Fool's Run (v1.1) by Patricia A. McKillip Read Free Book Online

that,” Takuda agreed softly. “There is indeed that. Have you checked with Sundown Sector? Maybe she’s involved with the National Regression Coalition.”
    “That’s a possibility. No, I haven’t checked it.”
    “Well, I’ll let you know if we come across anything. As you say, it’s an interesting problem.”
    “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
    He had to get to work himself, then. Yet he sat gazing at the blank screen, a man trained to movement, alertness, decision, still as a shadow in an old bomb shelter inside the Earth, while seconds and minutes on the chronometer wound silently into the past. Memory traced a face lightly, briefly on the screen; he remembered, as if remembering a missing hand, what it was to feel.
    He stirred, murmuring. His voice sounded eerie in the underground bubble. He moved then, quickly, restlessly, wanting familiar patterns of action, the beginnings and endings of small incidents, human voices.
    As he walked into the Constellation Club, the walls around him kindled to a fiery rose.
    Midnight, by Sidney Halleck’s frivolous timepiece. He stood a moment in the shadows near one of the house security guards, otherwise known as Sidney’s bouncers. Eighteen of the twenty stages were enclosed within silken falls of light. People wandered in and out of the light, glowing, for a moment, like dragonflies in the cascades of color. Eighteen bands were playing at once under Sidney’s roof, but the sound itself was caught and transformed within the curtains of light. The only music to be heard above the noise from the dozen bars was Sidney’s house band, Historical Curiosity, decorously playing chamber music in a corner.
    The place seemed untroubled. Aaron, who had been on his feet for four hours, called in a shift break. He borrowed a glittering receiver-belt from the bouncer and pressed a colored light at random. A robot band called IQ was running through the popular tunes of the hour behind the blue curtain. He touched other lights, got alpha music on the green stage, electronic music on the yellow, and, behind orange, something that sounded like a battle between recycling bins. He located Nova, finally, behind purple light.
    Quasar was belting out a song about making love on an asteroid passing too near the sun.
    The lyrics made Aaron wince.
    But music shirred from the Scholar’s rod-harp like a solar wind, and the Magician was creating a wild, tangled counterpoint out of his head with his body-wires. The Gambler’s cubing made the air pulse like a war zone; Aaron wondered, not for the first time, where anyone who resembled a walking bundle of twigs hid so much strength. He returned the receiver-belt, and made his way across the floor. He was stopped, greeted several times; when he was halfway across the vast club, the purple light in the distance vanished.
    He located the Magician at a table in a corner, toweling sweat and makeup off his face while Sidney dealt. Sidney, his serene, bulky face ferocious in concentration, saw him coming and beamed.
    “Aaron. How are you?”
    The Magician raised his smudged face out of the towel, smiling. “Pull up a seat,” he said, and Aaron chuckled.
    “Thanks, I’d like to keep my job.”
    “It’s not really gambling.”
    “Why not?” Sidney asked, affronted. A deep, throbbing run of notes sounded from an unlit stage on the other side of the floor; the sound was faint but the Magician’s ear turned curiously toward it.
    “What was that?”
    “A pre-FWG guitar: an electric bass. Someone in Thames Sector found it and wrote to me about it. I bought it from her unseen. It’s in beautiful condition.”
    “Who’s playing it?”
    “Michael Mole of the Starcatchers. He loved the sound.” He added cheerfully at the Magician’s quizzical expression, “I can’t play it well myself, and you’ve seen my house full of instruments. I have everything from a nineteen-foot grand piano to a didjeridoo—”
    “A didjeri—what?”
    “So what should I do?