He leaned over Amy. “Where’s the cup?”
She looked around the room, uncertain what had happened to it. “I must have left it in the bedroom,” she said.
He pulled her to her feet and shoved her toward the open door. “Get it.”
She wobbled off. I was listening to the voices in the hallway. Other than Choi, my neighbors were a young, timid woman, and a guy who was about ninety. No prospect of help there. I hoped someone had called for police.
Amy returned to report she couldn’t find the cup. Couldn’t remember what she’d done with it. Before he could hit her, I pulled the cushion away and showed it to him. Hap broke into a large toothy grin, picked it up, admired it, shook his head like who would have thought this piece of junk would be worth money, and shoved it hard into a pocket. It banged on something, and I winced. The thing had traveled nine thousand years to get mashed by this barbarian.
“What’s it worth?” he asked. He was more or less talking to the wall, his words directed to a blank spot between me and Amy. Anybody who wanted to could reply.
“Probably twenty thousand or so,” I said.
“All right.” He glanced down at the pocket. “Good.”
We stood there while he thought what to do next. He signaled Amy to sit back down on the sofa, and she complied. Hap pointed his flashlight directly at me. I had my hand over my eyes, trying to shield them from the glare. “If you leave now,” I told him, “I’d be willing to forget about this.” You bet. Right after I’d found a way to take him out.
“Yeah,” he said, with a smile that was absolutely cold. “I know you will, because if you make any trouble for me, ever, I’ll break your sweet neck.” He let me see nothing would give him more pleasure. “All right,” he said. “Here’s what’s going to happen.” Another smile. Then before I even realized it was coming, I caught a stinging slap across the jaw. It knocked me off my feet.
“Get up,” he said.
I was following flashing lights, and the floor felt unsteady.
“You want another one?” He lifted his foot and aimed it at my ribs. “Get up.” I looked at him. Philidor showed up in my peripheral vision, hopelessly out of reach. I staggered to my feet, holding on to the arm of the sofa to keep my head from spinning. “Now here’s what we’re going to do, Kolpath.”
No two ways about it. This guy was loaded with charisma. I had to admire Amy’s taste in men.
“I want you to make a call. Call whoever you have to. And transfer twenty-two thousand into my account.” He produced a card. “Here’s the number. I’m going to sell you back your cup. Nice honest transaction.”
I decided not to argue with him.
“It was mine, you know. It’s been in our family my whole life. Shouldn’t be anybody else getting that money.”
Absolutely not.
He dug into the same pocket the cup was in and produced a link, which he held out to me. “Make the call,” he said.
“I don’t have the account numbers memorized. I need the AI.”
He raised his fist and I backed away, but he thought better of it. Put me out of business and he can’t get his money. So he went into the other pocket, the left one, and withdrew a dark blue waferlike object. He fiddled with it for a minute, and the lights came back. Carmen’s status lamps blinked.
“It won’t work,” I said. “The police will trace the money.”
“No.” He smiled at my naïveté. “It’s a network. The money moves around. Nobody’ll ever know.”
He hadn’t meant to say that, because it meant Amy and I had a short future. He went back into the sweater and came out with a scrambler and pointed it in my direction. “Do it,” he said.
“Carmen?”
“Yes, Chase.” She was using a different tone than normal, deeper, almost masculine, signaling she would help any way she could.
I took his card and held it up for the reader. “We’re going to transfer twenty-two thousand,” I said.
“Wait a minute,” Hap said. “How much you got in your account?”
“I don’t know without looking.”
He hit me again. This time I was ready and managed to sidestep some of the impact. Still, it knocked me off my feet again.
“Let her alone,” said Amy. “She didn’t do nothing to you.”
“How much?” he demanded.
I didn’t know. But I gave him a ballpark. “Enough to cover. About twenty-four.”
“Make it thirty.” He jammed the scrambler against my belly, grabbed my hair, and hauled me back onto my feet. “Truth is, Kolpath, you’ve put me to a lot of trouble.” He twisted my hair. “Empty the account.” He desperately needed a shower. And some mouthwash. “Put it all in there.” He jabbed a finger at his card. If there’d been any doubt about his plans for Amy and me, that settled it.
He was standing in front of the sofa, where he could watch both of us. But I didn’t think he was really worried.
“Which account do we make the transfer from?” Carmen asked, in a flat disinterested tone. I only had one. She was suggesting a course of action. “Perhaps the Baylok account?”
Baylok? And Sky Jordan?
Jordan fighting off the teleporting monsters.
Nobody will ever again tell me household AIs are not sentient. “Yes,” I said, trying to sound subdued. “Let’s do it that way.”
“How much you got in the Baylok account?” demanded Hap.
“Forty-two. Plus change.”
“Maybe you should show me.” He was standing, facing the center of the room, watching the two of us, and moving his weapon casually back and forth to keep us both in the line of fire. He was looking simultaneously malevolent and pleased with himself when the Baylok leaped into the room, snarling and spitting.
Hap jumped.
The thing roared and charged. Amy shrieked. Its jaws gaped and a tentacle sliced toward Hap’s head. Hap fired once and fell backward over a footrest.
I should have gone after the weapon. But I was fixated on Philidor and I swept it off the shelf as he went down. The phantom roared past and I brought the statuette down on Hap’s skull with everything I had. It produced a loud bonk and he screamed and threw both hands up to protect himself. Carmen shut off the VR and I nailed him a second time. Blood spurted. Amy was off the sofa in an instant, begging me to hold fire. The people in the hallway pounded on the door. Was I okay?
I was trying to get another clear shot at Hap. Amy went to her knees on the floor beside him and blocked my angle. “Hap,” she sobbed. “Hap, are you okay, love?”
Maybe I don’t understand these things, but I could have bopped her, too.
TEN
I was there when the Seeker left orbit, December 27, ’88. I’d made my decision and stayed behind. So I watched my sister and some of my lifelong friends start out for a distant place that had no name and whose location had not been disclosed. I knew, as I watched the monster ship slip its moorings and begin to move into the night, that there would never come a time that I would not question my decision to stay behind. And I knew, of course, that I would never see any of them again.
—The Autobiography of Clement Esteban, 2702 C.E.
When I walked into my office next morning, Alex asked what had happened to my lip. By then I’d pretty much had it with the Seeker, the cup, and the Margolians.
“Hap paid me a visit.”
“What?” Alex turned purple. “Are you okay? Where is he now? Here, sit down.”
How wobbly did I look? “I’m fine,” I said. “A few bruises, nothing more.”
“Where’s he now? That son of a bitch.”
I believe that was the only time I ever heard Alex use the term. “I talked to Fenn this morning. He says they’ll probably put him away for a while. This one is over the top. He’s assaulted Amy twice now, plus a couple of other girlfriends. Maybe they’ll finally decide he’s not responding to treatment.”
I described what had happened. He broke into a huge grin when the Baylok s
howed up. “Good,” he said. “That was a brilliant idea.”
“Yes. It was Carmen’s.”
“Who’s Carmen?”
“My AI.”
He squinted at my bruises, told me he hoped they got Hap off the streets. Then he sat down beside me. “How about Amy?”
Usually, when I check in, he says good morning, tells me what our priorities are for the day, and goes upstairs to look over the markets. But this time he seemed at a loss for words. He told me he was glad it was nothing serious, that I hadn’t been injured, that it must have been a scary experience. He bounced out of the chair and came back minutes later with coffee and toast.
He made a few more comments about how glad he was I’d come through it okay, and was I sure I wasn’t hurt, had I been to see a doctor. And before I’d quite locked in on him again he got one past me. “Before we give up on the Margolians,” he said, “we have another lead I’d like you to follow. If you feel up to it.” He waited while I ran it through a second time and realized I was receiving an assignment among all the well wishes. “Last one,” he promised. “If nothing comes of this, we’ll write the whole thing off.”
“What do you need?” I asked.
“Mattie Clendennon. She trained at navigation school with Margaret and stayed close to her.”
“Okay,” I said. “What’s her number? I’ll talk to her first thing.”
“It’s not that easy.”
Another off-world run, I thought.
“No.” He looked guilty. It takes a lot to make Alex Benedict look guilty. “She’s apparently a bit strange.”
“Stranger than Hap?”
“No. Nothing like that. But it looks as if she likes to live alone. Doesn’t much talk to anybody.”
“She’s off-line.”
“Yes. You’ll have to go see her.” He put a picture up. “She’s in her eighties. Lives in Wetland.”
It was hard to believe Mattie Clendennon was that young. Her hair had gone white; she appeared to be malnourished; and she simply looked worn-out. The picture was two years old, so I wondered if she was even still alive.
Alex assured me she was. So I took the misnamed nightflyer next morning and arrived in Paragon by midafternoon. From there I caught the train to Wilbur Junction, rented a skimmer, and went the last hundred kilometers to Wetland. Despite its name, it was located in the middle of the Great Northern Desert; Wetland was a small town that had been a major tourist draw during the last century when desert sports were all the rage. But its time had come and gone, the tourists had left, the entrepreneurs had bailed out, and fewer than two thousand inhabitants were left.
From a distance it looked big. The old hotels were clustered on the north side around the water park. The gravity works, where dancers and skaters had free-floated, resembled a large covered bowl in the downtown area, and the Egyptian replicas, pyramids, Sphinx, and stables, lay windblown on the western edge of the city. Here, in the good days, you could bring your friends, mount a drome (the closest thing Rimway had to a camel) and set off to explore the glories of the ancient world. The Temple of Ophir toward the sunrise, the Garden Palace of Japhet the Terrible a few kilometers farther on (where, if you stayed alert and rode with skill, you might be able to get out with your valuables and your life). This was a place where you came to escape from VR, where the adventure was real. More or less.
It was all before my day, of course. I’d have enjoyed spending some time there during those years. People today sit in their living rooms too much. Everything’s vicarious, as somebody said. No wonder most of the population’s overweight.
The streets were quiet. A few people wandering around. No sign of kids.
I had an address. Number one Nimrud Lane. But Carmen had been unable to match it with a location. So I had no idea where I was going. There were only a few landing pads, and those all seemed to be private. You wanted to come down, you came down on the desert.
I descended near a stone building designed to look like an enhanced pagoda, climbed out, and dropped down onto the sand. The sun was in the middle of the sky, bright and unblinking, but it was cold rather than hot. Not at all what you’d expect.
I tried my address out on a couple of passersby, but they shrugged and said they had no idea. “Try City Center,” one said, pointing to the pagoda.
I walked into it five minutes later and stood in the lobby, which felt like a place bypassed by history. A bank of elevators lined the far wall. Worn chairs and divans were scattered about. There was only one other person there, an elderly man on a sofa peering at a notebook.
I approached a service counter and a male avatar appeared, looking fresh and helpful. Dark hair brushed back, amiable features, eyes a bit larger than you’d see in a normal human. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “My name’s Toma. May I help you?”
I gave him the address, and he looked puzzled. “It doesn’t seem to be in the atlas. May I ask you to wait a moment while I consult my supervisor?”
He was gone less than a minute. “I should have realized,” he said. “It’s out at the Nimrud exhibit. Or at what used to be the Nimrud exhibit. It’s in private hands now.”
It was nine kilometers northwest of the city. One of the old stops from the days when caravans filled with tourists ran out of Wetland.
Mattie Clendennon lived in a palace. High stone walls, spires at each of the four corners. Arched entrance, up a flight of broad stairs, everything guarded by sculptures of people in antique dress. Enormous windows. Angled skylights. Flags and parapets. There was a large interior courtyard filled with more statuary, shrubs, and trees. A fountain threw spray across the walkway. The only sign of decay was a dust-filled pool in a portico on the eastern side of the building.
I debated landing in the courtyard, thought better of it, and set down in front of the main entrance. I used my link to say hello, but got no response.
I got out, pulled my jacket tight against a cold wind, and stood admiring the building for several moments. The town officially claimed that the various ancient outposts surrounding Wetland were authentic, in the sense that this was how Nineveh and Hierakonopolis and Mycenae had actually looked, and felt, in their glory days. Nimrud, according to my notebook, had been part of the Assyrian Empire.
The truth was that the only thing I knew about Assyrians was the line from Byron.
I went up the front steps (cut at the actual dimensions from the original, according to the claims), walked beneath the arch, and stopped before a pair of ornately carved wooden doors. They were big, maybe twice my height. Iron rings were inset at about eye level. I pulled on one.
“Who’s there, please?” Female voice. Not an AI, I decided.
“Chase Kolpath. I was looking for Mattie Clendennon.”
“What about? I don’t know you, Kolpath.”
“You’re Ms. Clendennon?”
“Who else would I be?”
A grump. “I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk to me for a few minutes about Margaret Wescott.”
Long pause. “Margaret’s gone a long time. What could there possibly be to talk about?”
The wooden doors remained shut. Hunting cats were carved into them. And guys with war helmets and shields. And lots of pointed beards. Everybody had one. “Might I come inside?”
“I’m not alone,” she warned.
“That’s fine. I mean you no harm, Ms. Clendennon.”
“You’re too young to have known her.”
“That’s so. I did not know her. But I’m doing some research about her.”
“Are you a journalist?”
“I’m an antiquarian.”
“Really? That seems an odd way to make a living.”
“It’s been a challenge.”
Another long pause. One of the doors clicked and swung out. “Thank you,” I said.
“Come straight ahead until you reach the rear of the passageway. Then turn left and go through the curtains.”
I crossed a stone floor into a sha
dowy chamber. The walls were covered with cuneiform, and stone cylinders mounted around the room depicted kings accepting tribute, archers stationed atop towers that looked exactly like the ones surrounding the palace, warriors going head-to-head with axes, shining beings handing tablets down from the sky. Weapons racks, filled with axes, spears, and arrows, ran along two sides of the chamber. Shields were stored near the entrance.
Following her directions, I passed through another door into a broad passageway, took an elevator up to the fourth level, and turned left into a waiting room. I heard footsteps clicking on the stone, and Mattie Clendennon joined me. Her pictures didn’t do her justice. I’d expected a feeble, half-deranged old woman. But Mattie was ramrod straight. She radiated energy and strolled across that stone floor like a cat. She was tall, imperious, with gray-green eyes and thin, intense features. A smile played about her lips.
“Welcome, Chase Kolpath,” she said. “I don’t get many visitors.”
She wore sand-colored clothes and a trooper hat, the sort of thing you might have wanted if you were going out to do some excavations. Somehow this eighty-year-old woman did not look at all absurd in the outfit.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Clendennon,” I said.
She shifted her gaze to the engravings that surrounded us. “This is where they found the Gilgamesh Epic,” she said.
“Really?” I tried to sound impressed, thinking that the woman was out of her head.
She read my reaction. “Well, of course, not literally. This is a replica of the palace at Khorsabad. Which is where George Smith found the tablets.”
She led the way down a long corridor. The stone gave way to satin curtains, thick carpets, and lush furniture. We turned into a room furnished with modern chairs and a sofa. Curtains were drawn across two windows, softening the sunlight. “Sit down, Kolpath,” she said. “And tell me what brings you to Sargon’s home.”
“This is a magnificent place,” I said. “How do you come to be living here?”
One silver brow arched. “A mixed compliment? Is there a problem?”
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