Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [68]
Of course, the fact that she was investing in their firms should at least convey the idea that she was an hysteric with money. . . .
If they had any sense, they would be able to put the story together for themselves from the records, and they would believe her. Hopefully, they would be ready.
She transmitted the last of the messages, just as Alex arrived at her airlock.
"Permission to come aboard, ma'am," he called cheerfully, as she opened the lock for him. He ran up the stairs two at a time, and when he burst into the main cabin, she told herself that fashions would surely change, soon—he was dressed in a chrome yellow tunic with neon-red piping, and neon-red trousers with chrome-yellow piping. Both bright enough to hurt the eyes and dazzle the pickups, and she was grateful she could tune down the intensity of her visual receptors.
"How was your reunion?" she asked, once his clothes weren't blinding her.
"There weren't more than a half dozen of them," he told her, continuing through the hall and down to his own cabin. He pitched both his bags on his bed, and returned. "We just missed Chria by a hair. But we had a good time."
"I'm surprised you didn't come back with a hangover."
He widened his eyes with surprise. "Not me! I'm the Academy designated driver—or at any rate, I make sure people get on the right shuttles. Never touch the stuff, myself, or almost never. Clogs the synapses."
Tia felt irrationally pleased to hear that.
"So, did you miss me? I missed you. Did you have enough to do?" He flung himself down in his chair and put his feet up on the console. "I hope you didn't spend all your time reading Institute papers."
"Oh," she replied lightly, "I found a few other things to occupy my time. . . ."
* * *
The comlink was live, and Alex was on his very best behavior—including a fresh, and only marginally rumpled, uniform. He sat quietly in his chair, the very picture of a sober Academy graduate and responsible CS brawn.
Tia reflected that it was just as well she'd bullied him into that uniform. The transmission was shared by Professor Barton Glasov y Verona-Gras, head of the Institute, and a gray-haired, dark-tunicked man the professor identified as Central Systems Sector Administrator Joshua Elliot-Rosen y Sinor. Very high in administration. And just now, very concerned about something, although he hid his concern well. Alex had snapped to a kind of seated "attention" the moment his face appeared on the screen.
"Alexander, Hypatia—we're going to be sending you a long file of stills and holos," Professor Barton began. "But for now, the object you see here on my desk is representative of our problem."
The "object" in question was a perfectly lovely little vase. The style was distinctive; skewed, but with a very sensuous sinuosity, as if someone had fused Art Nouveau with Salvador Dali. It seemed—as nearly as Tia could tell from the transmission—to be made of multiple layers of opalescent glass or ceramic.
It also had the patina that only something that has been buried for a very long time achieves.
Or something with a chemically faked patina. But would the professor himself have called them if all he was worried about were fake antiquities? Not likely.
The only problem with the vase—if it was a genuine artifact—was that it did not match the style of any known artifact in any of Tia's files.
"You know that smuggling and site-robbing has always been a big problem for us," Professor Barton continued. "It's very frustrating to come on a site and find it's already been looted. But this—this is doubly frustrating. Because, as I'm sure Hypatia has already realized, the style of this piece does not match that of any known civilization."
"A few weeks ago, hundreds of artifacts in this style flooded the black market," Sinor said smoothly. "Analysis showed them to be quite ancient—this piece for instance was