Conquistador (53 page)

The old woman nodded eagerly, and took up the tale: “Then he spoke again to the human people: ‘When you die, you are to come to my land. Not living people. Dead people only. After four days they are to come to my land, the dead people.' Then he went away with Frog Old Woman, Hawk Chief, and all his people.”

Over the bent head Adrienne mouthed something silently to the young companion. That one urged the old woman away; the wrinkled apple face was smiling as she hobbled off.

“What was that in aid of?” Tom asked, pulling their luggage out of the Hummer.

“That's poor old Karkin,” Adrienne said. “Ah . . . long story. Karkin was a chief's daughter of the Ohlone tribe around the Gate in 'forty-six. She had a child with Salvo Colletta . . . that sort of thing happened fairly often back then in the very early years, when there were only a few people here in the Commonwealth and not many families. It went badly, of course, and then all her people died, and . . . well, Aunt Chloe took her in, and her daughter—she died in childbirth—and granddaughter. That's the granddaughter, Sandra Margolin. I met Karkin when I was a little girl, and I thought she was a witch. Quite a nice old lady; completely mad, of course.”

“What's with the story?” he said. “That's what she was doing, wasn't she? Repeating some sort of legend?”

“Oh, she's always going on with these old stories of hers. She used to tell them to me over and over, and I picked up a little of the language; as much because Mother hated me hanging around her as anything. I think Aunt Chloe wrote them all down somewhere.”

Adrienne had turned in fairly early.
Without
the unspoken invitation, this time, something that left him relieved and disappointed both. The
mayordomo
had dined with them, and Tom mostly observed the conversation—apart from the upcoming harvest, it centered on thinning the leaves of the grapevines, which was apparently important and delicate, and on the state of the livestock. Neither was something he was very familiar with: Grapes weren't a North Dakota crop, and few of the Red River farmers kept much in the way of stock anymore; between high land values and long winters, cash crops paid much better.

He felt a little too restless to turn in early himself, his mind battered by a rush of strangeness and things half-familiar and half-alien that were harder yet. Instead he prowled about a bit. The house was just that, a big and quietly sumptuous country house, rather than a palace. He'd been surprised at that, and had gotten a laugh out of Adrienne when he mentioned it.

“Rolfe Manor's a bit more grand” she'd said. Then, in a sardonic tone: “And Colletta Hall is what San Simeon might have been, if William Randolph Hearst hadn't been crippled by a limited budget and aesthetic restraint.”

Coming down the stairs to the front hall put a great window to his left—glass and Venetian Gothic stone tracery, looking out on a courtyard garden; the panes had been turned out, letting in night-scent of cool air, greenery and flowers to add to the wax and herbal smell of the house. The hall went up two stories; looking from here to the carved ebony of the front doors in the dimness he saw the subdued lights gleaming off wood floors, and from heavy silk carpets that looked Oriental but weren't, quite; at least not the Orient he'd grown up with. A long tapestry hanging on one wall was woven of hummingbird feathers, lustrous and shining in greens and blues and crimsons almost metallic; beside it was a paddle-shaped weapon of some tropical wood, edged with bronze wedges in the shape of shark's teeth. The opposite wall held a portrait of an imperious-looking matron in a black dress with a long string of pearls, evidently the famed Aunt Chloe. A wrought-iron gallery ran along the landing above the front entranceway; each side of the hall had one large arched opening.

He took the one that led into the library-study. A black cat with a white bib of fur on its chest jumped down from an armchair as he entered, came over inquiringly, and then stalked on by when he tried to make friends.

The library lights came on as he touched the plaque inside the door. It was exactly what a house library should be: big windows on the courtyard side, with more Venetian tracery, wood-lined elsewhere, with some tables, desks and plenty of bookshelf space. There was even one of those sliding ladders, so you didn't have to strain or stand on a chair to reach the top shelves. Most of the books looked like they'd been used, particularly those toward a working desk that sported a big thin-film display screen, with an office chair and a lounger nearby.

He went to a glass-fronted liquor cabinet and poured himself a brandy, then looked at the shelves nearest the desk. Nonfiction on one side, reference works on forensics and intelligence techniques, computer security, personal combat methodology, farming, biology and ecology, with an accent on California and the West—naturally!—plus some titles published here in New Virginia:
Post-Discovery Ecological Transitions
and the like.

The history shelves were well stocked and extremely varied—he didn't even know what half the titles were about—but slanted towards the pre-Columbian western hemisphere, the Hellenistic world, and the Colonial period in America.

A few were histories of
this
world;
The Rise and Fall of the Alexandrian Empire, The Post-Alexandrian World, Folk Migrations in Early Historic East Asia, The Selang-Arsi Kingdoms, The Eastern Iranians
and
Post-Celtic Europe.

His fingers itched to take them up, but there would be time later. Ditto for the translations from the Greek, and from languages that had never existed in his history.

He recognized the authors and titles of a lot of the nearby fiction section, and a few piled on a table beside the lounger, but not the editions—these were leather-bound with stamped gilt lettering on the spines. Unless he was much mistaken, this was Adrienne's personal corner.

Some children's books sat on the top shelves, preserved for affection's sake—
The Jungle Book, Little Women, Treasure Island,
the complete
Tarzan,
other Edgar Rice Burroughs, a well-thumbed set of the
Narnia
books of C. S. Lewis. Then poets; he recognized Poe and Frost, Dickinson and the Brownings, then Kipling and Tennyson; he wondered who Betjeman was, but not enough to take down, and
Hassan
by Flecker looked intriguing—there were some lovely twenties Art Deco Oriental illustrations. Two shelves held authors like Sabatini , Farnol and Richard Davies Hanson from the early twentieth century—
Captain Blood, Martin Coninsby's Vengeance, The Sea Hawk, Ransom's Folly
and many more. The were all bound in the same patterned black leather with gilt-stamped spines; he examined the title pages and found that they were the Commonwealth standard editions provided to schools and public libraries—highly approved reading, evidently. A few of the novels were completely unfamiliar, by New Virginian authors.

The rest were eclectic:
The Dream of the Red Chamber
and
Genji Monogatori
next to Proust, Mary Renault and Updike. And there was a good deal of mystery and science fiction, as he'd expected; evidently Adrienne had been honest when she said her personal revelations were authentic as far as they went. It was even good tradecraft to be as honest as you could, he supposed; the fewer lies you told, the less you had to remember when you opened your mouth.

One whole shelf made him grin:
Into the Alternate Universe, A World Unknown, The Gates of Creation, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, The Complete Paratime, Three Hearts and Three Lions, A Midsummer Tempest, Chase the Morning, The Key to Irunium, Worlds of If, Sideways in Time, Lest Darkness Fall, Guns of the South
. . . He could see why an imaginative youngster in
this
neck of the dimensional woods would pick them up.

He settled down in the lounger; it creaked a little under his solid weight, but was remarkably comfortable. He pulled out the keyboard and swung it into a comfortable position, then signed on to Nostradamus.

“Just as a theoretical exercise, what would be the Colletta assets, if they want to take this place over?” he asked himself. “Purely theoretical. Assume that what Adrienne shows me is going to convince me to help her and her extremely successful pirate-clan family. . . .”

The cat returned, jumped up on the side table, sniffed at the brandy with a slight whisker flick of distaste, then rearranged the folds of Tom's bathrobe and settled down on his lap.

A soft three-note tone woke Tom Christiansen the next morning. He blinked himself awake and turned; the screen on a table not far from his bed had lit, and he belted on the bathrobe and walked over to it. It was early; the light through the east-facing window showed only a shimmer of red across the mountains to the east through a curtain of fog, and there was a cool, damp smell in the air.

Adrienne's face was in the screen. “I just got a call that you might want to share,” she said.

Tom had never had a problem coming to full consciousness when he had to. The screen split; the other face was Piet Botha's; the square, brutal countenance was frowning as he spoke.

“. . . Schalk,” he finished. “I've been asking around about him, and—”

“Ah, yes,” Adrienne cut in. “I remember you mentioned that you were
concerned about his wife and children.
That's something
nobody but we
should discuss. We were there, after all; I'm sure you
remember it as well as I do.
”

Tom saw the eyes in the jowly pug face widen and then narrow as the Afrikaner caught the slightly off-key stress she put on certain words.

“
Ja,
Miss Rolfe,” he said. “Well, I'll be coming north on that business I mentioned, hey? We could talk about it then.”

“That would be fine, Piet,” she said. “You're calling from Rolfeston, right? Looking forward to it. We can't start our harvest here until the fog lifts and everything dries out, anyway.”

Tom sat silently for a moment, until she came into his room; she was in a bathrobe, with her hair still tousled from sleep. She crouched down and pulled the jack that tied his machine into Nostradamus before she spoke.

“Uh-oh,” Tom said.
So you're worried someone might be tapping your phone, and Schalk had friends in on whatever he was in on.

“Uh-oh,” she replied. “Look, Tom, things are moving a little faster than I'd have liked. According to Botha, there are a lot of Versfeld affiliates in on this thing too; or at least that's the way I'm reading what he carefully didn't say. Have you seen enough of the Commonwealth to decide whether you're going to help me or not?”

He rubbed at his chin. “Enough to make a preliminary judgment,” he said. “I'll have to talk to Roy. I have some points I could go over with you.”

“We can get him up here quick,” she replied. “And then I think it's time to talk to Granddad.”