In the Company of Thieves

by Kage Baker

  He went to pull open the door of Lewis’s car, but the cop put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do about it, bub—I’m going to take an accident report while you cool down. Or would you like to go downtown?”

  “He doesn’t,” said Lewis. “Joseph, talk to the nice policeman.”

  Joseph talked to the nice policeman for another twenty minutes, during which time a neighbor emerged from one of the other cottages in the court, inspected the damage, and offered to tow Joseph’s car to his machine shop and do a repair estimate. It was eight-thirty by the time Lewis was able to pull away from the curb again, with Joseph fuming in the seat beside him.

  “How the hell could you get lost?” Joseph demanded. “You’re a cyborg.”

  “It might interest you to know that we’re programmed with map coordinates taken in 1960,” said Lewis. “It just so happens your address isn’t on those maps. The whole block will be bulldozed for parking lots, as I discovered when I did an emergency access of the 1926 Sanborn survey, by which point I’d been around the block at Sunset and Vine six times.”

  “You...oh. Well, crap. What stupid data entry tech didn’t catch that?” Joseph gnashed his teeth. He subsided and glared out the window. “You’d still have gotten there faster if you hadn’t shaved before you left.”

  “I haven’t shaved,” said Lewis, with a certain edge in his voice.

  “Really?” Joseph turned to peer at him. “Well, some guys have all the luck.” He turned back and made an impatient gesture at a milk truck that had just pulled out in front of them. “Look at this! Where’s he think he is, a dance floor? Jeez, if I’d gone ahead and taken the streetcar, I’d have been there by now. Son of a bitch. Serves me right. You know, I should have been warned about this! How come that cop’s accident report doesn’t make it into the Temporal Concordance? What are those guys up in 2334 doing, anyway, huh?”

  “Failing to plot Event Shadows,” said Lewis.

  “You’re telling me. Sometimes it stinks, being a cyborg!”

  Lewis dropped him off in front of the Bowl with a sense of relief, and went home to shave.

  Reinhardt was in a fine mood that morning, scarcely noticing when Lewis showed up late. He flung out his arm at the Wood Near Athens, his blue eyes shining.

  “Wunderbar,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” said Lewis, gazing down at the set with a certain amount of awe. “My, that’s remarkable. It might have been growing there forever.”

  “It has,” said Reinhardt. “I know every tree, every blade of grass in this wood. I have been here half my life. I have lost cities and castles and my home...but this I cannot lose, because this alone is real.”

  “It...” Lewis blinked, transposing the image of the stage as he had last seen it with its present appearance. “It looks as though it got bigger overnight.”

  “It needed more trees,” said Reinhardt. “I had some dug up and moved.”

  “Ah,” said Lewis. “Dug up. From...?”

  Reinhardt made an expansive gesture that took in the surrounding valley. He strolled down the steps toward the stage, where the assistant director was engaged in heated conversation with the actor playing Bottom, as the other actors wandered to and fro along the apron. Lewis ran along behind Reinhardt, feeling curiously uneasy.

  Reinhardt seated himself in the front row and, feeling for his reading glasses with one hand, put out the other for the playbook. Lewis handed it to him.

  “Look, I have to do this big,” argued the actor. “I’m the only one moving on the goddam stage at this point, aren’t I?”

  Weissberger, the assistant, threw up his hands in impatience. “Not that big! You look like you are having an epileptic seizure, Mr. Connolly.”

  “Baloney!” Connolly clenched his fists. “Look at the size of this house! I’m going to be lucky if anybody at the top even sees me, let alone how I play this scene.”

  “Hmm?” Reinhardt looked over his glasses. “What is their trouble?” he inquired of Lewis, never taking his eyes from the stage. Lewis explained, quickly. Reinhardt got up, leaving the playbook and glasses on the bench, and threaded his way between the lights to the stage. Lewis followed him at two paces’ distance.

  “Let’s see the scene again. Where is the child?” said Reinhardt. Lewis translated, and Mickey Rooney stood up.

  “Do we do it again?”

  “Yes, please,” said Lewis.

  “O.K.” Rooney walked upstage and hit his mark. With a snort of impatience, Connolly lay down under a tree and sprawled at length.

  “And exit Oberon and Titania and...” said Weissberger. Rooney scrambled from behind the tree on hands and knees, and mimed pulling off Bottom’s ass’s head.

  “‘Now-when-thou-wak’st-with-thine-own-fool’s-eyes-peep,’” he recited, and dove back behind the tree.

  “Now,” said Reinhardt softly, “you must realize that it will be night, you will be well lit, and the whole stage will be yours. They will all be looking at you. You are the last unresolved question.” Lewis translated.

  Connolly raised his arm, with a galvanic jerk, and waved away imaginary flies. He opened one eye, wide; he opened the other.

  “Yes,” said Reinhardt, with Lewis echoing him in English. “Yes, all right, you must reach the top of the house, but what then? Go on—”

  Connolly sat bolt upright, and stared around wildly. “‘Heigh ho!’” he shouted. “‘Peter Quince? Flute the bellow-mender?’” He jumped to his feet, and ran to and fro. “‘Snout the tinker? Starveling? God’s my life! Stolen hence, and left me asleep!’”

  “You see? That’s—” said Weissberger.

  “That’s what you call audible,” said Connolly. Lewis began to translate for Reinhardt, but he put out a hand for silence.

  “You see, you are still asleep here,” he said. “You are in a dream within a dream. You have only wakened out of the first layer. It is a good dream; you do not yet remember the nightmare. So, no need to jump; you only lean up on your elbow, like a man in his bed, until you come through the next shroud of the dream on I have had a most rare vision. Again, please, from the eyes opening.”

  Lewis translated. Connolly lay down again, opened his eyes, played the scene as requested.

  “And now you wake a little more and get to your feet,” coaxed Reinhardt, “and go on—”

  “‘I have had a most rare vision,’” said Connolly excitedly, jumping upright. He smacked his left fist into his right palm. “‘I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.’” He stuck an index finger in the air. “‘Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream!’”

  “But you are not so awake even now,” said Reinhardt. “There is still another layer to come through. You must say this slowly. Sleepily.” Lewis translated, and Connolly rolled his eyes.

  “Look, Man is but an ass is where I get the laugh,” he protested. “It’s funnier this way.” Without waiting for Lewis to translate for him, Reinhardt stepped forward and assumed Bottom’s stance. He mimed stretching, murmured the lines in German, and at past the wit of man to say what dream it was he yawned elaborately, holding his hand far out as though before an ass’s muzzle.

  “O.K.,” said Connolly, watching him closely. “O.K., that would get a laugh.”

  “You have been under an enchantment, you have drowned in moonlight, you have been sleeping in the arms of a mist-goddess,” said Reinhardt. “And the spell is still on you and you remember now the pleasure, but then the horror sets in too, yes?”

  “What’d he say?” Connolly looked at Lewis, who translated.

  “Oh.” Connolly turned to look at Reinhardt. “So...I get some drama?”

  In answer, Reinhardt played the scene through in German. Methought I was—and the bewilderment came into his eyes, there is no man can tell what. Now he was frightened, feeling his face, feeling the air above his head in case he had ass-ears. Methought I was, and methought I had—Reinhardt delive
red the lines giggling, weak with relief, and the giggle built to hysterical laughter that culminated in an ass’s bray. He froze, as though appalled.

  Hesitantly he went on with But man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say...and felt again at his face, and scratched his head—was that a tuft of hair, or an ass’s ear?...what methought I had.

  “Yeah!” said Connolly, clapping his hands.

  Now Reinhardt mimed silent terror, doubt, confusion, dawning horror. His knees trembled. His frantic hands gripped two long hanks of hair, pulled them upright. Then he released them, stood straight, and swept back his hair. “So. You cannot awake from the nightmare. The audience will feel an echoing scream in their hearts. The wood is the source of all strange beauty, and all fear. The scene is not funny until you wake all the way and know it was only a dream, and then is the catharsis, and then you will caper like a fool and make them laugh.”

  All the actors were watching Reinhardt as though spellbound. Lewis realized his heart was pounding. He swallowed hard and translated, as Reinhardt calmly put his hands in his pockets. Connolly looked from Lewis to Reinhardt, and clapped Lewis on the shoulder.

  “Now, that’s more like it! Boy, is that a scene.” He looked around, triumphantly, at the assistant director. “No wonder they made him a professor!”

  But as Reinhardt turned away and climbed back to his seat, his face was bleak. “I wanted Charlie Chaplin in that part,” he murmured to Lewis. “Why couldn’t I have had Charlie Chaplin?”

  THREE: THE NINE-MENS'-MORRIS IS FILL'D UP WITH MUD...

  When Lewis tucked his copywork under one arm and walked out to his car to drive home, he saw Joseph already in the passenger seat.

  “Yes, of course I’ll give you a ride home,” said Lewis. “How silly of you to make such a fuss about asking, Joseph.” He drew nearer, stopped and stared. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” said Joseph. “I’m screwed. And, much as I’d like to go on a bender at C.C. Brown’s with about five hot fudge sundaes, that ain’t going to happen. ‘I must go seek some dewdrops here, and hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.’ Can I borrow your car tonight?”

  “Why?” Lewis looked anxiously at the Plymouth. “I just had it waxed—”

  “I have to break into somebody’s house.”

  “I see.” Lewis got into the car. “Phew! I strongly suggest—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, have a bath first or they’ll track me by scent. I was sweating a little more than usual today, OK?”

  Lewis started the car and pulled out onto Highland. “Perhaps you ought to tell me what happened.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” said Joseph morosely. “I worked hard on this job, you know? Had this great character I’d made up. ‘Joe Wilson.’ I had this whole history I’d invented for him. I had pictures of his wife and kids in my wallet. The mortals bought it hook, line and sinker. I made friends with the other guys on the crew. I traded them sandwiches from my dinner pail. We even talked baseball. Like: Is Dizzy Dean as good a pitcher as everybody thinks he is? That kind of thing.” He grabbed for his hat as they accelerated. “Can we roll up the windows?”

  “No. Go on,” said Lewis, who had no idea who Dizzy Dean might be and no inclination to access records on twentieth-century baseball just at that moment in any case. Joseph sighed.

  “And I might have painted myself green and worn a goddam ballet tutu, for all the good it did me. Did you ever hear of the Tavernier Violet?”

  Lewis accessed rapidly. “A diamond? Yes. You’re referring to the French Blue? Recut as the Hope Diamond.”

  “Ha! No, I’m not referring to the French Blue. How much of that story do you really know?”

  Lewis focused in more detail. “Hmmm. 1668, India, one Jean-Baptiste Tavernier bought a crudely cut 110-carat stone described in color as ‘a beautiful violet.’ Sold the stone to Louis XIV, along with several others. Stone recut in 1673, reduced to 69 carats—thereafter called the French Blue. Stolen from the Royal Treasury sometime in mid-September 1792, during the Revolution. Resurfaced twenty years and two days later (just as the Statute of Limitations time ran out) in London, in the possession of Daniel Eliason, recut to 44 carats. Mmmm...George IV acquired it somehow...turned up in the possession of Lord Hope, 1839...sold...sold...Turkish Sultan...Cartier sold it to Mrs. Evelyn Walsh of Washington, D.C. Well?”

  “Anything strike you as funny in that little data stream?”

  “Some mortal had remarkable self-control, holding on to it for twenty years,” said Lewis, turning left onto Hollywood Boulevard.

  “No, Lewis. More basic than that. Access the current description of the stone.”

  “Weight: 44.5 carats,” said Lewis promptly. “Cut: Cushion antique brilliant with faceted girdle, extra facets on pavilion. Clarity: VS1. Color: Fancy Dark Steel Blue. Oh. That’s not exactly Violet, is it?”

  “You bet it isn’t,” said Joseph.

  “So...the Hope diamond, formerly the French Blue, isn’t the Tavernier Violet,” said Lewis. “Well, isn’t that fascinating?”

  “See—what we have here is another Event Shadow. The blue rock got conflated with the violet one at some point. The blue rock moved on into history and became so famous, with its curse and everything, that it overshadowed the existence of the other stone. Even with the discrepancy in color staring everybody in the face.”

  “Maybe Tavernier was color-blind,” said Lewis.

  “He wasn’t,” said Joseph. “There was an error in the records. 110 carats cut down to 69, doesn’t that seem a little drastic to you? And no trace of the remaining 41 carats’ worth of violet diamond? Which there wasn’t. No, it was recut, all right, but only down to 91 carats. Set in a necklace. Given by the Sun King to his favorite popsy of the moment, Madame de Montespan. And then he asked for it back. He tended to do that kind of thing.”

  “But she didn’t give it back?”

  “She didn’t. Oh, she brought His Solarness the case, with a big purple fake in it; one that wouldn’t have fooled anybody. Madame, says Louis, this stone is paste! She goes white and looks like she’s about to faint. Athenais was a helluva good actress,” Joseph added, taken for a moment by fond memories. He shook his head. “She yells, I have been robbed! It must have been that dreadful man who repaired the broken clasp for me! And there was a lot of smoke and mirrors about some mysterious guy who’d made off with the real stone. Never happened, though.

  “Louis didn’t believe her for a minute, but he wasn’t going to push the matter, and she knew she was on the outs with him by that time anyway, so she didn’t care. She kept the Tavernier Violet. She passed it on to one of her kids by Louis, so you could say it stayed in the family, the Orleans branch of it anyhow. Until 1866, by which time it’d found its way to Mexico.”

  “And you know all this because...?”

  “Because I knew Athenais. And the family passed on the secret with the stone. And there’s a Duke of Orleans who owns shares in Dr. Zeus.”

  “You mean they’ll hang on into the twenty-fourth century?” Lewis was genuinely impressed. “My, that’s tenacity.”

  “There’s a Hapsburg who owns stock, too,” said Joseph.

  “No!” Lewis sat back. Then he made a face. “Oh, ugh, you don’t suppose they’ve still got those awful—”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid they do.”

  Lewis shuddered. “I don’t want to think about how you know. But, go on.”

  “Well, remember where the Lost Treasure comes from in the first place? One of the jewels donated to the revolutionary cause, see, is the Tavernier Violet, which by this time is in a gold filigree setting.

  “What I didn’t mention before was the fact that when I got orders to dig the treasure up and move it, I was supposed to look for the Tavernier Violet and make sure it was near the top of the pile, because the Company’s going to want it specially retrieved at some point in the near future. I found it; thing looked like a chunk of grape Popsicle.

  “Well, I figured I’d
make my job a little easier, right? So I stuck the rock in a Mason jar and buried it by itself, right under this one oak sapling, nice and deep.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Lewis. “I have a feeling I know what’s coming next.” He turned right at Ivar and headed down past the library.

  “So, you want to know what happened this morning, after you dropped me off?” said Joseph. “I go running up the canyon with my tail on fire, because I know something’s gone wrong. You get to be a few thousand years old, you’ve been around the block a few times, you start to get an instinct for this kind of thing, you know what I’m saying? And here’s Cookie’s truck zooming down the road toward me, doing maybe forty miles an hour, and I’m thinking—”

  “Cookie?”

  “Cookie Bernstein. Used to be a cook in the Merchant Marine. He’s really got his foot on the gas, and as the truck shoots past me I see Junior kind of slumped over in the bed of the truck—”

  “Junior?”

  “Junior Macready. Nice kid. Youngest guy on the crew. And he’s covered with blood, see? And sort of clutching a hankie right here.” Joseph slapped himself just above the bridge of his nose. “‘Holy Mackerel,’ I say to myself, ‘that poor kid.’ Little do I know! So I get up there finally, panting like a steam engine, and there’s Lester and Stinky and Mulligan standing around—”

  “What colorful mortal friends you’ve made—”

  “And I forget all about Junior because there’s this goddam crane, see, and what’s dangling from it, fifteen feet up in the air? Guess. Just take a wild guess,” said Joseph, pounding on the dashboard as his fury mounted. “Left! Left turn, Lewis! Jesus Christ on a Ry-Krisp, how could you miss it again?”

  “You can always catch the streetcar to your burglary, you know,” said Lewis. “I’m taking my wild guess now. Was it a certain oak sapling?”

  “Except it wasn’t a sapling any more,” said Joseph. “It had grown into a great big artistically perfect tree, which your boss decided was just the thing for fairies to prance around under. So, this morning, right about when you were driving around this block for the umpteenth time, Max Reinhardt orders my buddies to dig up the oak tree and move it. Here! Park here. This is Mr. Goldfisch’s spot, but he’s visiting his aunt in Cucamonga.”