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and pronounced it excellent. The bartender was sent back to his duty.
Kuusinen frowned. How the hell was it done? The White
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Room had no stage, therefore no trapdoors. The box had been literally taken
apart. The sound of the shaker had continued throughout.
Damnation. Kuusinen had been up all night working on one puzzle, and now here
was another, come to torment him.
The shaker was the key. There had to be a reason why the sound had continued.
But what was it?
But now another illusion commenced. Kuusinen soon figured out how it was
done that wasn't Maijstral's hand holding up the screen by its corner; that
hand was a clever fake, complete with trademark diamond ring. Maijstral's real
hand was elsewhere, manipulating things. And when
Roman walked onstage to give Maijstral a prop that could
have been on Maijstral's table all along, Kuusinen realized
Roman had passed Maijstral something he had concealed beneath his coat.
Having lost interest for the present, Kuusinen glanced the audience. Why, he
wondered, had Vanessa Run-citer claimed that insufferable oaf Dolfuss?
Normally she ate such people for breakfast. Doubtless, Kuusinen consid-ered
this was part of a scheme. Kuusinen craned his neck, looked for Geoff Fu
George or his assistants, and failed to see any of them. It seemed likely that
Dolfuss was getting his room ransacked right now, with Miss Runciter on hand
to alert the thieves should Dolfuss tire of the magic act and decide to stroll
back to his suite.
Pleased with his feat of deduction, Kuusinen turned back to the program.
One of Kyoko Asperson's media globes hovered closer, taking a first-row seat
for the climax of the illusion. Ku-
usinen looked approvingly at the arrangement of media globes in order that the
tricks wouldn't be given away unfairly, the globes had been arranged with
careful regard for Maijstral's sight lines.
The trick, the one Kuusinen had figured out, was building to a satisfactory
conclusion. Kuusinen, because he couldn't help himself, started counting the
media globes again, and received a mild surprise.
Khamiss, her feet up, watched the magic show on station vid, broadcast live by
Kyoko Asperson's globes. Not having noticed the phony hand, she wriggled her
toes in silent, delighted applause at the production of the live clacklo,
wondering how it was done.
Her phone rang. Feeling too lazy to reach the service Plate, she told the room
to record the performance and put foe caller on vid.
230 I WALTER JON WILLIAMS
Appearing on her vid unit was an elderly Tanquer
Khamiss recognized as a female who worked at the front desk. The Tanquer's
eyes bulged and her whiskers trembled:
she looked on the verge of hysteria.
Tanquers, Khamiss knew, suffered from an unfortunate fact of evolution. In
their early history they were prey to a large carnivore that would stalk and
kill anything that moved but which would leave a motionless victim alone.
Tanquers in a crisis, were therefore subject to a Darwinian tendency to wring
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their hands, dither, and become subject to the vapors. As compensation they
were masters of orderly pro-
cedure; but they tended to unravel in an emergency.
"You're with security, aren't you? I need your help!"
Khamiss smiled: she was off-duty. "Call security cen-
tral," she said. "I can't "
"I've tried!" Desperately. "I've been trying to reach Mr.
Sun, but I can't get an answer!" The Tanquer made a strangled noise.
"That's strange. Perhaps someone's interfering with communications." Khamiss
perked her ears forward. "What's the problem, then, ma'am?"
The Tanquer's tall, bushy tail swished frantically behind her head. "Someone's
just stolen the hotel safe!"
"Oh." Khamiss sat bolt upright. "The entire safe?" she asked.
"Ye-es!"
A wail of perfect despair.
"Continue your attempts to contact Mr. Sun. I'll be there as soon as I can."
While she flung on her uniform, Khamiss told her phone to contact as many
members of her security detail as possible.
She sent some to lurk outside Fu George's room-she assumed Maijstral, whatever
his talents as a magician, hadn't been doing a live performance and robbing
the safe
HOUSE OF SHARDS | 231
simultaneously and Khamiss told others to meet her at the
location of the hotel safe. Once dressed, she ran flat out for Sun's
headquarters.
The scent of smoke and the sight of flying robots told
Khamiss what had happened before she saw the headquarters door. She was forced
to slow to a walk firefighting robots crowded the hallways, and there was
retardant foam on the mothwing carpets. Mr. Sun, purple of feature, lay
propped against the wall, wheezing into a handkerchief as bright red smoke
poured from the door that led into his blue heaven.
Moving carefully so as not to slide on foam, Khamiss approached her boss.
"Are you all right, sir?"
Sun waved his hand feebly. Bronchial spasms reduced him to monosyllables.
"Smoke bombs. In the console.
Planted." He rallied enough to make a furious Holmesian declaration.
"Game's afoot!"
"Someone's stolen the entire hotel safe."
Mr. Sun's purple tones darkened. His eyes popped. He clutched at his throat,
unable to speak.
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"Shall I handle it, sir?" Tactfully.
Sun gave a frantic nod. Khamiss raced away.
"And now " removing the ring from his hand " the
Disappearing Diamond."
"Your grace. Have you heard from your people?" "I'm afraid not, my lady. I
don't know when I'll be able
to retrieve the Shard. Have you located its lordship?" "Its mucous trail led
to one of the central elevators, but
I lost it there. It had been looking at plans for the station
power plant, so I ran there, but its lordship never appeared.''
"Grief."
232 | WALTER JON WILLIAMS
"I don't know what to do. Do you suppose I should alert station security?"
"I've been trying that, my lady. They don't answer."
Heavy beam cutters, Khamiss recognized at once. The thief had started in a
storage locker, cut a hole in the wall, then cut the entire safe from its
cradle. At least a dozen alarms must have been triggered, but Mr. Sun's
headquarters had been filled with smoke and the alarms had been ignored.
She picked up a telephone.
"Contact Mr. Kingston," she said. "Tell him to search
Geoff Fu George's room at once."
The diamond ring, placed in an envelope sealed with red wax, rose slowly in
the air, swooping upward in slow, graceful arcs in response to gentle waves of
Maijstral's hand.
The envelope, flaring redly in the light of Rathbon's Star, rose higher,
higher, hovering at last in front of the giant impact diamond.
There was a startling bang, a gush of red smoke, and bits of the envelope fell
in slow charred droplets toward the floor. There were shouts from Maijstral's
audience as they began to realize it wasn't just the diamond ring that had
disappeared.
Overtaken by sensation at the vanished giant diamond, few of the audience
observed the ring that glittered on Ma-
ijstral's finger as he took his bow. Overshadowed by the large effect,
Maijstral thought, the reappearance of the smaller diamond proved somewhat
anticlimactic. He wouldn't use it as a finale again.
Kuusinen realized, as he stood and tapped his foot in the applause-pattern for
"joyous surprise," why the wood-
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HOUSE OF SHARDS | 233
winds' sound had been off. The resonance provided by the diamond was missing,
which meant of course the diamond had been missing for quite some time, and
replaced by an illusion. Maijstral hadn't stolen it just now: it had been gone
at least since morning.
Pleased with his acuity, Kuusinen turned from the per-
formance to see Roberta's butler Kovinn walk into the room and do a perfect
double take at the sight of Maijstral speaking to a gathering of his admirers.
Kovinn fairly leaped for one of the telephones and slammed down an opaque
privacy screen.
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