The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  The prosecution could probably also get more distance than the defense out of the question, “Why was Lord Moan a regular customer at Sauce for the Goose? If he had intended to set up an innocent shopkeeper, why make so many advance visits? Why not choose a completely new shop to plant the incriminating evidence?

  If Moan were found Not Guilty, Truemeasure would be prosecuted for the full blame. If by some chance his Earlship were found Guilty, she’d face trial as his accessory before the fact. They might not be able to jell it into a murder charge against her, not even if they convicted Moan. After all, Truemeasure would only have sold him the stuff in sufficient quantity or concentration for an overdose. He’d still have been the one who administered it, and her defense could claim the odee was without her intent or knowledge. But selling actual razzlelick carried a mandatory minimum of thirty years, and if a sales resulted in death, ten to thirty more got added. In Rosemary Lestrade’s opinion, the arrest, detention, and trial was already too much if the person was innocent.

  M. Truemeasure wouldn’t be able to afford a luxury security hotel, either. It’d be forty to sixty in the plain old low-budget no-frills state pen. Meanwhile, mandatory minimum bail for persons suspected of selling actual razzlelick, whammy, and other “violent” illegal substances was thirty thousand tridols. Plus another forty thousand for suspects in a murder case. Never mind that when she finally came to trial, the charge against her might not even end up as murder. Truemeasure’s savings amounted to a little over twenty thousand tridols. Two days after her arrest, she had put it all into a trust fund for her six-year-old son. Then she had managed a loan of six thousand to retain as good a defense lawyer as she felt she could afford. M. Derry Greene. Young and competent, not yet visibly brilliant. Truemeasure refused attempting to borrow enough for her bail. Just the interest on seventy thousand, accruing weekly throughout the X number of weeks until her trial, would have been too much, especially as her shop had to remain closed all that time.

  Lord Elegius Moan, delving into his own bank accounts, which had probably been fattened with gifts from his late (and latest) wife while she was still alive, had posted his bail within an hour of his arrest. And even now, during his trial, he was living in luxury in a guarded room of the downtown Hilton-Maracott, at their expense. Good advertising for their security hotels.

  Chapter

  In Suite 1997 of the Downtown Hilton-Maracott, Corwin Poe sat on the wide divan, feet up on a velvet ottoman, and folded brochures into small gliders. When he had a fleet of six, he launched them through the long, arched entrance vestibule, attempting to get the last one airborne before the first had come to rest. He failed.

  “But would I be passing my time thus,” he queried himself, “were I the real Earl of Worminglass?”

  The real Moan was directly overhead, in “The Dawn of Tomorrow,” a suite not identical but, according to the hotel management, entirely comparable in luxury to Suite 1997, “The Era of Reform.” Among Hilmar’s promotional boasts was that no two chambers in any one of its hotels were exactly identical; but when Corwin had expressed the studied opinion that it might be well for him to start getting as much as possible into his role at once, the hotel people were pleased to lodge him in accommodations as similar to those of Lord Moan as they could provide.

  They were even housing and feeding him, like Moan, at the corporation’s expense, proving how eager they were to introduce an investigator into Hummingbird Hill. And they had obligingly locked his door and thrown in a pair of guards just outside.

  Were I to change my mind now, he wondered, would they allow me to back out? At the least, without reimbursing them from my own pocket?

  He rose to retrieve his gliders. Two had landed within a few steps of the door. Being so close, he peeped through its spyhole, decorative relic of the Timorous Age of a century ago. Distorted and strangely distanced by the mock-antique lens, the two guards stood their posts: a man and a woman, apparently leaning against the corridor’s opposite wall. Though no voices penetrated the sound-soak, they were facing each other, their lips moving and, Corwin thought, curving upward, as though they were grateful for the opportunity to stand watch together. Each wore a holstered stungun—presumably a mere prop, and yet these guards might be hotel security regulars, licensed to carry actual weaponry.

  Feeling more Moanish, he sat at the desk and straightened his gliders back into brochures. One described Hummingbird Hill Security Hotel, four described similar Hilton-Maracott establishments in other regions of the continent, and the sixth brochure listed, with scarcely enough detail to satisfy the fair comparison guidelines, the facilities in the western and far eastern regions where other corporations held the franchise.

  Hummingbird Hill was, of course, a foregone conclusion in Corwin’s case; but the hotel had provided him exactly the same packet it provided the real Lord Moan, freshly printed from the Hilmar colorprint computer; and his authentic lordship might well be pondering every word of these six sheets and ordering copiously from the “Other Brochures Available” list.

  At one line Corwin drew the line short in his efforts to fathom the psychomystique of his present role model. Lord Elegius Moan, self-styled Seventy-first Earl of Worminglass, stood accused of murdering his wife. Corwin wished it had been any other offense. That such things happened and had always happened, he was aware; but without being able to conceive in the least why they should occur. Indeed, he dimly remembered having felt closer to comprehending—on a strictly theoretical and no doubt specious basis—the passions involved in such tragedies when he was adolescent than now.

  If Moan were guilty, as M. Click had confided that both he, Senior Sergeant Lestrade, and almost all their police colleagues fully believed…then Moan’s emotions must remain, to his impersonator, hopeless terra incognita. If innocent, all this business of being wrongly suspected and accused must be little more than minor annoyance in comparison with his grief at losing Lady Moan. That latter, at least, was the theory upon which Corwin meant to base his interpretation of the role, though he had yet to steel his resolution far enough to imagine even this much in its full bitterness.

  He wished that Angela could be with him tonight. But the real Countess of Worminglass was no longer on this mortal plane, and the police would have strictly forbidden his lordship any other female companionship, even if Hilmar had countenanced it. (Such things went on, of course, with or without a hotel’s countenance, but not when a brace of guards stood watch at the door.) Brief visits would have been allowed from relatives and old friends who could show personal correspondence dating from at least five years before the alleged crime, but no such relatives or friends had come forward petitioning to visit Moan. There was no role available for Angela.

  Corwin wondered, with a sigh and a shudder, if she would have taken advantage of such a role in any case. Even though she understood his reasons for doing this, it had very nearly blown up into their first serious difference of opinion since marriage—nay, since before they became engaged. Had he proposed beginning the charade this early out of secret fear of the quarrels that might erupt were they to spend the last night at home together?

  And yet ... perhaps he could suggest that she might visit him as Lady Moan’s spectral presence?”

  Restless, he rose and took another short, brisk prowl down the entrance vestibule. He considered rattling the doorknob and watching his guards’ reactions through the peephole, but it seemed unkind to interrupt their conversation with so theatrically futile a gesture.

  He returned to the desk, bent again over the brochures, and drew the ground glass astral lamp, with its Italian shade, closer. It would do no harm to learn all that he could of Hummingbird Hill ahead of time.

  Opened in August of 2056, it was already old enough to have begun acquiring its patina of age and tradition, while still new enough to have full modern comfort and convenience. Each accommodation unit in the four-story main building was
a suite, complete with bedroom, sitting room, kitchenette, bath, and breakfast balcony overlooking a beautiful view. The ground floor housed two gourmet restaurants, a “rustic coffee shop for casual moods,” gift shop, book shop, antiques and curios shop, drugstore, two personal grooming salons, and four hobby supply shops. The clothing store had its own separate building, as did a furniture and decor store for those who chose to furnish and decorate their own rooms. There were also a kitchenware and grocery store, a combination zoo and pet store, and a costume and fabrics bazaar. There were swimming pool, tennis courts, multi-game sports field, and playground with adult-sized swings, slide, fulcrum boards, and climbing equipment, all outdoors but with retractable bubble domes. There was a riding stable of four select horses. A five-hole golf course. Complete indoor gymnasium and health spa facilities, with courts for handball, basketball, astroball, squash, and curling; bowling lanes, gymnastics equipment, steam cube, and a second, indoor swimming pool. Several of these individual recreational facilities had small adjoining shops, although the main sports goods store was in the clothing mall. There were outdoor and indoor stage-screen theaters, a bandshell, an ice cream parlor, several cocktail patios, and a one-room schoolhouse. There were woods; a meadow; a small, totally realistic mountain with peak, cliff face, and cavern; a natural spring bubbling up on the grounds and landscaped into a naturalistic miniature cascade and pool, with a stone pavilion, suitable to be perceived as gazebo, summerhouse, temple, cloistered walk, picturesque ruin, etc., overlooking the water. There were paved hiking trails connecting all these points of interest. There was a chapel in the woods—for all who so desired, the archetypal “little brown church in the wildwood.”

  As well as listing all this, the brochure provided a map, its edges tactfully unenclosed. Nowhere was there any mention of the wall that boxed all this splendor into its hundred hectares. Nor was there any reminder that no one had ever escaped from a Hilton-Maracott, Hojo, or Astoria private security hotel.

  The brochure seemed eager to hint that no one ever wanted to.

  He refolded it into a glider and launched it down the entryway again. Already he himself was feeling the restraint, and he was no felon doomed to life amid compacted luxury.

  The glider flew well until it bumped the door and dropped. Angela enjoyed gliders. If at least he could have chimed her…but he was allowed no personal phones, because Moan was not; the room phone had been removed—for Room Service, he must petition his guards; and the computer unit had been strictly fixed in internal memory with limited functions. He had not yet recognized the computer anyway. It might be either the brass bookrest beneath the Eighteenth-Century landscape or the baize writing-stand beneath the Nineteenth-Century portrait that so resembled—to his present perception—Angela.

  Like most fanciers, he usually recognized multipurpose showscreens, which included computer screens because of their showscreen function. And usually, even when deep in his own world, he perceived computer keyboards as very antique typewriting machines; the anachronism involved only half a century or so. Tonight’s fantasy perception was almost too perfect.

  He reached for the second brochure, a rhapsodic extolling of Hilton-Maracott’s south Sea Island facility. The only brochure that mentioned the guardwall—or, rather, in this case, its absence. The Tropical Moon Security Hotel might be tempting, if one admired the prospect of tropical insectivora, no seasonal interest, and whatever security precautions, besides the ocean itself, substituted for the wall. Perhaps the top of the artificial coral reef that surrounded the half-artificial island was somehow electrified.

  He had begun to refold the Tropical Moon brochure when the door clicked.

  He turned in his chair, and almost immediately rose to his feet as the door opened and a tall lady entered. He saw her in straight, ankle-length blue skirt without bustle; red jacket of mannish cut above which showed the high collar of a white blouse; and auburn hair piled high beneath a wide-brimmed felt hat, fashionably shaped for his chosen period but resembling the mere base for a lady’s chapeau, innocent of feathers, fur, or any other adornment save one gilt-and-rhinestone brooch pinned to the crown. Her face was long and rather sharp, but not unpleasing; her eyes bright behind dainty pince-nez on a trailing white velvet ribbon.

  Sergeant Click followed her, dapper as usual in what Corwin guessed to be brightly colored casual clothing, but perceived as an old-fashioned copper’s uniform with well-polished buttons. The security guards played their role well, standing at attention just the far side of the doorway. Click turned back and saluted them before closing the door. Corwin could imagine him doing it with a wink and a grin. He found the image somewhat soothing.

  The tall woman said, “My byline is Lysistrata Liberty. ‘Lissy Jones Liberty’ for less formal stories. You may have seen it in the daily printouts.”

  “Yes—yes, indeed,” Corwin replied, trying to remember on which stories. “Your coverage of…ah…the last Cairo-Tel Aviv State of Riot was excellent, M. Liberty.”

  “That was Charlie Fax’s assignment,” she said dryly, rendering him grateful for his moment of vocal hesitation and choice of the adjective “excellent” rather than “superb” or “superior.” Bending quickly and gracefully at the knees, she picked up the paper glider, which had been pushed behind the opening door but came into sight again with its closure. Rising once more, she stepped forward into the sitting room and went on, “My latest to be published was the expose’ of bribery in Starstuff, Limited’s takeover of all mineral rights in New Helvetia Asteroids Fifteen to Forty.”

  “Ah, yes!” he bluffed. “Superb in-depth investigation. Then you’ve actually been to the New Helvetia Colonies?”

  She bestowed upon him a look half amused and half disgusted, as though seeing from his reply that he’d completely missed the story. “It was all digging that could be done in the Starstuff and United Minerals offices and New Helvetia Terraside embassy, M. Poe.”

  “Lord Moan,” Click corrected her in a stage whisper. Coming forward in turn, he announced, “Your lordship, M. Liberty is the one covering your trial for AP.”

  “I don’t have much patience with unnecessary play-acting,” said M. Liberty. “M. Poe isn’t Moan. Why jump the gun on pretending he is? Must be rotten on the poor floater, not to mention wasting a lot of people’s time and energy.”

  “It was my own request, M. Liberty,” Corwin assured her. “To help create the proper psychomood. I apologize if it strikes you as a waste, but it is, after all, conceivable that beginning tomorrow my life may depend upon how well I remember my role.”

  “I doubt it.” Transferring the glider to her left hand, she took another stride toward him and deliberately extended her right hand. He shook it gratefully. “You’re a brave soul, M. Poe,” she continued, sitting on a chair, crossing her legs, and slinging her petit-point shoulder bag to the floor beside her. “But it’s my whole thesis that most of the people you’re soon to meet are harmless to society at large and don’t deserve to be locked away for the rest of their lives.”

  “Save for the qualifier ‘most of,’ M. Liberty, that is certainly heartening.”

  “It’s also a bunnyburp,” Click put in. “I should warn your lordship, M. Liberty can be a bleeding heart at times. Would you rather see us fry them again, Lissy? Or just turn them all loose with a monetary fine and a pat on the hand?”

  “For most of them,” she replied, “some sort of parole would be sufficient. For the few truly dangerous cases, much as it grieves me to agree with the Von Hoferites in anything, execution might be more merciful than the present system.”

  “Brother von Hofer advocates bringing back the noose,” Click said with a touch of malicious glee. “Without the neck-breaking drop. For especially heinous crimes—the stake, the wheel, and the cauldron of boiling oil.”

  “Seriously?” Corwin was shocked. “Has he advocated this in public?”

  “M. Click is re
ferring to a statement Von Hofer made in his Good Friday screencast two years ago,” M. Liberty said wryly. “In all justice, what he said was that we might be better off to threaten malefactors with a foretaste of Hell. At least, that was what he claimed afterward to have said, when he spent half his Easter Sunday sermon trying to patch things up. There’s a glitch over some of the crucial words in the tape, so we may never know for sure, unless some kindly aliens catch the original soundwaves and beam them back to us from outer space. But whatever his original statement really was, it almost caused a major split in his own party, as well as bringing Holy Saturday challenges from ‘fellow’ evangelists Judith Paxdaughter, Jesse Faithful, and several smaller fish looking for publicity. Also from the World Council of Churches and Rabbi Epstein. The Vatican, the Universal Council of Churches, and most of the other established liberal-conservative religious bodies wisely held themselves aloof from comment.”

  “What one misses,” Corwin murmured, “by failing to keep up with the news of religion.”

  “Yes,” she opined. “I’m a little surprised you missed that particular brouhaha. Anyway, as even Brother von Hofer agrees these days, there are relatively painless methods of execution available to modern medicine, and the condemned could always be offered a choice.”

  “For some fanciers,” said Click, “there’s no such thing as ‘painless execution.’ Even with anesthesia. Eh, your lordship? Anyway, given the choice, I’d choose execution by aging to death in the lap of luxury. Just like they’re doing now.”

  “Are they?” M. Liberty raised an eyebrow at the policeman. “Let’s table this discussion for the time being, Dave. Until M. Poe can bring us his report on what life is really like inside Hummingbird Hill.” She turned back to Corwin. “That’s the only reason I’m going along with this business, M. Poe. To get the inside scoop on what life is really like inside a ‘luxury security hotel.’ So I can let society know what we’re doing to our fellow human beings in this so-called Century of Reason.”