Disappearing Act

by Margaret Ball

  Now, of course, after the barbed hints she'd dropped over dinner, they had worse problems to worry about. He summoned Torston and Kaspar into one of the curtained alcoves that lined the hall for a whispered consultation and outlined his fears. The woman had obviously studied ways of slipping materials past the customs inspectors; all right, that was reasonable enough given that her orders were to investigate Orlando Montoyasana's allegations of prohibited technology being smuggled onto Kalapriya. But that remark about the bacteriomat monopoly—!

  "It could have been an innocent observation," Torston suggested.

  "Nothing a Diplo says is innocent," Kaspar said. As the only one of the three who'd actually encountered a Diplo before, he took the lead in this conversation despite being the youngest of the three and the only one who wasn't from a Founding Family. "They're trained to make provocative comments that will upset guilty people and cause them to betray themselves. And from the looks of you two, that's exactly what happened. I do hope you didn't spill soup all over yourselves when she said that."

  "Certainly not!" Torston bristled. "We were eating krebsi at the time!"

  Dwendle stifled a sigh and wondered, not for the first time, why he had been saddled with an officious youngster and a doddering old fool as coconspirators. He knew why, of course. These two were not only venal enough to enter enthusiastically into the Consortium he had created, they were in his power by virtue of the background sheets he held on each of them. He'd thought himself very clever to ensure that no one was invited to join the Consortium but those who had some secret weakness he could exploit.

  "We betrayed nothing," he said to Kaspar, "but it's clear the woman knows too much. She knows it's a two-way trade, she was teasing us with her knowledge of our involvement, and she is far too conversant with the situation in the mountain Territories. And she's announced her intention of going wherever her inquiries lead."

  "If she goes into the hills, she might get involved in the tribal wars," Torston said hopefully. "Not our fault if she dies there."

  "It's hard to kill Diplos," Kaspar said gloomily, "and what's worse, it leads to investigations. What if she survives, and sees some of the weapons the Udarans are using?"

  "If she gets as far as Udara," Dwendle said, "she might see a great deal worse than that."

  In dismal silence, they watched the dancers. Diplomat Vissi looked like a young girl without a care in the world; she was laughing now, getting the steps of the twining promenade hopelessly mixed up as Gabrel Eskelinen tried to lead her through them. The peach-colored panels of her borrowed Kalapriyan-style dress fluttered around her ankles, revealing tantalizing glimpses of lavender underpanels and slim legs. Even that overserious prude Eskelinen was laughing.

  "It's deceptive," Kaspar said. "She's probably had youth treatments. Don't imagine that's a girl you're looking at. Think of it as a snake. A highly trained snake."

  "But if killing her will only lead to more investigations, how can we stop her?" Torston sounded close to tears. "All our fortunes, everything we've worked for, ruined because of this one woman poking her nose in. I told you Orlando Montoyasana shouldn't be given an upcountry pass, I told you the man was dangerous. No, no, you said, Dwendle, you said he was a known conspiracy maniac and nobody ever paid attention to him, everywhere he goes he fusses about native cultures being destroyed, even if he stumbles on something they'll write it off as more of Montoyasana's particular paranoia. That's what you said. And now look what's happened!"

  "Montoyasana won't be making any more complaints. And if the death of the Diplo also brings about the end of the investigation," Kaspar said, "there'll be no more questions asked. We can end the whole thing now, tonight."

  "But how?" Dwendle asked involuntarily.

  "Eskelinen. You've no particular love for him, have you?"

  "Another nuisance," Dwendle shrugged, "always wanting to be off up-country, mixing too much with the natives, but he's military—he can be kept under control. All we have to do is persuade his colonel that he shouldn't be given another pass to leave the regiment. I'll think up some good reason why I really need him in Valentin."

  "But if he could be neutralized along with the Diplo, you'd have no objection?"

  "Gods, no!" It sounded too good to be true. It probably was too good to be true.

  "Then it's very simple." Kaspar sounded unbearably smug, but Dwendle could put up with that in the hope of hearing that smug voice pronounce his salvation. "Torston, you will see that their departure from the ball is delayed until most of our people have been gone for some time, so that they will be alone on the road back to House Stoffelsen. Dwendle, you need to arrange some large transfers of funds into Eskelinen's accounts, and fiddle the accounting programs so that they are back-dated over the last several months; can you do that?"

  It would be easy enough to arrange, using the same backdoor accesses to the accounts that Dwendle already used to disguise the Consortium's illicit profits. "Yes, but he'll know—"

  "After tonight," Kaspar said coolly, "he'll know nothing. Tomorrow morning you will be shocked to discover that Gabrel Eskelinen killed the Diplomat using a pro-tech weapon, unfortunately just before the city security forces could stop him by more conventional means. They were, of course, forced to kill him in self-defense. His possession of the weapon and the sums transferred to his bank account will demonstrate that he was the smuggler she came to investigate. We will present the evidence to Rezerval, together with Gabrel's cache of prohibited weapons—I'm sorry, but we must sacrifice the latest shipment to lend verisimilitude—explain that we are shocked and dismayed but that we acted immediately to retrieve the weapons from their native possessors, and here they are, and here's the guilty party, unfortunately dead, and here's their precious Diplo, also unfortunately dead, but she died heroically in the line of duty. That wraps it all up nicely; no need for any further investigation." He smiled sweetly at his colleagues.

  "He's a soldier, she's a Diplo, how are you going to take them out?" Dwendle demanded.

  Kaspar's smile brightened. "With some of those pro-tech weapons Leutnant Eskelinen has been smuggling, obviously. I'll catch them both in a tanglenet, which she won't be expecting, and bubble those pretty brains with a dazer set for maximum neuronal disruption before she has time to pull any dirty Diplo tricks or bring out any secret weapons. He will have no defences against a tanglenet, so I'll have plenty of time to put a sword through him. Then it's only to disable the tangler, put the dazer in his hand, and congratulate the security men on their prompt action. They'll be willing enough to take the credit, and the evidence will be sufficient to prove that he's the smuggler."

  "If it works . . ." Dwendle said doubtfully.

  "Trust me. I'll see to it personally." Kaspar sketched a parody of a military salute. "I'm off now—and you'd best leave soon too, Stoffelsen. Those accounts need to be in place before morning."

  His insouciant manner was maddening. "Haar Stoffelsen to you, young man!" Dwendle snapped, "and I'll see to the accounting in . . . in my own good time."

  "As you like, Haar Stoffelsen," Kaspar said patiently, "but remember that leaving the ball early will ensure that you and your good lady—and your charming daughters—are home long before any disturbances on the road tonight."

  "I suppose that leaves me to entertain the Diplomat," Torston sighed with a long-suffering tone and a longing look at the pretty ankles he could glimpse under the Diplomat's layered skirt panels.

  "I think Gabrel Eskelinen will do that quite adequately," Dwendle said. "Just make sure they do not leave before the last valsa is played. Make it a point of etiquette—Valentin tradition, bad luck for the guest of honor to leave before everyone else has had a chance to make their farewells." Not a bad "tradition," even if he had thought it up on the spur of the moment—and the best of it was that if old Torston started boring on about it, everybody would accept his statement that it was an old Founding Families tradition without question. Sort of thing the old bore was a
lways coming up with anyway.

  Now if he could just think of an equally good excuse to get Ivonna and the girls out of here, without arousing the Diplomat's suspicions!

  * * *

  As the older contingent of Society members drifted away, there was plenty of space on the dance floor for the younger ones to demonstrate the shifting patterns and changes of the paar-dansken for their distinguished visitor. "Diplomat Vissi" was so involved in remembering the complicated sequence of right hand across, turn to your left-hand neighbor, skip back to the right and thread down the arches that she scarcely noticed when her host and hostess made their farewells. Only the loud complaints of Faundaree and Saara at being dragged home so early caught her attention.

  "Is it time to go?" she asked Gabrel in an undertone, between step-changes. "Should we leave too?"

  "By no means, young la—I mean, Diplomat Vissi! By no means!" boomed an authoritative voice just behind her. Maris turned, startled, to find one of the old guys from the banquet table standing much too close to her—only, with an adroit move, Gabrel was somehow between them, and the old guy backed off a few paces, still talking. Something about a long-standing Valentin tradition that absolutely required the guest of honor to remain until the end of the ball; Maris didn't follow all the details and didn't much care. Paar-dansken were fun; she wasn't supposed to know the steps so she didn't have to pretend to be an expert in something she was totally ignorant of; and nobody in the gay young crowd that surrounded her had the least desire to talk about bacteriomats, or tribal treaties, or prohibited technology, or anything else she was supposed to know all about.

  And Gabrel Eskelinen, who didn't know any better, was treating her like a toppie lady; a strangely intoxicating experience. This whole party was like living one of those holos she loved to watch whenever Johnivans could get them; not quite real, but much much better than any reality Maris had ever known.

  Fine by her if they kept dancing till dawn. Had to be easier to handle than whatever was next on the Barents Trading Society's gods-curst schedule.

  In fact it was well after moonset, if not quite dawn, when the band put aside the rapping sticks that dictated the rhythm of the paar-dansken and picked up traditional viols and flugels for the last valsa. Young officers in gold-braided uniforms and ladies in sheer dresses spangled with glittering dots took the floor, one couple after another, spinning and swooping with a grace that took Maris's breath away.

  "I can't do this," she protested when Gabrel took her hand. It wasn't like the paar-dansken, a bunch of people skipping around each other and everybody laughing when you got the pattern wrong. This was something else, magic, flying to music, something you couldn't fake from having seen it on historical drama holos.

  "You can't not do it," Gabrel informed her. "Valentin tradition. Guest of honor must be the last one dancing. And the last dance is always a valsa."

  Maris looked up at him suspiciously as he drew her into his arms, one hand firm on her back, the other holding her own hand. "Why do I suspect you made that up just now?"

  "Not all of it," Gabrel said. "The last dance is always a valsa. Anyway, it's easy. Anyone can valsa. Just listen to the beat—one-two-three, one-two-three, and here we go . . ."

  "Okay," he said a moment later. "You have to hear the beat and match your steps to it. ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three . . ."

  "Ouch," was the next thing he said, but Maris, biting her lip in concentration, hardly noticed.

  "I think I'm getting it!" she cried in delight.

  "No," Gabrel said through lips tight with pain, "that was my left ankle you got."

  The room spun around them and Maris found herself going backward and forward and sideways under Gabrel's firm steering, and most of the time now her feet were landing on the floor instead of on Gabrel's toes, and . . .

  "It is like flying," she sighed happily as the music came to a halt.

  "I hope you don't crash-land your flitters quite that often." Gabrel lifted one foot tenderly. "I should have worn cavalry boots."

  Maris grinned. "Serves you right for inventing traditions!"

  He put one finger under her chin and gently tilted her head up. "Diplomat Vissi, do you know that you look more like a seventeen-year-old girl at her first dance than like a mature and experienced graduate of the Diplomatic School?"

  Maris froze for a moment. Seventeen wasn't a bad estimate of her actual age, assuming she'd been nine or maybe ten when Johnivans recruited her into his gang. Was Gabrel guessing—no. He couldn't have guessed.

  She pictured Calandra Vissi's papers in her mind and tried to think herself back into the person who'd earned those diplomas and commendations and had been to all those worlds the travel records showed. How would Diplomat Vissi respond?

  "You flatter me, sir," she said with a polite smile. "I'm nearly thirty, far past being able to pass for a girl. But—" she laughed lightly "—this is my first dance. We don't dance on Rezerval—not like this, anyway. Perhaps that has misled you."

  "Nearly thirty," Gabrel repeated, while Maris repeated the mental arithmetic that had given her Calandra Vissi's age. "Hard to credit. Is there some magic about Diplomatic School, some secret youth treatments that we provincials wouldn't know about?"

  "Rumors of our special capabilities are greatly exaggerated," Maris replied demurely. If it needed youth treatments to explain the disparity between her face and Calandra Vissi's recorded age, there would be a rumor about such treatments as soon as she could plant one with Saara.

  Rumors could be quite useful.

  They just might save her skin.

  Gods knew what else would, given that she had no way off this world and out of this role except straight back into Johnivans' hands.

  Torston Huyberts kept Maris and Gabrel by his side, making farewells to all the toppies of Barents, until they were the last to leave—that was, if you didn't count the slender dark-skinned servants quietly fluttering around the hall and cleaning up the traces of the evening's entertainment, the red puddles of spilled punch and the twists of paper that had been somebody's dance card, the garlands of waxy-white flowers now beginning to turn brown at the edges, a torn and discarded strip of lace with a dirty boot print as mute evidence of what had happened to it. While they were waiting for the carriage to be brought round, Maris looked back into the empty hall, automatically cataloging these details and wondering why the room reminded her of the corridors on Thirty where Johnivans' gang had hunted down and killed the last survivors of Ugly Benko's band. And why she felt the same way she had during that fight—tired to death, scared, and yet somehow exhilarated by the fast action and the intoxicating scent of danger in the air. Well, this evening had been a battle of sorts, only fought with words and wits rather than with dazers and tanglers.

  And it was over now. What she had won, beyond another day's survival in her imposture, Maris didn't know; but at least she hadn't lost. Time to relax now; there would be more battles to fight tomorrow. Torston Huyberts's carriage had taken him away; there was only Gabrel by her side now, and she no longer thought of him as an enemy. Not somebody to be trusted with a secret that meant her survival, no, but not someone who was out to trick her and trap her either.

  She took a deep breath of the warm Kalapriyan night air, soft and damp with a hint of sea salt, and tried to convince her overstrained nerves and hammering pulse that there was nothing, now, in the air but the oversweet scent of fading flowers.

  "Tired?" Gabrel asked.

  "Not in the least," Maris said. "Do you think we Diplomats are such fragile flowers that we fade after an evening's entertainment?"

  "No. But it has been a long day for your first one on Kalapriya."

  Yeah, and you'll never guess just how long and hard—I hope! Maris's thoughts went back to Tasman, to the panicked girl standing in Calandra Vissi's quarters and realizing, too late—almost too late, she corrected herself—that she had run just where Johnivans wanted her.

  To kill her.

  Ha
d that really been only two watches—half a day, she corrected herself; must think in dirtside terms now—half a day ago? Seemed more like half a lifetime.

  Maybe it was. After all, she was a different person now.

  But the feeling of that discovery, the panic and the sense that all around her were enemies, stayed with Maris even as Gabrel Eskelinen handed her up into the carriage and they started out on the dark road back to House Stoffelsen. Well, and that made sense. These people were enemies of a sort, she argued against the prickly feeling at the back of her neck. Maybe they didn't know it, but that was only because they didn't know who she really was. They might make pretty speeches to Calandra Vissi, but they would be no friends to a nameless thief and smuggler from Tasman.

  And some of them didn't seem to like Calandra Vissi all that much, either.

  The feeling of danger was all around her, close and heavy like the overly warm night air and the strong sweet perfume of night-blooming flowers, and Maris couldn't shut down, couldn't keep from scanning the darkness on either side of the road as if Johnivans might spring out from the shadows.

  The road itself wasn't that bright, just a line of white dust between the shadowy groves and mud-walled buildings, lit by torches spaced too far apart to show anything but the bare outlines of the way the carriage must go. Maris had learned long ago, in the disputed corridors of Tasman's lowest levels, that light and darkness themselves could be weapons; cut the lights to a partition, and incoming fighters with dark-adjusted sight could make mincemeat of those within who were temporarily blinded by the loss of light. Now she averted her eyes from each pair of flickering torches, watching instead the shadows within the angles of joined buildings, looking for what didn't belong even while some part of her laughed at her senseless fears.