Out of the Black - Lee Doty [79]
A meter-wide drawer slid out. The top was clear armor glass. Through the glass, Ping could make out several boxes, and formed receptacles for four weapons. Three of the receptacles were filled.
The empty space was obviously for the collapsed sword in Ping's pocket. There were two pistols and a compact fletcher. He lifted the glass and reached for the pistols. Light, functional- not the same make as his ruined pistols, but they would do. He found four fifty-round magazines of two-millimeter ammunition. He slid one into each pistol, and spent a few moments transferring the weapons' locks to his lock rings. He heard the ready-tone, then stowed the pistols in his holsters. He left his warped guns in the drawer. The extra clips went in his jacket pockets.
Next,ancexamined the fletcher. The weapon was perhaps half a meter long with a pistol grip in back and another collapsible handle under the barrel. It fired 10mm shells containing twenty-five 1mm fletchettes. There was a thumb switch on the pistol grip near the trigger that selected the firing dispersion. At low dispersion, they would hit within a 10cm diameter at five meters, at high dispersion, they would hit within a one-meter diameter at the same range.
He found a two-shoulder harness for the weapon. He mounted one clip of ammo in the weapon, and put two more in the harness. He set the weapon and harness on the bed and examined the other contents of the drawer.
The first box was a miniature fireproof safe, which was odd because the drawer was itself a fireproof safe. He hesitated before opening it; he wasn't sure if Dek had intended him to grab the weapons and leave Roy's privacy otherwise intact. He weighed this concern against the chance that anything else here might help keep them alive.
The lid lifted to reveal memorabilia. Ping lifted a small pewter cross. It was crudely constructed... it looked old.
Ivo looks across the yard of the St. Petersburg Home of the Innocents. The wind cuts through his heavy wool cloak and the coat beneath. The smell of the city is held somewhat at bay by the frigid air. Around him, children in inadequate coats play. He will assuage his guilt by sending coats and blankets here later. What he intends will be divine or monstrous, but only time will tell.
He wouldn't need to be here if power didn't corrupt- if he weren't so desperate.
Apart from the others, one boy sits. His pudgy fingers toy with a small amulet of some kind. Curious, Ivo moves closer. His shadow falls across the boy of perhaps eight. He looks up with small, innocent eyes.
Monstrous, Ivo thinks, approximating a friendly smile, "What's your name, child?"
"ooooh!" the boy says, removing the cross, smiling with an intensity that seems to use every muscle in his round face. "Mmmmh!" His small hand stretches up. Ivo takes the crude pewter cross; stares into it for a moment.
The boy stares up at him: proud, smiling, cheeks red from the cold. Monstrous.
God help me, he thinks, smiling down at the boy now entirely enveloped in his shadow.
Ping fingered the broken metal where a loop once held the cross to a chain. Part of the loop remained, a half circle, terminating in two rough ends. Looking at the cross, he felt an inexplicable connection to the dead immortal.
He returned the cross to the box. There were several plastic rings that looked like gumball machine prizes, quite a few pictures, and a plastic-encased picture of a young man in aggressive looking clothes with confused-looking hair.
Ping picked up the picture. As he did so, he realized it wasn't just a picture. It was some kind of case, flat and about the size of his hand. After several gentle prods, the case opened to reveal a plastic disc clipped into the right side. In black letters across the refractive surface of the disk "Vanilla Ice" was written. Ping had no idea what this might imply. There was a short message handwritten in loose script on the inside of the cover:
Roy,