A Different Light Read Online Free PDF Page A

knock it over when reaching for the pens. He drew: the Flight Tower, the movalongs, the starships, Leiko's face. He stopped only for sips of water, and to stretch his cramped and ink-stained hands. This was not doodling, but careful work that might one day lead to a finished piece, or a roomful of pieces. Sternly he suppressed the excitement that was threatening to drive the pen too fast. It was like making love. Go slow, he told himself. Go slow, don't rush it.
    At last he could no longer make the pen move. Stumbling to the bed, he fell across it, elated, exhausted. He was almost instantly asleep.
    Just before waking, he dreamed about Russ, and woke with that face vivid in his mind, and memories he'd pushed out crowding back. He flicked the light on and went padding across the room to where the visicube stood on the desk. Just that one message, if you could even call it that, in fourteen years—just the cube, no communigram, nothing. Damn it, Russell, why can't I shake loose from you? He rubbed his eyes, feeling grimy and sticky, though not so tired. The clock face told him that he'd slept the afternoon away. It was already evening.
    He looked around at the bare white walls. Already they seemed familiar. His books were in a pile on the floor. His pens were all over the desktop. The Polish Rider —he plucked the print down from the wall and laid it flat between two pages of a sketchbook. Where are we going now, you and I?
    No answer.
    Shall we go to Dakar? But he had the feeling that the Rider knew all about Dakar. Hell, it was just another artists' colony, he thought. After a month, it would be just like living in Las Flores. More boredom. He didn't want to die on Dakar.
     
    Death riding slowly through His
    countryside—
    Noted;
    Undelayed.
     
It came from a poem he had tried to write about the picture. He still liked that line.
    The knock at the door made him start. When he opened it, he saw Leiko. She looked different. He figured out why when she came into the light. Her eyes were bare—no glitter, no color, no mask.
    "Oh. Hello," he said.
    "Sleeping?"
    "I just woke up."
    "You have that look."
    He rubbed his hands through his sleep-tousled hair self-consciously, and then laughed, and she smiled. "I came to say goodbye," she said. "I'm going tonight. I wanted to see you."
    "Thanks." He hunted for the right words. "You showed me things I would never have found by myself. I'm very grateful."
    "It was fun. I liked being with you."
    "I like being with you, too." There was a ridiculous, awkward silence.
    Leiko said: "You mentioned earlier that you hadn't decided where to go."
    "I haven't."
    "There are a lot of worlds to see," she said, "but I thought you might like to try Nexus. Nexus Compcenter, where the starships are. I'm going there. Maybe I'll take a few months off before I look for another ship. It's an interesting place. Lots of faces." She glanced at him. "I thought you might want to look for your lover there."
    "Oh."
    "Sometimes it's hard to decide." She walked over to him, laid her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him. Her lips were soft and dry. "That's for goodbye." Her hair brushed his chin. It was fine, a silky brown flyaway net, framing her face. She had a small dust of freckles on either side of her nose. She stepped back. "I hope it's good for you, wherever you go," she said.
    At the door she turned back. "On Nexus I spend a lot of time in the Port City, at a bar called Rin's. If you should decide to stop by, I might be there." Then she went through the doorway with one long gliding step, as if she were riding the movalongs.
     
     

 
     
    Chapter 5
     
     
    That summer—the summer of ivy—
    We made slow love in a little room,
    And watched the green stems grow up the wall
    Into our window.
     
    He was drawing Leiko again. There were other things to see in the crowded bar, but she was hunched in a new position, one hip perched on a table's edge, one shoulder up, muscles flexing under her thin shirt as