Space Is Just a Starry Night Read online

  Space Is Just a Starry Night

  short fiction by

  Tanith Lee

  Seattle

  Aqueduct Press, PO Box 95787

  Seattle, WA 98145-2787

  www.aqueductpress.com

  This book is fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61976-032-5

  Copyright © 2013 Tanith Lee

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by Lynne Jenson Lampe

  Cover illustration credits:

  Fornax Galaxy Cluster: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

  CabeusCrater: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

  Publication Acknowledgments

  “The Beautiful Biting Machine,” Cheap Street, 1984; Arrows of Eros. London, New English Library, 1989. Alex Stewart, editor.

  “Moon Wolf,” Asimov’s Magazine, August 2004.

  “Felixity,” Sisters in Fantasy, editors Susan Shwartz and Margin Greenberg, New York: Penguin/Roc, 1995.

  “The Thaw,” Asimov’s Magazine, Vol 3 No 6, June 1979.

  “You Are My Sunshine,” Chrysalis 8, edited by Roy Torgeson, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1980.

  “Black Fire,” Light Speed, edited by John Joseph Adams, Issue 8, January 2011; Lightspeed Year One. San Francisco: Prime Books, 2011. Reprint anthology.

  “Written in Water,” Perpetual Light, edited by Alan Ryan, New York: Warner Books, 1980.

  “Tonight I Can Sleep Quietly,” Emblemes (Editions de l’Oxymore,) ed Lea Silhol, 2005.

  “Stalking the Leopard,” Realms of Fantasy Magazines, edited by Shawna McCarthy, Vol 10 No 5, June 2004.

  “Dead Yellow,” Nature, edited by Henry Gee, Vol 453 No 7199, June 2008.

  “By Crystal Light Beneath One Star,” Tales from the Forbidden Planet, edited by Roz Kavney, New York: Titan Books, 1987.

  “A Day in the Skin (Or…),” Habitats, edited by Susan Shwartz, New York: DAW Books, 1984.

  “With a Flaming Sword” and “Within the Ghost” are original stories for this book.

  To my Husband and Angel, John Kaiine,

  From whom great inspiration I gaiine;

  And whose name is such fun,

  Since almost no one

  Can pronounce it — until we explaiine.

  Contents

  Publication Acknowledgments

  Part I: Myth Remembered

  The Beautiful Biting Machine

  Moon Wolf

  Part II: Burning Bright

  Felixity

  The Thaw

  You Are My Sunshine

  Part III: Falling Angels

  With a Flaming Sword

  Black Fire

  Written in Water

  Part IV: Death's Door

  Tonight I Can Sleep Quietly

  Stalking the Leopard

  Dead Yellow

  Part V: Exiles

  By Crystal Light Beneath One Star

  A Day in the Skin

  (or, the century we were out of them)

  Within the Ghost

  Author Biography

  I left my world to wander in

  This endless midnight sky,

  For space is just a starry night

  Where no suns ever rise.

  “Dana’s Song” by Tanith Lee

  from Sarcophagus, her first episode for the BBC TV Series Blake’s 7

  Part I

  Myth Remembered

  The Beautiful Biting Machine

  When the two suns go down and it starts to get dark, the Nightfair wakes up, a beast with a thousand bright eyes.

  Five miles long, four miles wide, the valley is full of lights, noises, musics, between the tall and echoing hills.

  This world’s a pleasure planet. It has many and various attractions. The Nightfair is only one. Here there are spinning wheels of yellow sparks against the dusk, and glimmering neon ghost towers ringing with screams, and carousels that maybe come alive. Not everyone cares for these, or the candy awnings, the peppermint arenas, the cries of fortune-tellers in glass cages, the crashing of pre-arranged safe vehicular accidents, the soaring space-flights that never leave the ground. Those that don’t care for them don’t come. But for those that do, there are the cuisine and superstition and popular art, the sex and syntax and the sin of twenty worlds, to be sampled for a night, or a week of nights. (Who could tolerate more?)

  So visit the Valley of Lights. Hurry, hurry, don’t be slow or sly or shy.

  Welcome to the Nightfair.

  “This gentlevyrainian’s gotta slight complaint.”

  “Tell him to see a doctor.”

  “Don’t cheek me, Beldek.”

  “No, Mr Qire. What seems to be the trouble, sir?”

  Beldek and Qire looked through the one-way window at the gentleman from Vyraini. Like all Vyrainians, he was humanoid, greenish, fretful. Vyraini did not esteem the human race, but was patronizingly intrigued by it and its culture. Anything human, where possible, should be experienced, explored. Now this Vyrainian had come to Qire’s pavilion at the Nightfair and was not quite satisfied, had a slight complaint.

  “Go and talk to it — him,” said Qire.

  “Me, sir?”

  “You. You speak their lingo. You speak half the damn gurglings of half the damn galaxy, don’t you, Beldek? You lazy son-of-a-ghex.”

  “If you say so, Mr Qire.”

  Beldek opened the long window and stepped through. The other side of the window looked like a door, glamorous with enamel paint and stained glass. Beldek bowed to the gentlevyrainian with his hands to his face, which was the correct form of greeting from an outworlder. The Vyrainian stood impassive, ears folded.

  “Fo ogch m’mr bnn?” Beldek inquired courteously.

  The Vyrainian seemed gratified; it lifted its ears and broke into staccato Vyrainese.

  The glottal conversation continued for two and a half minutes. After which, feeling Qire’s beady little eyes on him through the one-way door-window, Beldek leisurely set the computer for a twenty percent refund.

  The Vyrainian took its cash and offered Beldek the salute used when bidding farewell to an inferior but valuable alien. Not all Earthmen knew exactly what the salute implied (a rough translation was: I will let you lick my feet another time, O wise one). Beldek, who did, smiled pleasantly.

  The whaal-ivory screens of the outer doors closed on the Vyrainian’s exit.

  Beldek turned as Qire came storming from the inner office. Qire was a bulging, broad-faced type, the little eyes somewhat slanting, the mane of golden hair an implant. His clothes, though gaudy, were the best — real silk shirt, whaal-leather sandals. A ruby in his neck-chain.

  “Why d’yah do-that?”

  “What, Mr Qire, sir?”

  “Refund the bastard his money.”

  “Twenty percent. The amount he agreed would compensate for the slight complaint.”

  “What was wrong with her?”

  Beldek said, ultra-apologetically, fawningly, “A little something I told you about, that clicks —”

  “Why the Garbundian Hell didn’t you, for Christ’s sake, get it fixed?’

  “I have tried, Mr Qire,” said Beldek humbly. “I truly have.”

  Qire glowered.

  “I should put you out on your butt. Why don’t I?”

  “I’m useful?” Beldek said, attempting humbly to be helpful now.

  “Like urx-faron you are. All right. Give me the receipts. I’m going over to Next Valley. I’ll be here again five-day week. Chakki’ll be by in t
hree days.”

  Beldek keyed the computer for the cash receipts, tore them off when they came, and presented them to Qire. Qire riffled through them, glancing for mistakes. “Okay, Beldek. I want to hear from Chakki that she’s back in good order, you savvy?”

  “Oh yes, Mr Qire, sir.”

  Qire swore. At the whaal-ivory doors he turned for one last snarl.

  “I’ve got other concerns on this planet, Beldek. If Malvanda packs up, it’s no great loss to me. You’re the one’ll suffer. Back to hoofing the space-lanes with your card tricks and your dipscop seventh-rate jaar. You get me?”

  “To the heart, sir,” said Beldek. “And all the way up yours, Mr Qire.”

  Qire cursed him and slammed out.

  The doors, ever serene, whispered shut in his wake.

  Beldek leaned on the ornamental counter, keying the computer, which he had long ago rigged to count the amount he had creamed off Qire’s takings for the last five-day period. Qire, of course, guessed he did this. It was an inevitable perk of the job. All told, Qire seemed to value disliking Beldek. Value the hypertensive rage that came to the boil whenever Beldek’s cool clear eyes met his with such angelic sweetness above the long, smiling mouth that said: Yes, Mr Qire, sir. Most of the human portion of the Valley of Lights knew about Qire’s hatred of his employee Beldek, the drifter from the space-lanes. Beldek who could speak half the languages of the galaxy and could charm rain from a desert sky, if he wanted. Usually he didn’t want to. Beldek, whose un-implanted, long thick lank brass-colored hair hung on his shoulders and over his high wide forehead. Lean as a sculpture and tall, from birth on some unspecified lower-gravity world. Pale and pale-eyed. Something about him: more than the rumored past, card-shark, kept creature of male, female, humanoid…tales of a man murdered out among the stars…. More than the fact of working for Qire, in attendance on one of the weirdest novelties of the Nightfair. Be careful of Beldek.

  The pavilion stood on a rise. A quarter of a mile below, a bowl of dizzy fires, the Arena of Arson, flashed and flared. Back a way, one of the great wheels whirled gold against the black sky. But the crimson pavilion was clouded round with Sirrian cedars. Far-off lamps winked on their branches; the apex of the pavilion, a diadem of rose-red glass lit subtly from within, just pierced, with a wicked symbolism of many carnal things, from the upper boughs. Once among the trees, the rest of the Fair seemed siphoned off. You came to the kiosk with the ivory doors. You went in, read something, signed something, paid something, and were let through another door, this one of black Sinoese lacquer. And then the Fair was very faraway indeed. For then you were in the Mansion of Malvanda. And she was there with you…

  A faint bell chimed on the console. Beldek killed the read-out and looked urbanely at the door-screens. Another customer.

  The doors opened.

  A New-Worlder stepped through. He was alone. Most of them came alone, the same as most were men, or rather, most were male. A mixture of human and some genetically-adhesive other-race, the New-Worlder was fresh-skinned, grinning, handsome, and without whites to his eyes.

  “Say,” he said.

  “Good-evening, gentlenewman. You wish to visit Malvanda’s Mansion?”

  “Su-ure,” said the New-Worlder.

  “Take a seat, please.

  Grinning, the New-Worlder rippled onto a couch.

  Double-jointed, too. That should offer Malvanda a challenge.

  Beldek came around the counter and extended a small steel wafer.

  “You understand, this entertainment being of the kind it is, you must first —”

  “Sign a disclaimer? Yes, su-ure.” The New-Worlder was already excited, a little drunk or otherwise stimulated. That had usually happened too, before they got themselves to these doors.

  The Newman accepted the wafer, which hummed and spoke to him, telling him of possible dangers involved in what he was about to experience. As it droned on, the Newman grinned and nodded, nodded and grinned, and sometimes his all-blue eyes went to Beldek, and he grinned wider, as if they were in a conspiracy. When the machine finished, the New-Worlder was already up at the counter, his six fingers out for the disclaimer and stylus. He signed with a flourish. He paid the fee in one large bill and shiftily counted his change from habit, not really concentrating.

  “What now?”

  “Now you meet the lady.”

  “Say,” said the Newman.

  Beldek fed the disclaimer into the computer. The back of the kiosk murmured and rose, revealing the black lacquer door. The New-Worlder tensed. There was sudden sweat on his face, and he licked his lips. Then the door opened inward.

  Standing well back by the counter, Beldek got a glimpse of somber plush, sulky, wine-smoked light, the vague shimmer of draperies in a smooth wind scented with camellias and sorrow-flowers, the floral things of drugged funerals. He had seen the poisonously alluring aperture, that throbbing carnelian camellia vulva of doorway, many thousands of times. The New-Worlder had not. Mindlessly, helplessly, he went forward, as if mesmerized, and poured over the threshold. A heavy curtain fell. The door swung shut. The ultimate orifice had closed upon him.

  Beldek moved around behind the counter and touched the voyeur-button. He watched for less than a minute, his face matt as fresh linen, ironed young and expressionless. Then he cut off the circuit.

  Such a device, mostly unknown to clients, was necessary by law, which did not call it a voyeur-button. Persons who underwent such events as Malvanda had to be monitored and easy of access should an emergency occur. Twice, before Beldek joined the show, a client had died in there. Because the disclaimers were in order, and medical aid was rushed to the spot, Qire was covered and no action resulted. The Newman, however, had registered healthy on the wafer. Beldek had told at a glance he was strong. There was no need to watch.

  Qire sometimes came around just to do that. There was a more private extension of the voyeur-button in the cubicle off the inner office. Qire had not invented Malvanda’s Mansion, only sponsored the design and then bought the product. But he liked it. He liked to watch. Sometimes, Qire brought a friend with him.

  Beldek went into the inner office and dropped crystals in his ears that would play him an hour of wild, thin music, a concerto for Celestina and starsteel.

  He did not need to watch Malvanda.

  He knew what happened.

  When the hour was up, Beldek tidied the office and reset the computer. The panels dimmed one by one as the lamps softened in the kiosk, and the carnal peak on the roof went out. The New-Worlder was the last customer of the night. In thirty minutes, dawn would start to seep across the eastern hills.

  As Beldek was re-vamping the computer program for the next night, the black lacquer door shifted open behind him. He heard the Newman emerge, stumbling a little on his double joints.

  The hiccupping footsteps got all the way to the whaal-ivory doors before the voice said, “Say.” The voice had changed. It was husky, demoralized. “Say.”

  Reluctantly, abrasively polite, Beldek turned. He leveled a wordless query at the sagging male by the kiosk doors. The Newman’s eyes were muddy, looking sightless. He seemed to go on trying to communicate.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Nothing,” said the New-Worlder. “Just — nothing.” The doors opened, and like a husk he almost blew into the diluting darkness and away through the dregs and embers of the Fair.

  Whatever else, the click in the mechanism obviously hadn’t spoiled it for him at all.

  By day, the Nightfair goes to ground. Some of the big architectures and marts sink down literally into the bedrock. Others close up like clams. Coming over the hills too early, you get a view of acres of bare earth, burned-looking, as if after some disaster. Here and there the robot cleaning-machines wander, in a snowstorm of rinds, wrappers, drugstick butts, lost tinsels. Places that stand naked to the two eyes of heaven, the pair of dog-suns, have a look of peeled potatoes, indecent and vulnerable.

  Awnings of durable wait l
ike rags, dipped flags, for the glow and glitter of neon night.

  The peoples of the Nightfair are wolves, foxes, coomors; they sleep by day in their burrows or their nests up in the scaffolded phantom towers, among the peaceful wrecks of sky buses, their wry lemon dreams filling the air with acids.

  In the last of the afternoon there begins to be some movement, furtive, rats on a golden hill of rubbish littered with tin-can calliopes.

  “Beldek, is that you, you ghexy guy?”

  Qire’s runner, Chakki, having used his key to the whaal-ivory doors, peered about the office.

  “Who else did you hope to find?”

  Beldek was tinkering with a small box of wires and three or four laser-battery tools. He did not turn round. Chakki now and then dropped by, never when expected, checking up for Mr Qire, or just nosing. Scrawny and pretty, Chakki was a being of instinct rather than thought or compunction, an alley cat that runs in, steals a chicken dinner, pees in a corner, and, soulless physical ghost, is gone.

  “What ya doing, lovely Beldek?”

  “Trying to repair a click.”

  “My…Malvanda clicketh. Yeah, I heard about it. Better now?”

  “We shall see.”

  “You going in to give it her?”

  Beldek walked past him toward the back wall of the kiosk, which was going up to reveal the door of Sinoese lacquer.

  “You lucky buck. Bet she bends ya.”

  “So long, Chakki.”

  The lacquer door started to open. Chakki stared tiptoe over Beldek’s shoulder into camellia, carnelian, lilies-go-roses, funereal virgo unintacta.

  “Let’s have a piece, Bel?”

  “If you can afford it. Come back tonight with the other clientele.”

  “Go swiff yourself, Bellrung.”

  The curtain fell. The door had dosed.

  Beyond the door, no matter the time of day or season, it was always midnight in Indian Summer.