House of Shards (8 page)

Damn Kuusinen’s eyes, he thought. And his other parts, too.

He'd do it.

*

“Lord Qlp is inactive now,” Lady Dosvidern said. “The Drawmii have five brains, you know, each with one eye and one ear. They spend a lot of time not moving, just talking to themselves. Crosstalk, we call it.”

“I believe I'd heard something of the sort. That their interior life was somewhat complex.”

“It makes being Lord Qlp’s companion a little easier. I should have dinnertime to myself, and most of the evening, before Lord Qlp grows restless again.”

“I should be honored, my lady, to take you in to dinner.”

She smiled, her tongue lolling. “Thank you, sir. It would be my pleasure.”

*

People talked without sound. The orchestra sawed away without any aural effect. Clear privacy screens, Maijstral reflected, are a wonderful device for creating inadvertent comedy.

“Gregor.”

“Yes, boss?”

“Is Roman there? I want you both in the White Room as soon as possible.”

“Something's up?”

“I’m going to do an unassisted crosstouch, and I want it recorded from two angles.” Maijstral held the telephone with both hands, one cupped in front of his mouth, so as to inhibit lipreading.

The delight was palpable in Gregor’s voice.' 'Unassisted? Right there in front of everybody? Terrific, boss. Ten points, for sure.”

“Hurry. I expect the trumpets at any moment.”

“Only too.” Meaning, only too ready.

Maijstral put the phone down and told the privacy field to disperse. The sound of conversation returned, nearly drowning the orchestra. Maijstral glanced about and saw Advert huddling against the bar in an orange shell gown that clashed badly with her background, which was of bright closewood and mirrors. Deciding that Advert had failed to notice the clash and was therefore obviously very distraught, Maijstral decided to rescue her. As he walked toward her, he saw something glitter against the hollow of her throat. Seeing him, she turned away and watched his approach through the mirrored Khanji relief behind the bar. Only when his arrival seemed inevitable did she turn to him. They exchanged two fingers and sniffed.

“My compliments on your choker, madam,” Maijstral said. “The sapphire is wonderfully set off by the diamonds.”

Advert raised a hand swiftly to her throat, as if to prevent him from snatching the choker then and there. Then she hesitated.

“Thank you.” Through clenched teeth.

Maijstral glanced casually about the room. “Is not Pearl Woman here?” he asked. “There was something I particularly wanted to say to her.”

“She isn’t feeling well.”

“I trust she will recover soon. Before the ball, I hope.”

Sullenly. “I can’t say.”

“Perhaps my news will cheer her. I believe that she may have lost something, and I believe I know where it is.”

Advert's eyes blazed. “So it
was
you.”

Maijstral’s lazy eyes widened in feigned surprise. “I said I knew where it was, Miss Advert. I did
not
say that I had it. I believe it was recovered by someone else, and I can probably get it.”

Advert looked at him with suspicion. “What do you want?” she asked.

“May I escort you to your table? I think we may have a number of things to talk about.”

She put her arm through his. Rings glittered against the dark material of his suit. “I’m not certain whether I should listen to this.”

“You can always walk away.”

She bit her lip. Maijstral guided her away from the clashing backdrop. She harmonized much better with white than with close wood and mirrors.

“I’ll listen,” she decided. “For now.”

“Will you do me another favor, Miss Advert. Will you order a new deck of cards from one of the robots?”

Standing up amid the orchestra, trumpeters raised their instruments to their lips.

*

Trumpet calls rang from the giant diamond. A pair of leather-covered doors swung open. Couples began moving toward the dining room.

“The Waltz twins, definitely,” Geoff Fu George said, wrapping Vanessa’s arm in his. “Have you seen what they're wearing?”

“I’ve seen it,” Vanessa said. They were barely moving their lips, wary of lip-readers hiding behind invisible cameras.

“They can’t possibly wear those heavy pieces at the ball later.”

“They may go in the hotel safe.”

“In that case, we'll take them off the robot.”

“Not as many points that way.”

Fu George shrugged. “Risks of the game, Vanessa.”

“I suppose. Look. There's Roman.”

“Yes.” Noncommittally.

“I always liked him. Perhaps I should say hello.”

“Perhaps.”

“He never approved of me, I always thought. He probably thought me a nouveau riche adventuress.” She thought about this judgment for a brief moment. “He was perfectly right, of course.”

“Oh.” (A brush . . .)

“Ah.” (. . . not a thud.)

Maijstral offered an excusatory smile. “My apologies. I must not have been looking where I was going.”

Fu George looked at him and nodded. “Quite all right, Maijstral.” He nodded. “Miss Advert.”

“Mr. Fu George. Miss Runciter.”

Maijstral stepped back. “Pray go on ahead of us.”

Fu George was pleased. “Thank you, Maijstral.”

The trumpets were still calling. In his formal dinner clothes, Roman watched, imperturbable, from his corner of the room. The trumpets were not, after all, calling for him.

*

“Another alert, Khamiss. Violet Corridor, Level Eight, Panel F22.”

Sun's voice grated through Khamiss’s skull. She drew her lips back in a snarl. She was getting tired of that particular voice and the inevitability of its announcements— Sun was fond of bone-conduction receivers, and this one was surgically implanted in the top of Khamiss’s skull, where she couldn’t get rid of it.

Khamiss turned back to her troopers. Her three uniformed subordinates were as weary as she, and she could see their stricken expressions, recognizing them as reflections of her own.

“Another one, ma’am?” asked one.

“Yes. Violet Corridor, Level Eight.”

“We're not going to run all that distance, are we?”

Time, Khamiss realized, for a command decision. She knew, and her troops knew, that the alarm was false. Everyone but the guards was at dinner, and no one would be stealing now: their presence would be missed.

“We'll walk,” Khamiss said. “At our own pace.”

“Very good, ma’am.”

Her upper stomach growled. Things were bad enough that she had to spend her day chasing up and down corridors; now she and her squad had to go without meals. She touched the microphone on her lapel.

“Mr. Sun,” she said, “could you order a robot with some sandwiches to meet us in Violet Corridor? We're getting hungry.”

“Certainly. I shall also send some bottles of rink.”

Well, Khamiss thought. Things were looking up at least a bit. She began to feel a little more buoyant.

Her buoyancy fell considerably as she was informed that two more alarms had gone off before she and her weary troopers could quite respond to the first. She opened her bottle of rink with a move that could only be called desperate.

It was going to be a long night.

*

“If you will watch, madam.” Maijstral fanned the cards on the perfect white of the tablecloth. This wasn’t the deck Maijstral carried in his hidden pocket: this was a deck that Advert had just had delivered by one of the Cygnus robots.

“I’m watching, Maijstral.” Advert, sitting in the dining room below the massive kaleidoscoping steel doors, was in a much better temper. She actually smiled at him.

He squared the deck. “Take your table knife and cut the deck at any point. Lift your card, look at the corner, then drop it.”

“Very well.” She did as he had asked. He squared the deck again (using a little finger break), shifted the deck from left hand to right (thumb holding the break), drank casually from his glass with the left. . . .

“Is this one in your book, Maijstral?”

“Actually, no.” He put the glass down and moved the pack back to his left hand. (Maintaining the break, stepping the cards.) “My book is on advanced manipulations. This one's very elementary. I’m just doing it to warm up.” (Glimpsing the card under the heel of the left hand: eight of crowns.) He squared the deck with his right hand, then offered it to Advert.

“Shuffle it, cut it. However many times you like.” Riffling.

“I think the Pearl’s going to be pleased.”

“I daresay she'll be proud of you.”

The lights of the dining room were darkening. Pale tablecloths glowed dimly. “Best hurry,” said Maijstral.

“How do I know,” casually, handing the pack to him, “you haven’t hidden my card up your sleeve before you gave me the deck?”

He smiled. That was just the fear he intended to ease. “Let me run slowly through the deck. Take note that your card is there. Don’t tell me when you see it, and I won’t look at your face.” (Spotting the eight of crowns, counting five cards above it. Breaking the deck there.)

“Did you see it?”

“Yes. It was in the deck.” (A quick cut at the break.)

Maijstral put the deck down on the table top. “How many letters in your name?”

“Six.”

“Turn over six cards.”

The lights were almost entirely down. Advert had to squint at the deck. There was another trumpet cry.

“A-D-V-E-R-T. Oh.” She laughed and held up the eight of crowns. Maijstral took it, took a pen from his pocket, signed the card, handed it back to her.

“Why don’t you keep the deck as a souvenir?” Maijstral put the deck back in its box, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and signaled for a robot. “Have the robot take it to your room.”

Advert smiled in admiration. “Yes,” she said. “I believe I will.”

*

“A great crosstouch. Better than any I’ve seen him do in practice.”

“I believe,” Roman said, “that the knowledge of his being on camera affects his performance for the better.” He touched the micromedia globe in his pocket as a superstitious person would his Twalle amulet. “Mr. Maijstral always seems to work best under pressure.” He looked up sharply. “Hush, now. Someone we know.”

“Mr. Roman. Mr. Norman.”

“Mr. Drexler. Mr. Chalice.”

Roman and Gregor, walking toward the servants' dining room, sniffed and offered two comradely fingers to each of Geoff Fu George’s principal assistants.

“Larmon and Hrang are not with you?” Roman inquired.

“No,” Drexler said. “They would have loved to come, of course, but space is limited on this station, and Mr. Fu George won only two invitations in his card game with Lord Swann.”

“Yes, I understand. I hope Miss Runciter's suite was not likewise restricted.”

“She has her woman with her. Cooper.”

“Miss Cooper isn’t here?”

“She's getting Miss Runciter's ball gown ready. It’s got a lot of special effects.”

Roman gazed down his nose at Drexler. “Miss Cooper has my sympathy.”

Drexler was a young male Khosalikh, not yet having reached first molt; he was a little shorter man average height but built broadly, as if for durability. He wore a gaudy stud in one ear, and Roman suspected it contained a small camera. He was Geoff Fu George’s technician.

Mr. Chalice was another one of Fu George’s associates: he was human, thirtyish, and rail-thin. His hair was red, and his gangly movements seemed strangely disconnected, like those of a puppet. Roman had always thought Chalice had missed his true avocation, which was that of clown.

Roman had considerably more respect for clowns than for thieves. Maijstral’s life's work, alas, had not been chosen with Roman’s consultation.

Roman was forty-six and had begun to despair of ever living a regular life.

“Shall we dine together, gentlemen?” Chalice asked.

“Certainly.”

“Why not?”

A robot guided them to a table for four. (The servants’ restaurant had only nonliving maitre d’s.) When the next robot came by, they ordered a bottle of wine for the table.

Drexler looked at his guests, tongue lolling in a smile. His ears pricked forward. “I hope you weren’t overly inconvenienced by the customs people here.”

“They confiscated a case of equipment,” Gregor said. “But I expect we'll survive.”

“That's good.” Chalice seemed buoyant. “We'd hate to be the only thieves operating on this rock. If they don’t know which of us did what job, we'll be able to use the confusion to our advantage.”

“There's one job I’m really interested in,” said Drexler. He tapped his wine glass meditatively. “The Shard.”

Roman carefully avoided exchanging a glance with Gregor. “It may not be here,” he said.

“Personally,” Drexler said, “I think it is. Why else would the station vid run a documentary of its history? It’s too much to expect that sort of thing to be a coincidence.”

“If it’s here,” Roman said, “her grace the Duchess will wear it. She won’t have brought it all this way
not
to wear it.”

“Her grace the Duchess,” Drexler said, “has a very large staff. Including six people of no apparent function, who have not been seen since their arrival.” He glanced around the room. “And who are not here.”

“Perhaps they are readying her gown.”

“All six of them?”

Chalice laughed. “Some gown.”

“Perhaps,” Drexler said, “a wager is in order.” Roman’s ears perked forward.

“How so?”

“Perhaps we should make a wager concerning who will hold the Shard in his hands first. Someone on your side of the table, or someone on ours.”

“It’s a bet.” Gregor’s reply was instant.

“It may not,” Roman insisted, “be here.”

“If it’s not,” Drexler said, “or if no one gets it at all— which I doubt—then the wager will be void.”

Roman considered this. Gregor nudged him under the table. Roman’s diaphragm throbbed. “Very well,” he said.

“Five novae?”

“Let's make it ten,” offered Drexler.

“Five is sufficient.”

“Ten,” said Gregor quickly. “We'll bet ten.”

Roman’s ears went back. “Ten,” he sighed, feigning reluctance. “Very well.” Drexler grinned and raised his glass.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I give you success.”