A Different Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

everybody just a little afraid. It was said, here and there, that Ysao had once—in another lifetime, maybe?—worked in the almost legendary X-teams, the Exploration Teams that made the first landing on any world. It was also said—though Jimson had no way of verifying it, because no one would choose to break custom and ask him—that Ysao disappeared for part of every year and went to Psi Center, where he helped train a yearly crop (Jimson imagined them as tall, blond, and very thin, like grain) of X-team telepaths. And there was Leiko. And Jimson, in the corner that was his because he always sat in it. And fifty-odd other people.
    Jimson attended to his drawing. In the back of his mind sat the words of the communigram, which had arrived in the mail a day ago.
     
    Jimson Alleca: You could at least have told someone where you were going. It took me long enough to find you. Hope you are still there. Are you WORKING? You better be, to pay for this 'gram. Get some work together. I guarantee a show and a buyer. I scattered the news around, discreetly, that you might have some NEW things happening. Keep in touch. Samson.
     
    "Samson?" Leiko had asked.
    "Now I wonder how in hell he managed to find me?"
    "Who is he?'
    "My agent. He sells my pictures and sets up my shows. He is one smart man." Smart to find me, damn him, Jimson had thought.
    "You've been working pretty hard," Leiko had said. She'd nodded at the sketches that lay scattered on the desk, the floor, the chairs. "Lots of portraits."
    The noise of the bar skirled round him as he counted over pictures in his mind. I'll send the portraits, and the nudes. I'd like to do one more—if she'll sit for me.
    She strode towards him now, glitter-dust in her hair. She set her cheek against his. "I want to go home," she whispered.
     
    * * *
     
    Home was a shabby, four-room house, in one of the old sections of Port City. When it had been built, it was fashionable to live in the center of a garden, and the little plot of land around the house was now a sloping, tangly jungle. The ivy crawled up the walls of the house and into the bedroom window. The summer night was sweating hot. They pushed the bed beneath the window and lay under the portal of cool air, watching the glowing light of the city hanging above them, reflecting off the walls and ceiling, as the sweat dried on their bodies. After a while Leiko sat up and pulled the sheet over them both. Then she lay down; head on his chest, one leg thrown over his hip, arm across his stomach. Their heartbeats seemed to merge, separate, merge again.
    "Lady?"
    "Hey?"
    "Can I do one more picture of you?"
    "With no clothes on, you mean?"
    "Uh-huh."
    "Whatever," she said. Contented. And then just had to add: "It's too bad I'm not beautiful."
    "You are beautiful."
    "I'm not. "
    He kissed her wrist. "Do you know what color your hair is?"
    "Dirty brown," she offered.
    "It's the color of faded copper silk floating in a pool, with sunlight shining on it."
    The image so occupied her mind that she forgot to scoff. Perhaps she would indeed let him do one more nude—before she left him. Four months was a long time for a Hyper to stay planetside. She was a good pilot; she could get work anytime. When her longing for the Hype grew stronger she would leave him for it, he knew, even if she had to scrounge up the rest of a crew from the deadheads and dopers that hung around the Port at night. She'd go, and he wouldn't see her again, except, maybe, hung in frames on the walls of other people's rooms. And maybe not even there.
    She sighed, and settled into his arms. "I like that," she said. "Silk on water." She stroked him with one hand. "Summer of ivy," she murmured.
    He was embarrassed. "Snoop."
    She was not. "I look at your papers once in a while. That one didn't say 'secret' on it. I like poetry. What comes after that verse?"
    "That was all there was."
     
    * * *
     
    It took nearly a month before the drawings and prints were ready to send. Jimson