Firebird

TWO

Karen Howard lived in a plush estate in Westmont Park, where Mt. Gordana was just visible in the west when the light was right. The storm had finally subsided, and the skies had cleared, but the entire world was buried in snow. As we settled toward the ground that evening, we were instructed by a deep baritone to identify ourselves and state our business. “Rainbow Enterprises to see Ms. Howard,” I said, giving the system a code word that had been issued to us earlier. A ring of lights came on around the landing pad. The lights weren't necessary because it wasn't quite dark yet, but they did add a sense of luster to the place.

The house resembled an Itaki temple. Towers rose above both wings, and I found myself expecting to hear chanting as we touched down. The voice, still speaking through the comm link, welcomed us to Howard Manor and invited us inside. We got out of the skimmer and started along a sheltered walkway.

The windows were sedately illuminated, and a viol played wistfully. More lights came on. The front door opened, and a young woman greeted us, took our jackets, and showed us into a large sitting room. “Ms. Howard,” she said, “will be with you shortly.” The room possessed an elegant sterility: window curtains that might have been employed as ceremonial robes, ivory-colored ornamental shelves supporting vases filled with year-round flowers, a red carpet that looked as if no one had ever walked on it. It was a room to admire but not one in which you could relax and kick off your shoes.

We'd been there only a couple of minutes when Ms. Howard walked in. She inspected Alex and said hello to him. Then she smiled condescendingly at me. “It is nice to see you again, Ms. Kolpath.”

We exchanged a few pleasantries. Alex commented on how well kept the grounds were, presumably apparent to him under the snow cover. Howard took a moment to admire his scarf, and suggested that we all make ourselves comfortable. We sat down on a sofa while she took a large, padded armchair. “Chase tells me,” Alex said, “you have some items connected with Christopher Robin.”

She looked momentarily as if that fact had slipped her mind. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Benedict, I do.” Sidewise glance at me. “I take it you're in a position to represent my interests?”

Alex fell back on his charm. “Of course,” he said. “We'd be delighted.” His tone conveyed a sense that we were all friends, that whatever had gone before was of no concern, was part of a misunderstanding, and that he would find it gratifying to assist her. “I wonder,” he continued, “if it would be possible to see the materials?”

Some of the stiffness drained away. “Certainly, Mr. Benedict,” she said. “Please follow me.”

We went out into a central corridor, turned toward the rear of the house, and entered another, smaller, room. The objects had been placed on a dinner table, arranged with the Carpathian hat as the centerpiece. Plaques, lamps, framed pictures, books, paintings, the wedding ring, the diamond-studded comm link, a bust of a bearded man (Adam Karvenko, I learned later, who'd connected quantum theory with consciousness), and some electronic gear. And, of course, the books.

Alex circled the table, examining the objects, using a magnifying lens on some, lifting others so he could study them from different angles.

He took a long look at the wedding ring. “The names will help,” he said, “and especially the inscription.” Alex lifted the cover of one of the books. Mirabeau's The Social Abstract. Comments were printed in precise characters in the margins: Exactly!! And Out of context. And I'd love to see the documentation for that.

He paged through Hai Kallei's Lost in the Shadows, smiling at Robin's comments. Dumb. And Tribalism will always be with us, despite your assertions. And Sometimes I wonder if we deserve to survive.

In a collection of science essays, Alex, admiringly, read one comment aloud: We are like the seas. Tides come in, go out. Our shorelines wear down and drift away, but in the end, the substance does not change. Neither technology nor accumulated wisdom has any fundamental effect on who we are.

Baron's Cosmological Constant was also filled with commentary. Sounds good, but the logic is confused. And If this is so, the world is even more illusory than we thought. Alex smiled. “Did you know him very well, Ms. Howard?”

“Not especially,” she said. “I didn't especially like him.”

“Why is that?”

“He thought he was better than everybody else.”

Alex nodded. Isn't that the way of the world? He put the book down and looked up at the picture of the interstellar that Howard had shown me at the country house. It hung directly opposite the entrance, making it the first thing you'd see coming into the room. “This is exactly the way he'd placed it in his own house,” she said.

Alex examined it from several angles before turning to her. “Ms. Howard, what about this? Did it have a special meaning of some sort for Professor Robin?”

“Not that I'm aware of.”

Alex turned back to the picture. Shook his head.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“I've seen it before somewhere.”

I didn't recognize it. The superluminal looked retro. Too thick through the hull. The two odd characters near the main hatch. Individual portals on the bridge rather than the wraparound.

“So what do you think, Mr. Benedict?”

Alex smiled pleasantly. “We'll be happy to assist you, Ms. Howard. I doubt there'll be any trouble moving the ring, or the plaques. The books should be okay. Photos are always a difficult sell, because they are not single items, if you get my meaning. But I think we can do reasonably well.” He hesitated. “Ms. Howard, I'm going to ask you to be patient, however. It might be possible to increase the value of these items if you'll allow me some time.”

“Time to do what, if I may ask?”

“I won't be sure until we learn more about Professor Robin.”

He remained quiet until we got up into the night sky and had started home. It was not yet dark, but we had a crescent moon directly overhead. “There are some speculations about this guy,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Are you aware there's a Christopher Robin Society?”

“No. I didn't know that. Is that really so? What is it? A society of physicists?”

“Physicists, historians, enthusiasts.”

“Okay.”

“They meet monthly at Sanova.”

I knew the tone. “We're not going, I hope?”

“Why not?”

“What would be the point?”

“Who better to drum up interest in Robin artifacts than people who have a passion for his work?”

“But aren't we talking about physics? How do you get collectors passionate about physics?”

“Chase, we're talking about alternate universes and black holes.”

We were passing over the Melony. Fireworks were being launched from one of the casinos. Somebody celebrating something. “Alex?”

“Yes, Chase?”

“A lot of people have disappeared. Why does Robin draw enthusiasts? What are they enthusiastic about?”

His eyes caught some of the light. “Robin worked at the edges of science. He was interested, for example, in whether any part of us survives death.”

“Oh.”

“Okay?”

“And what did he decide?”

“I couldn't determine whether he'd ever reached a decision. Chase, Robin explored the fringes of science. He was looking for breakthroughs in areas that are considered beyond the pale by most of his colleagues. He asked questions nobody else dared to ask.”

“Like whether there really are alternate universes.”

“Yes.”

“I thought the notion of alternate universes was an established fact.”

“Mathematically. But Robin apparently wanted to find a way to cross over.”

“Oh.”

“And he thought maybe we were getting occasional visitors from one.”

“You're kidding.”

He laughed. “I think he was hoping. In any case, a lot of people are fascinated by the fact that he disappeared on the same night as the Kolandra Earthquake.”

“I suspect a lot of people disappeared that night.”

“He wasn't in the area where the quake hit.”

“So what are they suggesting happened?”

“The theory is that there was a collision that night. Between universes. That's what caused the quake.”

“That's crazy.”

“Ah, Dr. Kolpath, I'm glad to have that settled. However that may be, some of the enthusiasts-but I suspect none of the physicists-think Robin took advantage of the collision to cross into the other universe.”

“Okay. I know you're not buying into any of this. Are you?”

He laughed. “Of course not. But the more extreme elements make for good copy.”

“I don't think,” I said, “that lunatics buy antiques.”

“It doesn't matter. They'll raise the general level of interest in Robin. That's all we need.”

“Okay.”

“Some of the wackier elements claim he was looking into the possibility that there are ghosts. They've been arguing that he knew about people, or entities, who'd gotten caught in dimensional fluxes. And can't get clear. Plato described graveyards as being restless at night. He thought it was a result of people's being too materialistic. Tying themselves to the pleasures of the world. Then when they die, they can't untangle their souls. Robin's idea, according to some of these people, was that if you're in the wrong place when there's a collision, you can get permanently snared.”

“Is any of this on the record?”

“Not really. Look, Robin was given to kidding around. So it's hard to know what he really thought about a lot of this stuff. He'd appear at different events as a speaker, and somebody would ask the question, were there really such things as people trapped in the dimensions, or in cemeteries, and he'd play along. 'Of course there are,' he'd say. All you have to do is watch him in action, and you get the sense that he knows what he's saying is preposterous, but some part of him hopes it's so.”

“Okay-”

“He wasn't given to ruling things out simply because they seemed absurd. If collisions actually happen, he says somewhere, there could easily be casualties.”

“That's a pretty spooky notion.”

“Yes, it is.”

“But nobody's going to take this stuff seriously.”

“Chase, as far as we're concerned, nobody has to take it seriously. It doesn't matter whether the ideas have any validity. Only that people get excited about them. Anyhow, the timing's perfect. It's this weekend, and I'm going to head over there. You want to come?”

I put it out of my mind until, near the end of the week, Jerry Muldoon called. Jerry was a retired psychiatrist who had probably talked with a few too many patients. He was the most dispassionate guy I'd ever known, a man whose smile was automatic, and whose ability to portray empathy was nonexistent even though he thought he was good at it. Alex was on the circuit with another dealer, so I asked if I could help.

“I understand,” he said, “that you have some personal effects that once belonged to Chris Robin?”

“Yes, we have access to some, Jerry. But they haven't been placed on the market yet.”

“Magnificent,” he said. “What actually do you have?”

I told him. Then asked how it happened that he knew about them.

“I just happened to hear about it.” His tone suggested he'd outmaneuvered us. “Word of something like this gets around. You know what I mean? Can I see what they look like?”

“Not yet, Jerry. The owner wants to keep them under wraps for the time being. But I'm glad to hear you're interested. If you like, we'll notify you as soon as they become available.”

“What's the delay?”

I couldn't very well tell him that Alex was planning some backroom conniving. “They're still clearing the official documents,” I said.

“Damn.” He sounded genuinely disappointed. The odd thing was that Jerry had always been a collector of objects associated with the collapse of the Ilurian Era. That's literally several worlds and sixteen centuries away. He'd done some ancestral research and convinced himself that his forebears were among the thieves chased out during the Rebellion, so he was interested in anything connected with them. We'd been able to get a few modestly priced items for him: a dissembler-which is a weapon since outlawed-that had once belonged to an earlier Jeremy Muldoon, a vase that had been the property of a prostitute associated with one of the rebels, and one or two other objects from the period. But I'd never known him to be interested in other antiquities.

“Did you want these for yourself, Jerry?” I asked. “Or are you acting as someone's agent?”

“Are you kidding, Chase? They would be for me. Absolutely.” Outside, two capers were chasing each other through the snow, waving furry tails. “All right. You will let me know, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“As soon as you have something.”

Three minutes later, there was a second call. It was more of the same.

“Sure,” Alex said. “I leaked the story.”

“Why?”

“Call it a test run.”

“I'm amazed that anybody would care that much about a physicist. Even one who disappeared. I mean, we have pilots who've disappeared, pharmacists, librarians, all kinds of people. So you've dug up responses from a few people who don't have enough to do. What's it prove?”

“Chase,” he said, “you need to stop thinking about Robin as a physicist.”

“Really? What would you suggest?”

“Try 'celebrity.'“

“It's been a pretty well-kept secret.”

“You travel,” he said, in his locked-on imitation of Collier Ibsen, the actor who'd made a career of playing tough guys, “in the wrong circles, sweetheart.”