Eloise

"Odd, Earl, how at times like this you remember things. I took my first drink when I was twelve. It was at the festival and I sneaked a cup of wine. There was a girl, I thought she was an angel, but it must have been the wine. Twelve," he said broodingly. "A long time ago now. Too long."

Dumarest sipped at his brandy, nursing it, savoring it as it trickled down his throat. With care, it would last until dawn.

"What made you start playing?"

"That?" Arbush glanced at the gilyre, now coated with ice, the strings crusted with snow. "I don't know, really. There was a minstrel at our village, a transient, and he took a shine to me. I followed him when he left and he taught me to play. I was good at it, even then, and there were advantages. A good tune, a song, and the girls fell into my arms. I was young then, of course, not so fat as I am now; but it wouldn't have mattered. Sometimes, even now-" He shook his head, sighing. "Well, all that's in the past."

"And the Styast?" Dumarest wasn't really interested but they had to stay awake. To fall silent would be to yield to the fumes of the brandy, the lethargy which would bring the sleep preceding death. "How did you tie up with Eglantine?"

"That pig!" Arbush made a spitting sound. "A mistake, Earl. I rode on one ship too many and found I was trapped. Debts which couldn't be paid and a rut into which I fell. The wrong part of space for a minstrel to earn a living, even if he is young and good to look at. I am neither." Shrewdly he added, "As a traveler you should know the danger of taking passage on the wrong ship, of landing in the wrong world."

Planets without industry, backward worlds on which it was impossible to earn the price of a passage out; places on which the unwary could be stranded, often to starve to death. Handlers with warped minds who withheld the numbing drugs, and watched as those who had traveled Low screamed their lungs raw with the agony of resurrection. Small-minded, frustrated men trapped in the metal shells they rode between the stars, envious of those with wider horizons.

"Yes," said Dumarest bleakly. "I know."

"What makes a man do it?" mused Arbush softly. "To leave home and family and push into the unknown. I had friends, prospects; yet I left them all to follow a man who could make music with the touch of his fingers. Had I stayed there would have been wealth, girls to enjoy, ease and comfort to the end of my days. I must have been mad. All of us who drift like dust between the stars, all must be mad."

Beyond the mouth of the cave the wind gusted, sighing as if in agreement; the crude candle guttering, shadows casting thick patches on the minstrel's face, making him look suddenly old.

"Perhaps we are looking for something," said Dumarest.

"Perhaps." Arbush nodded his agreement. "Wealth, adventure, the love of women-who can tell? I wanted all those things and more. Fame, renown, the galaxy at my feet. Instead I found toil and tribulation, a stinking berth in a rotting ship. And you, Earl? What are you seeking?"

"A planet. A world called Earth."

"Earth?" Arbush sipped at his brandy. "Surely you are joking. Earth is a legend."

"No."

"But-"

"It is real," said Dumarest flatly. "It exists. I know. I was born there."

To run half-naked and half-starved, to catch his food with the aid of a sling, a thrown stone, a knife; small beasts which lurked among rocks which he had to catch or starve. A hard, bitter time in which hunger ruled, in which gentleness had taken no part.

He sipped at his brandy.

"Tell me about it," said Arbush quietly. "If we live, it could supply the material for a song."

"An old world," said Dumarest. "The surface scarred and torn by ancient wars. There is a great silver moon and the skies are blue when not fleeced with cloud. The sun is yellow, the seas a dark green when not grey. I left it as a boy, stowing away on a ship. The captain was more kind than I deserved. He should have evicted me; instead, he let me work my passage. I have been traveling ever since."

"But if you left it, Earl, you must know where it is. Surely you could take passage on a ship going that way?"

"Which way?" Dumarest was curt. "I told you that I was young and, perhaps filled with that madness you spoke of. The past was behind me, I wanted only to look ahead. For a while I rode with the captain and then he died, and I was on my own."

A bad time in which he had learned the hard way; work at anything which came to hand, fighting in the rings when there was no work, taking cuts, the scars of which he would always carry, killing when he'd had no choice. And moving, always moving, traveling from world to world; ever deeper into the galaxy, towards the center where the suns were close and planets thick. Into a region where the very name of Earth was a legend, its position unknown.