Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

“Only when he wants it so,” said Hugh. “Otherwise, he can be as obtrusive as… Well, as you.”

“You make a good pair,” admitted the Fudir. “The Ghost of Ardow was hard to find, too.”

“It comes in handy,” admitted Hugh.

“Speaking of which,” said Greystroke, “Rinty and I have just finished a case on Khlabash and being in the neighborhood, thought we’d stop here and sift for information on Bridget ban.” He looked from Donovan to Méarana and back, and smiled. “Imagine finding you two here! If I had to guess, you must be doing the same.’

Evening had come on and they ordered dinner from the café. The waitresses brought special pillows for them to sit on and plates of beaten copper and small cups of turgid coffee. They ordered McLoob—boiled chicken and fried vegetables all cooked together with rice. It was sometimes called the “planetary dish” of Harpaloon, though it was popular only in the Cliff na Murph and neighboring countries.

The craic ran high. Inevitably, there were reminisces of the Dancer affair, and the Fudir had the opportunity to set straight what had happened in the endgame and his close brush with Ravn Olafsdottr. “Still on the loose, I hear,” said Greystroke. “Hope she’s not still hunting for you. There are signs that many of their agents have gone back. Some sort of trouble in the Confederation.” The Hound and Hugh recounted some cases they had worked on, “as much as we can tell you.” And Méarana talked of her music and promised to play for them the next day. When the Fudir told them, with almost proprietary pride, of her song cycle around the Dancer, Hugh said lightly, “Be sure to play the part where the Fudir knocked me cold.”

They spoke, too, of Méarana’s mother, praising her skills. But the Silky Voice saw in the cast of the harper’s face the thought that one only eulogizes the departed.

“She was a woman easy to love,” said Greystroke, “but at the same time, difficult.”

“Aye,” said Little Hugh. “Easy for her to be loved, less easy for her to love.”

“She used her affections as a weapon,” Greystroke said. He lifted his coffee toward his lips, but it never arrived, and after a while he returned the cup to its saucer. “It blunts them,” he finished, “to use them so. She grew coarse, numb. She could not feel the caress of others.”

The third person. The past tense.

“Translation,” the Fudir said. “You wanted her to love you, and she would not.”

“Or she could not,” the Hound countered.

“All three of us wanted that,” said Hugh. “Didn’t we? We wanted her to love us; but she only wanted us to love her. I didn’t mind that. I wasn’t looking to be loved. Not then.”

“No,” said the Fudir. “She wanted control, not love. A bond becomes a leash when it fastens on only one end.”

“Ah, bile yer haids,” said Méarana with some heat. “Ye’re haverin’ because ye got the fling from her. What else could she have done— as a Hound? To love someone, ye maun gi’e yourself awa’. And she could nae afford that. The tightest leash? She kept that on herself. At home, wi’ me,’ twas different.” At that, she turned away a little from the table and fell into silence.

The Fudir exchanged glances with the others. “The strange thing,” he said finally in the quiet that had followed Méarana’s outburst, “is what I remember most clearly about her.”

“And what’s that?” said Greystroke.

“You would think it would be the… the weapons she used on me,” the Fudir said. “But what remains with me most clearly is the flair with which she did everything. The audacity. She was not always happy; but she was always full of cheer. With her, you always felt that things were possible.” Méarana turned and half looked at him over her shoulder. Her left eye, the one he could see, glimmered and a tear trickled down her cheek.

“Ah, it was different with me,” said Hugh. “It was more like exercise. She laid a trap for my heart, but I saw the trap and stepped into it willingly. So you might say we trapped each other.”

“Then perhaps,” said Greystroke, “she did love each of us, in a way, and if only a little.”

The Fudir pursed his lips. “With Hugh, she may have enjoyed the sheer recreation. With me, she may have liked battling wits. But only the gods know what she saw in you, Greystroke. No offense, but she had flair and she had drama; and among your many fine qualities those are not to be numbered.”

The Hound smiled. “Haven’t you heard? Opposites attract.”

The jibe irritated the Fudir almost as much as the chuckles he heard from the other voices in his head. “I, at least, was not snared,” he told the others. “In the end, I walked out on her.”

“She wasn’t the only one you walked out on,” said Hugh. “But, tell me: did you walk, or did you run?”

The Fudir flushed; and he shifted, suddenly uncomfortable, on his pillow.

“She was quite angry with you afterward,” the Pup added, “and for a long time.”

“And what greater anger,” the Fudir said with a smile toward Grey-stroke, “than that of love spurned? She wasn’t used to rejection.”

Hugh grinned. “Greystroke was madder than any of us. Does that mean he loved you even more?”

The question caught the Fudir short and he saw in a momentary slip that it caught Greystroke, too. Then he blew the Hound a kiss and said, “Gray One! I didn’t know you cared.” They laughed more heartily than the joke had warranted, and Méarana rejoined the banter dry-eyed once more.

Dessert had come by then and, when they were enjoying the mango sherbets and the McMoul cookies, Greystroke said, “So, how goes the search? Zorba told us over the Circuit that we should cooperate if we happened to cross paths. Retired agents have no authority to issue orders, but you know how that goes…” He wagged his hand ulta-pulta. “Though the Friendly Ones alone know how you hope to succeed where we have failed.”

The harper closed her eyes briefly. “I thought, being her daughter, I would notice something that you and your colleagues overlooked. No offense.”

Greystroke pursed his lips. “None taken. What have you found?”

“Very little,” Donovan said before the harper could speak. “They told me in the Corner that she met with some Terran and’ Loon leaders. Oh. And she was traveling as Francine Thompson—but that, you already knew.”

Greystroke sighed. “There is so much else to learn,” he ruminated. “What of her taste in jewelry, for example?”

Inner Child twitched and the scarred man’s hand knocked over his coffee cup. Everyone pushed back from the table and the waiters swooped in to clean things up.

The scarred man apologized to everyone for the spill. He found Little Hugh staring at him with grave concern. “Are you all right, Fudir?”

“Me-fella thik hai . You no worry, sahb.” If Greystroke noticed that the jewelry topic had been skipped, he was not so boorish as to point it out.

In the lift to their suite on the fifth floor, Méarana said, “I liked what you said about her.”

The Fudir looked wary. “What I said? What was that?” “You said, ‘She was not always happy; but she was always full of cheer.’ And that, old man, is the essence of hope.”

When they had reached their suite, the scarred man intimated to the harper by portents and signs that she should remain silent and change her clothing.

Méarana started to ask why, but he mimed silence again, and so, puzzled, she did as he wanted. While she changed, he chattered from the other room about past adventures with Hugh and Greystroke on Jehovah and New Eireann, and how pleased he had been to run into them like that. “Of all the cafés in all the worlds of the Spiral Arm,” he said, “they walk into ours.” Then he laughed, as if at some secret joke.