“Thank you. Feel free to come dust them sometime. If I’m not a suspect—”
“Let’s just say you’re someone I really wanted to meet and talk to. I’m not disappointed, either. You’re as beautiful as you are charming. More beautiful than your file picture, even.”
“My day is complete. Now if you’ll—”
“Some people can be such a letdown, you know? You think they should be fascinating and they bore you to tears. But not you. You—”
Rabinowitz stood up behind her desk. “If you have no further questions—”
Hoy refused to take the hint. “Well, one or two. Was anyone else from Earth involved in your deal with Levexitor?”
Rabinowitz sat down again. “No. I was brokering on behalf of the Adler Agency, but I was the only one representing human interests on this deal.”
Hoy nodded. “Did Levexitor mention any other names, human contacts?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Any other deals he was working on?”
“No, why should he? I’m not his partner. I didn’t tell him about any other deals I’m working on, either.”
“I understand. Well, that’s about all I had for now.” Hoy stood up and smiled at her. “It was great meeting you, Ms. Rabinowitz. A distinct pleasure. If you remember anything else, you can reach me through the local office, just across the Bay.”
Rabinowitz rose from her chair to show him out. “Of course, if you turn out to be involved in the black market sale,” Hoy continued, “rest assured I’ll put you inside for a long time. But if you’re not the one I’m looking for, would you have dinner with me sometime? After the case is solved, of course.”
“Sorry, I never eat,” she said as she closed the door behind him.
As the door closed she turned around, slumped against it, closed her eyes and sighed, “So pestered with a popinjay.” The next thing she knew she was jerking awake as her chin hit her chest. She straightened up and deliberately opened her eyes wide. Directly in front of her was the staircase leading up to the bedroom. Beside the staircase, the hall extended to the kitchen at the back of the house. Hoy’s comments about dinner had aroused her stomach’s interest. “I need the sleep more,” she mumbled, “but there’s all those stairs.”
She walked slowly to the kitchen, sure that if she moved too fast she would tumble and fall asleep before she hit the floor. She found two starchy slabs that were very probably bread, placed some unidentifiable filler between them and wolfed the conglomeration down before she could examine it too closely. Unfortunately, while this filled her stomach it left her feeling too wide awake to sleep. And there was a trap waiting before she could get back to the stairs.
She stopped beside the open veering room door. She looked inside. “I’ll regret this tomorrow,” she muttered. “Hell, I regret it right now.” So saying she stepped inside. “Veering: Jenithar, office of Path-Reynik Levexitor.
“With any luck,” she added to herself, “he won’t be in.”
She found herself in a vestibule in veer-space just outside Levexitor’s office. She faced two large wooden doors bare of any ornamentation. The very fact that she was here meant his veering unit was turned on and her arrival had been announced to him.
“Ms. Rabinowitz,” Levexitor’s disembodied voice said. “That you should visit again so soon is unexpected.”
“If I’m intruding, Highest, I beg forgiveness. I can return at another time.”
There was a strangely long pause before he replied. “I see no reason why we should not discuss matters now. It is not as though I were busy with anything else. You may enter.”
Rabinowitz stepped toward the virtual door in front of her. It swung inward to admit her to the reality Levexitor chose to show his visitors.
Some people were creatures of fancy, creating elaborate virtual habitats of exotic design. The Jenitharp were not among these people. Levex-itor’s office looked exactly as it had every time she’d come here over the past four months. The walls were maroon with flecks of gold, while the floor was slick and slate gray. There were two doors—the one she’d entered and one at the other end of the room—and no windows. Light diffused from unspecific sources. The room was small; someone that important on Earth would have had a spacious office. It was a somber, cheerless room, almost like a barely furnished cave—but then, Levexitor himself was scarcely Mr. Personality.
Against the back wall was a low workbench where Levexitor’s assistant, Chalnas, normally stood. Chalnas was a clerk of some kind who spent his time scribbling in a pad. Rabinowitz could not remember him ever uttering five consecutive words, and even that was merely to ask clarification of some point. Chalnas was not standing there now. He was one of those people you scarcely noticed when he was there, but his absence felt odd.
In the center of the room, at his own work desk, stood Path-Reynik Levexitor. The Jenitharp were bipedal, but humanoid only by a liberal definition of the term. They were shaggy cylinders, covered with a plumage roughly akin to marabou. Their two very long arms connected to the body at what should have been the waist; they could reach the tops of the slightly bulbous heads and the soles of their broad feet with equal ease. Their eyes were better hidden than a sheepdog’s, and their voices seemed to resonate from their entire body.
Levexitor’s veer-space projection was very tall, fully a head taller than Rabinowitz. His marabou was tinged with lavender, far more elegant than Chalnas’s plebeian brown. He was so noble he scarcely needed to move.
There were no chairs in the room. Rabinowitz stood, Levexitor stood, Chalnas—when he was there—stood. The act of deliberately making oneself shorter in front of others was obviously unspeakable on Jenithar. If Rabinowtiz had not been able to sit comfortably in her lounger at home while “standing” in Levexitor’s veer-space, some of her long negotiating sessions might not have gone as well as they did.
“Welcome, Ms. Rabinowitz. I had not expected to stand with you so soon again.”
“I do deeply apologize for the intrusion, Highest. There were still a few minuscule details left to settle, and I thought we could lay them to rest once and for all… but if Chalnas is not here to record them—”
“It is Chalnas’s day of relaxation, but I can remember well enough what we say. Please continue.”
Rabinowitz spent the next ten minutes discussing the precise definitions of underwater theatrical rights to the three Tenger novels and the exact duration of the options. While this was a meaningless exercise, it gave her a legitimate excuse to be here.
There were uncharacteristically long pauses in Levexitor’s responses, and he seemed more ill at ease. There was obviously some task in his real space that was preoccupying at least part of his mind. When Rabinowitz commented that he might prefer to deal with local matters and get back to her later he dismissed that out of hand and continued the discussion.
When they’d nailed the subject to the wall more thoroughly than it ever needed to be, Rabinowitz said, “Highest, I hesitate to bring up such delicate matters in front of someone so tall, but something has disturbed me so much I feel I must speak to you about it.”
“Please feel free to speak openly,” Levexitor said.
“Very well, Highest,” Rabinowitz said. “I’ve heard rumors on Earth that criminal elements are trying to smuggle some of our literature to outworld markets. I’ve heard no names, but only the lowliest of our people would stoop to such activity.”
“It is curious that you should mention such a subject just now, Ms. Rabinowitz. Please continue.”