Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

IVORIA

Tanith Lee

www.sfgateway.com

Enter the SF Gateway …

In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

Welcome to the SF Gateway.

Contents

Title Page

Gateway Introduction

Contents

Last Chapter: 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Bookmark

Epilogue

Afterword

Website

Also by Tanith Lee

About the Author

Copyright

The Passenger becomes the Stranger when he leaves the ship and steps ashore.

English Spoken

John Kaiine

Last Chapter

1

Nick opens his eyes and sees the eight-sided moon of the window floating in the dusk above him.

The window always pleases him.

Seeing it first, from outside in the strange, busy little cul-de-sac, had made him want this flat.

But the phone is going. Not his mobile, the landline. He gets up and walks barefoot through the shadowy room. “Hi.”

“Nick, I need to talk to you. What are you doing tonight?”

Idly, Nick responds, “Who is this?”

“Oh, for… your brother, Nicolas. Who do you think.”

“OK. It’s a bad line. Did you say tonight?”

“I’m at Euston.”

“Right,” says Nick. He leaves a gap.

“Well, where can I meet you? How about your place?”

“Ah. It’s a bit…”

“It’s always a bit. I said, this is important, Nicky.”

“I’m meeting someone, Laurence. In about an hour.”

“Can’t she wait? Can’t you? I only need to take up your precious time for twenty minutes.”

Nick sighs, quietly, and measures the narrowing perspective stretching from here to the connection with Jazz at 8 p.m. Which is in fact almost three hours off.

“All right. You can come up here,” he concedes. “Have a drink and unburden yourself of whatever awful crime you’ve now committed. Do I take it you’re driving?”

“You can bet I am.”

No delay for Laurence then to wait for a cab. He will, as usual, have left his car in the long-stay car park. Consumption of alcohol will not deter him either - unless of course some miraculous good-citizenesque conversion has taken place. Then again, the background now sounds like a pub or wine-bar.

“Fifteen minutes,” says Laurence.

Phone put down, Nick pads over the faintly warm, ever-smooth polished wood of the floor, and up the pair of shallow steps into the kitchen. He turns on the light, (nice, that, turning on a light - so what happened? You touched the switch and it got a snort of cocaine, or fell in love with you… make a note of this). He takes the vodka out of the fridge and opens a bottle of Casey’s Orange Dry. It will be fine. Laurence never stays here that long, though generally longer than promised. And Jazz will be late anyway. She inevitably is.

Having also drugged or seduced the side lamps in the main room, Nick surveys the flat a moment. He keeps it in condition himself, all but the floor, which a firm regularly attends to. Spare and clean, it shines, but the best thing is the moon of window; that goes without saying. The real moon will appear in a while, sliding into the right hand frame, full tonight, cold golden white in the clear November evening.

Laurence sits on the couch. He has removed his scarf, cashmere-mix overcoat, even his jacket, since the faultless heating makes the flat softly, airily warm. He is now in trousers and a thick-stripe shirt of slaty blues, staring at his shoes, which are leather lace-ups. In his hand the drink, his second, is already half full, or rather, half empty. “What am I going to do, Nick?”

Nick, still on his first glass of Sauvignon, pauses thoughtfully. “I don’t know.”

“No, no. Of course not. Oh shit,” says Laurence, “it’s a bloody mess.” And drains the glass. He gets up. “Can I use your lavvy?”

Nick nods, and also gets up, still shoeless, and goes to fetch the vodka and dry orange. He refills his brother’s glass. Now it is full again, as Laurence returns from the bathroom.

“It’s not that I did anything heinous, quite the reverse,” says Laurence, reassured by the drink’s restoration and therefore not yet tasting it.

“No.”

“Oh yeah. You’ll say I never do.”

“You never do.”

“Ha. But I have to finish this damn book. I’m already late for the deadline by months, and God knows I need the cash input. And then there’s the other programme, on the Roman site at Coreley. I have to start that in another ten days.”

“Yes.”

“God, Nick.” After all, a gulp of drink. “Sometimes I really envy you.”

“I thought you always did.”

“Yes, you little bastard. I bet you do.” Laurence sends Nick a wan smile. Laurence, in his forties,