The Occasional Diamond Thief

by J. A. McLachlan

  “And who’s’s this?” Messer Sodum lifts the ring negligently from the nest of crumpled tissue. His right hand, which holds it up to the light, is unadorned, but on his left hand are two large rings, glittering with diamonds and sapphires. He’s watching me, waiting for my answer.

  “It’s… my mother’s.” I glance around, moving my head as little as possible. There are no other customers, but an assistant stands a few feet away, rearranging a display of precious necklaces while the clear plexiglass hums above his hands in self-cleaning mode. I lean in toward the old man and say, in a carrying whisper which will surely reach the clerk, “she can’t come herself. She needs the money without my father knowing.”

  Sodum’s left eyebrow slowly rises into a scornful arch. “I’ll have t’evaluate this.” He picks up the ring. “See we’re not interrupted,” he tells the clerk, who smirks at me until his master gives him a look.

  I follow Sodum to a small back room. As soon as the door is closed he turns on me. “What d’yu think yer up to here? Who sent yu?”

  I stumble against a table and stammer out the name of the concourse peddler, thinking, the peddler lied! I’ve been set up! I back up to the door, ready to grab it open and dash out.

  His expression changes from suspicion to anger. “Bringin’ me somethin’ in daytime? He told yu that? No, no I didn’t think so! Yu didn’t think t’ ask how it’s done, did yu? I should turn yu in, yu little fool! Yu let me know when yer coming and yu come at night. There’s a door in the back there.” He juts his chin sideways toward the darkened end of the room. “Opens onto th’alley behind the shop. Use that.”

  I gape at him. What makes him think I’ll ever come again?

  He glares back at me. After a moment, I nod. He might give me a better price if he thinks I’ll come back.

  “Yu have an eye fer value,” he says sullenly, and I guess that’s the only reason he hasn’t kicked me out on the street. He settles on a stool and lays the ring under his jeweller’s eyecomp. I watch him move it slowly, recording each stone. “People yer age don’t often reco’nize quality when they see it. They go fer big and flashy. Fake stuff.” He snorts in derision and checks the numbers flashing across the rectangular screen at the base of his eyecomp before looking down into the eyepiece again. “Mmmm. Nice, very nice. Could be beginner’s luck.” He glares at me. “Who taught yu?”

  “No one.” I’m feeling a little sick, hearing that it’s so valuable, but I tell myself to douse it. Why take it at all, if it wasn’t valuable? “I inherited the skill,” I say defiantly.

  “Don’t be cute. Tell me how yu came by this. The truth, or I’ll send yu away with it.”

  I narrow my eyes and stare back at him. But when he picks up the ring and holds it out to me, my resolve breaks.

  “In a washroom. A woman took it off to wash her hands. Then she turned to fix her face, and forgot it.” My face feels hot. I could have called her, told her she’d forgotten it; instead I watched her leave.

  “She saw yu?”

  I shake my head. “I was in a cubicle. She’d moved to the make-up mirror before I came out. She was focused on it, listening to its instructions.” My mouth twists in disgust. Why would anyone let a communal mirror tell them how to make up their face? Couldn’t the woman even pretend to have some originality?

  “No cameras in a washroom.” Sodum nods, looking satisfied. “Come ’ere.” He places the ring back under the eyecomp. When I move closer he ignores me, as though he didn’t order me over. He rotates the ring gently with his electronic tweezers until each of the stones has been exposed once again to the light of the ’scope. After a final look, he stands up and motions me onto the stool. I hoist myself up and peer down into the eyepiece. A huge diamond gleams fiercely up at me.

  “Looka its planes—the angles it’s cut at. See how they draw the light t’the centre and toss it out again? Now look at it with yer eye alone.” He slides the ring out from the groove of the eyecomp and holds it up so I can see the diamond I’ve been looking at through the comp. The fire in it leaps from plane to plane as he turns it slowly.

  I nod, bored. Fine, it’s pretty. Is it worth as much as I need it to be?

  “Now looka this.” He pulls out a drawer underneath the table and lifts up a necklace. It’s got a single diamond, half again the size of the one in the ring; but where that one sparkles with life, this one is dull, its center oblique. He moves it around in the light. Its edges shine flatly, taking light in without throwing it back.

  “I understand.” I don’t really care. It’s not like I’m ever going to do this again. And compared to my father’s diamond, neither one is worth breaking a sweat over.

  Sodum smiles. Most people’s smiles widen their face, plumping out their cheeks to create a younger appearance. Sodum’s smile emphasizes the cadaverous thinness of his face with its long, narrow chin and avaricious eyes, slightly protruding as though there isn’t enough room for them in his face. I try not to grimace. He appears not to notice my reaction.

  “Shame to break down a piece like this. Looka that beautiful work.”

  “All right.” I’m done with this. What do I care if he thinks the thing is lovely? The woman didn’t, or she wouldn’t have left it lying there. People pay attention to things they love. That’s what makes them beautiful.

  Messer Sodum frowns through his ridiculous spectacles, then he shrugs. “Long as yu can recognize quality, yu don’t have t’appreciate it. This ring’s worth a thousand creds.” He points to the final numbers on the base of the eyecomp. I’ve heard that the meter can be ‘fixed’ and if it’s possible, this is the guy who’d do it, so I just look at him, as though I know more about this than I do.

  “I’ve got t’melt down the gold and cast the jewels into fresh pieces. My clerk saw yu, and he saw the ring. If there’d been a customer in the store— Yu put me at risk. I should send yu away. But since I like yu, I’ll split it 40-60 with yu. Next time, come at night and I’ll give yu 50-50.”

  “50-50 this time. 30-70 if you want me to come again.”

  Is the gleam in his eye amusement or anger? I don’t care; I’m the one who took the risk getting the ring. And I need the money. Five hundred creds will barely be enough. Of course I’ll never do this again, but it’s clear he wants the future business, so if I seem to be negotiating for it, he may let the more reasonable 50-50 go.

  “50-50 now, 40-60 next time if yu bring me the same quality, and nothin that’s known outsida its owner. No one will offer yu better.” He holds the ring out to me.

  “All right,” I say, hesitating just long enough to let him think he’s won.

  Sodum opens the drawer under the table again and gets out an envelope. I watch him write something on it, slip the ring inside and seal it, then shut it inside the drawer.

  “Come back in two weeks. At night, that door. I’ll teach yu t’open safes.”

  Back in the front of the store, he slides his card through the credcomp and keys in his password and account before he steps aside. My hand shakes slightly as I complete my end of the transaction. Is this really happening? I watch my account go from C75 to C575. It’s all I can do not to shout out loud.

  “Tell yer mother she can reclaim her ring within ten days.”

  I look at him blankly.

  “Standard practice.” His eyes narrow and flick sideways, where his clerk’s waiting on a customer nearby.

  “Of course,” I say. “My mother will expect that.”

  On the way home I stop to purchase two space-bags. This is really happening.

  Etin walks by my room as I’m packing my belongings into them. He stands at the bedroom door watching me.

  Don’t speak to me, I think. I’m going and nothing you can say will stop me, so don’t say anything at all. He doesn’t, but he keeps standing there. I find myself packing more slowly. Why should I be glad to see him? He’ll offer to take me out for a caf and gel, or to an action holovid—he knows I love them. Then he’ll ship out again
tomorrow, next week at the latest.

  I’m not being fair, even if it is true. Etin has to go on every run the Homestar makes. He lost money hiring a professional trader for some of the runs during our father’s illness and has to make it up now with continuous runs. Oghogho gets to go with him as an apprentice trader between study terms. Eventually they’ll be able to take turn about, as Etin and Father used to, and Etin won’t be gone so much. Well, that’s no help to me now, living with a mother who never speaks to me, rarely even looks at me, and a sister who’s little better.

  I walk to the closet and take down three jumpsuits—the last of my things.

  “I hear you translated at an Immigration Investigation. How did it go?”

  “Fine. They paid well.” I answer too quickly. He knows me enough to hear my nervousness. I take a silent breath and say, “I’m leaving.” Let him blame my tension on that. “I’ve registered with the College of Translators.”

  “You’re only fifteen.” He hasn’t moved from the door, but his voice has changed, is softer.

  “I turned sixteen last week.”

  “I’m sorry, Akhié. I’m away too much.”

  I shrug. What good are regrets? It’s not as though anything will change. I’ve found my own way out, anyway.

  “You’re still too young,” Etin continues. “No one there will be your age.”

  He thinks I might be lonely. I almost laugh out loud. As though I could be more lonely anywhere else than I am right here. But that isn’t Etin’s fault.

  “It’s what I want to do,” I say instead. “It’s what I’m good at.” I begin folding the first jumpsuit into my bag, not looking at him. “They’ve given me early admission. Why not? I’m already doing the work.”

  Etin smiles. “One job and you’re a translator? But I’m glad it went well. It was good of Dr. Eldrich to recommend you.”

  “They needed me.” Etin always assigns good motives to people, deserved or otherwise. “No one else can speak Malemese.” Why would they want to? If Seraffa wasn’t a port world of traders and merchants for all the outer inhabited worlds, I would never have found lesson flashdrives on such an insignificant and little-used language. I know that now. When I was ten I thought it must be an important language, because my father spoke it. I couldn’t understand why my brother wasn’t studying it as an apprentice trader.

  Etin is silent, watching me fold the second jumpsuit carefully into the space-bag. “She can’t help it, you know,” he says.

  I feel my stomach clench. “She could if she wanted to,” I answer after a moment. I can barely get the words out. My hands fumble, folding the last jumpsuit. Etin comes in and takes it from me. Shaking it out, he begins to fold it again. I sit on the edge of the bed with my head bent. I thought the hard part would be getting the money.

  “When you were born she called you ‘babydoll’. I used to watch her bathe you. You were so small, and bright. One day you looked at her and said, as clear as anything, ‘mommydoll’. Mother laughed with happiness. I heard her telling Father about it in a netcast.

  “She thought it would make him smile. But after that trip to Malem he never smiled. And he used to smile all the time, and laugh—you got your sense of humor from him—and lost it with him. We all did, especially Mother.”

  “Why did he even go to Malem?”

  “I was eight when he left. I remember them quarrelling about it. Mother said it was too far; the trip would take too long to be worth it. But the O.U.B. wanted transport there and they were willing to pay well. And Father thought by taking them he might get a foot in the door to trade with Malem.”

  “No one trades with Malem.”

  “That’s what Mother said, but Father was always an optimist. He even went to the trouble of learning Malemese.”

  “An optimist?”

  “You didn’t know him then. He changed after Malem. When he came back… I don’t know. He was feverish, not always rational. When his fever broke—well, you know how he was. Dr. Eldrich tried everything, none of the meds would work on him. He embarrassed me. I was nine years old and ashamed of my father.”

  “What happened to him there?” I don’t want to hear Etin’s confession. I idolized my father. When the other kids laughed at him I cut them off cold. Just as well. I don’t need any friends prying into my secrets.

  Etin shrugs. “He never spoke about it, not even to Mother. I guess we’ll never know.”

  “At least he didn’t name you something awful.” Etin means “strength” in Edoan. A good name, unlike mine, which means “sorrow.” Who names their kid that?

  “Akhié isn’t your official name. Mother wouldn’t name you sorrow. But that’s all he called you when he got home, and he was so fragile, always on the brink of fever and despair, she was afraid to openly name you something else. Soon everyone was calling you Akhié.”

  “What’s my real name, then?”

  He frowned. “Mother called you pet names—little bird, babydoll—your first few years. Then she called you Akhié, like Father did. I don’t think you have an official name; just your birth registration number. I guess you could pick one and register it, if you wanted.” He grins at me.

  What does he want from me? ‘Oh goody, I don’t even have a real name’?

  “I’ll think about it.” I get up and seal the two space-bags shut. The lining around them begins to hum and gently swell as oxygen is sucked out through the tiny nozzle and replaced with helium. In a few minutes they are so light, despite their contents, they gently bob beside me as I hold their strings.

  “You don’t have to go, Akhié. You can live at home and attend the College of Translators. Oghogho commutes to her college.”

  “Hers is closer. Anyway, I can’t stay here. You don’t know what it’s like.” How could he? Even when he’s home he only sees how things are for him.

  So I tell him: “Owegbé hates the sight of me. She’ll always remember that at the end I could understand Father when she couldn’t.”

  “Try to see it her way, Akhié. Malem took her husband from her. Malem devoured him. Even on his deathbed Malem claimed him. She hates Malem; hates the people, the language, the planet, hates the thought of it being in the same universe as us. How do you think she felt when her daughter began speaking Malemese too?”

  “That’s why she hates me?”

  “She doesn’t hate you. She’s afraid for you. And maybe afraid of loving you too much.”

  “No fear of that.”

  “Try to understand.”

  “No! It’s more than that. She blames me for his death even though she doesn’t know… what you and I know. And when she looks at me like that…” I swallow, and choke out, “…I think she’s right.”

  I know she’s right. I killed him. Etin knows. And now I’m a thief, as well, which he can’t ever know.

  “I’m afraid of what I’ll become if I stay here—if it isn’t already too late.”

  “Come on the ship with me. You’re too young to start college. You’ll learn a lot, and you’ll be with family.”

  I smile a little. “I’m a land-lover, Etin. I couldn’t live in space for months and months, without the wind and the soil and the sunshine.” The thought makes me shudder.

  “How will you pay to room at the college?”

  “I told you. The job paid well.” This is the question I’d feared. C75 would never have got me into college, let alone a room on campus. “I got a… grant. And I’ll work. Next year, I’ll get a scholarship. I have Father’s gift for languages, remember?” And other gifts of his, as well, I think, resisting the urge to touch my pocket where the small leather pouch lies hidden.

  How well did either of us know our father? Perhaps I’m the one who followed his real trade, not Etin.

  The space-bags bob gently behind me as I walk down the hall to the door. I don’t look back, even for Etin, as it closes behind me.

  Chapter Four

  It takes me two months—the last week barely eating—befo
re I go back to Sodum’s shop. Tuition and residence cost more than I thought, and the part-time job I expected to find—well, who’s going to hire a college freshman when they can hire a senior? The money I made from the diamond ring is spent.

  I could move back home and commute two hours to the College of Translators. Owegbé wouldn’t turn me away, but she wouldn’t welcome me, either. I don’t need that. So here I am in the middle of the night, somewhere near the back of Sodum’s store. It’s cloudy, the only light comes from the narrow, solar-powered panel that runs along the jutting edge of the roofs in front of the stores. Here at the back of them, it’s almost pitch dark. I’ve been up and down this unlit street twice, looking for the entrance to the alley. If I could just walk past the storefront and orient myself it would be easier, but the front street is too well-lit with sidewalk panels as well as the rooftop panel, and I don’t want to be seen near the store.

  Why shouldn’t I steal? I ask myself as I walk slowly in the dark. My father did. Apparently not very successfully or we’d have been better off—unless it was all used up during his years of illness. All but the magnificent diamond with its black, secret center. He wouldn’t sell it and neither will I, not ever. I only wish I knew its secret. According to the info-net, GoTo, there may be diamonds mined on Malem—extraordinary ones, if it’s true—but no one’s ever brought one away from Malem to verify the rumor. It could just as easily have come from a dozen other places where my father traded, but none of them describe a stone like his.

  Wait, there: I stop at a break between two buildings and look down a narrow dirt walkway littered with garbage. On either side the dirty walls of buildings rise up, barely discernable from the black night as they recede into the alley. I shiver, peering into the pitch-black alley.

  This is only temporary. Next year I’ll win the second year scholarship. But that won’t feed me now. My empty belly is more insistent than my fear, so I step into the dark. Four paces in and the darkness becomes tangible, a midnight space I have to force myself to walk into.

  I grope with my hands along the wall that I think is the outside of Sodum’s store. If I’ve got the right block, the right alley. How far along is his store? It’s been months since I sold that ring to him, I can’t remember the block front clearly, let alone the back. If I hadn’t passed him by chance at the station, where I was trying to shoplift something to eat, I wouldn’t have remembered his offer to teach me at all. On impulse I dropped my bag in front of him and, bending to pick it up, set the date for tonight’s meeting.