House of Shards (4 page)

*

“You'll excuse me, ladies, I hope.” Geoff Fu George gave his formal congé to Advert, the Duchess, and lastly to Pearl Woman. As he sniffed her left ear, his lips closed delicately over the dangling pearl and the sonic cutters in his white implanted incisors neatly severed the dangling link. He slipped the pearl under his tongue, smiled, and stepped across the Casino toward Miss Vanessa Runciter.

Vanessa looked up at him and gave a near-imperceptible nod. Fu George knew that she'd caught everything on the micromedia globe she was wearing in her hair.

Satisfaction welled in him like warm water from a volcanic spring. He had practiced the stunt for months, ever since he had conceived the idea of separating Pearl Woman from her trademark, in public, without her knowledge. He had been a bit clumsy at first: Vanessa had lost a part of her earlobe, and even after surgery restored her appearance Fu George had a difficult time persuading her to resume practice. But return she did, and now he could perform the trick flawlessly.

The most satisfying part of his maneuver was that, since both he and Maijstral were present at the time, Pearl Woman wouldn’t know which had done it. Her temper was famous, but he doubted she'd challenge without proof.

Fu George would sell it back to her, of course, through the most discreet agent he could find, assuming of course that she bid higher than any of her fans. But he wouldn’t sell the trinket before everyone in the Constellation had taken note that the Pearl had lost her trademark, and the speculation concerning who had done it reached its height. At that point the video would be released, and it would be obvious to whom should belong the credit, and the points.

The Ratings Authority gave a full ten points for style. Geoff Fu George had it in abundance.

He wasn’t on top by accident. He was very good at his work.

*

“Maijstral. I fancy a round or two of tiles. Will you join me?”

“Certainly, your grace.” Mildly surprised at her suggestion, Maijstral offered Roberta his arm. Perhaps, he thought, she was just sizing up the opposition.

“I understand the customs people here are very rigorous,” Roberta said. “I hope you are not entirely inconvenienced.”

“I’m on station simply for the company.”

Roberta shot him a look under her lashes. “Yes? How unfortunate. I hoped we might discuss . . . business matters.”

Maijstral absorbed this. His lazy green eyes glowed. “I am entirely at your disposal, madam,” he said, and sat her at the tiles table

“Five a point?”

His voice betrayed a slight hesitation. “Very well,” he said.

*

Lord Qlp
oozed
onto a concourse that echoed to the sound of a woodwind quartet.

Oozed,
Khamiss thought. There was no other possible word. She tried very hard not to shudder.

Lord Qlp was one of the Drawmii, a particularly enigmatic species living almost entirely on Zynzlyp. Though the Drawmii were undoubtedly intelligent and (in their own opaque fashion) cultured, it had never been entirely established whether the Drawmii had ever
noticed
their conquest by the Khosali, or understood entirely what it meant. Very few of the Drawmii travelled off their native planet, and when they did their travels were obscure, their motives doubly so.

The Drawmii looked like glistening, eight-foot-long sea slugs. This one was green below and bright orange above, with mottled off-white warts scattered about its body. Five eyestalks sprouted along its back. It left a trail of slime as it moved.

Accompanying it was a female Khosalikh, about thirty, in the uniform of a Colonial Service diplomat. She wore a translation stud in one ear.

Khamiss stepped forward to offer her assistance and was promptly staggered by Lord Qlp’s appalling odor. Her nostrils slammed shut, and she only opened them by an act of will.

This, she realized, was the down side of working with the public.

“Khamiss, ma’am,” she said in Human Standard, her voice a bit denasal. “Silverside security. I have been put entirely at your service. If you could give me its lordship's documents, I will process them directly.”

A cigar, she thought. If I smoke a cigar, perhaps I won’t have to smell this.

“I am Lady Dosvidern,” the Khosalikh said. She spoke Khosali Standard. With polite restraint, she sniffed Khamiss’s ears. “I am Lord Qlp’s translator and assistant.”

Lord Qlp raised its front end and made a series of blurting sounds. Lady Dosvidern listened, then translated. The voice she used when translating was different: deeper, more polished but less expressive, as if she felt it wasn’t her place to interpret its lordship's remarks by means of locution. Her formality verged on High Khosali without quite losing the communicative ease of Standard.

“The temporal affinities have been propitiated. They are sound,” she said.

Khamiss glanced from his lordship to Lady Dosvidern and back. “I am gratified to hear it, my lord,” she said. A cigar, she thought. No. Wrong.
Lots
of cigars.

Lord Qlp spoke again. Its breath made its normal odor seem pleasant. “Silverside is an appropriate contextual mode,” Lady Dosvidern said. “The requirements of the continuum are clear. The Protocol of Mission demands the location of the Duchess of Benn.”

Khamiss’s mind swam, but she understood the last sentence well enough. “I will see if I can locate her grace, my lord. If you will excuse me?” She turned on her heel and marched back to one of the desks. Never had station air tasted so sweet.

She shouldered aside the customs agent at the second-class counter—the second-class passengers would have to wait—and touched the ideogram for “security central.” Sun's holographic profile appeared above the desk. His eyes were fixed ahead of him, presumably on his monitors.

“Mr. Sun,” she said. “Lord Qlp wishes to meet the Duchess of Benn. Can you locate her for me, please?”

The answer was immediate. “She's in the Casino, playing tiles with Maijstral.” Mr. Sun's tone made it clear that he had no respect whatever for Roberta’s scale of values.

“Thank you, sir. Would you have a robot meet me there, and bring a box of cigars?”

“I didn’t know you smoked, Khamiss.”

“I just started, sir.”

Sun's expression was indifferent, yet resolute. Khamiss thought that Sun made a point of being indifferent to anything unusual, presumably in the hope this would demonstrate his own omnipotence. “As you like, Khamiss,” he said. The hologram vanished.

Khamiss turned back to the Qlp party and saw Lady Dosvidern approaching on silent feet. While Khamiss waited she inclined her torso slightly to the left in order to peer around her ladyship and make certain that Lord Qlp wasn’t up to any mischief. Apparently it was not: it was undulating slightly, perhaps with respiration, but not moving anywhere.

“Miss Khamiss,” said her ladyship.

“Yes, my lady?”

Lady Dosvidern's voice was tactful. “Have you been provided as, ah, a full-time escort for Lord Qlp and myself?”

Khamiss was cautious. “If necessary, ma’am.”

“I don’t believe any such necessity exists,” said her ladyship. “I have been travelling with Lord Qlp for some time. It is inactive most of the day, and although its, ah, olfactory presence can be overwhelming, it has never acted in such a way as to prove a hazard to other beings.”

Relief bubbled in Khamiss’s mind. “As your ladyship suggests,” she said.

“And now,” said Lady Dosvidem, “if I might trouble you to escort us to the Casino?”

Cigars, thought Khamiss.

“Certainly, my lady,” she said.

Lord Qlp burbled a greeting as the two Khosali stepped toward him. Khamiss’s nostrils clamped shut. She couldn’t get them to open.

Afterward, she was denasal for hours.

*

“Drexler and Chalice will have everything ready by tonight,” said Vanessa Runciter. She dressed in cool colors that emphasized her clear, pale skin; her hair was the color of smoke and piled on top of her head in an old-fashioned way, and she smoked a cigaret from a silver-banded obsidian holder. Her father had cornered the dither market on Khorn and left her the entire pile when he died: to others it seemed perfectly unfair that she was lovely as well as implausibly wealthy.

While waiting for Fu George to make his move, she had lost a cool four hundred novae at the markers table. Even the croupier had been impressed.

Vanessa put her arm through Fu George’s. They began strolling toward an exit. “I've been making lists. We've got a lot to choose from. Kotani's diamond studs, Baroness Silverside's famous art collection, the Baron's cape, Ma-dame la Riviere's antique necklace, jewelry of one sort or another from Lord and Lady Tvax, Colonel Thorn, the Waltz twins, the Marchioness Bastwick, Adriaen, Commodore and Lady Andric . . .”

Fu George delicately raised his handkerchief to his lips, folded the pearl within it, put the handkerchief in his inside breast pocket. “And Advert,” he said. “She's got a minor fortune and likes to display it.”

Vanessa looked dubious. “It might be a bit dangerous, going to that quarter again.”

“Ten points for style, my dear.”

“True.” Dubiously. She frowned as she concentrated on her list. “There's an antique store—expensive, some nice items, but nothing truly exciting. A rare book store. Drexler will have to look at that: I’m not enough of an expert. A jeweler's, but it would have considerable security. The main hotel safe.”

“The Eltdown Shard,” Fu George said.

Vanessa stopped in her tracks. “You're sure?”

“No. But the new Duchess is here, and this is her debut.”

Vanessa took a languid puff on her cigaret as she glanced over the room. One of the many holographic ideograms for “good fortune” paraded over her head. “They had a history of the Shard on the station feed, did you notice? But perhaps that's just publicity. It’s a long journey from the Empire. Providing security for that entire distance . . .”

“She can afford it.”

Vanessa’s eyes narrowed as she focused on the tiles table. “She's playing tiles with Maijstral. I don’t like the looks of that.”

“It means nothing. She is young, a social being. She conversed as pleasantly with me.”

“I
still
don’t like it, Geoff.”

Vanessa and Maijstral had a history. Fu George, knowing this, discounted her objection and began moving in the direction of the exit once more. A Cygnus moved by on silent repellers, holding a tray of drinks in its invisible force field.

“We'll know for certain tomorrow night,” Fu George said. “If she has the Shard, she'll wear it then.”

“And until tomorrow?”

He thought for a moment. “The Waltz twins, I think,” he said. “Both at once should be good for a few style points.”

*

“Pardon me. I believe you have something on your carapace.”

*

“Yes. He's got all the family titles now; he had his father declared dead a little over a year ago.” Pearl Woman gave Advert a knowing look. “That was just before the new inheritance law came into effect. Maijstral saved himself a lot in taxes by getting the job done when he did.”

Advert glanced over her shoulder. She could see Maijstral chatting to the Duchess as they bid their tiles. “Horrible,” she said. “One hears of such things, but one never knows the people involved. It gives me a chill to look at him.”

“No more a chill than Maijstral’s dad got.” Pearl Woman grinned and tossed her hair. Advert looked at her in horror.

“Pearl,” she said. Pearl Woman looked at her, then frowned.

“What's wrong?”

Panic wailed in Advert's veins. “Pearl,” she whispered desperately. '
'Something's missing!”

*

Mr. Paavo Kuusinen walked out of the Casino, the tip of his walking stick making a casual touch upon the mothwing carpet at every second step. He was keeping Vanessa Runciter and Geoff Fu George in sight. They seemed to be heading toward the main lounge.

A happy awareness tingled in his nerves, and he allowed himself a satisfied smile. He was pleased to discover that, of all the people in the Constellation, Fu George and Miss Runciter shared a secret with him alone.

Kuusinen knew where Pearl Woman's trademark was. He had been watching the party from the cashier's table, and had, by a stroke of fate, looked up just at the instant of the theft. Elegantly done, he had to admit.

The observation, lucky as it was, hadn’t been made purely by chance. Kuusinen had a permanent, professional interest in Drake Maijstral and Geoff Fu George, and he had been watching them closely.

Unlike Roberta, he sensed something potentially catastrophic in the situation here. Silverside Station was a small place, two first-rank thieves like Maijstral and Fu George were unlikely to coexist happily, and the presence of other inflammatory characters like Pearl Woman and Kyoko Asperson wouldn’t help.

For the present, however, Kuusinen was happy to possess his secret.

For a long, pleasant moment, he wondered what to do with it.

*

“Pardon me. I believe there's something on your carapace.”

*

“Oh, no.” Pearl Woman was appalled by the sight of the approaching mushroom-shaped hat surrounded by eight bright, bobbing media globes. The Pearl raked her fingers through her hair, drawing strands down over her left ear in hopes of concealing the empty chain. Advert clutched her other arm.

“Miss Asperson,” Pearl Woman said, and bowed. She turned her head slightly, offering the globes a three-quarter profile.

Kyoko Asperson grinned up at her. “Pearl Woman,” she said. The Pearl offered token sniffs; Pearl Woman tried to keep her head turned casually away. “So pleased to see you again. I believe this is Miss Advert?”

“Yes. Advert, allow me to introduce Kyoko Asperson.”

“Your servant, miss.”

“Yours.”

“I'd be delighted to stay and chat, Miss Asperson,” Pearl Woman said, “but I’m late for an appointment.”

Kyoko’s bright birdlike eyes flicked from one to the other.

“I understand entirely, Pearl. It was, however, Miss Advert whom I was hoping to interview.”

Advert cast a cool glance at the Pearl and received a nod in return. She would cover Pearl Woman's retreat.