Firebird

ONE

1434, RIMWAY CALENDAR. SIX YEARS LATER.

I was sitting in my office at the country house, watching the snow come down, when Karen Howard arrived. The storm had reached epic proportions, at least by local standards, and I'd expected her to postpone. But she appeared at the front door exactly on time.

The only things I remember about her were that she wore a big hat, and that she talked in a loud voice. And, yes, that she was short. When she'd called for an appointment, she'd dodged explaining why she wanted to see us. “I have something to sell,” she had said. “I know you'll be able to get a good price for me. It's all quite valuable.”

But no details. That kind of approach is usually a guarantee that the prospective client is trying to get away with something. The antiquities business attracts a lot of con artists. Particularly our specialty, which is handling objects that have specific historical significance. The original notebook, say, that Despar Kolladner had used when he was writing Talking with God, or a set of drums that had belonged to Pepper Aspin. People are usually quite good at creating and producing supporting documents, but Alex is hard to fool. It's only happened once, and it cost us. But that's a tale for another time.

Karen came into my office, shook off the snow, and removed the hat but held it close to her blouse as if it would one day be a collector's item. “I'm Elizabeth Robin's sister,” she said, in a tone suggesting that explained everything.

I invited her to sit, but she remained standing. So I got up and came around in front of the desk. “I'm Chase Kolpath, Ms. Howard. How may I help you?”

“You're the person I talked to?”

“That's correct.”

“Is Mr. Benedict available?”

“I'm his associate.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“At the moment, Ms. Howard, he's busy. I'm his associate. What can I do for you?”

She frowned. Took a long look at me. Apparently decided she could make do. “You may know that Elizabeth died last year.” I had no idea who Elizabeth Robin was, but I nodded and managed to look sympathetic. “I've inherited the estate,” she continued. “And I have some items connected to Christopher that I'm going to make available. I'd like your help getting a good price.”

An old Ray Cammon song, “Love Is All There Is,” was playing quietly in the background. “Who,” I asked, “is Christopher?”

She just barely avoided rolling her eyes. “Chris Robin,” she said. “Of course.” Then, seeing that I needed further explanation: “Elizabeth was his wife.”

“Oh,” I said. “Chris Robin the physicist?”

“Yes. Who did you think?” Now she sat down.

“He's been dead a long time,” I said.

She smiled sadly. “Forty-one years.”

“I see.”

“Maybe I should be speaking with Mr. Benedict?”

“You should understand, Ms. Howard,” I said, “that artifacts connected with physicists- Well, there's just not much of a market for them.”

“Christopher wasn't just any physicist.”

“Did he accomplish something special?”

She sighed, reached into a handbag, and pulled out a book, an old-fashioned collector's edition, with his name on it. Multiverse. “Here's part of what he did,” she said.

“Well-” I wasn't sure where to go from there. “It looks interesting.”

“He accomplished quite a lot, Ms. Kolpath. I'm surprised you don't know more about him. I suggest you read this.” She laid the book on my desk. Then she reached back into the bag and brought out a small box. She opened it and handed it to me. It contained a wedding ring with engravings of Liz and Chris, with the inscription “together forever.” There was also a diamond-studded comm link. “This is the one he always wore,” she said, “on special occasions. Whenever he received an award. Or spoke at an event.”

“Okay,” I said.

She produced a chip. “I wanted you to see some of the other items. Do you mind?”

“No. Of course not.”

The chip activated our projector, and a pair of lamps appeared. “They were custom-made to his order.” The lamps were ordinary flexible reading lamps, one black, one silver. Documentation consisted of two photos of Robin, one at his desk writing by the light of the black lamp, and one in which he was relaxing on a sofa, reading, with the silver lamp behind him.

“I have a large number of his bound books. He was a collector.” She showed some of the individual volumes to me. Mostly they were physics texts. There was some philosophy. Some cultural commentary. Danforth's History of Villanueva. “One problem is that he was always writing in them. Elizabeth said he couldn't sit down with a book without writing in it.” She shrugged. “Otherwise, they're in excellent condition.”

For significant people, of course, writing in a book inevitably increases its value. I wasn't altogether sure whether Robin qualified for that classification.

“There are other items as well. Some of his lab equipment. Some wineglasses.”

She showed me those, too. None of them would be worth anything. There were several other photos, some taken outside, usually of the happy couple, posed in starlight or beneath a tree or coming up the walkway to the front door of what appeared to be a small villa. “It's their home,” she said. “On Virginia Island.” A few were limited to Robin himself. Robin lost in thought by a window, Robin biting down on a piece of fruit, Robin throwing a log on the fire.

One photo consisted of two lines of print. “It's the closing sentences,” she said, “from Multiverse.”

We cannot help then but draw the conclusion that each of us has an endless number of copies. Consequently, we are never really dead, but simply gone from one plane of existence.

“I never really understood it,” she said. “Oh, and I almost forgot.” A photo of a superluminal appeared. The ship's name, or maybe a designation, was partially visible on the hull, but the symbols were nonstandard:

Since all vessels use the same character set, the vehicle seemed to be a photographic fiction.

“I also have three autographed copies of Multiverse, and also-” A battered, broad-brimmed hat appeared. She looked at me expectantly. Then sighed. “It's the Carpathian hat he made famous.” She put more framed photos on display. Robin and Elizabeth in the bright sunlight on the front deck of their home, Robin at a lectern with one hand raised dramatically, and Elizabeth with another, younger, woman. (“That's me,” said Howard.) And there was Robin receiving an award, shaking hands with students, conferring with various people. And at his desk with his eyes fixed on a notebook. And one I especially liked: Robin at a restaurant table pouring tomato sauce onto a salad while Elizabeth watched with an indulgent smile.

“He loved tomato sauce,” Howard said. “He put it on everything. Potatoes, sandwiches, beans, meat. He used it for a dip.”

“Okay,” I said. “I've got it.” That was my moment to cut it off, to explain that we only deal with artifacts that are connected in some way with famous places or events, or with historical figures. That I was probably not the only person in Andiquar who'd barely heard of Chris Robin. But I ducked.

And she roared ahead. “Look at this,” she said, activating another visual. It was a painting of Robin and his wife. Elizabeth was dark-haired, attractive. The kind of woman who always draws attention from guys. She wore a pleasant smile, but there was a formality in the way she stood and in the way she looked at her husband.

“She died last year,” Howard said.

“Yes, I'm sorry.”

Her eyes clouded. “I am, too. She was irreplaceable.”

Robin could have been a perfect typecast for the mad scientist in an over-the-top horror show. His eyes peered out at me with unrelieved intensity. His hair had retreated from the top of his skull, though it was thick and piled up over his ears. Unlike Elizabeth, he made no effort to look gracious. His expression reminded me of Dr. Inato in Death by the Numbers whenever he was about to unleash a killer typhoon on a crowded resort.

Another oil painting displayed a few musical notes and a date. “Those are the opening bars from 'Starlight and You,'“ she said.

I'd heard the song, of course. It had been popular off and on for years. “What's the connection?”

She looked surprised. “He wrote it.”

“Really?”

“Do I sound as if I'm kidding?” A note of annoyance had crept into her voice.

“Not at all,” I said. “Music or lyrics?”

“Both. Chris was a man of many talents.”

Well, I thought, maybe we had something after all. I was reminded once again of the perils in dismissing a prospective client too quickly.

Another painting depicted him and Elizabeth standing atop a bluff overlooking a moonlit ocean. “They lived on Virginia Island,” she said. “Did I mention that?”

“Yes.”

“It's a gorgeous place. Have you ever been there?”

Virginia Island was halfway around the planet. “No, Ms. Howard, I'm afraid I've missed it.”

She smiled tolerantly. “You need to get out more. Get away from the office and see the world.”

Robin was wearing the Carpathian hat, slanted off to one side. He and his wife stood with their backs to the imager. They were leaning against each other, looking out to sea. Though they were not clasped in each other's arms, it was a remarkably romantic picture.

A photo depicted him walking through a terminal, carrying a small piece of luggage, with a notebook slung over one shoulder. “This one's of special interest,” she said.

“Why's that?”

“He was leaving for that last flight.”

“Did something happen on the flight?”

Another show of disdain. “At the end of it,” she said. But she seemed disinclined to go further on the subject, so I let it slide.

There was always a possibility somebody would be interested. I decided to let Alex make the call. “Very good, Ms. Howard,” I told her. “We'll be in touch with you shortly. If we decide to accept the commission, Mr. Benedict may have some more questions for you. And he'll want to see the actual material.”

She let me see that she had some issues with my competence. “To be honest,” she said, “I'm surprised there'd be any hesitancy on your part. I mean, you've said yourself that you deal in artifacts connected with people of historical interest. If my brother-in-law doesn't fit that description, I find it hard to imagine who would.”

“Ms. Howard, you have to understand that he was a physicist. And I've no intention of demeaning that, but scientists don't usually become celebrated. And it's celebrity that drives the price. We have to be sure he fits the profile in which our clients are interested, and also that we ourselves are in a position to do him-and you-justice.”

She got up. “That sounds like double-talk.”

“I'm sorry if it does. I'm trying to be honest with you.”

“Of course you are. And I assume you won't object if I make the offer to someone else?”

“That would be your choice, Ms. Howard.”

“Just in case,” she said, “I'll leave the chip.”

We walked back out to the front door. It opened, and she strode through onto the deck. “I'm always surprised,” she said, “that these small companies don't train their people better.”

I smiled politely. “How about his AI? Is that available?”

“No,” she said.

“Is there a reason? That could be the most valuable object in the estate.”

“No. Elizabeth wiped it.”

“That's odd. Why would she do that?”

“I have no idea. I didn't realize its condition until after she'd passed.”

Alex wasn't in the building. When Howard arrived, I'd been sending out notification bulletins to clients, letting them know we'd found the artifacts they'd requested or, in several cases, that they were unavailable, or that we hadn't been able to locate them. Often objects just vanish. Someone gets them who's not connected to the rest of the world, or who has no wish to deal regardless of the price being offered. Occasionally, thieves make off with something, and it disappears from view for an extended period. Valuable artifacts have vanished for centuries, only to surface again.

Anyhow, I went back to work and was just getting ready to break for lunch when Alex came in. He'd been doing his workout routine, which now consisted mostly of swimming over at the Delancey pool. He brushed the snow off his coat and gave me a broad smile, the implication of which was that all the world was bright and enticing. I smiled back. “I see Audree was there today,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, she couldn't get off this morning.”

“When you write your autobiography, Alex, I have a title for you.”

“And that would be-?”

“There's Never a Shortage of Beautiful Women at Delancey's.”

He grinned. “It's too long, Chase.”

“Well, I don't know-”

“And you never want to start a title with There.”

“Oh.”

“You have a lot of talent, sweetheart, but you'll never be a writer.” He pulled off his hat and scarf. “It's cold out there.”

It was the first storm of the season, and the earliest we'd seen anything like it as far back as I could remember. He sat down to wriggle out of his boots. “Anything happening here?”

“Mack Darby thinks we should try harder to get the stiletto.” That was the weapon that Nicholas Wescott had used to kill his young bride, thereby igniting the revolution that ultimately wrecked the Fremont Republic.

Alex dropped one boot on the floor. “Keating wouldn't let go of it unless somebody went over there with a gun.”

“I told him that. Not in those words, of course. I don't entirely trust Darby.”

“He's okay. He's a bit intense, but he wouldn't hurt anybody.”

“Anyhow, Alex, he says he wants to try. Says if anybody could persuade him-”

“What's he offering?”

“You'll need to talk to him.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“You ever hear of Chris Robin?”

“The Chris Robin?”

“A physicist who wrote songs.”

“That's him. He wrote 'Starlight and You.'“ Alex laughed. “Chase, the guy's famous.”

“If you say so.”

“I think you spend too much time in this office.”

“That's more or less what she said.”

“Who's she?”

“His sister-in-law.”

“You were talking to Chris Robin's sister-in-law?”

“Yes. She was here. Has some stuff for sale that belonged to him.”

“That's interesting.”

“Really?”

“Chase, the reason he's well-known doesn't have anything to do with 'Starlight and You.' Or the physics. It's because he disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to him.”

Light finally dawned. The physicist who'd come home from somewhere, had gotten out of a skimmer at his front door, and never made it into his house.

Alex shook his head. Sad story. “But it gives some value to anything connected with him.”

“Yes. I remember now.”

“So tell me about the sister-in-law.”

“Her name's Karen Howard. She's inherited the estate, and she wants to market some of his personal items.”

Alex gave me a broad smile. “Sounds promising. What's she have?”

I showed him the inventory. He looked at it and made some notes. “Okay. The ring will probably bring a decent price. What about the house AI?”

“It got erased.”

He groaned. “How'd that happen?”

“I've no idea.”

He shook off the other boot. “Well, the books might be worth something.”

“She says Robin was in the habit of writing notes in them.”

“Okay. That'll help. You saw some of these, right? The books?”

“Some.”

“Okay. I'll want to go over and take a look.”

“I'll set it up.”

“Good. I'm surprised you haven't taken care of it already. Was there a problem?”

“Alex, I didn't think we were going to do anything with this unless maybe because he was a songwriter.”

That brought a smile. “All right. Let's lock it down.”

“So what's he done? Other than drop out of sight?”

“Chase, what else does he need to do? You make up a list of people who've vanished over the years, they've almost all become famous, but hardly anyone's done anything other than that. It's all you need. And Chris Robin is among the top ten.”

I called Howard, told her we were interested in representing her, and set up an appointment for the following evening. Then I looked up Christopher Robin.

A pilot who often worked with him had dropped him off at his home on Virginia Island at around 11:00 P.M. on the first day of spring, 1393. And if that rings a bell, it's because that's the date of the Great Kolandra Earthquake. The pilot's name was Cermak.

Robin's home was located in an isolated area at the southern tip of the island. A young couple who were strolling along the edge of the ocean saw the skimmer arrive. Elizabeth, apparently, slept through it all.

Robin seems never to have entered the house, and no one ever saw him again.

In an odd coincidence, it was also Cermak's last night. He'd been bringing Robin in from Skydeck. They'd flown a lander into the Vasilyev Terminal in Kolandra and parked. From there, Cermak had delivered Robin to Virginia Island, then gone home to his own place at Caton Ferry, a small coastal town five hundred kilometers north. He apparently arrived just in time to get caught in the quake.

Cermak became one of the heroes of that unhappy event. There are pictures of him, scorched and bleeding, carrying kids out of burning buildings, administering first aid, pulling people from wrecked cars. In one particularly dramatic shot, he's charging across a rooftop several floors above the street, surrounded by flames.

Two hours and seven minutes after the first quake hit, a tidal wave rolled ashore and demolished most of Caton Ferry. It also destroyed the Vasilyev Terminal.

Fortunately, Virginia Island felt only a few temblors.

Like Robin, Cermak simply vanished that night. He disappeared during the general chaos. He was either carried out to sea by the tsunami or buried in the wreckage. According to the accounts, it's unlikely he ever learned that his passenger had gone missing.

“What do you think happened to Robin?” Alex asked. His voice surprised me; I hadn't seen him come into the office.

“I have no idea,” I said. “It sounds as if he jumped, or fell, into the ocean. But if so, why didn't they find the piece of luggage he'd been carrying? Or the notebook?”

“It's a good question.”

“Maybe he just ran off. Maybe there was another woman.”

“It's possible.”

“He could have been murdered.”

Alex nodded. “Maybe he wasn't there at all.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The people who saw the lander on the pad did not actually see him get out.”

“That doesn't mean anything. But maybe that's what happened. It's unlikely that both men would disappear on the same night. Maybe he went on to Kolandra with Cermak.”

Alex shrugged. “If so, why stop at his home first?”

“He might have changed his mind. Maybe he just needed something at the house.”

“It's possible, Chase. It would explain the bag.”

“Well,” I said, “it's a long time ago.” Alex was silent. “We aren't going to look into it, are we?”

“No,” he said.

“That's good. But you're surprising me. Why not?”

“Because if we were able to find an answer, the value of the artifacts would go down.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe what we'll do is pretend to look into it. If we do that, and can't solve the riddle-”

“The value goes up.”

“Very good, Chase. You're a natural for this business.”