Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (52 page)

“I don’t mind.”

They made their way off the terrace into the big living room. It was dimly lit with scores of carved pumpkins with candles inside. In one alcove, a noisy variant of spin-the-bottle was being played with an empty champagne magnum. People were conversing in standing groups, sitting on the overstuffed furniture, and lounging on the floor. Pieces of discarded costume were beginning to litter the nooks and corners.

“Would you care for a drink or some munchies?” the clown asked as they passed an open bar.

“No thank you. But do have one yourself.”

He took a glass of designer water and ice. “It’s pretty noisy in here. Let’s go across the hall to the library. It’s got a balcony overlooking the sea.”

“Perfect.”

No one else was in the book-lined sanctum. The balcony doors were open and there were cushioned Woodard chairs waiting
outside in the shadows. A cool breeze rustled the giant fir trees that framed the spectacular view.

The clown plopped into one of the metal chairs and his sparkling companion took a seat more gracefully. The dark visor of her ornate helmet was up, but her face was entirely concealed except for the hazel eyes. The clown wore traditional whiteface with a broadly drawn smile and a red rubber ball for a nose. His suit was white with big colored polka dots and he had a pleated ruff around his neck. His multicolored fright wig was topped with a floppy pointed hat.

“You’re a great dancer,” he said. “Hope I didn’t step on your toes too often. I don’t go to very many parties. A bit of a workaholic, I’m afraid.” He had his mind-screen up, but it was only casually constructed and she had no difficulty sliding through it.

“You’re very light on your feet,” she said. “What kind of work do you do?” She took special care in fashioning the probe, holding it ready until the appropriate moment.

“A little of this, a little of that. I’m sort of an apprentice in the family sweatshop. Boring stuff. Money, power, interstellar commercial intrigue …”

She laughed. “I don’t suppose you want to dispense with the games and tell me your name?”

“Why, sure! Just as soon as you show me your face, Diamond Mask.”

“Not yet. I’m surprised you can’t see it already with your deepsight.”

Hunching over his knees, he leaned closer to her, squinting. “Oof! Gimme a break. You’re hiding behind the Great Wall of China!” Shaking his head, he fell back into his seat and pretended to fan his brow. “That’s what I call a real face-blanking headscreen! What are you—an axe-murderer on the lam? Or some famous Planetary Dirigent come slumming?”

She slid the probe home and began to weave the bypass structure.

“I’m only a college student,” she said. “Math and physics. Boring … like your old family business, Mister Bozo the Clown.”

There! Now she could begin the ream while they nattered on, making idiotic boy-meets-girl small talk. She would be able to ask him questions as well as extract data from his memories, just as she had done with the members of the Dynasty, and he would never suspect.

“I’ll bet you’re lovely behind that mask, little Diamond.” He grinned hopefully. “Come on. Give us a peek.”

“Oh, no. Not yet. Tell me more about yourself first. Do you know Marc Remillard well? This house of his is really a showplace, isn’t it?”

“Kind of ostentatious, if you ask me.” The clown waved a hand in lofty dismissal. “I’ve found that people who need to surround themselves with excessive amounts of material goods are—”

“—but when you’re a nine-hundred-kilo canary like Marc, you get to sing anywhere you damn please, right?”

She laughed appreciatively at the conclusion of the joke. “Oh, abso-bloody-lutely!” She got to her feet. “This has been ever so much of a giggle, Mister Bozo, but now I’d like to go dancing again.”

The clown’s face fell. “Aw, you promised, Diamond Mask. First let me see you for real.” He reached for her jewel-encrusted breathing equipment, but she skipped out of range, laughing again, and dashed away toward the terrace. The band was playing a fair imitation of the famous George Benson cut of “This Masquerade.”

The clown closed and locked the library door, then went into the adjacent room that served as Marc’s home office. A credenza yielded up a powerful subspace communicator at the touch of a button. The clown called Chief Evaluator Throma’eloo Lek at the Office of the Galactic Magistratum in Orb.

“Lek? Get ready for an intimode mind-squirt. I’m gone.”

Shutting off the communicator, the clown relaxed in Marc’s big leather chair, closed his eyes, and extended his mind 4000
lightyears to bespeak the waiting Krondak official on his intimate telepathic mode:

Lek, this is vitally important. I want you to arrange the immediate arrest of one Clinton Wolfe Alvarez, an administrative assistant to the Dirigent of Okanagon. He is an unusually powerful Grand Master with all five faculties up to snuff, so you’d better send a Krondak team. Hoke up some civil charge like suspicion of vehicular homicide. Groundcar hit-and-run. You’ll have to arrange a major computer hack-job, but I know you’re capable of it. See that Alvarez is held without bail and with as much publicity as possible until you and I can get to Okanagon to interrogate him. I especially want the Earth media to find out that this guy is in the slammer just as soon as it happens. And make it happen soon! Within hours, not days. Can you do it?

Certainly, if you say so. What is the actual reason for detaining this individual?

I’m virtually certain he’s part of Hydra. Catch you later …

The clown opened his eyes and sat there for a few minutes, thinking. Then he left the office and went out to find Rogi.

The bookseller was at the bar, filling a glass of ice cubes with straight Wild Turkey. “She do her number on you okay, kid?”

The clown nodded. “And she was very good, Uncle Rogi. Too damned good. Once I deliberately let her in, I was almost dead meat. I was actually forced to tell her the truth. Thank heaven she didn’t ask the wrong questions. Or maybe I mean the right ones.”

“Well, well. So she really is paramount-class.”

“Beyond a doubt … She fingered a Hydra-unit that her grandmother had inadvertently stumbled over and showed me the monster’s metaconcert config.”

Rogi brushed all that aside. “But am I off the hook? Did you fix it so she won’t drag me off to Okanagon and get us both killed?”

“All you have to do is make certain she checks out the interstellar news tomorrow. A certain Citizen Clinton Alvarez is about to be framed on a capital charge and locked up howling his head off in the Chelan Metro chokey on the planet Okanagon. Dorothea will call off the trip like a shot when she finds out.”

Rogi let out a sigh of relief. “What next?”

The clown gazed out at the dancers. Brom Bones and Diamond Mask were waltzing to Wes Montgomery’s “West Coast Blues.” Near them was a couple in strikingly beautiful Shakespearean
costume—a burly Moor of Venice and a delicate, pale-skinned Desdemona with scarlet lips. For an instant, Rogi thought he recognized the woman. But then he realized he was mistaken. Both she and her companion wore impenetrable mental disguises.

“I’m taking my own starship to Okanagon,” the clown said. “You make sure our mutual female friend goes to Kauai after she gets the news. Drag her there if you have to, and see that the two of you stay on the island under Malama’s protection until I find out what Clinton Alvarez has to say for himself.”

Dee nabbed Marc during the Ladies’ Choice waltz. At first he had attempted to demur because of the difference in their heights: he was over 40 centimeters taller than she, and the black jack-o’-lantern of the CE helmet made him even taller.

But she said, “You can’t back out of Ladies’ Choice, Big Boy!” She took both his hands in hers and gave him a coercive nudge that made his eyes widen. Then he laughed at her audacity, and they swung out onto the floor together. She was so light on her feet that they seemed to complement each other perfectly, a pair of graceful grotesques, and many of the other couples stopped to watch.

But she found it impossible to get into his mind.

No fair! she said. You’ve got the
hat
energized haven’t you.

He said: The E16’s internal power source won’t move mountains, but it’s quite adequate to Diamondproof me. You’ll simply have to take my word that I’m neither Fury nor part of Hydra.

“A likely story,” she said aloud. She tried to pull away from him but he held her gloved hands tightly. “Let go.”

“Don’t make a scene. You wanted to dance. Do it.”

“You big bully!” The diamond mask hid her fury at being momentarily outmaneuvered, but after a moment’s hesitation she submitted.

Marc only laughed. He had not bothered to extend his augmented power to an external disguise, and she could easily see through the bulky CE helmet with its zany stuck-on features to the ironically smiling face beneath. It was safe to assume that he could see her face, too.

“I’m delighted to meet you, Dorothea Macdonald. Since you’ve had a go at probing the other Remillards, I believe it’s only fair to give me a turn with you.”

Her dancing feet never missed a beat but the eyes above the glittering mask hardened. “Try it.”

He did, gently at first and then with building intensity, calling at last upon the maximum enhancement potential available with the limited power source of the helmet. His mental probe would have cracked a Krondaku Grand Master; it did not faze the fifteen-year-old girl.

“Bonté divine! You are a prodigy, aren’t you, Diamond Mask! Your mind-screen’s as strong as Jack’s.”

“Good.”

“You’re hostile … what a shame. And we’ve just met.”

“Let’s not pussyfoot,” she retorted. “You were expecting me to do just what I did. Your CE equipment is set for the augmentation of coercion—not creativity.”

The black jack-o’-lantern nodded. “The helmet is capable of enhancing only one metafaculty at a time. Switching it over requires the insertion of a different brainboard. It’s not difficult. The original interface will be plugged back in before I perform my bag of tricks later in the evening.”

“What are you going to do to me now?” she asked calmly. “Prosecute me for felonious mental trespass against members of your family?”

“I’m going to waltz with you,” Marc said.

“No warning me off the Remillard preserves with threats of legal retaliation?”

“Your enemy is ours. Believe me! We should join forces, not work at odds. My brother Jack would like to—”

“No!” For the first time, her silver-clad body faltered. “I don’t want anything to do with that—with him.”

“He’s human,” Marc said softly. “He was very impressed by your probing this evening. He says he couldn’t have done anything approaching it without cerebroenergizing. You’re an appalling young woman, Diamond Mask. I hope the Lylmik waste no time magnatizing you. You’ll join our elite little club then, whether you want to or not.”