Arthur C Clarke's Venus Prime Omnibus

by Paul Preuss

She could not hear Blake, however. He was not in his room, not sleeping or rooting around in his closet or in the bathroom shaving or cleaning his teeth. He was not there.

  This was very curious. Sparta bent swiftly until her face was level with the latch, not to peek through the old-fashioned keyhole—as it no doubt appeared to those who watched—but to taste the air near the doorknob. She sensed the spicy flavor of Blake’s characteristic skin oils and acids, freshly overlying a couple of centuries’ worth of brass polish.

  Something else. She remembered the old riddle, “Twenty brothers in the same house. Scratch their heads and they will die.” Matches. A whiff of phosphorus, very faint.

  She stood up. Since she knew they were watching she decided not to enter his room.

  The situation wasn’t necessarily bad. Blake had disappeared before. After the Star Queen incident, for example, when she’d stayed behind on Port Hesperus and he’d gone back to Earth and she hadn’t heard a word from him for months and hadn’t seen him until he’d shown up walking toward her across the surface of the moon. On Mars, when he’d insisted on working underground and they’d both almost gotten themselves killed. But he’d always had a good reason for his vanishing acts.

  Something else odd—she wondered if there was a connection. When she’d gotten out of bed that morning, she’d noticed a smell of fresh putty. One of the panes in her own window had been replaced during the night.

  Sparta spent the next hour wandering the house and grounds, determined to seem unworried. Blake was not in the library or the game room or the screening room; he was not in the basement firing range or the gym or the squash courts or the indoor pool. He wasn’t in the conservatory. He wasn’t playing a solitary game of horseshoes or croquet. He wasn’t lawn bowling or shooting skeet or practicing his fly-casting. He hadn’t taken any of the horses out for a midday canter. In the garage next to the stables, all the estate’s usual cars were in their usual spaces.

  But a big window on the first floor had also broken since yesterday; glaziers were at work replacing a piece of the pearly stained glass.

  At midmorning Sparta stood on the wide back porch, leaning on the rustic railings of peeled and varnished pine, watching the woods. Nothing moved besides the occasional squirrel or field mouse or little gray bird. And the falling leaves. She watched them fall. By listening she could hear each leafy collision with the leaf-covered ground.

  Blake was gone.

  The commander found her there.

  “Where is he?” she asked quietly.

  “I told him he could go when he wanted to.” His voice was a rattle of stones, but there was something hollow in it. This morning he wasn’t wearing his country clothes, he was wearing his crisp blue uniform, with the few imposing ribbons over the breast. “This morning, early. We took him out by chopper.”

  She turned away from the railing and fixed him with her dark blue eyes. “No.”

  “You were asleep. You couldn’t hear…”

  “I couldn’t have heard the chopper, I was too full of your drugs. But he didn’t want to go.”

  His blue eyes were lighter than hers, knobs of turquoise. “I can’t change your opinion.”

  “I’m glad you know that. If you want this conversation to continue, Commander, stop lying.”

  His mouth twitched, an aborted smile. He’d used that line himself, a time or two.

  “By now you know quite a lot about me,” she said, “so you may suspect that if I get it into my head, I could bring this house to the ground and bury everybody in it.” Her pale skin was red with anger.

  “But you wouldn’t. You’re not like that.”

  “If you’ve hurt Blake and I find out about it I will do my best to kill you. I’m not a pacifist on principle.”

  He watched the slight, fragile, immensely dangerous young woman for a moment. Then his shoulders relaxed a millimeter or two and he seemed to lean away from her. “We took Blake out of here at four this morning under heavy sedation. He’ll wake up in his place in London with a false memory of a quarrel with you—he’ll have the notion that you told him you were engaged in a project too sensitive and too dangerous for him to get involved, and that for your sake as well as his own you insisted that he leave.”

  “I won’t accept that”—because she knew he was still lying—“I’m leaving here now.”

  “Your choice, Inspector Troy. But you know as well as I do, it’s the truth.”

  “I never said that or anything like it…”

  “You should have.” For a split second his anger flared to match hers.

  “…whatever memory you planted in him, it was not that.” She walked away.

  “Do you want to know what really happened”—the catch and tension in his voice gave him away; he was playing his last card—“to your parents?”

  She stopped but did not turn. “They died in a car accident.”

  “Let’s drop that pretense. You were told they died in a helicopter crash.”

  Now she turned, poised and dangerous. “Do you know something different, Commander?”

  “What I know I can’t prove,” he said.

  In his rasping voice she heard something else, not exactly a lie. “Oh, but you want me to think you could—and just won’t.” Is that what he really wanted? “Do you know my name too, Commander?—don’t say it.”

  “I won’t say your name. Your number was L. N. 30851005.”

  She nodded. “What do you know about my parents?”

  “What I’ve read in the files, Miss L. N. And what I’ve learned from the prophetae.”

  “Which is?”

  “That’s not for free.” His face had hardened again; this time the simple truth. “Are you on the team or aren’t you?”

  And that’s why the uniform. R & R was over, the whistle had blown, back to the game. She sighed tiredly. “Send me in… Coach.”

  PART

  2

  THE SIGN

  OF THE

  SALAMANDER

  6

  Blake woke up in his London flat feeling as clear-eyed and peppy as he had for months—since before he went underground in Paris, since before he chased Ellen to the moon, since before he went to Mars. Since before the last time he’d slept in this, his own bed, in fact. Which did not necessarily mean he was in good health. Somebody had shot him full of anti-hangover serum.

  He jumped out of bed—he was wearing pajamas, for Pete’s sake; he never wore pajamas, although his mother kept giving them to him for Christmas—and went into his bathroom.

  Hmm, only a day’s growth of beard. Odd. The back of his hand—he must have scraped it somehow—was shiny with new skin. Had the same Somebody used Healfast on him?

  He ran his chemosonic shaver quickly over his cheeks and chin and throat and splashed his face with lime-scented aftershave; he probed his teeth with his ultrasound brush and ran his tongue over their polished surfaces, then slid a comb through his thick, straight hair and grimaced at his freckled face in the mirror.

  For the first time on months Blake experienced the pleasure of having a full wardrobe open before him. He pulled on snug flexible cords and chose a loose black softshirt from his dresser. His watch and commlink and I.D. sliver were neatly laid out on the dresser top—even his black throwing knife. What must they have thought of that, whoever they were?

  He slipped his bare feet into rope-soled navy blue Basque slippers. He didn’t plan to go anywhere for an hour or two—not until he’d reacquainted himself with his home, not until he’d let the memories filter back. That was one of the little problems with anti-drunk drugs—they tended to block recent memories, at least until they wore off.

  His sunny little kitchen was spotless, dustless, everything put away. Somebody had been over the place and wiped it clean—not his charlady; he didn’t have one—and there was more food in his refrigerator than he could recall leaving there. Fresh, too.

  He was hungry but not famished. On the gleaming gas range he made a two-eg
g omelet with herb cheese and ate it at the beechwood table overlooking his tiny brick-walled garden and those of his neighbors. The eggs disappeared fast; he followed them with a glass of orange juice he’d squeezed himself and a cup of French-roast coffee. His home was London, but he was still an American; no beans on toast for his breakfast, and he wanted something stronger than black tea to start his day.

  The phonelink chortled, but he heard the click as he picked up the kitchen extension. Wrong number? Or Them, checking.

  He took a second cup of coffee into the living room and sat contemplating the clear autumn sky through the branches of the big elm outside his window. The leaves were falling and the branches glistened in the low sun; sunlight brought out the rich blues and burgundies of the kilim on the floor and illuminated his floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled with rare printed books. The bold black Picasso minotaur in the alcove, the warm Arcadian Poussin watercolor over the desk, reassured him that he was home.

  Another sip of coffee. A tiny headache had started throbbing in his right temple. Memory was creeping back.

  Night. An ivy-covered granite wall, lit by brilliant spotlights. Was he climbing on it? Yes, he was inching across its face toward… Ellen’s window…

  Window glass splintered and sprayed across the kilim. But this was real time! Blake reacted to the crash before he knew what it was, diving and rolling through the door into the hall.

  A dragon’s exhalation of flame spurted through the doorway behind him, searing the painted wooden frame into blisters and charring the papered wall opposite; he’d rolled just half a meter past the plume of fire, and he kept going on knees and elbows, into the kitchen.

  He knew the smell of phosphorus and jellied gasoline intimately, thus knew that his books and paintings were already gone, that in minutes the whole apartment, the whole building would be going. Already the air under the ceiling was seething with black smoke.

  Keeping to the cooler air near the floor, he went on through into his back porch workshop and kicked through the locked back door.

  His flat was on the second floor. He leaped from the backstairs landing and crashed into the roof of a potting shed, taking the impact with flexed knees. On the rebound he jumped, landing in a myrtle tree in the garden.

  He extricated himself from the branches. He didn’t dare linger in the open. The attacker probably didn’t have a gun, or maybe didn’t know how to use one, for Blake had been literally a sitting target. But his assailant must be close, probably on an adjacent roof.

  “Fire! Fire! Everybody out!” Blake yelled as he smashed his way through the garden gate and ran on through the narrow basement passageway to the street. “Fire!”

  He came through the front to find people from across the street already pouring out of their doors. A big red-faced bobby was pelting toward him down the walk, jabbering into his comm unit as he ran. Blake looked up at the side of his flat.

  A sucking gout of oily flame was rushing out of his shattered windows, blackening into a rising column of foul-smelling smoke. The old elm that had shaded his living room—it was in his neighbor’s garden—was on fire. The roof of the building was beginning to shed scales of gray-brown smoke.

  Old Mr. Hicke, his downstairs neighbor, stumbled out onto the porch, wearing flannel pajamas and a threadbare robe. “Mister Redfield! You’ve returned! Oh my—are you aware that your face is scratched?”

  “This way, Mr. Hicke, away from the building. That’s better. I’m afraid there’s been a rather serious mishap.”

  Blake was about to plunge back through the front door when Miss Stilt and her mother, the only other residents of the building, emerged in wraps, bothered by the commotion and blinking at the light.

  “That’s all right, sir, if you’ll just give us a bit of room here…” The bobby moved in to escort the ladies to safety; other police had arrived to hold back the quickly gathering crowd. Blake retreated with the crowd to the opposite side of the street.

  He stood watching the graceful old building dissolve in flames. It was well on its way to becoming a gutted ruin before the first trucks arrived minutes later.

  Whoever had thrown or launched the bomb must be long gone, unless that person was a committed firebug or for some other reason lacked a sense of self-preservation. Blake doubted it. Blake had been the specific target of the attack, and there was a message in the medium.

  Blake himself had a weakness for blowing things up. Whoever had tried to kill him knew that.

  He reviewed the morning’s events and simultaneously realized that his memories of the night before—it must have been two nights before, allowing for the change in time zones—were almost fully restored. Along with a full-blown headache.

  He remembered trying to rescue Ellen. He remembered her betrayal. He couldn’t believe it.

  Maybe she’d cut a deal with the commander to get him out safely. The commander knew Blake didn’t trust him, and Blake knew he wanted to get him out of the way. Had she seen to it that Blake was treated well, returned to his home? And had the commander then betrayed her?

  Or was someone else after his well-crisped hide? There were certainly enough candidates.

  He watched the building burn, taking with it the last of the things he cherished. If he was to survive long enough to revenge himself, he’d better not hang around here waiting for the authorities to begin their tedious inquiries.

  The hypersonic aircraft outraced the sun across the sky. It was still early morning when Blake landed on Long Island, and only a little after 10:00 A.M. when he let himself into his parents’ Manhattan penthouse.

  “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.”

&nb
sp; “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.