“Korda! Why would Korda have anything against me?”
“Well, that’s exactly what I was wondering, you see. He’s said some odd things lately. About possibly eliminating your position and reassigning your responsibilities to Philippe.”
“That’s ridiculous. My workload could never be—”
Philippe threw up his hands. “This isn’t my doing — I don’t want your job. I’m overburdened with responsibility as it is.”
“Okay,” the bureaucrat said disbelievingly. “All right. Tell me exactly what Korda said to you.”
“I don’t know. Don’t look at me like that! Honestly I don’t. Philippe only gave me the broadest outline. You know how cautious he is. He’d keep what he knew from himself, if that were possible. But, listen — I’ll be merging back into him in a couple of hours. Do you want to give him a message? He could gate down to talk with you.”
“That won’t be necessary.” The bureaucrat swallowed back his anger, hid it away from the agent. “I ought to have this case wrapped up in a day or two. I can talk with him in person then.”
“You’re that close, are you?”
“Oh yes. Gregorian’s mother gave me a great deal of information. Including an old notebook of Gregorian’s. It’s full of names and addresses.” Actually the book was largely taken up with occult diagrams and instructions for ceremonies — full of serpents, cups, and daggers — that the bureaucrat found both obscure and tedious. Other than the insights it gave into the young Gregorian’s character and youthful megalomania, its only solid lead had been the references to Madame Campaspe. But the bureaucrat wanted to give Philippe something to think about.
“Good, good,” the agent said vaguely. He stared down at his hand, swirling the liquid only he could see in its imaginary glass. “Why is it that line-fed fruit juice never tastes as good as what you get in person?”
“That’s because when you’re just being line-fed the flavor, you don’t get the body rush from the sugars and so on.” Philippe looked blank. “It’s like getting a line-fed beer — all flavor and no alcohol. Only the physical component of apple juice isn’t so pronounced, so while your body feels the difference, you’re not consciously aware of what the lack is.”
“You know a little bit of everything,” Philippe said amiably.
When the bureaucrat opened his eyes, Chu was waiting for him.
“I’ve found it,” she said. That small, feral smile again, conspiratorial flash of teeth and gone. “Come on out back.”
On the blind side of the hotel was a long storage shed with a single narrow door. Chu had smashed the lock. “I need a light,” the bureaucrat said. He took one from his briefcase and entered.
Amid a litter of tools, lumber, and scrapwood, were a dozen new-made crates. “They were all set to close up shop,” Chu said. Setting a sawhorse aside, she reached into a crate she’d already ripped open, and handed the bureaucrat a shell knife just like the one he’d seen earlier.
“So they’re smuggling artifacts, just as we thought, eh?”
Chu took a second shell knife from the crate, a third, a fourth.
They were all identical.
“There’s other stuff too. Pottery, digging sticks, fishnet weights. All in multiplicate.” She reached into the shadows. “Look what else I found.”
It was a briefcase, the perfect twin of the one the bureaucrat held. He could tell by its markings that it had been issued by his own department.
“You see the scam, don’t you? They got hold of some genuine haunt artifacts, fed them to the briefcase, and had it make them copies. Then they returned the originals to the source. Or maybe copies, I don’t imagine it would make any difference.”
“Only to an archeologist. Maybe not even then.”
“Did you find out where the knife came from?”
“The original was from Cobbs Creek,” the bureaucrat said. “It’s on display in Dryhaven.”
“Cobbs Creek is just down the river. Not far from Clay Bank.”
“I’m less interested in where the artifacts came from than in how the counterfeiters got hold of one of our briefcases. Have you questioned it yet?”
“Don’t waste your breath.” Chu held it open to the light so that he could see the interior, blackened and blistered. “It’s dead.”
“Idiots.” The bureaucrat took patch lines from his own briefcase and wired the two together. “They must’ve overloaded it. It’s a delicate piece of equipment; if you order it to keep making copies of something and don’t take care to keep it supplied with the elements it needs, it’ll dismantle itself trying to follow instructions. I need a full readout of this thing’s memory.”
His briefcase was silent for a second, then said, “There’s nothing left but the identification number. It managed to disassemble all its insulation before it died, and the protected memory rotted out.”
“Shit.”
“Give me a hand with this crate,” Chu said.
Grunting and puffing, they wrestled the crate outside, and let it fall to the ground with a crash. The bureaucrat went back in for his briefcase, took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “Won’t all this noise alert the counterfeiters?”
“I’m counting on it.”
“Hah?”
Chu took out a cheroot, lit it. “You think the nationals are going to arrest anybody over this? With the jubilee tides so close? A petty little counterfeiting ring that’s probably not even cheating Mirandans? Face it, these things are being sold to offplanet tourists. Hereabouts that amounts to a victimless crime. The briefcase might have been a bigger noise, but it’s dead. Anyway, the hot rumor is that the Stone House is going to announce a general amnesty on crimes committed in the Tidewater, a few days before the tides. To make things easier for the evacuation authority. So the national police aren’t going to be very excited about this. I figure there’s only two things we can do. The first is to throw this crap in the river, so they can’t make any more profit off it.”
“And the second?”
“That’s to make so much noise hauling it out that anyone involved will know we’re on to them. They don’t know about the amnesty. I figure that barkeep must be a mile away by now, and running fast. Wait here, and I’ll go requisition a wheelbarrow.”
When they came back from the river, the bar was empty and the bartender gone. He had left without even turning off the television. Chu went behind the bar, found a bottle of remscela and poured them both a shot. “To crime,” she said.
“I still hate to see them get away.”
“Enforcement is a dirty business, sonny,” Chu said scornfully. “And there’s a lot more dirt down here than you have up in Cloud-wonderland. Buck up, and enjoy your drink like a grown-up.”
On the television a man was arguing with old Ahab about the man’s twin brother, long ago lost at sea. Murderer! Ahab shouted. He was your twin, and your responsibility!
Since when am I my brother’s keeper?
Unseen by either, a mermaid peered in at them through a window, her face open with wonder, and with pain.
5. Dogs Among the Roses
The strings of waxflowers were all lit now, red-blue-yellow-white fuzzglobes of light swaying overhead, and the music was hot and urgent, a magnetic field in which the revelers swirled and eddied, caught in its invisible lines of force and sent spinning away in a rush of laughter. Among the fantasias were lesser costumes, representational rather than interpretive, angels with carnal smiles, clowns, and sentimental devils with goatees and pitchforks. A satyr stumbled drunkenly by on short stilts, hairy and near-naked, waving panpipes to keep from falling.