The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories (45 page)

I was introduced as Captain Crossbie, and people took me for a yachtsman, which technically I suppose I was. People asked me about regattas and famous captains, and I admitted that I only used my yacht for travel. I was then asked where I'd been, and I managed to tell a few stories.

I was talking about yachts to an engineer named Bond—his dream was to buy a ship when he retired, and travel—when a blond man came up to talk to him. I thought the newcomer looked familiar, but didn't place him right away.

He talked to Bond about some kind of bottleneck on the Downside grapevine station that was threatening to interfere with shipments to Upside, and Bond assured him that the problem would be engineered out of existence in a couple weeks. He asked after Bond's family. Bond told him that his son had won some kind of prize from the Pryor School of Economics. It was then that the blond man turned to me.

He had the chiseled perfection that came with his flawless genes, and violet eyes, and around his mouth was a tight-lipped tension that nature—or his designers—had not quite intended for him.

"This is Mister Denys Pryor," Bond said. "Denys, this is Captain Crossbie."

He realized who I was about the same instant that I finally recognized him as Katarina's husband. The violet eyes narrowed.

"Ah," he said. "The accomplice."

"I don't have any response to that," I said, "that I'd expect you to believe."

He gave me a contemptuous look and stalked away. Bond looked after him in surprise, then looked at me. Then the light dawned. Panic flashed across his face.

"If you'll excuse me," he said, and was gone before I could even reply.

That was the last conversation I had at the party. Word about my connection to Tonio flashed through the room faster than lightning, and soon I was alone. I got tired of standing around by myself, so I went out onto the terrace, where a group of women in immaculate white balloon-suits were grilling meats. I was considering chatting up one of them when Tonio came up, carrying a pair of drinks. He handed me one.

"My apologies, compeer," he said. "They are stuck-up here, yiss."

"I've been treated worse."

He looked up at the strangely infirm stars. "I have Katarina by way of compensation," he said. "You have nothing."

"I have
Olympe
," I said. "I've been thinking maybe it's time she and I flew away to the next Probability."

He looked at me somberly. "I will miss your companionhood," he said.

"You'll have Katarina." I looked at the sky, where Upside glittered on its invisible tether. "I hope Eldridge isn't still looking for me," I said.

"You don't have to worry about Eldridge," Tonio said. "I told Katarina all about him."

Hot terror flashed through my nerves.

"What did you tell her?" I asked.

"I told her that Eldridge tried to use us to smuggle his salt, and that we found the stuff and spaced it."

I relaxed a little. The scene that Eldridge and I had played in front of Katarina might not seem that suspicious, if of course she believed her lover.

"You didn't hear the news?" Tonio said. "About that police officer that was found in the vacuum, over on Vantage."

My mouth was dry. "That griff lieutenant?" I asked.

"Her captain. The lieutenant is learning a new job, floating in zero gravity and sucking up industrial wastes with a big vacuum cleaner." He rubbed his chin. "The Pryors don't like people fucking up their workers with drugs."

"They don't seem to mind all those enhanced production quotas, though," I said. "Do you think those come from workers who aren't spiked up?" There was a moment of silence. The scent of sizzling meat gusted past. "What happened to Eldridge?" I asked.

"Don't know. Didn't bother to ask."

If anything was going to harden my determination to leave Socorro as quickly as I could, it was this.

I turned to Tonio. "I'll miss you," I said. I raised a glass. "To happy endings."

Before Tonio could respond there was a sudden brilliant radiance in the sky, and we looked up. An enormous structure had appeared in the sky above Socorro, a vast black octahedron covered with thousands of brilliant lights, windows enabling the 1.4 million people aboard to gaze out at the passing Probabilities. To gaze down at
us
.

"It's the Chrysalis," I said aloud.

Surrounding the structure were half a dozen birds, each larger than the habitat, long necks outstretched. The storks that were the emblem of the Storch gene line, each with ghostly white wings flapping in utter silence, holograms projected into space by enormous lasers.

Suddenly I remembered Tonio's emerald ring, in its special pocket on the old trousers I'd left back at Tonio's flat.

Too late,
I thought. Shawn had come for us.

 

"We can't keep them out," Katarina said. "This Probability isn't a secret any longer, and anyone can exploit it now that it's registered."

I doubted the Pryors could keep the Chrysalis out even if they wanted to. The Pryors maintained a police force here, not an army, and I know the Chrysalis had weapons for self-defense. They had those huge lasers they'd used to project their flying stork blazons, for one thing, and those could be tuned to military use at any time.

We sat on Tonio's terrace the morning following the Storches' arrival, soaking in the scent of blossoms. The Chrysalis was still visible in daylight, its edges rimmed with silver.

Breakfast was curdling on our plates. Nobody was very hungry.

"The Chrysalis is a state-of-the-art industrial colony," I said. "They can park it here and start exporting materials in just weeks."

Katarina gave me a tell-me-something-I-don't-know look.

"They have also made an official request," she said. "They want the two of you arrested on charges of theft and turned over to them."

I felt myself turn pale, a chill touching my lips and cheeks. "What are we supposed to have stolen?" I asked.

Katarina permitted herself a thin smile. "They haven't said. We have requested clarification." She turned her black eyes to me. "They have also asked that your ship be impounded, until it can be determined whether you obtained it by forging Aram Maheu's will."

"That was all settled in the chancery court on Burnes Upside," I said. "Besides, if I was going to forge a will to give myself a yacht, I'd give myself the money to keep it going."

"The request is a delaying tactic," Katarina said. "It's to tie up your vessel for an indeterminate period and prevent you from escaping.,"

"Is it going to work?" I asked. Katarina didn't bother to answer.

The previous night's party had ended with the appearance of the Chrysalis, as the Council of Seven went into executive session and their employees scattered to duty stations to do research on the Chrysalis and the implication of its arrival.

Apparently at some point in the night Tonio had told Katarina about Adora and Shawn, and Katarina must have believed him, because neither of us was being tied to a chair and tortured by Pryor security armed with shock wands.

Katarina rose and gave Tonio a kiss. "I've got a lot of meetings," she said.

"See you tonight, lover mine," Tonio said.

We sat in silence for a while as Socorro's strange sun climbed above the horizon. I turned to Tonio.

"Are you certain," I asked, "that Adora gave you that ring?"

He gave me a wounded look. "Surely I am not hearing what I am hearing, my compeer."

"It wasn't one of those misunderstandings?" I pressed. "Where you're certain she gave it to you, but she doesn't remember doing it?"

"I am certain she told Shawn it was stolen," Tonio said with dignity, "but this is what happened in sooth. He presented her with the ring at their wedding, a sentimental token I imagine. But later she was angry at Shawn for a scene he'd made, where he was complaining about how she had behaved with me at a certain social function, and out of anger she bestowed the ring upon me."

"And when you left and she went back to Shawn," I said, "she couldn't admit it, so she told him it was stolen."

"That is my postulation."

Or that was the postulation that Tonio wanted me to believe.

Tonio had been to prison, and in prison you learn to manipulate people. You learn to tell them what they want to hear. Is it lying if there is no harm intended? If it's just saying the thing that's most convenient for everyone?

I didn't steal anything
. How often in prison do you hear
that?

I think Tonio was sincere in everything he said and did. But what he was sincere
about
could change from one minute to the next.

In any case this had to be more than just about the ring. The ring was valuable, but it didn't justify moving over a million Storch employees to this Probability and opening mining operations.

"Why did Shawn and Adora marry in the first place?" I asked.

"Their families told them to. They hadn't met until a few days before the ceremony."

"But
why?
Usually line members marry each other, like Katarina and Denys. It keeps the money in the family. When they merge or take another outfit over, they do it by adoption. But Shawn and Adora were different—each was ordered to marry
out
. The Storches do heavy industry. The Feeneys specialize in biotech and research. What did they have in common?"

Tonio waved a hand in dismissal. "There was a special project. I did not ask for details, no. Why would I? It was connected to Shawn, and when I was with Adora, I had no wish to talk about Shawn. Why spoil a bliss that was so perfect with such a subject?"

"If it was so perfect, why did you leave Adora?" I asked. "When I last saw you together, you seemed so . . . connected."

"She grew too onerous," Tonio said. "Once we began to live together, she began giving orders.
Go here. Do this. Put on these clothes. What do you want to name the children?
Under the oppression my spirit began to chafe, yiss. She loved me, but only as a pet."

"Still," I said, "you had good times."

"Oh, yiss." There was a soft light in his eyes. "They were magical, so many of our times. When we were sneaking away together, to make love in an isolated corner of the Chrysalis . . . that was bliss, my compeer."

I looked up at the Chrysalis, hovering over our heads like the Big Heavy Shiny Object of Damocles.

"Do you think she's up there?" I asked. "It was Adora who was the member of the Storch line. Shawn was the Feeney half of the alliance. He could only command the Chrysalis with the permission of his in-laws."

Tonio looked at the sky in wonder. His face screwed up as he tried to think.

I rose and left him to his thoughts. I needed to do a lot of thinking myself.

 

For the next several days we bounced around the apartment with increasing energy and frustration. The news was grim. Shuttles from the Chrysalis were exploring uninhabited parts of Socorro. There had been one near-miss between a Storch shuttle and a Pryor transport. Fail-safes normally kept ships from getting remotely close to one another, so the miss had been a deliberate provocation

Guards stood on our door and even on the next terrace, sensors deployed looking for any assassins lurking on the horizon. Tonio's blazemobile privileges had been revoked, and he wasn't allowed out of the building.

"I love my little Katarina, yiss," he said one day as he stalked about the main room. "But this is growing onerous."

A bored Tonio was a dangerous Tonio. If he walked out on Katarina, we were both just so much dog food.

"She's just trying to protect you," I said. "It'll only last until the business with the Storches is resolved."

He flung out his arms. "But how long will that be?"

I looked at him. "What if Adora's up there, Tonio?"

He gave me an exasperated look. "What if she is?"

"Do you think you can talk to her? Find out what she wants?"

Tonio stopped his pacing. His startled face began to look thoughtful.

"Do you think I can?" he asked.

"If you try it from here, Katarina will be listening in before you can spit."

"But she won't let me
leave
here!"

"Let me work on that."

His adjutant bleeped, and he answered. His face broke into a look of pure joy as he said, "Hello, lover."

Go on pleasing them, Tonio
, I thought.

I went to one of the security guards on our door and told him that I needed to speak to Denys Pryor.

 

"I don't know why I'm even talking to you," said Denys. I had been called into his office, the design of which told me that he liked clean sight lines, no clutter, curved geometries, and a terrace with a water view. He remained at his desk as I entered, and was turned slightly away, so that I saw his perfect chiseled features in three-quarter profile. He wore fewer ruffles in his office than at the party.

There was no chair for me to sit in. Not anywhere in the room. I had a choice of responses—Denys would probably have preferred an awkward shuffle—so instead I leaned on his immaculate white wall.

"I'm here to solve your problems," I said.

He raised an eyebrow.

No wonder Katarina was dissatisfied with him, I thought. She could have conveyed the same suspicion and contempt without twitching a single hair.

"Your Chrysalis problem," I clarified, "and your Tonio problem."

"Tonio Hope," he said, "is welcome to my wife. They deserve each other, and I hope you'll tell them that. But the problem represented by the Chrysalis is rather more urgent." He turned in his chair to face me. "Tell me your scheme, please. Then I can have a good hearty laugh and have you thrown out of here."

Cuckolded husbands, I have observed, are rarely models of courtesy.

"Tell me one thing first," I said. "Is Adora Storch on the Chrysalis?"

"Your friend's former lover? Yes." His tone was bored. "Apparently he stole something from her, but she's too embarrassed to admit what it was."

"Her heart," I said. He looked away suddenly, toward the distant lake.

"What I would like," I said, "is a secure means of communication between Tonio and Adora." And then, at the sudden, sharp violet-eyed look, I added, "Secure, I mean, from Katarina."