“What are these?” she asked, looking across to where the old servant was standing in the doorway.
He smiled politely. “The Old Master—“
“Oh, fuck the Old Master!” she said, finally losing her temper with him. “He’s been dead eighteen months now and still you act like he’s going to return at any moment! Well, he isn’t! And I’m Mistress here now. So cut all the ‘I don’t know’ shit and tell me what the hell all of this is!” He looked down, staring at his feet, shocked by her outburst. “I—I don’t know, Mistress. We were told not to come here. Master Lever. . . well...” She gave a sigh of exasperation. Was it always going to be like this? She counted to ten, then stood, facing the man. “Look, Steward Elliot, I’m sorry if I lost my temper just now, but I need to know what all of this is. How can I make a proper inventory of the Mansion unless I know what’s where?”
He made the smallest movement of his head, conceding the point. “Good. Then be helpful, neh, and bring me something I can use to open these crates.”
michael lever was in his office, taking briefings from his personal assistant, Dan Johnson, when his wife Mary’s voice came through on his desk comset.
“Michael? Come to the West Wing. Now. I need to see you.” He met Johnson’s eyes, making a grimace of exasperation. “Em . . . the meetings in ten minutes. Can’t it wait?”
“No. Now!”
The comset went dead. Michael ran a hand through his hair, frowning, clearly in two minds.
“When the Mistress of the House calls—“ Johnson said, grinning, showing perfect teeth. “You go. I’ll tell the board you’ve been delayed. Who knows, maybe it’ll do the old buggers good to be kept waiting.” “Dan . . . respect!” But Michael was smiling now. Besides, maybe Dan was right. Maybe he ought to keep them waiting, if only to let them know who was Head of this Company. Yet his instinct was against it. This was an important board meeting and he needed to get their agreement—if only tacitly—to the latest round of changes. If he didn’t. . . He huffed, half irritated by his wife’s summons, half intrigued, then, pulling himself up out of his seat, got the lightweight harness moving, making for the door. Johnson was there before him, holding the door open. “How’s it feel?”
Michael looked down at the support harness, which helped him walk and move about. Since the accident he had had a succession of them, but this was the lightest, the least uncomfortable, to wear. Why, it was almost possible sometimes to forget he had it on. In a year, the doctors said, he might even do without.
He smiled. “It’s great. The best yet. Doesn’t chafe like the last.” Johnson nodded his head, then touched Michael’s arm, for that brief moment more friend than assistant. “That’s good. And, look, don’t worry. I’ll fend them off, okay?”
“Fine.” Again he smiled, glad that Johnson was there, that he had such a good right-hand man. “I’ll not be long. I promise.”
HE FOUND HER in the West Wing, in a room which, for as long as he could remember, had been locked. She was sitting on an old wooden trunk, staring down at something she was holding between her hands. All about her were stacks of opened crates, their half-glimpsed contents nestling in blue-and-gold wrapping. Michael took two steps into the room, then stopped, looking about him.
“What’s going on?”
She looked up, a deep frown on her face, then held the object up for him to see.
“What is this, Michael?”
He took three ungainly steps toward her, then stopped, astonished. It was a head. A human head. And it was black.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
She looked about her. “It was here, in the trunk. And other things. Books and clothes, paintings and maps. Old stuff, from the time of the American Empire. But this . . .” She shuddered. “Well, it’s horrible. I mean, what was it? GenSyn? Were they operating back then?” He shrugged, staring at the hideous object with a mixture of fascination and repugnance. “Maybe. I don’t know. But this must be my father’s stuff. The stuff he bought from auction. Old Man Marley told me about it. Said he had plans to exhibit some of it before he died, so maybe there’s an inventory somewhere. Or purchase slips.”
Gingerly, he took the head from her, then turned it in his hands, studying it more closely. It looked wrong, somehow, the hair too curly, the nose too flat, the lips too broad. Lifting it slightly, he sniffed the black, leathery skin.
“Odd.” Again he shivered. Wrong, yes, but somehow it didn’t seem “made.” He looked back at Mary. “What do you think we should do with all this stuff?”
She leaned down, picking something up from beside her, then turned back and stood, holding something else out to him. It was a book. An old leather-bound book.
“I don’t know,” she said. “My first instinct is to burn it, but it might be important. Here, look at this. Where I’ve marked.” He set the head down, then opened the book where she’d set the marker. A musty smell drifted up at him, the very scent of age. The smell of Empire. He stared at the open page a moment, then looked back at Mary.
“Gods! It’s not possible, is it?”
“Sure it is. Look at that face. Who else could it be but a Kennedy?”
“And the man? The black man?”
“Look at the caption.”
He looked back at the old black-and-white print, studying it a moment, then turned the book, looking at the lettering on the spine. The book was old, two centuries old. But that face. He looked at it a third time, nodding to himself. A Kennedy and a black man. A king, so it said here. How strange that seemed. A black king.
“Do you think Joe knows about all this?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, to be honest. If he does, he’s kept it very close, neh?”
He nodded, then, struck by an idea, began to smile. “Hey. . . maybe we should give it to him. . . you know, at his birthday party on Friday. It’d be perfect, don’t you think?”
She took it back from him. “If you want. But not before I’ve had a chance to read it. There are things here . . .” She gave a little shiver. “Well, you’d best get back, neh? The old men are waiting, and you know how irritable they get.”
He laughed. “Don’t I just.”
immvac’s boardroom was 3 huge hall of a chamber, surrounded on three sides by a bslcony from which 3 dozen soft-wired scribes looked on, ready to take notes and provide their masters below with up-to-date information on whichever topic was the current subject of discussion. Below, about a massive octagonal oak table, sat seven elderly men, their gray hair combed back in a uniform style, their business silks a uniform midnight-blue. On the table in front of each was a long, low screen, on which figures and briefing information would appear as needed. At the head of the table, beneath the Com-p3ny logo, which dominated the back wall, the high-backed chair was empty. To one side of it stood Dan Johnson, his hands out in front of him as he fielded the old men’s brusque inquiries about Michael Levers whereabouts.
“Gentlemen. I’m sure Mr. Lever will be here at any moment. If you would just be patient.”
“Twenty minutes!” the old man directly opposite Johnson said in a loud, disgruntled voice. “His father would never have kept us wsiting twenty seconds! We have our own Companies to run, you know!” Johnson lowered his head as if in respect to the old man, but in truth he was simply trying to keep his temper. The speaker was Johannes Kemp 3nd he wss an abrasive old bastard. Even at the best of times he was difficult, but today, it seemed, he wss going out of his wsy to be unpleasant. “I’ll give him another five minutes, and then I’m off. It’s intolerable.