“Not at the moment, Clyde.” I tipped them both. Then I turned back to the house: “Would you get a message to Ms. Greengrass?”
“I can put it on her board.”
“Ask her to call me as soon as she can.”
“Very good, madame. Is there anything else?”
“Can you tell me anything at all about the persons who took the tablet?”
“I’m sorry, but that would not be ethical.”
Alex was not happy. I can tell because he always starts telling me not to be upset. “This Greengrass should be able to let us know who took it, and we’ll just make an offer.”
“Sounds good.”
“We should be able to track it down easily enough.”
“Maybe whoever took it is thinking the same thing we are.”
“You mean that it’s an artifact? Not likely.”
“Why not?”
“How many academics do you think scan the Rees Market every morning? No, I think somebody just likes white stone and decided it would make a nice garden decoration.”
Jacob broke in. “Pardon me, Alex,” he said, “but Ms. Wellington would like to speak with you about the Ivar vase.”
The Ivar vase had stood in a prominent place onstage during the turn-of-the-century hit Showstopper. The problem was that Ms. Wellington, its new owner, had encountered an “expert” who was telling her that her vase was only a duplicate. That the original had been broken during the next-to-last performance. All the paperwork was in place, but Ms. Wellington needed to be reassured she had the original.
Alex signaled I should go back to work while he got on the circuit with his client. I went down to my office, finished the billing, did some inventory work, recommended to a couple of clients that they not participate in planned trades, and eventually it was time to go home.
I called Madeleine Greengrass again.
“Ms. Greengrass is not available. If you wish, leave a message.”
Well, I wasn’t about to leave the building until I’d found out what the situation was, so I settled in to wait. Alex came down after a while, told me to go home, and promised he’d call as soon as he heard something.
“It’s okay,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll hang on for a bit.”
He suggested it was pointless. “It’s much ado about nothing, Chase. Don’t waste your time. Go home and entertain Mack.”
Mack was my boyfriend of the hour. Alex didn’t especially like him. He was an archeologist, he disapproved of what we did for a living, and he made no effort to hide it. “Years from now, Chase,” he had told me, “you’re going to look back on all this vandalism and grave robbing and selling off antiquities that should be in museums, and you’re going to regret it.”
Mack was a charmer, and that was the reason he was in a temporary status and not gone altogether. I hoped he might eventually arrive at a more reasonable point of view. At least that was what I kept telling myself.
I stayed on at the country house. We sent out for sandwiches. Then Alex got caught up in a conference with two people who’d just come back from an excavation at a thousand-year-old military base in a star system I’d never heard of. Of course, there was nothing unusual about that. If you haven’t traveled much off Rimway, you probably have no idea how big it is out there.
I was sitting in my office, finishing what was left of a pot-roast sub, when Jacob indicated we had a caller. “It’s Professor Wilson. He wants to talk to Alex, but Alex is busy. Did you want to take the call?”
Wilson appeared to be at home, relaxing in a large fabric armchair. I couldn’t see much of the room, but it had dark-stained panels, and the lighting was subdued. A trophy case guarded a doorway behind him, placed so that it was visible to callers. Concert music rumbled through the background. Heavy stuff. Barankov or somebody, I thought. But the volume was turned down. “Ah, Chase,” he said. “I was calling for Mr. Benedict.”
“He’s busy at the moment, Professor. I can have him get back to you, if you like.”
“No, no. I’ve looked again into the tablet engraving. It’s definitely not Late Korbanic. Which is not a major issue. But there’s nothing like it anywhere in the record. I have found a few similarities to other systems, but nothing close enough that would give us an identification.”
“What about the Ashiyyur? Could it be a Mute artifact?”
“Possibly. We don’t have complete information on ourselves, let alone on them.”
“So we’ve no idea where this thing might have come from.”
“None. I’d say it’s either a hoax, or you have something quite valuable on your hands. What does Alex think?”
“I don’t know. I’d guess he’s on the fence.”
“Well, let me know if I can do anything else.”
That evening, I finally got through to Greengrass. “Madeleine,” I said, “the tablet was gone when I got there.”
“I know. Stafford told me.”
Stafford? That would be the AI. “We think it may have some intrinsic value.”
“Too late now. It’s gone, Chase.” She had a laid-back manner, probably a result of doing presentations for the visitors at Silesia Park.
“Can you tell me who took it?”
“No idea.”
“You don’t know?”
“I think that’s what I said.”
“They didn’t give you their names?”
“I didn’t give my approval for anyone to take it. A couple more people called after you did. I thought I told them it was no longer available, but there might have been a communication breakdown. I don’t know. I just wanted to get rid of it, okay? I’ve no idea where it is now, and I don’t particularly care. I apologize, though, that you made the trip for nothing.”
“I was hoping you could help us retrieve it.”
“How valuable do you think it is?”
“We don’t know yet. Maybe a lot.”
“Well,” she said, “it’s only money.”
“Ms. Greengrass, I’m not promising anything, but it might have bought you another house.”
“You’re not serious.”
“As I say, we don’t know yet. Is there anything you can think of that might help us locate it?”
“Well, I wish I could. But I just don’t see anything. I don’t even know who those people were.”
“How about if we take a look at what your AI has. We might be able to identify whoever took it.”
“Hold on a second,” she said.
I waited. After a minute or so she relayed some images to me, and we watched two men and a woman walk up onto her porch. The tablet was sitting there, between two chairs. “Madeleine,” I said, “don’t you log skimmers?”
“Yes, we do. Stafford?”
“They came in a Sentinel, Madeleine.” Late model. White, split-wing. The woman had dark hair. She was wearing athletic gear, but she looked like money. She knelt to examine the tablet. After a minute or two, she looked up at the others and nodded. The two men, dressed in the same sporting style, moved the chairs out of the way.
One was big. Broad shoulders, lots of muscle, built close to the ground. He had a black beard and a bald skull. The other male looked a bit thin to be moving rocks. But they took their positions on either side of the tablet and, on a count of three, lifted. The big guy gave directions; they got the tablet off the porch, carried it down to the skimmer, and loaded it into the backseat. The woman joined them, and all three climbed in. We watched the vehicle lift off. They’d been careful about the landing, turning the vehicle so that its designator was never visible.