The Medusa Encounter (8 page)

“Blake! Where on Earth have you been?”

 

“Mom, you look terrific. As usual.”

Emerald Lee Redfield was a tall woman whose pampered skin, careful makeup, and exquisite clothing— today she was wearing a gray wool suit and a blouse of blue watered silk—always made her look thirty years younger, at least in the eyes of her son.

For all her elegance she was not skittish. She hugged him with enthusiasm. Then, keeping her grip on his shoulders, she studied him at arm’s length. “I wish I could say the same for you, dear. Did you sleep in your clothes?”

He laughed and shrugged.

“Come.” She took his hand and led him toward the sunny living room. Eighty-nine stories up, it had a 120-degree view of the towers of lower Manhattan and the surrounding shores. “What are you doing home? Why haven’t you called? We were so worried! Your father contacted practically everyone he knew, but no one . . .”

“Oh no!”

 

“Discreetly, discreetly.”

 

“I’ll have to have a talk with Dad. When I’m on the trail of a rare acquisition, I sometimes have to sort of . . . go underground. I must have explained all this a dozen . . .”

 

“Blake, you know how he is.”

Edward Redfield had endlessly criticized Blake’s career choice—that of a consultant specialist in old books and manuscripts—and occasionally launched into angry tirades against the money Blake was “throwing away” (money Edward could not control, as its source was a trust left to Blake by his grandfather). For Edward was of that class of old-family Eastern Seaboarders who were not required to do anything to make a living except watch over their investments—not that that was an insignificant task.

But
noblesse oblige
, and the Redfields were busy in the administrative and cultural affairs of Manhattan —this model city, the center of the Middle-Atlantic Administrative District. Indeed, so active had generations of Redfields been in public life that the present organization of the continent of North America (which no longer included a United States, except as a geographical fiction) owed much to their efforts.

Emerald seated herself on an Empire chair upholstered in blue velvet and pressed a button on the table beside her. “And I really did emphasize that he should act with discretion.”

 

Blake fell back into an overstuffed, brocade-upholstered armchair. “Well, anyway, here I am. And, as you see, in good heath.”

 

“This quest of yours . . . did you succeed?”

 

“Perhaps I’ll be able to tell you when the, uh, transaction is complete.”

 

“I understand, dear.” A maid had appeared in response to Emerald’s signal. “Your father and I are having lunch in today. Will you join us?”

 

“Love to.”

 

“Another setting for lunch, Rosaria.” The woman nodded and left as silently as she’d come. His mother smiled brightly at him. “Now Blake, what
happened?
”

 

“I got home this morning to find that my flat—not just
my
flat, the whole building—had burned to the ground. Everything I owned.”

 

“My poor boy . . . your furniture? Your clothes?” She peered at his soiled canvas slippers.

 

“Not to mention the books, the art.”

 

“So depressing, dear. You must be in a
state
. But of course you’re insured.”

 

“Oh, yes. Insured.”

 

“That’s a comfort, then.”

 

“Well—I’ll tell you all about it at lunch. Will you excuse me long enough to change out of these sweaty clothes?”

 

“Blake . . . it’s so good to have you home.”

He headed for the room that was always there for him, furnished precisely as he’d left it when he’d graduated from college. Despite the slight air of distraction with which his mother navigated life, she spoke from the heart. Love between parents and children is more complicated than it should be, he thought, and more subtle than anyone he’d read had ever been able to express adequately, but despite all the emotional harmonics and bass rumbles that accompanied the love between him and his mom and dad, love was solidly there among them.

He emerged from his old room wearing a respectable suit and tie, dressed the way he knew his father would want to see him.

“So you lost all those books you’d spent a small fortune on.” Redfield
pere
was taller than his son, with a square patrician face mounted upon a squarer, even more patrician jaw. His gingery hair and eyebrows and the sprinkle of freckles across his fine nose hinted at his Boston Irish origins, suggesting that the money in the family was perhaps only two centuries old, instead of the three or four centuries claimed by those with names such as Rockefeller and Vanderbilt.

“Yes.”

 

Edward glared at his son in ill-disguised triumph. “I hope you learned a lesson.”

 

“More than a lesson, Dad. I lost everything. I won’t be collecting anything of so perishable a nature again.”

The dining room was in the southeast corner of the penthouse, overlooking old New York harbor. In the weak sunlight of autumn, the algae farms that covered the wide waters from the Jersey shore to Brooklyn were a dull matte green, like pea soup; stainless steel harvesters grazed languorously on the stuff, converting it to food supplements for the masses.

The Redfields were not of the masses. Edward sliced through the medium-rare
magret de canard
and put a left-handed forkful into his mouth, European-fashion. “The insurance wasn’t adequate?” he mumbled.

“Oh, the financial loss is covered. Not allowing for appreciation. But I realized how ephemeral those old books and paintings are.” Can I really get away with this? Blake wondered—but people are desperate to believe what they want. “Perhaps I’ve finally grown up.”

Edward kept chewing and mumbled again. “I’ve been thinking I might look around a bit and see if I can apply myself to public service,” Blake added. His father having written him off as a dilettante, nothing could be sweeter to Edward than to hear his son come around to his point of view.

“What a fine idea, dear,” his mother said brightly. “I know our friends will be more than happy to help you find something suitable.”

 

“Why government, Blake? Why not something with more potential?” By which Edward meant buying and selling.

“I’m not really a statistics kind of guy, Dad. The market never made sense to me.” False, but it fit Edward’s prejudices. “If I’d followed your advice I’d have gone to law school,” Blake added, truistically, “but it’s too late for that.”

“Well, what
are
you good at?” A whiff of the old rancor. After all, sending Blake to SPARTA had not been an inexpensive proposition; sure, that enhanced-education project had had foundation support, but parents like Edward who
could
pay had paid plenty to get their kids enrolled.

“I’m a good investigator—anybody who’s serious about scholarship has to be. I know my way around old libraries as well as I know my way through electronic files. I can be inconspicuous when necessary.” All this was true, and not the half of it; his father would not have believed even the half of it. “I read and write a dozen languages, I’m fluent in almost that many, and I can pick up more when I need them.” Blake added something musical in Mandarin for the benefit of his mother, meaning roughly,
I owe it all to you
.

His father, who didn’t speak Mandarin, although he was fluent in German and Japanese and the other old languages of diplomacy, emitted another skeptical mumble. When he finally swallowed his mouthful of duck he asked, “What sort of job do you think all this qualifies you for?”

“I forgot to mention that I’ve become a fairly experienced space traveler in the last year.”

 

“You mean that trip to Venus?”

 

“I’ve been to the moon, too. And Mars. I guess it’s been a while since I phoned home.”

Edward put down his fork and glared at his son. “So. You’re a multilingual . . .
investigator
. . . who knows computers and doesn’t get spacesick. Maybe you should be a . . . a consumer advocate or something.”

Emerald’s thin black eyebrows shot up and her delicate mouth curved into a happy smile. “What an excellent suggestion, dear! I’m sure Dexter and Arista would be delighted to have someone of Blake’s talent and abilities on their staff.”
“At Voxpop?” Redfield looked at his wife, angrily. He hadn’t intended to be taken seriously. “Doing what?”

Dexter and Arista Plowman, although born to wealth, were a brother and sister team of professional reformers, the sort of ascetics whose roles in previous centuries had been played by such as Ralph Nader and Savonarola. What money the Plowmans had once had, and whatever came their way, they invested in their Vox Populi Institute.

Emerald said, “If Dexter Plowman or his charming sister . . .”

 

“Peculiar sister,” Edward growled. Away from his clubs and boardrooms, Edward’s confusion frequently expressed itself as temper.

 

“. . . wish to employ Blake, they will certainly use his best talents.”

 

“And he gets nothing in return. No way to get rich.”

 

Blake said, “Dad . . .” He cut himself short. We’re
already
rich was a reminder his father didn’t need to hear.

 

“Let’s think about this for a day or two,” said Edward.

Blake could see the wheels turning in his father’s head. The Plowmans were Currently Fashionable Persons in Manhattan, somewhat of the rank of crusading district attorneys, people whose good opinions Edward Redfield had courted and to whom he would be honored to loan the services of a son. No money in it, but . . . his prodigal son Blake, reformed, and now a well-known public servant . . . Edward allowed himself a thin smile.

Late that night Blake tiptoed into his father’s den, feeling his way by the faint light reflected through the windows from the hazy sky outside. Years ago, as a child, he had learned the combination to his father’s desk, and he used it now to open the upper drawer in which was secreted Edward’s whisper-quiet, gascooled, micro-super computer.

It was a machine Blake had always regarded with awe and a tinge of jealousy, since his father used only a vanishingly small fraction of its power in his business dealings and did not appreciate what his money had bought. Blake hunched over it and went quietly to work; his project would test the machine’s mettle.

What was really going on at that “safe house” on the Hudson? Four hours later: for all Blake’s skill, his search had so far gained him little but negative knowledge.

The steel king’s mansion was where it was supposed to be, all right; nowadays it was called Granite Lodge, a good, gray, innocuous name, and was supposedly used as a place where North American Park Service employees and their families could vacation, where dignitaries could retreat, where managers could confer, and so on—the usual sort of cover one might expect for so opulent a safe house.

Except that this cover seemed airtight. Blake could discover no links whatever between the Park Service and the Space Board, much less the commander’s investigative branch. On the other hand, there were plenty of documented instances of use by vacationing employees, conferring managers, and retreating dignitaries.

In state files Blake found floor plans and other documents describing the house and grounds, all accurate as far as his personal knowledge went, and the Park Service’s budget for the place with lists of the staff and their salaries and so on—and it all seemed aggressively innocent.

With sour amusement Blake read a wholly “factual” account of what had been going on there recently, when he and Ellen had somehow had the impression that they were the only guests. Seems they had overlooked a convocation of Anglican bishops, not to mention a creative writing seminar and a study session of high-school curriculum developers; this week the lodge was hosting a gathering of Jungian analysts.

A few minutes of effort produced independent “confirmation” of these events on the open network: notices and bulletins from bishops, writers, curriculum developers, and Jungians, all impenetrably convincing. Off the public net, Blake confirmed the existence of these people and the apparent authenticity of their recent itineraries.

Perhaps if he had had Ellen’s uncanny ability to sniff out and avoid the electronic trapdoors and blind drops and cut-outs, to slip through layers of electronic subterfuge, to uncover fake I. D.s and fake addresses and commlinks and life histories and travel vouchers and so on, he could have gotten what he wanted from the computer net. But Ellen’s powers were beyond him.

What was left to him was his skill as a thief and saboteur. He would have to break into Granite Lodge.

Blake was bold, even excitable, but he was not foolhardy, and he was not in the habit of undertaking unknown risks or risks where the odds were too great against him; he had a healthy respect for the defenses of Granite Lodge. But although he would have much preferred to have stayed way from it, that option was closed.

He went back to the computer. In the latter years of the 21st century, weather prediction was still an art rather than a science, but it had become a fine art. The fractal patterns of the Earth’s atmospheric system spilled across the flatscreen, unfolding in vivid false color a probable series of meteorological events for the lower Hudson valley in the coming days. If he acted soon, the weather would be on his side.

VII

A green-eyed, red-haired young woman stood in a narrow London street, watching a bulldozer root and wallow in a mudhole across the road. To the left of the construction site, over the brick wall of the neighboring garden, a man in a yellow slicker was perched on a ladder, sawing a burned limb off a huge elm. To the right, plastic sheeting covered a hole in the roof of a neighboring building.

Where the bulldozer was snorting like a boar, Blake Redfield’s apartment building had disappeared.

Sparta belted her shabby raincoat more tightly around her waist and hoisted her umbrella against the wind. She hurried along the pavement, dodging the umbrellas of the bent-over pedestrians coming her way. Half the oncomers seemed to be tangled in the leashes of their dogs, who were more eager than their masters to be outside on the wet, cold afternoon.