After Glow

Chapter 31

Monday morning Lydia lounged in her office chair, sipped hot rez-tea, and surveyed her small, attentive audience. Melanie was propped on the edge of the desk, skirt riding high. Shrimpton hovered in the doorway.

"That's pretty much the end of the story," Lydia concluded, "After Emmett used Vance's signet to de-rez that big ghost blocking our path, we made our way to the nearest exit. Emmett immediately got in touch with Verwood and Detective Martinez and briefed them on the situation down in Greenie Land. Martinez went in with a contingent of cops and hunters and mopped up. It was a huge coup for her, of course."

"Too bad Herbert Slattery or Troy Burgis or whatever his name is got away," Shrimpton said dourly.

"They'll find him," Lydia said.

Melanie nodded. "Meanwhile, finding that cache of illegal weapons in that corridor the Greenies called Area 51 will pretty much guarantee that Martinez gets a huge promotion."

"By the time Martinez receives her new promotion, Emmett will be an ex-Guild boss," Lydia said firmly. "Wyatt's recovering nicely, thank goodness. He's going home from the hospital today."

Shrimpton scowled thoughtfully. "Have they figured out what this Herbert-Burgis character was planning to do with all those guns?"

"Burgis is the only one who can answer that question for certain but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he had plans to follow in Vance's footsteps."

"Conquer the city-states?" Melanie was appalled. "Impossible. There's no way he could have done that."

"I think he dreamed of finding some alien technology in that so-called tomb of Amatheon," Lydia said slowly. "By all accounts he's been obsessed with Vance for years. Got a hunch he figured that Vance had discovered some great secret in that chamber."

"And Burgis thought that if he got his hands on that secret, he could accomplish what Vance failed to do, is that it?" Melanie asked.

"That's the current theory," Lydia said. "Like I said, we'll know more when they get Burgis."

"Shouldn't take long to find him," Shrimpton said. "Something tells me that if Martinez doesn't catch him right quick, the Guild will hunt him down very soon."

"That's for sure." Melanie chuckled. "Jack says every hunter in every city in the Federation is looking for Burgis. He can run for a while but he won't be able to hide for long."

Shrimpton heaved a mournful sigh. "So much for the great deal on the Mudd Sarcophagus. There never was a real private collector waiting to pay twice what it was worth. It was all a ruse to make the kidnapping possible."

Melanie's brows zipped together. "I don't get that part. Burgis must have known that if you disappeared in the middle of a Greenie tour someone would have suspected the Order of the Acolytes of Amatheon."

Lydia shook her head. "He didn't care if a few of the Greenies got picked up off the street and questioned. None of them knew anything. The ones who were involved in the kidnapping were all safely back underground. It never occurred to Herb that anyone could find his hidden empire."

"But he was wrong," Shrimpton said. "Professor Lawrence Maltby discovered it first and he tried to warn you, didn't he?"

"Yes." Lydia put down her empty cup. "Poor Maltby. He wandered for years down there in the tunnels. At some point he must have stumbled onto Burgis's operation. He obviously recognized Burgis and figured out that the Greenies were responsible for my Lost Weekend. He tried to warn me but by the time I got to his apartment, someone else had gotten to him first."

"Burgis or one of his Greenies," Melanie said. "Everyone in Maltby's neighborhood knew he used drugs. It wouldn't have been difficult to spike a batch of Chartreuse with something lethal."

"Yes," Lydia said. "I think the killer probably went in to make certain that the drugs had worked. Maltby must have still been alive. He'd been using Chartreuse for years and had no doubt built up some tolerance. It probably took him longer to die than the killer expected. There must have been a struggle."

"That's when the killer's necklace got broken," Melanie said. "Afterward, he picked up as many of the beads as he could find, but it was dark in the apartment and he was in a hurry."

"He missed the bead that I found," Lydia concluded.

"He also missed the note that the professor had started to write, the one about the Amber Hills Dairy milk carton. Even if the killer noticed it, he probably assumed that it wasn't important. Just the start of a grocery list."

"I take it Burgis sent some more Greenies to search Maltby's place later that night just to make sure that nothing had been left behind that might give the cops a clue?" Melanie asked. "Those were the two guys you and Emmett surprised?"

Lydia nodded. "They didn't find the milk carton, either."

Melanie frowned. "What happened to Burgis's three pals? The ones who were with him in that pulse-rock band and later disappeared?"

"The cops haven't been able to identify them yet."

Lydia said. "The assumption is that they are all living under other names and are part of the Greenie hierarchy. But it's going to take a while to get to the bottom of that organization."

There was a short silence while they all absorbed that fact.

"It's not fair, I tell you," Shrimpton said darkly. "The governor appointed the university to oversee the excavation of that library chamber and all of the big museums are going toe-to-toe to get a piece of the action. They're lobbying like mad and calling in old favors. But this institution is out in the cold. It's not right."

Melanie cleared her throat. "We don't exactly have the facilities to handle a major excavation like that one, sir."

"Nevertheless, we should have been allowed to be part of the team that will open up the library." Shrimpton slapped a hand against the doorjamb, his indignation rising. "But no. We don't get zip-squat. Not zip-squat, I tell you."

"It's okay, Boss," Melanie said soothingly. "Take it easy. Remember your blood pressure."

"The devil with my blood pressure. It was a Shrimpton employee who discovered the way into that chamber. If there was any justice this institution should have been granted the lead license to excavate."

Lydia exchanged a glance with Melanie. Referring to Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors as an institution and making it sound as though it belonged in the same category as the Department of Para-archaeology at the university or the renowned Cadence Archaeological Museum was pushing it. But neither of them had the heart to point that out to Shrimp.

"I know just how you feel, sir," Lydia replied. "No one from my old department at the university even bothered to invite me to join their crew as an outside consultant."

"It's your own fault, if you ask me," Melanie said. "You should never have given your ex-colleagues in the department the secret to getting through that illusion wall."

"I know, I know." Lydia spread her hands. "The thing is, it was clear that they were going to attempt to de-rez it on their own. If someone had screwed up, there would have been a terrible accident. I didn't want that responsibility on my shoulders."

Shrimpton snorted. "The bottom line here is that we've got nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for our contributions to this momentous discovery. In fact, we actually lost something: a perfectly good sarcophagus. Those things don't grow on trees, you know."

"I have it on good authority that the Guild will see to it that the sarcophagus is returned," Lydia assured him. "Emmett says it's the least the hunters can do under the circumstances."

Shrimpton huffed. "Well, that's something to be thankful for, I suppose. But who's going to compensate us for losing you, Lydia?"

"You've still got me, sir," she said quickly.

"Yes, yes, of course we have you as a member of the staff," he continued, "but let's face it, the moment London steps down from his position as the boss of the Cadence Guild, you'll no longer be the big draw you've been lately."

Melanie chuckled. "Sad to say it, Lyd, but he's right. When you are no longer Mrs. Guild Boss, I doubt if we'll be able to convince folks to pay extra for a private tour of the museum conducted by you."

"Like I said, we get zip-squat," Shrimpton concluded mournfully. "Be lucky if this institution even gets mentioned in a footnote in one of the countless articles and books that will be written about that alien library."

Lydia had been waiting for this very moment. "I regret that I will no longer be a major attraction here at Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors, sir, but I think I can guarantee that this museum will get a bit more than a footnote out of this affair."

He blinked a couple of times. "How's that?"

"Mr. Shrimpton," she said very earnestly, "you gave me a job when no one else in the city would even consider of hiring me because they thought I'd been burned out. In addition, you have been very generous about allowing me to develop a private consulting business outside my duties here. And then there was all that time off you gave me to prepare for the Restoration Ball. I owe you a great deal."

"Nonsense." Shrimpton turned an odd shade of red and flapped a hand. "You've been an excellent addition to the staff. Happy to have you with us."

Lydia sniffed a couple of times and managed a watery smile. "The point I'm trying to make is that, regardless of my outside activities, I consider myself first and foremost a member of this, uh, institution's staff. My professional loyalties lie here at Shrimpton's, not up at the university."

Shrimpton dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at his cheeks. "Very touching, my dear. Very touching, indeed."

Melanie sighed. "If you two are going to burst into tears, I'll have to leave."

Lydia wiped her nose and quickly got to her feet. "Because of my allegiance and affection for this museum, I wouldn't dream of allowing it to come out of this business with nothing but zip-squat."

"Yeah?" Melanie began to look interested.

Shrimpton put his handkerchief back in his pocket. "What do you mean?"

Lydia reached down, opened her bottom desk drawer, and took out the large cardboard box she had placed there when she had arrived at the office that morning. Setting the box on the desk, she removed the lid with a flourish.

Shrimpton shuffled forward to take a closer look. Melanie leaned over the desk. They both stared at the book that Lydia had brought out of the alien library.

"Oh, my goodness," Shrimpton whispered. "Is that for us?"

"For a while," Lydia said wryly. "Sooner or later we'll have to let the university experts examine it. But they're going to be very busy for quite some time inside that library. I figure we can put this book on display as soon as we get the Guild to arrange security, say, this week. We should be able to exhibit it for at least a month or longer before the crowd up at the university realizes what's going on and starts screaming bloody murder."

"Well, well, well." Melanie grinned. "I do believe Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors has got its next big attraction."

Shrimpton was dazzled. "People will be lined up all the way to the river to see this book."

"They sure will," Lydia said. "Especially when they find out it has pictures."

"Pictures!" Melanie exclaimed. "Are you serious?"

"Oh, my," Shrimpton said, aghast at the prospects. "Oh, my goodness gracious. Pictures?"

"There is a tiny bit of psi-energy coming from it," Lydia explained. "I wanted to be sure it was safe. Yesterday I took it to a private lab to get it checked out. The techs did some fiddling and testing. They figured out that anyone who can rez a lightbulb or a door key can operate this thing."

Very carefully she opened the quartz covers and turned to the place she had marked.

Melanie and Shrimpton looked at the small section at the bottom of the page where the quartz paper seemed to shimmer and waver.

"It's easy enough to do once you get the hang of it," Lydia explained. "Watch this."

She sent out a small pulse of psi energy. The shimmering section snapped into focus. A clear holographic picture formed in midair above the page.

"Isn't he adorable?" she said. "He looks just like Fuzz."

They all gazed in wonder at the life-sized picture of a dust-bunny. There were two versions; one showed the creature with just its baby blues open. The other showed it with all four wide open.

"We rezzed each of the photos in the book at the lab," Lydia explained. "Every single one is a picture of an animal commonly found here on Harmony. The lettering seems large for the size of the page."

Melanie's face lit up with sudden comprehension and delight. "Oh, my goodness. A children's picture book of animals."

Lydia touched the page reverently. "So unimportant and insignificant that it was overlooked and left behind when the aliens packed up the contents of that chamber and left town. But the clear connection between the pictures and the lettering will give the experts a crack at decoding Harmonic writing at last."

Shrimpton beamed. "Our very own Rosetta Stone," he whispered.

Lydia and Melanie both looked at him.

"What's a Rosetta Stone?" Melanie demanded.

"I don't understand, sir," Lydia said. "It's not a stone, it's a book."

"Bah, that's the trouble with the modern educational system," Shrimpton declared. "They don't teach the history of Old Earth archaeology in school the way they did when I was a lad." He grinned with benign satisfaction. "Never mind. The important thing is that Lydia is right. This is going to be an even bigger draw than having the Guild boss's wife on the staff."