Rock of Ages

by Walter Jon Williams

  “The wood pattern seems an odd design choice,” Kuusinen observed.

  “That isn’t ornamentation,” Joseph Bob said. “The pistol’s actually made of wood. It’s a model that Colt carved on a sea voyage. Once he returned, he built a working chugger out of metal and patented his process.”

  “They built pistols out of metal?” Roberta said. “That seems as outlandish as a pistol of wood. Why would Mr. Colt use metal?”

  “It wouldn’t do to admit this in certain political circles,” Joseph Bob said, “but here among friends, I believe I might observe that human technology was not always as advanced as it is at present.”

  Roberta briefly touched her tongue to the corner of her mouth, a simulacrum of Khosali mirth. Maijstral had noticed that the human residents of the Empire, where the Khosali were in the majority, more often used Khosali gestures than humans of the constellation.

  “Here are a pair of chuggers you might recognize, Maijstral,” Joseph Bob said, and indicated a matched pair of pistols on the wall.

  Cold trickled up Maijstral’s spine as he looked at the weapons. Years ago, when he was sixteen, he’d fought a duel with those pistols, and the horror he’d felt at the time had never left him.

  “Oh yes,” Maijstral said unenthusiastically. “I recognize them perfectly well.”

  “Back in our Academy days,” Joseph Bob told the others, “Maijstral fought a duel with those pistols. I wasn’t there—the seconds wouldn’t allow witnesses—but everyone said Maijstral was the coolest fellow imaginable.”

  Maijstral looked at the assembled company and felt sweat gathering at his nape. What others mistook for coolness had been, in fact, a pure, horrified paralysis.

  “I’m sure the others exaggerated,” Maijstral said.

  Joseph Bob put a hearty hand on Maijstral’s shoulder. “Quite a feat, though, fighting a duel at that age—what were we? Sixteen? Seventeen?”

  “Too young,” Maijstral said.

  “I’ve always envied you the experience. Here I am, a crack pistol shot and an exemplary swordsman, and I’ve never once had an encounter! I’ve always wanted a chance, but everyone’s always been so polite to me.”

  Arlette looked a little nonplussed at this evidence of her husband’s bloodthirstiness. Maijstral raised a thin smile. His ears pricked forward. “If I ever have another fight,” he said, “you can substitute for me if you like.”

  Joseph Bob gave a hearty laugh. “Oh,” he said, “I wish I could!”

  “We youngsters were jealous of you,” the Bubber offered. “And that girl of yours who was the cause of it all—we were jealous of her, too. Quite a pippin, that Zoe.”

  “Maijstral started quite a fad,” Joseph Bob added. “There must have been a dozen challenges among the underclassmen before the term was out. We seniors had to suppress them all, of course.”

  Maijstral sincerely wished someone would act to suppress this topic of conversation. He didn’t care for his youthful follies being the subject of quite this much speculation. He observed that Kuusinen was watching him with interest, and Maijstral liked neither the intrigued tilt to Aunt Batty’s head nor the glitter in her eye. Probably she was planning on adding another note to her three-volume biography.

  And Roberta, he noted, was looking at him with an admiration that made him thoroughly uneasy. On Silverside Station she had served as his second on a duel that, fortunately for him, had not actually come off. He didn’t want to leave anyone with the impression he was a fire-eater happy to swashbuckle his way through life in search of deadly encounters. A reputation like that could attract more danger than it would keep away—just look at the career of Pearl Woman or Etienne, to name two among the Three Hundred who were constantly having to hack their way out of one lethal situation or another.

  Perhaps, Maijstral considered, it was time for a bit of misdirection. “Say,” he said, turning to an intriguing-looking shoulder weapon with Troxan markings, “what is that used for? Is that a harpoon of some sort?”

  Annoyance flared in Maijstral as Joseph Bob clung to his reminiscence. “D’you know, Maijstral,” he said, “after I got the pistols back, I couldn’t hit a blessed thing with either one of ’em. Turned out the sights were out of true.”

  Maijstral suppressed a jolt of alarm, and instead said, “Perhaps the seconds were careless in handling them afterward. Asad and Zah were pretty excited by the whole business.”

  “I wonder—d’you suppose it was one of the masters bent on avoiding bloodshed?” Joseph Bob fingered his chin analytically. “Perhaps if word of the duel got out, one of our housemasters could have got into my room with his passkey and twitched the sights out of alignment.”

  It had been Maijstral, of course, far gone in the depths of terror, who had crept into Joseph Bob’s room and tweaked the foresights with a handy pair of pliers. It had been his first successful breaking and entering, one of those painful, involuntary milestones on his path to the present. How many other people, one could well ask, have discovered their own utter cowardice and the silent joys of burglary at the same time?

  Maijstral affected to consider Joseph Bob’s theory. It occurred to him that the notion was far too close to the truth, and probably ought to be discredited altogether. “I think your theory probably gives the masters too much credit,” he said. “It was never my impression that they knew anything we were doing, let alone anything we were trying to hide from them.” His lazy lids closed over his eyes, leaving only slits. “I’m inclined to suspect it was just careless handling by the seconds. Julian and I held the pistols only for a moment or. two, just long enough to shoot, but the seconds probably had them for hours.”

  “Mm,” Joseph Bob conceded. “Very likely.”

  “Now what is this—harpoon sort of thing?” Maijstral asked, once more attempting his diversion.

  As Joseph Bob went on to explain that the harpoon gun was intended to anchor the wandering, homicidal trees that lurched about one of the Troxan homeworlds, Maijstral viewed the other guests from beneath his slitted lids. Arlette, the Bubber, and Roberta seemed perfectly willing to be diverted by the harpoon gun. Kuusinen’s polite expression, as ever, revealed little. But Aunt Batty’s lace-covered ears were cocked forward, and her tongue lolled in a smug little smile—as if, Maijstral concluded, some pet theory of hers had just been confirmed.

  He wondered if there were some way he could read this biography.

  Perhaps, it occurred to him, he could steal it.

  *

  The string quartet’s rendition of a Frayng piece echoed up the hall as the company made their way to their rooms.

  “I say—Maijstral?”

  “Yes, Bubber?”

  “Oh, call me Will, won’t you? I don’t care much for meaningless titles, and I guess you don’t, either, considering you don’t use yours.”

  “Will. Yes. You may call me Drake, if you like. How may I help you?”

  “I was wondering if we might do a trade. I’d be most happy to teach you to ride a horse tomorrow, and—well, what I want is—I, ah—could you teach me magic?”

  A pause. “Well.” Another pause. “I would be happy to teach you a few things, of course. But I won’t be spending that much time here in Tejas, and I won’t be able to give you anything but a few fundamentals.”

  “Oh, that would be fine. I understand your time is limited. But I’d like to find out if magic is something I could really master—you know, I’ve always lived with J.B., and he’s a perfectly splendid person, but he’s so good at everything. A better shot than me, a better fencer, a better rider . . . and probably a better lord, if it comes to that. And I can play the cello pretty well, but I’m not as good as the fellow who’s normally got the job . . . so anyway, I thought if I could master something that J.B. isn’t good at, then . . . well, I’d like to give it a try, anyway.”

  “I would be happy to teach you what I can.”

  “Thank you. Er—Drake?”

  “Yes, Will?”

 
“Did I just say something—you know—pathetic?”

  “Not at all, Will.”

  “Thank you.” A sigh. “I’m relieved.”

  “Good night, Will.”

  “Goodnight. And thank you.”

  *

  “Dear?” Strolling up the stairway a few moments later. “Did you really envy Maijstral his duel?”

  “Oh, yes. Of course. It’s a chance to find out what you’re really made of, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t you think you know what you’re made of, Joe?”

  “Well.” A nervous laugh. “Not the way Maijstral does, I’m sure. I’ve done well, but then I startled out with so many advantages that I would have had to work hard at doing badly in order to make a failure of myself. I certainly haven’t been tested, not the way my grandfather was in the Great Rebellion, nor the way Maijstral was before he was twenty.”

  “You got me all on your own, Joe.”

  The sound of a kiss.

  “Well,” reflectively, “perhaps I haven’t done so badly, after all.”

  *

  The same stair. Another pair.

  “Do things progress, Kuusinen?”

  “Indeed, your grace. The mechanics of smuggling an object as large as a coffin into the house without Maijstral’s knowledge presented some difficulties, but now that he’s decided to go riding tomorrow, I believe we can use the window of opportunity afforded by his absence.”

  “And his servants?”

  “His Highness’s butler has been instructed to divert them. They, and your servants as well, will be taken on a special picnic tomorrow morning.”

  “Very good. Perhaps I will take exercise with Maijstral and make certain he’ll be gone for a sufficient length of time.”

  “An admirable addition to the plan, your grace.”

  “I don’t believe it will be any great sacrifice—it will be a perfectly pleasant morning, given good weather.”

  “Of course, your grace.”

  Another pause. “Is that Snail they’re performing?”

  “Frayng, your grace.”

  “Ah. I can never tell them apart.”

  “Hardly anyone ever can. I believe that’s why they were provoked into their unfortunate duel—each thought the other was imitating him.”

  “They fought with bassoons, did they not?”

  “Yes. Bassoons, your grace. Not the most graceful of weapons, but then they both died, so perhaps there is some hidden martial quality to the instrument of which we are unaware.”

  *

  “Good grief!”

  “Oh. Sorry, Mr. Maijstral. I really didn’t mean to startle you;”

  Maijstral contemplated the jutting finlike pompadour sticking up above his rack of suits. “If you didn’t mean to startle me,” he said, “why did you hide in my closet?”

  Conchita Sparrow’s genial face worked its way out from between a pair of jackets. “One of your servants was in here a minute ago, and I didn’t want him to see me, so I just nipped in for a second.” She fondled a shoulder seam. “Nice suit, this green one. I like the cut.”

  “Thank you, Miss Sparrow. Would you care to step into the room now?”

  “Only too.” Conchita left the closet, took a breath, and grinned. “It was stuffy in there.” She looked around the room. “Can you give me a drink or something?”

  Maijstral, ignoring this last request, folded his arms and regarded the intruder. “The matter of your being in my closet is now explained, but we have yet to address the question of your being in my room in the first place. Have you dropped off another stolen art treasure?”

  “Oh. No. I was just wondering if you’d had a chance to review my recordings.”

  “You needn’t have come in person. You could have phoned. Or you could have knocked on the front door and asked for me.”

  “Well, yes,” Conchita admitted. “But I wanted to show you how well I could neutralize the security in this place.” Her eyes widened. “Oh: The closet. One moment.”

  She reached into the closet and removed the command override she’d placed on-the closet command systems. “Close the doors, please.”

  “I have been interfered with.” The closet’s tone was sulky.

  “Close the doors, please.”

  The doors closed with a final grumble. Conchita turned to Maijstral and grinned.

  “Your technical ability is without question,” Maijstral said. “But I already employ a tech. The only work I could offer you is perhaps an occasional contract, and that only rarely.”

  Conchita’s face fell. “Oh, come on, Mr. Maijstral,” she said. “Your life would never be dull with me around!”

  This, Maijstral considered, was becoming all too plain. “Perhaps that’s so,” he said, “but I can’t fire a perfectly good employee just to relieve the tedium.” At that point there was a knock at the door.

  He and Conchita looked at each other for a moment, and then Conchita turned to the closet. “Open, please,” she said.

  “I won’t,” the closet said. “You interfered with my mechanisms.”

  “Open, closet,” Maijstral said.

  “Well,” the closet said, “for you.”

  The closet opened and Conchita ducked inside, jabbing her command override into the closet’s systems as she did so. The doors shut smoothly, and Maijstral went to answer the knock.

  Kuusinen’s head was cocked slightly in an inquiring manner. “I hope I do not interrupt, sir,” he said.

  Maijstral unconsciously straightened his jacket. “Oh. Not at all. Would you come in?”

  “Thank you, no. I had only a single question to ask you,” Kuusinen said. “I hope you won’t consider it impertinent, but I’m afraid I’m compulsive in certain ways, and I won’t be able to sleep unless I know the answer.”

  “I will do my utmost to assume you rest, Mr. Kuusinen.”

  “What do you call the technique you used in the trick where the cards were hidden under the creamer? The one where you substituted one card on the very top of the deck for another?”

  Maijstral blinked. “I must have performed the trick very poorly for you to have noticed.”

  “On the contrary,” Kuusinen said, “your working of the trick was excellent, and I noticed nothing at the time. But, in thinking about the trick afterward, I realized how it had to be done, and—I apologize again—I was consumed with a desire for the information.”

  “I’d be obliged if you refrained from sharing your line of reasoning with the others.”

  “I won’t, I assure you. This is purely for my own satisfaction.”

  “The technique is called a top change.”

  Kuusinen closed his eyes and absorbed the bit of jargon with an expression akin to bliss. His eyes fluttered open. “Thank you, sir.”

  “I hope you sleep well.”

  “I’m sure I shall.”

  Maijstral closed the door and was on his way to the closet when he was interrupted by a gentle chime from the phone. He answered, and the visage of the Duchess of Benn appeared on the screen.

  “If you’re looking for Mr. Kuusinen,” Maijstral said, “he just left.”

  “I wasn’t, actually,” Roberta said. “I was hoping that I might invite myself along on your riding trip tomorrow.”

  “You’re most welcome,” Maijstral said, “but I’m afraid I won’t be a very challenging companion. I’ve never been on a horse in my life.”

  “Neither have I. We shall learn together.”

  “I shall look forward.”

  “Good night, Maijstral.”

  “Good night, your grace.”

  Maijstral turned from the phone to see the closet door gliding open. Conchita appeared. “Was that the Duchess of Benn?” she asked.

  “It was.”

  “That’s fingo all right!”

  Maijstral raised, his eyebrows at this piece of cant. “Sorry?” he said.

  “I mean, I’m impressed. You stole the Eltdown Shard from her and she not only still
speaks to you, she looks for ways to ride off into the sunset with you.”

  Maijstral blinked. There was a lot more to the Eltdown Shard story than ever reached the public, and he intended it stay that way. “I believe you were leaving,” he said.

  “Well.” Conchita shrugged. “I suppose I was.”

  “Shall I open a window for you?”

  “No thanks, I got in through the ventilation.”

  She popped a grill off the wall, floated up off the floor, entered feet-first, and paused to give a wave before she disappeared into the ventilator shaft. Maijstral walked to the service plate and touched it.

  “Roman. Would you come in here, if you please?”

  It was Drexler’s voice that answered. “Sorry, Mr. Maijstral. Roman left before dinner and hasn’t returned. May I be of service?”

  Maijstral paused. It was most unlike Roman to be absent at this hour, when he; was usually required to unlace Maijstral from his jacket and trousers. Maijstral would have to summon a robot to do the job.

  “Did Roman say where he was going?”

  “No, sir. May I help you?”

  First things first, Maijstral thought. “Yes,” he said.

  “Miss Sparrow has returned. I don’t know if she left anything behind, but if she did, I want it found.”

  “I’ll take care of that right away, sir.”

  “Thank you, Drexler.”

  Another long search of his own quarters, Maijstral thought wearily.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to get used to this.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Maijstral arrived for his ride dressed in what he believed to be the correct costume: wide Stetson hat, large bandanna, leather vest, fringed chaps, high-heeled proughskin boots with pointed toes, silver rowel spurs that gleamed in the sunlight, a stunner in the shape of one of Mr. Colt’s revolvers on one hip and a waspish rapier on the other.

  Will, the Bubber, regarded Maijstral with an expression of genial surprise as he stalked into the stables on his tall heels. “Very authentic,” he said.

  “Am I . . . overdressed?” Maijstral said. The Bubber’s costume complemented his own only in the matter of boots.