Curse of the Iris (25 page)

“Okay,” he said, hefting the device. “Turning it on. It's working.”

“And?” Yana asked, excitement leaking into her voice.

“I'm not receiving anything,” Tycho said, peering at the readout to make sure the scanner was functioning properly.

“Let me sweep it around,” he said, firing his maneuvering jets to turn himself in a slow circle.

There was nothing. The scanner was silent.

“No signal anywhere,” he said, frustrated.

“You're probably just out of range,” Yana said. “Activate the sled's nav unit so you know you're pointing the scanner in the direction of the Unger homestead.”

“Right,” Tycho said. “I can do that.”

The impeller and the equipment platform were on the other side of the siphon. He tapped his maneuvering jets and craned his head, looking for the outline of the sled or the bright circle of the pipe.

Among the sensors and antennae he saw four rectangles, one on top of the other. Tycho fired his jets and moved closer, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The rectangles were greenish gray, each separated by a short length of cable. He looked up and saw that the cable was shackled to a clump of instruments, secured by its own weight.

“Strongboxes!” he yelled.

He heard Yana gasp, then her muffled voice telling the others.

“And the signal?” she asked.

“No signal,” Tycho said, pointing the scanner at the boxes until it nearly touched them. “That's strange.”

“Are you sure it's the treasure, then? I mean, why leave it right under Darklands and not tell anybody?”

“I don't know. But there's nothing else it could be. Four strongboxes—I can see where the chain holding them was welded to the machinery.”

“Amazing. You were right, Tyke.”

Grinning, Tycho tapped the jets and drifted around the boxes, examining them from every angle.

“The boxes are corroded—so's the cable—but they're intact,” he said. “They look too heavy to move to the platform all at once. I'll work from the bottom and cut them free one at a time.”

He reattached the scanner to his suit, then tugged the cutting torch free of a pouch on his leg and thumbed the igniter. The torch blazed like a star in the water, which began to boil around the superheated arc of plasma.

Remembering his simulation exercises, Tycho bled some air from his tanks, sinking to the level of the last strongbox. A loop of cable hung below it, hanging free in the water. Above it, another cable attached the box to the next one in the chain. Tycho grabbed the loop of cable at the bottom, clambered awkwardly onto the lowermost box, and looked for the best place to cut the cable.

Then he was tumbling head over heels, moving very fast, with his breath hammering in his ears. The torch pinwheeled away from him, a spark of brilliant light in the darkness.

“Tycho!” Yana yelled.

Somehow the cable had snapped above him. The boxes were plummeting into the abyss on a one-way trip to the moon's distant core—and they were dragging him along like an anchor.

His body thrashed back and forth as he plunged deeper into the ocean. The suit was rated for three hundred meters—below that, his faceplate would crack and he would die.

“Tyke! What's happening?”

He managed to get his head pointed up, still clutching the loop of cable that was now at the top of the chain of strongboxes. It felt like his arm was going to rip free of its socket. He fumbled with his other hand for the jet-pack controls, missed them, then found them on the second try. The maneuvering jets roared to life on full blast, trying to push him back up.

He was still plummeting downward. He had no idea how deep he was.

“Come on come on come on come on come on . . . ,” he gasped.

He was still falling, though he thought he was slowing down. Or perhaps that was his imagination.

“TYKE!” Yana was screaming.

“COME ON!” he yelled.

No, he was definitely slowing. The pain in his shoulder was excruciating. He got his other hand on the loop of cable, trying to distribute some of its weight.

“Tyke! Talk to me!”

“Cable . . . broke,” he managed to say. “Still got . . . boxes.”

His descent had slowed to a crawl. But he was still going down.

“Let go!” Yana yelled.

“No.”

Tycho hung in the water, the jet pack's force having finally counterbalanced Callisto's gravity and arrested the strongboxes' plunge. The jet pack was hot against his back. Tycho prayed it wouldn't burn out or run out of fuel.

As he slowly began to rise, he heard a tiny sound inside his helmet, above his eyes.

A small crack appeared at the upper left corner of his faceplate, where it joined the helmet. A faint whiff of ammonia reached his nose.

He was rising more quickly now, the pain in his shoulders running down his arms into his hands. Sweat was pouring down his back. His sister was screaming at him.

The small crack suddenly zigzagged halfway across his faceplate. He tried to will the jet pack to propel him faster. A tiny drop of water formed at the center of the crack, on the inside of his faceplate. The droplet hung suspended for a moment, trembled, then hit him in the nose.

Something gleamed above him. It was the siphon. There was the sled, floating in the water next to it. And there was the platform.

He shut off the maneuvering jets and almost smashed into the platform as he shot past it, crying out as he let go of the cable with one hand. His hand was numb and spasming. He started to sink again, but the third strongbox hit the edge of the platform and stuck there, the top two boxes settling atop it with a clank. The fourth strongbox hung just below the platform. Exhausted, Tycho wrapped his arm around the platform and shut off the jet pack. His back was burning.

“Remind me never to do that again,” he told Yana between gasps.

15
THE
IRIS
CACHE

T
ycho knew he must look terrible, because even Yana was able to contain her impatience, waiting to ask about opening the strongboxes until Tycho had had a hot shower, put ointment and a dressing on the blisters on his back, and devoured an entire bowl of hominy and a plate of soft tack.

It was like Christmas morning, he thought, enjoying his sister's exasperation as he accepted Parsons's offer of a second cup of tea.

Finally feeling somewhat restored, he pushed his chair back from the table and turned to look at the corroded strongboxes, now sitting side by side in the living area of Darklands, next to the sled and his muddy suit and damaged helmet.

“We broke the locks but didn't open them,” Carina said. “Tycho, you do the honors.”

Tycho crouched down in front of the first strongbox, amazed at how tired he was. He looked up at the Hashoones surrounding him, smiled, and threw back the lid.

The first thing he saw was the jewelry—there were necklaces, and brooches, and things he didn't know the names of. Diamonds and rubies and tigereyes gleamed amid loops and curls of gold and silver.

“Oh my goodness,” Yana said.

“Arrr, ain't that a beautiful sight,” muttered Huff.

Tycho put his hands in the box, pushing them inside until he was up to his wrists in wealth. He stared at the rest of his family in wonder.

They opened the rest of the boxes, exclaiming in amazement at a bag of uncut emeralds, a diadem that glittered and flashed like a comet, old-style watches and pendants and a hundred other astonishing objects.

“It's a pirate hoard of old,” Mavry said. “There's five or six million in livres here at least. Sometimes the legends are true.”

“Hate the thought of givin' part of it to that blasted Oshima,” Huff growled.

“We can spare it,” said Diocletia, sounding giddy.

“And Mox's share?” asked Carlo, grinning as he showed off two hands festooned with rings.

“Arrr, I vote we jes' shoot that one this time,” Huff said. “Even my generosity has its limits.”

Tycho laughed along with the rest of his family, but all the while he was looking for something out of place—something that would quicken the pulse of a Securitat agent with an interest in old secrets.

He spotted it in the third box—the black square of a data disk, almost invisible beneath a spill of golden coins. He palmed the disk quietly and pointed at a necklace of lapis lazuli Yana had just held up triumphantly, and when heads turned toward his sister, he slipped the disk into the pocket of his jumpsuit.

And then he realized how desperately he needed to sleep.

This time all Yana had to do to wake him was poke her head into his darkened room.

“Dinner's almost ready. We would have let you sleep, but Aunt Carina wants to discuss tomorrow's meeting at Ganymede.”

Tycho forced himself upright in his bunk, groaning at the ache in his shoulders and back.

“Okay, I'm up,” he said. “What else have I missed?”

“Not much. Mr. Knackert's going over the valuables downstairs, figuring out what they're worth.”

“And is it good news?” Tycho asked anxiously. His last thought before vanishing into sleep had been a flash of paranoia that the jewels would somehow turn out to be fake.

“Very good news. Knackert's about ready to drown in a puddle of his own drool. He's thinking eight million. Maybe more.”

Tycho relaxed and grinned at his sister.

“We found it—we really found it! Everyone thought the
Iris
cache was gone, or an old legend, or cursed, but we found it.”

“
You
found it,” Yana said.

“We all helped. Without you we wouldn't have gotten Lord Sicyon's and Loris's shares.”

Yana snorted. “I'm sure you'll insist that Mom note that in the Log alongside all the details of your triumph.”

“Of course I will,” Tycho said, suddenly serious.

Yana shook her head, but she was smiling.

“You know what? I believe you,” she said, turning to go—but then she turned back.

“Something's bothering me, though,” she said, looking at him gravely.

“What's that?”

“It's about what was missing from the treasure.”

Tycho froze. He had been sure no one had seen him pocket the disk.

“We never found the quantum signal,” Yana said, and Tycho was suddenly able to breathe again.

“Maybe it fell off when the chain broke,” he said, flexing his abused shoulders.

“Then the scanner would have picked it up before that. No, I don't think the signal was there in the first place. That's strange, isn't it?”

“It is. But everything to do with the treasure has been strange.”

“That's true. Anyway, you'd better hurry if you want any candied yams,” Yana said, and the door shut behind her.

Tycho waited a moment, then dug his mediapad out of his duffel bag and entered the password for the hidden file where he'd transferred DeWise's messages. Soon he would be rid of the Securitat agent, his schemes, and the sleepless nights that had come with them.

I have something you want
, he typed, then looked down at the glowing letters on the screen. He imagined the Securitat agent reading the message on his cruiser above Europa, or in some nest of bureaucrats on Ganymede, and allowed himself a satisfied smile.

Tycho found the other Hashoones standing behind a hunched, bald little man in a dirty jumpsuit who was rummaging through the last of the strongboxes, humming happily to himself. Knackert was one of the more discreet members of Carina's network of Port Town dealers who specialized in goods of uncertain pedigree.

Knackert looked up from his work, calipers and sensors jangling from bandoliers and straps on every limb. He smiled hugely at Tycho, then dissolved into red-faced mirth. Tycho, used to the old dealer's fits of laughter, knew enough to wait.

“Master Tycho!” Knackert said at last, giggling as he turned a diamond-encrusted case for a personal communicator so it caught the light. “So good to see you again, ho ho! Oh, yes! And congratulations on such a remarkable prize! You'll see these beauties again, come high season on Ganymede—and on Earth and Mars, too. Oh, yes, Master Tycho—hee hee!—your discoveries will adorn lucky wives, husbands, mistresses, consorts, and concubines for years to come. Ha! Such a pleasure to bring such marvelous objects back into circulation!”

“An' to pocket yer biggest commission in years, right, Knackey?” Huff rumbled amiably.

Knackert waved that off with a chuckle and punched numbers into his mediapad. Then, with Parsons's help, he bundled the strongboxes onto a floater cart and waddled up the ramp.

“I'm kind of sad to see it all go,” Yana said, judging Knackert's progress by the chortling and cackling that bounced down the well to the dinner table. “Some of that stuff was really pretty.”

“When have you ever cared about that?” asked Carlo.

“I'm allowed to think things are pretty,” Yana said, looking annoyed.