, the thing ate through stasis boxes like a mouse through cheese. The headache and disorienting effects were noticeably less when the thing was moved to a new box. Gradually, the effects worsened, until even the demented lab tech-no empath, he-complained of his head aching and his sight jittering. At which time it was only prudent to remove the thing to another box and start the cycle again.

It was this observation of the working of the thing's ... aura that had led her to investigate its possibilities as a carrier of disease. Her studies were-of course-inconclusive. If it carried disease, it was of a kind unknown to the Scouts' medical laboratory and to its library of case histories.

There are, however, other illnesses to which sentient beings may succ.u.mb. Which line of reasoning had immediately preceded her trip to Solcintra Healer Hall, stasis box in tow, to request an interview with Master Healer Inomi.

"And much profit you reaped from that adventure," Montet muttered, opening her eyes and straightening on the bench. Throw it into a sun, indeed!

For an instant, the headache flared, fragmenting her vision into a dazzle of too-bright color. Montet gasped, and that quickly the pain subsided, retreating to its familiar, wearisome ache.

She stood, fis.h.i.+ng the car key out of her pocket. Now what? she asked herself. She'd exhausted all possible lines of research. No, check that. She'd exhausted all orderly and reasonable lines of research.

There did remain one more place to look.

THE LIBRARY OF LEGEND was the largest of the several libraries maintained by the Liaden Scouts.