them will come over. Taber and I stagger the shifts so simmthings always open.”
She didn’t introduce me, though some of the tappers looked at my eight-fingered hands curiously; and one of the men looked surprised and then angry. He looked as if he was going to say something to me, and then changed his mind, his face getting redder and darker until the lantern line stood out like a scar.
When they were all inside the music room, Jewell led me to the pianoboard and had me sit down and spread my hands out over the keyboard, ready to play. Then she said, “This is my new pianoboard player, boys. Say hillo to him.”
“What’s his name, Jewell?” one of the men said. “You ginna give him a fancy name like the girls?”
“I nivver thought about it,” she said. “What do you think?”
The tapper who had turned so red said loudly, “I think you shid call him sidon and kick him out to burn on Paylay. He’s a Mirror.”
“I alriddy got a Carnelian and a Garnet. And I had a sidon once. I giss I’ll call him Ruby.” She looked calmly over at the man who had spoken. “That okay with you, Jick?”
His face was as dark a red as mine. “I didn’t say it to be mean, Jewell,” he said. “You’re doing what you did with the sidon, taking in simmthing thit’ll turn on you. They won’t even lit Mirrors on Solfatara.”
“I think that’s probably a good ricommendation considering what they do lit on Solfatara,” Jewell said quietly “Sot-gamblers, tap-stealers, pervers—”
“You saw that Mirror kill the tapper. Stid there right in front iv ivverybody and nobody kidd stop him. Nobody. The tapper bigging for mercy, his hands tied in front of him, and thit Mirror coming at him with a sot-razor, smiling while he did it.”
“Yes,” Jewell said. “I saw it. I saw a lot of things on Solfatara. But this is Paylay. And this is my pianoboard player Ruby I din’t think a man should be outlawed till he does simmthing, di you, Jick?” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you know 'Back Home'?” she said. Or course I knew it. I knew all the tapper songs. Kovich had played in every happy house on Solfatara before somebody broke his hands. He had called “Back Home” his rope- cutter.
“Play it, thin,” she said. “Show thim what you can do, Ruby.”
I played it with lots of trills and octave stretches, all the fancy things Kovich could do with five fingers instead of eight. Then I stopped and waited. The nitrogen blowers kicked off, and even the fans made no noise. During the song Jewell had gone and stood next to Jack, putting her hand on his shoulder, trying to tame him. I wondered if she had succeeded. Jack looked at me, and then at Jewell and back at me again. His hand went into his formals shirt, and my heart almost stopped before he brought it out again.
“Jewell’s right,” he said. “You shiddn’t judge a man till you see what he does. That was gid playing,” he said, handing me a plastic-wrapped cigar. “Wilcome to Paylay.”
Jewell nodded at me, and I extended my hand and took the cigar. I fumbled to get the slippery plastic off and then had to look at the cigar a minute to make sure I was getting the right end in my mouth. I stuck it in my mouth and reached inside my shirt for my sparker. I didn’t know what would happen when I lit the cigar. For all I understood what was going on, the cigar might be full of gunpower. Jewell did not look worried, but then she had misjudged the sidon, too.
My hand closed on the sparker inside my shirt, the nitrogen blowers kicked suddenly on, and Jack said lazily, “Now whit you ginna light that with, Ruby? There in’t a match on Paylay!”
Jewell laughed and the men guffawed. I pulled my empty hand sheepishly out of my jacket and took the cigar out of my mouth to look at it. “I forgot you can’t smoke on Paylay,” I said.
“You and ivvery tapper that kimms in on the down,” Jewell said. “I’ve seen Jick play that joke on how many newcomers?”
“Ivvery one,” Jack said, looking pleased with himself. “It even worked on you, Jewell, and you weren’t a newcomer.”
“It did not, you tripletapping liar,” she said. “Lit’s hear simmthing else, Ruby,” she said. “Whit do you want Ruby to play boys?”
Scorch shouted out a song, and I played it, and then another, but I do not know what they were. It had been a joke, offer the newcomer a cigar and then watch him try to light it on a star where no open flames are allowed. A good joke, and Jack had done it in spite of what he had seen on Solfatara to show Jewell he didn’t think I was a sidon, that he would wait to see what I would do before he judged me.
And that would have been too late. What would have happened when I lit the cigar? Would the house have gone up in a ball of flame, or all of St. Pierre? The hydrogen-oxygen ratio had been high enough in the upper atmosphere that we had had to shut off the engines above a kilometer and spiral in, and here the fans were pumping in even more oxygen. Half of Paylay might have gone up.
I knew how it had happened. Jewell had interrupted the downpilot before he could ask about sparkers, and now, because her feet had hurt, there was a live sparker in her house. And she had just convinced Jack I was not dangerous.
I had stopped playing, sitting there staring blindly at the keyboard, the unlit cigar clamped so hard between my teeth I had nearly bitten it through. The men were still shouting out the names of songs, but Jewell stepped between them and me and put a hardcopy on the music rack. “No more riquists,” she said. “Pearl is going to sing for you.”
Pearl stood up and walked unassisted from her white chair to the pianoboard. She stopped no more than an inch from me and put her hand down certainly on the end of the keyboard. I looked at the music. It showed a line of notes before her part began, but I did not know that version, only the song that Kovich had known, and that began on the first note of the verse. I could not nod at her, and she could not see my hands on the keys.
“I don’t know the introduction,” I said. “Just the verse. What should I do?”
She bent down to me. “Put your hand on mine when you are ready to begin, and I will count three,” she said, and straightened again, leaving her hand where it was.
I looked down at her hand. Carnie had told her about my hands, and if I touched her lightly with only the middle fingers, she might not even be able to tell it from a human’s touch. I wanted more than anything not to frighten her. I did not think I could bear it if she flinched away from me.
Now I think it would have been better if she had, that I could have stood it better than this, sitting here with her head on my lap, waiting. If she had flinched, Jack would have seen her. He would have seen her draw away from me, and that would have been enough for him to grab me by the dog collar and throw me out the door, kick me down the wooden steps so hard that the sparker bounced out, leave me to cook in the furnace of Paylay.
“Now whit did you do thit for?” Jewell would have said. “He din’t do innything but tich her hand.”
“And he’ll nivver do innything ilse to her either,” he would have said, and handed Jewell the sparker. And I would never have been able to do anything else to her.
But she did not flinch. She took a light breath that took no longer than it did for my hand to return to the keys and hit the first note on the count of three, and we began together. I did not do any trills, any octave stretches. Her voice was sweet and thready and true. She didn’t need me.
The men applauded after Pearl’s song and started calling out the names of other songs. Some I didn’t know, and I wondered how I could explain that to them, but Jewell said, “Now, now, boys. Lets not use up our pianoboard player in one shift. Lit him go to bid. He’ll be here next shift. Who wants a game of katmai?” She reached over and pulled the cover down over the keyboard. “Use the front stairs,” she said. “The tappers take the girls up the back way.”
Pearl bent toward me, said, “Good night, Ruby,” and then took Jack’s arm as if she knew right where he was and went through the curtained door to the card room. The others followed two by two until all the girls were taken, and then in a straggling line, and Jewell unfastened the heavy drapes so they fell across the door behind them.
I went upstairs and took off the paper shuffles and the uncomfortable collar and sat on the edge of the bed Jewell had fixed for me by putting a little table at the end for extra length. I thought about Pearl and Jack and how I was going to give Jewell the sparker at the beginning of the next shift, and wondered who I was copying. I looked at myself in the little plastic mirror over the bed, trying to see Jewell or Jack in my face.
I had left my cigar on the music rack. I didn’t want Jack to find it there and think I had rejected it. I put my shuffles back on and went downstairs. There was nobody in the music room, and the drapes were still drawn across the door of the card room. I went over to the pianoboard and got the cigar. I had bitten it almost through, and now
