Mosaic - Jeri Taylor [44]
Now, they could use their lights. Cheb and Blake turned on palm beacons and played them around a cavernous room that was elegantly appointed, with wood paneling and vaulted ceilings. Running the length of the room were two wooden alleys, separated by deep grooves.
"What are they?" she asked Cheb, and he smiled at her. "Bowling alleys," he answered, but that told her nothing.
"It's a game that was. popular until about a hundred years ago. You rolled a heavy ball down this wooden alley and tried to knock over an arrangement of ten pins."
Kathryn shook her head. It sounded ludicrous. But people had played some very strange games in the past.
"Whose mansion was this, Cheb? And why was it abandoned? Does anyone own it now?"
"It was built early in the twenty-first century by a wealthy man who was an amateur historian. He wanted an authentic Irish castle for the woman he loved, who came from Ireland. So he spent a fortune having it built here, in Ohio. But she was never happy here-too isolated, too far from home. She wanted to leave him, but he begged her, pleaded with her, even threatened her. One day, she vanished, leaving a note that she was going home. He was so distraught he packed up, moved out, closed the house, and never came back. The castle has been empty for three hundred years. It's kept up through a provision in his will, but it's never to be occupied again." They all reflected silently on the strangeness of this tale. It was grand and romantic, and perfectly suited the ambience of the imposing structure. It seemed neither improbable nor far-fetched. "Of course," continued Cheb, "there were rumors that he killed her. Buried her somewhere here, in the house. Maybe in this basement."
Kathryn shot him a glance. "Are you trying to scare us with ghost stories, Cheb?"
He shrugged. "Just telling you what I know."
"Let's see the rest." Anna had found the stairway up and was heading toward it; the others followed, climbing upward in the darkness. Cheb and Kathryn were last, and she felt him pull her back, holding her behind for a moment. Then he moved close and kissed her.
Kathryn was amazed that her knees suddenly felt wobbly and jelly-like. You really could get weak in the knees! That was the effect Cheb Packer had on her, and she liked the sensation, enjoyed the stirring of such powerful feelings. Her fingertips were an explosion of sensation; tiny, intense firecrackers danced within them.
They followed the others upstairs, and discovered them in a huge, paneled dining room, whose table and chairs were covered with sheets, lending a ghostly presence to the room. It was a once-elegant room, boasting of a huge marble fireplace at one end and a ceiling that was stenciled in a faded design of shamrocks and thistle.
The young people removed the sheets from the furniture, opened the duffels they'd been carrying, and began to set up the picnic dinner they'd brought. That had been their plan-to hold a feast in an Irish castle. They'd brought soup and sandwiches and Kathryn's mother's caramel brownies. Blake lit candles and they sat in the flickering light around a carved wooden table with bear claw legs.
"You realize," said Cheb, "that probably every one of us is going to end up at Starfleet Academy next fall. I propose we repeat this dinner-next February in San Francisco." Cheb searched in his duffel and extracted a bottle of wine. "A toast to the occasion."
"Is that real?" asked Anna. "It's synthehol, isn't it?"
"This is an authentic Pinot Noir from northern California," said Cheb, pouring some into a cup and sniffing it with the elan of a wine steward. Kathryn wasn't sure how she felt about real alcohol. She'd never actually tasted it; she had experimented with synthehol because it was a substance over which one had control. Alcohol was not, and she'd always considered it somewhat subversive because of that.
Cheb tasted it, pronounced