The Devil's Eye Read online

  Had Selotta ever cheated?

  I cringed as the thought intruded itself.

  Kassel snorted. It was half laughter, half sneeze. “It’s okay,” he said. He squeezed my shoulder, and his eyes locked with Selotta’s.

  Selotta showed her fangs again. “You try too hard, Chase,” she said. “And, if you would know the truth, we share everything.”

  The truth was I didn’t know quite what she meant, but she picked that up, too. “Use your imagination,” she added.

  It wasn’t a place I wanted to go.

  Alex looked in my direction and delivered one of those innocent smiles to let me know he understood precisely what was going on. I swear, sometimes his ability to do that left me wondering whether he had a few Mutes in the family.

  Eventually the captain showed up. He was wearing a dumb smile and went on about how he hoped we were all comfortable and enjoying the cruise. He made it a point to look everywhere except at his Ashiyyurean passengers. Don’t want to stare, you know. His eyes touched mine, and he let me see how uncomfortable he was, how he wished we’d keep our friends home next time. I knew he was wondering how far the telepathic reach of the aliens extended. Was he safe on the bridge? I had no idea. But he probably wasn’t.

  “He is safe enough,” said Selotta, “unless we extend ourselves.”

  “He doesn’t mean anything by it,” I said.

  “I know. I have the same sort of reaction to him.”

  When he was safely away, Alex chuckled.

  Kassel did that deep-throated rumble that passed for a laugh. “He’s shallow water, Alex,” he said. “You, on the other hand, are hard to read.”

  “Low IQ?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t try to empty his mind,” said Selotta. “It’s a bad idea to sit and try not to think about things.”

  “So Alex fills it up,” added Kassel. “He concentrates on the Konish Dynasty and the kind of silverware they had, and what their plates looked like and why the latter-day glassware is worth so much more than the early stuff.”

  “Ah, you’ve found me out.” There was a touch of pride in Alex’s voice.

  “It’s rather like crowd noise,” said Kassel, innocently.

  Alex pretended to take offense. “Konish Dynasty antiques are not crowd noise.”

  “Point of view, my friend. Point of view.”

  We started for the surface. The captain’s voice thanked us for using Atlantis Tours, expressed his hope that we’d enjoyed ourselves, and invited us to come back soon.

  The other passengers gave us plenty of room as we filed out. The pier was big, but the deck was moving sufficiently that some people grabbed for handrails. Most looked for the taxi area; others made for one of the restaurants. We headed toward a restaurant. We were halfway there when Jay Carmody appeared. Jay was one of Alex’s colleagues and a longtime friend.

  It had been a marvelous two weeks, and Carmody was bringing the wrap-up, a parting gift for the Ashiyyureans. It was in a white box. And it was supposed to be a surprise. To ensure that, neither of us knew what Carmody had gotten. “Just make sure it’s something to blow the roof off,” Alex had said.

  But as soon as Carmody started toward us, I heard somebody gasp. Selotta, I think. And she knew. They both knew.

  “Jay,” said Alex, “do you want to show us what’s in the box?”

  “Absolutely.” He was glowing. We sat down on adjoining benches, and he removed the lid. The Mutes had both gone absolutely still.

  It was a brick. Sealed in a plastene container.

  At first I thought it was a joke, but I’d seen the reaction of our guests.

  “Atlantis?” asked Alex.

  Carmody smiled. “From the Temple of Akiva. Rear courtyard. Removed in the thirty-second century by Roger Tomas, donated originally to the London Museum, and later taken to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Eventually it wound up in Berlin. It’s been around.” He reached into his jacket and removed a folded piece of paper. “Certificate of authenticity, signed on behalf of the current owner.” He was facing Alex, but he was talking to Selotta and Kassel. “I’ve gone over the bona fides thoroughly. A complete copy of the record is in the box.” He handed it to Alex. “I hope it’s satisfactory.”

  Nobody could ever say Alex was in the antiquities business purely for the money. Well, people had said it. In fact, they said it all the time. But it wasn’t true. I’ll concede he has an affection for the bottom line, but if you show him something like a vase that had once stood in Mesmeranda’s villa, or maybe the chair that Remus Alverol had tossed across the room when news arrived of the massacre at Port Walker, his eyes positively lit up. That was what I saw at that moment, watching him gaze down at that brick. Placed by human hands in the courtyard of the goddess, probably on a sunny day like this one, twelve thousand years ago, removed forty-five centuries later by an archeologist who had himself become a legend.

  This was the single most valuable piece that we’d acquired in the four years we’d been in operation. And now he was about to—

  —Give it away.

  He handed it to me. “You were the one she took care of,” he said.

  And I passed it to her. “It’s yours, Selotta. For you and Kassel. I hope you’ll keep it for yourself.”

  “—Rather than give it to the museum,” she said.

  “Yes. It’s for you. With our appreciation.”

  Carmody took pictures. Selotta, clearly flustered, shook her head in a human gesture and held up her hands to decline. “I can’t accept this, Chase,” she said. “Not possibly. You and Alex arranged the tour for us. That’s enough.”

  Alex was nothing if he wasn’t a charmer. He smiled and glanced at Kassel. “You’re a lucky man to have so lovely a spouse,” he said.

  Kassel, perhaps surprised at being called a man, licked his lips with that long forked tongue in a gesture that suggested the details were wrong but it was okay.

  “Please,” she continued. “I can’t imagine the price you must have paid. I can’t let you do this.”

  “It’s okay, Selotta,” Alex said. “It’s something we wanted to do for you.”

  The following day we caught the shuttle from Drake City and rode it up to Galileo. We had a farewell dinner in a Chinese restaurant. It was an era of occasional armed confrontations between Ashiyyurean and Confederate warships. While we dipped into the chicken and spices, an HV began to run a report of a new incident. A Mute ship had gotten too close to a Confederate world, and a destroyer had fired on it. The Mutes were saying it was an accident. The ship had gotten off course. In any case, no casualties were being reported by either side.

  That got us increased attention from the other diners. Kassel ignored it. “Alex and Chase, you are welcome on Borkarat anytime. And we’d be happy to put you up at our place,” he said.

  We told him we’d bring some brew with us. We were leaving, too, of course. Headed back to Rimway. We paid up, this one on Kassel, who insisted. When Kassel insisted, he tended to sound as if he meant it. We took a last look at Earth. We were on the nightside, over Europe and Africa. Lights everywhere, from Moscow to the Cape. Electrical storms glimmered in the Atlantic.

  Here was where it had started. The great diaspora.

  They were riding a diplomatic flight. We stayed with them until they boarded. They introduced us to a few of the other passengers, who were both Mute and human, and to the captain. Then it was time to go. We retreated back down the tube, they closed the hatches, and it was over.

  We made for the Belle-Marie, checked to make sure our luggage had arrived, and climbed on board. I went up onto the bridge, said hello to Belle, the AI, and began running my checkoff list. When I was satisfied everything was in order, I contacted the ops center and requested permission to depart. Minutes later we were on our way, gliding past the moon, adding velocity, and feeling pretty good. I could hear Alex talking in the cabin. Nothing unusual about that: He was having a conversation with Belle. We were looking at a
four-hour flight, plus probably a day or two after we had made our transit out of hyperspace. It was a lot quicker than it would have been a few years back, when the Armstrong drive needed weeks to cover the same distance.

  I was making final heading adjustments before initiating our jump when I heard a third voice in the cabin. A woman’s. Alex was checking his mail.

  I broke in. “Alex, prepare for jump.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  The last green light came on, indicating his harness was in place, and I eased us into hyperspace.

  Two minutes later he asked me to join him when I was free. I told Belle to take over, got out of my chair, and headed back.

  First thing I saw when I went into the common room was a female standing frozen, staring at Alex out of stricken eyes. It was a hologram, of course. She was young. Good-looking. Dark eyes and black hair cut short. She wore a white-and-gold blouse inscribed with the name HASSAN GOLDMAN above an arc of six stars. Something about her was familiar. “Who is she?”

  “Vicki Greene.”

  “Vicki Greene? The Vicki Greene?”

  “The Vicki Greene.”

  Vicki Greene, of course, was, and remains, an immensely popular novelist, a writer who specialized in horror and the supernatural. Voices in the night, demons in the basement: She’d made a substantial reputation by scaring the wits out of millions of readers across the Confederacy. “I wasn’t aware you knew her.”

  He lowered himself into his seat. “I don’t.”

  “Okay. Pity. So it’s a business thing. She wants us to find something for her?”

  “Listen to this,” he said.

  He directed Belle to run the transmission from the start. The image blinked off, blinked back on.

  Greene looked at Alex, then at me, did an appraisal, and turned back to the boss. “Mr. Benedict,” she said, “I know this will strike you as odd, but I don’t know who else can help me.” She was having trouble controlling her voice. “Since you’re not here, I’m asking your AI to forward this message. I’m in over my head, Mr. Benedict.” She was staring at him. Her turn to be terrified. “God help me, they’re all dead.”

  Alex touched a control and froze her again. “That’s it,” he said.

  “That’s it?”

  “That is the sum of the transmission.”

  “What’s she talking about?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve no idea.” He took a deep breath. “I’m wondering if we’re looking at a woman in the last stages of a breakdown.”

  She had looked thoroughly spooked. “Maybe she’s been writing too much horror,” I said.

  “It’s possible.”

  “And you’ve never met her?”

  “No.”

  “Who’s all dead?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Maybe a bunch of fictitious characters.” I got coffee for both of us. “You might want to recommend she see somebody.”

  “It’s been in the folder for several days.”

  “That’s because we told Belle not to disturb us.”

  He ran the artwork from her books. Etude in Black, which featured a young woman playing a stringed instrument in a spotlight while glowing eyes watched her from a dark curtain. Love You to Death, with a vulpine creature kneeling in sorrow at a grave site. Nightwalk, portraying a satanic figure in the clouds over a moonlit city. And three others with similar motifs: Wish You Were Here, Dying to Know You, and Midnight and Roses. “What do you think?”

  “Alex, she sounds like a lunatic.”

  “She’s in trouble, Chase.”

  “You want my advice? Don’t get involved.”

  We couldn’t send or receive a message while we were in hyperspace. We could have interrupted the jump, but there was really no point in that. So we waited until we arrived back at Rimway. Thirty seconds after we saw the stars again, he sat down and told Belle to record. “Ms. Greene,” he said. “I just received your message.” He stopped and looked in my direction. “Chase, how far out are we?”

  “About a day,” I said. “Day and a half.”

  He turned back to his message. “We’ve been away. I’ll be in my office by the weekend. Meantime, if you want to talk to me, I’m within radio range now. Skydeck can put you through.”

  He sat quietly for several moments, then told Belle to send it and looked up at me. “What’s wrong, Chase?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on. Talk to me.”

  “I think you should be more careful about getting involved in other people’s problems. You’re an antiquities dealer, not a psychologist.”

  “If she’s in trouble, I wouldn’t want to walk away from her.”

  “If she’s in trouble she can call the police.”

  TWO

  We don’t fear death because we lose tomorrow, but because we lose yesterday, with its sweet poignancy, its memories of growing children, of friends and lovers, of all that we have known. Nobody else has really been there in the way we have. And when the lights go out for us, for you or me, the lights go out in that world, too.

  —Wish You Were Here

  They’re all dead.

  We cruised toward Rimway. With its big moon, it constituted a glittering double star in the sparse sky near the galactic rim. Vicki Greene didn’t respond, didn’t send a message, didn’t say anything. The hours dragged on, and the double star grew into a pair of spheres. But Alex couldn’t put it out of his mind. When we got closer, where the delay in signal exchange wouldn’t be so great, he placed a call to her but was informed the code was inoperative. Temporarily out of service. Ordinarily he’d have dismissed the whole thing at that point as the work of a crank, but since it was Greene, he couldn’t let go. Maybe it was that she was an icon, the biggest name in supernatural fiction. Not that he ever read any of it, but he liked meeting celebrities as much as the next guy.

  So, a day and a half after we’d tried to communicate with her, we docked at Skydeck and headed directly for Karl’s Dellacondan Restaurant. It was traditionally our first stop after a flight. It doesn’t matter how good the shipboard food is, and we get good stuff on board the Belle-Marie , it’s always a pleasure to make for a real dining room, spread out, and eat from a fresh menu. We were just walking into the place when he brought her up again. “She must be okay,” he said, “or she’d have gotten back to me right away.”

  He was genuinely worried. More than the meet-the-deranged-celebrity thing. I’d known him for four years by then, and I still couldn’t figure out how his mind worked. I’d have been interested to know what Selotta might have been able to tell me about him. It was unsettling to realize she’d only spent a few days with the guy and knew him far better than I ever would. Maybe that’s the real reason people resent the Mutes so much.

  “She probably sobered up,” I said.

  He looked at me with an expression that told me we both knew she hadn’t been drinking. So I let it go, and the host led us to a corner table. We sat down beside a window. Brilliant splotches of light were spread across the globe. In the north, lightning glimmered.

  “Have you ever read any of her novels?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Never had time.”

  “Make time. She’s good.”

  “When did you read them?”

  “I read Dying to Know You on the way in.” He took a moment to examine the menu. “Great stuff,” he added.

  “You mean the food?”

  “I’m talking about Greene. I was surprised how good she is.”

  “I like fiction that’s a little more realistic.”

  He went into his paternal mode. “You need to open your mind to new experiences, Chase.”

  “I guess. You’d really like to meet her, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I would.”

  “You get in trouble,” I told him, “you’re on your own.”

  I was glad to see Ben Colbee again.

  Ben had twice proposed to me. All the signs were there. I
saw passion in his eyes, watched him light up whenever I walked into a room. And I think I was in love with him, too. At least, I’d never felt about anybody else the way I felt about him. Ben was a good guy, sensitive, smart, good-looking, and he knew how to make me laugh. That’s the big thing. Make me laugh.

  He was a musician. He played cornerstone with the Full Boat, which—he thought—was moving up and would shortly make him famous. That did eventually happen, but it’s another story. Anyhow, Ben was waiting as I knew he would be when the shuttle got in. He offered to take Alex home, too, but Alex knows when he’s an encumbrance, so he said no thanks, you guys go ahead, and threw his bags into a taxi and took off.

  We did some smooches, and Ben asked me how the flight had been and told me about the Full Boat’s latest gig at the Sundown. Then, somewhere in there, he looked at me funny. “What’s wrong, Chase?”

  “Nothing, Ben. Just a crank message we got on the way home.” He asked me about it so I told him. I didn’t mention who it was from, though.

  “This guy was a complete stranger?” he asked.

  “It was from a woman. And yes, she was nobody we knew.”

  “Not one of your customers, right? Somebody you maybe forgot about?”

  “No, Ben. Not somebody we forgot about.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Crazy people everywhere. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  We left Andiquar behind and headed out over the western hills. And, to make a long story short, I wasn’t very receptive to his advances, not at all what he’d expected when I’d been gone almost three weeks. Hell, not what I’d expected. And I don’t think it had anything to do with Alex and the crazy woman. I’m not sure what it was. I had a feeling we were approaching another one of those moments when Ben was going to pour out his heart to me. I’d been gone a long time, and he’d missed me, and—well, you know. And as much as I liked him, loved him, whatever, I wanted to head it off. So I explained I wasn’t much in the mood. Tired. Long trip. He deflated and said okay, he’d see me the next day. If that was all right. “You know,” he added, “you’re gone a lot.”