Carnival

Vincent, who had followed him, swallowed but didn’t speak.

“The Lawrence Tree,”Michelangelo said. He didn’t need to look at the plaque. “Georgia O’Keeffe.”

“I’ve heard of her,” Vincent said. He almost sounded surprised. “What’s this one?”

Michelangelo didn’t know. He waved a question at Pretoria.

The warden came to them, as if reluctant to shout now that they were thick in the spell of the gallery. “Saide Austin is the artist,” she said, and Michelangelo took a moment to appreciate the irony of a woman named after a city named after a man. “It’s called Jinga Mbande.”

It was wood, Michelangelo thought, darkly polished, the image of a well‑armed woman with upthrust breasts pointed like weapons, the strong curve of her belly hinting at fecundity. She held a primitive firearm in one hand, a spear in the other, and had the sort of classically African features that were rarely even seen on Earth anymore. “An Amazon heroine?”

“A freedom fighter,” Pretoria said. She stood silent on his left hand as Vincent waited on his right, and they all breathed in the silence of the rich gleam of light on polished wood. The air was cool and smelled faintly of lemon oil.

“Old Earth history,” she said then, and stepped away as if she needed to cut the camaraderie that had almost grown between them. “Follow me, and I’ll show you the friezes.”

They went. Up a spiral stair– neck‑breaking‑type,Vincent mouthed at him as they climbed–to the third and final gallery. As they reached the landing, Miss Pretoria about a dozen steps ahead of them, Kusanagi‑Jones leaned forward and whispered in Vincent’s ear, “If this is where the marines were killed, was Montevideo’s comment a veiled threat?”

Vincent coughed. “Pretty well‑cursed veiled.” And then he looked up and fell silent.

Kusanagi‑Jones hadn’t been prepared to be struck dumb again. You’d think you’d run out of awe eventually.And perhaps one would. But not right away.

The friezes, as Montevideo had so blithely called them, were a single long strip about three meters tall that ran the entire perimeter of the room. They had subtle detail and deep refractive color that washed to white when you weren’t looking at them directly, so they faded out as one glanced along their length, ghosts emerging and vanishing. At first he wasn’t sure if the images actually moved, but he occasionally stopped and stared at one detail or another, and became aware that the scene shifted, playing itself out in slow animation.

And he understood why the New Amazonians called the long‑lost native aliens Dragons.

The pictured creatures were feathered almost‑serpents, four‑limbed counting the wings and the legs that helped anchor the flight membranes. The wings were bony and double‑jointed, shaped for walking on and manipulating things as well as flight. The vane was stretched skin over an elongated pinkie finger that formed the longest part of the leading edge of the wing, five more fingers making a grasping appendage at the front of the joint. They were neither bat‑wings nor bird‑wings, despite the hairy feathers–or feathery fur–that covered the creatures’ backs and napes and heads.

The Dragons flocked through the spires of what must be one of the other cities of New Amazonia, because it was far taller and more towered than Penthesilea, and they raced clouds in jewel‑bright colors. The ones in the foreground were as detailed as Audubon paintings. The ones in the background were movement itself. In among them were wingless animals, four legged, like lean reptilian jackals. They reminded Michelangelo of some kind of feathered dinosaur, what a theropod would look like if it ran on all fours.

A scientist–an anthropologist or biologist–might have cautioned him against jumping to conclusions. But to Michelangelo, it was breathtakingly obvious that the winged animals were the city builders, the native inhabitants. Even if several of them did not hold objects in their hands that he tentatively identified as a light‑pen, a paintbrush, a chisel, the eyes would have given them away. They were all iris, shot through with threads of gold or green–but even in the thing the New Amazonians inadequately called a frieze,they were aware.

The Dragons towered three or four feet taller than he, even with their long necks ducked to fit into the frieze. They moved in the animation, the three humans the focus of their predatory attention. Michelangelo felt them watching, and it took the gallery railing across his lower back to make him realize that he had backed the entire width of the catwalk away.

6

AFTER THEY RETURNED TO THEIR ROOMS, MICHELANGELO took his time finishing his report to Kaiwo Maruand getting ready for bed. Vincent waited until he ordered the lights off and slid in beside him. He turned under the covers, cloth brushing his skin, and pressed himself against his partner’s back, draping an arm around Angelo’s waist. Michelangelo stiffened in the darkness.

“This is twice now,” Vincent said. “Are you going to tell me why you’re angry?” Again in their own private language, needlessly complicated, half implied and half tight‑beamed, the parts of speech haphazardly switched and vocabulary and syntax swiped from every language either one of them had encountered.

For a moment, he thought Michelangelo wouldn’t answer. But his hand covered Vincent’s, and he said, “Twice?”

“On Kaiwo Maruand at di

Michelangelo didn’t respond. Not even a shiver, and this time he let the silence drag. Vincent was just about to retreat to his own side of the bed when Michelangelo stretched, turning so their eyes could meet, the transmitted light of the nebula revealing his expression. Which, as usual, admitted nothing.

“If we’re going to work together–” –you have to talk to me.It was more than talking, though. He wanted what they had once had, the trust and the knowledge that Michelangelo would be where he was needed. And it was unfair to ask.

Vincentwas the one keeping secrets that could get them both killed. The betrayal had already happened, and Angelo inevitably was going to find out about it and have to live with the consequences. How many times are you going to make his choices for him?

Whatever lies Michelangelo was implying, they were for the job; he had made that plain on Kaiwo Maru.The smallest dignity Vincent could do in return was not to lie to Michelangelo about Vincent’s honorable intentions.

So Vincent leaned forward, instead, and kissed his partner. There was a moment of resistance as their wardrobes analyzed the situation, but as he’d suspected after Kaiwo Maru,they were still keyed to each other. Vincent had never changed his program, and apparently Michelangelo hadn’t either. The resistance faded, and Angelo took Vincent into his arms.

Sounds drifted into the room from outside, attenuated by height. Music, laughter. A woman singing, the nauseating reek of scorched flesh from some restaurant, people getting the jump on Carnival. The colored sky shone through the false skylights, filling the room with a faint glow. Michelangelo’s mouth opened. He kissed hard, well, fluently, his hands soft and warm on Vincent’s back. And Vincent…wished he believed.

Lesa undressed herself and hung her clothes up to air without bothering House to raise the lights. The night was cloudless and there was enough illumination through the ceiling that she had no problem maneuvering in her own bedroom. But it was dark enough that she was surprised to find the bed already occupied when she tugged the covers back.

Surprised, but not terribly so. “Hello, Robert.”

He was awake. He propped himself on his elbows, the sheets gliding down his chest, revealing curly hair. Glossy scars contrasted with the oiled smoothness of his scalp. His teeth flashed in the darkness. “I thought you’d be longer.”