‘If it isn’t going to be really authentic, you don’t need it at all. Make up something.’
‘I can’t do that and use Furz’s name. The legal reps are firm about that. I’ve got to have something in there he came up with.’ Lim looked down. Tasmin, in surprise, saw a tremor in his arms, his hands. Nerves? ‘That’s just the lead in, though. There’s something else.’ Lim gulped wine and cast that sideways look again, as though he were afraid someone was listening.
‘I’ve met someone, Tas. Someone who’s put me on to something that could get us into the history books right up there next to Erickson. No joke, Tas. You and Cels can be part of something absolutely world shattering. Something to set Jubal on its ear….’
‘Oh, don’t be stiff about it, Tas.’ Celcy was pleading now, making a playful face at him. ‘He’s family and it’s all really exciting! Let him have it.’
‘Celcy.’ He shook his head helplessly, praying she would understand. ‘I’m a Tripsinger. I’m licensed under a code of ethics. Even if we ignored the risk to my job, our livelihood, I swore to uphold those ethics. They won’t permit me to do what Lim wants, I’m sorry.’
‘Hell, I was a Tripsinger, too, brother,’ Lim said in a harsh, demanding tone. ‘Don’t you owe me a little professional courtesy? Not even to make a bundle for old Mom, huh?’ Said with that easy smile, with a little sneer, a well-remembered sneer.
The dam broke.
‘What you spent for that unit you’ve got on your wrist would get Mom’s eyes fixed and set her up for life,’ Tasmin said flatly. ‘Don’t feed me that shit about putting it all into equipment because I know it’s a lie. You were never a Tripsinger. You broke every rule, every oath you took. You set up that ass Ran Connel to help you fake your way through the first trip, then after you were licensed you led four trips, and your backup had to bail you out on all of them. You got through school by stealing. You stole tests. You stole answers. You stole other people’s homework including mine. Whenever anyone had anything you wanted, you took it. And when you couldn’t make it here, you stole money from Dad’s friends and then ran for the Coast. The reason I have to support Mom as well as my own family is that Dad spent almost everything he had paying off the money you took. You never figured the rules applied to you, big brother, and you always got by on a charming smile and that damned marvelous voice!’
Celcy was staring at him, her face white with shock. Lim was pale, mouth pinched.
Tasmin threw down his napkin. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not hungry. Celcy, would you mind if we left now?’
She gulped, turning a stricken face to Lim. ‘Yes, I would mind. I’m starved. I’m going to have dinner with Lim because he invited us, and if you’re too rude to let childish bygones be bygones….’ Her voice changed, becoming angry. ‘I’m certainly not going to go along with you. Go on home. Go to your mother’s. Maybe she’ll sympathize with you, but I certainly don’t.’
He couldn’t remember leaving the restaurant. He couldn’t remember anything that happened until he found himself in a cubicle at the citadel dormitory, sitting on the edge of the bed, shivering as though he would never stop. It had all boiled up, out of nothing, out of everything. All the suppressed, buried stuff of fifteen years, twenty years….
Over twenty years. When he was seven and Lim was twelve, Dad had given Tasmin a viggy for his birthday. They were rare in captivity, and Tasmin had been speechless with joy. That night, Lim had taken it out of the cage and out into the road where it had been killed, said Lim, by a passing quiet-car. When Tasmin was eight, he had won a school medal for music. Lim had borrowed it and lost it. When he was sixteen, Tasmin had been desperately, hopelessly in love with Chani Vincent. Lim, six years older than she, had seduced her, got her pregnant, then left on the trip to the Deepsoil Coast from which he had never returned. The Vincents moved to Harmony, and from there God knows where, and Dad had been advised by several of his friends that Lim had stolen money – quite a lot of it. With Dad it had been a matter of honor.
Honor. Twenty years.
‘Oh, Lord, why didn’t I just say I’d think about it, then tell him I couldn’t get access to the damn thing.’ He didn’t realize he had said it aloud until a voice murmured from the door.
‘Master?’ It was Jamieson, an expression on his face that Tasmin could not quite read. Surprise, certainly. And concern? ‘Can I help you, sir?’
‘No,’ he barked. ‘Yes. Ask the dispensary if they’d part with some kind of sleeping pill, would you. I’m having a – a family problem.’
When he woke before dawn, it was with a fuzzy head, a cottony mouth, and a feeling of inadequacy that he had thought he had left behind him long ago. He had ruined Celcy’s big evening. She wouldn’t soon let him forget it, either. It was probably going to be one of those emotional crises that required months to heal, and with her pregnant, the whole thing had been unforgivable. The longer he stayed away, the worse it would be.
‘You childish bastard,’ he chided himself in the mirror. ‘Clod!’ The white-haired, straight-nosed face stared back at him, its wide, narrow mouth an expressionless slit. It might be more to the point to be angry at Celcy, he thought broodingly, but what good would it do? Being angry with Celcy had few satisfactions to it. ‘Idiot,’ he accused himself. ‘You can sing your way past practically any Presence in this world, but you can’t get through one touchy
