The Crown Jewels

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Happily, my lady.”

  As she told the telephone whose number to call, the Countess pictured in her mind the smooth yellow sward, the click of mallets and balls, the brisk, fresh air. (Baron Sinn searching for his ball amid a pile of kibble fruit. Lovely, lovely.) And while she enjoyed herself, the plan would be moving forward. That was all she asked.

  *

  “I’m going to think for a while.” Maijstral had just assembled his late luncheon, a pair of sandwiches on a tray. “Please don’t disturb me unless you’re positive it’s very important.”

  Maijstral was good enough at being an aristocrat that neither Gregor nor Pietro Quijano thought to ask what he intended to think about, or how long it was going to take. Only Roman knew Maijstral well enough to detect a slight falsehood in his bearing, and Roman was off on an errand at Woolvinn Leases, Ltd.

  The truth was that Maijstral had nothing better to do until Roman returned from his errand, and he didn’t want to hang around gazing at the reliquary while Quijano continued his fretting. Maijstral planned to finish watching his Western while he ate his sandwiches, and afterward take a nap, but he knew that maintaining a certain level of mystery was an important factor in sustaining his position as leader, and that the admission of how he intended to spend the rest of the afternoon would not serve to enhance his mystique.

  Maijstral sat cross-legged on his bed, while the Western played out to its cathartic end, Jesse and Priscilla dead, Bat wounded, the King alone . . . a lump rose in Maijstral’s throat at the last lonely guitar chords from the man walking companionless into the bloody sunset. The tragedy was awesome and gorgeous, and Maijstral felt better instantly. He stifled his longing for a third sandwich— he might have longed for something different, but the kitchen was Roman’s province and Maijstral didn’t know how to fix anything else— and then Maijstral stretched out on his bed and tried to sleep.

  Withal, this was perhaps an odd reaction for a man whose honor had just been mortally insulted. He should, perhaps, have been stamping and fuming and plotting bloody-handed deeds of revenge. No doubt that’s what Robert the Butcher would have done. But Maijstral was more careless in these matters— in fact, he had no intention whatever of challenging Baron Sinn or anyone else, or indeed of risking his skin more than it had been risked already. He had made the threats to impress Quijano, and because Roman expected it to be said. He knew how to play a part as well as anyone.

  He knew that he was terribly deficient in his moral sense, but this knowledge seemed not to bother him. No doubt he was deficient in conscience as well.

  Conscienceless, his nerves soothed by sandwiches and safe video tragedy, he slept well.

  *

  Roman changed into proper modest clothing before waking Maijstral, and bade a regretful farewell to Mr. Castor as he hung the braided jacket in his closet. Maijstral, used to being awakened at odd hours, snapped fully awake as soon as Roman scratched softly at the door.

  Roman knew, as soon as he saw Maijstral stretched on the bed, that he had been secretly enjoying low entertainments again. Stifling a spasm of resignation, he reported his findings to Maijstral and watched as Maijstral ran through the hologram of Anastasia’s residence. Maijstral ran through it twice, nervously twisting the diamond on his finger, then looked up.

  “We shall have to make a plan,” he said. “Do you think Mr. Quijano can handle a pistol?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Paavo Kuusinen drowsed most of the afternoon away, stretched out full length beneath a yellow-leaved cricket tree. He was on a knoll about half a mile from Countess Anastasia’s residence; by cracking open one eye he could look down across the back of the manse and the rear portico with its double row of pillars that overlooked the smooth expanse of the croquet court, a court surrounded by a grove of low, red-fruited kibble trees. Through the longfinders he carried, Kuusinen could see the back windows and occasional dim figures, usually robots, moving behind them. (From his comfortable position he couldn’t see the boarded-up front window behind which Amalia Jensen languished in her well-fed exile, but then he was new at the art of surveillance.) His flier was parked out of sight on the reverse slope of his knoll.

  There hadn’t been much to see since morning; only the Countess playing croquet with Baron Sinn. By putting his longfinders on maximum amplification, Kuusinen could see they both carried pistols as well as mallets. He watched long enough to note that the Countess was a furious and competitive player. She had given the Baron a ball of a peculiar shade of red, and when, with cracks that reverberated all the way to Kusinen’s knoll, she whacked Sinn’s ball off beneath the kibble groves, Sinn was compelled to sort his ball out from fallen kibble fruit of an identical size and shade. Kuusinen concluded the color of the ball could not be anything other than deliberate psychological warfare on the part of the Countess.

  It worked. She won both games.

  At siesta the games ended. Kuusinen drowsed. On waking he yawned, stretched, and searched the windows again with his longfinders. Nothing of interest. He went to the picnic basket he’d had a restaurant deliver, ate a cold salmon salad, and drank a bottle of rink. Perhaps, he thought, he should call Maijstral and tell him anonymously where Amalia Jensen was being held prisoner. He decided to wait until the morning before making the call.

  Stars appeared. A cool wind began to gust through the cricket tree. Kuusinen shivered and put on a cloak. In a moment, when the breeze fell silent, he heard the delicate whisper of a flier somewhere in the night sky. He trained his longfinders upward and saw the unmistakable silhouette of a Gustafson SC-700 moving against the Milky Way. He smiled. Maijstral’s flier was a Gustafson.

  The flier settled over a mile away, onto the far side of a tree-crowned ridge with a view of the front of the building. Kuusinen couldn’t see them from his position; that didn’t bother him. He got some system-assists from his flier and dry-swallowed them, intending to keep alert. Something was going to happen, and he was sure that when Maijstral made his move, he could get a view of it somehow.

  Another flier whistled overhead, skimming Kuusinen’s knoll. Kuusinen looked up and waved. Another Gustafson SC, close enough so that Kuusinen could see two people in it. It circled and landed by the first. In a few minutes, both fliers rose and sped off over the horizon.

  Kuusinen frowned. Maijstral’s behavior— if this was Maijstral— seemed odd. But then he realized that the fliers had probably been sent somewhere on autopilot, just in case anyone had seen them land.

  Paavo Kuusinen smiled as the first wave of system-assists began to dance along his nerves. This was going to be fun.

  *

  “Hey. Do you know what you get when you cross a range-drover with a dithermoon? A baby who vetches in purple.”

  Amalia Jensen convulsed with laughter. She raised her bound ankles and kicked her legs as she cackled. Tvi grinned. It hadn’t been a half-bad idea to leave Amalia efficiently tied up after siesta and slip downstairs for a bottle of wine. In order to avoid detection, she’d had to sneak down the circular stairs in the round library on the east side, but this was no problem for a practiced thief. She snuggled deeper into her overstuffed chair.

  “My grandfather worked as a dithermoon for a season,” Amalia said. “He had all sorts of stories. That was before the Rebellion. He commanded a cruiser at Khom, but didn’t meet Admiral Scholder till after the war.” She sighed. “My father was in the Navy, too. I lived at sixteen bases before I was twelve. That’s when my father died in the Hotspur accident and my mother came here. We lived with my grandfather till he died.”

  “My childhood was similar,” Tvi said. “But my parents were both civil service.” She supposed she wasn’t giving too much away by that admission— Imperial civil servants numbered in the hundreds of millions.

  “Most of the places were all right. The border’s fairly close to Earth, so most of the bases were near or on planets that had been inhabited for a long time. It wasn’t as if my dad was a member of the Pioneer Co
rps or anything.”

  “But it was still military. I can imagine.”

  “It was, well, disciplined. But that was all right. The part I didn’t like was my father going away all the time.”

  “But you didn’t join the Navy yourself.”

  Amalia Jensen shrugged. Her face was drained of expression. “I have a mild form of epilepsy. It’s controllable with medication, but it still disqualified me. It’s not curable without great expense, and the Navy would prefer to sasve their money and train someone else.”

  “Sorry.” Tvi wondered what epilepsy was. Something peculiar to humans, apparently.

  “I could have got into Planetary Services. But for me it was the Navy or nothing.” Tvi’s stomachs rumbled. She looked at her watch and saw that Khotvinn would be bringing supper fairly soon. Better finish the bottle. “More wine?” she asked.

  “Thank you. So I got into politics instead. It seemed the best way to serve. Outside the military, anyway.” Tvi brought Amalia’s wrists and ankles together, poured wine, stepped back across the room, and then sat in her chair again, all while Amalia went on talking.

  “Your father would approve, you think?” Tvi asked.

  “I think he would,” Amalia said. “He and my grandfather were always strong prohumans.”

  Tvi lapped at her wine meditatively. “Mine doesn’t approve of me at all,” she said. “We were in constant combat when I was growing up. But I wonder. If my father had died when I was twelve, would I be in Imperial uniform, trying to be the best timeserver on fifty planets?”

  Amalia Jensen seemed lost in thought. There was a knock on the door that made them jump, and then Khotvinn’s voice.

  “Relieving you.”

  Tvi lapped up the rest of her wine in a hurry, then hid the glass in a drawer. The little left in the bottle she poured into Amalia’s cup.

  “See you later,” she said.

  “Au revoir, Mr. Romper.” With a drunken giggle.

  Tvi was surprised to see a long sword strapped to Khotvinn’s waist and a strange defiant gleam in his eye. Tvi wondered what notion had crossed the troglodyte’s brain this time, then decided he’d probably spent the afternoon being fired up by a recording of Ten Greatest Militarist Speeches or something equally exciting. “The prisoner’s in good spirits,” she reported.

  Khotvinn grunted. “What was the name of that person who was visiting her last night?”

  Tvi was surprised by this evidence of interest. “Him? Lieutenant Navarre, I think.”

  “Hm. Good.” Tvi could almost watch the slow tumblers of Khotvinn’s mind clicking over. The fur on her shoulders rose slightly— the cave-dweller was perfectly eerie, with his sword and intent expression— then she consciously smoothed her fur and handed over the Ronnie Romper hologram. She was, on reflection, almost glad she didn’t know what Khotvinn was thinking. It showed, she thought, that her ancestors, unlike his, had probably advanced somewhat in the last million or so years.

  Tvi moved down the servants’ stair, careful not to sway too drunkenly. Odd, she thought, that the captive was the only person in this place she could talk to. Amalia Jensen might be something of a political crank, but her opinions weren’t vicious and at least she seemed a more balanced sort than the other cranks around here.

  *

  “There’s some geezer on a knoll off to the northeast,” Gregor said. He was in his darksuit, soft, loose crepe covering everything except the pale oval of his face, but hadn’t yet turned on the camouflage holograms. “He’s got a flier parked out of sight. He waved at us as we flew overhead. No effort made to conceal himself. There was nothing to hide behind but a tree that isn’t even as thick around as he is.”

  “Do you think he’s a lookout?” asked Pietro. He was wearing a spare darksuit, and weapons hung from his belt. He had proved a quick study at their use, but Maijstral and his assistants hadn’t any idea of how he’d act when the real thing came, and decided to equip him only with nonlethal weapons against which their own darksuits had built-in protection.

  “A lookout?” Maijstral asked. His voice came eerily from the cloudy blackness of a hologram. “Possibly, although I’d think it more likely he’s police, or one of Miss Jensen’s political contacts.”

  Pietro shook his head briefly. “No. Not one of us.”

  Maijstral went on. “He can’t see half the approaches to the house from where he is— if he is a lookout he’d do better on the roof— but we may not be dealing with professionals here.” He had just come down from a short flight above the trees, searching the front view of the house with longfinders. “There’s a window boarded up on the second floor, near the southeast comer. Fairly obvious, but then the Countess was never subtle.”

  Gregor had a hologram projector in his hand. He touched a button and suddenly, glowing in the dark night air, the white expanse of the house appeared. Maijstral turned off his darksuit and pointed with a soft-gloved hand. “There.”

  Gregor altered the perspective of the hologram, moving through the second floor of the building.

  The front of the building was shaped like a broad, shallow U, a covered veranda held within the U’s gentle arms. On the southeast corner, second floor, was a drawing room that occupied the arm of the U on that story. Just to the north of the drawing room was a circular library, two stories in height, with an ornate, wrought-iron spiral stair and a large crystal chandelier. The western-facing windows of the drawing room looked out over the roof of the veranda, and in the drawing room’s northwest corner was a door that led into the upper front hall. Moving down the hall, one door to the west, was the room with the boarded-up window.

  Maijstral found the situation testing his temper. “There’s just too much access to the second floor,” he muttered. “Look here. Inside the house, within a few paces of Miss Jensen’s door, there’s a servants’ stairway, and just around the corner from that is the grand stairway to the ground floor. We’ve got the spiral staircase coming up the round library on the east side, and that stair has access to the southeast drawing room, and from the drawing room it’s two paces to where they’re keeping Miss Jensen. There are two stairs from the front porch to the balcony on the front portico, and they lead to Miss Jensen’s window. And then elsewhere there are— let’s see— four other stairways and two elevators.”

  “That gives us more ways out.” Gregor offered.

  “It also means that we can run into trouble on any route,” Maijstral said. “We’re going to have to assume that Miss Jensen is guarded, and we may not be able to deal with the guard in silence. Therefore we must plan against an alarm being given.”

  “A diversion, sir,” suggested Pietro. “Some of us could try charging in the back way. . . .”

  Maijstral turned his ears down in disapproval, and Pietro fell silent. “I think not.” he said. “Splitting our forces invites chaos, and the diversion would accomplish little if they ignored you and instead concentrated on defending Miss Jensen.” He frowned, twisting the ring on his finger. “What we need to do is seal off Miss Jensen’s room for the time it takes to break her free. All we have to do is get an a-grav harness around her and a proximity wire around her neck. Then even if she’s tied up, she can manage her own escape while we cover her withdrawal.”

  He gave his ring a final twist, as if in decision. “Very well. Roman, you and Mr. Quijano enter through the second story drawing room on the southeast comer. Roman, you will move to the hall door and stand by ready to deal with any guards in the corridor. Mr. Quijano, your particular job will be to block the door to the library staircase. Don’t just lock it, put a piece of furniture in front of it, as heavy as you can carry. And then help Roman if he needs it. Gregor, you’ll go in the unblocked window next to Miss Jensen’s. Any guards in the corridor will be caught between you and Roman.”

  “And you, boss?”

  “I will fly first to Miss Jensen’s window. I want to make certain she’s actually being held there before any of the rest of us make a move.
”

  Pietro Quijano gave Maijstral an admiring look. The others accepted his plan without a word. Maijstral had his own reasons for wanting to go first, and wanting to be on the second floor balcony where there were no guards and a clear field for escape, and his reasons had nothing to do with a hope that Pietro might admire his bravery.

  “We’ll approach from the southeast to avoid detection from that fellow on the knoll, whatever he’s doing there. Keep in cover till I give the signal—”

  “Deus vult, sir?” offered Roman.

  Maijstral smiled. Roman was ever prepared to trace Maijstral’s ancestors far beyond the point that Maijstral found creditable. Jean Parisot de La Valette was, in any case, supposed to be a celibate, and furthermore would almost certainty not approve of his alleged descendant.

  “Deus vult. Very well. Thank you, Roman.”

  Maijstral asked each of his companions to repeat his instructions aloud, making certain he knew what he was supposed to do, and then led them on a brisk hike along the bottom of the ridge, staying out of sight of the mansion, and then through the first tripwire alarm, the hemispheric cold-field that surrounded the building like an invisible bubble. Roman, controlling Pietro Quijano’s darksuit through a proximity wire, showed the young man how to slip through the net.

  A brightly lit flier appeared over the western horizon. Maijstral froze, snapping on his darksuit, his heart hammering in a perfectly absurd way. He was glad no one could see the way his hands had begun to tremble. Roman’s darksuit was also turned on, but apparently he had raised his longfinders. “Dewayne Seven,” he said.

  An old model, not very fast. Visitors? Maijstral wondered. The flier circled, then landed out back. Not visitors, Maijstral concluded, if they were using the servants’ entrance. Plumbers, cooks, maybe people installing new security gadgets. If the latter, it was time to move quickly.

  “This may work to our advantage,” he said. “They will be less likely to do violence if there are outsiders in the house.”