Moira strained to get used to the name she was supposed to
assume at Weideranders. She tried even harder to become a genuinely
creative artist. She failed abysmally. She had absolutely no talent
for anything but acting.
Blake grumbled, “I guess that’ll have to
do.”
“Do? What’s wrong with it? It’s legitimate.
And dramatist White says Janos
Kasafirek . . . ”
“I said all right.” Blake smiled. “He’s
been at me harder than you have, pretty lady. He says it’s
your future.”
She was thrilled. She would really get to do what she
wanted . . . She began cramming classical
drama, the Old Earth classics, especially the Elizabethans. She was
mad for Shakespeare. Dramatist White actually broke down and told
her she played an inspired Ophelia.
She was floating. Her mission was going to give her a chance to
realize her wildest dreams. She would get to study with the great
Kasafirek.
“Slight change in plans,” Blake said one day not
long before she was due to leave. “They’ve tightened
security in Twilight. You’re going to leave here as
Pollyanna, instead of waiting till you get to
Weideranders.”
She was to be billed as the touring daughter of Amantea Eight,
an under-minister in Confederation’s Ministry of Commercial
Affairs. The lady actually existed and was obscure enough to cause
local officials some concern. The obscure career people were the
real powers in Luna Command. The identity of surnames was
serendipitous.
Moira thought the going would be easy once she left Blackworld.
The character was more nearly the real her than the one she
portrayed for Edgeward. Her daydreams often revolved around an
acting career. She never had given that serious consideration
before because Edgeward had such little use for actresses. She had
not thought of leaving home except to go stalking after
Plainfield.
It came time to leave. She went to the crawler locks
reluctantly. This would be the end of one life and the beginning of
another. The doubts had begun to hem her in. “Albin.
What’re you doing here?”
“Boss told me to go with
you.”
She spotted Blake, ran to his chair, gave him a quick little
kiss. “Thank you. For Albin. I won’t be nearly so
scared.”
“I thought not. And I thought we might learn something in
Twilight. He knows the city. Be good, Moira. And be careful.
You’re going to be involved with some strange, dangerous
men.”
“I’ll be all right.”
She enjoyed the ride to Twilight. She had never been outdome
before. She saw her world from an entirely new perspective.
Bleak ghosts of midnight landscapes slid by the crawler. Crewmen
made garrulous by her beauty and exotic skin color provided her
with a running commentary. This had happened here, that had
happened there. Over yonder was a fantastic landmark mountain that
stuck straight up a thousand meters, but you couldn’t see it
on account of it was dark. The crewmen were from The City of Night.
They did not know her. She rehearsed her cover for them, as
Pollyanna, telling outrageous lies about life in Luna Command.
She reached Twilight in a bright and cheerful mood. It quickly
soured.
At first glance Twilight Town appeared to be a clone of Edgeward
City. She started to say so to Korando. The human factor
intervened.
Two hard-faced policemen began checking papers as the passengers
started shedding their hotsuits. They were especially nasty to
Edgewarders, but only slightly more civil to the Nighter crew and
the citizens of Darkside Landing. They were revelers in petty
power, the sadists who gave police a bad image everywhere.
Pollyanna lost her temper when they started in on Korando.
“You,” she snapped, using words as gently as a
torturer uses small knives. “You with the face like a
pig’s butt. Yes. You. The one with the nose like stepped-in
dog shit. We know your mother made a mistake when she decided
against the abortion. You don’t have to prove it. Go beat
your wife if you have to mistreat somebody in order to feel like a
man.”
Korando flashed a desperate “Shut up!” look. She
just smiled.
The policemen were stunned. The other passengers made pained
faces.
The man she had abused grinned malevolently. He had found
himself a victim. “Papers, bitch!”
Malice turned to uncertainty. He looked at her, at her travel
pass. White. Meant offworlder. Youth and sex might mean she was the
brat of power.
“These better be good, bitch,” he muttered to
himself.
“Give them here, Humph,” his partner said.
“And calm down.”
“Can you people read?” Pollyanna demanded.
“You can? I’m amazed.”
She expected more trouble than they gave her. The one officer
became very solicitous once he saw the seals on her pass. “Be
cool, Humph. This fluff’s straight out of Luna
Command.”
Humph grabbed the pass, flipped through it. His eyes widened
slightly. He thrust the booklet at Pollyanna. “I’ll be
watching you, smartass.”
“I do believe you take after your father.” She was a
little frightened now. She had to concentrate to maintain her
snottiness. “He never forgave your mother either.”
And, before he could reply, in a gentler tone, she added,
“A little courtesy doesn’t hurt, officer. If
you’re nice to people, they’ll usually be nice to
you.” She stalked away.
Korando came over while she was eating a snack at the station
canteen. “That wasn’t very smart, Polly. But I
appreciate it. He forgot all about me.”
For possible watching eyes they pretended to become acquainted.
Korando told her he was going to stick a little tighter than he had
planned. She needed keeping out of trouble.
And stick he did, like a limpet. So tight that he got no chance
to interview Blake’s agent. He stayed beside her until he had
seen her enrolled in the Modelmog.
The trip thither was an adventure, Edgeward having been her
whole universe and most of his. The space flies were like a visit
to a dome devoted to happy times. The big Star Liners were
space-going hotels.
Weideranders Station was different. That vast space-going
roundhouse was too alien. Pollyanna and Korando spent most of their
layover in their rooms.
Pollyanna remembered Weideranders. She had been there before,
almost too long ago to recall anything but the fear she had known
then. They had been running from men who had wanted to kill the
people she was with. She could not face all those corridors and
shops and eating places filled with outworlders, Toke, the
Ulantonid, Starfishers, and other strange people. Not without
coming apart, without anticipating something dreadful.
She could not have endured it without Korando’s help.
She was easing him into the role Frog had vacated by dying. He
seemed to accept it.
The Mountain was terrifying too. Though it was the gentlest of
worlds, it lacked that without which a Blackworlder never felt
secure. It had no dome. Neither she nor Korando ever learned to
face the open sky.
Lucifer Storm was almost too easy. She was sleeping with him,
loving him, and married to him almost before she herself knew what
was happening.
Janos Kasafirek was impressed with her abilities. She was
astounded and delighted. He had a reputation as a savage,
unrestrained critic.
For a time she was thoroughly content. Life seemed perfect,
except that she did not get to see Korando as often as she would
have liked. Albin was her sole touchstone with her past and
home.
Then, a year after their arrival on The Mountain, Albin
announced that he was going home. She protested.
“There’s been trouble,” he told her. “A
skirmish in the Shadowline.”
“What can you do?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Blake will need me, though. Be
calm, Polly. You’ve got it under control. I’m nothing
but excess baggage now.”
She cried. She begged. But he went.
Looking back later, she chose that as the day when everything
started going wrong.
During her tenure at the Modelmog, Lucifer’s father and
Richard Hawksblood fought a brief war on The Broken Wings. Lucifer
followed the news uneasily. She tried to comfort him, and quickly
became engrossed in the action herself, seizing every sketchy
report from the Fortress of Iron, skipping from newscast to
newscast to find out the latest. It was her first exposure to
mercenary warfare. She was intrigued by the gamelike action and by
the odd personalities involved. Once she did become enthralled,
Lucifer lost interest. He expressed a virulent disapproval of her
interest.
She was disappointed because the war ended so quickly.
A few months later Lucifer announced, “We have to go home.
I got an instel from my brother Benjamin. Something bad is in the
wind.”
“To the Fortress?” She became excited. She would be
a step closer to Plainfield. And closer to the mercenaries she
found so interesting. Lucifer’s father had come to their
wedding. What a strange, intriguing old man he had been. Two
hundred years old! He was a living slice of history. And that
Cassius, who was even older, and Lucifer’s
brothers . . . They were like nothing
Blackworld or The Mountain had ever seen.
What had begun as an ecstatic honeymoon was fading fast. She did
not mind leaving a scene that promised to become
unhappy—except that she would miss Janos Kasafirek and her
studies.
“I don’t want to go,” Lucifer told her.
“But I have to. And it’s cruel to take you away from
your studies when you’re doing so well.”
“I don’t mind that much. Really. Janos is getting a
little overbearing. I can’t take much more. We both need to
cool down.”
Lucifer looked at her oddly.
He changed after they reached the Fortress. His joy, youth, and
poetic romance fled him. He became surly and distant, and ignored
her more and more as he tried to fit into the Legion. The Legion
tried to adjust to him. He could not meld in.
Inadequate to the mercenary role, he would be little help during
the grim passage he had returned to help weather. Pollyanna could
see it. Everyone else saw it. Lucifer could not. He was a
fingerling among sharks, trying to believe he was one of the big
boys.
Pollyanna became his outlet for frustration.
Knowing why he was hurting her did not ease her pain.
Understanding had its limits.
Loneliness, self-doubt, her own frustration, and spite drove her
into the arms of another man. Then another, and another. It became
easier each time. Her self-image slipped with each one. Then came
Lucifer’s father. A challenge at first, he began to remind
her of Frog. He gave her moments of real peace. He was gentle,
considerate, and attentive, yet somehow remote. Sometimes she
thought the body she clasped in their lovemaking was a projection
from another plane, an avatar. The quality was even more pronounced
in Storm’s associates, spooky old Cassius and the
Darkswords.
Plainfield, wearing the name Michael Dee, finally appeared. She
met him with some trepidation, sure her hatred would shine through,
or that he would remember her.
He did not remember, and did not sense her odium. Her scheme
progressed with such ease that she lost herself in its pace. Before
she knew it, she and Plainfield were aboard a ship bound for Old
Earth and, eventually, Richard Hawksblood.
Her life seemed to become an ancient black and white movie.
Jerky and depressing. Events followed Blake’s script
perfectly, yet she had a growing feeling that everything would fall
apart.
She had lost a marriage that had meant a lot. She did not like
the person she had become. Sometimes, lying beside Plainfield while
he slept, she held discourse with Frog’s ghost. Frog kept
telling her nothing was worth the price she was paying.
It worsened. Storm forced her return to the Fortress. She would
have killed Plainfield then had she not still felt an obligation to
Blake, Korando, and her home city.
She became lonely in a way she had never known in Edgeward. She
felt as if she had been dropped into the midst of an alien race.
The men helped, for a few minutes each, but when a lover left her
he took with him just a little more of her self-respect.
Then Plainfield was beyond her reach, running with the bodies of
Storm’s sons. She almost committed suicide.
Frog’s ghost called her a little idiot. That stopped
her.
She still had her duty to Edgeward. She had been living with
soldiers long enough, now, to see herself as a soldier for her
city. She could persevere.
Moira strained to get used to the name she was supposed to
assume at Weideranders. She tried even harder to become a genuinely
creative artist. She failed abysmally. She had absolutely no talent
for anything but acting.
Blake grumbled, “I guess that’ll have to
do.”
“Do? What’s wrong with it? It’s legitimate.
And dramatist White says Janos
Kasafirek . . . ”
“I said all right.” Blake smiled. “He’s
been at me harder than you have, pretty lady. He says it’s
your future.”
She was thrilled. She would really get to do what she
wanted . . . She began cramming classical
drama, the Old Earth classics, especially the Elizabethans. She was
mad for Shakespeare. Dramatist White actually broke down and told
her she played an inspired Ophelia.
She was floating. Her mission was going to give her a chance to
realize her wildest dreams. She would get to study with the great
Kasafirek.
“Slight change in plans,” Blake said one day not
long before she was due to leave. “They’ve tightened
security in Twilight. You’re going to leave here as
Pollyanna, instead of waiting till you get to
Weideranders.”
She was to be billed as the touring daughter of Amantea Eight,
an under-minister in Confederation’s Ministry of Commercial
Affairs. The lady actually existed and was obscure enough to cause
local officials some concern. The obscure career people were the
real powers in Luna Command. The identity of surnames was
serendipitous.
Moira thought the going would be easy once she left Blackworld.
The character was more nearly the real her than the one she
portrayed for Edgeward. Her daydreams often revolved around an
acting career. She never had given that serious consideration
before because Edgeward had such little use for actresses. She had
not thought of leaving home except to go stalking after
Plainfield.
It came time to leave. She went to the crawler locks
reluctantly. This would be the end of one life and the beginning of
another. The doubts had begun to hem her in. “Albin.
What’re you doing here?”
“Boss told me to go with
you.”
She spotted Blake, ran to his chair, gave him a quick little
kiss. “Thank you. For Albin. I won’t be nearly so
scared.”
“I thought not. And I thought we might learn something in
Twilight. He knows the city. Be good, Moira. And be careful.
You’re going to be involved with some strange, dangerous
men.”
“I’ll be all right.”
She enjoyed the ride to Twilight. She had never been outdome
before. She saw her world from an entirely new perspective.
Bleak ghosts of midnight landscapes slid by the crawler. Crewmen
made garrulous by her beauty and exotic skin color provided her
with a running commentary. This had happened here, that had
happened there. Over yonder was a fantastic landmark mountain that
stuck straight up a thousand meters, but you couldn’t see it
on account of it was dark. The crewmen were from The City of Night.
They did not know her. She rehearsed her cover for them, as
Pollyanna, telling outrageous lies about life in Luna Command.
She reached Twilight in a bright and cheerful mood. It quickly
soured.
At first glance Twilight Town appeared to be a clone of Edgeward
City. She started to say so to Korando. The human factor
intervened.
Two hard-faced policemen began checking papers as the passengers
started shedding their hotsuits. They were especially nasty to
Edgewarders, but only slightly more civil to the Nighter crew and
the citizens of Darkside Landing. They were revelers in petty
power, the sadists who gave police a bad image everywhere.
Pollyanna lost her temper when they started in on Korando.
“You,” she snapped, using words as gently as a
torturer uses small knives. “You with the face like a
pig’s butt. Yes. You. The one with the nose like stepped-in
dog shit. We know your mother made a mistake when she decided
against the abortion. You don’t have to prove it. Go beat
your wife if you have to mistreat somebody in order to feel like a
man.”
Korando flashed a desperate “Shut up!” look. She
just smiled.
The policemen were stunned. The other passengers made pained
faces.
The man she had abused grinned malevolently. He had found
himself a victim. “Papers, bitch!”
Malice turned to uncertainty. He looked at her, at her travel
pass. White. Meant offworlder. Youth and sex might mean she was the
brat of power.
“These better be good, bitch,” he muttered to
himself.
“Give them here, Humph,” his partner said.
“And calm down.”
“Can you people read?” Pollyanna demanded.
“You can? I’m amazed.”
She expected more trouble than they gave her. The one officer
became very solicitous once he saw the seals on her pass. “Be
cool, Humph. This fluff’s straight out of Luna
Command.”
Humph grabbed the pass, flipped through it. His eyes widened
slightly. He thrust the booklet at Pollyanna. “I’ll be
watching you, smartass.”
“I do believe you take after your father.” She was a
little frightened now. She had to concentrate to maintain her
snottiness. “He never forgave your mother either.”
And, before he could reply, in a gentler tone, she added,
“A little courtesy doesn’t hurt, officer. If
you’re nice to people, they’ll usually be nice to
you.” She stalked away.
Korando came over while she was eating a snack at the station
canteen. “That wasn’t very smart, Polly. But I
appreciate it. He forgot all about me.”
For possible watching eyes they pretended to become acquainted.
Korando told her he was going to stick a little tighter than he had
planned. She needed keeping out of trouble.
And stick he did, like a limpet. So tight that he got no chance
to interview Blake’s agent. He stayed beside her until he had
seen her enrolled in the Modelmog.
The trip thither was an adventure, Edgeward having been her
whole universe and most of his. The space flies were like a visit
to a dome devoted to happy times. The big Star Liners were
space-going hotels.
Weideranders Station was different. That vast space-going
roundhouse was too alien. Pollyanna and Korando spent most of their
layover in their rooms.
Pollyanna remembered Weideranders. She had been there before,
almost too long ago to recall anything but the fear she had known
then. They had been running from men who had wanted to kill the
people she was with. She could not face all those corridors and
shops and eating places filled with outworlders, Toke, the
Ulantonid, Starfishers, and other strange people. Not without
coming apart, without anticipating something dreadful.
She could not have endured it without Korando’s help.
She was easing him into the role Frog had vacated by dying. He
seemed to accept it.
The Mountain was terrifying too. Though it was the gentlest of
worlds, it lacked that without which a Blackworlder never felt
secure. It had no dome. Neither she nor Korando ever learned to
face the open sky.
Lucifer Storm was almost too easy. She was sleeping with him,
loving him, and married to him almost before she herself knew what
was happening.
Janos Kasafirek was impressed with her abilities. She was
astounded and delighted. He had a reputation as a savage,
unrestrained critic.
For a time she was thoroughly content. Life seemed perfect,
except that she did not get to see Korando as often as she would
have liked. Albin was her sole touchstone with her past and
home.
Then, a year after their arrival on The Mountain, Albin
announced that he was going home. She protested.
“There’s been trouble,” he told her. “A
skirmish in the Shadowline.”
“What can you do?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Blake will need me, though. Be
calm, Polly. You’ve got it under control. I’m nothing
but excess baggage now.”
She cried. She begged. But he went.
Looking back later, she chose that as the day when everything
started going wrong.
During her tenure at the Modelmog, Lucifer’s father and
Richard Hawksblood fought a brief war on The Broken Wings. Lucifer
followed the news uneasily. She tried to comfort him, and quickly
became engrossed in the action herself, seizing every sketchy
report from the Fortress of Iron, skipping from newscast to
newscast to find out the latest. It was her first exposure to
mercenary warfare. She was intrigued by the gamelike action and by
the odd personalities involved. Once she did become enthralled,
Lucifer lost interest. He expressed a virulent disapproval of her
interest.
She was disappointed because the war ended so quickly.
A few months later Lucifer announced, “We have to go home.
I got an instel from my brother Benjamin. Something bad is in the
wind.”
“To the Fortress?” She became excited. She would be
a step closer to Plainfield. And closer to the mercenaries she
found so interesting. Lucifer’s father had come to their
wedding. What a strange, intriguing old man he had been. Two
hundred years old! He was a living slice of history. And that
Cassius, who was even older, and Lucifer’s
brothers . . . They were like nothing
Blackworld or The Mountain had ever seen.
What had begun as an ecstatic honeymoon was fading fast. She did
not mind leaving a scene that promised to become
unhappy—except that she would miss Janos Kasafirek and her
studies.
“I don’t want to go,” Lucifer told her.
“But I have to. And it’s cruel to take you away from
your studies when you’re doing so well.”
“I don’t mind that much. Really. Janos is getting a
little overbearing. I can’t take much more. We both need to
cool down.”
Lucifer looked at her oddly.
He changed after they reached the Fortress. His joy, youth, and
poetic romance fled him. He became surly and distant, and ignored
her more and more as he tried to fit into the Legion. The Legion
tried to adjust to him. He could not meld in.
Inadequate to the mercenary role, he would be little help during
the grim passage he had returned to help weather. Pollyanna could
see it. Everyone else saw it. Lucifer could not. He was a
fingerling among sharks, trying to believe he was one of the big
boys.
Pollyanna became his outlet for frustration.
Knowing why he was hurting her did not ease her pain.
Understanding had its limits.
Loneliness, self-doubt, her own frustration, and spite drove her
into the arms of another man. Then another, and another. It became
easier each time. Her self-image slipped with each one. Then came
Lucifer’s father. A challenge at first, he began to remind
her of Frog. He gave her moments of real peace. He was gentle,
considerate, and attentive, yet somehow remote. Sometimes she
thought the body she clasped in their lovemaking was a projection
from another plane, an avatar. The quality was even more pronounced
in Storm’s associates, spooky old Cassius and the
Darkswords.
Plainfield, wearing the name Michael Dee, finally appeared. She
met him with some trepidation, sure her hatred would shine through,
or that he would remember her.
He did not remember, and did not sense her odium. Her scheme
progressed with such ease that she lost herself in its pace. Before
she knew it, she and Plainfield were aboard a ship bound for Old
Earth and, eventually, Richard Hawksblood.
Her life seemed to become an ancient black and white movie.
Jerky and depressing. Events followed Blake’s script
perfectly, yet she had a growing feeling that everything would fall
apart.
She had lost a marriage that had meant a lot. She did not like
the person she had become. Sometimes, lying beside Plainfield while
he slept, she held discourse with Frog’s ghost. Frog kept
telling her nothing was worth the price she was paying.
It worsened. Storm forced her return to the Fortress. She would
have killed Plainfield then had she not still felt an obligation to
Blake, Korando, and her home city.
She became lonely in a way she had never known in Edgeward. She
felt as if she had been dropped into the midst of an alien race.
The men helped, for a few minutes each, but when a lover left her
he took with him just a little more of her self-respect.
Then Plainfield was beyond her reach, running with the bodies of
Storm’s sons. She almost committed suicide.
Frog’s ghost called her a little idiot. That stopped
her.
She still had her duty to Edgeward. She had been living with
soldiers long enough, now, to see herself as a soldier for her
city. She could persevere.