The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  The boy nodded.

  “Okay, we’ll have the polcar in the front drive at sixteen hundred hours, park and wait if necessary.”

  “Check.” He glanced at his wristphone. “Uh, if I want to call you, I can tab the police button and ask for you?”

  “Better if you could tab my channel direct. Got an extra channel I could code my number into?”

  “Can you do that? Mom’s got the key.”

  “I have a key on my police penphone.”

  “Yeah? Hey, great! Let’s see, there’s Mom on the green tab, our house phone on the yellow, Grandma Cunningham, Grandpa Bob, Badger, M. Hawthorne—that’s Sherry’s mom—and Uncle Harve. You can use Uncle Harve’s channel. It’s on the brown tab.” He unstrapped his wristphone and handed it to her: a simple Trimex model, five colorcode tabs on each side of the digital timeband-transmitter, setter on the back.

  “No tab for your dad?”

  “Woodstock’s fancy-class. He doesn’t wear any phone, just uses our house phone.”

  “Um-hmm.” Sitting on her knees, she voice-activated the key on her penphone and reset the brown tab. “I’ll channel it back to Uncle Harve once we have you in custody. You know his number without the tab?”

  “Sure, for getting it on full-button phones. I’m a zipper with numbers. Thanks!” His fingers seemed to hug the phone with pride as he took it back and buckled it on again. (Or was that her imagination?) “If I’m through early,” he went on, “I’ll wait for you outside. By the front door. The one I knocked open Friday night.”

  She must have smiled, but she didn’t quite feel it until he added,

  “I won’t run away, Sergeant Lestrade. You can trust me.”

  Chapter 26

  Custodian? was Dave Click’s first thought on seeing the maintenance engineer of Owlsfane Garber Middle College. Holy Zorro! I’ll bet all he has to do is crook his little finger and every woman in sight is panting. Thirty-one, tall, olive-skinned but Irish-featured beneath his Zapata mustache, a build like Tarzan in a red tunic and dun trousers and, Hal help us, even a centimeter-long scar on his left cheekbone! Scowling, he looked like Casanova. Grinning, he must look like ... If this six-star shooter went out with Esther Rivers exclusively, the next corpse at Owlsfane Garber would probably be hers, knocked out of the way by one of her female co-profs.

  Click glanced at his senior to see how she was soaking in the suspect’s raucho-macho, and the old girl looked cooler contemplating M. Pinesweep than Pinesweep looked contemplating them. Clearly, to her, just one more member on an anonymous tiplist. Taking another thought at Gloriana Robotnik in the school office, Dave felt reassured in his own style. (A little trauma about the botch he’d made of it with Big D and Badger, that was the trouble. His senior had taken the tone, “All right, we’ll listen to your tape later and then decide whether to blank it or not.”)

  Pinesweep silently heard their idents and silently let them into his custodian’s sanctum—basic brown plasticrete, but spotless, with framed charts of marine life over his workdesk.

  “M. Pinesweep,” the senior sergeant began, very neutral, “you left the school plant at your usual time last Friday afternoon?”

  Without displacing either stack of printout sheets, Pinesweep sat on the edge of his neat desk, folded his arms across his broad chest (which was probably deep with curly black hair), and cracked a smile. “Yes and no. Do you mean the time I usually go home, or the time I’m scheduled to go?”

  “You’re scheduled to leave at seventeen thirty hours,” Lestrade clarified.

  Click added, “Routine snooping.”

  “Sure. But what the databanks won’t tell you is that when I usually leave is closer to seventeen forty-five, even eighteen hundred. No, I don’t get paid overtime for it. No, I’m not one of your old-fashioned thirty-five-hours-a-week workaholics. I happen to have a deep and abiding respect for miniature ecosystems. Which you pollies don’t seem to possess.”

  “Hey!” said Click. “Don’t tell me a trained police photolab team does more damage than a crowd of midschoolers.”

  Pinesweep gave him a smirk. “The midschoolers have profs to oversee them.”

  “We’ve got plenty of respect,” said Lestrade. “We just don’t have your degrees in the field.”

  Pinesweep shrugged. Elegantly masculine. “I said I’m no workaholic. I was able to clock the three hours I spent here Saturday morning cleaning up after your police waterspout. Now I can take them out of my schedule any time within thirty days. Today I’m clocking out at sixteen thirty. Thanks. You’re lucky I didn’t decide to clock in late this morning.”

  Lestrade inquired, “You can square that with your deep and abiding respect for ecosystems?”

  “Hey! Those systems are the reason I was hired. I have personally stocked the aquanatorium with fifteen new species, the terrarium with twenty-seven. They’re my babies. I take care of them first, and any reasonably competent mech can dust floors and wipe windows. And my mechs are competent. I have a say in hiring them.”

  “Including mermaids?” said Click.

  “Hey?”

  “Your fifteen new aquanatorium species. They include mermaids?”

  “That swimming coach’s been telling you his fantasies. My Pterophyllum karmilovensce could be his mermaids, who knows?” Pinesweep’s jaw clenched for a moment before he went on. “They’re the iridescent little loves Stickysap killed two of with his cigar ashes last month. Delicate, trusting creatures. Only discovered four years ago. We were lucky to get three.”

  Click waited a few nanoseconds before probing. “I thought all your school specimens had to be hardy.”

  “Hardy enough to share their water with clean human bodies for a couple of hours a day. Hardy enough to survive kidplay above, given weed shelter near the bottom to hide in. Not necessarily hardy enough to survive contaminants flicked at them when they’re swimming near the surface.”

  “You have our sympathy,” said Lestrade. “I hope we didn’t leave any tobacco ashes in your aquanatorium.”

  “I give you that. A cello candy wrapper, however. Hard to spot in the water.”

  “Our people wouldn’t have dropped a candy wrapper,” said Lestrade. “Where is it?”

  Another shrug. “In the recycling bin. The one they picked up this morning.”

  That was that, and when his senior gave back no comment but a frown, Click went on (kind of hoping Pinesweep never connected the foreign prints in the boys’ dressing room with his own shoes), “M. Sapperfield pay for the fish? They must have been valuable.”

  “They were, and he didn’t. So? You can’t just replace Pterophyllum karmilovensce specimens for tridols and quadrols. You have to get back on the waiting list. At the bottom.”

  “What time did you actually leave the school plant last Friday evening?” said Lestrade.

  “My usual time. Between seventeen forty-five and eighteen hundred hours. All right? Then I collected M. Esther Rivers at her apartment and spent the evening with her.”

  “Better make it seventeen forty-five,” Lestrade remarked. “M. Rivers says she was with you from eighteen hundred hours on.”

  “Until twenty-three thirty. I went from here straight to her resi.”

  “For an evening of fine food and frivolity?” said Click.

  “For hamburgers at Birkby’s Flophouse and lightgames at the Old Arcade. We have simple tastes.” The custodian gestured at a blue door in the far corner. “And I have my own little clean-up station. I’m very fast at personal hygiene. Five minutes maximum.”

  Must use facial depilatory, reasoned Click, who opted for rotary shaver. “Real beef hamburgers at Birkby’s?” he said aloud.

  “Our tastes are simple. Nostalgic. Not cheap.”

  “And once out of the building,” said Lestrade, “barring unforeseen disruptions, you can leave your systems untende
d for the entire weekend?”

  “That’s the definition of a fine-tuned ecosystem: you can leave it to tend itself. I could walk out of here at sixteen thirty tonight, stay away for thirty years, and come back to find my terrarium and aquanatorium as healthy as when I left them, if it weren’t for profs and coaches bringing their classes in every Monday through Friday.”

  “I see,” Lestrade remarked. “You didn’t notice M. Sapperfield on your way out? You had no reason to suspect he might still be in the plant?”

  Pinesweep’s face got even stiffer. “If I had suspected, I wouldn’t have been out of here before nineteen hundred at earliest. Date with M. Rivers or not. Not after what he did to my Pterophyllum karmilovensce.”

  “I understand he liked to get in pretty often and disturb the vibes,” said Click. “You weren’t aware of it?”

  “Of course I was aware of it. But you can’t outguess grudkiks like Sapperfield every time, and I noticed his latest little student sweetie on her way down the road to the shop stop at fifteen thirty.”

  Chapter 27

  One thing middle college had that primary college didn’t was lunchgroves, little cubbies around the cafeteria walls. Sophomores were higher on the reserve list than frosh, so Cunningham had been getting into a lunchgrove oftener this year than last year. Juniors, seniors, and postgrads had the second lunch break, 11:45 to 12:30, so next year he’d be at the bottom of the list again. And probably he wouldn’t be getting in any more this year for a long time now, not in his own name. Maybe along with Badger. You didn’t get knocked to the bottom of the list for punishment—that’s what they told you—it was just that the good kids, the ones who didn’t get themselves punished, stayed up there at the top. After last Friday night, just about the whole frosh class would be moved up above Cunningham, soph or not, for a couple of months at least.

  So it knuckled him over when he found Dolphin Lunchgrove still bouncing to his name on the reserve screen. He wouldn’t even have checked, but he and Badger had listed as a double, and doubles got moved around by the good-conduct standing of the highest kid in the group. So far as he knew, Badge was still up there. But the lunchgrove was in Cunningham’s name, not Badger’s. Maybe it was a glitch in the computer. But that didn’t happen very often, so maybe M. Robotnik just hadn’t entered his minus marks yet. Yeah, that must be it. She was waiting to see how many Princeps Cage would give him in all, and she’d feed them in tomorrow.

  He got his tray filled and carried it over to the lunchgroves. Alligator, Bristleback, Cod, Dolphin, Elephant, Fawn—the first letter addressed where they were and the number of syllables showed how many kids could sit inside.

  Badger was already there, waiting. It didn’t look like he’d started to eat yet. That was funny.

  “Hey, Badge!”

  “Hi, Cony.” Cony wasn’t Cunny. Badge said it was an old word for rabbit, and he’d screened up the dictionary entry to prove it, so Cunningham didn’t mind Cony when it came from Badger. He still didn’t want it from anybody else.

  “What kind of day are you having?” said Cunningham, like always. All his own days were solid, standard reality, so Badge never had to ask.

  This time Badger started out with, “Terrible,” and then changed to, “Oh. Dungeon Chess day.” Badger said he was getting reality-perception days almost half the time now, but if he wasn’t careful he was still going to wake up some morning and find himself frozen into one of his fancy worlds. Only most of the time he was happier about his Dungeon Chess and World War and Robin Hood days than he seemed to be today.

  Cunningham put his tray on the table and slid into the seat. “Something wrong?”

  “Cony, we’re in big trouble. I ... uh, I sort of told them about the bet. How Big D bullied you into it.”

  “Yow! He know?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, probably. He was standing right there.”

  Cunningham whistled. “Trouble, all right. Who’d you tell?”

  “Some polly. And, uh, Princeps Cage. They sort of made me ... Well, it seemed like the best thing to do, Cony.”

  “Yeah. Well, maybe. Look, if it comes to trouble with Big D, we’re in it together. He’s enough bigger than us, Slamkowski and Harrigan’ll allow two to one if we ask for Albuquerque Rules.” A few profs okayed the Postgrad Court, like Dame Elfreda, M. Chips, and some kids said Old Piney. But Princeps Cage was frown-down on it, which was why it took types like Dunk Slamkowski and Mary Harrigan to run it, but they were all right, for big kids and Old Rebels. Everybody would get in trouble all over again if Princeps Cage found out, but it’d be worth it to get things cleared up with Wally Dutois. And it always took a couple of days to arrange a Showdown, sometimes a week, so maybe meantime the princeps would go a little softer after school today, now he knew Friday wasn’t entirely Cunningham’s fault. “Who was the polly? Senior Sergeant Lestrade?”

  “No, some big guy with a short name. About twice as tall as Princeps Cage. Well, head and shoulders taller, anyway. A real bully.”

  “Sandy hair?”

  Badger closed his eyes for a moment and nodded. “Yeah, I think so.” World War days sometimes changed things like people’s hair for him, but Dungeon Chess days didn’t. That seemed funny.

  “Must have been Junior Sergeant Click. He’s okay, he’s her sidekick.”

  “He is a first-degree black belt bully.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. But he isn’t too bad when you get used to him.”

  “Cony, he wanted to get me away from Princeps Cage and I don’t know what he would’ve done to me, but I thought I’d have the trollies. I stood firm, like Lancelot or Whipsnapper, but—and that was after I’d told him what he wanted to know, too, about Wally making you take that bet.”

  “Well, I’d rather go with Sergeant Click than Princeps Cage any day. Some guys don’t know good luck when it bites ’em.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t. Even when the princeps brought out his flagellator.”

  “Ow! You saw it? He really has one? He used it on you?”

  “No, just on Big D, but he made me watch.”

  Badger told his friend about it from the beginning. Neither one of them ate very much. Cunningham mainly spent the rest of lunch break scooping cold gravy back over his chicken croquettes and digging grooves with his fork for it to flow down again, the way he used to do when he was a little kid pretending croquettes and gravy were volcanoes and lava.

  Chapter 28

  The building engineer didn’t know or wouldn’t tell the name of M. Sapperfield’s last “little student sweetie,” and he was vague about her description. The only additional data he would supply were that the late professor had sometimes performed his acts of petty sabotage through these junior flares, and that all of them were girls. He remarked this last as if out of grudging justice to Sapperfield’s memory, as if it were more virtuous to seduce (and possibly impregnate) underage females than to sidle after juveniles of his own gender. Lestrade kept her private opinion on the matter to herself.

  As they emerged from Pinesweep’s sanctum, Click let out an audible sigh of relief. “Now for fresh air and Little Mack’s.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but Corwin Poe wants to lunch us. Willing to pass on your rabbitburgers for once?”

  “I’ll suffer. So long as he doesn’t want to loop us over to Birkby’s.”

  “If I remember, there’s a swank eatery at the shop stop. We can check on bus and subtrain connections after lunch.”

  Click tapped his notecom. “I can feed the schedules in from the school’s office terminal.”

  Or he could do it through the polcar radioscreen, but that wouldn’t give him another chance to brush shoulders with Cage’s pretty aide. “We only want to tap into the school gossip,” said Lestrade, “not supplement it any more than we have to. We might be able to check connections by riding out to Sapperfield’s neighborhood. Noth
ing like field research, Dave.”

  “Hmm. Sounds as if you’ve got an idea who she is.”

  “An idea, yes.”

  They walked a few steps in silence, and when she did not elaborate, he remarked, “That candy wrapper. Could have been Dickerson’s. He’s always popping fruit drops.”

  “And stuffing the wrappers in his pockets.”

  “One could’ve fallen out of his pocket.”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t us. Out of Sapperfield’s pocket, maybe. No, he didn’t keep any candy around his apartment. Grind that custodian. It could have told us whether the killer sucks Corbidrops or Savers.”

  “Say, Les, what do you think about M. Pinesweep?”

  “Obvious, isn’t it? He had his reasons for hating Sapperfield, and his alibi’s not quite pat enough, but—”

  “I mean as a member of the complementary gender. If you met him alone, on your own time, with no reason to put him on any list of suspects.”

  She stared briefly at her partner. “Any woman who wants to meet that type alone is welcome to him. Anyway, it was probably an unmarked wrapper, or Photolab would’ve noticed it.”

  “A simple cello in the water,” said Click. He looked and sounded relieved. About what? Surely not the lost clue. Touch of male envy? Set off by that hombre Pinesweep? Men could get their emotions up about the flimsiest things.

  She returned to the candy wrapper. “But our building engineer saw it.”

  “Or made the whole thing up to put a bug under our skin.”

  “Mmm. Or found it by chance, dipping his hand in to test the temperature. If that watch crystal had fallen in the pool and sunk, chances are we’d never have found it.”

  “What watch crystal?” said Click.

  “The one you told me you confiscated from Dutois.”

  “Shake your brain, Les. That flicker was never near the pool area. Big D found it outside the school office, remember?”

  She paused in her stride and looked at her partner again. “Yes. That’s right. And you turned it over to Cage, didn’t you?”