Authors: Walter Jon Williams
“So I understand,” Maijstral said.
“You and she are still friends, right? I mean, no hard feelings or anything.”
“No.”
“Not after she took up with you on that what’s-its-name planet, Peleng, and then dumped you for that fellow she’s living with now.”
“It didn’t happen,” Maijstral said.
“Hm?” Kenny looked surprised. “No, really. She’s living with him. It was in the news and everything. He’s her set designer or something.”
“I mean,” Maijstral said patiently, “that Nichole and I were not involved on Peleng, and, insofar as we weren’t involved, she didn’t jettison me when she took up with Lieutenant Navarre.”
“Oh.” Kenny took a moment to process this—the thought that something reported in the media might be a falsehood was obviously a difficult one for him—and then he brightened. “Well, good; You’re still friends, then. You wouldn’t mind introducing me to her, would you? I’d love a chance to work with Nichole if I could. Associating with the Diadem never hurts a fellow’s career.”
Poor Nichole, Maijstral thought. Still, celebrity was something she had chosen, along with all the little annoyances that went with it. Annoyances with names like Kenny or Winky or Vang-Thokk.
“Should the opportunity present itself,” Maijstral said, “I will make the introduction, yes.”
Kenny looked over Maijstral’s shoulder and frowned. “There’s a fellow in black keeps staring at me. He probably wants an autograph or something, the vermin. I’ll just roll away, then, and keep out of his way.”
“Bye,” Maijstral said.
When he’d been living with Nicole, he’d had
many
conversations just like this one.
“I believe I’ll accompany Kenny,” Alice said, and made her congé.
Batty and Maijstral looked at one another.
“What a . . .
forceful
young man,” Batty said.
“It could be worse,” Maijstral said. “He could drink.”
“Your father,” said Batty, “has been put in my room.”
“That’s exceedingly good of you,” Maijstral said. “We can move him to my suite later, and I can engage someone to look after him.”
“As you like, dear, but that really won’t be necessary, I’m growing accustomed to him, and as it was our family that brought him here in the first place, I have no objections to looking after him until you get over your trouble with Joseph Bob.”
At the expense, Maijstral considered, of having Batty dig farther into his life history. Still and all, his father didn’t really know anything likely to prove too embarrassing—since he’d reached the age: of reason, Maijstral had kept his family strictly away from anything important—and so all the little gems Batty was likely to discover would be of the Peter Pajamas variety, domestic and perhaps even endearing.
Besides, sharing digs with a dead man, even a father, was hardly to his taste.
“If you truly don’t mind,” Maijstral said.
“That young man is still staring at us,” Batty observed.
A silver sphere descended from somewhere near the ceiling and swooped closer to Maijstral. Following it, on foot, came a young woman with an unusually sculptured hair arrangement and a peculiar bell-shaped skirt.
“Mr. Maijstral?” she said, in Human Standard. “I’m Mangula Arish from the Talon News Service.”
The appearance of such a person was inevitable, of course. Maijstral’s lazy-lidded eyes half closed as they regarded the journalist.
“How do you do?” Replying in the same language.
A second media globe joined the first, recording the subject from another angle. “Has your journey to Earth been productive?” Mangula asked.
“No,” Maijstral said, “but then I had not intended to produce anything while I was here.”
“I meant,” patiently, “will we see the disappearance of any of Earth’s finer artworks or gemstones while you are on-planet?”
Maijstral sighed and once again told the truth, perfectly aware that no one would ever believe him. “I am here on vacation, and to attend the wedding of some acquaintances. If anything disappears, it won’t be my fault.”
“Is this restraint motivated by any regard for Earth’s great history and its priceless collection of treasures?”
Maijstral’s eyes narrowed to slits. “It is motivated by the fact I am on vacation.”
“Do you intend to offer an apology to the people of Earth while you are here?”
Maijstral’s eyes opened in surprise. “Apologize?” he said. “What have I to apologize for?”
“It was on Earth that your grandfather, the Imperial official better known as Robert the Butcher, committed the great majority of his crimes against his own people.”
Maijstral’s ears cocked forward as he feigned puzzlement. “And therefore?”
“And therefore,” the journalist went on, “you, as his descendent, might be expected to apologize for his behavior.”
“I was not even alive at the time, miss,” Maijstral said, “and had nothing whatever to do with my grandfather’s decisions, the actions that resulted from them, or any of the consequent suffering. But if anyone can receive comfort by an apology from someone who had nothing to do with the acts being apologized for, then I will happily offer mine, for whatever good it will do.”
He was tempted to apologize as well for the acts of other bad eggs such as Jesse James and Mad Julius, considering that he had about equally to do with those, but some lingering sense of diplomacy kept his mouth shut.
As for Mangula, it took her a. moment or two to disentangle the grammatical complexities of Maijstral’s last statement. She blinked. “So you do apologize?” she asked.
“I thought I already had.”
Mangula blinked again. The whole apology question had been one she’d raised herself on the assumption that, however Maijstral answered, she’d be able to turn it into something provocative, but it hadn’t turned out quite the way she’d wished, and so she plunged ahead, hoping to be able to provoke a bit of sensation out of the jumble.
“Do you disavow the Cause for which your grandfather fought?”
Maijstral thoughtfully fingered the semilife patch along his jawline.
“Miss Arish, I believe history has disavowed my grandfather’s cause more than I ever could. I wish everyone well, and I desire peace for all, regardless of their politics, and really, what more can I say?”
It would require a fair degree of context removal—”editing,” in the journalistic sense—to make anything remotely sensational out of this, and Mangula decided to end the interview and let her news director decide what to do with the results.
As a consequence, she completely forgot to inquire as to the significance of Maijstral’s semilife patch, which by now had become rather prominent in view of the swelling its rooted tendrils were sopping up—and that inquiry would have given her a scoop indeed.
“Thank you, Mr. Maijstral,” she said, and made her exit, silver globes swooping after her.
“Does that sort of thing happen
all the time?
” Batty asked.
“Oh yes,” Maijstral said. “More now than ever.”
“What a strange life you must lead, I’m sure.”
“One must be sure to always make one’s answers to the media as complex and laden of context as possible. They can never make a simple, sensational story out of it that way. Not without a good deal of effort, anyway.”
Batty’s eyes shifted over Maijstral’s shoulder again. “That young man in black is approaching. And he’s got a friend with him.”
Maijstral sighed—the last two people who spoke to him had been rather a trial, and there was no guarantee that this one would be any different. Still, he turned to face the newcomers with as civil a face as possible.
The young man in black had long hair styled similarly to Maijstral’s, and Maijstral observed he wore a large diamond on one finger—the same finger as Maijstral’s own diamond, and a very similar diamond at that. The man’s friend wore a bottle green coat and gold jewelry.
“Maijstral,” the man in black said, offering Maijstral three fingers in the handclasp to Maijstral’s one, “I’m Laurence.”
Maijstral sniffed the actor’s ears. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “I’m told you do me rather well.”
The actor stepped back with a look of surprise. “It sounds as if you haven’t seen me.”
Maijstral probably should have assured the young man that he’d seen him scads of times, and thought him very good, not that his opinion really counted, but fortunately it was shared by all the very best critics, and Laurence must surely be pleased—after which Laurence would have gone off a happy man. But events had thrown off Maijstral’s social timing, and he’d already had to deal with one actor today and his patience was probably shorter than usual, and so he did the worst thing possible, which was (once again) to tell the truth.
“I’m sorry to say I haven’t,” he said. “My life is rather pressing and I have little time for video. But I’m told that many people prefer you to that, ah, other fellow.”
“Anaya.”
“Quite so. My apologies, anyway, for not recognizing you.” Laurence frowned, and his ears were pinned back, but he turned to his friend and made the introduction.
“This is Deco, my companion.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Maijstral said. He had discerned by this point that he’d made a gaffe, and in amends gave two fingers to Deco’s one, then mentally sighed at how it did not seem possible to achieve social attunement this afternoon no matter how hard he tried.
Maijstral introduced Aunt Batty, and then the four stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“It is a most attractive dwelling, is it not?” Batty finally said. “Most underwater environments give one such a sense of confinement, but Prince Hunac has made everything here so spacious that one’s sense of claustrophobia is quite underwhelmed.”
“True,” Deco said.
“Very,” said Laurence.
Silence reigned once more. Aunt Batty concluded that she’d done her best.
Laurence, it should be observed, did not actually play Maijstral on video. He played a character superficially similar to Maijstral, or at least similar to who Maijstral might have been if he were the hero of a video series—brave, stalwart, chivalrous, handy with his fists, and staggeringly successful with women. The company that made the series had (after the Imperial Sporting Commission) first call on the videos Maijstral made while stealing, and mixed Maijstral’s videos with their own, altering Maijstral’s image to that of Laurence. It was
understood
that Laurence was playing Maijstral, even if the character had a different name, and it was suggested that all the video adventures; preposterous though they were, were in some sense true, that they all offered details of Maijstral’s life that had not been made public. And since Maijstral could never commit as many burglaries as a character in a weekly series, the producers bought videos from other burglars who were unlucky enough not to have series characters designed after them, and likewise altered the image to that of Laurence—and in the end Maijstral got the credit for a lot of spectacular capers that he had never actually performed.
“I see you wear a diamond ring,” Maijstral observed.
“Yes.” Laurence brightened. “It’s just like yours. I use it as a focus, when I’m acting—I look at the ring, and I say to myself,
I’m Drake Maijstral, I’m the greatest burglar ever
. And then I do my scene.”
“But you wear the ring when you’re not acting,” Maijstral said. “Doesn’t that cause confusion? When you look down at your plate at luncheon, for example, and see the ring, don’t you say to yourself,
I’m a burglar
, and then have to fight away a crisis of identity along with an impulse to slip the silverware up your sleeve?”
“But Laurence is a terrific burglar,” Deco said. “He’s had lots of practice.”
Maijstral looked at Laurence in surprise. “Do you actually steal?” he said.
Laurence flushed. “Well, no. My contract doesn’t permit—it wouldn’t do for the star of a series to end up in prison. But I’ve done everything
but
steal.”
“He’s got a very good darksuit,” Deco said. “I made it myself—I’ve studied how all the tech is done. Sometimes he flies out at night, just
being a burglar
, you know.”
“It’s really helped my interpretation of the role,” Laurence said.
Maijstral looked from one to the other and decided that, yes, he was intended to be impressed by this. He was trying to decide how to respond when one of Hunac’s servants approached.
“Sir, a message for you. Miss Nichole. There is a privacy booth in the corner.”
Maijstral manufactured an apologetic look. “My apologies, gentlemen,” he said, and moved away.
“Umm,” Laurence called after him. “You know—I really wanted to talk to you about Nichole. . . .”
Maijstral escaped to the privacy booth and activated the field that sealed him off from any eavesdroppers and lip-readers. At a command Nichole’s face appeared before him.
She was a tall blond woman located ambiguously on the cusp between mid and late thirties, and she was one of the Three Hundred who were so famous they bore only a forename. She was, technically speaking, an actress, but her real profession was so far above a mere
actress
, above
celebrity
, even above
star
, that only a place in some fairly all-embracing pantheon could probably do justice to her standing.
When she spoke, entire planets hushed to hear her words. People she had never heard of, and never
would
hear of, committed suicide at the thought they were unworthy to share the universe with her. Obscure alien races knelt at her image and spit up, with appropriate ritual obeisance, offerings of the very best regurgitated fish-liver wine.
She was, so to speak, colossal. Even for a member of the Diadem she was big.
Maijstral had once turned down a chance to join the Human Diadem and live on the same plateau as Nichole. The refusal had made him, briefly, more famous than if he had accepted, but the industry that was Nichole rolled on without him, generating more fame, more glory, more worship, while the comparatively small enterprise that was Maijstral, denied the constant barrage of publicity and glory granted members of the Diadem, was compelled to sneak up on success and win it by stratagem rather than bag it in one grand rush.