Authors: Walter Jon Williams
“You look so
shocked,”
she said. “And you a member of the Diadem!”
Zoot was seeking a reply to this when the inner door burst open. Zoot leaped to his feet. His nostrils were assaulted by an appalling stench as Lord Qlp entered. Its body convulsed in agitation. Lady Dosvidern ran for her translation stud.
“Alarm!” its lordship said, bubbling in barely understandable Khosali. “Astonishment!”
Zoot's soul wailed. “I believe I can explain, my lord,” he said quickly. “It’s all my fault.”
Lord Qlp thrashed about as if in pain. Its eyestalks whipped in all directions, glaring. “Interference!” it howled.
“I see that you have reason to be upset, my lord,” Zoot said. “But appearances can be deceiving, and I . . .”
Lord Qlp reared on its hindquarters, boomed loudly in its own language, then lowered itself to the floor and skated away with remarkable speed. Zoot took a hesitant step after it.
“My lord,” he said. “I, ah ...”
Lady Dosvidern gripped his wrist. “I’ve never seen it this upset. I’ve got to be with it.”
An agony of distress clawed at Zoot's mind. He'd destroyed Lady Dosvidem’s reputation, her marriage, her hopes of happiness. “I understand,” he said. Lady Dosvidern ran for the closet and her clothes, shouting at the service plate to send her a wardrobe-bot.
Horrible, Zoot thought, horrible. However could he atone?
*
Khamiss slumbered on. Her feet, semilife patches decorating the blisters, were propped on pillows. Her gun hung from a peg in a closet.
Her waiter's jacket, the left armpit torn, lay on the floor. Degree Absolute had been cancelled. Khamiss was taking full advantage of it.
*
Maijstral, as the robot tightened his laces, watched with one eye a play on the station vid. An old-fashioned farce, the current scene featured milord's mistress, dressed as a maid, hiding behind the Montiyy screen in the corner, while milord's daughter and her suitor were beneath under the bed. Milady’s current lover was in the closet, and the Marine captain who hoped to be her next was suffocating in a trunk. A private detective swung madly in the chandelier, taking notes.
In a firm voice, Maijstral told the vid to turn itself off. It was one thing for one’s life to threaten to turn into farce, he thought; it was quite another for an impertinent video to point this out.
*
His head swimming, Zoot allowed Lady Dosvidern’s robot to lace up his suit. He was feeling slightly ill.
Apprehended!
he thought.
Doomed!
Lord Qlp had rushed out without paying attention to his protestations, and Lady Dosvidern, as soon as she was decently clothed, had followed. Zoot had not only compromised a lady; he'd compromised a diplomatic mission. The consequences could be nothing short of hideous.
He lurched into the corridor. Something glanced off his forehead and he stumbled forward, almost knocking Kyoko Asperson to the floor. He reached out a hand to steady her while another careless media globe banged off his skull.
“I’m terribly sorry, Miss Asperson,” he said. “I wasn’t looking where I was going. Please forgive me.”
Kyoko looked up at him while her media globes moved into assault formation. Her ears cocked forward. “You seem distracted, sir,” she said.
“I’m truly sorry. An unforgivable lapse.”
“Ah.” Her silver loupe gazed at him like the blank eye of doom. “I forgive your lack of attention, Zoot. Lady Dosvidern is, no doubt, a distracting individual.”
Zoot started, guilty memories flooding his brain. He drew himself up. “Lady Dosvidern?” he said. The words came out a yelp, and he cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Whatever do you mean?”
Kyoko gave a disbelieving grin. “You're leaving her suite after noon, there's a breakfast cart set for two here in the corridor, and you're still dressed for last night's ball. Forgive me for making the assumption that she's been entertaining you for the last ten or twelve hours.”
Horror crystallized in Zoot's mind. Everything was becoming
public.
He had to retrieve the situation somehow; he owed Lady Dosvidern that, at least. “Yes,” he said, and forced a grin. “Lady Dosvidern's company, and that of her husband, was most stim—most
entertaining.
I confess I entirely lost track of the time.”
“Lady Dosvidern's husband?” Kyoko’s eyes barely concealed their rapture.
“Yes.” He flicked his ears to indicate puzzlement. “You didn’t know?” His facial muscles, he realized, were betraying him, producing odd tics and quiverings that he was finding impossible to squelch on command.
“I’m afraid that information escaped my researchers. She's married to Lord Qlp, then?”
“Happily. A devoted couple, so unusual and yet so . . .” He flailed for the next word. “Unusual,” he repeated, and then he gave a frantic smile. “You must forgive me, Miss Asperson.” He sniffed her. “I’ve got to be about my, ah, my breakfast. I mean business.”
“Certainly, Zoot. It’s been most. . . illuminating. I hope we can meet later, and then you can tell, me what you and the Drawmiikh talked about till noon.”
“Yes, yes.” Zoot felt the fur between his ears rise in an involuntary attack posture. He swiped at it with the back of his hand. “Delightful. Later. Yes. Charmed.”
Somehow he managed not to run. The effort cost him dearly, though; he kept lurching like the Hunchback of Torville Three at every other step.
\
One way out, he thought. He felt feverishly for his pistol. One way out.
*
The Duchess of Benn sat in her room, savoring her coffee and her triumph. A few minutes after midnight tonight, she thought, and she'd ransom the Shard. She wouldn’t tell anybody, would keep it secret for months before she wore it again, and then the occasion would be a special event— Special Event, rather. She had begun thinking of it that way.
Roberta smiled and took another sip of coffee. The Special Event was going to be a surprise, perhaps even more sensational than this last.
There was a pounding at the front door of her suite, followed by a turmoil among her household staff. Annoyed at the interruption, she cocked an ear in that direction and continued sipping coffee. The commotion increased. Roberta frowned, and then her door burst open and Lord Qlp flung itself in. Roberta stood, wondering whether to be alarmed or affronted. Lord Qlp’s ghastly odor, in the event, prevented either stance from gaining much ground. She raised a hand to her face, intending to cover her mouth and nose, and then remembered her manners and forced the hand to her side.
“Sorry, your grace.” Her butler, Kovinn, hovering in the door, wrung her hands. “Its lordship just. . . insisted.”
“Interference!” Lord Qlp thrashed in distress. “Alarms!”
Roberta steeled herself. “Very well, Kovinn. You may go.” She looked at Lord Qlp. “Coffee, my lord?” she asked, denasal.
“Ah ...” said Kovinn, but then another figure pushed past her. It was Lady Dosvidern, disheveled, tugging at the laces of her jacket.
“Beg pardon, your grace,” she said breathlessly. “But I thought—”
“You and its lordship are welcome at any time,” Roberta said, as if these things happened every day. The stench was making her glassy-eyed. “But have you any notion—?”
“Afraid not, your grace.”
Lord Qlp continued thrashing. It belched out something in its own tongue. Roberta took a step back from the violence of its speech.
“Humiliation!” Lady Dosvidern said. Her tone was bewildered. “Has not the Time of Exchange passed?” More belching noises. “Has not the Commodity been sufficient?”
The sluglike body convulsed. Something flung itself across the room, thudded into a chair. It was, Roberta saw, another oval exudate similar to those which Lord Qlp had already spit up in her presence.
Lord Qlp roared in its bubbling tongue. Its eyes whipped wildly at the ends of their stalks. “The Commodity is thrice-offered! Discontinuation of existence is necessary if humiliation is increased! May one not be vouchsafed a glimpse of the Preciosity, the Eye at the Center of Existence, the Perfected Tear?”
“Tear?” Roberta said. Her own eyes were growing tearful at the continued olfactory onslaught. Lord Qlp’s phrases gathered in her mind, and in a glorious wave of prescience she realized what Lord Qlp had been going on about all this time.
“The Eltdown Shard?” she said. “You wish to trade for it?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Lord Qlp bounced high in eagerness. Its High Khosali was not quite grammatical—the sentences did not comment on one another in the preferred contextual mode—but its meaning was clear.
“I'd be happy to show you the Shard, your lordship,” Roberta said, “but I’m afraid the Shard has been stolen.”
Lord Qlp’s response filled Roberta with alarm. It moaned as if in pain. It fell heavily on its side and thrashed, knocking a chair halfway across the room. It boomed painfully, and Roberta held her hands over her ears.
“Woe, woe!” Lady Dosvidern translated. “Your Existenceship promised to guarantee the Exchange!”
“I did?” Roberta searched her memory. “I suppose I did, then,” she said, recalling her conversation with its lordship just prior to the race.
“The Condition is altered. Discontinuation of existence is necessary for assuagement.”
A chill crept into Roberta’s heart as she thought she understood what
Lord
Qlp meant. “No!” Roberta said. “You don’t have to kill yourself. It’s not your fault!” She thought frantically. “Can’t you just take the ... objects . . . back?”
Lady Dosvidern's expression was frantic as she translated the bubbling sounds. “Exchange has already commenced. Blamings are impertinent. Zynzlyp awaits the Object of Desire. All meaning is now invested in the Perfected Creation. Pointlessness of existence is alternative! Planetary discontinuation will soon be necessary!”
Alarms clattered in Roberta’s mind. Was Lord Qlp talking about the suicide of his entire
species?
She shook her head frantically, tried to think. She had to
do
something.
“I will locate the Shard!” Roberta declared. “I will bring it to you!”
Lord Qlp wrenched itself upright and began undulating out of the room. “Crosstalk necessary before further action. Must consider method of regaining Center of Meaning.”
Roberta’s mind swam with relief. It didn’t sound as if Lord Qlp was planning on murdering itself anytime soon. She'd have a while, at least, to get the Eltdown Shard from Maijstral and bring it to its lordship.
Lady Dosvidern was following Lord Qlp from the chamber. She looked terrified. Roberta snatched at her sleeve. Wild-eyed, Lady Dosvidern spun, her arm trembling in Roberta’s grasp.
“Wait!” Roberta said. “I’ll try to get the Shard from— from whoever has it. Don’let its lordship do anything hasty in the meantime.”
“Yes, your grace.” Lady Dosvidern ran after Lord Qlp. Roberta stepped to the service plate and touched the ideogram for “telephone.”
“This is the Duchess of Benn,” she said. “Call Drake Maijstral’s room. Inform him this is an emergency.”
Just below the service plate, Roberta saw the two objects that Lord Qlp had previously offered her, each wrapped in a dinner napkin. While the phone rang endlessly, Roberta bent to unwrap them. She gasped in surprise.
Enchantment dazzled her eyes. The objects of exchange had transformed, become something magic and beautiful.
Colors spun bright webs at Roberta’s feet. Iridescence shimmered, altered, became substantial. The telephone rang on and on.
CHAPTER 10
“Miss Asperson.”
“Miss Runciter. Are you here for the magic show?”
“I’m here by chance, but if Maijstral’s putting on a show, I daresay I’ll sit through it. Even though I know his tricks.”
“Perhaps he's learned some new ones.” A beat’s pause. “You seem to have met with some injury. I hope you are well.”
Vanessa touched her cheek. The semilife patches had happily sopped up most of the swelling before expiring in gorged bliss, but faint bruising was still visible even through her cosmetic. “An accident, unfortunately.”
“A pity. Bad luck seems to be making the rounds. First Mr. Fu George, then yourself.”
Vanessa narrowed her eyes. “Luck has a way of turning.”
“Looking at the both of you, one might almost think Fu George and yourself had been in a brawl.”
“Neither of us would ever condescend to brawl, Miss Asperson.” A cold smile. “Good afternoon.”
“Your servant.”
*
“Miss Advert.”
“Marchioness. Will you sit by me?”
“Gladly. It’s very kind of you to share.” Settling into her seat. “You’ve got a very good view of the stage.”
“From here I can watch Maijstral. It’s very important that I do so. I’m on a secret mission for Pearl Woman.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m afraid she’s just too desolate to appear in public right now.” Smiling. “She's lost something very important to her.”
*
Roberta’s holographic head and shoulders floated in Lady Dosvidern's video display. Lady Dosvidern observed that the Duchess had changed into a one-piece racing suit, probably in case she had to get somewhere in a hurry.
“I haven’t been able to find Mai—to find the person who took the Shard. I’ve told his suite to give him my message when he arrives, and I’ve sent my household staff looking.”
Lady Dosvidern tried to conceal her nervousness. She ceased her pacing and faced the holo cameras. “I looked in on its lordship a few minutes ago. It was still in deep crosstalk. Eyes and ears totally withdrawn.”
Roberta gave a relieved sigh. “So Lord Qlp isn’t likely to kill itself in the next few minutes.”
“I’m not sure what it would kill itself
with.
Neither of us carries guns. It doesn’t have wrists to slice. There isn’t anyplace high to throw itself from.”
“There are airlocks.”
Lady Dosvidern's ears turned down. “Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.”
Roberta’s violet eyes glittered as she considered possibilities. “Unfortunately there's no way to stop someone from killing itself. The right to self-annihilation is supported by High Custom. I assume we can’t prove it’s insane?”
“By what standards?” she asked. “Its lordship is perfectly mad by the standards of the Khosali or humanity, but it’s entirely normal for a Drawmiikh. I think.” Helplessness filled Lady Dosvidern. Was she responsible for this? What if Lord Qlp really
was
angry about Zoot?