Finally, he called June again with a shopping list of further items that he needed: a white work coat of the kind worn by lab techs and in plant nurseries, and some kind of memento from the Martian desert. “You know, a piece of polished rock, or a mineral with a striking pattern—the kind of thing they make into ashtrays and souvenirs. And it needs a fancy box to put it in, suitable for a wedding gift, along with a blank card.” From theatrical suppliers, Asiatic-style stores, costumers, or anywhere else she could think of, he wanted an Eastern outfit: loose, pajama-style trousers; Turkish dolman jacket or similar; tarboosh or other suitable headgear, along with appropriate shirt, slippers and accessories; to go with it, a stage makeup kit and a selection of wigs—dark through white, showing various stages of graying. Kieran concluded: “Put some of my own clothes at the apartment in one of my bags, leave it in a baggage locker at the spaceport, and send me the key code. And, lastly, I want you to book a reservation at the Oasis for me.”
“You’re already there.”
“Well, not me, this other character. Come on, stop acting obtuse. Let’s have him arriving tomorrow, let’s say for two nights.”
“And who would this be for?” June asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” Kieran confessed.
“I need a name to make the reservation.”
Kieran frowned and thought for a few seconds. Then his face broadened into the kind of smile that came with a sudden inspiration that he couldn’t resist. “The Khal of Tadzhikstan,” he announced with a verbal flourish. “What do you think? Like it?”
June groaned. “Dare I ask what this is about?” she hazarded.
“He’s going to be our way of getting to Brother Hamilton, otherwise known as He-Who-Seeks-After-Higher-Powers,” Kieran informed her. “And the person he can do it through is right here, at the Oasis. You know, Lovely, I’m almost beginning to believe in a Higher Helping Hand somewhere myself.”
* * *
When the syringes and test solution arrived, Kieran settled down with a pen, note pad, and a sample batch of lilies from the refrigerator to experiment with. He tried various ways of introducing the liquid using the different syringes, noting down the details and then carefully unraveling the buds to inspect the results. After discarding the failures, he found four methods that avoided internal damage or spoiling the external appearance. Using a numbered label to identify each, he repeated each of the four procedures on a new, untouched bud, and then laid them out around the room to thaw overnight, each covered by an upturned wastepaper bin. Beyond that, there was little he could do until the packages that June was organizing began arriving. Kieran went downstairs to have dinner and learn what he could through discreet questioning about the wedding party’s composition, security arrangements, schedule for the following day, and anything else that might be useful.
The last thing he did that evening was call Walter Trevany out in the Juggernaut for the latest eavesdropping news from Troy. Major Cobert and all his men were now showing clear signs of Banks & Co.’s condition, and Dr. Farquist had been advised that the entire contingent—Zorken people and the military force—would be moved to a hospital in Lowell before the end of the day for further observation.
Everyone—in Asgard, at Troy, and in Hamil’s group—was equally mystified as to who had been in the Airchief that had been driven off at Troy earlier, and what they had wanted. Trevany believed that whoever it was had presumed the camp to be still occupied by the archeological expedition that had been there previously, but it left him none the wiser as to who or why. Kieran had a pretty good idea where the intruders were from and what—or more accurately, who—they had come looking for. Tomorrow morning would be a good time for him to disappear again for a while, he decided.
18
When Kieran checked his mail the next morning, a reply had come back from the communications-expert friend out in the Belt. The frequencies that Kieran had specified for activating the nano-synthesizers were outside the bandwidth of regular phones, so their coils couldn’t be pulsed in the way Kieran had proposed. However, a power oscillator circuit associated with the graphics might work, but it would require an external piece of hardware called a multiplex modulator, or “muxmod,” to inject the signal into a data channel while the phone was in use. The message detailed several models and wished Kieran good luck. Kieran then called Pierre, who confirmed that he had prepared an additional quantity of the solution as requested. Kieran told him to have it delivered to the room of the “Khal of Tadzhikstan” at the Oasis hotel before the end of the morning. Pierre was beginning to know Kieran sufficiently by now to not even bother asking. Kieran passed on the information he had obtained concerning remote activation of the nano codes via the phone system, along with the details of the muxmod that it would need. Pierre promised to look around and see what he could find.