Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (32 page)

There was nervous laughter from the lot of us and once again I experienced that peculiar frisson. What was it about her that made her seem simultaneously desirable and menacing? Her beauty was unusual, but she had nothing of the classic femme fatale about her; her manner was friendly, intelligent, almost modest for all that she was obviously an operant of the highest rank.

I dismissed my uneasiness as we entered an inertialess tube capsule. We were the only ones aboard and I had failed to note its posted destination. There was no sensation of speed as the windowless thing whizzed through Orb’s guts. We relaxed in the comfortable seats and were able to indulge in verbal conversation again.

“I promised you some fun in the snow,” Marc said, “and Paliuli didn’t fill the bill. Of course I could have booked you into one of the big hotels in the central core, but they’re so bland and cosmop that you might as well be in Boston. I’d just about resigned myself to building a large igloo in the front yard of my A-frame when I happened to meet Lynelle at a bash Davy MacGregor threw. She made a suggestion that solved our problem in the best way possible—as you’ll see in just a minute or two.”

And the pair of them exchanged glances.

I said to myself: Qu’est-ce que c’est que ce bordel?! Which may be roughly translated: What the
fuck?

Not a single thought had escaped from behind either of their
invincible mind-screens. I’m sure no one else noticed a thing. Shig Morita was asking Marc some damn fool technical question about Orb’s weird sun, and Marc was answering with breezy aplomb.

Had I imagined that nanosec flash of mutual affinity between my cerebral great-grandnephew and the enigmatic smasher?

Before I could ruminate further on the topic a bell tone sounded, the door of the inertialess capsule opened, and Lynelle Rogers said, “Here we are, everybody!”

We emerged into another tube-station waiting room and were nearly blinded by the sudden razzle-dazzle. A silver-gilt sign on the wall gave the name of the place in ideographs and in more familiar Roman script:
BIRITON ENCLAVE—AMALGAM OF POLTROY.

Boom-Boom Laroche looked around and said, “Holy flaming shit!”

Shig Morita giggled.

Pete Dalembert murmured, “Welcome to the Arabian Nights!”

Alex Manion said, “Compared to Poltroyan homes, this is drab.” He’d studied on the Poltroyan planet of Fomiron-su-Piton.

Even if one has had some experience with this charming race’s mode of accommodation through Tri-D presentations or books, the first view of actual Poltroyal glitz is apt to bring on terminal flabbergast—to say nothing of scorched retinas.

Imagine a quaint little old nineteenth-century railway depot … with a décor that blends Black-Forest-Disneyland kitsch with the dizzying jewelry-box extravagance of a Balinese temple. Imagine intricately carved woodwork picked out with gold and silver leaf, rafters tarted up with finicky curlicues and gem-encrusted gargoyles, gilt-leaded stained-glass windows, an unbelievably lovely ceramic stove glowing like a great plique-à-jour lantern, golden filigree benches with red leather cushions set cosily near the source of heat, and an honest-to-God Chinese cloisonné floor. The Purple Folk love human fripperies. Everything from doorknobs to teleview cubicles in the tube station had been floridly embellished with lashings of colored enamel doodads, precious sequins, inset tiny mirrors, and faceted glass rondelles. Glitter, shimmer, sparkle, blaze, flash—time out to reset the fuses. That’s Poltroy, citizens! After a while you even get to like it.

The place was toasty-warm, but there was thick frost on the lower part of the windows and a clot of melting slush on a fish-fur mat near the outside door.

Lynelle Rogers beckoned and headed toward the exit. “It’s a bit nippy outside, but you can all turn up your body thermostats for a few moments, can’t you? There’s a sleigh waiting.”

Laughing and chaffing, we all stumbled out into the wintry night. A simulated starry sky with a brilliant, Y-branched Milky Way shone overhead. The Poltroyan station seemed to be situated in the midst of a snowdrifted forest clearing. Polished brass lamps cast a glow on icicles fringing the stationhouse roof and struck diamond glints from a light dusting of hoarfrost clinging to the platform and steps. A closed vehicle waited in the station forecourt, a kind of gussied-up Cinderella coach mounted on sprung sled runners that had ample space for seven people. Hitched to the sleigh was a foursome of high-rumped exotic quadrupeds in bejeweled harness. They had branched horns, long laid-back ears, and puffy tails.

“Good God,” drawled Pete Dalembert. “They look just like giant jackalopes! You know, those mythical critters of the American West—jackrabbits with antlers.”

“The Poltroyans call the animals yingi,” Marc said. “These are robotic, of course. On their own worlds, Poltroyans have mechanized snow vehicles and flying rhocraft for everyday transport. But the yingi are as traditional with them as horses are with us. Now they keep the creatures as pets.”

“All aboard!” caroled Lynelle Rogers. “I’ll drive.”

We piled in, glad that the interior was heated since the outside temperature was well below freezing. Lynelle took the reins, which entered the coach through a befurred slot, shook them, and gave a command in the Poltroyan language through a speaking tube. The mechanical jackalopes galumphed off in comical unison and we all rolled about laughing. The beasts even had sleighbells, another feature that the Poltroyans had borrowed from humanity.

The trip was a short one, but the illusion of an expansive snowy countryside was nearly perfect. The road went up hill and down dale, and on either hand were clusters of gigantic trees, gnarled and leafless branches lifted toward the stars, and lights scattered among the monstrous buttresses of their roots and dotting their trunks.

Our sleigh turned onto a neatly plowed lane and entered one of the groves, pulling up before a particularly impressive tree. Nestled within the shelter of its roots was the entrance to a typical Poltroyan abode, an antechamber built of mortared stone. The margins of its sloping roof were hung with festoons of fairy
lights—another adopted human novelty. The rest of the home was carved out of the living tree, and small lighted windows were visible higher on the massive bole.

Lynelle pulled up and we all got out. The patient robots appeared to snuffle and twitch their furry ears as they settled down to wait indefinitely. Realistic breath-clouds came from their nostrils.

Either Marc or Lynelle must have sent out a farspoken announcement of our arrival, for the front door of the tree-house was abruptly flung open and a diminutive lilac-skinned male Poltroyan dressed in jeweled robes bounded out to meet us.

“You’re here! You’re here! A thousand welcomes to my hearth, honored guests!”

The exotic ran up to me, seized both my hands, and forced me into an impromptu ring-around-the-rosy there in the snow. “Rogi, Rogi, mon vieux! Surely you remember me? Fritiso-Prontinalin!”

“Batège!” I cried. “It’s old Fred!”

Of course I knew him. The ever-perplexing Lylmik had forced the poor guy to rescue me and Teresa Kendall and newborn Jack the Bodiless from the snowbound fastness of British Columbia. Fred was a longtime academic colleague of Denis, a former Visiting Fellow in Psychogeomorphology at Dartmouth. He and his wife Minnie had become dear friends of our family during their tenure at the college, but I had not seen them since they returned to their own planet four years earlier, at the time that they were both named magnates.

Marc introduced Alex, Pete, Boom-Boom, and Shig, and the genial Poltroyan urged all of them to call him by his Earthling nickname. Then he led us inside, apologizing for Minnie’s absence; one of her Concilium committees was sitting. We crowded into the little stone foyer, stamping the snow off our feet, then followed Fred up a very long, steep, and narrow (for bulky humans) stairway into the main part of his tree-home.

Once again there were exclamations of awe and amazement. Alex Manion was right: the fantastic tube station didn’t have a patch on Fred’s parlor when it came to eye-popping Byzantine splendor, but for all that the place was comfortably untidy, strewn with book-plaques, discarded mukluks, outdated news printouts, and other homey clutter.

We all made admiring comments, but our little host hurried us up another stairway to our individual guest rooms on the upper level, each one small but tricked out fit to titillate Louis Quatorze.
Our luggage had already arrived. Fred invited us to freshen up and come down to the parlor in an hour or so for drinks and a simple fondue supper.

Then he turned to Marc. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you to move in, too? Minnie and I have oodles of room and we both adore house parties. The enclave’s Wintergarden is just across the grove from our place and it has facilities for every kind of cold-weather sport imaginable.”

“Do it!” I enthused. “You’ve been overworking yourself for months.”

But Marc shook his head. “It’s kind of you, Fred. But I’ve got to finish preparing a critical piece of CE equipment for demonstration before the Science Directorate. And there are still details connected with my new magnateship that I need to sort out. I certainly will drop by for skiing and mind-mashing with this gang of loafers as often as I can. Thanks again for taking them in.”

“The warmth of my abode is always yours to share,” Fred replied rather formally. Marc had never been quite as matey with him as Denis and Lucille and the other children and I.

“I’ll have to be leaving now,” Marc said. “But I want everyone to join me for dinner at twenty hours tomorrow at Les Trois Marches in Versailles Enclave. Lynelle will be there and I hope Minnie will be able to come, too.”

Fred went to see him and the Rogers woman off and I retired to my room, where there was a compact teleview with a data terminal. I did a bit of fast research and found out that Citizen Lynelle Rogers was a very high-ranking staffer of Dirigent-Designate Patricia Castellane of Okanagon. She was only twenty-three years old, and had lived on the cosmop world all her life. Her educational background was outstanding (political science, economics) and all of her metafaculties were grandmasterclass. She had never been married.

Well well well!

But I still felt vaguely uneasy.

Later, space-lagged and ready to relax, we sat in the parlor eating, drinking, and schmoozing while Fred attended to some domestic matters. The buffet our host had laid on was simple but delicious, and outside a preprogrammed snowfall was adding four cents of crispy new powder to the winter wonderland.

Boom-Boom and Shig lounged like Roman emperors on gilt-wood divans upholstered with blue sea silk, snacking desultorily
from a low table with golden legs and a top of priceless lapis lazuli that was now splattered with melted cheese and strewn with dirty dishes. The lads were still munching ambrosial Gi candies and slices of some exotic melon that tasted like perfumed custard. The big fondue pot was almost empty, as were the baskets of mauve Poltroyan bread and the big dish of Earth-style crudités.

Alex Manion had finished eating. Perched on a carved stool, he was doing a rather good job of hammering “The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring” on an exotic dulcimer inset with what might have been emeralds. Pete Dalembert, elected bartender, was making a round of killer shooters from the collection of outlandish liqueurs and flavored brandies on Fred’s sideboard. Poltroyans are crazy about syrupy booze.

I lay on the fish-fur rug at the far side of the room, replete, sipping a B&B and studying a big wall-hung Sony Tri-D masquerading as a reproduction of Fra Angelico’s
Madonna and Child with Saints.
The faces of the holy folk and angels had been modified to give them lilac complexions and ruby eyes, and their uncovered heads were bald and painted with delicate designs in the best Poltroyan fashion. It was sensitively done and the Fra would have approved.

After a while Fred came in, poured himself a stein of eau de vie de Danzig, and joined me on the floor. “Minnie won’t be back tonight.” He sighed and gazed moodily at the flakes of gold leaf floating in the clear, oily liqueur. “All of the Ethics and Philosophy Directorates are stuck in extraordinary session. Debating the morality of creativity enhancement.”

I h’mphed. “Marc’s E15 project?”

“Exactly.”

“Ti-Jean wanted to help plead his brother’s cause but Marc wouldn’t hear of it. How are things looking?”

Fred shrugged. “Poltroy is for it, the Simbiari are violently opposed, and the Gi and Krondaku lean toward conditional approval. Your Human Polity is split down the middle. A lot of humans seem to be more dubious about Marc himself than about his project. There are rumors that Paul Remillard prevailed upon the Lylmik not to nominate Marc to the Concilium two years ago when they were inclined to do so.”

“Afraid he might join the Rebel faction, I suppose.” Or was it just envy? I told Fred: “Marc’s mental assay is cosmic. He’s about the best we’ve got. But Paul’s wrong if he thinks Marc
would side with the Rebels. He’s above politics. All he’s interested in is that CE project of his.”

Fred took a hefty gulp of goldwasser and I tried not to cringe. “Minnie says that if Marc’s demonstration is a success and his brain shows no damage from the device, his research will probably be granted restricted approval. Great benefits could accrue.”

“So they say.” For a time we were silent. Alex Manion was softly singing “Poor Wand’ring One” from
The Pirates of Penzance
, accompanying himself on the Poltroyan instrument. The others were drinking Pete’s appalling shooters and cooking up exploration plans for the morrow.

“What are your feelings about Marc?” Fred inquired softly. “He was a remarkable person even when I knew him as an adolescent. Imagine! Defying the Galactic Magistratum in order to save his mother and unborn brother …”

Behind my own mental barricade, I reflected that Fred didn’t know the half of it! I confessed: “There were times, when Marc was very young, when I wondered whether he was really human. He was more withdrawn then—colder—and it was obvious that he was awesomely intelligent in addition to having those stupendous metapsychic powers. Neither his mother nor his father took the time to understand him. Teresa was sweet but neurotic, the lark who’d hatched an eagle egg, if you catch my analogy. And you know what Paul is like—passionate, driven, putting humanity’s success in the Milieu above every other consideration. The sexual games Paul plays have led Marc to despise him. He underestimates the tremendous things Paul has accomplished and his importance to the Human Polity.”