Streak snapped back into wakefulness and almost dropped the box. Very gingerly, he put it down in the doorway and reached for his scanners.
“What the-”
“I couldn’t stop him,” came Serrin’s voice from behind him. “Couldn’t touch him. He had enough power around him to bust right through the barriers. The watchers never even twitched. No trace either. I tried to have a watcher follow him and it looked more confused than I’ve ever seen. It’s out there wandering around somewhere, but I don’t think it’s going to find anything”
“He pulled this same stunt at the Baptistery,” Streak growled. “I’d like to meet Blondie again when he isn’t expecting it, the little scumfrag.”
“What’s in there?” Serrin pointed to the box.
“Nonferrous metal,” Streak said.
“Open it,” Geraint ordered.
“I haven’t finished-”
“If he wanted to do us any harm he could have cut our throats in the doorway,” Geraint pointed out. “He’s hardly going to bother with a bloody bomb, is he?”
“He also stopped us getting scragged this morning,” Serrin added.
“Okay, you got it,” Streak said, whipping out a heavy knife and prying open the wooden lid of the box.
“Oh, very slick,” he said as he lifted out the item inside.
It was a clock, of sorts. A hand’s length high, the gold filigree-decorated clock sat inside a glass case. A pair of exquisitely sculpted angels were bracketed to either side of the clockface and housing. Beneath the clock at the base of the case was a pool of liquid, and an intricate motor-driven mechanism rotated, lifting tiny buckets of the water to drive the clockwork mechanisms inside the housing.
“Exquisite,” Geraint said softly. “It’s worth a few nuyen, I can tell you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any thing like it.”
“I think I have,” Serrin replied, amused.
“Really? Since when did you start taking an interest in antiques?”
“Since, oh, a few days ago. Unless I’m much mistaken, this is a superior working version of Leonardo’s design for a water-driven clock. Let’s go and check it against the sketches in the book I got this morning.”
It took only a couple of minutes to confirm the identification. The clock continued to function perfectly and soundlessly, keeping immaculate time.
“Bet you a monkey the sodding thing goes bang at six o’clock or something,” Streak said, grumbling.
“We’ve been through that,” Geraint said laconically. “So why this? And why now?”
“Now, because we’re here. As to why this,” Serrin mused, “I really don’t know.”
“Well, we can worry about it at the villa I’ve found for tonight,” Geraint said. “I had some words with the cosulate. You packed?”
“More or less. Michael still has to get his deck squared way, Did he tell you what he got?”
They walked slowly back up the stairs, Michael explaining to Geraint that the Priory of Sion’s systems beyond Rennes had been stripped bare and closed down, leaving only the throne icon behind them.
“Some kind of message or signal,” Serrin suggested. “But it’s so general, it could mean anything. It must mean something specific to the Priory, but without someone to explain it to us we can’t know what it means.”
Idly, he turned on the trid. They had a few minutes to kill while Michael gathered together his equipment. The tail end of the local news was showing. Thick red and white smoke swept over the heads of a roiling crowd waving banners and gesticulating wildly.
“The Milan soccer derby,” Serrin estimated. “Usually two or three get killed each year.”
“These Eyeties don’t know squit,” Streak growled. “Take ‘em down to the Dogs, down Milwall. We know how to have a decent soccer riot down there. And look at that crowd, has to be a hundred thousand, Too many by far.”
“The San Siro,” Senin told him. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”
“Not bad,” Streak said. “Oh! Ouch, look at that tackle. I’ll give them that: their footballers really know how to break legs,” and then he had no more time to expand upon the subject as the tridcast cut to an entirely different scene. After a few moments of trying to figure out what was being discussed, they dissolved into laughter.
“Oh, lovely icon that.”
“The evaporating turd? Yeah, good one. What the frag is this?”
Florentine local trid was using some graphic icons to illustrate the tail-end news item. Since it concerned a rival city-state, it wasn’t going to get better than last-spot status, but it was important enough that it couldn’t, regrettably from the Florentine point of view, be ignored entirely.
Waterways were shown with icons of various toxic effluent, from the graphic pile of excrement to clouds of steaming vapor with skull-and-crossbones motifs, evaporating from them. The scene panned back to show the canals. Serrin sat bolt upright in his chair.
“What am they saying?”
“Can’t make much out, he’s jabbering too fast,” Streak said.
“Call up the bloody subtitles,” Serrin demanded.
“Don’t know how, not on this!” Streak complained.
“Give me the gist, then.”
“It’s about de-polluting the canals in Venice” Streak paused, listening hard to the next chunk of excitable commentary.
“Big change. Lots of drek disappearing. You can fall in and not be dead inside the hour now, apparently. Tourists come to Venice, that sort of spiel. This local commentator’s getting right sarky about that.”
The scene cut again to the advertisements. Apparently soap powder moved scantily clad young Italian females to implausible states of hopeless excitement.
“Venice! The bastard’s in Venice,” Serrin yelled.
“How can you-”
“The book. The book! Slot! Why didn’t we see it? The book we found.”
“See what?” Geraint demanded to know.
“The book was a signal to the Priory guy-Serrault, Seratini, whatever-as to where our quarry is!”
“What do you mean?”
“A treatise on water elementals, right?”
“And so?”
“We just got a water-driven carriage clock as a message. We had a clue about water elementals. Leonardo lived in Venice for some time, and he certainly spent enough time designing canal systems. Including the years just before he died. And what was that apocalyptic stuff I found earlier?”
“The Flood,” Geraint mused. “It sounded like the myth of the Flood to me. All it needed was a bloke with a big ship and the old animals two by two.”
“Merlin also told me he might have moved on,” Serrin added. “I think we should try Venice. Look, it’s barely an hour away and if we’re wrong we can get back here damn quick. Not that we have any definite idea of what to do next anyway.”
“Can we find out how long this has been going on in Venice?” Geraint said. “The book was sent a week ago or therabouts. If you’re right, the Priory knew our man was Venice then, if this detox work started at least that far back that would be worth knowing.”
“We must be able to check. What about the consulate?”
“Nice idea,” Geraint grinned. “I think I may just have a call from His Majesty’s Department of the Environment that I must relay to the consulate officials with all due speed. Consider it done.” He walked off briskly to his bedroom to make the call.
Michael returned with everything packed and they filled him in on the details.
“I’m not sure about this,” he said. “The chain of logic isn’t too compelling.”
“It isn’t compelling, but it’s plausible,” Serrin said, and since Venice is so close we’ve got nothing to lose by a short detour. At least we can start checking something out there.”
“Sounds good to me,” Streak said, fondling an Ingram with his usual meaningful expression. “There’s another reason why I like the idea of moving on.”
“And what’s that?” Michael asked.
“While you guys have been reinventing the Bible and up to your ears in clocks, I’ve been doing some peeking through windows. Our old muckers, the gentlemen in suits, are out there now, if you know where to look. The NOJ has, of course, tracked us here. Which I expected. Sometimes, Serrin mate, people do expect the Inquisition.”