The Crown Jewels (22 page)

“Croquet, my lady?” he suggested, dooming himself to a day of chasing his ball beneath the kibble trees.

Her answer, tongue lolling, seemed the smile of a fiend.

*

Safely in Nichole’s suite with Calvin and his associates on guard, Lieutenant Navarre toggled off the hologram of Drake Maijstral. Nichole laughed and offered her hand. Navarre gallantly sniffed her wrist, ignoring a persistent twinge of his bruised back.

“You looked very like Maijstral, dressed in mourning,” she said. “I’m pleased to see you. Lieutenant.”

“The pleasure,” said Navarre, “is all mine.” He was speaking the truth. He was thoroughly gratified to discover that he felt very safe here.

Maijstral turned off the vid and relaxed in his chair, happy. Nichole knew how to carry off a deception, and her foil, whoever he was, had played his part well, even to the duplicate of the diamond Maijstral wore on his finger.

*

A robot rattled past on an errand, making its usual bleeping noises. Maijstral clenched his teeth, then calmed himself. He was learning to hate the robots, but now was not the time for irritation. It was time to put forward his plan.

*

Tvi watched the vid with interest. She turned to the robot. “Bring up another bottle of the cabernet. The forty-four, if you please.”

“Yes, madam.”

Since her flight from the Anastasia residence she’d done fairly well. The first thing was to dump the Dewayne Seven and steal a new Jefferson-Singh Hi-Sport. Since she’d arrived on Peleng, she’d got used to them.

Then she’d found a place to hide out. It was a comfortable house of twelve rooms, apparently inhabited by a family whose interests took them to Nana for half the year. The household security was ancient and it had been child’s play to reprogram it to treat her as a member of the family.

Now she’d have to find a way to earn a living. She sipped cabernet and thought about it.

Stealing seemed like a good idea.

She smiled. Life on Peleng was looking up.

*

“My name is Roman, my lord. At your service.”

“Count Quik. Yours. Please sit.”

Roman settled on a padded bench next to the Troxan. “I see you have returned to the methane environment exhibit.”

“Not got look before properly. Nichole in way with globes. Many many crowdings.”

“To be sure.”

“I methane speak,” said the Count.

Roman was inclined to wonder if he spoke methane in as singular a manner as he seemed to speak everything else, but the Count proceeded to demonstrate, leaning his pumpkin-sized head toward a microphone that remained as a relic of Nichole’s visit. As the Count’s voice pulsed through the supercool environment, the methane creatures blushed a delicate violet and began to cluster gelatinously toward the speakers. At their current rate it would take them about half an hour.

“Congratulations, my lord,” Roman said. “You seem to have stimulated them admirably.”

An answering communication moaned from hidden speakers. The Count listened and made his reply.

“I told them you are with. Interested they were.” His head lolled in a peculiar Troxan manner. “Badly these speakers do. Troxans better makes speakers.”

“Undoubtedly the best, sir,” Roman said. The Troxan head was such a superb conductor of sound that they tended as a species to be very particular about audio equipment.

“Tell yourself,” Count Quik suggested. “I tell will then the methane critters.”

“I am a member of Drake Maijstral’s entourage.”

“Interesting. Translation problems many indeed. No word for ‘thief' in methane world.”

“Perhaps a better world than ours, my lord.”

“But boring-er.”

“Duller. Yes, my lord. No doubt.”

The Count chatted with the methane creatures. They groaned in reply. Roman waited for a lapse in the conversation.

“Mr. Maijstral,” he interjected, “asked me to find you.”

Count Quik’s deep goggle eyes swiveled to Roman. “Yes? Wherefore, Mr. Roman?”

“He hopes, sir, that you will consent to do him a service. He realizes this is an unusual request, but he hopes that once you understand the circumstances, you will do him the honor of acting for him in a matter of importance, in brief a matter concerning the Fate of the Empire. He hopes that the matter may be resolved quickly and satisfactorily, and in fine to your— and the Empire’s, advantage.”

Count Quik’s expression did not— in fact could not— change, but it seemed to Roman that his gaze seemed to intensify.

“You intrigue, Mr. Roman. Please speak on. I am all ears.”

Roman reflected that, of all the times he had heard that last turn of phrase, this was the only time it might be, quite literally, true.

*

General Gerald gazed blearily at the young man on his doorstep. Since waking from his unutterably pleasant, thoroughly violent dreams at the first touch of dawn, he had climbed out of his armor and gone to bed, swearing to get enough sleep
this
time so that he wouldn’t be caught nodding if Maijstral appeared tonight. The young man’s appearance caught him by surprise. He didn’t have visitors very often. Sometimes he wondered if he intimidated people.

The General could see the young man through the door without being observed himself. The visitor was dressed formally, but in a bright radical style that pushed at once the bounds of convention and the General’s sense of the harmonic possibilities of color. Cheeky, the General thought, looking at him. Impudent. Needs discipline. Just look at the way his hands are stuck in his pockets, the hi-stick just hanging in his mouth. A tour in the service would do him good.

A tour in the service was the General’s automatic prescription for many social ills. He opened the door.

“General Gerald?”

“Marines.” Automatically. “Retired.”

“My name is Gregor Norman. I am an associate of Drake Maijstral.”

Surprise boiled up in General Gerald’s sleepy mind.

“What’s that to me?” he barked, his voice still on automatic pilot while he wondered what hell Maijstral was playing at. Some attempt to get him out of his house so that it could be rifled?

“Mr. Maijstral,” Gregor said, “has come across something which may interest you. Something relating, believe it or don’t, to nothing less than the Fate of the Constellation.”

If this was a ploy, the General thought, it was a bold one.

General Gerald admired boldness.

He stepped back into his hallway. “Come in, youngster,” he said.

“Thank you. General.”

“Leave the damned hi-stick outside. Don’t you know they’re bad for you?”

Gregor hesitated a moment, then snapped the offending stimulant in half and put it in his pocket.

At least, the General thought with satisfaction, Maijstral had an assistant who knew how to obey orders.

*

The robot wove silently through the kibble arbor on its way toward Baron Sinn. Sinn was using his mallet to knock bits of fruit about, looking for his croquet ball. Thus far he hadn’t achieved success.

The robot proffered a telephone. “My lord. A call from His Excellency Count Quik.”

The Baron straightened. “He knows I’m here?” The robot, not possessing a sense of irony, offered no answer.

Sinn glanced out onto the croquet lawn and saw Countess Anastasia smoking a cigaret and gazing with malevolent satisfaction at him— and at the scatter of red beneath the kibble trees. “Very well,” he said. I’ll take it.”

The Baron, still kicking idly at fruit, took the telephone from the robot’s manipulator. The robot hovered over fallen kibbles. Baron Sinn hesitated for a moment, glancing at the Countess and then at the robot, and then an idea struck him. His tongue lolled in a smile.

“Robot,” he ordered, “pick up all the fruit and put it into piles.” He held out a hand. “About this high. If you find a croquet ball, let it lie.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Sinn’s grin broadened as the robot went on its way, then he touched the answer ideograph and the phone promptly projected a miniature hologram of Count Quik’s round head before Sinn’s snout.

“Your ever faithful, my lord. It is a pleasant surprise to hear from you.”

“Is day for surprisings. Am myself surprised earlier.”

“Pleasantly, I hope.”

“I with friend spoke of Mr. Maijstral.”

A rush of frantic energy sped through the Baron’s nerves at the sound of Maijstral’s name, but it was a few seconds before he was able to decipher the Count’s syntax and make a guess at what Count Quik had actually intended.

“You spoke with a friend of Maijstral’s, my lord?” Wanting to be absolutely certain.

“Correct is. Requested assistance mine as neutral third party, yet citizen of Empire. I gave.”

Maijstral’s insulating himself well. Baron Sinn thought with a certain amount of admiration. And he moves fast.

He kept his expression amiable. “That was very generous of you my lord,” he said.

“Offered compensation. Twenty percent. Declined.”

“Of course, my lord.”

“Disinteresting seemed best.”

The robot was piling fruit into a small pyramid. No croquet ball yet.

Sinn, as if on cue, affected disinterest as he gazed at Count Quik. “What manner of assistance did Maijstral believe he needed from Your Excellency?”

“I bids transmit, my Baron.”

“I understand.” Sinn considered this for a moment. “Is there a place where you can be reached?”

“Yes. At Peleng Hotel now.”

Behind his facade, Sinn cursed heartily. That was where Etienne, Nichole, and (presumably) Maijstral were staying, covered by Diadem security.

Delay, Baron Sinn thought. The longer the delay, the better chance of catching Maijstral outside of his paramour’s protection. He peered benignly into the hologram.

“I have no bid at present. Excellency. But I have no doubt that I shall receive instructions from my consulate to offer one,”

“Understandings, my lord. But dealings must be concluded in one local day. Thirty-eight hours.”

Sinn cursed again. Maijstral seemed to have thought, of everything.

“I have no concrete assurance of what His Majesty’s government will or will nor offer,” Sinn said, “but I am certain they are willing to offer a fair price for return of the Imperial Artifact.” His ears pricked forward intently. “However, should the Imperial Artifact
not
be returned at the end of this adventure, I trust that your principal will take care to understand the consequences of such an unfriendly act. When great empires play for great stakes, the counters are oft at hazard.”

“Understandings, Baron Sinn. Your servant, sir.”

“Yours.” Nuance, the Baron thought, nuance.

The Count’s hologram faded. Baron Sinn noticed that the robot seemed to have left a single round, red object alone during the course of its pile-making. The Baron walked over to it and prodded it with his mallet. It was definitely his croquet ball.

He lit a cigaret and addressed the robot. “Continue piling the fruit.”

“Yes, sir.”

Baron Sinn drove his ball back into play and strolled back onto the lawn. The Countess tossed her cigaret off the playing field and walked to her bail.

“I set the robot to clearing the kibbles away. I hope you don’t mind “

The Countess betrayed no sign of chagrin. “Not at all, Baron.” She stood above her ball and readied her mallet.

“I should have thought of that myself, when I handed you my special ball. Please forgive my lack of foresight.”

“Of course, my lady.”

Countess Anastasia squinted as she took aim. “Was the call anything of importance. Baron?” she asked.

The Baron timed his comment perfectly. “Maijstral’s agent, my lady.”

The stroke hit off-center and the ball spun of on a tangent. “Bad luck. Countess,” said Baron Sinn, and prepared to roquet and drive the Countess’s ball off the court, beneath her kibble trees.

He was beginning to enjoy the game.

*

“Of
course
I’ll take the twenty percent, youngster! D’you take me for a fool?”

*

Paavo Kuusinen watched the game of croquet in mounting frustration. Nothing had developed at Amalia Jensen’s place since the Humanity Prime goon squad had returned to its roost. Drake Maijstral was, it appeared, safely under Nichole’s protection. Kuusinen had flown to the Countess’s place in hope of seeing something dramatic, and found only a game of croquet and a robot piling kibble fruit. Kuusinen sighed. He decided to fly to Lieutenant Navarre’s in hope of viewing some new developments.

Since he’d been in on the beginning, he’d hate to miss the finish.

*

Amalia Jensen had spent the afternoon getting acquainted with the discouraging fact of her house being used as a barracks for a host of armed and belligerent men, and her response had finally been to throw up her hands in despair and retreat to her room. There she had been watching the video news, hoping to discover some news of Maijstral’s current whereabouts, and listened instead to a report about the current wave of odd crimes affecting Peleng City and vicinity, to-wit: one theft from Lieutenant Navarre’s house that involved an object of small value taken by highly expensive means; one violent kidnapping followed a short time later by inexplicable release; one equally inexplicable armed attack on Countess Anastasia’s mansion; a violent intrusion at a country house, where robots were shot and the house torn apart; and now— a late development— a violent attack on Lieutenant Navarre by a Khosalikh in a Ronnie Romper disguise.

Amalia Jensen straightened in her chair. The newscaster, a supercilious Khosalikh, pointed out that Ronnie Romper disguises had been used by the perpetrators of the Jensen kidnapping. Facts seemed scanty at the moment, but this didn’t stop the news writers from speculating.

Cold fingers touched Amalia Jensen’s neck at the report that Ronnie Romper had been killed during the attempt, apparently by a visitor who happened onto the scene. The newscast hadn’t identified the Khosalikh even as to sex, and she couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t Tvi. In fact it very likely was, since the tall Khosalikh had probably been too badly injured in the attack on the Countess’s mansion to participate in further mischief.