They found Zaer quickly. He sat with a dark-haired woman in the sheath of emerald silk. On the table in front of them moved a number of small glowing many-colored shapes-sparkling, flashing, intense as patterns cut from butterfly wings. It was a ballet, projected in three-dimensional miniature. Tiny figures leaped, danced, posed to entrancing music in a magnificent setting of broken marble columns and Appian cypress trees.
After a moment the four stood back, watching in dour amusement.
Breaugh nudged Mario. "By heaven, he acts like he's been doing it all his life!"
Ditmar advanced to the table; the girl turned her long opaque eyes up at him. Zaer glanced up blankly.
"Hello there, Zaer," said Ditmar, a sarcastic smile wreathing his lips. "Have you forgotten your old pals of the Oxonian Terrace?"
Zaer stared blankly. I'm sorry."
"I suppose you don't know us?" asked Breaugh looking down his long crooked nose.
Zaer pushed a hand through his mop of curly black hair. I'm afraid you have the advantage of me, gentlemen."
"Humph," said Breaugh. "Let's get this straight. You're Pete Zaer, are you not?"
"Yes, I am."
Janniver interposed, "Perhaps you'd prefer to speak with us alone?"
Zaer blinked. "Not at all. Go ahead, say it." "Ever heard of the Chateau d'lf ?" inquired Breaugh acidly. "And eight thousand dollars?" added Ditmar. "A joint investment, shall we say?"
Zaer frowned in what Mario could have sworn to be honest bewilderment.
"You believe that I owe you eight thousand dollars?" "Either that, or eight thousand dollars' worth of information."
Zaer shrugged. "Eight thousand dollars?" He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a bill-fold, counted. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There you are, gentlemen. Whatever it's for, I'm sure I don't know. Maybe I was drunk." He handed eight thousand-dollar bills to the rigid Ditmar. "Anyway now you're satisfied and I hope you'll be good enough to leave." He gestured to the tiny figures, swaying, posturing, to the rapturous music. "We've already missed the Devotional Dance, the main reason we tuned it on."
"Zaer," said Mario haltingly. The gay youthful eyes swung to him.
"Yes?-politely.
"Is this all the report we get? After all, we acted in good faith."
Zaer stared back coldly. "You have eight thousand dollars. I don't know you from Adam's off ox. You claim it, I pay it. That's pretty good faith on my part."
Breaugh pulled at Mario's arm. "Let's go."
Chapter III
Blind Plunge
Soberly they sat at a table in an unpretentious tavern, drinking beer. For a while none of the four spoke. Four silent figures - tall strong Janniver, with the rough features, the Baltic hah-, the African fiber, the Oriental restraint; Breaugh, the nimble-eyed, black browed and long-nosed; Ditmar, the sardonic autumn-colored man with the sick liver; Mario, normal, modest, pleasant.
Mario spoke first. "If that's what eight thousand buys at the Chateau d'lf, I'll volunteer."
"If," said Breaugh shortly.
"It's not reasonable," rumbled Janniver. Among them, his emotions were probably the least disturbed, his sense of order and fitness the most outraged.
Breaugh struck the table with his fist, a light blow, but nevertheless vehement. "It's not reasonable! It violates logic."
"Your logic," Ditmar pointed out.
Breaugh cocked his head sideways. "What's yours?"
"I haven't any."
"I maintain that the Chateau d'lf is an enterprise," said Breaugh. "At the fee they charged, I figured it for a money-making scheme. It looks like I'm wrong. Zaer was broke a month ago. Or almost so. We gave him eight thousand dollars. He goes to the Chateau d'lf, he comes out, takes a suite at the Atlantic-Empire, buys an expensive woman, shoves money at us by the fistful. The only place he could have got it is at the Chateau d'lf. Now there's no profit in that kind of business."
"Some of them pay ten million dollars," said Mario softly. "That could take up some of the slack."
Ditmar drank his beer. "What now? Want to shake again?"
No one spoke. At last Breaugh said, "Frankly, I'm afraid to."
Mario raised his eyebrows. "What? With Zaer's climb to riches right in front of you?"
"Odd," mused Breaugh, "that's just what he was saying. That he was one of the meteoric schoolboy wonders who hadn't meteored yet. Now he'll probably turn out to be an unsung genius."
"The Chateau still sounds good, if that's what it does for you."
"If," sneered Breaugh.
"If," assented Mario mildly.
Ditmar said with a harsh chuckle, "I've got eight thousand dollars here. Our mutual property. As far as I'm concerned, it's all yours, if you want to take on Zaer's assignment."
Breaugh and Janniver gave acquiescent shrugs.
Mario toyed with the idea. His life was idle, useless. He dabbled in architecture, played handball, slept, ate. A pleasant but meaningless existence. He rose to his feet. "I'm on my way, right now. Give me the eight thousand before I change my mind."
"Here you are," said Ditmar. "Er-in spite of Zaer's example, we'll expect a report, Tuesdays and Fridays at three, on the Oxonian Terrace."
Mario waved gaily, as he pushed out the door into the late afternoon. "Tuesdays and Fridays at three. Be seeing you."
Ditmar shook his head. "I doubt it."
Breaugh compressed his mouth. "I doubt it too."
Janniver merely shook his head....
Exmoor Avenue began in Lanchester, in front of the Power Bank, on the fourth level, swung north, rose briefly to the fifth level where it crossed the Continental Highway, curved back to the west, slanted under Grimshaw Boulevard, dropped to the surface in Meadowlands.
Mario found 5600 Exmoor to be a gray block of a building, not precisely dilapidated, but evidently unloved and uncared-for. A thin indecisive strip of lawn separated it from the road, and a walkway led to a small excrescence of a portico.
With the level afternoon sun shining full on his back, Mario walked to the portico, pressed the button.
A moment passed, then the door slid aside, revealing a short hall. "Please come in," said the soft voice of a commercial welcome-box.
Mario advanced down the hall, aware that radiation was scanning his body for metal or weapons. The hall opened into a green and brown reception room, furnished with a leather settee, a desk, a painting of three slim wide-eyed nudes against a background of a dark forest. A door flicked back, a young woman entered.
Mario tightened his mouth. It was an adventure to look at the girl. She was amazingly beautiful, with a beauty that grew more poignant the longer he considered it. She was silent, small-boned. Her eyes were cool, direct, her jaw and chin fine and firm. She was beautiful in herself, without ornament, ruse or adornment; beautiful almost in spite of herself, as if she regretted the magic of her face. Mario felt cool detachment in her gaze, an impersonal unfriendliness. Human perversity immediately aroused in his brain a desire to shatter the indifference, to arouse passion of one sort or another.... He smothered the impulse. He was here on business.
"Your name, please?" Her voice was soft, with a fine grain to it, like precious wood, and pitched in a strange key.
"Roland Mario."