Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [40]
Two months previously, Swan and Luis had driven together in his little red van to a farm in Allegany County. The family was auctioning their equipment, their land already sold. Luis and Swan walked past a small crowd examining the tractors and trucks that would be up on the block later that afternoon. The genuine auction was a cover for a rather less ordinary sale taking place in one of the farm’s big sheds.
There were a dozen people there, sitting on folding chairs they had brought with them. Luis spread his big jacket on a bale of hay and he and Swan sat down side by side.
She recognised some of the faces. Swan had only a rough idea of who the other buyers were, a mix of collectors, incognito scientists, conspiracy theorists, and spies. These little auctions were held on an irregular schedule, always masked by some other big sale: last time it had been an office building selling off its desks and filing cabinets. Swan and Luis had sold one or two items over the years, but usually, they were here to buy.
The lots were presented by a soft-voiced young man in a dark suit who mostly looked at the ground; he always made her think of attendants at a funeral, their insistent solemnity.
The resemblance would have been better if it hadn’t been for his punk hair, a wave of metallic red that sparkled with golden highlights. Despite her not inconsiderable efforts, Swan had never managed to find out exactly who he was.
Today’s selection was fairly typical. Plenty of circuit boards with suspicious pedigrees. A box of floppy disks that bore the label of a major researcher – bidding was fierce for that lot. More disks and some printouts of stuff downloaded from milnet. Part of what looked like the controls of a helicopter, labelled in Cyrillic script. Some of it had been brought by the bidders, but mostly it had filtered down through a grapevine of thieves and collectors. The auctioneer set a starting-price for each. He had a reputation for scrupulous fairness when it came to estimating the values of his wares.
The young man always saved the most eccentric items until last, like a sort of dessert course. They often included odd little inventions, specially modified computers, and things the auctioneer admitted he could not identify. People ventured the last of their mad money on cheap gewgaws which might turn out to be anything from an amusing toy to a genuine innovation.
Swan rarely bought anything at the auctions; she and Luis joked that she was waiting for the pearl of great price. He was mostly interested in antique technology; the little gems of early computing that sometimes surfaced at these sales made it well worth his while to attend. That day he bought a RAMAC
305, gloating over the primordial hard drive while the spies battled for the military stuff.
‘Our last item, ladies and gentlemen,’ announced the auctioneer. He wore contact lenses that made his eyes appear an unnaturally bright blue. ‘Two objects of extraterrestrial origin.’
A little polite laughter as he displayed the two gadgets.
They looked nothing like the serious machinery he had been selling all afternoon. They looked like gift shop baubles, or kid’s toys.
‘I would like to start the bidding at five thousand dollars,’
said the soft-voiced man.
That stopped the chuckling. The bidders glanced shyly at one another. What did the auctioneer know about those gizmos that they didn’t?
Swan put up her hand for the first time that day ‘Five thou,’ she said loudly. The other bidders looked everywhere but at her.
‘Five five,’ said someone, halfheartedly.
‘Six thou,’ said Swan. Luis was grinning and nodding at her. There was nothing he loved better than a surprise, some mystery machine he could pull apart at home and decipher.
‘Um, six one?’ said the other buyer, but Swan knew she had it.
‘Six five,’ she said firmly.
Silence. ‘Going, going, gone,’ murmured the auctioneer
‘Dutch?’ said Luis.
‘Of course,’ said Swan.
They were each wearing a money belt tucked under their jackets. Luis had a thirty-eight special