Starship Summer Read Online Free PDF

you think of the exhibition?”
    “The crystals are so… powerful, don’t you think? They put you in touch with what it is to be human.”
    Someone appeared at our side. “Which is what art is all about.” It was Hawk, smiling at the catalogue he was holding up before him. “Or so it states in here. According to our illustrious Arts governor, Hermione Venus, ‘Sommers communicates his vital essence in a powerful range of unsurpassed works of genius’.”
    Maddie tut-tutted. To me she said, “Hawk had a fling with Hermione last year. He’s yet to get over the experience.”
    Hawk grunted. “Venus swanned into the yard looking for scrap which she wanted to turn into art. She was everything I disliked in a person: vanity, pretension and a breathtaking egotism.”
    “So Hawk tried to cure her in the only way he knows.”
    “That’s unfair, and you know it,” he remonstrated. “Venus threw herself at me, and I was stupid enough to respond. Which, I think, is understandable. I mean, look at her, Conway. Admit it, she’s beautiful.”
    Venus stood before a nearby graphic, a contemplative finger to her lips. Six feet tall, slim as a ballerina, she had elegance and poise and—Hawk was right—an undeniable Latin beauty.
    I nodded. “And she knows it.”
    Maddie said, “Would you be smitten, David?”
    I shook my head. “Not my type.”
    Hawk defended himself. “I was low, hadn’t had an affair for months, and then Venus decides she wants to slum it with a barbarian. I mean, who am I to refuse?”
    “You’re so gallant, darling,” Maddie mocked.
    “What is it with you two?” I said, glancing from Hawk to Maddie.
    Hawk laughed. “We love each other, really.” He stopped and looked across the dome to the bar. Hermione Venus had moved from the exhibition and had cornered Matt Sommers who was gripping a bottle of beer and trying to appear politely interested in what Venus had to say.
    “Come on,” Hawk said. “Matt looks like he needs rescuing.”
    As we moved to the bar, I hung back to observe the reaction of Venus to Hawk’s sudden appearance. She was laying a hand on Sommers’ sleeve with cloying familiarity, and stopped talking suddenly when she saw Hawk.
    “Oh, Hawksworth. This is an awkward time—Matt and I were just discussing the possibility of an exhibition in MacIntyre.”
    Sommers smiled diplomatically, but I sensed his relief at Hawk’s arrival. “It’ll do some other time, Hermione. Look, why don’t you come over to my place next week, and we’ll discuss it then?”
    “Why, that’s so kind of you, Matthew. I’ll hold you to that.” And she swept away, giving Hawk an icy smile en passant.
    “Just in time,” Sommers said. “I could have been here for hours. What are you drinking?”
    Sommers bought a round of beers and Maddie introduced me. “A friend of ours, just moved to Magenta. David Conway.”
    “Welcome to Magenta, David,” Sommers said, taking my hand in a strong grip. He spoke with a slow, confiding Alabama drawl, his every word accompanied by a smile.
    I mentioned that I was from Vancouver, and that my wife had stocked some of his reproductions.
    Sommers shook his head, as if in wonder. “Know something, David? I still find it hard to appreciate that people across the Expansion buy my work.” The sentiment was, I thought, genuine, and not false modesty.
    “I like the crystals,” I said.
    “But the graphics do nothing for you?”
    I hesitated. “Well… To be honest, compared to the crystals—” He saved me further embarrassment. “I know. They’re weak. They don’t work.”
    “Matt,” Maddie said, “I don’t know about that. They have something…”
    “But not what I wanted to say,” Sommers went on. “They’re third rate. I wasn’t trying. I turned them out because I mistakenly thought that producing something was better than producing nothing. I should have scrapped the lot.”
    “You’re too harsh on yourself,” Maddie said. Behind her, Hawk