by Ryk E. Spoor
“As you say. In addition…I am accustomed to doing some form of work. I have been many things in my time, but even as a nobleman, I tried to busy myself with the responsibilities such a position entailed. I would feel quite at a loss if I had nothing at all to do.” He waited for me to acknowledge this second point, then continued. “Now, my former profession, while illegal, has the advantage of being paradoxically expected. When the government sees large sums of unexplained cash, it expects drugs are the source. If it finds what it expects, then it digs no farther. And if I can deny the government admissible evidence and have…connections who pay the right people, it is unlikely to do more than try to harrass the suppliers. Supplying drugs also, as I understand you deduced, has the advantage of no set hours. If I wish to be eccentric and meet people only at night, well, this is no more strange than some of the other people involved in this business.”
I rubbed my chin, thinking. “Uh-huh. You have this double problem. Not only do you have money of unknown provenance—and thus, from the point of view of any cop, probably crooked somewhere—you can’t afford to have people look at you too closely because there’s some aspects of your own existence that you have to keep hidden.
“So what you need is a job or profession which permits you to communicate with people exclusively, or nearly exclusively, during darkness hours, which has the potential to earn very large sums of money, and which you can at least fake having the talents for. Either that, or you need a way to get a huge sum of money here where you can use it openly and have an ironclad reason for getting that money.”
“I think you have summed it up admirably, yes. I also have something of a philosophical objection to the rates of taxation applied to certain sources of income, but that’s a different matter.”
“And way out of my league; finding more acceptable employment is one thing, convincing the federal government that it shouldn’t tax income is another.” Verne smiled in acknowledgement. I went on to the next item of business.
“And what are you doing about your soon-to-be-former business associates?” At a glance from him, I hastily added, “No, no, I’m not asking if you’re going to turn them in or anything. Just when and how you’re going to get out of the business, so to speak.”
“I have, in point of fact, already informed the relevant persons of my decision. I will, of course, clarify my position to them if any of them desire it.”
I looked at him questioningly. “You do realize that some of these people may not think of retirement as an option?”
He smiled, but this smile was colder somehow, less the smile of a gracious host and more the bared-fang expression of a predator. “I am sure I can…persuade anyone who might think otherwise, Jason. Do not concern yourself with that side of the equation.”
I gave an inward shiver, remembering what Elias Klein—barely a baby by Verne’s standards—had been capable of. No, I didn’t suppose Verne would have much trouble there.
“Okay,” I said. “I guess I can give it a shot. I’ll have to think about it a bit, and of course we’re going to have to go into your skills and knowledge areas. I’d feel kinda silly giving you a standard questionnaire, so I’ll just have to talk to you for a while on that—get a feel for what you would enjoy, what you’d hate to do, what you’ve already got the skills and knowledge for, and what you’d learn easily. Also, you’ll have to confirm or deny the various limitations I guessed for your people, and how they apply to you, so I know what things are definite no-nos and which ones are ‘sometimes, but only rarely,’ if you know what I mean.”
“I grasp your meaning, yes. Would you like to start tonight?”
I ran over my schedule in my head. “Unfortunately, no. I’d have to leave here in about another hour anyway—I have some early clients to see—and I’d like time to let the concept percolate through my brain. How about Thursday—day after tomorrow? I know that one was clear, since I checked on it yesterday.”
“Thursday will be eminently satisfactory. I shall expect you at the same time, then?”
“Fine with me.” I got up and extended my hand.
He shook it with a firm but not oppressively strong grip. “You have neglected to mention your fee, Jason.”
I shrugged. “This isn’t a normal job—I have no idea what to charge at this point. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In fact, I have a better idea. When I bring over the work-for-hire agreement, the price will be left open to your discretion. You can decide after the fact what the work was worth to you.”
“Are you not concerned I might take advantage of this option?”
I shook my head. “You’re a man of honor. You’d feel too guilty. In fact, I will probably come out ahead, since you’re likely to charge yourself more than I would.”
He laughed. “You are indeed wiser than your years would make you, Jason. Good night, then, and have a pleasant journey home.”
“After that dinner, I certainly will. Thank you, Verne.”
Chapter 11: Personal History
“All right,” I said, “you can meet people in the daytime if necessary. Just not a good thing to do often. That’s great—there are a lot of things, like signing papers, getting permits, and so on, that are close to impossible to manage if you can’t get the principal to make himself available when other people are.”
I was going over the notes I’d gotten that night, while Verne answered my questions and read the work-for-hire agreement. “Yes, I understand that,” Verne confirmed. “I will certainly make myself available for official meetings in the daytime, but would strongly prefer such things be very few and far between. By the way, I admire your wording in this agreement—making it clear that part of your job is to take into consideration my special requirements, while being so utterly generic that someone getting a look at this agreement wouldn’t think anything of it.”
I grinned. “Wish I could take credit for that one, but I stole most of the wording from similar agreements for people with disabilities.” I stood up. “Okay, let’s take a look around your house here. Sometimes what you see in a man’s home gives you ideas—I’m assuming you keep at least some things around because you like them, not just for show.”
“Indeed I do. Most things are for my enjoyment, or that of my people.” Verne rose also and began to lead me on a tour of the house.
Verne Domingo’s “house” was one of the only ones I’d ever visited that deserved the apellation “mansion.” It rose a full three stories, sprawled across a huge area of land, and had at least one basement level (given my host’s nature, I was not at all sure that there weren’t parts of the house, above or below ground, that were being concealed). His staff numbered twelve; thirteen, if you counted Morgan. He seemed wryly amused at the coincidence of the number, and noted to me that it had been that way for at least three hundred years. “Therefore,” he said, “you must forgive me for putting little stock in triskaidekaphobia.”
“So none of your staff is less than three hundred years old?” I asked, trying to get my brain around the concept.
“Not precisely. What has happened is that, on the occasions I have lost a member of my household over the past few centuries, I have quickly found a replacement. This number seems to be suited to my requirements for efficiency, comfort, and security. My youngest, in fact, you have met—Hitoshi Mori is scarcely seventy-five years old, and has been in my service for forty-two years.”
“Morgan, I know, can work during the day. So they aren’t vampires like yourself, right?”
Verne nodded, pausing to point out the engravings that were spaced evenly around the walls of this room. “It is possible for someone such as myself to bind others to my essence—allowing them to partake of the power that makes me what I am—without giving them all the limitations of the life I follow. Naturally, they do not gain all the advantages, either.”
“No blood-drinking?”
Morgan shook his head, opening the next door for us. “No, sir. We do have a preference
for meat, given a choice—our metabolism, to use the modern term, seems to use more protein and so on. We gain immortality, some additional strengths and resistances, but nothing like the powers accorded to Master Verne.”
“This is my library, Jason,” Verne said as we entered another large room, with tall windows that admitted moonlight in stripes across the carpet before it was banished by Morgan’s finger on the switch for the overhead lights. “One of them, to be more precise. This contains those works that might be commonly consulted, or read for pleasure, and which are not so unusual or valuable as to require special treatment.”
The other three walls were covered with bookshelves—long, very tall bookshelves. A runner for one of the moving bookladders I’d seen in some bookstores ran the entire circumference of the room, aside from the one window-covered wall. Other tall shelves stood at intervals across the room, with a large central space for tables and chairs. Two people were there now, one taking notes from a large volume in front of him, the other leaning back in her chair, reading a newspaper. “Ah, Camillus, Meta, good evening.”
The two rose to their feet. Camillus was the one who’d led the three-man assault team that had kidnapped me; a man of average height, slightly graying brown hair, brown eyes, and the wide shoulders and bearing of a career soldier; despite a strongly hooked nose, I was sure that Syl would have rated the tanned, square-faced Camillus highly on looks. Meta was a young lady—or, I amended, a young-looking lady—whose height matched Camillus’, but whose long, inky-black hair very nearly matched her skin shade. Despite that, her eyes were a startling gray-blue, and her features were sharp and even, giving her a look of aristocratic elegance that made questions of beauty almost inconsequential.
“No need to rise,” Verne said with a smile. “But since you are up, please say hello to Jason Wood.”
“Mr. Wood.” Camillus’ grip was as strong as I would have expected. “Domingo’s spoken of you quite a bit of late. My apologies for a certain…comment on our prior meeting?”
I grinned. “As long as the threat’s withdrawn, sure.”
“It is forgotten, then. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist.”
“Sure,” I said. “What exactly do you do?”
“I’m the master-at-arms and in charge of security here,” he responded.
I noted the nature of the material scattered around his side of the table and grinned. “And how do you feel about that?”
He understood exactly what I meant and grinned back. “You have me there. By all the gods, security has changed in the past century! At least in the old days the common man didn’t have access to sorcery; nowadays, you can pick up one of these,” he gestured at several home electronics catalogs, “and order up something with the eyes of an eagle and the hearing of a bat that will send all it sees and hears right back to you.”
“Well, I noticed the security setup you have here; it’s not bad for a man who seems to still be playing catch-up on the century.”
He acknowledged the comment with a bow. “Mostly done on contractor recommendations. I’m not comfortable, though, with having anything in the house that I don’t understand.”
“Then ask me. Once I’ve got Verne’s problem out of the way, I’ll be glad to bring you up to speed. I’ve got plenty of resources in the security area.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, smiling. “Oh, sir,” he said, looking at Verne, “Carmichael sent a pretty pissed-off message to you. I don’t like the tone of it.”
The two of them went off a ways to discuss Carmichael. I turned to Meta and shook her hand. “And your position here is…?”
“I suppose you might call me…librarian? Archivist? Something of that sort.” Her grip was gentle, though not a limp fish by any means.
“Ah, so I’m in your territory here.”
She smiled. “It is of course Master Domingo’s, but I have jurisdiction as he allows.”
Meta and Verne let me wander the library for a few minutes; it was rather instructive, I thought, to see just what Verne thought of as “not unusual or valuable enough” to warrant being kept elsewhere. Even with my relatively limited knowledge of books, I noted several items on the shelves that would easily bring in several hundred dollars if sold.
The next hour of the tour passed without notable event—the other staff might have been sleeping or out for the evening, but whatever the reason I didn’t run into any more.
Finally, Verne led me down a wide flight of stairs into the basement, which was as high-ceilinged and opulently furnished as the downstairs, but had clearly greater security. “And here is my bedroom.”
“Wait a minute. I thought you said that room on the second floor was your bedroom?”
“My show bedroom—the one that visitors of most sorts will be told is my bedroom, if they have any occasion to ask or discover it. I can rest there, if necessary, but here, enclosed in the earth itself, I am better protected.”
The room was very large; I was vaguely disappointed not to see a classic pedestal supporting an open, velvet-lined coffin; instead there was a huge four-poster bed with heavy curtains about it. Several small bookshelves stood at intervals along the walls, along with some large and oddly elaborate frames for paintings, a desk and chairs, a fair-sized entertainment center, and two wardrobes. Besides the paintings, there were a few other objects on the wall, most of them weapons of one kind or another. I wandered around the room, studying these things carefully. The oddity of the painting frames became clear when I realized they were double-sealed frames—museum quality, for preserving fragile materials against the ravages of time. Probably nitrogen-filled.
“So, Jason,” Verne said finally, “does anything occur to you?”
I rubbed my chin. “I’m getting something of an idea, it’s just being stubborn and refusing to gel. I need just one more thing to trigger it. Unfortunately, I haven’t got any idea what that one more thing is.”
“Well, I have saved the part I believe you will find most entertaining for last,” Verne said. “It is, of course, natural that I would place those things I value most in the most secure area. Here is the entry to my vault—a small museum, if you will.” He led the way to another room, relatively small and undecorated, whose far wall was dominated by a no-nonsense, massive door suitable for use in banks and government secure areas. Verne placed his hand on a polished area near the door, then punched in a number on a keypad and turned the large handle. The door opened onto another set of stairs going down to a landing which ended in another door—also clearly strong, though nothing like the several-foot-thick monster Verne had just swung open. I paused, but he gestured me down. “Go first, Jason. I think you will find it more effective to see it without my leading the way.”
I shrugged, then went down the steps. As I reached for the door handle, I saw it turn and push inward, as though grasped by an invisible hand. I felt the prickle of gooseflesh as I realized this wasn’t any cute gadgetry, but a subtle demonstration of Verne Domingo’s powers, clearly for the effect. I felt myself momentarily immersed in something mystical, standing at the edge of ancient mysteries. The black door swung open, into inky darkness. Then the same unseen force switched on the lights.
I can’t remember what I said; I think I may have gasped something incomprehensible. What I do know is that I stood for what seemed an eternity, staring.
In that first instant, the room was ablaze with the sunlight sheen of gold, the glitter of gems, the glow of inlay and paint so fresh it might have been finished only yesterday. At first I couldn’t even grasp the sheer size of the vault’s collection; it wasn’t possible, simply wasn’t even imaginable that so many artifacts and treasures could be here, beneath a mansion in upstate New York.
Once more, a quote from long-ago years surfaced: Lord Carnevon to Howard Carter as Carter took the first look into the tomb of Tutankhamen: “What do you see?”
And Howard’s response: “Wonderful things.”
There were statues of
animal-headed gods, resplendent in ebony and gold, bedecked with jewelled inlay. A wall filled with incised hieroglyphics provided a sufficient backdrop to set off coffers of jewelry, ceremonial urns, royal chariots. Farther down, beyond what was obviously the Egyptian collection, were carefully hung paintings, marble statues, books and scrolls in glass cases, something at the far end that shimmered like a blown-glass rainbow…
I stepped slowly forward, almost afraid that the entire fantastic scene would disappear like smoke. I reached out, very hesitantly, and touched a finger to the golden nose of a sitting dog.
“From the chambers of Ramses II,” Verne said from behind me, almost making me jump. “His tomb was looted quite early, as things go; I managed to procure a large number of the artifacts, which was fortunate since otherwise they would have been melted down or defaced for valuable inlay and so on.”
I just shook my head, trying to take it in. Ramses…II? “That’s the one they associate with Moses?”
“Indeed.”
I walked cautiously around this first incredible chamber, stopping at a huge sarcophagus. The golden face rang a faint bell, which was odd because I’d seen very few statues or busts of Egyptian nobles. What…I studied some of the symbology, not that I was an authority or even much of an amateur in the field, but because maybe something would trigger a memory. As an information expert, it’s a matter of pride to get the answers yourself, even if it’s by luck.
There! That disc, the rays…
My head snapped up and I looked at Verne in disbelief. “No. It can’t be.”
He inclined his own. “Can’t be…what?”