Loose Cannon by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Read Free Book Online

should not stroke his beard
and his cheek; she should not kiss his nose, nor lay her palm on
his face, this Terran who never knew the taboo of it....
    "Let's trade," he said, very gently. "A
story for a story, a touch for a touch."
    Then he laid his hand on her cheek,
spreading his wide hand so that his thumb and his forefinger
spanned her face.
    It was late in the night, very nearly
morning; the sounds from the road were not yet impinging on their
lair. His breathing, and hers, and his touch.
    "I," he said after a moment. " I cannot go
to the Healers, because when someone in my family is cured, we
loose the art. My father, my grandfather, my uncle--myself. I
tried, there once--"
    He paused, brushed her hair away from her
eyes, kissed her on her nose, covered the marks on her face as if
he would wipe them away. "After that painting was stolen from me I
could have been locked up forever there, but for the good luck of a
Scout's intercession. So, I thought I should get over the crash. I
spoke to a doctor and he seemed to make sense, and they gave me a
therapy and drugs and an implant...."
    "Here!"
    He guided her hand and held it against that
long scraggly scar on his leg. She'd found that scar before, but
never dared question--there were things lovers were not to ask,
after all; the Code was clear on that.
    "Three months," he said very quietly. "Let
me say about two of my usual cycles, though they change
sometimes--be warned!--and I had not even the slightest twinge of
being able to paint, and what I drew was stick figures and bad
circles and patterns, and I spoke politely to people and one night
I went home and picked up a cooking knife and thought that I would
cut my throat."
    He took her hand and placed it under his
beard, where it was just above his throat, and let her feel the
pulse of him, and the smaller, more ragged scar.
    "I'd made a start, actually, when I realized
that what I wanted was not my throat cut, but my art back. And so I
took the knife and opened my leg and took the thirty-four months'
worth of implant that was left out of me, and I washed it down the
drain."
    She stared at him, at once fascinated and
horrified, not knowing what to say.
    "My cousin," he went on, after a moment. "My
cousin Darby. He took the cure and has stayed on it. He's married,
he goes to work, comes home, goes to work, comes home--and I have
the last piece of sculpture he did before the implant. He was
brilliant. He made me look like a bumbling student. But it is gone.
Five years and he can't draw a face much less model one; he can't
see the images in the clouds!"
    He brushed his lips over the mark under her
left eye, then kissed the one under her right eye.
    "You know," he said quietly, "you are
beautiful. I have known beautiful ladies, my friend, and you are
very beautiful."
    The realization hit her--what he would ask,
in exchange for this tale from his soul. Very nearly, she panicked,
but he caught her mouth with his, and in a few moments she relaxed
against him.
    "My friend," she said, "you can be as cruel
as you are wonderful. To cut yourself so--the pain! But I am not so
brave as you. I took the cuts from my Delm, in punishment--cut with
the blade my family keeps from the early days. Then I wept and
cried, and was cast from the house..."
    "Does this person yet live?" Not in his
deepest despair had she heard his voice so cold.
    Cyra looked into his face and saw he meant
it--that he contemplated Balance or revenge or--
    "No, Bell, you cannot. My Delm was doing
duty. I was cut to remind me and to warn others."
    He said nothing, but kissed her face again,
gently, waiting.
    "We are not as rich a house as some others,
Clan Nosko; and my Delm, my uncle, is not so easy a spender as you
or I. As I was youngest of the daughters of the house--and lived at
the clan seat, it being close to my shop--it fell my duty sometimes
to spend an afternoon and a night, or sometimes two, doing things
needful. And so..."
    Here she paused a moment, gently