“Now is the winter of our discontent,” he began, “Made glorious summer by this sun of York.”
Rabinowitz found herself in two places at once: sitting spellbound in the audience as this improbable impostor outlined the joke he intended to play on all of England, and standing in the wings mouthing the lines along with him. Yet somehow there was a still, small voice saying clearly inside her mind, “No, you’re the wrong murderous schemer! The War of the Roses is centuries away. Where are my witches? Where are my secret, black and midnight hags? Clarence, Brakenbury, guards, you’re on!”
Alarms buzzed insistently. The world whirled around her. She sat up as the burned-out theater melded in surreal counterpoint with her bedroom. The lights rose from darkened to dim, letting her see without immediately blinding her. A small yellow light was flashing in the wall to her left.
“Alarm: status,” she said.
“Potential intruder, front porch. No penetration, but testing door and windows. Should I call police?”
“First the alien at the banquet, now this,” she muttered. Then, more loudly, “Not yet. Turn on porch light. Intercom, sound only: Hello out there. State your business, quickly.”
“Debs, please. I must see you now. There’s trouble, and I need your help!”
Bian Dinh! “Be right down. Intercom: off.” Rabinowitz rolled out of bed and grabbed a robe from her closet. “I knew this was going to be unpleasant,” she muttered. “Why are my instincts always so right?”
Bian Dinh sat in the middle of Rabinowitz’s living room couch, sipping hot chocolate laced with brandy. She was still shaking, though the drink was starting to calm her down. Rabinowitz sat beside her, trying to soothe her old friend while she herself was anything but tranquil.
“I tried to call you, I swear it,” Dinh said, “but your p-code was on and I couldn’t slice through, so I thought I should come by in person and try to wake you, but I was so nervous and it was so dark that I wasn’t sure what to do—”
“Slow down,” Rabinowitz advised. She reached out to momentarily stroke Dinh’s short, black hair. “Breathe a little. Don’t say anything more until you can figure out where the periods go in your sentences.”
Dinh took some deep breaths and a few more sips of her drink. Finally she said, “Where should I begin?”
“Well, what did you do after I left you at the banquet?”
“I returned to my room and teeped to K’tolu’tan.” Dinh snapped her fingers twice as she pronounced the alien word. From her own experience, Rabinowitz guessed that was just an approximation of the real sound.
“Is that a planet? I thought I’d heard of almost everyplace, but I’m not familiar with that one. Why’d you go there?”
“I was meeting a publisher. He wants to commission a book from me.”
“Is that why you wanted me to stay with you after the banquet?”
“Well, one reason. But I don’t think it will do any good now.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s… he’s dead. I discovered him lying on the floor.”
“Natural causes?” Rabinowitz asked hopefully.
“There was a knife through his chest.”
“Doesn’t sound terribly natural. Have you notified any authorities?”
“I didn’t know who to call on K’tolu’tan, and you know what I think of our own police. The only person I could think of was you. You’re always so… organized.”
Rabinowitz paused for a moment. “I have no idea who to contact on… K’tolu’tan, was it?—but I think I know a way to get things started. Phone: Voice only. Interpol, San Francisco office, Detective William Hoy.”
Dinh’s eyes widened. “Interpol? You?”
“Relax. It’s not what you think. It’s not even what he thinks.”
“Detective Hoy is not on duty at this hour,” came the voice from the Interpol switchboard. “Will some other detective do, or should I route you to his message area?”
“This is only for Detective Hoy. Route it through his personal code. Tell him Deborah Rabinowitz called on a matter of life and death. Phone: off.”
Dinh shook her head. “I don’t know whether it’s wise to bother an Interpol detective on his time off—”
“He owes me entirely too many favors. It’s time I started collecting on them, anyway.”
Dinh sipped on her drink for a moment, absorbed in some thought she didn’t know how to voice. Finally she said, “There may be a scandal involved in this matter, you know.”
“On Earth, on K’tolu’tan, or both?”
“K’tolu’tan. Perhaps. I don’t know.”
The phone chimed. It was Hoy. His broad face on the living room screen bore a look of concern, and his hair was rumpled. “Are you all right? What’s the trouble?”
“I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”
“Your message said life and death.”
“Yes, but not mine. A friend of mine seems to have stumbled across a murder on a world called K’tolu’tan.”
“Is this something contagious? Do you give it to your friends?”
“She’ll need a sympathetic ear, and she’s far more attractive than I am.”
“Impossible, but I’ll be there within an hour. Phone: off.”
“What did he mean by ‘contagious’?” Dinh asked.
“Well, believe it or not, I know exactly how you feel. I stumbled across a murder a couple of months ago myself, and Detective Hoy… well, ‘helped’ isn’t quite the right word, but he did keep me centered long enough to solve the case. He’ll at least know who to contact for you. In the meantime, until he gets here, let’s keep our minds on other things.”
Dinh sipped some more of her hot chocolate thoughtfully and said nothing.
“I was having a dream when you came onto my porch,” Rabinowitz said. “You weren’t in it, but I think it was about you, in a way.”
“What was it?”
“It was about a production of Richard III I directed in my senior year at UCLA. I’d found the notes for it in the drama department files; it was first staged that way over a hundred years ago, but it sounded like fun and I convinced the department to let me try it. It worked well, we got some nice reviews.”
“What has that to do with me? I was not in it. I never even saw it.”
“No, but that was the time I met you. While I was directing that play I started taking the orientation sessions for Polycultural. You remember those.”
Despite her hot drink, Dinh shivered. “Yes. There were times I was sure I would not survive the orientations, let alone the institute itself. If you had not helped me, I don’t think I would have.”
“We helped each other,” Rabinowitz said. “I can remember times—”
She broke off in mid-thought. She had no desire to get into a reminiscing contest with Dinh. She had all too good an idea where that could lead them.
More silence descended. It was Dinh who broke it this time, though she, too, was avoiding the subject of the murder. “I still have trouble believing where our paths have taken us. Who would have thought you would become a reputable, sedate literary broker?”
“Only the people who’d also predict you’d write cookbooks.”
“Please. Treatises on food preparation as sociological phenomena.”
“Complete with recipes.”
“Complete with recipes.” Dinh laughed for the first time since entering the house. “Imagine, us—the two most rad of the radhumfems—making our livings so mundanely.”
“But times do change and move continually.”
“You and your Shakespeare.”
“That was Spenser, actually, a contemporary of Will’s. But he makes a point. People evolve just as planets do.”