The night had turned cool. Rusterman’s white and gold canopy sheltered them from the light rain, but not from the wind. “Fall soon,” Cassie muttered.
“Our show won’t be ready for this season,” Reis told her. “We’ll need scenery.”
A uniformed chauffeur opened the limousine’s wide rear door.
“And rehearsals.” Thinking of things she had heard the night before, Cassie shuddered.
“You’re cold. Have you a fur coat? Mink? Ermine, perhaps?”
“Wool. But it’s real wool and looks nice on me. I like it.”
“Get in, please. I’ll go around.”
She did, and the chauffeur closed the door with the merest whisper of sound.
At once, or so it seemed, Reis was sitting beside her. “Blue mink, I would say. I hopped here today to meet you. You cannot have known that, Cassie, but I did. One hour from Berlin in a friend’s hopper. Have you been into space yet?”
She shuddered again and shook her head.
“I should be getting you a drink.” Reis gestured. “This little cabinet opens into a bar. You must’ve seen that from the glasses. Brandy?”
“Nothing, please.”
“This will be a very ordinary cognac, I’m afraid. Our Earth’s a small place, Cassie. You see that clearly from out in space. I could have hopped from Berlin to Beijing just as easily. We weren’t ready for space travel when science gave it to us.” He poured three fingers of amber fluid into a pony glass and handed it to her.
“I’ve heard people say that.”
“It’s true. A hundred years ago, men dreamed of it. They thought there’d be a world government long before it came, that ignorance and poverty would’ve been eliminated.”
“It’ll never happen,” Cassie whispered. She pretended to sip.
“No world government?”
She shook her head. “I was thinking of poverty and ignorance.”
Reis poured for himself. “When I show you Earth from space, when you see how beautiful it is, you’ll realize how easily it might be put right.” Reis appeared to hesitate. “Poverty and ignorance... they’re relative terms. Let’s see that everybody has enough to eat and a place to sleep. That everyone can read well enough to enjoy reading.”
“That would satisfy me. May I ask why you wanted to meet me? Wanted to so much that you hopped from Berlin?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Reis seemed oddly embarrassed.
“Not to me.”
“I want you for Mariah. You haven’t read the script, I realize. Mariah Brownlea’s our star, the woman who dates the Volcano God. A year from now, Cassie, you’ll be ready to open on Broadway. There’ll be a film, a year or two after that. You’ll star in the film, too. I won’t have to insist on you because everybody will insist on you.”
Cassie’s purse played the first three bars of “Pigs in Paradise.” She opened it, found her cell phone, and said, “Hello?”
“Cassie?” The voice (a pleasant voice that she found she remembered very well) sounded concerned. “It’s me. I just learned that Reis is in town. Are you someplace where you can use my name?”
She glanced at her watch. “No,” she said, “and you’re about six hours late.”
As she spoke, she felt the limousine glide away from the curb.
TOO DEARE
They met for breakfast at the International House of Toast, a plastic-cum-Formica palace less crowded and noisy than Walker’s. Gideon ordered the Renaissance French Toast, and Cassie the Fontina Toast aux des Raisins Secs.
“If there’s something you don’t want to talk about,” Gideon said, “give me an idea of what I ought to stay away from. I’m going to have a lot of questions.”
Cassie nodded. “So am I.”
“But you don’t want to talk about... ?”
“How scared I was. What a coward I am.”
He shook his head. “I doubt it. But fine, we won’t talk about that. Or at least, I won’t.”
“I had my gun on my leg in that holster thing you saw. Left leg, inside, just high enough that a long skirt still covered it when I sat down. I kept thinking I ought to get it out and stick it in his face. Stay away or I’ll shoot! Only I never had the guts.”
“You didn’t want to talk about this.”
“I didn’t want you to talk about it. I still don’t. I felt like my insides were going to run out and soak the backseat. I was afraid I was going to fall when I got out. My knees were that weak.”
“Our friend would have picked you up.”
“Right. And helped me to my apartment and wanted to come inside for a drink, and Cassie, I’ve done you some big favors already and I’m going to do you a lot more. I’d like just one little one from you. Take off that dress.”
Gideon, who had been toying with his fork, put it down. “I doubt it. He’s not that crude.”
“He wanted to know about the bracelet. He’d given me a bracelet — this was in public, when I couldn’t turn it down without losing every friend I had.”
“Including me,” Gideon said.
“Right. Because you want me to play footsie with a tiger and find out exactly how he bites their necks. Well, I didn’t turn it down. Happy?”
“Very. What was it he wanted to know about it?”
“Where it was, and why I wasn’t wearing it. I told him half the truth, that I didn’t want him to think he owned me. The other half is that I hate the damned thing. He has lousy taste.”
As a waitress in a frilly lace cap brought coffee, Gideon said, “I’ve never thought so, but perhaps I have poor taste myself. You said he wanted to know where it was. Where was it?”
“I gave it to Margaret and told her to keep it for me. Margaret’s my dresser. A dresser is someone who helps you with your costumes.” Cassie paused. “I’m talking like I’ve had her for years, but I only hired her yesterday.”
Gideon sipped. “Could she be working for Reis?”
“I doubt it. She was working for Alexis Cabana when The Red Spot opened. Alexis let her go when it closed, I assume because she doesn’t have anything lined up. You said you had lots of questions for me. Can I ask you one?”
“Certainly. Go ahead.”
“You and I had breakfast yesterday. Sharon came in and took pictures. That afternoon one was on vid, and she talked about us. You know she did, because we caught her part of the show. That evening — I’d be shouting here, if I were onstage — you-know-who was in the audience.”
Gideon nodded.
“Last night he said he’d had lunch with India, so he got onto us awfully, awfully fast. How did he do that?”
“I don’t know, and I wish I did. I can offer two speculations. No, three. Do you want to hear them?”
“You bet I do.”
“All right. He’s attracted to glamorous women. I’ve looked into his background, and it shows very clearly. I’m certain you recall what Sharon told her audience on trivid, and while we were at Walker’s there was a good deal said about your beauty and desirability. About your being a star, and so forth. An online edition of her paper could have had her story as soon as she wrote it. Suppose Reis had software searching for news items in which those words were used.”
“I don’t believe it. I know any good programmer could do the computer stuff, but he wouldn’t hop halfway ’round the world because of something Sharon wrote.”
“He’d have seen you. Perhaps even heard you speak.”
“Thanks, but I still don’t buy it. What are the other two?”
“That first one, the one you’re dismissing so easily, is my favorite. I don’t like this one as much. It’s that he’s done at least one search using my rather distinctive name, having realized at some point that I was looking into his operations. I’ve tried to be careful, of course; but it’s entirely possible that I haven’t been careful enough. He wants you as a way of getting to me.”