Eidolon (5 page)

He had sent cash; more cantra pieces than
Ceola had ever seen. There was a note, too, begging her pardon for
leaving her to handle the last details by herself, and citing duty
as the reason for his absence.

There was no contract.

*

Ceola stared up at the news feed which had
been restored to The Glass, along with the security contract and a
dozen other small niceties. The story she followed detailed the
results of a skimmer race, paying particular attention to the
losing team. The news service provided formal Clan photos,
identifying the white-haired pilot as Shan yos'Galan, and the
dark-haired co-pilot as Val Con yos'Phelium, thodelm and na'delm,
respectively, of Clan Korval.It was the co-pilot who engaged
Ceola's attention particularly. It was difficult to be certain,
with the na'delm dressed in High House splendor and holding his
face close, yet--

"It's him," Jas Per said from behind her.
"Captain Shadow himself."

Ceola turned to look at him. "Did you
know?"she demanded.

He shook his head. "I thought my luck beyond
wonderful, that I'd caught the attention of a Scout. Korval?" He
laughed and gave her a bow. "See how we are both honored!"

"All very well for you to laugh," Ceola said
irritably. "Laugh again when you recall that there is an honor debt
between us and--and Na'delm Korval."

To his credit, Jas Per did not laugh, though
his grin did not fade.

Ceola sighed and looked back to the news
feed, which had left the race behind.

"I am going,"she told Jas Per, "to the
Little Festival."

*

Araceli
had won the day, and its crew stood in the
Winner's Circle, surrounded by well-wishers.

Contract in her pocket, Ceola had started
down to the Winner's Circle--and stopped short, abruptly and
burningly aware of the enormity of her proposed action. To march up
to Korval-in-future and publicly demand that he sign her contract?
The mere notion was madness.

She had, from where she stood, feet rooted
to the path, a most excellent view of the winners. The dark-haired
pilot in his bold orange cloak--she could see his face now, and his
motions--there was no doubt that this was Shadow, whom Min had
slighted; who had taught Ceola to protect herself, and helped her
win free to her heart's desire.

Who am
I
? Ceola asked herself.
He had his reasons for not wishing to sign the contract, who
am I to force him to my will? Why, he has probably forgotten all
about us--Min, The Glass . . .

She took a deliberate breath, centering
herself.

I am Ceola
tel'Denvit
, she thought calmly,
owner of The Friendly Glass. I do business
properly or not at all
.

And, really--who but a madwoman would allow
one of Korval to buy in to her business without a contract to
contain him?

She took another breath, and moved one step
down the path.

The dark-haired man in his bright orange
cloak looked up from his conversation with a lady, and saw her.
Ceola imagined his eyebrows rising. He leaned over to speak to the
tall white-haired man, and then stepped out of the circle.

Ceola hesitated as he came briskly up the
walk.

I should
bow
, she thought, but she never had the
chance.

A warm arm swept 'round her waist, turning
her with him, orange silk billowing, as they moved up the path,
toward the confectioneries and the Pleasure Tents.

"Hullo, Ceola," he said, and it was Shadow's
voice, right enough. "Are you very angry with me?"

--END--

PERSISTENCE

Beba walked faster now, nearly running;
she'd actually stopped and looked around to see if anyone was
within range and now she'd be late. For her, proximity was
important. Long range was ten or twenty paces of clear sight
distance, or just a few paces if a wall intervened. No one there.
And she was late.

Ignorance is
winning
.

Somewhere between five deck and six deck the
idea surfaced, and at first she wasn't sure if it was hers or not,
it was so subtle, so tentative. She rarely picked up something as
direct as a thought, though once or twice she had; mostly when she
was young and hormonal. No one was in range though.

The idea was persistent, so she turned it
over in her aware mind, saw the signs that it was her thought, and
that made it more necessary to think about it:

Ignorance
was
winning.

On consideration, that's what this morning's
time with the news round-up had showed: incontrovertible evidence
that ignorance was winning. Market flux caused by the industrial
committee's decision to favor blue over green this year, the newest
student-style of self-lighting ring hats that fluttered in the
presence of multiple low-power comm calls to the student accounts
that invited conference calls, so that they might all flap together
in a spotlight mocking illumination, the resurrection of the
so-called Mind Safety Administration. This run of strangeness, all
these things together, illustrated the fact that ignorance was
winning.

Beba sighed heavily, a flip of the hand
telling the unseeing wall that even the freshly minted shift
schedules handed down by the new Bazaar administrators were created
more by wishful thinking than thoughtful planning. Orders came down
by fiat, by . . . ignorance. "Persistence."

She said that word out
loud, knowing that, after all, she'd done this to herself created
in her own head the idea that there were only two volitional forces
at work in the inhabited universe. Those forces were not
necessarily
antagonistic,
except that somehow persistence ultimately was superior since
ignorance was entropic and the evolutionary dialectic favored
life's anti-entropic organizing principles.

Alas, she'd written that in a paper for
philosophy class back when she'd still been permitted public
schooling and the result had been a severe setback to her grades as
well as her social range. Original thinking, it turned out, was
antagonistic to her novice philosophy instructor's preordained
lesson plans; she could see it in the stiff shoulder and neck
muscles when he walked into class, in the way he avoided looking at
her shape, in the swirling purple fog that wisped around his eyes
and ears, and in the scent.

By then her emotive-control
tutor, long since banished off-planet as a threat to world order,
had deduced that the scent information she got was as real as the
visual, and that she ought not tell anyone about it, just as her
sister--off-planet now as well!--should not mention that she
could-so
pull names out
of people's heads, nothing else, just names they were thinking
of.

The so-called philosopher was marked in her
memory for his associations of scent and people: her younger self
had worried that he'd turn cannibal. It was only later she'd
discovered him on video-share, eating. Eating and eating very
publicly a meal costing close to a year's tuition. As a ranking
member of The Goudry Gourmand Society he might well have looked at
a woman and considered how she'd do as a chaser to roast rump,
after a pond of beer.

In a lab session during that course her
ex-lab partner had managed a search-and-discuss that brought up her
family name. From the joyous green cloaking the pronouncement she
doubted it was an accident and from the response of the locals she
quickly found that friends grew more distant if they thought you
knew exactly what they were thinking, though of course there was
none of that precision in her family, at least, and perhaps none
anywhere save among the legendary Healers of Liad. Damn the
Healers, that they expressed no kinship, and offered no assistance,
to those probable kindred living among the Terran worlds.

She pushed the resentment away rapidly: it
was Grandmother Varky who claimed to have written message after
message and been rebuffed, and to have stood in the foyer of the
Liaden embassy and been laughed at. But she'd been well over a
hundred Standards and her memories colored by time and the cyclical
nature of her peculiar talents.

Diploma school had not admitted the family
when Grandmother had been young and she'd deplored it as wasted
effort when Beba had aspired to it, just as she'd deplored paying
for an outside tutor when there were family members like her with
wide experience. That she oft remembered things that hadn't
happened yet . . . Mother had gone for the outsider, and Beba's
life was the better for it.

The family had tried hard
to make things better for Beba and her sister. They'd tried. And
then they'd slipped away, most of them, with no word to those not
at home. Gone with no forwarding address but a note that tested
true:
Grandmother has seen a place for us.
Be well
.

And so she'd fallen in with a man with more
plan than money, more connections than cash, and a business that
needed tending by someone with just a touch of talent. That
Caratunk Carpeting wanted to buy that business on the cheap was an
on-going problem, for Derry Caratunk, who had more than once cast
lusty glances at Joshu, was married into one of the triads in new
Management, and spoke to Beba only because she was part of Joshu's
life. She'd made it quite plain, had Derry, that the Sinners Rug
was a detriment to them doing regular business, and a minus to any
buyout. "You," he said without heat, "are late. That means I may
well miss the second seating at Charleschow!"

She laughed, pleased that he wasn't angry,
or beset with swarming customers. Charleschow, of course, was so
far above their budgets as to be a joke.

"I see then that you have found a major
buyer?"

He shrugged at the room, turned and shrugged
at her, then pointed with a nod of the head.

"That one, see, who appears to be browsing
as so many others, that one is a buyer, my dear. I think, given his
coat and manner, that he is not one to buy from the floor bins. I
note that he has support staff, which of course a simple tourist
will not."

Joshu, who had opened the booth this
morning, was an optimist, which was good, for she could not have
lived on the shop floor with a pessimist, nor one who dwelt
overmuch on failure, delay, or insult. Such thinking was not only
unfortunate habit for some, but a burden to one who suffered her
family curse of knowing far more and far other than was said.

She'd marked the man Joshu indicated, which
was easy enough to do, though he was halfway to the end of the
hall. Clearly he was not looking to find one item of this or one
item of that in order to take home a gift; but for something more.
And surely, walking the full bazaar from which Bazaar itself took
name, one might find anything in profusion.

The gentleman appeared not
to
need
random
profusion as he stood in the aisle of fabrics and textiles, rather
he was examining the cards as well as the goods and if he left far
more cards than he carried with him, that was the sign of a careful
and deliberate buyer. The kind of buyer who might carry more than a
holiday tenbit in his pocket, of which they'd seen far too many in
this buying season.

"Joshu, yesterday the large female wearing
strings of steel chain was the hope of the day, that we'd unload
the last of the Flovint rags. The day before was the cruise ship
madness which would make us our season. The day before . . . ."

"This is hardly fit topic for conversation:
you and I both see this buyer and we can see he ignores the left
side of our booth, which is for the tourists and pays for the rice
in our bowls . . " he paused and shrugged his shoulders ". . . at
least some days it pays for the rice. But this man, my dear, this
man is impeccable. He is discriminating, he . . . ."

Unexpectedly Joshu had run out of energy. He
reached into some inner reservoir and continued at a slower
pace.

"He is the only one who has come back for a
second look at the warebook who has done more than stare at the
pretty images of the Sinners Rug. Truly, I believe it was wrong of
us not to have a catalog made up of that rug alone, to sell to the
tourists."

"Should I flaunt myself to see if he
notices?" Beba swayed her shoulders suggestively, ringed right hand
turning palm out in invitation. "The rug provides ample
tutoring!"

The quelling look was lost on her, but his
words carried some sense.

"Hah, or should I flaunt? Someone as careful
of his person as that one may have wide-ranging tastes, my
dear."

She laughed, for Joshu believed himself as
very private of his personal appetites as he was forward with his
wares. The image of him publicly flaunting himself was one she'd
not previously entertained, though she suspected Derry Caratunk
might.

But there, their wares had not been so much
of interest and though they were not destitute they were far from
their goal of relocation out-system.

"I'm for my break, and then the commerce
office to see if there's any update on those shipments that got
lost--so I'm away for awhile. But if that buyer comes around, you
pay attention."

She nodded, but he took her hand and looked
deep into her eyes.

"Really, listen to your head, Beba," he
said, nodding at the man and those two satellites who might also be
his people, "and tell me of his mood. I see he stays distant; if
you must, yes, gain his eyes."

He took a deep breath. "I have to be
elsewhere!"

For one with no measurable talent of the
mind Joshu had instincts which served him well, and she knew that
his game of naming this or that top prospect was as much a
challenge to himself as a prediction. Often enough he turned those
sales, even without her help.