‘No, I hadn’t heard that,’ Mast answered truthfully. ‘I can’t see that it makes any difference. The government’s always worried about something or other.’
‘Oh, I don’t know… I had some inside griff the other day. Caean has made a formal protest. Something about a cargo of raiment stolen from a crashed ship. Coincidence, eh?’ Jadper winked grotesquely. ‘The Caeanics get paranoid about their togs, you know! The police might start looking for it. Things could be difficult.’
‘Look,’ said Mast, ‘are you interested or not? I don’t have to find a buyer. I’m told my goods are worth ultimately about twenty million, but I’m prepared to scale down that figure substantially to make a quick sale.’
‘Hmm, I’d have to have someone look at them. Even if your valuation is right, what with all the risk and everything I doubt if I could even go as far as one million.’ Jadper looked fretful, full of doubt. Mast was relieved; the fence had started trading.
‘When do you want to inspect the goods?’ he asked. ‘Once they’ve been viewed even you will be ready to part with at least twelve million.’ Then he became aware that something was happening to the chair he was sitting on. He tried to rise, but could not: he was fixed to it somehow.
The chair tilted back, rose from the floor and turned a half circle until he was facing Jadper upside down. It was as if his backside and spine were firmly glued to the chair. Presumably he was in the grip of an inertial field.
‘I thought perhaps the day after tomorrow,’ Jadper said seriously, displaying no sign that he noticed anything amiss. ‘Where are you keeping them?’
‘Let me down!’ Mast cried in exasperation. ‘This is intolerable!’
The chair released him and he fell sprawling to the floor, giving his skull a painful crack on the tiles. Jadper chuckled.
Mast scrambled to his feet, retrieving his hat and jamming it back on his smarting head. He brushed himself down and turned to Jadper gravely.
‘I absolutely refuse to go through with this. How can I think straight when I’m being interfered with all the time?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jadper said with a dismal shrug. ‘It’s not my fault.’
Mast deliberated. ‘This house is as full of tricks as a rat-trap,’ he said. ‘If you want to carry on talking let’s do it outside.’
‘You want to go for a stroll? But of course!’ Jadper jumped up with alacrity. ‘It’s a beautiful day! Let’s go out on the lawn.’
Nervously Mast followed him through a door in the rear of the vestibule. They emerged on the other side of the house before an expansive, well-tended lawn of Harlos moss, a silky lavender-coloured growth which was generally preferred to earthgrass. Once in the open he felt safer.
Then, without warning, his hat deluged him with green ink. With a cry of frustration he snatched the titfer from his head, ripped it apart to see the cunning ink reservoir Jadper had planted there, and flung it away from him. He fumbled for a kerchief to wipe the dye from his face.
The prankster turned and grinned at Mast as they stepped across the moss. ‘Lots of nice clothes, eh? Lovely!’ He waved his left hand in a complicated motion and suddenly his flabby body was bedecked in dazzling finery. Glittering gold knee breeches, a tunic of silver and green stripes with puffed sleeves, and a gorgeous multihued sash. It was hardly Caeanic in quality, however – more like showy trash – and even as Jadper walked it was peeling from him, disintegrating and scattering until only ragged scraps remained.
How had Jadper performed the trick? Mast had seen nothing about his naked person from which to produce the coverings, flimsy though they were.
Jadper’s tone dropped and became soberly confidential. ‘I’ve been wondering if this lawn might be better with a pavilion on it,’ he said. ‘Something like this, perhaps.’
Again he waved his hand, making magic passes in the air. It was hard to see exactly what took place. The air shimmered and there were countless little rainbows, as if the sunlight was striking sprays of water. In seconds a small pavilion took shape, seeming to coalesce out of nothing. It had a façade of what looked like carved, painted wood, complete with arched windows and a brief veranda.
‘Come inside,’ Jadper invited.
‘How do you do it?’ Mast asked as they mounted the steps and passed to the shaded interior. He received no answer. The pavilion was unfurnished, and had a hurriedly erected, half-finished look. But it was solid. The floor sounded hollow beneath his tread. He tapped a wall with his knuckle. It was like matt plastic or fibrewood.
‘A pleasant place to sit and drink with friends, perhaps,’ Jadper suggested. ‘What do you think? A better view of the garden might be in order.’ He pointed with his finger and invisibly cut out large windows in the rear of the building, making available a view of the rest of the lawn and the flowers and trees beyond.
Jadper turned to him, his face bland. ‘Well. How about the day after tomorrow, then? Where do you have your goods?’
‘Tell your evaluator to meet me in the middle of town,’ Mast said stubbornly. ‘I’ll take him to them.’
‘Aha! Caution, caution!’ Jadper tapped the side of his nose with his finger. ‘All right, then. Afterwards you can come back here and we’ll talk money.’
‘I’d rather it was somewhere outside, preferably in public,’ Mast said.
‘Oh, come, come! Don’t insult my hospitality!’
They sauntered back to the villa. From his manner one would think Jadper had ceased playing his jokes now. Mast pressed him once again to reveal how he was able to invoke clothing and buildings out of thin air.
‘It’s perfectly simple, really,’ Jadper said. ‘I’ll show you.’
As they went into the vestibule Mast glanced back and saw that the pavilion had already begun to collapse and dissolve, the panels of the walls curling up like paper in a fire. Jadper disappeared through a side door and returned a few moments later carrying a cylinder with a handgrip and an array of nozzles.
‘See.’ He pointed the nozzles and pressed a grip. A set of furniture shimmered into being across the floor: a dining table, chairs, and a sideboard.
‘There’s an aerosol for everything these days,’ Jadper chuckled. He opened the side of the cylinder and explained to Mast how the gadget worked. It was a programmed extrusion process controlled by insertable templates. Liquid plastic from a reservoir sprayed out in an atomized mist, hardening on contact with the air to form whatever structures the templates dictated.
The reservoir held an amazingly small volume of liquid. ‘It mixes with the air to make practically any bulk you like,’ Jadper told him. ‘And those solid objects are ninety nine point nine per cent air.’
‘Hence their lack of permanence,’ Mast commented.
‘Oh, they could be as durable as you like. But that would be in awful nuisance, don’t you think? I use a mixture with an ingredient that makes them instantly degradable.’
‘Ingenious,’ admitted Mast, ‘but I didn’t see you use an aerosol in the garden.’
For an answer Jadper laid the gadget down on an occasional table and, using his right hand, disconnected his left hand at the wrist. ‘I lost my real hand some years ago. Just making a virtue of necessity. Very handy, as you might say, for an amateur conjuror, eh?’
‘Is that what you call yourself?’ Mast responded drily. ‘It’s all very interesting.’ He watched the dining table, the sideboard and the chairs suddenly lose strength and cave in on themselves, gradually dissolving to tatters and then to dust. It would make a good epitaph for the quality of Jadper’s mind, he thought.