“Yes, but the purpose of our voyage . . . ?” Klimov said, no longer peevish but clearly unsatisfied. “The things we have come to see?”
“Yes,” said Daniel. “You want to go hunting, Count, and Countess—Valentina—”
Catching himself before her slim, beringed finger waggled in his face.
“—you are a student of ethnology. While you share an interest in pre-Hiatus artifacts.”
“Yes, exactly,” said the Count. “What of those things?”
“He doesn’t know yet, but he’ll learn,” the Countess said. “That is correct, is it not, Captain Dannie?”
Daniel shrank the starfield so that he could meet the Klimovna’s eyes without a milky holographic veil between them. “Countess,” he said, “I will promise to call you Valentina henceforth if you promise not to call me Captain Dannie. Are we agreed?”
“Agreed, Daniel,” she said and stretched her hand out over the astrogation tank. He touched fingertips with her and withdrew his hand.
“And of course your wife is quite right, Count,” Daniel continued with a smile. “I don’t have enough information yet to give you our intermediary planetfalls; but I will before we lift in seven days. I’m going through my Uncle Stacey’s logs. For the most part they deal with sailing directions, but there are notes regarding the planets where he put in for air and reaction mass. More important, I’ve asked Mistress Mundy to use her resources. She’s Mundy of Chatsworth, by the way; one of the most noble houses in the Republic, as your friends the Collesios will tell you.”
“But she is your signals officer?” Klimovna said. “The sort of populations which interest me will not have radios, let alone starships.”
“She’s acting as my signals officer,” Daniel explained, “but her training in the Academic Collections on Bryce was as a librarian—an information specialist. Mistress Mundy will learn whatever can be learned on Cinnabar about suitable planetfalls. When we reach Todos Santos, she will learn more. You will not be disappointed, sir and madam.”
The Klimovs exchanged a long glance. She nodded and the Count stepped to the hatch and swung it to before returning to face Daniel.
It was the wife who spoke, however, saying, “There is one further matter, Daniel. Eighty years ago our planet was ruled by a man named John Tsetzes.”
“He was a mercenary soldier who made himself emperor,” Klimov put in. “He called himself Emperor Ivan the First. Twenty years later he was overthrown and fled on an armed yacht.”
“I see,” said Daniel, a placeholder limited to the very little bit that he did understand thus far. Keeping his mouth shut seemed to be the best way to learn more.
“Tsetzes took the national collection with him,” Valentina said. “Items of great sentimental value to the nation and sometimes more. In particular he took the Earth Diamond. You have heard of it?”
“No ma’am,” Daniel said, “I have not.”
But in thirty seconds Adele could tell you more than you know yourself, he thought, or I miss my bet.
“Regardless, it is very famous,” Valentina said with a dismissive gesture. “It is a perfect diamond, the size of a man’s head; spherical and hollowed out.”
“That’s indeed impressive,” said Daniel. Jewels had value, but no jewel could truly be said to be unique given that all the universe was open to human acquisitiveness. The labor of hollowing out a huge diamond, however, invested it with a value beyond that of the material itself.
“It is more than that,” said Klimov. “The name, the Earth Diamond, is not just words. On the inside of this diamond sphere is carved a map of the continents of Old Earth before the Hiatus, a thing that could never be duplicated in the past two thousand years. Now do you see?”
“Yes,” said Daniel. He blinked with the weight of what he’d just been told. “I do.”
The Hiatus in human civilization occurred when the first tier of star systems colonized from Earth revolted against the home world. The war was fought with asteroids accelerated to slam into planets, distorting the crust and killing all but a few percent of those living on those worlds before the war started.
It was a millennium before mankind returned to the stars, and the return came from second- and third-tier colonies, worlds like Cinnabar and Pleasaunce which had been too minor for either side to bother destroying. No one today could tell what the Earth looked like before the Hiatus, because the continents had died along with those who lived on them.