“Tomorrow we’ll also find out more about the life and times of Zack Rolfe,” said Jake. “And we have to find out what he meant by Excalibur.”
After taking another swig, Gomez again contemplated the ceiling. “Is it worth the anguish?” he murmured.
“Is what?”
“I was carrying on a debate with myself,” confessed his partner. “It’s possible that I can sweet-talk a stewpot of useful info out of the fair Natalie. I’m just not sure if I want to get snared in her web yet again.”
“Natalie can be a pest, but you’ve worked with her before,” Jake pointed out. “And she has been moderately helpful, which she was over in Japan a few months back. And just because she’s fond of you, Sid, that doesn’t mean her judgment is flawed in other areas.”
Gomez arose, smiling. “Come to think of it, amigo, the fact that she admires me does indicate a certain smartness on her part, doesn’t it?” he said. “I guess I’ll keep that lunch date.” His eyes twinkled.
The young man in the black overcoat slowed his pace. A half block ahead of him on his right, only partially visible in the night fog, rose the three tall towers of the Maida Vale Complex. Jonathan Ainsworth, member of the British Senate, was on the 18th floor of Tower 2 just now.
He was visiting, unbeknownst to his wife, a young woman named Felicity Blore.
Silly name.
Silly young woman, for that matter.
The young man, breathing in and out regularly, walked on by the apartment towers.
Just beyond them was Visitors’ Landing Area 2. There were approximately sixty skycars and skyvans parked there, swathed in fog. The globe lights ringing the wide area were all blurred by the thick mist.
The young man walked up to the small plastiglass guard hut. Wiping at his nose with the back of his left hand, he asked, in a voice not his own, “Can I maybe, gov, earn a bit of lolly by polishing up some of them cars?”
The guardbot was large and gray. He came lumbering out of the hut to eye the young man.
“I’m ’avin’ ’ard times, I am,” the young man continued. “Why, I ain’t eaten since—”
“Go away.” The robot had a deep, rumbling voice.
“Aw, I bet a lot of these toffs wouldn’t mind me earnin’ a—”
“Go away, young fellow me lad, or I shall have the law on you.”
Lurching, the young man put his hand on the guardbot’s shoulder to keep his balance. That contact produced a faint, unexpected buzzing sound.
The robot suddenly stiffened, metallic eyelids clicking rapidly for nearly half a minute.
“Back into your shed,” ordered the young man. “I have a permit to visit here and you’ve seen it.”
“Yes, sir. Right you are, sir.” Bowing once, the robot withdrew to his dim-lit hut.
The young man crossed over into the lot and walked straight to an expensive crimson skycar parked in the third row.
A uniformed human pilot, a thickset man of thirty, was dozing in the driveseat.
After easing his stungun out with his right hand, the young man held it down at his side. With his left he tapped nervously on the window.
The pilot jerked awake, blinking. “What the devil you want?” he asked, lowering his window a few inches.
“Oh, dear, I do hope you’re the person I’m seeking, sir. This is just awful.”
“What the devil are you nattering about?”
“Are you Simmons? Bert Simmons?”
“I am. What’s it to you?”
“Well, you see, I’m Alfred Swindon and I’m employed over there in Tower 2,” he explained excitedly. “I very much fear that your employer—if your employer is Senator Ainsworth—is he?”
“Yes, now quit your acting daft and explain yourself.”
“He’s had—it’s Senator Ainsworth I’m alluding to—he’s suffered some sort of seizure. In Miss Blore’s apartment unfortunately. I thought perhaps under the circumstances that you might wish to remove him to a more—”
“All right, twit.” The door came popping open and the thickset man stepped out. “I’ll come up there with you, see, and take charge.”
“Yes, you strike me as the sort of gentleman who can handle these embarrassing situations.” The young man shot the pilot with his stungun.
Then he hopped deftly backward, out of the way of the falling man.
After a careful look around, he stored the unconscious man in the back compartment of the skycar.
Next he took off his cap and removed his overcoat.
He was ready.
He was wearing a tattered, bloodstained uniform. It was the kind worn by the United Nations Combat Forces during the Brazil Wars years ago. His hair was cut short, his moustache was bushy, and from his left ear dangled an earring made of a Brazilian coin.
It was important that Senator Ainsworth see him in this uniform in the last minutes of his life. Ainsworth had been an enthusiastic supporter of those wars. He’d spearheaded the reinstatement of the draft in Great Britain. A lot of young men had died because of him.
The young man took his other gun out of his pocket. He removed the note and tucked it into the breast pocket of his tunic.
After folding up the coat and placing it carefully on the passenger seat, he slid in and sat where the pilot had been.
He didn’t mind waiting.
13
THE COPPER-PLATED ROBOT CHEF set their breakfast plates before them. “Allow me to apologize again, messieurs,” he said, fluffing his crisp white chef’s hat. “In all my years at the Louvre Hotel, I assure you, the waiter androids have never before gone out on strike. Machines that put on airs ... Bah!” Turning briskly, he went striding away across the large, vaulted dining room.
Gomez picked up his knife and fork. “I’ve been meditating about Excalibur,” he said, gesturing with his knife. “It was King Arthur’s sword, sí?”
After sampling his soycaf, Jake said, “According to legend, yes.”
“My informative buddy, Limehouse, is what you might call an anglophile. A monarchist actually, who yearns to see a king back in place,” continued his partner. “The gent has his underground digs lavishly plastered with pics of British royalty.”
“And?”
“Yesterday, amongst the newer portraits, I glimpsed one of a chinless chap called King Arthur II.”
“When did he reign?”
“He hasn’t, amigo. Not yet, though he’s apparently standing by.” Gomez used his knife and fork on his fakbacon. “Should the present English system, with prez, vice prez and so on, collapse or be overthrown, then Artie would dig up the discarded throne, dust it off, and hop aboard. He’d rule as King Art II.”
“Wonder how many supporters he has.”
“Quien sabe? But I’ll find out,” he promised. “It could be there’s an Excalibur associated with this guy.”
“Sands is in England, so is this Arthur Number 2, so it—”
“A thousand pardons, Monsieur Cardigan.” It was the coppery chef again, cap in hand. “There’s an important phonemessage for you.”
“Can I take it in the lobby?”
“Oui, in Alcove 6.” He glanced down at Gomez’s plate. “What’s wrong with the crêpes?”
“Not a blessed thing.”
“I notice you’re toying with them and not eating them.”
“That’s my breakfast style. Don’t take it as a critique.”
“As you say.” Replacing his snowy white cap atop his copper-plated head, he walked away.
“Keep toying,” said Jake, leaving the table. “I’ll be back soon.”
Jake’s former wife frowned at him from the phonescreen. “Do you know where he is?” Her voice was touched with anger.
“Sands? Nope, I don’t, but—”
“What in the hell are you talking about, Jake?”
“Bennett Sands. He disappeared from prison late last night.”
She inhaled sharply. “That’s impossible. Nobody can get out of a place like
that.”
“With the right sort of help you can get out of anywhere,” he told her. “Didn’t you know Sands was planning to escape?”
“No, of course not. Simply because I once worked for him, that doesn’t mean I’m involved with what he does now,” she said. “But that’s not why I called you.”
“Is it Dan?”
“Yes. They called me just now to say Danny’s run away from the Bunter Academy.” She started to cry softly. “Sometime last night, they think, Jake. I really am trying to be a good mother ... But Danny ... ever since you got out of prison ... I don’t know, he hasn’t been happy and there’s been trouble at every school he—”
“What about Nancy Sands? Has she turned up?”
“No, she hasn’t. That hadn’t occurred to me ... Do you think she and Danny might be together?”
“Kate, I don’t really give a damn how closely you’re tied up with Sands.” He leaned closer to the screen. “But if you know where he’s holed up, tell me. His daughter’s probably with him by now, and if Dan knows where she’s gone, he may try to join her.”
“For God’s sake, I’m not Bennett’s mistress—or his accomplice,” she shouted at him. “Danny’s my son, too, remember? Do you really think I’d let him get involved with something like this?”
“You don’t know where Sands is?”
“No, damn it, no! I just want to find my son,” she said, sobbing. “I contacted you because I thought you could help. But if all you’re going to do is criticize me and preach, I’m hanging up.”
“Okay, okay,” he interrupted. “I’ll come over to England, be there in a few hours. I’ll find Dan.”
“Can you come here first? I—”
“I won’t have time,” he told her. “But I’ll keep in touch with you by phone. I’ll let you know whatever I find out.”
She asked him, “You’re never going to forgive me for divorcing you while you were in prison, are you?”
“Probably not.” He hung up.
Jake’s first-class compartment on the Paris-London subtrain was mildly annoyed with him. “But, really, sir,” it was saying out of the voxbox implanted just below the phonescreen, “the complete luncheon is included in the price of your ticket, don’t you see? If you hadn’t wished to partake of the luncheon, why, may I ask, did you book first class?”
“For privacy,” explained Jake. “Now, please, shut yourself off.”
The voxbox went dead.
Jake moved across the small, blankwalled compartment and activated the vidphone. He punched out a London number.
Thirty seconds later a ballheaded gray robot appeared on the screen. “Hewitt Inquiry Agency here.”
“Jake Cardigan for Arthur Bairnhouse.”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Cardigan. A moment, if you will.”
Bairnhouse was a pink-faced, moderately overweight man of forty, dressed in a tweedy fashion. His office, what could be seen of it on the phonescreen, was paneled in dark real wood. “Glad you’ve called, Cardigan,” he said.
“Anything on Dan yet?”
“Nothing thus far, I’m afraid,” replied the detective. “We do, however, have something fairly definite on the Sands girl.”
“It’s my hunch she’s going to join her father.”
“It doesn’t, actually, look as though that’s the situation.” Bairnhouse rubbed at his broad flat nose with his thumb. “We have reason to believe that she’s gone into a very rough, crime-infested section of London. An area dominated by youth gangs and not, I’d venture to say, a likely area for a man like Bennett Sands to go to ground.”
“Dan is probably following her. He may even have heard from Nancy and know where she is.”
“When we had our violent revolution some sixty years ago, Cardigan, a great deal of damage was done to large sections of London. The area around Buckingham Palace was especially hard hit,” the plump detective told him. “For various reasons, some of them symbolic, a goodly portion of that damage was never remedied. Now the children control the area and it is, to state the case quite simply, not a safe place for a decent young person to be roaming unprotected.”
“Soon as I reach London, I’ll have to head for there to start hunting for my son.”
“Drop by our offices first, will you, Cardigan? We should have more information by the time you arrive, and I can be of some help in preparing you for the pitfalls,” said the detective. “There will be, believe me, a great many pitfalls.”
“Yeah, I’m expecting that,” said Jake.
14
THE PREVIOUS EVENING, ALL across Barsetshire, it had been snowing. A quiet, gentle snow that fell straight down through the dark sky. From the side door of Dan’s dorm building to the stone wall that surrounded the grounds of Bunter Academy was roughly two hundred yards. Dan had stood in the doorway for nearly ten minutes, waiting and listening. The snow kept flickering silently down. Far off, probably at the estate up on the hill, a lone dog barked once.
Readjusting the tan neowool muffler that Nancy Sands had given him just two weeks ago, Dan went darting out into the open. He ran across the white ground, snow quietly crackling underfoot. When he reached the six-foot-high wall, he struggled up it and grasped the top with both hands. Breathing hard, Dan pulled himself up and stretched out flat for a moment.
The five gray buildings that made up the school looked flat and two-dimensional through the soft, fluttering snow. No one seemed to have noticed him. Dan took a deep breath before dropping off the wall to muffled turf on the other side.
Getting to his feet, he brushed snow off his dark jacket and trousers. He started walking rapidly along the road that led to the village. It was two miles distant, but Dan figured he could make it there in under half an hour.
He glanced back over his shoulder a few times. As soon as he was sure no one from the academy had been aware of his unauthorized departure or had come after him, he quit looking back.
And so he never saw the dark figure that moved out of the stand of trees and started to tail him.
Night was well along by the time Dan reached the center of the village. The windows of the one- and two-story metal and plastiglass shops glowed pale yellow, and a light wind was swirling the snowflakes as they fell.
Hurrying, Dan turned onto a narrow street marked Antiquity Lane. All the shops and restaurants here had been designed to resemble nineteenth-century structures. There were tiled roofs, thatched roofs, timbered fronts, oaken shutters, stained glass windows. An android beggar boy, dressed in raggedy mismatched nineteenth-century clothes, stood shivering in front of Dan’s destination.
“Spare me tuppence, sir?”
Ignoring him, Dan entered the Maze Tea Shop. There seemed to be a fire blazing briskly in the deep stone fireplace of the simulated parlor.
A plump maternal android in appropriate dress came bustling over, smiling broadly, wiping her hands on her large white apron. “How may I serve you, young master?”
He said, “I’m supposed to meet someone here.”
“Bless me if I don’t sense another romance in the making,” said the proprietress, chuckling. “Would it be a pretty, dark-haired young lady that you’re seeking?”
“Yes, it is.”
“She’s here already, anxiously awaiting you. You’ll find the dear thing out in the maze and looking pretty as a picture.” The android pointed toward a doorway on the left. “Follow the arrow, mind.”
Dan went through the doorway and found himself in what looked to be a vast stretch of outdoor garden. A maze made of high thick hedges filled most of the grounds.
“Arrow,” reminded the proprietress from the parlor.
On the grassy path at his feet a yard-long arrow of red light appeared. The arrow started moving slowly forward.
Following, Dan was led along pathways and through the green, leafy corridors of the hologram maze. When the arrow reached a small, sunlit clearing, it faded away.
Seated alone at a round white wicker table was a slim youn
g woman of sixteen. Her hair was dark and long and she had on the uniform of a nearby school. “I thought perhaps they wouldn’t give you permission to leave the academy this late in the evening,” she said.
“They didn’t.” He sat opposite her.
“Are you likely to get in trouble, Daniel?”
“I am, yeah,” he admitted. “You said on the phone that you had something new to tell me about Nancy, Jillian.”
“I think perhaps I do.”
“Perhaps?”
Jillian Kearny asked him, “Would you care for some tea, Daniel?”
“Not especially. Do you know where she is?”
“I have a notion,” the girl answered. “I was considering telling the McCays, the people she’s been staying with, yet I suspect Nancy didn’t trust them too awfully much.”
“Are they involved in this?”
“I’m not certain.” Carefully Jillian poured herself a cup from the china teapot. “I’ve only known Nancy, keep in mind, a few weeks,” she reminded him. “In that time, however, we have become rather close friends.”
“I know. That’s why when you phoned—”
“I’ve been going over all this in my head ever since Nancy ran away.”
“You’re sure she did run away on her own, that she wasn’t taken?”
“Yes, I am. A few days, you see, before she left the McCays I think something unpleasant happened there.”
“Did they hurt her?”
“Nothing of that sort, Daniel. Nancy did, though, discover something that upset her a great deal. I was aware that she was upset, but she wouldn’t confide any details.”
“She didn’t even hint at what she’d found out?”
“She simply didn’t wish to talk about what was bothering her.” Jillian paused, sipped her tea. “My impression is that this had something to do with her father.”
“Did she mention him?”
“Rather she stopped talking about him. Which is the point, do you see? Up until then she’d mentioned Mr. Sands quite often,” said the girl. “Nancy always spoke of him in a positive way, defending his reputation. She firmly believed, I’m convinced, that he was innocent of all he’d been charged with and was unjustly serving time in prison.”
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