19 - The Power Cube Affair (13 page)

"That's not so unlikely," said Illya. "Remember, every square inch of the skin has millions of nerve endings, which eventually communicate back to the brain. For amplification, that's enough. What really matters is the pattern, the injected signal."

"You mean this is for real, Illya?"

"Real enough to have headquarters seething like a pot on a fire. The version they have is that Gorchak managed to calculate the precise shapes for various potentials and carved the crystals—they are not gallium arsenide, incidentally, but something very similar, we don't know what—he carved a number of crystals in such a way that they can be fitted together to make a cube. And the man who holds that cube in his hand is master. His power will be fantastic and invincible."

"Hold it a minute!" Solo clung to sanity grimly. "Why didn't Gorchak just keep it for himself?"

"Two reasons, so far as I can find out. One, he knew that he himself was unstable. And this is like drugs, like LSD. It expands, so it will make a sane man brilliant, but an unbalanced man would be destroyed by it. And he seems to have had one of his regular differences with the technological hierarchy in policy. So he scattered his carvings all over the place."

"That's right!" Carpenter nodded excitedly. "It's a kind of chase. All sorts of people are after the pieces."

"But there's one really big snag," Kuryakin pointed out. "Gorchak was crazy. He cut those pieces in such a way that just to hold any one in your hand is enough to knock you for a loop in short order. Like a belt of vodka on an empty stomach. So even if one man could assemble them all, he still has to figure out how to put them together."

"Now I get it," Solo groaned. "Twenty-five pieces I have, and two to go. An insoluble problem, he called it. Three by three by three, to make a cube, and he has them all."

"That's right, Napoleon. And he reckons he knows a way to solve the thing. We don't have much time."

"Look!" Carpenter cleared his throat carefully. "If this really is a story, and you get anything, remember where I live, won't you? What I mean, this is a
story
!"

"If we live to tell it," Kuryakin promised gravely, "you shall have the exclusive."

After he had hurried away, pleading pressure of business, the two men were silent awhile in thought.

"We ought to report this, Illya. Mr. Waverly would skin us if he knew we were holding out."

"Holding out what? The only real clue we have is the Danby affair tonight, and that may not come off. Besides, those crystal parts are not much bigger than a pea. The whole thing—the cube—is only an inch each way. It's not going to be easy to find, even if we are looking in the right place."

"You know," Solo sighed, "this whole business is full of stones; on the beach for target practice, on John Guard's window ledge, now these wild carvings. Even the man who sold me the car was called Stone. But I still can't fit in that hit about 'the seventh stone' at all."

TEN

THE MINI rolled to a stop outside the Perrell residence that evening. Miss Perrell, tall and regal in white and cream, came out to walk around the little red car and turn up her nose at it.

"Charlie Stone's idea of a joke, I suppose," she said, and her voice and manner indicated near freezing conditions as the two men climbed into the Princess alongside her. She got into gear and plunged swiftly into the traffic, keep silent for a long while. Then:

"Been busy, have you?"

"A little," Solo murmured. "Studying maps, learning the district. For instance, Danby Hall is about an hour away isn't it?"

"That's quite right. Of course, I might just have managed without that bit of information, but I'm obliged to you just the same!"

Solo shrugged, exchanged silent glances with Kuryakin and let the silence reign. He had spoken the truth, and now both men were intently on the look-out for sign posts, and one in particular. They saw it together, just a few mile beyond Norwood. A finger post indicating a road that would take them to Piedmont. They exchanged glances again. After a long while Miss Perrell stirred, sighed, and said:

"Since you are my guests, we might as well pretend to be on speaking terms, just for the look of it. Somebody say something."

"A question," Kuryakin murmured. "You've never been to one of these affairs before. Why not?"

"That's my business!" she snapped, and Solo leaned back and smiled.

"End of conversation," he said, and began to whistle silently. The car purred on, swooping through villages and along lesser roads until they came to the crest of a rise and she slowed down.

"There it is," she told them.

They studied it. The massive square frontage, gray and white with white marble pillars, was patched and shaded with ivy. In the growing gloom the light pouring from windows and the open porch doorway helped to conjure up an illusion of an old demon face with a beard, glowing eyes and a fanged mouth wide open in invitation. Miss Perrell flicked on her lights and sent the car sailing down the slope and in between wide open iron scroll gates, up to the forecourt. Out of the car, she led them up a gracious flight of stone steps into the faint babble of many voices and the sound of music. A massive servant garbed like a Roman slave came to take her cream satin cloak and to escort all three of them across an immense tiled hall to the double doors where their hostess stood. Her nod and smile were enough to send the servant stalking away again. Lady Herriott was once again in green, in a tint that no woman in her right mind would have tried to wear, but this time the material was some kind of linen, draped casually about her after the fashion of a Greek
chlamys
. The whole thing depended on one gold pin, and had that failed, she would have been nude, but for her huge rubies.

"I'm so glad you could come," she said, and made it sound genuine. "You two must have some secret or other. I been trying to lure Nan here for ages, but this is the first time."

"Should we pay now?" Kuryakin asked, and she frowned delicately.

"Not payment, dears. That's illegal. Call it contributions, or donations. You can do that now, if you like. I usually make a little speech when we're all here, and then collect, but you can do it now."

"We'd prefer that," Solo smiled. "You see, we don't really expect to stay very long. Would a thousand dollars be all right? I have the check all ready, if you'll tell me who I make it out to."

He scribbled at her dictation, Miss Perrell standing by in bleak silence. Kuryakin eyed her curiously but made no comment.

"Oh dear," complained Lady Herriott, "I do hope you won't want to dash off, once you see what we have to offer. That would be a pity."

Then they were through the door and stepping down over thick carpet to floor level of an enormous room, almost circular, with a lofty ceiling ablaze with lights, where the great stretch of the center floor was like glass, and tapestry screens had been set up all around the perimeter to give the impression of many secluded little booths, each with a table. There were only a few people present as yet, and an empty place was easy to find. Solo took this first chance to study Miss Perrell in the clear light, and he was quietly impressed.

She had put on a close fitting dress of creamy white satin which came almost to her fingertips, hugged her shape as far as her hips and then descended almost to floor level in luxurious folds. The effect was that of a cloistered nun. Even her makeup was muted. But there was a glitter in her blue eyes that spoke of fires below. Solo noted it and took time to think of something harmless to say. Before he could find it there came a hail from his right and he saw Evadne Herriott approaching across the floor, determination in her every line.

"You," she said, aiming a finger at Kuryakin. "Dance with me!"

It was an order. Solo grinned at his friend and gestured to the floor. Miss Herriott spared him a gleam and said, "I'll be back for you later. If you don't mind, Nan?"

"Why should I mind? I don't own him!"

Which was true but hardly gracious, Solo reflected, watching Illya proceed away with the predatory Evadne. She was worth watching. Her costume—if you could call two small patches of clustered pearls, a bracelet, and the skimpiest kilt ever seen in or out of Scotland, a costume—hampered her movements not at all. Solo stared, recovered breath, turned to his partner.

"Shall we dance? That much, at least, we have in common."

He was wrong. She came into his arms stiffly, and it took only three or four steps to know that the magic she had shown at Ferrier's was no longer working. He guided her to the edge of the floor tactfully, then said:

"Look, lady, if you want to bite or scratch or screech—or even take me outside and shoot me—let's do it and get it over with, but let's not ruin a perfectly good waltz, huh?"

"You talk of ruin, after that charming character reference you just gave Maggie Herriott?"

"I'm sorry, you have to play that bit again, I didn't get it."

"You said," she muttered through her teeth, "that you didn't expect to stay very long. Your tone included me. That will be taken to mean that you are not very interested in the attractions being offered here. From which it follows, as the night the day, that you have your own source of superior supply."

"Oh!" Solo thought it through. "Meaning you?"

"Who else? We came together!"

"But you know I didn't mean anything like that."

"Do I? I don't remember you explaining that part." She smiled pointedly. "Even if it's true, do you think that makes it any better? That you look and then turn up your nose?"

"Hmm!" Solo thought that bit over and sighed. "I can't win. And I thought this was going to be fun!"

All at once her mood changed dramatically. "Does it look like fun?" She gestured to the rapidly filling floor. Solo looked with sharpened eye and curiosity. The men were all of a kind, almost anonymous in formal evening dress. They managed to look furtive, uncomfortable and unwilling, but determined not to show it. The women, though, were another matter. There was every color imaginable, and textures all the way from toweling to the most gossamer sheer, and there was more bared flesh, taken wholesale, than would have been possible anywhere outside a Turkish bath. But they too had that unhappy and determined not to show it look.

"Trying too hard," he guessed. "They've heard the message, that nudity and sex and love are all the rage now, so they are determined to be 'with it.' But it's not really them." He pondered a bit more. "These are all rich people, important people in some way, right? So they have a value on themselves. And they can't let go. They are just going through the motions because it's the thing to do, but they would far rather be smothered in sables and diamonds and make a show that way."

"That's rather profound." Miss Perrell looked impressed despite herself. "Are you quoting somebody?"

"No. Just thinking. After all, this fuss about the flower people, the hippies, is largely because they are rejecting most of the things ordinary people value. And when you think about it, those things are largely outward show. Ostentatious expenditure. Remember what Evadne said about nudists on Levant? You couldn't tell one from the other, they all look the same. People do, underneath. So"—warmed to his theme as the ideas came to him—"if you tend to be a somebody without artificial trappings, you have really got to be good. It isn't something you can buy."

"Oh!" She looked thoughtful. "Perhaps I should take off this stupid dress, then? Stop pretending to be—"

"Save it," he grinned. "You don't have to prove anything to me. Shall we try that dance again?"

"Do you really want to?"

Solo caught what he had been straining to see all this time, just a flash of coppery red hair over there. It was enough. "Eh? Want to? You bet I do. Come on!"

Meanwhile Mr. Kuryakin was having troubles of his own. Evadne was setting a pace that he couldn't possibly keep up with, but that didn't worry her at all.

"You just watch me," she invited. "When the steam starts coming out of your ears, then we'll see what we can do let it off."

So he watched her and hoped that the glue she had used was good stuff, or she was going to lose her pear patches. From time to time he spared a quick glance for the others on the floor. One slim girl circled sedately past him, at arm's length from her partner, and, like him, she wore a black tailcoat. And a veil. And nothing else at all. And there was a Spanish vivid girl, every bit as lively as Evadne, who had achieved her costume by simply dipping handfuls of flower petals in some kind of gum and dabbing them all over herself. But then, out of the babble and rhythm, came a voice.

"My dear young lady, I am, I assure you, performing the oscillations you require of me. On the inside. The news has yet to reach the outskirts, alas. It will take time!"

Kuryakin knew that voice, would never forget it. He fixed Evadne with a chill eye, extended his arm and waved her close.

"Touching is for later, darling!" she protested, but he took her by the wrist and held her close, working her around in conventional steps until he could see where the voice had come from. It came again.

"I fear it is a labor of futility, my dear. My body could never contort itself like that, nor would it look attractive if it did. I leave it, delightfully, to you."

Kuryakin looked. That was Louise, sure enough, and the man with her fitted the mental picture. A veritable Falstaff, he had a pinkly cherubic face and a great shining dome of a head. Kuryakin locked his partner close.

"You know everybody here?"

"Naturally. There isn't one can hold a candle—"

"Shut up! Look, that large man dancing with the redhead in gold."

"That's Uncle Henry. Silly old man, he is."

"Your uncle?"

"Of course not! I just call him that. He's an old friend of the family, comes here often."

"What's his name?"

"Now look here!" Evadne grew restive under the questioning. "You forget about him. Pay attention to me, that's what I'm for—"

"The name!"