“How long a nova to die takes?” Sebastian asked.

“A few weeks, perhaps two months. A super-nova can take up to two years to dwindle.”

“The message, the Mouse said. “You don’t want to see what Prince says?”

“You do?”

Katin suddenly leaned over the chessboard. “Yes.”

Lorq laughed. “All right.” He strode across the room. Once more he touched the control panel on the Mouse’s chair.

In the largest frame on the high wall the light fantasy faded in the two-meter oval of gilded leaves.

“So. That’s what you’ve been doing all these years!” Prince said.

The Mouse watched the gaunt jaws and his own jaws clamped; his eyes raised to Prince’s thin, high hair, and the Mouse’s own forehead tightened. He pushed forward in the chair, his fingers twitching to shape, as on a syrynx, the bladed nose, the wells of blue.

Katin’s eyes widened. His sandal heels grabbed the carpet as involuntarily he pushed away.

“I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish. Nor do I care. But…”

“That Prince is?” Tyy whispered.

“You’ll fail. Believe me.” Prince smiled.

And Tyy’s whisper became a gasp.

“No. I don’t even know where you’re going. But watch. I’ll get there first. Then”—he raised his black-gloved hand—”we’ll see.” He reached forward so that his palm filled the screen. Then the fingers flicked; there was a tinkle of glass- Tyy gave a little scream.

Prince had snapped his finger against the lens of the message camera, shattering it.

The Mouse glanced at Tyy; she had dropped her cards.

The beasts flapped at the leash; the wind scattered Tyy’s cards on the carpet.

“Here,” Katin was saying, “I’ll get them!” He leaned from his seat and reached about the floor with gawky arms. Lorq had begun to laugh again.

A card overturned on the rug by the Mouse’s foot. Three-dimensional within laminated metal, a sun flared above a black sea. Over the sea wall the sky was alive with flame. On shore two naked boys held hands. The dark one squinted at the sun, his face amazed and luminous. The tow-headed one looked at their shadows on the sand.

Lorq’s laughter, like multiple explosions, rolled in the commons. “Prince has accepted the challenge.” He slapped the stone. “Good! Very good! Hey, and you think we’ll meet under the sun afire?” His hand went up, a fist. “I can feel his claw. Good! Yes, good!”

The Mouse picked up the card quickly. He looked from the captain to the viewing screen where the multichrome’s shifting hues had replaced the face, the hand. (And there, on opposite walls, were dim Idas and pale Lynceos in their smaller frames.) His eyes fell back to the two boys beneath the erupting sun.

As he looked, his left toes clawed the carpet, his right clutched his boot sole; fear pawed behind his thighs, tangled in the nerves along his backbone. Suddenly he slipped the card into his syrynx sack. His fingers lingered inside the leather, becoming sweaty on the laminate. Unseen, the picture was even more frightening. He took his hand out and wiped it on his hip, then looked to see if anyone watched.

Katin was looking through the cards he had picked up. “This is what you’ve been playing with, Tyy? The Tarot?” He looked up. “You’re a gypsy, Mouse. I bet you’ve seen these before.” He held the cards up so the Mouse might see.

Not looking, the Mouse nodded. He tried to keep his hand from his hip. (There had been a big woman sitting behind the fire—in the dirty print skirt—and the mustachioed men sat around under the flickering overhang of rock, watching while the cards flashed and flashed in her fat hands. But that had been…)

“Here,” Tyy said. “You to me them give.” She reached.

“May I look through the whole set?” asked Katin.

Her gray eyes widened. “No.” Surprise was in her voice.

“I’m sorry,” Katin began, confused. “I didn’t mean to…”

Tyy took the cards.

“You do you read the cards?” Katin tried to keep his face from freezing.

She nodded.

“Tarot reading is common over the Federation,” Lorq said. He was sitting on the sculpture. “Of Prince’s message, your cards anything have to say?” As he turned, his eyes flashed like jasper, like gold. “Perhaps your cards of Prince and me will speak?”

The Mouse was surprised how easily the captain slipped on the Pleiades dialect. The expression inside was a quick smile.

Lorq left the stone. “What the cards about this swing into the night say?”

Sebastian, gazing from under thick blond brows, pulled his dark shapes closer.

“I their patterns want to see. Yes. Where Prince and myself among the cards fall?”

If she read, he would have an opportunity to see more of the cards: Katin grinned. “Yes, Tyy. Give us a reading on Captain’s expedition. How well does she read them, Sebastian?”

“Tyy never wrong is.”

“You for a few seconds only Prince’s face have seen. In the face the lines of a man’s fate mapped are.” Lorq put his fists on his hips. “From the crack across mine, you where those lines my fate can tell will touch?”

“No, Captain—” Her eyes dropped to her hands. The cards looked much too big for her still fingers. “I the cards only array and read.”

“I haven’t seen anybody read the Tarot since I was in school.” Katin looked back at the Mouse. “There was one character from the Pleiades in my philosophy seminar who knew his cards. I suppose at one time you could have called me quite an amateur aficionado of the Book of Toth, as they were incorrectly labeled in the seventeenth century. I would say rather”—he paused for Tyy’s corroboration—”the Book of the Grail?”

None came.

“Come. Give me a reading, Tyy.” Lorq dropped his fists to his sides.

Tyy’s fingertips rested on the golden backs. From her seat at the bottom of the ramp, gray eyes halved by epicanthi, she looked between Katin and Lorq.

She said: “I will.”

“Mouse,” Katin called, “come on and take a look at this. Give us your opinion on the performance—The Mouse stood up in the light of the gaming table. “Hey…!”

They turned at the wrecked voice. “You believe in that?”

Katin raised an eyebrow.

“You call me superstitious because I spit in the river? Now you tell the future with cards! Ahnnn!” which is not really the sound he made. Still it meant disgust. His gold earring shook and flashed.

Katin frowned.

Tyy’s hand hung over the deck.

The Mouse dared half the distance of the rug. “You’re really going to try and tell the future with cards? That’s silly. That’s superstitious!”

“No it’s not, Mouse,” Katin countered. “One would think that you of all people-”

The Mouse waved his hand and barked hoarse laughter. “You, Katin, and them cards. That’s something!”

“Mouse, the cards don’t actually predict anything. They simply propagate an educated commentary on present situations—”

“Cards aren’t educated! They’re metal and plastic. They don’t know—”

“Mouse, the seventy-eight cards of the Tarot present symbols and mythological images that have recurred and reverberated through forty-five centuries of human history. Someone who understands these symbols can construct a dialogue about a given situation. There’s nothing superstitious about it. The Book of Changes, even Chaldean Astrology only become superstitious when they are abused, employed to direct rather than guide and suggest.”

The Mouse made that sound again.

“Really, Mouse! It’s perfectly logical; you talk like somebody living a thousand years ago.”

“Hey, Captain?” The Mouse closed the rest of the distance and, peering around Lorq’s elbow, squinted at the deck in Tyy’s lap. “You believe in those things?” His hand fell on Katin’s forearm, as though holding it, he might keep it still.

Tiger eyes beneath rusted brows showed agony; Lorq was grinning. “Tyy, me the cards read.”

She turned the deck over and passed the pictures—”Captain, you one choose”—from hand to hand.