The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  He had been promised simple leathern strops. He tried to regain sufficient reality mode to perceive the whips as such, even closing his eyes in concentration and gripping the stalagmite column in an attempt to feel it as the human-made thing it undoubtedly was. It continued to feel like actual frozen limestone, cold and slick. When he unclosed his eyes, the two purgators had taken their places, one on either side and slightly behind him, so that without craning he could see little except the skirts of their robes. Closing his eyes again, he lowered his head, tried to clamp his features into a stoical expression, and hoped the whips would feel like simple lengths of leather.

  They did not. Not that he had ever felt any actual lashes with a razor strop, any more than he had ever felt an actual flagellation administered by ancient Roman lashes tipped with leaden weights. But what he seemed to feel in that cavern struck him as much more resembling the latter than the former, only—as was always the case—far, far worse in physicality than in purely mental imagination. At the first blow, he seemed to see small splatters of blood appear on the cave floor. He tried to keep track of them, for if any of them should change position it would constitute evidence that they were not really there. But concentration on anything other than pain had soon become virtually impossible.

  He had known there ought to be nineteen blows, but lost all count after fewer, presumably, than five. First the man on his left would strike, then the one on his right, and so on, sometimes almost immediately, sometimes—the purgatant could have taken his oath—several full sixty-second minutes apart. Twice or thrice he thought that Dr. Macumber had stepped forward during the pauses, felt his cheeks and forehead, taken his pulse, possibly listened to his heart, and administered a few sips of something that tasted like sour wine. Corwin thought he remembered asking whether they were indeed plain leathern strops, and being assured that they were, albeit with a chuckle.

  He seemed also to remember staggering more than thrice, half falling against the column and either hauling himself or being helped shakily back to his feet. Logically, these falls should have inspired Dr. Macumber’s visits of inspection; but chronology became totally confused after the second or third blow, until he could hardly have taken his oath how much of what he seemed to recollect as actual experience had in fact been relived afterward in the distortion of dreams. By the time they rubbed his back with some liquid—probably antiseptic paindeadener, though at first touch it stung like salted vinegar—unshackled him, and draped him loosely in a blanket, he had felt semi-conscious at best, and seemed to be stepping with dazed care through a deep and slippery carpet of his own splattered blood. The return to the main hotel building and settling in bed had been dreamlike in the extreme.

  In retrospect, he thought he remembered making a mental note, early on in the flogging, that the flagellator to his left laid on with a stronger hand and sharper upward jerk than did the one to his right. He would not be astonished to discover that the one to his left had been John Stock. Not that their identities necessarily had any bearing whatsoever on the problem of who might be trying to murder Adrian Withycombe. On the whole, he feared that the experience must prove of rather less value than he might have hoped in solving the case.

  Just before he finally, and with that unexpected suddenness which sometimes blesses those who lie abed feeling speciously wakeful, slipped back to sleep, his brain found a moment to worry about whether last night could actually have set him back, whether anything in the way he had comported himself might have been too much at odds with his incognito of Elegius Moan, Seventy-Somethingth Earl of Worminglass.

  Chapter

  Lestrade had spotted the place on the way out to the Range Heights pollystation. A clockround quickmeal that looked like a local independent. The Easy Alley, garish and flashy, but in a homegrown way. Her taxi driver verified that it sold good food cheap.

  “Want me to wait for you again?” said Conchita as she glided her taxi to a stop in front of the Easy Alley. “There’s a parking cave just down the street.”

  “Thanks.” Lestrade handed her an extra tridol. “Wait, but you might as well sit inside, get yourself some breakfast. I’d say join us, but we’ll be talking shop.”

  “Si, si, M.,” Conchita replied, falling back into theatrical Mexican for a few words as she took the tridol.

  “Maybe tonight, ’Chita,” said Hammersmith. “Just you and me someplace cozy. How about it?”

  “Sorry, senor, I don’t go out with no jailbirds—I mean with no fares.”

  “Nervy little floater, aren’t you?”

  “Si, senor, maybe I am. You better get out now, or maybe we get ticket for sitting here too long.”

  It’d be almost the only kind of traffic violation you could get a ticket for in Reno, Lestrade thought.

  * * * *

  Leaving Conchita to park her taxi, they went in. Hammersmith looked around and remarked, “Thanks for the thought, Lady Les, but did you have to bring me to one of these conveyor belt eateries? They usually put your eggs and patties on the chilled links and your orange juice on the hot ones.”

  Lestrade touched her fingertips to a couple of empty carrier units, red and black, that were just rolling past her on their way around the belt. “You’re in luck, M. Hammersmith. Either they didn’t go in for the alternating hot and cold links here, or it’s out of order. We’ll get everything at a nice, uniform, easy to digest lukewarm.”

  “Great. Look, I think the local Little Mac Deluxe is just a mile or so back.”

  Lestrade spotted an empty table next to the kitchen wall and walked over to it. The table in front of it had only one customer, a woeful-looking young knucklehead dozing off over a heavily underlined copy of somebody’s how-to on calculating odds and a portfolio-sized computer with its screen showing a blackjack layout. He had a cup of coffee at his elbow. Lestrade wondered how much longer he could nurse it before some restaurant worker noticed and nudged the poor floater out. The table directly across the conveyor belt from the one she’d picked out had four customers, but they were all conversing too heavily with one another to overhear anybody else speaking lower than a shout.

  She sat facing the door. Hammersmith, right on her trail, sat opposite, blocking her view of the student of odds, and started reading the order board in the middle of the table. Aloud.

  “Didn’t they feed you at the station?” said Lestrade. “I thought I was just letting you tag along to have the pleasure of your conversation while I ate.”

  “They handed me a cellopac of nutribalanced trail mix and half a bulb of warm water when they first hauled me in. I guess it was designed as part of the softening-up process. They said I’d get ‘another meal’ in four hours. Probably more of the same. You came just in time to save me, Sarge. Even the junk this place serves has to be a couple steps above the Range Heights cuisine. Lessee…eggs: scrambled, boiled—tab number of minutes—fried, up or over—that’s it, that’s your choice. Or eggbeaters, scrambled only, what’s the star mean? Oh. Recommended, specialty of the house. Scrambled eggbeaters? Bacon, tab number of strips but no tabs for limp or crisp ... I’m beginning to think you didn’t save me so much after all, Dragon Lady.”

  “Just keep thinking about trail mix.” Back home they’d have brought him a nutribalanced sandwich, rabbitbase or vegetarian, and his choice of nonalcoholic beverage from Marchpane’s. Maybe one of these days there’s be a Marchpane’s out here in Nevada. On her side of the order board, Lestrade tabbed pancakes, two, with coconut syrup, and coffee, mocha blend, black, two cups’ worth. She hesitated over the bacon, considered Hammersmith’s observation about no tabs for limp or crisp, and decided not to risk it.

  “What I keep thinking about,” said Hammersmith, “is the way they handled that piece of envelope. I swear to you, Sarge, I had the thing in an evidence bag!”

  “Maybe they were running low on evidence bags.”

  He gave her a this-is-not-
the-time look. “Come on, Dragon Lady! What I think, it smells of police complicity. A cover-up.”

  “I know it’s not going to do any good, M. Hammersmith. But I’m trying again anyway. Call me ‘M. Lestrade.’ As for your police cover-up theory, it depends on too many coincidences—”

  “What coincidences? Closest station to Apex’s ranchero—”

  “And Apex’s pet polly just happens to be on duty in the right spot at the right shift.” She shook her head. “You’re letting your fancy run away with you, M. Hammersmith. How did they know you were coming? Or is the whole station in on it? Maybe every other Reno polly as well? How about a whole private spy ring reaching through all circles of Reno society? We aren’t after Fu Manchu’s Secret Take-over-the-galactic-empire Society! We’re—I mean, you’re—after a smallfish tribillionaire who may or may not have murdered or helped murder his uncle for the family fortune and who may or may not be dabbling in some illicit enterprise on the side.”

  “Something big enough for brother Adrian to have him running scared with a few blackmail notes from lifetime lock-up.”

  “Meaning the theoretical police accomplice or accomplices had to recognize the postal code at a glance.”

  “Well, I did. Learned it quick enough.”

  “After reading one of Withycombe’s letters. How much secret data can how many people know before it starts leaking all over the walls? That’s where your secret conspiracy theories usually break down, M. Hammersmith. Or maybe we shouldn’t be talking in here? After all, that floater behind us could be in on it, too. Or all those loudmouths over there. Or the kitchen staff, and they’re got our table bugged.”

  He chuckled. “With a bugging device made to look and feel like a used wad of chewing gum. I like it! Yeah, but seriously, M. Sergeant Lady Lestrade—”

  “Seriously, I agree. All North American police are bound by law to preserve and restore any and all confiscated property except items illegal in and of themselves and, in certain cases and for certain specified lengths of time, demonstrable evidence. They might have been within their rights to confiscate your piece of envelope entirely, bag and all. Especially bag and all, for the ‘demonstrable evidence’ reason. Not to throw it away. That shatters the official guiderule, and I like to think it would never have happened back home. But what probably happened here was that some Reno polly with a daylight biorhythm, who should never have been assigned to a night shift anyway, took out this apparently worthless corner of charred paper to try to figure out what it was doing in an evidence bag—or collector’s bag, as you preferred to call it back there at their station—found the problem too much for the underdeveloped snoopersense of your average Nevada polly, decided that it was some kind of fluke, and dropped both the bag and the scrap of paper into the wastebasket to watch the way they fluttered down. If you’d have dug a little more, you’d probably have found the bag. But make it part of a conscious cover-up, and you have to explain why the polly in question didn’t just finish burning or otherwise destroying the incriminating corner of charred envelope.”

  “Yeah,” Hammersmith said reluctantly. “Yeah, there is that. On the other hand, good ol’ Pepe Ramirez Vego obviously knew just enough to burn Withycombe’s letter, presumably unread, but not enough to make sure it was all burned up completely.”

  “M. Vego is listed as Apex’s employee.”

  “His complete fulltime custodial staff for this little property. Good thing our boy didn’t have one back in his Nostalgia City condo, huh, Dragon Lady?” He finally finished tabbing his order.

  She sighed. “The point is, Apex could have given his employee certain instructions without bothering to explain them in detail with full whys and how-comes. A lot more easily than he could have bossed the Reno Police.”

  “Pepe Ramirez Vego. Quite a moniker, huh? Wait’ll you meet little Pepe in person, Lady Les. Mexican pureblood ain’t the half of it.”

  Moniker. Where did he did up his slang? For a registered reality perceiver, Hammersmith had his era as well researched as most fanciers. Well, maybe it was good for his business, attracting rich fancy-class clients. Who was she to hatch suspicions about it, with her own specializing in fancy-class cases and the incidental literary-historical research that involved? “I think, M. Hammersmith,” she said aloud, “that we’d better start by having you tell me all about what you did last night between leaving me and landing yourself in the Range Heights holding tank.”

  “Thought you had all that from your pals the Reno pollies.”

  “I want to have it again from you. Think of me as your lawyer. Unless you want me to deposit you in some Reno legal counsel quickserve office until fourteen hundred hours, which I’d like just fine.”

  He made a face and shook his head. “You’ve got such a tender loving way with words, Dragon Lady, how can a poor floater resist? Well, after I pulled myself together from that little knockdown you so kindly engineered for me, I drove out to give you-know-where a quick once-over. It’s way out in Darkest Surburbia, ten minutes beyond the last gambling den, five beyond the last street light. Reno’s still got street lights in the inner suburbs, y’know. Worth the drive just to see ’em dotting the neighborhoods by night. Anyway. The Apex spread is in an old enough rich folks’ area to have been put up while high-security home alarm systems were still the cat’s meow in high style, but what Apex has in the way of home security is a whole lot newer than the hacienda itself. United Securities Soundtripper. Not absolutely the newest on the market, but it would’ve caught me if I didn’t keep up with the literature as part of my workline. So I performed the necessary surgery, eased open a window, crawled through that electric bugfield—what do they have bugscreens for out here? Scorpions? Thing musta thought I was one grandpappy of a scorpion, way it tingled at me. You oughta try it sometime, Lady Les. Almost as good as a needlespray massage. Anyway, first thing I check for was a maildrop. Wasn’t any. Not in the foyer, not in the den, not in the library, kitchen, office, or enclosed patio. You oughta see that, too. Swimming pool and greenhouse area combined. I didn’t check the back of the house right away. Might have saved myself a little grief if I had, but I figured, who has maildrops in their bedrooms or bathrooms? I also figured if there wasn’t a maildrop inside the house—maybe Apex didn’t want to have to get the necessary adjustments made in his United Securities Soundtripper for certified delivery types—there wouldn’t be a mailbox out anywhere on the edge of his property, where any nosy parker could riffle through it. He must have a box down at the nearest P.O.”

  Lestrade’s coffee appeared on the conveyor belt. Thermal pot and mug on their own little carrier tray with a number card stuck in the slit at the top of the handle. At first glance she thought it was someone else’s hot beverage because of the half dozen packets of additives in the tray section between mug and pot. But the number—1—matched their table number. She grabbed the carrier tray just before it got out of reach, swinging it onto the surface in front of her. The top additive packet said “Honey ’n’ spices (dehydrated).” They must just leave the supply in all their hot beverage carrier trays—but then, why put the choice tabs on the menu board? Life’s little mysteries.

  “Congratulations, Sarge, you caught that coffee like a real pro.”

  “Natural talent, M. Hammersmith. Get on with your story.”

  The conveyor belt’s ceaseless motion faded into the background again as he continued. “Well, I proceeded down into the basement, turned on the lights, and found our romeo’s love den, done up like the inside of one of those rustic mountain cabins. Fake log walls hung all over with crazy quilts—handmade, too, no less—and Indian blankets. Couple shelves with antique crockery and copper kettles. Wet bar disguised as an old wooden dresser with a table in front of it and a door to the wine cellar behind, just a little to one side. Fieldstone fireplace with synthetic white bearskin rug eight centimeters thick in front of it, and no other furniture in the room, jus
t a bunch of elegant floor pillows and more synthetic bearskins lying all over. Carpet was dark brown, to look like packed earth, I guess, but at least forty centimeters deep and springy as all getout. Apex must not have to worry so much about keeping up his fancier image out here, can afford some real stage setting. Or maybe he likes to seduce realizer chicks, of either gender. Or maybe it was Uncle Westerman’s and our boy just hasn’t gotten around to redecorating it yet. Anyhow, what really charmed me was that fireplace. A beaut, deep inset for real flames, ledge stacked with real logs and real kindling, grate full of real ashes waiting to be cleaned out by a real somebody with a real whisk broom. Which should have tipped me off that there might be a housekeeping staff, but I figured Apex could just as well hire one from a local temporaries agency whenever he came to town for any length of time. So I found the tab to make the firescreen slide outta the way, rooted around a couple seconds, and came up with our little corner of telltale envelope. I’d just gotten it bagged and started to sift for more, maybe a scrap of the letter itself, when Apex’s good buddy and houseboy—not sobuddy, he was careful to inform me, claims he always sleeps in the bunkhouse out back when his employer’s in town, moves into the master bedroom only when Apex is elsewhere—our good friend Pepe Ramirez Vego, with a Pancho Villa mustache to match his name, waltzes in and holds a deer rifle on me. Real charmer, our boy Pepe. So, having nothing but my trusty stunner to put up against his steel-bullet deer rifle, I elected to let him prove his hospitality by tying me up on a nice, soft bunk in the bunkhouse—his ‘very nice bunkhouse’—until the local pollies arrived to collect me. That was the last episode of any relevance until you got back into my picture. Unless you’d like a blow by blow description of Reno police seize, search, and question procedure, which unfortunately, much as I’d love to, I can’t quite make out to be any unusual kind of inhumanity. Comes doggone close to a mix of specimen handling and just plain old-fashioned rank stupidity, but you can’t quite call it inhumanity in the lawsuit sense. Except maybe for the trail mix.”