Seeker (4 page)

Casmir Kolchevsky. The near-legendary archeologist who’d been pursued by the security bot. “I do,” he said.

Alex reached for his wineglass. “This should be interesting.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“He doesn’t approve of people in our line of work. At least not those of us who go out and dig up their own merchandise.”

“You take credit for a great deal,” Kolchevsky said. He was not the natural speaker Bolton was, but what his voice lacked in timbre, it more than made up in passion. He swung around to encompass the audience.

He had a lined, windblown face, a long jaw, and eyes that, at the moment, blazed with anger. “I suppose nothing should surprise me anymore, but here I am, listening to you people honoring this thief, this
vandal
. He stands up there talking as if he’s an honest man. As if he makes a contribution. You applaud him because he tells you what you like to believe about yourselves.” He turned back to the speaker. “I’ll tell you what you contribute.”

I could see movement at the doors. Security people were spreading out into the room and weaving among the tables, closing on Kolchevsky.

“You people have wrecked countless sites across the Confederacy, and beyond its borders. And if you haven’t done it personally, you’ve done it by proxy. You’ve done it by supporting—” Someone grabbed him and began pulling him away from the table. “Let go of me,” he demanded.

A tall woman with the security detail had moved in behind him along with two or three others. She was saying something to him.

“No,” he said, “we certainly can’t have this, can we? It doesn’t do to confront the truth, does it?” He continued to struggle. Reinforcements arrived. Someone at his table began struggling with one of the guards. Somebody else fell down. Kolchevsky by then had both arms pinned against his sides. “I’m leaving on my own,” he roared. “But this is a den of thieves. Nothing more.”

They began dragging him toward the exit while he continued to resist. I’ll tell you, I couldn’t help admiring the guy.

For several minutes after they got him outside, we heard raised voices. Bolton never moved from his position at the speaker’s table. When the disturbance seemed at last to have subsided, he straightened his jacket and smiled at the audience. “All part of the show, folks. Wait’ll you see what’s up next.”

You might say the evening’s mood had been dampened. We wandered among the guests, and when the official proceedings ended, attended several of the parties. Alex was certain Goldcress’s client was on the premises. That he’d have to be there somewhere. “No way he could resist this.”

“But how do you expect to find him?” I asked.

“He knows us, Chase. I’ve been hoping he’d give himself away, maybe show a little too much interest in us. Maybe allow himself to watch too closely while we talked with his agent.”

“And did you see anybody?”

“I saw a lot of people keeping an eye on us,” he said. “But primarily on
you
.” That was a reference to my cherry red evening best, which was maybe a bit more revealing than I was accustomed to allow.

But if anyone was there, he stayed clear of us. At the end of the evening, we went back to our hotel empty-handed.

The day we returned home, I slept late. When I walked into the office at midmorning, Jacob posted a list of the day’s callers. Among them was a name I didn’t recognize. “
Local woman
,” he said. “
Wants an appraisal
.”

Where antiquities are concerned, serious collectors prefer to do things face-to-face, especially if they think they have a potentially valuable artifact. In fact, where that kind of merchandise is concerned, Alex refuses to do a remote appraisal. But the vast majority of the stuff they show us is of minimal value, and you don’t need to see it up close to realize it.

We get a lot of people directly off the street. They tend to be folks who’ve picked up something at an estate sale, or it’s maybe an inheritance, and they’ve begun wondering if it’s worth more money than they’d been told. When they do, under the assumption there’s nothing to lose, they call us. I take a look, then offer my assessment. Diplomatically, of course. The truth is that I’m no expert in matters
antiqua
, but I know junk when I see it. If I’m not sure, I pass it to Alex.

Ninety-nine percent of the calls off the street are pure refuse. That’s a conservative estimate. So when, a couple hours later, I returned the call and her image blinked on in the office, my first thought was to take a quick look at what she had and send her on her way.

She was a tiny, blond woman, nervous, not particularly well dressed, unable to look me in the eye. She wore gold slacks that would have fit better on someone with narrower hips. A creased white blouse was open at the throat and would have revealed a lot of cleavage if she’d had any. She had a blinding red neckerchief and a smile that was at once aggressive and shy. She was seated on a worn Springfield sofa, the kind that you get free if you buy a couple of armchairs.

Greetings were short without being abrupt. “
My name’s Amy Kolmer
,” she said. “
I have something here I’d like you to look at. I was wondering if it might be worth some money
.” She reached out of the picture and came back with a cup, which she held up to the light.

It was a decorative piece, the sort of thing you might buy in a souvenir shop. It was gray. A green-and-white eagle was etched into its side. There was something antiquated about the style in which the eagle was drawn. It was in flight, wings spread, beak open in an attack posture. A bit overdramatic. It might have been popular in the last century. A small banner was unfurled beneath the eagle, and something was written on it. It was too small to make out clearly, but I could see it wasn’t the Standard alphabet.

She turned the cup so I could see the back side. It featured a ringed globe, with inscriptions above and below. Same type of symbols.

“What do you think?”
she asked.

“What’s the language, Amy? Do you know?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Do you know what it is?”

She looked puzzled. “
It’s a cup
.”

“I mean, what
kind
of cup? Where did it come from?”

“My boyfriend gave it to me.”

“Your boyfriend.”

“My
ex
-boyfriend.”
Her eyes narrowed, and I could see things had come to a bad end. She was trying to turn whatever remained of the relationship into cash.
“He saw me admiring it one time so he told me I could have it.”

“Good of him,” I said.

“I liked the eagle.”
She stared at it for a long moment.
“He gave it to me the night before we broke up. I guess it was supposed to be a consolation prize.”

“Maybe.”

“The cup’s worth more than he is.”
She smiled. One of those smiles that tell you she wouldn’t feel especially upset if the boyfriend fell off a bridge.

“Where did
he
get it?”

“He always had it.”

I could see I wasn’t going to get far with her. I was tempted to tell her what I believed, that the cup was worthless. But Rainbow has a code of ethics that requires me to know what I’m talking about. I fell back on our AI. “Jacob,” I said. “What’s the language?”

“Searching,”
he said.

There was really nothing outré about the cup, nothing to set it apart, aside from the strange symbols. But I’d seen a lot of odd lettering during my years with Rainbow, and, believe me, it didn’t necessarily mean anything.

Jacob made a sound as if clearing his throat. It signaled he was surprised. Had Amy Kolmer not been on the circuit, I knew he would have made an appearance of his own. “
It’s English
,” he said. “
Mid-American
.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“Fourth Millennium,” I guessed.

“Third. Nobody spoke English in the Fourth.”

Amy came to life. She’d not expected any good news from me. But she’d overheard enough to raise her hopes. She looked at the cup, looked at me, looked back at the cup. “
This thing is nine thousand years old
?”

“Probably not. The inscription uses an old language. That doesn’t mean—”

“Hard to believe,”
she said.
“It’s in good shape for all those years.”

“Amy,” I said, “why don’t you bring the cup over here? Let us take a close look at it?”

The truth is that Jacob can give us all the physical details remotely. But Alex insists that a computer-generated repro is not the same as holding the actual object in his hands. He likes to imply there’s a spiritual dimension to what he does, although if you ask him point-blank he’d say it was all nonsense, but that there are qualities in a physical object that computers cannot measure. Don’t ask him to specify.

So I made the appointment with Amy Kolmer for that afternoon. She showed up early. Alex came down and ushered her into the office personally. His curiosity had been piqued.

I didn’t particularly care for the woman. On the circuit, I’d sensed that she expected me to try to cheat her. In person, she went a different direction, playing the helpless but very sexual female. I suppose it was Alex’s presence that set her off. She fluttered and primped and cast her eyes to the floor.
Poor me, life is hard but maybe I’ve gotten lucky and I surely would be grateful for whatever assistance you can lend
. If she thought Rainbow’s asking price to broker a transaction would go down as a result of her efforts, she didn’t know Alex.

She’d wrapped the cup in a piece of soft linen and carried it in a plastic bag. When we were all seated inside the office, she opened the bag, unwrapped the cup, and set it before him.

He studied it closely, bit his lip, made faces, and placed it on Jacob’s bulk reader. “What can you tell us, Jacob?” he asked.

The lamp in the top of the reader blinked on. Turned amber. Turned red. Dimmed and intensified. Went pretty much through the spectrum. The process took about two minutes.

“The object is made of acryolonitrile-butadiene-styrene resins. Coloring is principally—”

“—Jacob,” said Alex, “how old is it?”

“I would say the object was constructed during the Third Millennium. Best estimate is approximately 2600
C.E.
Error range two hundred years either way.”

“What does the inscription say?”

“The banner says
New World Coming.
And the lines on the back of the cup seem to be a designator.
IFR171.
And another term I’m not sure about.”

“So the cup is, what, from an office somewhere?”

“The letters probably stand for
Interstellar Fleet Registry.”

“It’s from a ship?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”

Amy tugged at my arm. “What’s it worth?”

Alex counseled patience. “Jacob, the other term is probably the ship’s name.”

“I think that is correct, sir. It translates as
Searcher.
Or
Explorer.
Something along those lines.”

The lamps went off. Alex lifted the object gently and placed it on the desk. He looked at it through a magnifier. “It’s in reasonably good condition,” he said.

Amy could hardly be restrained. “Thank God. I needed
something
to go right.” Alex smiled. She was already thinking what she would be able to buy. “How can it be that old?” she asked. “My drapes are new, and they’re already falling apart.”

“It’s a ceramic,” he told her. “Ceramics can last a long time.” He produced a soft cloth and began gently to wipe the thing.

She asked again how much we would pay.

Alex made the face he always used when he didn’t want to answer a question directly. “We’re not normally buyers,” he said. “We’ll do some research, Amy. Then test the market. But I’d guess, if you’re patient, it will bring a decent price.”

“A couple hundred?”

Alex smiled paternally. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said.

She clapped her hands. “Wonderful.” She looked at me, and turned back toward Alex. “What do I do next?”

“You needn’t do anything. Let’s take this one step at a time. First we want to find out precisely what we have.”

“All right.”

“Have you proof of ownership?”

Uh-oh. Her face changed. Her lips parted and the smile vanished. “It was
given
to me.”

“By your former boyfriend.”

“Yes. But I own it. It’s mine.”

Alex nodded. “Okay. We’ll have to provide a document to go with it. To certify that you have the right to make the sale.”

“That’s okay.” She looked uncertain.

“Very good. Why don’t you leave it with us, and we’ll see what more we can find out, and get back to you.”

“What do you think?” I asked when she was gone.

He looked pleased. “Nine thousand years? Somebody will be delighted to pay substantially for the privilege of putting this on the mantel.”

“You think it’s really from a ship?”

He was looking at the cup through the magnifier again. “Probably not. It comes out of the era when they were just getting interstellars up and running. It’s more likely to have been part of a giveaway program or to have been sold in a souvenir shop. Not that it matters: I doubt it would be possible to establish whether it was actually on shipboard or not.”

What we really wanted, of course, was that yes, it had traveled with the
Searcher
, and that preferably it had belonged to the captain. Ideally, we would also find out that the
Searcher
was in the record somewhere, that it had accomplished something spectacular, or better yet, gotten wrecked, and, to top everything, its captain would be known to history.

“See to it, Chase. Put Jacob on the job, and find out whatever you can.”

There is an almost mystical attraction for us in the notion of the lost world, of an Atlantis out there somewhere, a place where the routine problems of ordinary life have been banished, where everyone lives in a castle, where there’s a party every night, where every woman is stunning and every man noble and brave.
— Lescue Harkin,
Memory, Myth, and Mind,
1376