Authors: Walter Jon Williams
“Darling?” Kotani's voice, speaking Khosali Standard. “Why is your door locked?”
Maijstral turned in the closet, surveyed the room for signs of his presence, found none, and sotto voce told the closet door to shut as he glided backward, obscuring himself behind the Marchioness's clothing.
“I cannot close the door,” the closet said, speaking Human Standard, as Maijstral had. “My sensors inform me there is a person inside.”
The Marchioness glanced in apprehension at the closet, then at the door that was keeping her husband at bay. “What time is it, dear?” she called.
“I am the person inside,” Maijstral explained, trying to keep his voice to a whisper. “Shut the door, please.”
His heart crashed in his ears as the closet's idiot brain considered the problem. Blackness ringed his vision, narrowing it. He appeared to be gazing at the world through the barrel of a gun. I am not going to faint, he told himself. He downed the champagne as a restorative.
“Five,” said Kotani, “or thereabouts. Did I wake you?”
“I was dozing,” said the Marchioness. She was looking more and more alarmed as she perceived the closet's stubbornness. She rose from the bed and donned her mothwing gown.
“Great news!” called Kotani. “Open the door. I want to tell you.”
“Just a moment,” said the Marchioness. She stepped into her changing room. Maijstral seized the closet door and tried to haul it shut.
“Do not attempt to close the doors manually,” the closet said. “Damage to the mechanism may result.”
“Then shut the door,” Maijstral whispered. If he had his burglar’s tools with him, this wouldn’t have been a problem.
“There is a person inside the closet.” Happy to get back on track again. “I cannot shut the door with a person inside. It is a matter of safety. Please leave the closet.”
Maijstral could feel beads of sweat gathering on his scalp. Terror yowled blindly in his brain. He gave the closet door a final despairing yank. The closet door yanked back. He thought about letting himself out the other door into the corridor, the exit used by Fu George, but decided against it. A man standing unclothed in the hallway might become subject to unfortunate amounts of attention. Not to mention derision.
“Do not close the door manually,” the closet said again. “Damage to the mechanism may result.”
“Why have you locked the door?” Kotani asked. His tone was growing suspicious.
The Marchioness reappeared, looking desperate. She had a spray bottle of scent in her hand, and she perfumed herself wildly as she searched her mind for an answer.
“I’m afraid of burglars,” she said. “I have my jewelry here.”
The door rattled from within as Kotani tried the knob. “I told you,” condescendingly, “to keep your jewels in the station safe.”
“I’m sorry, dear.” Her eyes implored Maijstral to do something. Maijstral, in the last seconds before his vision faded away entirely, glanced desperately for another hiding place, recalled where he had found Fu George, and dived for the bed. As he rolled beneath it he heard the closet door slide triumphantly shut. The air was drenched with perfume. The Marchioness unlocked the door.
“Would you like some champagne?” she said, a bit breathlessly.
Kotani stepped in. “A nightcap would be pleasant,” he said. “I’ve just struck a deal with Silverside.”
“Congratulations, dearest. Would you fetch a glass from the other room?”
“A better deal than I expected, my only,” Kotani crowed as Maijstral heard his footsteps leave the room. “In view of his problems with security here, the fact they'll be highly publicized, and the damage to his custom that could result, he conceded any percentage of gross revenues in hopes my play will contribute to restoring any of the station's lost ton. He's got a profit percentage only. I think the poor fellow was so down he was prepared to concede anything.”
“Splendid, dear.” Kotani's footsteps returned. Maijstral, over the demon pulse of his heart, heard champagne being poured, then the sound of a sneeze.
“Allergic to champagne, my dear?”
“Not at all, Janetha-my-dove. Your scent is exquisite, but you seem to have applied it a little generously evening.”
“I wanted to smell good for you.”
“A charming and considerate thought, dearest. But it is a bit ... overwhelming.” He sneezed again.
“Shall we step into the other room? Perhaps a little fresh air might help.”
“An excellent suggestion, my heart.”
Good grief, thought Maijstral. Kotani's conversation in private was just like those in his plays. No wonder the Marchioness was getting restless. Who wants to live with someone who’s a paragon of courtesy and sophistication even when sneezing?
The door closed behind them. Maijstral let a long breath out. Moving in trained silence, he rolled from under the bed and, in as low a voice as possible, asked the closet door to open. The moronic mechanism was happy to oblige. Maijstral drew his belongings into his arms and decided that he wasn’t about to take a chance of Kotani walking in on him half-dressed. Therefore he rolled under the bed again and began dragging on his clothes. On his way to Dolfuss's room he'd be walking unlaced—no trained bots-of-the-wardrobe available in the corridor—but that would be far less conspicuous than wearing nothing at all.
There wasn’t much clearance under the bed, but Maijstral was agile: he was performing the last operation, shrugging into his jacket, when the door to the front room opened again. Maijstral’s heart leaped into his throat. He froze.
The door closed. Lady Janetha's plump, pretty feet appeared beside the bed. “Maijstral?” A whisper. “Are you still there?”
“My lady.” He worked his way to the edge of the bed and stuck his head out.
“I wanted to say goodnight to you properly.” She knelt and kissed him. Maijstral, almost smothered by her perfume, managed to give a convincing imitation of passion while keeping one eye cocked on the inner door.
“Don’t forget,” she said, “I'd like to feel the Shard against my skin.”
“Tomorrow night,” Maijstral promised. He could use Dolfuss's room for the assignation: no sense in taking ridiculous chances again.
“I wager you’ve done this sort of thing before. Your leap into the closet was a thing of beauty. You were hiding before I even had the chance to blink.”
He appraised her. “I suspect you’re not new to this, either. The trick with the perfume was a good one.”
He rolled out from beneath the bed and hitched his trousers up. The Marchioness brushed her lips against his, took the champagne bottle, and stepped through the door with a careless laugh.
Maijstral knotted his trouser-laces, tugged his jacket close around him, and stepped out the other exit into the hallway. He yawned. There was one more thing he must do, and then sleep.
*
“Ah. He's making his move. You see?”
“Just like we thought, boss.”
“Brilliant, my dear.” The sound of a kiss. “We've got him where we want him.”
Geoff Fu George smiled, brushed his lips over Vanessa Runciter's knuckles, and turned back to the video. The picture was blurred. It looked like a double exposure.
In the center was the giant impact diamond, picked out in the darkened White Room by spotlights. But right next to it was another, identical diamond, with straps around it and a blurring about its rim. The second diamond was moving, dropping downward.
“Follow that, Drexler,” Fu George said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Prepare to send the globe on its way. Don’t get too close, now.”
“Sir.”
Fu George gave a cold, deliberate laugh. His eyes glowed as he looked at the screen. “A lovely decoy that Maijstral’s made. With a holographic image of the diamond hanging there, no one will even know it’s missing.”
The diamond sailed to the floor in its a-grav harness, then disappeared into a laundry cart. Sheets and blankets moved to cover it.
“He'll snap off the hologram at some suitably dramatic moment,” Vanessa said. “With hundreds of people in the room, no doubt, to be fooled into thinking he somehow made the diamond vanish in front of their eyes.”
“More style points that way.”
“He thinks like a conjurer, boss,” said Chalice.
“I’m moving the globe, sir,” Drexler said. The point of view began to shift as the globe followed the cart, which was rolling, apparently under its own power, out of the room.
“Leading us right to the Shard,” Chalice said. He gave a barking laugh. “This is great, boss. Almost worth losing ten novae for.
“Ten novae?” Fu George asked, distracted.
Vanessa’s eyes glittered. She put her hands on Fu George’s shoulders. “When will you take Maijstral’s loot, dear?”
“Ah.” Forgetting the ten novae. “That will depend, lover. We'll have to see if the room is guarded. It would be best to wait till the place is vacant.”
“Pity you can’t just turn Maijstral and his friends into stripped electrons.”
Fu George patted her hand. “Now, now. No style points for violence.”
Vanessa’s mouth tightened. She touched the semilife patch on her cheek and eye, where Khamiss’s elbow had bruised her. “More's the pity, Fu George,” she said. “More’s the pity.”
As Maijstral, a mere blur in his darksuit, pushed the laundry cart down the corridor, Drexler's media globe followed cautiously behind. Drexler knew that Maijstral’s darksuit contained detectors that might spot the motion of his globe: he kept his distance, and crept around corners with caution, He had no need to keep close, fortunately; the laundry cart was a large target. Drexler was entirely pleased with himself.
He might have been less pleased had he known that he, himself, was being followed.
Behind Drexler's globe came another, one that moved cautiously, keeping Drexler's dark sphere just in sight . . . following Drexler's globe, which was following Maijstral, who was moving at all deliberate speed to his hideout.
The second globe's operator was
very
pleased. And happily making plans for the morrow.
Dolfuss held open the door of his room as Maijstral pushed the laundry cart inside. As Dolfuss closed the door behind him, Maijstral turned off his holographic camouflage, stripped the darksuIt’s hood from his head, and shook out his long hair.
“Things went well, sir?” Dolfuss inquired.
“Very well indeed.” Maijstral picked up the sixteen-foot impact diamond—in its harness, it was weightless. He frowned for a moment, then moved toward the closet.
“Full of art, I’m afraid,” Dolfuss said.
“Well.” Maijstral set the diamond down. “I suppose it will have to stand in the corner.”
“Best not take any more bulky loot, sir.”
Maijstral took off his signature ring, which he wore over his suit gloves, and began to peel off the darksuit. “I intend to take no more loot at all,” he said. “A wise thief quits while he's ahead.”
“I'd say you have reason enough to be pleased.” Dolfuss reached for the Eltdown Shard, which had been tossed rather carelessly on the bureau top. The dark stone glowed softly in his hand.
“Pity I couldn’t have watched you take it,” he said. “But boors—even phony boors—don’t get invited to the more exclusive parties. I spent the evening watching an old vid.
Prince of Tyre,
by Shaxberd. What a piece of rubbish.”
“I like much of his other work.” Maijstral cocked an eye at the actor. “The
Llyr
might suit you. You're old enough for the part.”
“Too depressing. Satire’s more my style.”
“It dates rather more quickly than other sorts of comedy, however.”
“True, sir. But while it lasts, it has more bite.”
“I’ve subscribed to Aristide’s translations.
Comedy of Errors
is the next.”
“Farce. Even worse. It’s so low.”
“Taking the last few days into account, it does seem more true to life.”
“Precisely my point, sir. If you take my meaning.”
Maijstral reached for his dressing gown. “Literary debates later, I think. For now, I want only bath and bed.”
“I’ll get out of your way, then,” said Dolfuss.
“Would you mind taking the cart with you, Mr. Dolfuss? Just leave it somewhere.”
“As you like, sir.” But he hesitated, frowning at the Shard in his hand. “Do you think, Mr. Maijstral, that the Shard is worth all the fuss? All the lives?”
Maijstral gave a self-satisfied laugh. “It’s not worth
my
life, at any rate.”
Dolfuss smiled. “As you say.” He put the stone on the bureau and stepped toward the door. “Have a pleasant night, sir.”
“I’m sure I will. And you.”
“Your servant.”
Dolfuss pushed the cart out of the room. Maijstral told the room lights to grow dimmer, and then told the room to ready his bath. The sound of running water came from the bathroom.
Maijstral looked at his Grat Dalton costume, now tossed on a chair, and smiled. Even the Dalton Brothers had never pulled off a string of robberies as glorious as this one.
Like Drexler, like Fu George, like the operator of the second globe, he was very pleased with himself.
*
Elsewhere in the night, unobserved by anyone, magic was happening. Wrapped in dark cloth, discarded in a corner of a room, a pair of objects were transforming themselves. Cold fire ran over their surfaces: burning red, cold violet, electric green . . . shimmering, iridescent, and wonderful. Silent. Unseen. Entirely unanticipated.
CHAPTER 9
Miss Asperson? Kyoko?” Gregor rapped on the door. There was no answer. Must be a sound sleeper, he thought. He reached into his pocket for a touchwire, snapped off the lock, then entered Kyoko’s room. “Kyoko?”
The room was empty. Six abandoned media globes circled the bed like moons bereft of their primary. The vidset was on.. The vidset was repeating, over and over, all known biographical data on Mr. Sun, Silverside's head of security. Gregor watched for a few minutes, learned nothing of any significance, and shrugged and left the room. Kyoko must have been studying for her interview. Poor Mr. Sun, Gregor thought, and grinned. Too bad he'd lost his affections to such an early riser.
Sex and death have an unfortunate association in the Khosali mind. Every child of the Empire is brought up on tales of the disgraced Madame Phone and the spectacular suicide of her lover Baron Khale, whose internal organs were, as specified in his will, preserved and set up in a monument as a warning to future generations.