The Elysium Commission (8 page)

“Suicide is interesting, but I don't recommend it.”

“Who would want that connection exposed, whatever it is?”

“About half the aristos in Thurene, so long as it was embarrassing and would reduce Legaar's power and wealth, and so long as they weren't revealed.”

That wasn't exactly a help. “Who most of all?”

“How deep is the ocean? How high the sky?”

With her questions came the servitor with the main course—Agneau dela Reine. Each rack of lamb had been steeped for days in a mint brandy marinade, then grilled so that the outside was not quite black, the inside warm bright pink. With the lamb was a choice of a blackberry mint or a lime rosemary sauce. Crisp green beans almondine circled the rack on the platter before me, each almond slivered precisely and butter-toasted golden. The next wine was a cabernet-merlot, Falconcrest Reserve.

I enjoyed the lamb and wine for a time before speaking. “I would have thought you, of all souls, dear Odilia, would have known more about the infamous Eloi brothers.”

She raised her left eyebrow a millimeter. “When the evening is over, Blaine dear, you will know all that I can tell you.”

If that weren't an ambiguous statement, I hadn't ever heard one. “In the meantime, what else can you tell me?”

“I understand that Judeon Maraniss likes black-eyed women in black. Legaar likes a greater variety. Interestingly enough, both prefer them teasingly subservient—at least in public.”

I didn't believe the disclaimer in the last four words at all.

“Do they have partners or children?”

“Maraniss doesn't. Legaar had a wife years back. She obediently provided two sons, then departed. She lives in the Lamia system, well provided for.”

“And the sons?”

“Legaar sent them off to school. I don't know where. I doubt anyone living on Devanta does, either.”

Effectively, that was the end of what I learned at the table.

Dessert was a simple crème brûlée, accompanied by a pale amber dessert wine, Toad Hall Reserve. I doubted Odilia served anything that wasn't at least a reserve.

I took a bite of the crème brûlée. Flavor that was part pure vanilla and part cinnamon almost filled my senses, rich without being heavy, light without losing substance.

When we had finished, I looked to my hostess. “An exquisite dinner, Odilia. Truly enjoyable.”

“Thank you.” She rose from her chair, lifting the other eyebrow, less than a millimeter.

I understood. No more questions about the Elois and Maraniss. I knew a bit more, but not nearly what I'd hoped. Still, finding out anything when so much in Thurene was hidden in plain sight—and still invisible—was useful. Just not useful enough.

“I'll rejoin you in a moment,” Odilia said. “You know where the guest facilities are.”

I did. I used them, then waited for her.

We walked quietly to the portico, where a pale gold limousine waited. It was large enough to carry eight in the two semicircular couches of black permavelt in the rear compartment, and armored and shielded heavily enough to have held a combat groundcar to a draw. We sat across from each other, but at the far end, so that our knees almost touched.

“I've heard that Carreres Domingo is absolutely marvelous as Saturnus,” she said as we were carried out though the cupridium gates.

“I've only seen
Hyperion
twice before, once with Kherrl Mylnes and once with Mykelj Farinelli.”

“Which did you prefer?”

“Farinelli was better on the top, but he minced the role. Mylnes
was
Saturnus, but that's because he takes himself so seriously all the time anyway.”

Odilia laughed. “It's best you don't write consulting reports on the opera.”

I agreed with that.

“I would judge that Domingo has Farinelli's top and Mylnes's gravitas.”

That might be worth seeing…and hearing.

Before long, the limousine pulled up at the entrance outside the upper entry foyer, used only by those who had boxes in the royaux row. A footman dressed as one of Apollo's minions held the door as we exited. I was of less import and status. I went first.

Those waiting inside the foyer looked at Odilia without seeming to. A few looked in my direction, less circumspectly. Two men stared.

“They're jealous, dear Blaine. Don't mind them.”

I didn't.

Odilia steered us toward a blond woman in a clinging pale seafoam dress. While the garment covered everything from wrist to neck to ankle, it left little to the imagination. That was a waste of expensive fabric. Why use it like a surface coating? Paint would have done almost as well.

“Sephaniah, you look positively ravished,” Odilia said in a honey-sweet voice. “I mean, ravishing. Have you met Blaine Donne?”

Sephaniah smiled at Odilia. “You always look so regal and distinguished. You certainly have managed to capture the look and spirit of the later Victoria, I mean, Victorian time frame.” Sephaniah's blond hair was in long, perfect ringlets that curled forward across her shoulders and partly covered her almost nonexistent breasts, to which the seafoam fabric clung like a second skin, revealing every nuance. Clearly, the nymphet look was back. Rather, the nymphets-across-history look was back. Odilia was now merely a more conservative version of what Sephaniah flaunted.

The nymphet turned to me with a warm smile. “I'm pleased to meet you, Seignior Donne. You don't look like either the ancient poetic type or a searcher after truth in the shadows.” Her hand almost touched my trousers, and my hip, not quite suggestively.

“I'm limited in both fields. Good poetry and truth are both difficult to discover,” I replied.

“I doubt you're limited in areas where it matters most.” She glanced toward Odilia. “Do enjoy the opera. It's said to be charmingly antiquarian.” With a sidelong glance, she slipped away toward a tall and well-muscled gladiatorial type in black and gold. Maybe he was meant to be a god, but he looked more like a gladiator posing as one.

Odilia gave an amused laugh. “Sephaniah refuses to admit any intellect in public. She has a long listing of translations from lost languages, and she wrote the libretto for
Gilgamesh,
based on her own original translation from the Urdu or Sanskrit or whatever the clay tablets were written in. She also wrote the libretto for
The Lictor's Sword.
Have you ever met Laniel Greyspan? He's right over there.”

“I know of him, but I've never had the pleasure.” I turned slightly to see the angular figure talking to a shorter man and a woman who had clearly modeled herself after Titania. Greyspan had been the financial advisor to the city sisters for generations—and with his haggard face and thin gray hair, he looked it. He was one of the unfortunates for whom nanotech and telomeric therapy worked marginally. He'd had to rely on his own cloned organs to keep going. As his appearance revealed, that process had limits. He would reach them soon.

“Intellectually, it's a pleasure.” Odilia left the rest unsaid.

She turned, and I stepped up to her side.

Out of the thousand plus in the opera house, there couldn't have been more than a dozen aristo women who did not look as though they were either nymphs, nymphets, or slightly older, and not more than twenty men who were not shaped in some semblance of youthful gods. My appearance was definitely on the older side. I hoped I didn't qualify as a satyr. I'd let a few wrinkles stay here and there, on the grounds that my various opponents and nameless enemies might underestimate me.

We walked across the foyer toward the middle, where Odilia had a private box, in the exact center of the royaux row. She extended her hand, and the door opened, keyed by her persona. I stepped forward and gestured for her to enter, since I could not actually open the faux goldenwood door. It closed behind me. I looked down. While I had been in other private boxes, I had not entered Odilia's before. The four seats directly behind the balcony rail were visible to the rest of the audience. That was where one sat to be seen. The second line was blurred from outside, but offered a clear view of the stage and the pit. That was where guests who wished to see the opera but not be seen sat. The two couches on the third level offered a restricted view of the stage, but were totally private.

Odilia eased down the steps toward the front, then gestured to the two seats in the middle of the first row. I seated her.

“Will anyone be joining us?” I had my doubts because there were only two programs laid out.

“
Hyperion
is very much a period piece these days, Blaine. Few in the Thurenen elite enjoy period pieces. They remind them too much of their mortality.”

“You support the opera.” I'd checked the program. Odilia was one of the larger donors. “Couldn't you change that?”

“I could, but a few period pieces are necessary. Contemporaneity for the sake of contemporaneity is even worse than senseless veneration of the past.”

Was
Hyperion
senseless veneration of the past? It certainly was an ancient opera. At one time, I'd guess it had been considered futuristic, but it was merely derivative from one of the even more ancient poems written in proto-Anglo, which had been derived from even older myths. Not that either the story line or the music mattered, although I'd always been partial to the music. It, too, was derivative. Lamarque had evolved and improved melodies from someone called Lloyd-Veber, back before the collapse and Terran Diaspora.

When you get right down to it, everything anyone does is a pastiche based on the interaction of the past with present motives, civilization, and technology. I suppose it's always been that way.

The point of going to L'Opera was as much to be seen as to see, to be heard as to hear. More than a few pairs of eyes strayed upward. Uncomfortable as it made me, I reminded myself that some visibility was necessary. It was a way to get clients. Not the only way, but easier than many, and far more pleasant. If I had to be visible, who better to be visible with than Princesse Odilia?

The murmurs died away as the first notes of the overture filled the theatre.

As the curtain rose, Saturnus sat under a glitter-tree, not exactly in a vale, and the notes came from the Naiad. “Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star…”

I'd always liked those words, far better than the others mixed with them by time—the ones about the last day of life as we knew it and the carousing that followed.

Sitting beside Odilia, as the opera proceeded, I was aware of those lustful yet virginal pheromones she was exuding. Any normal male would have been, and in that respect I was very normal.

At the end of Act I, she turned and smiled at me. “There is a bottle of Angelique Blanche on ice on the sideboard. There are two goblets. If you would…”

“I would.” I rose and bowed slightly to her.

Actually, there were two bottles of the Angelique on ice, but she had been right about the number of goblets.

When I turned, Odilia had reseated herself in the second row. I stepped down and extended the goblet to her, then sat down beside her.

I had a difficult—hard, really—time concentrating on Act II. Odilia's head was not quite on my shoulder, and I could feel and sense the palpable desire emanating from her. Yet she only looked at me in passing as she watched and listened to the conflict and desire on the stage below and before us, amplified by the lushness of the music.

We also finished the first bottle of Angelique. Rather, she finished most of it.

“Would you open the second bottle?” she asked after Act II.

“Of course.”

She was on the couch when I turned after refilling her goblet. I knew what was coming, and I couldn't say that I was displeased. Anyone who says that pheromones boosting virginal lust is an oxymoron has no idea what they're talking about.

She took only one sip before setting the goblet aside and touching my cheek with those soft and slender fingers. The pheromones swept over me, and I was barely able to set down my own goblet before Odilia's arms went around me.

The world indeed lay before me like a land of dreams, and knowledgeable as we were about ignorant armies, still we filled that darkling plain with what certitude we could.

Odilia and I did manage to gather ourselves together before the applause at the finale died away. We actually looked presentable. I still was bemused at how easily she'd been able to shed all that faux-Victorian finery—and then redon it without looking disarrayed in the slightest. I felt disheveled and worse as we rode back to the palacio in her limousine.

I didn't love Odilia. I never would. She didn't love me, and never would. That might be because it is impossible to love and be wise. I have never been that wise, but we understood each other, and sometimes understanding and lust are an acceptable, if bittersweet, substitute for love. Why should we give all our bounty to the dead?

“Domingo wasn't as good as he has been,” she said with a smile. “Or perhaps I was distracted.”

“I believe the word is distracting, Princesse.” I couldn't deny I had enjoyed the evening, and I was glad I hadn't been left loitering amid the sedge, hollow-eyed, where no birds sang.

When we reached the palacio, I walked her to the edge of the portico.

“Good evening, sweet knight of shadows.” Odilia wrapped herself around me for a moment—and that was very out of character—providing a long and lingering kiss and some indiscreet fondling. As she stepped back, I realized she had slipped an envelope inside my cummerbund.

“I had a lovely evening, a truly lovely evening. Thank you.” Her smile was seemingly without guile.

“Thank
you.
”

Without another word, we parted. Sometimes, “good-byes” or “good nights” are redundant.

Her limousine had slipped away, but the full-sized special one I had engaged pulled up. My flashcode confirmed that it was my hire.

Once settled in the conveyance, I extracted the envelope. Inside was a miniature dataflat, and several printed sheets. I slipped the dataflat into my bodywallet, then leaned back, exhausted and involuntarily relaxed as I was, and began to read the sheets. I'd read halfway down the first when the limousine came to an abrupt halt.

“There's a wall…across the road.” Drivers were supposed to be impassive. “Right across the end of Boudicca. It wasn't here fifteen minutes ago.”

Walls didn't just get built across roads in minutes. Had the driver been suborned somehow?

I could feel a sudden pull, like a singularity beam focused just on me. Except such a beam would have been instantly fatal. I triggered the full nanoshield, just before a jolting twist ripped me out of the limousine and into swirling brilliant chaotic white. I closed my eyes, but they still burned. I could feel heat building around me, directed back at me by the shield.

Then the whiteness vanished, and I was falling. I didn't fall far, but the jolt, even inside the shield, was enough to immobilize me for a moment.

I dropped the nanoshield, but the relief wasn't that great. Even at eleven hour, under the stars of the Arm, I'd been dropped into a moist, almost junglelike environment. I was still on Devanta, because I caught a glimpse of the smoky red three-quarter disc of Bergerac in the east, but how could I have been moved and so quickly?

Not possible.

Sir?
came the reply to my inadvertent comm.

Max, interrogative my location. Soonest.

Ten point three klicks at 326 degrees from Thurene city center.

That was close to the shielded IS installation above Glen Lake. The lake couldn't be that far…not with the humidity.

A whining rose behind me and grew into a shrill buzz.

I recognized it instantly. It wasn't a sound an operative ever forgot—nanogenetically modified Aswaran wasps. Nasty creatures. Near-immediate massive anaphylactic shock if they stung you. What were they doing outside of confinement? The entire swarm was almost on me when I triggered the shield again.

Frig!
One was inside my jacket.

I contracted the shield, hoping to crush it—and that my shirt and undershirt and skin would protect me.

I sensed the crunch and eased the shield, enough to be able to move. I had to get clear of the swarm. I only had minutes before the shield cooked me, unless I went to partial porosity, and that would open me up to snipers. I headed downhill, toward where the locator said the lake was. It was off-limits, too.

The shield flared orange. I dropped to my knees. Someone—something—was firing at me. The particolaser had to have been a defense-response weapon. That meant I was inside the IS restricted area.
Double frig!

I could sense even more heat building inside the shield, but partial porosity was definitely not an option. If I didn't get moving, I'd be out. I'd also exhaust my oxygen before long, even with the limited screen vibro-diffusion.

My systems had the lake at 143 degrees absolute at three hundred yards. I turned, centered myself, and started moving, trying to keep low, and out of sight line from the crystalline towers that held the response particolaser. I tried to keep an even pace. That delayed internal heat buildup.

The trees and vegetation ended a good forty yards from the water, and the low grass that sloped down to the lake was open to the towers and the laser. There was no help for it. I kept moving toward the water.

Another blast of light flared the shield and raised my temperature.

I jumped into the water. You don't dive when you don't know the depth, even within a shield, because if the shield hits anything hard, the shock still get transmitted. I went down, but only about a meter and a half before my shielded dress boots hit gooey mud.

Another blast struck shield and water, raising steam all around me. I lurched forward and tried an awkward surface dive. If I remained exposed, the tower laser would boil me alive. Underwater, there was no oxygen diffusion at all, and that was another problem, because the re-breather unit in my belt would only provide oxygen for a quarter stan. I'd already used some of that.

Still underwater, I cut off the nanoshield. I just hoped that the mechanism would stay dry. I didn't have much choice. If I left it on, I'd end up boiled in my own heat. The cool of the water around me was both a shock and refreshing. I kept swimming underwater. I hadn't had the water mods. Even if I had, I couldn't have kept them when I'd been retired.

I came up and took a quick breath, then dropped below the surface.

Light flared behind me, so close that I could feel the heat from the laser. I angled slightly to the right and kept swimming.

I finally managed to get to the overlook on the east side of the lake. It took a good quarter stan before I clambered out of the water.

Max…time check.

Eleven past eleven hour
.

That was a only few minutes later than when I'd been sitting in the private limousine. How could that possibly be? I knew I'd spent a quarter stan swimming. I was soaked and tired.

I didn't have a chance to puzzle that over because a Garda flitter arrived and fixed me in its lights. Water was still dripping from my dinner jacket and trousers, and my boots were probably ruined.

“Walk toward the flitter. Keep your hands away from your body.” The patroller's projected voice didn't sound like Javerr's. I was thankful for that.

“Stop.”

My enhancements picked up all the sensors and remote probing. They didn't pick up anything, because there wasn't anything to detect. I'd gone to the opera, not out on an operation.

“Sensors confirm you are Blaine Donne, Fifty-One Cuarta Calle, Thurene.”

“That's correct.”

“Can you explain what you were doing in Glen Lake?”

“No, Officer. I cannot. You can verify that a few standard minutes ago I was in a limousine roughly at the intersection of Boudicca and Vallum. The next thing I knew I was at the edge of the lake on the far side with some very angry wasps chasing me. I ran into the water and swam here. I imagine that since the far side is an IS installation, that, if they choose, they can verify my appearance.”

“How do you know that it's an IS installation?”

“I'm retired IS, Officer.” I didn't mention the medically retired part.

“Glen Lake is a restricted water source. Bathing or swimming is forbidden.”

“I understand that, Officer. I also know that even standing on the IS reservation is prohibited, and they have lasers. I just wanted to get away from there.”

“I'll have to take you in, Seignior Donne.”

The change in salutation was anything but good. He'd tapped into my dossier at the Garda.

The hatch behind the guidance section opened. The flitter was remote-operated. “Get into the flitter.”

I did. The space was confined enough that my knees were tight against the bulkhead. The hatch closed, and the flitter lifted off. The flight back to the Garda station took less than five standard minutes. I spent the time gently easing the wasp carcass into a jacket pocket.

Within minutes of the time I stepped out of the flitter I was in an interrogation room across a table from an officer Donahew. The walls were a pale blue. That was a shade designed to relax. I didn't. There was a scarcely visible nanite shield between us.

“Swimming in reserved waters is an offense against the Codex, Seignior Donne.” Donahew was stocky, dark-haired, and had pale green eyes. His voice was almost a bass.

“As I told you—or whoever was the RP on the flitter—that was the least dangerous alternative.”

“Ah, yes.” His lips curled into an amused smile. “We did check as you suggested. You were where you said you'd been when you said you'd been there. That raises a most interesting question. How did you manage to traverse ten klicks in a few minutes?”

“I told you. I don't know.”

He consulted the miniature console I couldn't see. “Interesting.”

I waited.

“For a space of five minutes a wall seemed to appear at the intersection of Boudicca and Vallum. What did you have to do with that?”

“The driver said it was there. Before I had a chance to look, I was on the IS reservation with wasps chasing me.”

“That seems rather unlikely. Yet you're smart enough to know that we'd find it so. Why are you telling me that?”

“Because it's what happened, and if I tried to tell you what didn't happen, all those sensors focused on me would tell you that I was lying.”

Donahew's smile grew broader. I didn't like the expression.

“Now how could someone—or how could you—hop out of that limo and get onto a flitterjet and reach the lake without registering on the satellite scans?”

“I don't know how any of it happened, Officer Donahew. I only know that one minute I was in the limousine, and the next I was above the edge of the lake with wasps targeting me.”

“Exactly what kind of wasps? Or do you know?”

“They sounded like Aswaran wasps.”

“Nasty little creatures, but I haven't seen any in Thurene in years. They're interdicted, you know. I can't see as anyone would break the interdict just to have fun with a small-time regen spec-opper.”

“You're absolutely right, Officer. Neither can I.” I carefully eased the insect carcass out of the pocket of my damp jacket and onto the table. “This is one of them. I offer it to you.”

Donahew looked at the insect and swallowed. His expression wasn't quite an old revolt from awe. More like disgust. The sensors refocused on the dead insect, playing over its black-and-red stripes, the shimmering, if now tattered, double wings, and the smooth long injector stinger.

“It
is
an Aswaran wasp.” He shook his head. “That'll play Hades with the EPs.” He paused, probably forwarding an alert to the environmental police. “You aren't exactly making this easier, Seignior Donne.”

“I can't change what happened, Officer Donahew. Some windows are always broken when people play ugly Yahoo tricks.”

He gave me an odd look, but then, it was an odd, if appropriate, old misquote.

“If I were the guessing type, Seignior Donne, I'd suspect that someone might be targeting you. You wouldn't care to speculate on that, now, would you?”

“Officer…I could speculate a great deal, but I have no idea who had the ability to carry me ten klicks without my even knowing how it happened.” Donahew wasn't pressing me, not the way Javerr had, and yet he'd clearly accessed my Garda dossier. I wasn't about to ask why, but I made a mental note to keep that in mind.

In the end, Donahew sent me back to the villa in a Garda van—sealed. I'd still had to pay the fine—three thousand credits—for contaminating a public water source. The sisters have always frowned on that sort of thing, no matter what the reason. I did take the wasp carcass with me—in a case Donahew supplied after he entered the information into the files. He didn't want it anywhere around. That was also troubling.

Once I was inside my villa, I immediately went to my study and copied the dataflat's contents to a quarantined section of my systems, then stored the dataflat itself in the secure section below the study. I set Max to using the equipment on the lower level to dry and decipher what I hadn't read of the dossier Odilia had slipped me. I hoped he could do it. I had no idea if it were a summary or something new, and I was far too exhausted to try to make any sense of any of it until I got some sleep.