“That’s all right,” Sharrow sighed, looking around at the other boxes. She shrugged. “Would you mind if I have a look at some of this other stuff? I knew house Tzant well…”
“By all means,” the android said. It opened the seals on a variety of nearby crates and packages while Dloan and Miz pulled the wrappings off.
“That’s fine,” Sharrow said, after the android had opened twenty or so of the plastic bundles and-far from showing any sign of stopping-actually seemed to be speeding up.
Feril, bent over to de-seal a tall crate, stood immediately, bowed to Sharrow and said, “Please, look at your leisure. Unless you need me for anything else, I shall be at or near the door.”
“Thank you,” she said.
The android walked away, disappearing between the stacked cases.
“Never seen an android embarrassed before,” Zefla said after a little while.
“Idiot,” Miz said, sitting on a low sideboard constructed from blackwood and seagrain and edged with brushed platinum studded with opals.
“Oh well,” Dloan said. “At least some of this stuff looks interesting…” He gazed round at the opened packages.
“I take it this fouls up the plan,” Miz said.
“Hmm,” Sharrow said, frowning. She stroked a heavy fur cloak of silver inlaid within black, which lay draped over a huge crystal bowl crusted with jewels and strung with loops of precious metals; they both sat on a mirror-rug covering an antique holotank.
Zefla strolled towards a huge, intricately carved wooden cupboard and opened a door. “Whee!” she said, and pulled out a bottle. “A stand-up wine cellar.” She sat up on the sideboard with Miz.
“Look what I found,” she said.
“Amazing,” Miz said, shaking his head and looking closely at Zefla. “Is there anywhere you can’t find a drink, Zef?”
“I sincerely hope not.” Zefla waved the dusty bottle at Sharrow. “Fancy depleting the inventory?”
“Is it legal?” Sharrow asked.
Zefla shook her head emphatically. “Not even arguably.”
“All right then,” Sharrow said, as Zefla took a knife from her pocket and started opening the bottle.
“Let them sue us,” Miz said.
“I know a good lawyer,” Zefla told him.
They drank the wine from the bottle. Dloan inspected a presentation set of hunting rifles. Miz calculated the break-up value of the sideboard he was sitting on. Zefla donned the fur cloak, dragging its metre-long hem across the dusty warehouse floor.
“Fate, it’s heavy,” she said, shucking the cloak and hoisting it back on top of the ceremonial bowl. “They actually wear stuff like that?” She shook her head. “The weight of tradition.”
Sharrow sat side-saddle on the unwrapped motor-bike, looking glum.
“Hey,” Zefla said. “Any more news about Breyguhn?”
“Still staying where she is,” Sharrow said.
“Crazy,” Miz said.
Sharrow nodded. “I tried to call her; the Brothers said she’s there now as a willing guest. They said she wouldn’t talk to me.”
Zefla shook her head. “You think that’s the truth?”
Sharrow shrugged. “I don’t know. They might be lying, or Breyguhn might really want to stay; the way she was when I saw her last, it’s just about believable.”
“Think hearing about Cenuij could have flipped her over the edge?” Zefla asked.
“If she wasn’t long gone already,” Sharrow said. She got off the bike and walked towards the black cube of the tomb, squinting up at it. “Dloan,” she said. “Think you could give me a punt up there?”
“Surely.” Dloan put one of the hunting rifles back in its case, stepped to the side of the tomb and made a stirrup with his hands. Sharrow was lifted towards the top of the sarcophagus and pulled herself up.
“You be careful up there,” Miz called.
“Yes, of course,” Sharrow said, gazing at the top surface of the black granite cube. “I wonder if we can get this thing ope…” Her voice trailed off as she looked down at the bike she had been sitting on.
“Shar?” Zefla frowned.
Sharrow glanced around the warehouse. She sat on the edge of the black cube, turned and lowered herself on her hands, then let herself drop to the warehouse floor.
She walked over to the bike, a strange expression on her face. The others looked baffled. Sharrow put her hand on the bike’s front fairing and stared at the machine.
The bike was long and low-slung and had a single deeply contoured seat aft off a bulging gas tank and above a shiny V4 hydrogen engine. Its two wheels were dark tori of flexmetal, trenched by cross-cut grip-curves.
Above the sweep of the front wheel’s splash-guard, what appeared to be the bike’s light cluster and instrument binnacle was a solid, bulky mass covered with a thin aerodynamic fairing. Two stubby cylinders protruded from the matt-silver of the main casing, ending in a pair of darkly bulbous lenses. A couple of oddly impractical stalks protruded from the casing, a strap with no apparent purpose lay draped across the gas tank, and the two main instrument dials at the rear of the binnacle looked tacked-on.
Sharrow knelt down by the tipped front wheel, patting the roughened silver surface over the two dark lenses.
Miz shrugged. Dloan continued to look puzzled. Zefla took another swig from the bottle. Then her expression changed suddenly from incomprehension to amazement. She sputtered wine and pointed. “Is that the Lazy Gu-?” She coughed, then patted her chest.
“What?” Miz said loudly, then looked around guiltily.
Dloan looked puzzled for a moment longer, then smiled and nodded slowly.
Sharrow shook her head, rising and inspecting the point where the two instrument dials disappeared into holes cut in the binnacle. “No,” she said, inserting a fingernail into the gap and sliding it back and forth. “The real thing wouldn’t let you cut these holes in it.” She stepped back and folded her arms, looking the bike up and down. “But somebody’s gone to some trouble to make it look like one.”
The others crowded round the bike.
Miz peered closely at the instruments. “Maybe you get on, fire it up and it takes you to where the real thing’s stashed,” he said.
“Like a pair of magic shoes in a fairy tale,” Zefla nodded.
“Maybe,” Sharrow said.
Dloan leant closer, inspecting the instruments. He frowned, then tapped both main read-outs. They were old-fashioned electromechanical dials with slim, plastic needles pointing to numbers printed round the edges of the instrument faces.
“Hmm,” Dloan said, gripping the dials and shaking them; they moved in the binnacle.
“What?” Zefla said.
“According to these instruments,” Dloan said, straightening, “this thing’s doing fifty klicks an hour and it’s revving at sixty a second.”
“Never trust a Lazy Gun,” Zefla muttered.
“Really?” Sharrow said. “Let’s see…” She put a hand on each of the two dials and pulled.
“Hey, careful -” Zefla said, stepping back.
The dials clicked out of the binnacle, coming cleanly away. There were no wires trailing from them. Sharrow turned them over; the instruments had no obvious connections anywhere on their stainless steel surface.
“One needle’s moving,” Dloan said quietly.
Sharrow held the instruments in front of her. The speedometer needle swung a little, then steadied. The tachometer needle stayed steady. Dloan reached out, altered the orientation of the instrument cluster so that it was lying flat, then while Sharrow still held them turned the dials around ninety degrees and back. The speedometer needle shifted round the dial, but kept pointing in the same direction, towards one wall of the warehouse.
Sharrow nodded in the direction the needle was indicating. “Then let’s walk that way, shall we?”
They bumped into Feril while they were walking down the aisle, intent on the two instruments. Sharrow smiled awkwardly and turned the dials’ faces to her chest. The android just stood there.