Patron of the Arts

holster at my hip and felt a little better. It was a minor skill that I had not thought I would ever really need, but now I was glad for the hours of practice and the careful gun and holster fittings. A laser is one of the deadliest weapons ever conceived for close fighting. The millisecond pulse of coherent light is the zapgun of old-time fiction, the disintegrator of popular writing back when we were first thinking of leaving that old ball of mud. There’s a thumb setting for pulse-per-second on the side, turning it from a single pulse firing into a multipulse ray that can slice like an invisible sword. As ruggedly as these weapons are constructed, however, such prolonged firing requires the powerful batteries to deliver their energy at a rate that can melt the circuitry. There is a vernier adjustment for intensity, and both controls can be reached with your thumb as the gun rests in the holster. In addition, my holster has a telltale that will pick up the radio waves that are emitted during firing and send a tiny alerting shock into my thigh. If you are close enough you can hear laser discharge, but at any distance, or with enough ambient noise, they are pragmatically silent. Thus the telltale can make you aware of laser firings nearby. The firing range of hand lasers is limited by the batteries, but their accuracy is one hundred percent within any visible range. While the gun is one hundred percent precise the man behind it might not be. That was what I was counting on.

Nova protested violently, but I sent her off toward home in her sandcat, along with four of Sunstrum’s friends. They all looked more than capable, and very angry that anyone would endanger Nova. Me, they didn’t care about. I didn’t blame them. Anyone who seems like a perennial laser target will find he has few friends. At least close friends. Once Nova had left I suddenly felt very alone. Wootten and Puma were off in other directions, and I knew no one except the casual drinking buddies of the other night. None of them had enough of an investment in me to stay by me, and I didn’t blame them, either. They were all curious, but kept carefully neutral. Maybe the assassins were some of Nova’s admirers and they didn’t want a blood feud. Killing me wouldn’t affect anything, no Guild or Legion, unless someone else got sliced in the process. I was politely asked to leave two different bars and I went quietly.

This was not the first time I had been the assassin’s target. I was always hoping it would be the last, but somehow it never was. I couldn’t tell anyone who I was, or at least, I didn’t think I could and didn’t think it would do any good anyway. I was beginning to think it might be better to follow my first impulse and get the hell out of Bradbury. I couldn’t shoot down everyone who came near me, and they had the advantage of anonymity.

It took both my Unicard and my Publitex card to rent a sandcat. I could see the owners were not interested in having one of their valuable machines disabled or ruined. Not even valid assurances of unlimited credit and complete insurance coverage would do it, not until I guaranteed double the full cost of the sandcat, and was backed by the Publitex power. And then I only think they did it to get me out of town. I headed west, then veered north, messing up a trail turn with my treads so they couldn’t be sure which way I went. I cut east when a lucky sandstorm came along. I was driving blind, navigating by bleeper and satellite, taking my bruises as I hit rocks and fell over the edges of small craters and ancient rilles. But the sandcat is built rugged and I had a good seat. I was well east of Bradbury when the storm veered off and I cut south again, this time to combine pleasure with hide-out, and stopped in a gully near the Star Palace about sunset.

I ran the heat sensors over the ruins from a distance and used night-light and sonar and everything else I could find, including squinting. Then I rolled the sand-cat right into the Star Palace and backed it into an odd- shaped exterior room that was part of the base of the structure. I took a light and checked my laser and climbed out of the cat. I stood listening for a long time, not focusing, only receiving. There was only the sound of a slight wind. The Star Palace was still dead. The cooling metal of the sandcat’s engine went ping and then there was only the whisper of wind.

The opening I had backed into was large, one of a series that ran around the base of the ruin, opening outward, each a monoclinic or triclinic shape, a negative crystal formation, each facet composed of millions of smaller facets. Even in the dim afterglow of sunset there were firesparks here and there at the lower levels and as I looked up there were the fabled crystal spires, the luminous domes that caught the faintest traces of light, the sheer sloping walls of great polished facets, the traceries of gemstone lace, and the incredible structure that science said was a natural formation and logic said could not be. Organically grown and controlled crystalline architecture seemed to be the only answer. But what artists, what architects, had conceived and constructed such a mountain of beauty? It was filled with halls and caverns, small rooms and large, each flowing from one to another so that you were not certain where one stopped and another began.

I roamed for an endless time in this unique and beautiful structure. Tomorrow, in the sunlight, I knew it would be a different experience, as the solar light came down through the crystals, bathing this chamber in emerald green, that one in ruby red, this long high hall in dappled rainbow.

But now, as I wandered, my powerful handbeam sent back refractions from a million surfaces, reflecting and rereflecting until I seemed to stand in space with light above and below, shifting monumentally with each small movement of the torch. I came out on a smooth balcony and looked up at the stars and galaxies and unseen radio giants.

Man was small and the universe was vast beyond

comprehension. I thought the standard thoughts of someone faced by beauty and size he cannot handle, then I went into a corridor of black crystals like orthorhombic mirrors, and further into a series of upward spiraling blue chambers, each smaller, bluer, and more complex than the one before it.

I was standing in the topmost chamber looking at the Queen’s Soul, the crystalline star of ice blue, when the telltale touched my thigh with a warning I did not want to feel.

Somewhere close someone had fired a laser.

I jumped for the light, which I had set opposite the Queen’s Soul, to shine through it in the night. I switched it off and stood perfectly still. I heard nothing, only, again, the faint rustle of wind. Cautiously, I moved to an opening at the side of the chamber that lead out to a multilayered balcony of sorts, and stood without moving, listening to the night.

Why would anyone fire, except at me? I had no desire to be egotistical in this matter. There were lots of people I wouldn’t mind their firing at, but why would they fire, except at me?