exasperated look in his direction, wrinkling her nose at his Legion jumpsuit. “May I assist you?” she asked, in a tone of voice that made it clear she hoped she couldn’t.
“Quite likely,” said Phule, setting down his bag. “First of all, I’m interested in a room.”
“Impossible,” said the woman, throwing up her hands. “We have been fully booked since the beginning of Waarmth.” Hix’s World had adopted its own eccentric calendar, featuring supposedly natural names for the time units equivalent to months.
“Ah, good for you,” said Phule, smiling broadly. “I’m glad to know that such a fine establishment is so popular- but I’m sure you can find an open room for one of the old regulars.” Phule himself had never been there, but his mother had taken vacations on Hix’s World several times while he was growing up-which was how he knew of the place.
“Regular or irregular, it is simply impossible,” said the woman, with an air of finality. “There’s not even a closet to be had. The entire district is full for the Floribunda Fete.”
Phule kept a broad smile on his face as his hand went into his pocket and returned with a small rectangular object which he placed on the counter just in front of the woman. She dropped her gaze to inspect it; when she looked up, with a gasp, her eyes were open wide. “A Dilithium Express card!” she whispered.
“Yes,” said Phule. “Do you think that’s good for a closet?”
“I think we can arrange something,” she said. “At your service, Mr.-uh…” She tried to make out the name on the card.
“Captain Jester will do,” said Phule. “Now-about that room…”
“Madame will be delighted to have you here, Captain!” she said. The young woman clapped her hands, and a man appeared from a door behind the desk. His tastefully rustic attire did not in the least disguise the fact that he was the bellman. “Andrew! Show the Captain to the Olympic Suite!”
The Olympic Suite was several degrees more elegant than any closet Phule had ever seen. Phule tipped Andrew, closed the door behind the bellman, and poured himself a cold glass of mineral water from the suite’s refreshment center. He sat down at the suite’s communications center, which was tastefully hidden inside a faux- Victorian rolltop desk. He’d learned from his mistakes on Cut ‘N’ Shoot and Rot’n‘art. No more dashing about on a wild
He synchronized his Port-a-Brain with the hotel’s web hookup, and began an automatic scan for Beeker’s machine, a virtual twin of his own. If Beeker’s computer had been connected to the planetary network anytime in the last two weeks, Phule’s machine would be able to detect it. Better yet, if the machine was currently in use, he should be able to locate it instantly. If that happened, he intended to charter a private jumpcraft to the exact location-with any luck, in plenty of time to catch his errant butler. Of course, if Beeker had turned on his computer, he should have seen Phule’s email. Had he not turned it on? Or had he seen the message and decided, for some reason, not to answer it?
Much to his relief, the Port-a-Brain was still functional; the special security systems hadn’t taken over. So Beeker must be in range. He started his custom search engine, and, while it ran, went to look out the suite’s picture windows, which overlooked a stretch of countryside that could have been somewhere in Provence, several centuries earlier. In fact, it
As he cast his gaze over the pleasant contours of the rolling hills, covered with Old Earthlike greenery, Phule could hear the Port-a-Brain gently whirring in the background. It was a very soothing sound, telling him that one of the most powerful artificial brains in the known galaxy was working to solve his problem. In the middle distance he saw something moving; just what, he couldn’t quite determine. Probably some creature imported from human worlds; the settlers hadn’t so much expelled the indigenous flora and fauna from the terraformed sections as gently persuaded them to take their business elsewhere. Even so, a few species had stubbornly resisted the program-part of the charm of the place, Hix’s World old-timers would tell you.
Then, all of a sudden, his eyes went into sharp focus and he forgot entirely about the whirring of the Port- a-Brain. There, crossing the faux-Provencal landscape, was none other than Nightingale!
The owner of La Retraite Rustique sat in her office, looking over architects’ renderings of the new addtion she planned for her hotel. She hated trying to extrapolate from the drawings to the actual structures they purported to represent. “Damn lying pictures,” she muttered. “Why can’t they show you what it’s really going to look like?” The answer was obvious, of course-if the drawings looked like the finished product, the customer was a lot less likely to pay for the work.
There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she growled, not really annoyed at the interruption as much as generally disgruntled. She’d once owned the most fashionable and lucrative resort hotel and casino on Lorelei. Now she was trying to start over on a new world-and finding it a lot more work than she had any appetite for.
Robert, the concierge, entered. “Good news, Madame,” he said. “We’ve just rented the Olympic Suite, at double the regular rate. Some Space Legion officer with a Dilithium Express card…”
“Space Legion officer? Dilithium Express?” Maxine Pruett sat bolt upright in her seat. “It can’t be… what’s this man’s name?”
“Captain Jester,” said the concierge. “Of course, all Legion names are pseudonyms…”
“Pseudonym, hell-I know Jester,” said Maxine. “For your information, his real name’s Willard Phule. The little son of a bitch nearly ran me out of business on Lorelei-or did you miss that particular episode?” Maxine had plenty of reason to remember it, since it had broken the mob’s control of the casino business on Lorelei. Combined with the defection of Laverna, her most trusted assistant, it had also toppled her from her perch at the top of the Lorelei syndicate-which was ultimately why she’d moved her operation to Hix’s World.
“I must confess I hadn’t remembered the man’s name,” said Robert, warily. “Would you like me to rind some pretext to deny him the room? It should be simple enough-I can always claim that some high official of the planet needs the space.”
Maxine frowned and lit a cigarette. “No, that would just move him someplace else. Let’s keep him here where I can keep track of him. What I want to know, though, is what’s he doing here? He has to know it’s my place-why else would he be here?”
“He apparently claimed a family connection,” said Robert. “That’s not impossible-but not very likely, either. I’ll tell the waitresses and bartenders to see if they can find out the real reason from him.”
“Tell ‘em there’s a bonus if they get what I want,” said Maxine, pounding a fist into her other palm. “He’s got to be here to interfere with my plans for the casino. How the hell did he find out? Bastard!”
“We’ll learn whatever we can, Madame,” said Robert. “I can probably have his suite searched while he’s out, as well. Are there any other instructions?”
“Yeah, search the suite,” said Maxine, nodding. “But be careful-I don’t want him to know he’s being spied on, and he’s probably got better security systems than most banks. We don’t want to make him suspicious. Find out where he’s going when he leaves the hotel, and who he sees. And let me know if anyone comes asking for him-especially anybody else in a Legion uniform.”
“I’ll tell the staff,” said Robert. “Anything else?”
An evil grin came to Maxine Pruett’s face. “Yeah. I’d like to set a trap or two for him. Here’s my idea…”
It took Phule something less than five minutes to get from the Olympic Suite to the gardens he’d been viewing from the window, where he’d seen Nightingale-or her twin sister. By the time he got there, the woman was nowhere to be seen, of course. But short of jumping out of a third-story window, there was no more direct way he could have gotten to the gardens.
He stared around in frustration, trying to figure out which way she could have gone. There were three paths leading away from the clearing where he’d spotted her, all of which turned corners quickly enough that he couldn’t see very far down them. He picked the path that seemed closest to the direction she’d been going when he saw her. Fifty paces down the path he came to a clearing, with three more forks leading away. There was no sign that anyone had come this way recently. Making a snap decision, he took the middle fork. Fifty paces farther, there was another clearing, again with three paths…
Phule stopped and scratched his head. Running blindly after her-without even knowing which way she’d
