alight. Saw him create a wild Dan Fixer night.
Yas laughed and let her complaints drop. The shouting stopped. Someone called for music. Jenny went with Rolo and Tom to fetch the instruments from the back room and started rollicking folk songs. That wasn't unusual. Three nights a week they did it for pay. It went beyond that, though.
Market Square was ringed with taverns and restaurants, all with tables outside on two levels. Soon everyone was joining in, thumping hands and feet with the rhythm. Fiddling into a sweat, Jenny glanced at Dan. There was no way to tell whether he was still making it happen, but she knew he was.
Dancing to death…
Other musicians joined them, and the crowd urged the group of them out into the center of the square. Jenny ended up on a precarious spot high on the central statue of the first ship to Gaia leaving Earth. Perched up there, surrounded by singing and stamping, she felt like the heart of a bright-burning bonfire that shone out on hundreds of faces at tables, in windows, and crowding the open space as well.
She realized people were being drawn here from all around.
Like moths to a flame? Or like a firestorm, sucking everything into infernal destruction? And what became of those at the center of such a storm?
Where was Dan? She found him, leaning against the base of the ship, singing along with the rest. This couldn't be bad. Dan wasn't bad. He was just flaring, burning off his whatever, and creating light against the dark at the same time.
But why tonight did Dan the fixer need so much light, laughter, and song? Why did he have so much energy to burn, even after fixing that boy's leg? What did it say about the blighters?
Jenny escaped that by diving back into the music.
Tom called an end to it at midnight.
'We've got to stop. I'll get fired if my mates turn up.' He was a policeman. 'Last song!' he called in his strong voice.
Despite protests, they huddled, trying to come up with the best piece to wrap this up without a riot.
' 'Gaia,' ' Jenny said.
Tom looked at her. 'The anthem?'
'You can sing it, can't you? I think it's right.'
No one argued, which was strange. They weren't in the habit of singing the planet's syrupy anthem based on a bad poem by one of the first settlers. Each settlement had its own anthem, but Gaia was dragged out at any planetary-wide event — usually to groans.
Jenny wondered where the idea had come from and glanced at Dan, but he was sitting now, an adoring woman on each arm. She didn't even know them.
Flies to jam. She'd better watch it. She wasn't going to ruin a friendship by turning stupid over Dan. But if he wanted the anthem, he could have it. She struck up a chord and Tom started to sing in his deep, strong voice.
The crowd was singing along by then, and in the chorus, the thunder of it seemed to rattle the windows all around. With the gates closed and blighters attacking, the words had new meaning. Power crept up Jenny's spine, almost making her hands fumble on her fiddle.
She glanced down at Dan again. He had his head back and his eyes closed as if he was absorbing something from the air.
It was the crowd rather than Tom that repeated the chorus one last time, almost softly despite the hundreds of voices.
Like a lamp turned down, the roaring energy settled to a glow, and everyone began to drift peacefully away.
Jenny sat in the convenient dip between ship and Earth because her legs had turned weak. The others looked pretty shocked.
'The power,' Tom said.
The magic, she thought, and she might have a bit of it.
Dan stood waiting to help her down, but she jumped down by herself, then hurried back to the tavern with her fiddle.
The publican, Ozzy Rooke, shook his head. 'You're supposed to get the customers drinking, not out there singing the planetary anthem!' He was joking, though, and he gave them all a free round of beer.
Dan sat beside Jenny at the bar. She made a business of picking up her glass because it let her move an inch away. She probed the air around him. Nothing. Nothing more than the usual aura that was Dan. Had he burned it all up in that singing?
By the time Ozzy threw them out and locked up, the city was quiet — a soft quiet that seemed infinitely safe. They set off home together, but Rolo and Tom split off not far from the square. Jenny, Dan, Gyrth, and Yas
