I made a sympathetic kind of noise. “This particular job,” I said, “was a barrel. Inert atmosphere, under slight pressure. The barrel contained some artifacts, and some papers.”
“Sounds about right,” he said. “We get a lot of that. Sometimes barrels, sometimes boxes or any damn thing.”
“Would there be any way of checking back on that one particular job?” I said. “You might remember something about it.”
I’d already talked to the two other techs involved, and they’d loaded me with worksheet listings, reports and the like, so I wasn’t just blindly guessing about any of this. Mathias sighed, and nodded reluctantly.
“I could go and find the sheets for it,” he said. “It’s all on record. I’d remember something from the sheets. Is this really important?”
I assured him that a) it was, and b) I had the work sheets right there with me. He sighed again and nodded, and I passed him the sheets, and he read at them for a couple of minutes, making little muttering sounds under his breath. Then he looked up.
“I remember that one,” he said. “Naturally I do. That was the one with all the trouble.”
I did not smile; it might have interrupted him a little. I said: “Trouble? Tell me about it.”
“There was a young one there,” he said. “Before we got to open the thing. One of the dig crew. Not a real babe, you know—” I recognized another bit of late-Twentieth slang—”but not just cold oatmeal, either. You had nothing better to do, she would be a fair jump, you know?”
“Before you opened the thing,” I said. Not interrupting him, just gently pushing him along.
Maybe, just maybe, this was something.
“She was all kinds of worried,” Mathias said. “Said this was a special job, very important. What she wanted was to be there during the opening.”
“And was she?”
Mathias snorted. “Hell of a thing to allow that,” he said. “No way in the world. She had to be outside. Precautions, it’s all in the book. You catch me going against the book, it will have to be for a babe and a half—I’m not going to be stuck in this dead-end job forever.”
“So you said,” I told him. Gently, unobtrusively. Non-interruptedly. “And she didn’t get to be here when you opened the barrel?”
“None of them did,” Mathias said. “But he was there, like five seconds after the thing was open and the warning light went off—automatic, you know.”
I said: “He?”
“She wasn’t there for maybe five minutes,” Mathias said. “With the other ones on the dig crew. Five, ten minutes, everybody was there. But he was there right away—I figure he had seniority, he was making sure everything was done right. She must have told him he couldn’t get in during, but right after was fine—which is what I’d told her. She argued like Hell over it, but she took it.”
“He?” I said. “Who he?”
The answer seemed to take several years in coming. When it did come I had the feeling that pieces clicked together inside my head. Not all of them, not even most of them. But, at last, one piece seemed to fit some other pieces.
“The old guy,” Mathias said. “Mouse. Something like Mouse.”
“Rouse,” I said. “Grosvenor Rouse.”
Mathias nodded. “You got it,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I’D SCHEDULED PAULA SHORE—the young one, the more-or-less satisfactory babe—for the next morning. I wanted very badly to change the appointment, and rush up to see her within the next thirty seconds.
I did nothing of the kind. A piece had clicked in—and before I knew what I wanted to ask Paula Shore—or Grosvenor Rouse, for that matter—I was going to have to sit down and do some hard thinking.
I was also going to have to consult with Master Higsbee. And just possibly—at second hand, I was sure—with little Robbin Tress. When I did get back to the apartment—and I took my time over it, and went out to dinner, though not to the Art Café; I was slowing myself down and giving the back of my head a little time to work, but I don’t think I could have taken another conversation just then with Corri Reges and Chandes Washington, on any subject under the local sun—when I did get back, I found a message waiting for me.
Old Forgetful at work, damn it: I had neglected to instruct the damned thing, and my pocket piece had, naturally, been as silent as the grave of (choice of one or both) Ramsay Leake or Norman W. Nechs.
And I was going to hear about it, too—because the message was from Master Higsbee.
“Gerald, there has been rather an odd development,” his rasp told me. “Please meet me, and Robbin, as soon as you get this message.” He told me where, and I gave a small but powerful curse. “Her therapists think it a good idea, and I have, of course, acceded to their wishes in the matter, as it can make no real difference to you.”
Little did he know the difference it made to me, and I was not about to tell him. The message was twenty-eight minutes old when I heard it. God damn it, it had taken me thirty-five to forty minutes to get to the apartment from the place at which I had so slowly and casually dined.
Well, it would take me less time than that getting back to the damned Art Café to meet the two of them—if I had to bribe a local cabbie with all the treasures of Ravenal, and steal Geraint Beauthis’ half-ream of antique paper to add in.
* * * *
IT TURNED OUT that I wasn’t meeting the two of them after all; I was meeting the three of them. The Master and Robbin were sharing a back corner booth in the place—there were a few booths, though most of the place was old-fashioned open tables—with another old friend, B’russ’r B’dige.
Shock upon shock, so to speak—Robbin actually out in public in a restaurant—and B’russ’r himself in the place. That little Robbin was comfortable around B’russ’r was no great surprise; Berigot were people she’d been able to accept for some years. They had, as far as Robbin was concerned, few emotions, and therefore posed no threat to speak of.
Whether her talents extended to them—whether (for instance) her feeling that the ringleader (or associate ringleader) of the damned forgery and theft was someone I’d met included Berigot as well as humans—I wasn’t at all sure. Nobody knew how the talent worked, and that particular question—were Berigot included in the futures she saw—had never quite come up.
Best to assume it did, and they were, of course.
But seeing her out in a public restaurant—even in a rather dim and secluded back booth—was like seeing her in the middle of a Year Day parade back on Earth, waving grandly from a float depicting the Incorporation of Grand Forks, Iowa. It took me a few seconds to get my breath back, and smile, and greet everybody.
B’russ’r inclined his head to the right; I gave mine a nod to the left. Little Robbin gave me a small, slightly nervous smile.
“Hello there, Sir,” she said in that breathless little voice. “I’m so glad to see you, Master Higsbee was sure you’d make it here but I was worried, there’s so much traffic out on the streets, you know, it’s hard to be sure of anything.”
The streets had been as crowded as they get on Ravenal—or in City Two, at any rate; traffic in City One, where the bureaucracy mostly works, does crowd up on you at times—which is not very. “It isn’t so bad, once you get used to it,” I said. “I’m sure you will, too. It’s wonderful to see you out like this.”
“Oh, I’m doing all kinds of things, Sir,” she said. “I went to First Files Building to meet B’russ’r here, I really did, and went through the doors and the turnstile and everything.”
“Wonderful,” I said, and meant it. The Master was fixing me with a glittering eye. Not a pleasant eye.
“Gerald,” he said, “it is very kind of you to accept the invitation of an old, blind man. It has been one hour since my call to you, an hour forever lost in the past, an hour that might perhaps have been used.”
Oh, God. “I forgot the damned pager again,” I said. “Sorry.”
The eye glittered just a hair more
. “Tell me, Gerald,” he said quietly. “When you left to meet us here, did you remember to instruct your apparatus?”
I smiled at him. Maybe he could feel the smile somehow. “I did, Sir,” I said.
He gave me a curt nod. Perhaps a shade disappointed. “Good,” he said.
“Now,” I said, and sat down. The Master had been having the eggplant parmigiana. Robbin had some sort of salad, or what looked like the remains of a salad. There were three empty glasses in front of her, and a fourth one half-full of what looked like, and certainly was, a chocolate milkshake. B’russ’r—who wasn’t sitting, of course, but leaning casually against a side wall of the booth—had been drinking something bright red from a closed bottle, like a no-G squeeze affair. Specially ordered in, I supposed, for a distinguished guest.
I gave them all a smile. “What’s new?”
“Oh, it’s about the shooting,” Robbin said. “Of the birds, you know. When the three birds were hurt, long long ago.”
B’russ’r never so much as turned a hair, though Berigot a) are not birds, nor avian in any way, and b) rather dislike being taken for such things.
“In fact,” the Master rasped at me, “it was the police who turned the fact up. They very kindly shared it with B’russ’r, and he has shared it with us, and now with you.”
I took a deep breath. The puzzle-piece I’d found was connected to the manuscript, and that end of things. If something had now turned up about the Berigot shootings five years before, perhaps it would connect with my new piece.
Perhaps the whole puzzle was beginning to take on a recognizable shape, I told myself. Hope (as a writer named Dickerson, either Gordon or Emily, said preSpace) is the thing with feathers, not to be confused with B’russ’r B’dige.
Not to be confused with the facts of the real universe, either. “It seems the three Berigot—” the Master began.
And B’russ’r did something I had never seen a human being do—Robbin Tress excepted. He interrupted the Master. “G’ril Mnus,” he said, “G’mancae B’dint, and B’dyr G’ridget.”
Master Higsbee nodded at him—not at him, in his general direction. Being a Blind Man, who couldn’t quite locate the speaker. It underlined massive irritation; but none of it showed in his voice.
“Exactly,” he said. “G’ril and G’mancae and B’dyr had, it now seems, an acquaintance in common.”
My eyebrows went up. Maybe the Master felt the air motion. “Of course they did,” I said. “Most Berigot know each other, after all. The way most humans in an outpost on a non-human planet know each other. It goes with the territory.”
“No,” Master Higsbee said, and gave a small, savage smile. “A human acquaintance in common. The police had thought nothing of it, since he was only an acquaintance, though fairly close to two of the three; they could find no connection between him and any of the shootings. I am advised—assured—that they are now—ah—rethinking.”
If the human acquaintance was who I thought it might be, I told myself, all sorts of pieces were going to click into place.
But it wasn’t. I said: “All right, that’s different. And, I agree, very greatly interesting. Who?” And the Master said:
“Ramsay Leake.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
AFTER A LONG, long second, I said: “Well.”
After about four more seconds I said: “But all this establishes is that Leake was connected to the whole thing. And we knew that already.”
“You’ve missed rather an interesting point,” the Master said. He threw it away, casually—which is worse than underlining the fact that Gerald Knave had been being stupid. I tried not grinding my teeth, and put on an attentive expression. Who knew what he was capable of noticing? Any normal person would have had his eyes restored thirty years before.
He was waiting for his acknowledgment, and I gave it to him. “I might have,” I said. Mildly. “Go ahead.”
“There are two roads to this conclusion,” the Master said. Robbin was working away at her salad, or whatever it was—it had fruits in it, and nuts, and tomatoes, and a lot of things I was too occupied to identify, all covered in a white, lumpy goo—and B’russ’r was leaning patiently, listening. “The first you may have been too hurried by events to notice. The second has just come to our attention.” He paused, took a fork, and twirled spaghetti onto it, guiding himself just a bit with his left hand. He handles spaghetti very well. “The connection has been underlined by the—ah—acquaintanceship,” he said. “And it goes back further than five years, in two cases—and just over five years, in the third case.”
“So Ramsay Leake met one of the Berigot just around the time of the shootings,” I said. “What does this tell us?”
“It tells us—since we know that a connection between Leake and the shootings must exist—that the meeting was purposeful.” The Master twirled a little more spaghetti. B’russ’r sucked on his bright red thing and nodded, shifting slightly against the wall.
“Then Leake was actively involved,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” the Master said. “But that isn’t the main point, Gerald. The main point is that the entire plan regarding the forged Heinlein manuscript has been in existence for at least five years.”
B’russ’r nodded again. Robbin took a forkful of tomatoes, nuts and goo. I said, very slowly: “For at least a year before anybody dug up Norman W. Nechs and his little hoard.”
“At least that, yes.”
I was hurried, I suppose. I said a stupid thing. “Then someone, somewhere, knew about Nechs, and knew he was a Heinlein collector, and—”
The Master stopped me with a kindly wave of his hand, which was full of fork and spaghetti. “Gerald,” he said very mildly, “you must control this tendency of yours to—ah—rush off in all directions. That is simply not the case; it could not be so, and therefore it is not so.”
“But—” I said, and then stopped the mad rush, and thought, and said: “Oh.”
“Precisely,” the Master said. “A target—”
“Of opportunity,” B’russ’r said. “The plan waited for the discovery of a suitable hoard, somewhere on Earth. Once that discovery had been made, and was known, it could be put into practice quickly. The forged manuscript would have been ready and waiting for opportunity.”
A consequence of information upload, of course—and I had uploaded that much of it myself, once I’d taken thought just a little—but he really should have known better. He knew something about Master Higsbee, after all, and he might have seen that the Master was not fond of interruptions.
The Master looked in his general direction again—not at him, just vaguely out there somewhere. The Blind, Helpless Stare, perhaps a little overdone to my taste. He gestured with his loaded fork—and carelessly let it fall while his hand was in motion. The fork landed at the far edge of the table, splattering bits of spaghetti and sauce here and there, and falling short of B’russ’r himself by about four inches. If I’d asked the Master—at the time, or at any moment of his life from then on—he’d have given me the miss distance in microns.
“Oh my,” he said. “I am sorry, Sir. Would you mind—ah—retrieving it for me? I’m blind, you know.”
B’russ’r moved a step or two to the side, to give himself room, and picked the fork up in one small hand. He leaned forward across the table, his left wing narrowly missing Robbin’s plate of things and goo, and put the fork on Master Higsbee’s plate, carefully making a sound with it, plinking the fork handle on the edge of the plate. “There you are, Master,” he said. His voice was even and respectful. What else could it have been? “It is just to your right, on the plate.”
“Thank you,” Master Higsbee said. “I am most grateful. It is a terrible thing, to be blind.”
“It must be,” B’russ’r said. “To lose an entire sense. But surely there is medical aid, Master. I have heard that you will not accept it, but—”
“It cannot be done,” the Master said, an outright lie, or else a stateme
nt that the Master’s rules were the rules of the universe. He reached for the fork, without hesitation or a wrong move, and smiled. “Thank you for your concern, Sir.”
“Just so,” B’russ’r said, and the moment passed off. I was some relieved, myself; I’d thought there might have been bloodshed. But Master Higsbee had made his move, received an apology—and managed to interrupt B’russ’r, just to even matters up.
Robbin had never paused in stoking her own little furnace, but she paused now. “What could it be that’s so interesting about the time, Sir?” she said. “I mean, whoever did all this had to have time to get everything ready, didn’t he? Or she or whatever. To make the paper and get the story written, whatever it is, and just get everything ready. Isn’t that obvious?”
“Of course it is, dear child,” the Master said. “But what we now know is that the plan was in full operation as long as a year before the dig. Leake could not have been the principal player—in fact, his task in all of this is comparatively simple to deduce, I should think. Gerald?”
I’d been waiting for that, and was ready, thank God; I had had enough of looking stupid in front of bright people. “Leake was a computer expert,” I said. “And there’s really only one spot for a computer expert in all of this, as we all assumed from the start—making the analogues of isotope patterns, so that the paper could be prepared.”
“Well,” the Master said slowly, “there is another possibility, Gerald. There is such a thing as computer analysis of style; he might have been called upon to analyze the Heinlein style for the actual writing itself.” He sighed, cut and took in some eggplant parmigiana without any noticeable Blind Man antics, and admitted: “But it is of such low probability, it can effectively be ignored. In any case, computer analysis of style has never given any solidly dependable result.”
“So I thought,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t mention it.”
“No,” he went right on, ignoring me, “Leake would have taken the isotope patterns from a sheet of contemporary paper—easily enough available even today, though fax paper is far more common—and had it ‘run back’ by computer through time, so to speak, to the putative date of the manuscript. Then he would have performed a second computer operation, constructing an isotope pattern suitable for material from the mid-Twentieth century, surviving until the present. All in all, not a terribly complex job for anyone at ease with that sort of programming—as many variables as isotopes, each with its own half-life and rate of change.”
The Counterfeit Heinlein Page 14
