Nova

The Mouse nodded. “The Sun.”

“You know if you go around pinching cards, they can’t very well show up in the reading. Captain was rather anxious to see this one.”

“I know.” He ran his fingers along the strap of his sack, “The cards were already talking about me coming between Captain and his sun; and I’d just pinched the card from the deck.” The Mouse shook his head.

Katin held the card out. “Why don’t you give it back? While you’re at it, you might apologize for kicking up that fuss.”

The Mouse looked down for half a minute. Then he stood, took the card, and started up the hall.

Katin watched him turn the corner. Then he crossed his arms and dropped his head to think. And his mind drifted to the pale dusts of remembered moons.

Katin mulled in the quiet hall; finally he closed his eyes. Something tugged at his hip.

He opened them. “Hey—”

Lynceos (with Idas a shadow at his shoulder) had come up to him and pulled the recorder out of his pocket by the chain. He had held up the jeweled box. “What’s this—”

“—thing do?” Idas finished.

“You mind giving that back?” The foundations for Katin’s a

“We saw you fooling with it back at the port.” Idas took it from his brother’s white fingers—”Look—” Katin began.

—and handed it back to Katin. “Thanks!” He started to put it back into his pocket. “Show us how it works—”

“—and what you use it for?”

Katin paused, then turned the recorder in his hand. “It’s just a matrix recorder where I can dictate notes and file them. I’m using it to write a novel.”

Idas said, “Hey, I know what that—”

“—me too. Why do you want to—”

“—have to make one of—”

“—why don’t you just make a psychorama—”

“—is so much easier. Are we—”

“—in it?”

Katin found himself starting to say four things. Then he laughed. “Look, you glorified salt and pepper shakers, I can’t think like that!” He pondered a moment. “I don’t know why I want to write one. I’m sure it would be easier to make a psychorama if I had the equipment, the money, and the co

“Oh,” Lynceos said.

“You sure you know what a novel—”

“—of course I do. Did you experience War—”

“—and Peace. Yeah. But that was a psychorama—”

“—with Che-ong as Natasha. But it was—”

“—taken from a novel? That’s right, I—”

“—you remember now?”

“Um-hm,” Idas nodded darkly behind his brother. “Only”—He was talking to Katin now—”how come you don’t know what you want to write about?”

Katin shrugged.

“Then maybe you’ll write something about us if you don’t know yet what—”

“—can we sue him if he says something that isn’t—”

“Hey,” Katin interrupted. “I have to find a subject that can support a novel. I told you, I can’t tell you if you’re going to be in it or—”

“—what sort of things you got in there anyway?” Ides was saying around Lynceos’ shoulder.

“Huh? Like I said, notes. For the book.”

“Let’s hear.”

“Look, you guys don’t…” Then he shrugged. He dialed the ruby pivots on the recorder’s top, then flicked it to seven. Bear in mind that the novel—no matter how intimate, psychological, or subjective—is always a historical projection of its own time.” The voice played too high, and too fast. But it facilitated review. “To make my book, I must have an awareness of my time’s conception of history.”

Idas’ hand was a black epaulet on his brother’s shoulder. With eyes of bark and coral, they frowned, flexed their attention.

“History? Thirty-five hundred years ago Herodotus and Thucydides invented it. They defined it as the study of whatever had happened during their own lives. And for the next thousand years it was nothing else. Fifteen hundred years after the Greeks, in Constantinople, A

“Note to myself number five thousand three hundred and eight. Never loose the pattern of stripped sycamores against vermilion—”

Katin flicked off the recorder.

“Oh,” Lynceos said. “That was sort of odd—”

“—interesting,” Idas said. “Did you ever figure it out—”

“—he means about the history—”

“—about our time’s historical concept?”

“Well, actually, I did. It’s quite an interesting theory, really. If you just—”

“I imagine it must be very complicated,” Idas said. “I mean—”

“—for people living now to grasp—”

“Surprisingly enough, it isn’t.” (Katin) “All you have to do is realize how we regard--”

“—Maybe for people who live later—”

“—it won’t be so difficult—”

“Really. Haven’t you noticed,” (Again Katin) “how the whole social matrix is looked at as though it—”

“We don’t know much about history.” Lynceos scratched his silver wool. “I don’t think—”

“—we could understand it now—”

“Of course you could!” (Katin encore) “I can explain it very—”

“—Maybe later—”

“—in the future—”

“—it’ll be easier.”

Dark and white smiles bobbed at him suddenly. The twins turned and walked away.

“Hay,” Katin said. “Don’t you…? I mean, I can ex…” Then, “Oh.”

He frowned and put his hands on his hips, watching the twins amble down the corridor. Idas’ black back was a screen for fragmented constellations. After a moment Katin lifted his recorder, flicked the ruby pips and spoke softly:

“Note to myself number twelve thousand eight hundred and ten: Intelligence creates alienation and unhappiness in…”

He stopped the recorder. Blinking, he looked after the twins.

“Captain?”

At the top of the steps Lorq dropped his hand from the door and looked down.

The Mouse hooked his thumb through a tear in the side of his pants and scratched his thigh. “Eh… Captain?” Then he took the card out of the sack. “Here’s your sun.”