Loose Cannon (5 page)

She tried to tell herself it was just the
noise that was making her skittish, but she knew it wasn't so. She
had moved the stool behind the counter to gain a better vantage of
the street, and had developed a nervous motion--nearly a shake of
the head it was--when surveying the street.

The knowledge that she had a masterwork of
art in her back room awaiting the return of the absent Bell
frightened her deeply.

Suppose he didn't return? Suppose he had
"crashed" in some fey Terran way and was now locked in a quiet back
room at Healers Hall, or worse?

A smartly dressed businessman carrying a bag
from the pastry shop strode by and Cyra found herself looking
anxiously past him toward the corner where she'd first spotted
Bell. It didn't help--the businessman had slowed, eyes caught by
one of her displays, perhaps--and now was peering in and reaching
for the door, carefully wiping feet, and bringing the brusque roar
of a transport in with him as he entered. He closed the door and
the sound faded..

Cyra slid to her feet.

"Gentle sir." She bowed a shopkeeper's bow.
"How may I assist you today?"

He bowed, and now that she did not have the
advantage of the stool, she saw that he was very tall, with
sideburns somewhat longer than fashionable and--no, it was a very
thin Terran-style beard, neatly trimmed and barely covering
chin.

"Cyra, I am here to bring you a snack and to
collect my painting."

She gawked, matching the height, and the
color of the beard, and the voice--

"Bell!"

He laughed, and said mysteriously "You,
too?"

"Forgive me," she said after a moment. "You
gave me great pause. I have been watching for you--but I did
not..."

He put the bag on the counter and began
rooting through it, glancing at her as if calculating her
incomplete sentence to the centimeter.

"I clean up well, eh? But here--if you'll
make some tea the lady at the pastry shop assures me you're partial
to these..."

"Pastry shop? What does that have to do with
anything?" She sputtered a moment, and-- "Eleven days!" She got out
finally, which was both more and less than she wished to say.

He lived very much in his face, the way
Terrans do; his eyes were bright and his smile reached from the
corners all the way to his bearded chin. He laughed gently, patting
the counter, where there were now half-a-dozen pastries for her to
choose from.

"Yes," he acknowledged. "Eleven. Not too
bad. The worst was twenty-four, but that was before I knew enough
to keep food by, and I'd been partying instead of painting."

"But what did you do for eleven days?"

He shook his head and the grin dissolved. He
glanced down, then looked back to her, eyes and face serious.

"I crashed. I slept and I tried to sleep. I
spent hours counting my failures, numbering my stupidities. I
counted transports and the explosions and watched the crack in the
wall get larger with each. Every so often I knew I'd never see my
painting again, and I would know that I'd been taken and that you'd
fled the city and I would never see you again, either."

He raised his hand before she could protest.
"And then I would pull myself together and say 'Fool! Bewitched by
beauty again!' And that way I'd recall your face and the painting,
and try to sleep, knowing you'd be here, if only I could recall the
shop name when I walked by. I nearly didn't, you know. I had to
focus on that set of ear cuffs that match yours before I was
sure."

She nearly reached for her ear, and then she
laughed, somehow.

"Forgive me. I am without
experience in this
crashing
you do. I was concerned for you, for your health,
for your art!"

He smiled slowly. "We're both concerned for
my health then, which I'm sure will be greatly improved if I can
eat. My stomach has been growling louder than the shuttles! Please,
join me! Afterward I will need to visit the port--it would be good
if you could do me the favor of retaining my art until I return."
The smile broadened. "I promise--I will not be gone eleven days,
this time."

The noise of the street invaded their moment
then, as two young and giggling girls entered. They stopped short,
staring at the towering, bearded figure before them.

"Please," said Cyra to Bell. "If you will
come back here we can let my patrons look about!"

He nodded, and moved without hesitation.

She opened the counter tray to let him pass,
indicated a low stool for him (his knees seemed almost to touch his
ears!) and moved the pastries to the work table, where they would
both be able to reach them.

He smiled at her as she lifted a pastry to
her lips. She felt almost giddy, as if she'd discovered some new
gemstone or precious metal.

* * *

DEBBIE, THE HALF-TERRAN pastry maker from
the shop four doors down was in, again, when Cyra returned from
apartment hunting. It didn't improve her mood much; the girl hardly
seemed as interested in the goods as in Bell, and her language was
sprinkled with Terran phrases Cyra could just about decipher on the
fly. Likewise the assistant office manager from the Port Transient
Shelter. Didn't they realize that--she shushed her inner voice,
nodding, Terran fashion, to Bell in his official spot behind the
trade counter. He winked at her and she sighed. Were Terrans always
so blatant?

The conversation continued unabated: and
there on the counter were actual goods; an item she didn't
recognize, so it was for sale to the shop.

"Now," Bell was saying carefully, "I've seen
places that these might have been in the absolute top echelon."

The women gazed at him.

Drawn to the story and the voice despite the
crowd, Cyra leaned in to hear.

"Of course, that would only be if the local
priestess had purified the stone before it was cut, blessed the ore
the silver had come from, sanctified the day the day the ring was
assembled, and then prayed over the ring-giver and scried the
proper hour for giving."

"In other corners of the universe," he went
on, "as, say, on Liad or Terra, the flaws in the stone might mark
it ordinary. If I were you, I would ask Cyra if she'll set a price,
knowing it for a nubiath'a hastily given..."

Cyra moved behind the counter to take up the
office of buyer, but the women had both apparently heard tall tales
from Terrans in the past--

"Bell, now really, were you on that planet,"
asked the assistant office manager, "--or have you merely heard of
it?"

He rolled his eyes and surprised Cyra with a
discreet pat as she squeezed by him.

"What, am I a spaceman, or a Scout, to have
all my stories disbelieved?"

They laughed, but he continued, assuming a
serious air.

"Actually, it was almost all a disaster. The
planet you should never go to is Djymbolay. I arrived just after I
finished a painting on board the liner, and was pretty well spent.
I had my luggage searched twice for contraband, and then they
confiscated the painting as an unauthorized and unsanctified
depiction of the world."

He shook his head, then tapped it with his
finger. "They wanted to have me put away for blasphemy or
something, I think. It took a Scout who happened by--all thanks to
little John!--to let me keep my papers and my paint and my freedom.
Off with my head or worse, I expect was the plan! But the Scout was
there on another matter and interceded. The locals walked me across
the port under armed guard, and the Scout came, too, to be sure
that it was gently done--and they kept me confined to the spaceport
exit-lounge for the twelve days the ship was there. If several kind
ladies hadn't taken pity, and brought me meals and blankets, I
might well have starved and froze."

Cyra bit back a comment half-way to her
lips; after all she knew not where he'd slept before she met him,
nor, for that matter, that he always returned to his own rooms on
the afternoons and evenings he went to the lectures at Scout
Academy. She only knew he returned to the store with sketches and
ideas and full of hope that he might eventually be permitted to
visit a new world, to be the first painter, the first
interpreter....

In a few moments more, the transaction was
made; she paid a fairly low price for the emerald ring--the one
suggested by the seller--and agreed to look at earrings that might
be a match.

The two women gone. Bell looked at her
carefully.

"You're tired--and you've been angry."

Exasperated by his grasp of the obvious,
Cyra waved her hands in the air in a wild gesture, and snapped,
"How else?"

"You might be pleased, after all. The
emeralds were got at a decent price."

"Yes, a decent price. But if I'm going to
afford you, my friend, we'll need to do better."

He looked at her with the same air of
frankness he'd used when talking about the disaster that had cost
him a painting, and shook his head.

"Yes, I know; I am hardly convenient for
myself, much less for anyone else."

"That's not what I meant!" she protested. "I
mean that--I mean that it is difficult to find a larger place to
live hereabouts, and nearer to my apartment there are those who
will not rent to someone who--"

"Someone who might bring a Terran home of a
night," Bell finished, as she faltered. "Inconvenient I said, and I
meant! " he insisted with heat. "I don't mind sleeping here in the
store, after all, though the light is not always good. Perhaps you
can offer to rent the corner place the next street over."

They had been over that before, too. Bell's
situation was so changeable that neither knew how long they might
find each other's company pleasant, useful, or convenient. He could
hardly sign a lease, with his "transient alien" status in the port
computers assuring that any who looked would laugh at his request.
Even getting a room beyond the spaceport was difficult for him,
except here in the Low Port area. Mid-port was too dear for his
budget in any case.

He could hardly co-sign with her, either.
The conditions her Delm had set were strict and might well bear on
that--if she wished to ever return to the House, she would, during
her time of exile, refrain from forming formal alliances; she must
not buy real estate; she was forbidden to marry, or to have
children....

There could be no co-signing; she could
speak for none other than herself. But to add a place where some of
his paintings could be shown--this close to the port, they might
gain a better clientele with such a gallery.

Truth told, though, Bell's sometime presence
permitted Cyra to cut her dependence on Ortega's chancy employ; in
fact, twice recently they'd been there as patrons.

He looked at her, snatched the ring to his
hand and began tossing it furiously into the air. This, after three
previous ragged forty-day cycles, she recognized. Any day, perhaps
any moment, he would drag out the rough sketches and ideas, choose
one, and then hardly see her, even should she stand naked before
him, while he took plasboard and tegg-paint and the secret odds and
ends from his duit box and transformed them by touch of skilled
hand and concentration and willpower unmatched to art as fine as
ever she'd seen. Days, he would be one with the art.

And then he would crash; folding into a
hollow and dispirited being barely willing to feed himself, with a
near-fear of sunlight and a monotone voice and no plans to speak of
... until the cycle came full and from the gray, desperate being
emerged Bell, fresh and whole and new. Again.

He shook the ring, tossed it, glanced
anxiously to his art kit where it was stashed near the door to the
back room.

"I know," he said. "I know! It's almost
time. I think we should close early, perhaps, and go someplace fine
to eat--I'll pay!--and plan on a bottle of good wine and
snacks--I've chosen them already--and a night, a glorious night, my
beauty. And then, we can talk at breakfast, if the art's not here
yet, and if it is, we'll talk in a few days."

In front of her then, the
choice--and she knew already she'd take it, or most of it. Had she
a clan to call on she would pledge her quartershare-- to make this
work, she'd--but what she would do
if
was no matter, now. Her
quartershare would go--till the twelfth year, at least--into the
account of a dead child, just as her invitations--large and
small--would go to her Delm, and be returned with the information
that she was in mourning and not permitted.

She recalled the discreet caress a few
moments earlier, her blood warming...

Tonight she would forget the she was poor
and outcast. Bell would take them somewhere with his stash of cash
and they would spend as if he were a visiting ambassador instead of
an itinerant artist, and then he would--

"Bell," she said gently, "perhaps we should
stay until nearer closing. My friend. I followed your instructions
last time, you know--there are three prepared boards waiting--and I
have already an extra cannister of spacer's tea and you gave me
enough for two tins of Genwin Kaffe last time, so we have that.
That is, if you are certain that you won't talk to the Healers this
time."

He looked at her then and his eyes were
hungry; she doubted that hers were not.

"I'll check the boards, Cyra, and make sure
that you have room to work this time, too."

* * *

CYRA TASTED THE SALT on her lips, and nearly
wept as she relaxed against him. He was so inexhaustible and
inventive a lover, she thought, that perhaps she should have
invited the office manager to help out--and she laughed at the
silliness, and he heard her, Bell with his hands still willing and
eager, and his quirky Terran words dragged out of him in the
midsts.