And here he was, he thought—a man apart from this, one of the few men who were apart from it. But driven by the same motives and same greed as all those other billions. Although there was one difference. He was a gambler and they were drudging slaves.
A gamble, he thought. It could be a gamble. But the letter written on the deathbed and the rude, scrawled map, despite their romantic character, had a strange, sure ring of authenticity. And his search of the records had borne out the facts of the last days of Steven Furness. There was no doubt at all that he had been the man who, in 1972, had stolen from the museum that employed him a collection of jade pieces that were worth a fortune.
Somewhere, on one of the islands in this particular stretch of river, that fortune now lay buried, exquisite carvings packed in paper inside an old steel suitcase.
"… Because I do not wish they be lost forever, 1 now write the facts and pray that you may be able to locate them from the description thai 1 give,"
A letter written and intended for that same museum from which the jade collection had been stolen, but a letter never mailed—perhaps because he never had a chance to mail it, because there was no one to take and mail it for him, not mailed, perhaps, because he had no stamp for the envelope and death was creeping close. Not mailed, but packed away with his other poor possessions in a battered suitcase—a mate, perhaps, to the one in which the jade was buried.
And the suitcase—where had it lain secreted or forgotten ever since the old man died? By what strange route had it finally found its way into that auction house, to be offered on a rainy afternoon along with many other odds and ends? Why had no one ever opened it to see what it might contain? Or might someone have opened it and thought it to be no more than it was— a bunch of junk that had all the appearance of being entirely worthless?
An idle, rainy afternoon, with nothing else to do but seek shelter from the rain. And the mad, illogical, small-boy impulse that had made him start the bidding at a quarter, just for the hel! of it, and then no other bids. Hicklin remembered, sitting there and smoking, how he had thought for a moment he should set it down somewhere and then wander off, affecting absentminded-ness, leaving it behind, thus getting rid of it. But once again, illogically, he had carried it back to his room arid that evening, for lack of anything more interesting to do, had examined its contents and found the letter and been intrigued by it—not believing it, but intrigued enough to make an effort to find out who Steven Furness might have been.
So here he was, beside this river, with the campfire burning and the lament of the whippoorwill sounding from the hollow-the only man in the world who knew (or knew approximately, at least) where the stolen jadelay buried. Perhaps, at this late date, one of the very few who knew about the theft at all.
Even now, he told himself, the jade probably could not be safely placed upon the market. For there would be records still and the museum still existed. But five hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, it could be safely sold. For by then the very fact of the theft would have been forgotten or so deeply buried in the ancient records that it could not be found.
It would make, he told himself, a satisfactory stake for the second life—if he could only find it. Diamonds, he thought, or rubies would be scarcely worth the effort. But jade was different. It would keep its value, as would any work of art. The converters could turn out diamonds by the bushel and they could, in fact, turn out jade as well, by the ton if need be. But they could not turn out carven jade or paintings. Art objects still would retain their value, perhaps appreciate in value. For while the converters could turn out the raw material, any kind of raw material, they could not duplicate a piece of craftsmanship or art.
A man, he told himself, had to use some judgment in selecting what he meant to cache away against Revival Day.
The tobacco had burned out and the pipe made gurgling noises as he sucked at it. He took it from his mouth and tapped out the ash against his boot heel.
Tomorrow morning there'd be fish on the lines that he had set and he still had flour and other makings for a plate of flapjacks. He got up from the ground and went down to the canoe to get his blanket roll.
A good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast and he'd be on his way again—looking for the island with a sandbar at its point shaped somewhat like a fishhook and the two pines just landward of the sandbar. Although, he knew, the sandbar's shape might well have changed or been wiped out entirely. The one hope that he had were the two pine trees, if they still survived.
He stood at the water's edge and glanced up at the sky. The glitter of the stars was unmarred by any cloud and the moon, almost full, hung just above the eastern cliffs. He sniffed the breeze and it was clean and fresh, with a hint of chill in it. Tomorrow, he told himself, would be another perfect day.
18
Daniel Frost stood on the sidewalk and watched the lights of Ann Harrison's car go down the street until it turned a corner and disappeared from sight.
Then he turned and started up the worn stone steps that led back into the apartment building. But halfway up he hesitated and then turned about and walked down the steps to the street again.
It was too nice a night, he told himself, to go back into his room. But even as he told it to himself, he knew that it was not the beauty of the night, for here, in this ramshackle neighborhood, there was nothing that held any claim to beauty. It was not, he knew, the attractiveness of the night that had turned him back, but a strange reluctance to go back into the room. Wait a while, perhaps, and its emptiness might wear off a little, or his memory might become slightly dulled so that he could accept the emptiness the better.
Until this night he had never known how empty and how drab and colorless and mean that room had been— not until he had come back from the park where he had met Joe Gibbons. And then, for a little time, it had come to a fullness of color, warmth, and beauty with Ann Harrison within the four small walls. There had been some candles and a dozen roses—and the price he'd paid for the roses had seemed to him outrageous—but it was neither the candles nor the roses, or the both of them together, that had transformed the place. It had been Ann who had brought the miracle.
The room had been mean and empty and it had never been before. It had been simply sensible to live in a place like that, a door for privacy, a roof for shelter, a single window to let in the light and one window was enough. A place for eating and for sleeping, a place to spend his time when he wasn't working. There was no need for larger quarters, no thought of greater comfort. For whatever comfort he might need came from the knowledge that week by week he added to the competence he'd take with him when he died.
Why had the room seemed so mean and small when he'd come back to it that evening? Was it, perhaps, because his life likewise suddenly had become mean and small? That the room was empty because his life was empty? And how could his life be empty when he faced the almost certain prospect of immortality?
The street was in shadow, with only a streetlamp here and there. The rundown structures on each side of the roadway were gaunt specters from the past, old somber residential buildings that long ago had outlived any former pride they may have held.