"Yes. Steve Taylor worked for me for a while in the Islands. We came to an understanding a few weeks ago. He gave me his word that Taylor and Crawford will wait until after the board meeting before they respond to the proposal to spin off the container division."
"Well, that's something at least. What about the distribution problems at the New Portland warehouse?"
"The problem has been resolved."
"How?"
"The new inventory control system had a glitch. It's fixed. I've also had a talk with Kimiyo Takanishi at Ta-kanishi Freight. I convinced her that she would get a better contract from me than she would from Selby."
"She'll wait until after the board meeting to negotiate?"
Rafe picked up his cup of coff-tea. "She'll wait."
Alfred G. sank his teeth into a slice of muffin. His eyes narrowed. "Why can't you find yourself a nice young woman like Kimiyo?"
Rafe grinned. "Mrs. Takanishi is old enough to be my mother. I'll admit she's very charming and a brilliant businesswoman, but even if she was willing to marry me, we'd have a small problem with the fact that she's married. It wouldn't be easy to get rid of Ray Takanishi. He's as tough as you are."
"True." Alfred G. glumly munched his muffin. "Has that damned marriage agency sent you out on any dates yet?"
"Back off, Al I told you, everything's under control."
"Sonovabitch, Rafe. Time is running out. Haven't you got a single possibility lined up yet?"
Rafe hesitated. "As a matter of fact, I have."
A hopeful look gleamed in Alfred G.'s predatory gaze. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"
Rafe braced his elbows on the arms of the lawn chair. He steepled his fingers and regarded the maze in the center of the garden. "Because it's far from being a done deal."
"Why not?"
"We don't have much in common. And apparently she's as difficult to match as I am."
"How do you know that?" Alfred G. asked sharply.
"She's been registered even longer than I have. A full year, in fact. She's only had one date during that time."
"Sounds to me like you both have more in common than you think."
"What the hell do you mean?"
Alfred G. chuckled. "Neither of you can get a date for Saturday night. Tell you what. Bring her to my birthday party. Let me have a look at her. I'll tell you whether or not she'll suit."
Rafe tried to envision Alfred G. and Orchid socializing here in the gardens at what was considered one of the city's most important social events of the year. "Serve you right if I did bring her."
Alfred G. stopped smiling. "You are coming to the party, aren't you?"
It would be the first time he had attended since he had walked out on his heritage fifteen years ago, Rafe reflected. It would send a signal to his cousin that he could expect a fight over Stonebraker Shipping.
Attending Alfred G.'s birthday party would be the first shot over Selby's bow. An announcement that war had been declared.
"Wouldn't miss it," Rafe said.
"The relic was similar to the others that you see in that case." Alexander Brizo gestured toward the locked glass cabinet at the end of a row of laboratory workbenches. "Made of the same material. A bit longer and narrower in shape than the object on the left."
Orchid walked to the cabinet and gazed, fascinated, at the collection of alien artifacts. It was clear from their odd designs that they had not been made to fit human hands. They were all fashioned from a silvery alloy that defied analysis.
"This is the first time I've seen any of the relics outside the museum," Orchid said. "They really are strange, aren't they?"
"Very." Brizo sighed. "We don't know much more about them now than we did when Lucas Trent brought in the first batch. We can't even identify the components of the alloy the aliens used to make these objects. All we know is that the items were not made of anything found here on St. Helens."
Rafe came to stand behind Orchid. He studied the objects in the case. "Whatever it is, it must be something incredibly different from anything the first generation colonists brought with them from Earth."
"Quite true." Brizo's brows came together in a sober frown. "The fact that the alloy did not disintegrate within months after it was exposed to St. Helens' atmosphere the way the Founders' Earth-based materials did, means that it is alien in every sense of the word."
"Any idea yet how old the relics are?" Orchid asked.
"Our best psychometric-talents estimate that they're at least a thousand years old. Maybe more."
"Too bad the fourth Chastain Expedition hasn't found any biological remains in that so-called alien tomb they're excavating," Rafe said.
"Not a trace," Brizo said. "If there ever were any bodies inside, they decomposed eons ago. The archeolo-gists have not found so much as a bone fragment."
"Maybe the aliens didn't have bones," Orchid said. "Maybe they were as different from us physically as this alloy is from our metals."
"Or maybe they escaped St. Helens after all, but had to do it in a hurry," Rafe suggested. "That would explain why they left a lot of their equipment behind."
"It's certainly possible," Brizo said. "The most popular hypothesis at the moment is that the aliens came to St. Helens the same way the first generation colonists from Earth did, through the Curtain. We assumed that they got stranded here when the Curtain closed without warning, just as the Founders were stranded. But perhaps the Curtain opened again long enough to allow the aliens to escape."
Orchid stared at the strangely shaped relics behind the glass. Every schoolchild knew the history of the colonization of St. Helens. A little more than two hundred years earlier a mysterious Curtain of energy had materialized in space very near Earth. It had proved to be an interstellar gate between the home planet and a hospitable new world the colonists named St. Helens.
But shortly after the first generation settlers had arrived the Curtain had closed without warning. Cut off from the home planet, the small population of humans had been left to fend for themselves. A desperate battle for survival had ensued. The green world of St. Helens had welcomed the humans but it did not tolerate their Earth-based technology. Something in the very air and soil of the planet was anathema to the machines and materials of Earth.
The aliens had had better luck so far as their technology was concerned, but they, themselves, had disappeared.
"You have no idea at all why Theo Willis would have stolen that one particular relic?" Rafe asked.
"No." Brizo shrugged. "It wasn't any more unusual or interesting than the others except for the fact that it was found outside the tomb, rather than inside."
"Outside?"
"It was imbedded in a small deposit of jelly-ice. Must have fallen into it a thousand years ago and just sat there until the expedition team discovered it."
"What did it look like?"
"It was a simple narrow rod about a foot long. A bit like a thin flashlight except that there was no visible means of generating light."
Orchid looked at him. "You said Theo Willis was found at the bottom of the cliff the day after the relic disappeared?"
"Yes. The police ruled it a suicide, but I'm more inclined to think it must have been an accident. I don't see why Willis would have killed himself right after stealing the relic. The problem is that the artifact was not found at the scene of the crash. It has disappeared."
Orchid frowned. "What makes you so sure that Willis took the relic in the first place?"
"Because he seemed keenly interested in that one item in the collection," Brizo explained. "In fact, a few days before it disappeared, Theo asked to be assigned to the team that was responsible for conducting the analytical tests on it. He often stayed late to work on his projects and he was alone here the night the artifact disappeared."