The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  —Anonymous, untitled NTC travel brochure (corporate undated copyright)

  * * * *

  “Too many screenshows indeed!” Angela exclaimed. She had been polishing the observation mentally all the way back to the Honeymoon Suite. “It wouldn’t hurt Captain Denne to watch a few herself! Or even to read a mystery novel occasionally. Oh, Senior Sergeant Lestrade could have done that so much better!”

  “Yes.” Corwin grinned. “I must confess that I prefer fingerprinting by Sergeant Lestrade to public grilling by Captain Denne. Who seems more of a bligh than a kirk. And yet, her last order may have its advantages ...”

  “No,” Angela said, very regretfully, “we’d better stay dressed. They may catch him and call us all back any minute. Oh, dear, Jemmy? Poe, do you really think he ...”

  “At this moment, I wish that I could think nothing at all, simply blank the brain’s whole giddy maze of pensory circuits and neurons and whatever.”

  “No, you don’t. That’s more or less what whammy does.”

  As they started wrapping up—fully dressed—in each other’s arms, the doorchime sounded. Corwin made a wry grimace and tabbed open the voice channel. Its click was answered by, “M. Raven,” spoken softly.

  “Dr. Junge?” Angela whispered.

  Corwin hesitated only long enough to take a breath before he unlocked and opened the door.

  Dr. Junge stepped inside quickly. “M. Raven, come with me at once.”

  “Forgive me,” he replied, “if I pause to consider.”

  “Yes!” said Angela, remembering everything he’d told her before the captain called them all together. “Dr. Junge, the R.S.A. and the S.S.S.R. aren’t enemies, and as for your Reich and the Russians—”

  “We waste time.” Dr. Junge shut the door. “M. Raven, I must have your help.”

  “My help?”

  Unbuttoning her left breast pocket, Dr. Junge withdrew a plastic card, ran her fingertip along one end of it, and handed it to Corwin. Angela studied it with him. The end Dr. Junge had felt was covered with braille letters, clearly to help her identify her own identification card, which bore her picture, both her right and her left thumbprints, and on the other side the information that she was an agent of Inindrucon: the International Independent Drugtraffic Controllers.

  “I should have been able to call on our good captain,” Dr. Junge went on, “but you have seen for yourselves. No doubt Denne is an excellent fair-weather commander, and no doubt she can be relied upon during a mere crisis of storm or danger to her ship. But when it is a crisis of people, she is nothing. And it is barely possible that she is herself the one whom I seek. The same applies to her officers and crew. And to our fellow passengers.”

  Angela demanded, “But you’ve decided it isn’t ‘Herr Raven’?”

  Dr. Junge sighed and brushed one hand over her forehead. “M. Garvey, most of me knows that Der Vaterland lost the Last Great War, that today there is no Thousand-Year Reich, that your husband is probably not a spy for anyone and that even if he is, it is little concern of my own. My latest score on the standard test is eighty-seven point three seventy three percent reality perception. But when I am under emotional strain—and this is not often, because I have iron emotions and very little touches them, but tonight I am in great emotional strain because of Valkyrie—then my reality perception can drop to as low as seventy or even sixty percent. Do not fear. I will not make any attempt to have your dear husband arrested when we land. But at this moment, thirty to forty percent of me considers that I am begging my old rival’s help against a common enemy. It is a dramatic situation, is it not? Now come quickly, M. Poe.”

  “I hope you don’t want me for my own reality perception! I doubt it’s above forty or fifty percent just now, and liable to dissipate utterly at any moment.”

  “Provided that you recognize people with sureness, and you have shown that you do, your fantasy perception is little problem. I want you for your eyesight. And because you have shown yourself clever at fighting in close quarters. And because, of everyone aboard, you are the one whom I can best trust. I think we two have some understanding of each other, yes?”

  Angela observed, “You aren’t saying ‘jawohl’ and ‘nein’ and ‘Herr’ and ‘Frau’ anymore. Why not?”

  “Such words are what everyone learns first of another language. I use them only when I want to impress folk with my German accent. I do not want to impress you with my accent now, only with the fact that I need my Raven’s help. Whoever smuggled the whammy aboard has learned that Valkyrie is also trained to sniff out illegal substances. So I think that person or persons will try to finish what M. the Ribald began. Therefore, I want you on hand, M. Raven—M. Poe—to help me protect my dog and catch the devil.”

  “Valkyrie leaped at me over the dinner table this evening.”

  “She leaped at my soup. You sat directly across, you were fearful of her because of that first night we met, when she growled at you in the hotel cocktail lounge, and so you thought she leaped at you. Yes, I suspected you for a time. I tested my suspicions and found that they rested on nothing. Now come.”

  He rubbed his bandage and nodded. “Very well.”

  “All right,” said Angela, “but I’m coming with you.”

  “You judge the size of my stateroom by your own suite,” Dr. Junge told her. “We will have difficulty enough concealing your husband so that the untermenschen—you will allow me that word for smugglers of whammy and murderers of dogs—do not see him at once. It is fortunate that the Raven is in stature no more than medium size.”

  Corwin put his hands on Angela’s shoulders and kissed her cheek. “I believe that the obersturmbannfuehrerin has cleared me of suspicion, and Valkyrie’s life may indeed be at stake.”

  “Well, all right, but just one more minute.” Angela turned to swing her toiletries case from the luggage netting onto the bed. Opening it, she pulled out the white and gold jeweler’s box containing her mother’s wedding gift to them: wristphones with the first tab readyset to each other’s personal numbers. Under normal circumstances, Corwin was one of those people who preferred not wearing a wristphone at all, and Angela had laid hers aside aboard the Melon; but emergency situations were different.

  “Now, whose room is yours nearest?” she asked Dr. Junge. “The madre’s is just across the corridor, isn’t it?”

  “You have been brought up to trust anyone in a priest’s collar, M. Garvey. I have not. What are you doing?”

  “I’m giving him his wristphone so he can chime me in a nanosecond.” She adjusted it on his wrist, which he had presented without protest. “Anyway, I think Mother Frances already has Belladonna with her, and maybe Winterset too, so one more—”

  “Would cram their room, M. Garvey. You would reach mine more quickly from your own. Besides, the three of them might be in this together. I think not, but it is possible. The wristphones are good, however. If you come, bring something to use as a club. Wrap it in cloth, we do not wish to risk killing, and be careful to know at whom you swing it. M. Poe, we will find you a hand weapon in my room.”

  “I’ll come the instant my phone chimes,” said Angela. “You won’t even have to say my name.” She kissed his cheek.

  He squeezed her shoulder, turned, and followed Dr. Junge, who had reopened the door without making a sound. Angela was equally careful in closing it behind them.

  Somehow, those instructions about making herself a club inclined her more than anything else, even the identification card, to trust Dr. Junge. She began looking around to see what she could use for the weapon.

  * * * *

  They said nothing on their way up the narrow corridor; but Corwin was wary, counting the steps and hoping that tonight Angela’s perceptions would not mislead her into selecting a shoehorn, plastifoam knee pillow, or rolled towel as suitable material for a hand weapon.

  Wh
en they reached her stateroom, the obersturmbannfuehrerin felt the doorframe, nodded, and pulled away a few thin loops of tape before opening the door and stepping aside as much as to motion him in first. He hesitated. The cabin was in darkness save for the light from the corridor.

  “You first,” he murmured.

  “Is my room dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then we are probably in good time. They would have needed to turn on the light.” With one of her downward-tipping smiles, she crossed the threshold, again cleared the doorway in a single sidestep, and dialed the light control to about dawn intensity.

  Valkyrie lay sprawled on the lower berth, her middle swathed in white bandaging. He could detect no stain of blood seeping through.

  The suspicion seemed unworthy, requiring as it did that he suppose four sober crew members and the ship’s doctor all in collusion with the obersturmbannfuehrerin; but so far he had only their word for the dog’s condition. M. Belladonna the Ribald certainly appeared prostrated with remorse; but she and all the others had been whammied when the thing allegedly took place, and no one save Dr. Caduceus seemed to have seen Valkyrie since sobering up.

  Von Cruewell opened her mouth, but at that moment the dog whimpered. Almost instantaneously, the woman was at her bedside, stroking her fur and murmuring soft phrases in German.

  Somewhat ashamed to feel relief at the authenticity of another creature’s pain, Corwin closed the door. As it clicked, von Cruewell turned her head toward it. “Rav—M. Poe?”

  “‘Raven’ will do for the present,” he replied, guessing that she had feared the click to mean he was no longer in the room. “I believe there may be space enough for me to lurk where the door, on reopening, will conceal me.”

  “If they do not open it so wide that they feel the soft obstruction.”

  “Unlikely, if they open it by stealth.”

  “Ah. I see. If they open it by stealth, they may open it halfway only, and thus hide you without blocking your own view completely. But they will shut the door again, to hide their activity, and then if they are wise they will look around and see you. It would be better if you could find somewhere to conceal yourself until you see them actually bend over ready to murder. Most likely they will intend to use either a pillow, like Othello, or an injector, like Mad Dr. Macumber.”

  “It has occurred to me that the villain or villains may not want to stop at murdering your dog. Understanding she is trained to scent out controlled substances, they will have deduced that her mistress is an operative.”

  When von Cruewell’s smile showed her teeth, her lips did not twist down at the corners. “Do you think I have failed to consider this, Raven? They will find me with my head in my arms on the bed near my Leibstandarte, as if I have fallen asleep in exhaustion. You understand how I depend upon your eyes. Jawohl?”

  “Jawohl. Or perhaps I should say, Da, horosho.”

  “Say Jawohl. Your pronunciation of the other reminds me that you are not really Russian. Here.” From beneath the bed, she pulled out some kind of short club and held it in his general direction.

  He took it. “A London bobby’s truncheon?”

  “Yes. So far, your reality perception still works. It is a gift from a good friend of mine in the London branch of Inindrucon. For myself, I have my walking-stick. It has a sword concealed inside, but I do not intend to use that tonight. I will use it as a simple walking-stick. You see how I trust you with my secrets, Raven. With most of them.”

  “Obersturmbannfuehrerin, you honor me.”

  “To my friends, I am known as ‘She-Wolf.’ The She-Wolf of the SS. Now, Raven, where will you hide?”

  He looked around. She could well be correct in assuming that an intruder bent on mischief would check behind the door. He would be even more exposed to sight in the upper berth; moreover, its guardnetting would hamper his leap into action. There might be room for him to squeeze beneath the lower berth, but getting out again would be still more difficult, and his all-important view would be cut off. There was neither space to squeeze nor any chance of concealment beneath either the window desktable or the dressing table. The far corner of the wardrobe cabinet might conceivably hide a sufficiently skinny eight-year-old from the sight of someone in the doorway, but not from that same someone once advanced to the bedside.

  “I think each stateroom has a folding screen somewhere?” he asked.

  “Yes. Set it up, and they will look behind it as quickly as behind the door. If it does not alert them to back out at once.”

  “It is far from the easiest task to play a master spy in your world, Ober—M. She-Wolf. Well, then, the only hope I can find is the wardrobe. How full is it?”

  “It was made large enough to hold the clothes of two passengers. I travel with one attache’ case and one spare uniform in a garment bag. Will you be able to see out?”

  “If I can squeeze in at all, I may be able to leave the door just sufficiently ajar. I could wish the shelf compartments were on the other side,” he continued, studying the situation, “but at least the door opens in the right direction for our purposes. Do you mind if I roll up your garment bag and stuff it into one of the empty shelf compartments?”

  “Such a question, Raven, you should not need to ask.”

  “Consider it my unfailing sarcasm under fire. That, I think, is one traditional character trait of master spies?”

  “Of Russian master spies, perhaps. Their bleak Motherland breeds it into them. And of some others with less cause.”

  While speaking, he was rolling the garment bag and its contents as tightly as he could. “And whom, if I may ask, do you most suspect, She-Wolf?”

  “Everyone aboard this zeppelin, except myself, my Leibstandarte, you, and your pretty bride. Even M. Tolliver I suspect, a very little.”

  “‘Even’ M. Tolliver? Only a little? I’d suppose that everyone else assumes him—”

  “Shh! ... No, it is nothing, only something overhead. Some stress on the catwalks, I think, that echoes a little even through this sound-soaking. Yes, it was probably Tolliver who struck the crew woman unconscious. That is reason enough for them to hunt him and put him into restraints. But if he were our smuggler, he should have known where the substance was hidden, and not brought it down for our soup. He is whimsical, however, our Highwayman Tolliver. He may have decided to play a great practical joke, and gone up now to dispose of any remaining evidence. That would be very foolish of him, but he ate the soup also, did he not?”

  “Enough, at least, to comment on his perception of it, and to escape censure for rudeness.”

  “So he, too, became whammied. People do strange things under whammy, and it may not need whammy to make Tolliver do strange things. No, I do not rule him out completely.”

  “But how—uh—” said Corwin, grunting as he tried to cram the rolled garment bag into one of the shelf compartments, “—how did he get out of the bathroom?”

  “Ah, you have not yet figured it out, Raven? I saw it at last, that moment I said, ‘Mein Gott!’ and our foolish Olympian thought that I addressed him. Do you have your hiding place ready yet? Will it contain you?”

  He suddenly hoped it would not. The narrow closet raised unpleasant memories. He felt astonished that in the rush he had overlooked them until now. “The garment bag insists on protruding a few centimeters,” he said, “but that may be to the good. Since we want to keep the door ajar anyway. No, She-Wolf, I confess that I have not yet figured out how and when Tolliver got out of the bathroom.”

  “No. You would have been watching at your bride’s bedside all that time. I understand. The dancer, Raven! The Firebird. She collided twice with me in the corridor. The first time it enabled you to escape into the bathroom and lock the door. I should have stopped then to hold M. Petrovka, but I was after you, and so I permitted her to dance away again. A mistake. She danced the length of th
e promenade deck—I heard her footsteps echo—and back, which gave me long enough to unlock the door. Then she fell over me the second time, and this time I decided to make her safe. While I was securing her in the Olympians’ suite, that was when Tolliver left the bathroom and, it appears, got up into the ship above us through the hatch in the promenade deck.”

  “I see. All very simple, after all. I wonder ...” Picking the truncheon back up from the shelf where he had laid it while occupied with the garment bag, he slapped it more than once on his left palm as he stared at the unshelved floor-to-top side of the wardrobe.

  “I think you stall, Raven. How much longer before you try the fit of the wardrobe?”

  “Uh ... At once. A mere touch of claustrophobia. Hardly worthy a master spy of any nation.” He stepped in, found with a mixture of satisfaction and dismay that he could just fit, gripped the truncheon in his right hand, and felt with his left for some fingerhold on the inside of the door. “I cannot find any way to pull the door shut from this side.”

  “One moment.” She pushed it slowly until it stopped on the protruding edge of the garment bag. Then something tapped on it near the bottom, and it stayed in place. He failed to restrain a shiver. She went on, “I have leaned my attache’ case against the door. It should not look suspicious, and it will fall away at once when you come out. Can you see?”