New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers (14 page)
Read New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers Online
Authors: Alexei Panshin
Louisa had been correct in having reservations about climbing inside a box. Some five per cent of the people put in cold boxes were simply not revivable—no matter, of course, to a thumb-runner, who never intended to revivify. At one time, a full ten per cent had been denied life, but the responsibility was found to be linked to a gene already being eliminated throughout the Empire as undesirable.
Villiers closed the cover and went to the next box. He continued on to the racked cold boxes. He opened and closed the covers. At the sixth box, he stopped. It was Louisa within.
The light overhead threw her face partly in shadow. Villiers looked down at her for a long moment, his finger touching the switch in its protective recess. But the question, after all, was already decided. He turned the switch off and cut the field.
People differ in their versions of passage in a cold box. Some are tossed in the billowing conflux of endless black clouds. Some spread glistening wings and fly. In almost all cases, people emerging suffer dissociation.
Louisa looked up and smiled. She knew enough to say, “Hello, Tony.”
He said, “You’ve been rescued after a fashion. Come on down from there.”
He helped her out of the box, and she clung to his arm. If she had still been terrified, she would have grabbed as much of him as she could get her arms around. If she had been calm and completely present, she would have taken charge of her own hands. As it was, she clung to his arm and her eyes lingered where they touched him.
Villiers explained what had happened in as unalarming tones as he could manage and he gradually got the feeling that she was with him.
At last he said, “Are your legs steady enough to walk on?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well come on out and meet your other rescuer.” Adams was in a pantry off the control room. He emerged and set a number of edibles on a little table. “They aren’t very tidy, but they have some very nice things to eat. As long as we’re waiting, I thought . . . Who’s this, sir?”
“Miss Parini, meet, if you will, Mr. Adams of the Emperor’s Naval Forces. Mr. Adams, Miss Louisa Parini.”
Adams salaamed, but with a question hotly held. He finished his gesture, and asked, “Where did she come from?”
Villiers said, “She was in one of the cold boxes.”
“She was? Well. Uh, sir. Since we’re going to be here until the cruiser arrives, could I wake somebody up, too? I mean, it would make the numbers even.”
Villiers said, “Just one. You’d better take your time over your choice.”
Adams nodded and saluted. “Yes, sir.” He hurried back into the hold.
Villiers waved Louisa to a seat by the tiny table. “Would you like some . . .” He read a label. “Would you like a porde roe sandwich? Say, Adams was right. I know this brand. I’ve seen this brand.”
“Let’s make one and split it,” Louisa said.
“Fair enough.”
Villiers hunted around, came up with a spoon, rejected it, and found another. He cut two fine slices of bread, buttered them lightly, spooned out the white eggs, and spread them. Was it only that evening they had eaten dinner? He fitted the sandwich together and then sliced it neatly apart
He handed Louisa half. “Necessary skills,” he said. “I was just thinking that it seems a long time since this evening.”
Shyly, Louisa asked, “Will you answer a question?”
“Yes. Of course.”
She set her sandwich down. “Have you been thinking about—you know, about what we said?”
Villiers nodded. “Yes—whenever I had a free moment. I think I will go from here to Yuten. If all goes well, I may find my three-month-old money there. But you, I think, should go to Miss McBurney’s Seminary.”
“Don’t ask me to do that,” Louisa pleaded. “Do you want me out of the way because I caused so much trouble?”
Villiers leaned over and gripped her hands. “Louisa, don’t think that. I don’t want you out of the way. I do sincerely doubt my ability to be the master confidence man you would have me be.”
“Oh, you could do it, Tony,” Louisa said.
“Oh, yes, possibly,” Villiers said, smiling at the thought. “But it would mean such an extreme change in my way of life—dropping old connections and old habits, and making new ones. I’m not up to that.”
“You mean you don’t want to do it,” Louisa said.
Villiers was unsure of his ability to make clear the difference between not wanting to become a professional confidence man and rejecting her. He thought there must be one.
“Let me ask you a question, then.”
“All right.”
“Can you out-act the girl you saw at dinner?”
“The one in the black coronet braid?”
Villiers thought back. “I believe it was, yes.”
“I
think
so,” Louisa said defensively.
“How much?”
“Well, some.”
Villiers said, “I didn’t follow the note that she sent me. Do you remember? It wasn’t because I knew what she and Henry Maurice had in mind. It was because she didn’t play a lady well enough to convince me.”
“And I couldn’t convince you?”
“No, Louisa. I don’t think so.”
“Oh.”
“I think they’ll teach you at Miss McBurney’s. I think that’s what your father has in mind.”
She rose without saying anything. She walked some feet away and gave Villiers her back to look at for some moments. He couldn’t tell whether she was controlling herself or just thinking.
After a time, she said, in a calm little voice, “Tony, what are fardels?”
* * *
Just as there are frightening dreams in a late October night, there are leaping dreams of the possible that live in May. If May isn’t your season, this isn’t your story.
Alice Tutuila had passed her time inside the cold box in a happy puddle. She awoke feeling slow and drowsy. She stretched her arms. Then she looked up into the eyes of a large, presentable young man who was leaning over her. Her heart distinctly bounced, and she didn’t even know as yet that he was a Navy man.
The young man turned and called, “Sir? Sir? I’ve picked one.”
12
A
DAMS BADE HIS FAREWELL TO ALICE
at the end of Phibbs’ counter, but Villiers continued to walk beside Louisa in Mrs. Bogue’s line. Mrs. Bogue was not pleased about his presence, but chose to say nothing. Control had slipped away from her on the night of the seventeenth and for the moment she was content to accept what she was given until she had her complete power again.
Louisa said, “And you promise you will see me if you come to Nashua?”
“If you are there, I will see you,” Villiers said.
Last act curtain lines are either extremely clear or extremely equivocal. Louisa didn’t want either total uncertainty or total certainty. She was willing to take moderate ambiguity and call it a first act curtain.
She said, “Well, goodbye, then, Tony.”
He took her hand. “Goodbye, then.”
Then he turned away. He walked back toward Adams, who had a hand half-raised in final farewell.
“Mr. Villiers.”
It was Bledsoe, one of those bound out on the present ship. He nodded with deliberation as he spoke.
“Mr. Bledsoe.”
Bledsoe held a card out to Villiers. “For you, sir. My card.”
Villiers looked at it. Bledsoe said, “May I compliment you, sir, on your good advice to Miss Parini? It was excellently in order.”
The name on the card was not Bledsoe. It was Pavel Branko, described as an entrepreneur. Branko!
Villiers said, “A cousin?”
“A second cousin, doing a favor. On the other side of the card is an address you may have interest in. For Jack the Hand. Good day, sir.”
* * *
Louisa woke that night in the ship when a warm dream spilled into consciousness. The dream was made of pure feeling. She lay awake thinking about it. It was a very specific dream.
This room was larger than the room in the
Orion
. Alice was overhead, firmly asleep. Louisa stared at the bottom of the bed half the length of an outstretched arm above her.
Her mind was busy, busy, busy. First act, only.
* * *
It was raining on Yuten when Villiers and Torve left the Navy cruiser there. It was the rain of early summer, cool and peltering, and it made splashing circles, quickly gone, on the hard white surface of the field. The rain was wind-driven and irregular. Torve’s fur began to mat as it grew wetter.
“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Villiers said, as he bent against the wind.
A constant absence of weather is bound to be a bore. After several weeks in travel, it always seems pleasant to feel wind and rain, to see the lightest of gray skies and dark little moving cloud ghosts, to walk on muddy ground and have the mud stick to your shoes.
They were the only passengers to depart. The rain was slackening as they reached the port terminal. The sun poured through a rent in the gray fabric and lit the tented world from within. The grayness of the world had a momentary glow and the puddles glistened.
There was the usual delay in Torve’s clearance, settled in the usual way, at the usual cost in time. While they were waiting, Villiers was recognized by Lord Hawkwood’s cheetah.
“Viscount Charteris,” the man said, hurrying up. “Lord Hawkwood would be pleased for your company. An extremely pleasant week, I assure you. The affair is already gathering. No sharpers, no dubs, and it is winter now on his Kirkie estates in the south. The sport is excellent, as I make no doubt you will remember from last year.”
“No,” Villiers said. “I missed the occasion last year.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the cheetah said. He spent his time at Yuten’s sole spaceport when Lord Hawkwood directed to let the right arriving people know where the action was. Common practice. “In that case, it would be a shame, a shame, if you were not to be present this year.”
“Could you excuse me for a moment?” Villiers asked.
“You will consider?”
“Of course, sir.” Villiers turned away as another cheetah he did not recognize rushed up.
“Sir, Mr. Graftoon’s compliments, and could you favor—”
“A moment, if you will,” Villiers said.
He left the cheetahs strutting and preening at each other and favoring Torve with dubious looks. Torve stood flat-footedly and waited.
Villiers found the general mail center in the terminal and went inside. It was half-asleep, lulled perhaps by the rain.
A single clerk was working behind the counter. He looked up as Villiers entered.
Villiers said, “Good day, sir. Would mail sent to Yuten as a general address be delivered here?”
“Yes, sir. It would.”
“Would you check then and see if there is any mail for me? My name is Villiers.”
The clerk nodded and walked to his left out of Villiers’ sight. Villiers craned, but could not see him. It is hard to trust somebody to be doing something correctly when you can’t see him doing it.
After a minute the clerk said, “You did say Villiers?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Don’t see anything for anybody of that name back here.” He followed his voice out to the counter. “Were you expecting something in particular, or are you just hoping?”
“Something in particular. It should be coming from Morian, sir. And it will have a mark like this on it.” Villiers sketched his personal mail symbol.
“Morian, you say. Well, hold on a second. A ship is just in from Star Well.”
“Star Well?” Villiers said, raising his eyebrows.
“Yes. It could have mail from Morian. Star Well is the hub of the Rift, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Just hold on.”
The clerk turned and entered the maze of sorting bins, carts and boxes, ruck and clutter. There was a man at work back there, so colorless that he blended into the postal operation as one more piece of standard equipment. The clerk started him up and he performed some sort of intricate native function. When the clerk turned, he had a number of pieces of mail in his hands. He sorted through them as he returned to the counter.
He came to an envelope and leaned away from it to get a better look. “Hmm,” he said. “Villiers. Have you got identification?”
“I just described that envelope,” Villiers said.
“Yes,” said the clerk, “but somebody might have told you what it looks like. I’ve got to have identification.”
Villiers identified himself several times and received in turn the envelope.
“Fresh off the boat,” the clerk said.
“From Star Well.”
“Yes.”
“There must be a moral there somewhere. Thank you.” It was the usual amount, little and late. Villiers looked at it, sighed, and then returned to Torve and the pair of cheetahs.
“My best to Mr. Graftoon,” he said, “but I’m afraid that my company is already spoken for.”
He smiled pleasantly and Graftoon’s hawk sighed and gestured and withdrew.
Villiers nodded to Lord Hawkwood’s man. “Lead on, if you will.”
* * *
Of the men trapped by Villiers and Adams within Star Well, all but one were taken into custody with ease. Some had already agreed to terms and the others knew well enough how nonsensical it would be to hold hostages or don a space suit and hide in a crevice on the surface. These would only delay the inevitable.
Star Well was closed for a short time by its owners, who declared their surprise and shock at the actions of the manager they had trusted. They stated, however, that they saw no point in not taking advantage of the improvements he had added, and when Star Well opened again, it had three operating ports and enjoyed an immediate happy rise in the use of its warehouse facilities.
The one missing man was Hisan Bashir Shirabi.
He was not killed. He was not captured. He did not escape. He was never seen again in Star Well. He simply disappeared.
Shhh.
Listen. Listen to the rock. Put your ear against it. Is that the echo of secret tunneling? That was years ago, years ago.
Might it be the careful sound of secret purple footsteps?
—End Book I—
Art, murder, Admiral Beagle and the Fascination of the Gawk figure in the second Anthony Villiers novel, The Thurb Revolution.
