Dying of the Light

trickling through the window now, and finally that snapped off too, and the world was gray.

When the world was gray, he noted, the dust did not dance. No. Not at all. He felt the air to be sure; there was no dust, no warmth, no sunlight. He nodded sagely. It seemed that he had discovered some great truth.

Dim lights were stirring in the walls, ghosts waking for another night. Phantoms and husks of old dreams. All of them were gray and white; color was only for the living, and had no place here.

The ghosts began to move. They were locked into the walls, each of them; from time to time, Dirk thought he could see one stop its furious dancing and beat helplessly and hopelessly against the glass walls that kept it from the room. Wraith hands pounding, pounding, yet the room shook not at all. Stillness was a part of these things; the phantoms were just that, all insubstantial, and pound though they might, finally they must return to dancing.

The dance-the dance macabre-shapeless shadows– Oh, but it was beautiful! Moving, dipping, writhing. Walls of gray flame. So much better than the dust motes, these dancers; they had a pattern, and their music was the song of the Siren City.

Desolation. Emptiness. Decay. A single drum, beaten slow. Alone. Alone. Alone. Nothing has meaning.

'Dirk!'

It was Gwen's voice. He shook his head, looked away from the walls, down to where she lay in darkness. It was night. Night. Somehow the day had gone.

Gwen-she had not been sleeping-was looking up at him. 'I'm sorry,' she said. She was telling him something. But he knew it already, knew it from her silence, knew it from– From the drum perhaps. From Kryne Lamiya.

He smiled. 'You never forgot, did you? It wasn't a question of forgetting. There was a reason why you never removed the…' He pointed.

'Yes,' she said. She sat up in the bed, the coverlet falling down around her waist. Jaan had unsealed the front of her suit, so it hung on her loosely, and the soft curves of her breasts were visible. In the flickering light the flesh was pale and gray. Dirk felt no stirrings. Her hand went to the jade-and-silver. She touched it, stroked it, sighed. 'I never thought– I don't know– I said what I had to say, Dirk. Bretan Braith would have killed you.'

'Maybe that would have been better,' he answered. Not bitterly, but in a bemused, faintly distracted sort of way. 'So you never meant to leave him?'

'I don't know. How do I know what I meant? I was going to try, Dirk, really I was. I never really believed, though. I told you that. I was honest. This isn't Avalon, and we've changed. I'm not your Jenny. I never was, and now less than ever.'

'Yes,' he said, nodding. 'I remember you driving. The way you gripped the stick. Your face. Your eyes. You have jade eyes, Gwen. Jade eyes and a silver smile. You frighten me.' He glanced away from her, back to the walls. Light-murals moved in chaotic patterns, along with the thin wild music. Somehow the ghosts had gone away. He had only taken his eyes from them for an instant, yet all of them had melted and left. Like his old dreams, he thought.

'Jade eyes?' Gwen was saying.

'Like Garse.'

'Garse has blue eyes,' she said.

'Still. Like Garse.'

She chuckled, and groaned. 'It hurts when I laugh,' she said. 'But it's funny. Me like Garse. No wonder Jaan-'

'You'll go back to him?'

'Maybe. I'm not sure. It would be very hard to leave him now. Do you understand? He's finally chosen. When he pointed his laser at Garse. After that, after he turned against teyn and holdfast and world, I can't just– You know. But I won't go back to being a betheyn to him, not ever. It will have to be more than jade-and-silver.'

Dirk felt empty. He shrugged. 'And me?'

'You know it wasn't working. Surely. You had to feel it. You never stopped calling me Jenny.'

He smiled. 'I didn't? Maybe not. Maybe not.'

'Never,' she said. She rubbed her head. 'I'm feeling a little better now,' she said. 'You still have those protein bars?'

Dirk took one from his pocket and flipped it at her. She snatched it from the air with her left hand, smiled at him, unwrapped it, and began to eat.

He stood up abruptly, jamming his hands deep into his jacket pockets, and walked to the high window. The tops of the bone-white towers still wore a faint, waning reddish tinge-perhaps the Helleye and its attendants were not entirely gone from the western sky. But below, in the streets, the Darkdawn city drank of night. The canals were black ribbons, and the landscape dripped with the dim purple radiance of phosphorescent moss. Through that lambent gloom Dirk glimpsed his solitary bargeman, as he had glimpsed him once before upon those same dark waters. He was leaning on his pole, as ever, letting the current take him, coming on and on, easily, inexorably. Dirk smiled. 'Welcome,' he muttered, 'welcome.'

'Dirk?' Gwen had finished eating. She was fastening her jumpsuit tight again, framed in the murky light. Behind her the walls were alive with gray-white dancers. Dirk heard drums, and whispers, and promises. And he knew the last were lies.

'One question, Gwen,' he said heavily.

She stared at him.

'Why did you call me back?' he said. 'Why? If you thought we were so dead, you and me, why couldn't you leave me alone?'

Her face was pale and blank. 'Call you back?'

'You know,' he said. 'The whisperjewel.'

'Yes,' she said uncertainly. 'It's back in Larteyn.'

'Of course it is,' he said. 'In my luggage. You sent it to me.'

'No,' she said. 'No.'

'You met me!'

'You lasered us from your ship. I never– Believe me, that was the first I knew that you were coming. I didn't know what to think of it. I thought you'd get around to telling me, though, so I never pressed.'

Dirk said something, but the tower moaned its low note and took his words away from him. He shook his head. 'You didn't call me?'

'No.'

'But I got the whisperjewel. On Braque. The same one, esper-etched. You can't fake that.' He remembered something else. 'And Arkin said-'

'Yes,' she said. She bit her lip. 'I don't understand. He must have sent it. But he was my friend. I had to have someone to talk to. I don't understand.' She whimpered.

'Your head?' Dirk asked quickly.

'No,' she said. 'No.'

He watched her face. 'Arkin sent it?'

'Yes. He was the only one. It had to be. We met on Avalon, right after you and I… you know. Arkin helped me. It was a bad time. He was there when you sent your jewel to Jenny. I was crying and all. I told him about it, and we talked. Even later, after I met Jaan, Arkin and I stayed close. He was like a brother!'

'A brother,' Dirk repeated. 'Why would-'

'I don't know!'

Dirk was thoughtful. 'When you met me at the spaceport, Arkin was with you. Did you ask him to come along? I was counting on you being alone, I remember.'

'It was his idea,' she said. 'Well, I told him I was nervous. About seeing you again. He… he offered to come along and lend me moral support. And he said he wanted to meet you too. You know. After all I had told him on Avalon.'

'And the day you and he took off into the wild– you know, when I got into trouble with Garse and then Bretan-what went on?'