“You go if you like,” Armstrong said sullenly. He pulled out a tiny template of a knife and a block of carbon. “I’ve got things to do.”
“No, you’re right,” Maurice said. “Let’s just get drunk.” He took a swig of beer. Claude shrugged. “Well, if your friend is too afraid of what he might find…”
Maurice felt deflated as Claude gave him a wink and turned to go.
“Hold on,” said Armstrong. “I never said that. How long does this game take?”
“It varies. Why don’t you come along and take a look? If you don’t like it, you can always go back to getting drunk.”
He moved with an easy grace across the bar, dancing to the rhythm of the waves. The legs of Armstrong’s chair squeaked as he pushed it back across the stone floor.
“Come on, Maurice,” he said, “we’ll take a look.”
Maurice and Armstrong took the last two available seats around the table. He recognized some of the people already seated. Michel, his team co-ordinator, was there, along with Craig and Joanne. There was another man he recognized but whose name he didn’t know. Apparently his wife had left him a few weeks previously: got on a ship and headed back to Earth, abandoning the kids. There had been a bit of a crisis over that one, since the two Stephanies from Social Care hadn’t managed to avoid the breakup. The rumors were flying that one of the Stephanies in particular was in big trouble over that.
“People!” said Claude, raising his hand for attention and smiling around the table. The gentle susurration of chatter ceased as all eyes fixed on the beautiful man who sat in their midst. He had an air about him: he didn’t appear to wait for people’s attention. He simply spoke when he was ready, and everyone listened.
“Now, has anyone here played the n-strings game before?” he asked. “No? Good! Good!” He clapped his hands together in delight. Maurice saw Michel give a puzzled smile at this. Joanne, sitting next to him, narrowed her green eyes thoughtfully.
“Are we all sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.”
Claude unfastened the handwoven bracelet from his wrist and held it out in front of him. A heavy silver ring glinted on his little finger.
“This bracelet is made using the basic six plait,” he said. He twisted the bracelet into a complicated pattern and then pulled it apart. Now there were two bracelets. He held the two bracelets together and repeated the twisting movement to make four bracelets. Maurice joined in with the growing round of applause as he repeated the movement once more, to make eight.
“Ah, but it wasn’t a trick,” said Claude, tying one of the bracelets back around his wrist. “These bracelets are formed of cosmic strings. Each strand on the bracelet is a loop of thread pulled from the very weave of the universe itself. They are unbreakable.”
Now Maurice laughed.
“You find that amusing, my friend?”
“I find that impossible,” said Maurice, grinning at Armstrong, who was too busy trying to outstare Claude to notice.
“Really?” said Claude, in tones of polite surprise. “I have been told that it is the same principle as that of the Black Velvet Bands.”
At that a shadow passed across the table, as all those assembled thought of what was happening on Earth. Black Velvet Bands dropped from Dark Plants. They formed silent nooses on unobserved places, and then just shrank away to oblivion. The people of Earth were strangled in their sleep by Black Velvet Bands….
“But we were playing the n-strings game,” said Claude, quickly pulling apart the seven remaining bracelets into their six constituent strands. “Everyone begins with six strands each.”
Maurice watched as the strands were passed around the table to reach where he was sitting. Armstrong took the last six. Maurice put up his hand.
“I don’t have any strands.”
