Her belt was wide – gold backed with carlon, and heavily jeweled. A jeweled half-veil of fine gold mesh highlighted rather than hid her face. And, to cap the delectable package, her hair – which was the same rich purple as her boots and scarf – sported a tiara that would have dazzled the Empress herself, so overloaded as it with gold filigree, diamonds and amethysts. The tiara alone had been appraised conservatively at – and insured for – one million, three hundred ninety thousand rubles; yet Yvette wore it as casually as a sun-bonnet.
Ignoring the stares of the people waiting in the long line and the sidelong glances of the office workers, the outrageous pair walked briskly up to the front desk. ‘We are Citizens of Earth,’ Jules proclaimed loudly to the startled receptionist as he courteously but firmly edged his way into the narrow space between a fat woman and the desk. The clerk was too stunned by the appearance of these apparitions to move; Jules took advantage of her indecision to lean over, pick up her hand and tuck a hundred-ruble bill neatly into it. ‘Carlos a nd Carmen Velasquez, Citizens of Earth,’ he repeated even more loudly, dropping two ID cards onto her desktop. ‘You sure do have a nice planet here, yes, ma’am.
‘Course, all we saw of it was on the way from the spaceport to here, but I’m a man of quick opinions. I know what I like when I see it, and I like this here Algonia, yes, ma’am. Your duke wouldn’t be thinking of selling it, would he?’
The poor receptionist’s jaw dropped open.
“Course not,’ Jules laughed, giving her a broad wink. ‘Dukes don’t go a round selling their planets; I was just funning you. Still, this is a nice place, and my wife and me’ll be happy to stay here for a while.’
Yvette, who had chosen so far to stand beside her brother silently with her nose in the air, now deigned to speak. ‘This is the office where newcomers apply for sixty day visas, is it not?’
The flustered clerk’s face brightened as the conversation finally reached a level she could comprehend. ‘Oh no, ma’am … sir. That would be Gospodin Rixton’s office downstairs the SOTE, ma’am … sir.’ She seemed quite relieved to be able to shoo this duo out of her jurisdiction.
‘What seems to be the trouble here?’ A tall blond man with a pencil thin mustache oozed his way across the floor to stand beside them. ‘Problems, Gospozha Chen?’ The girl turned to him, a ‘thank you’ lighting up her face. ‘Gospodin Rixton, these two people …’
‘Citizens of Earth,’ Jules interrupted. ‘They’d like to apply for a sixty day visa.’
‘I’ll handle it, then.’ He put an overly friendly arm on Jules’ shoulder and steered him out of the line. ‘My name is Alf Rixton, and I’m the first assistant of SOTE here on Algonia …’
‘Delighted to meet you,’ Jules said loudly, pumping the man’s hand. ‘We’re Carlos and Carmen Velasquez, Citizens of Earth. We’d like to stay a couple of months on this wonderful planet of yours.’ He reached into his pocket and produced another hundred-ruble bill. ‘I trust you can arrange it for us. We’ll be staying at the Hotel Splendide.’ He stuffed the bill very blatantly into the SOTE man’s hand, then he and Yvette marched out of the room.
To their inner disgust, Rixton made no attempt to return the bribe.
CHAPTER EIGHT – AMBUSH IN THE PARK
THE STANLEY DOCTRINE. As one of her principal reforms, Empress Stanley Five imposed on society the formal hierarchical structure still in use today. Given the fact that stratification was inevitable in any social system, she elected to ,introduce the arrangement that had served mankind the longest – that of hereditary nobility. Her logical mind took what was essentially a chaotic state of affairs and reorganized, simplified and, in a sense, standardized it. All inhabited space was divided into thirty-six Sectors, with Earth considered to be the center of the sphere. Each Sector is ruled by a grand duke, and may contain hundreds of planets. Single planets are ruled by dukes. Marquises rule continents or the equivalent thereof. Earls rule over what would previously have been considered states or small nations. Counts rule countries. Barons – the lowest ranking nobility – rule cities or districts.
(Stanhope, Elements of Empire, Reel 2, slot 408.)
The Hotel Splendide was the plushiest, most exclusive caravansary on Algonia. Rooms there started at two hundred rubles a night and rose sharply in price. The hotel’s chef was famous throughout most of Sector Three, and it was not uncommon that meals in the Splendide’s restaurant ran to seventy or eighty rubles a person. The grounds of the hotel covered more than forty hectares, and included virtually every recreational facility, licit and illicit, known to man. There was even a small private forest for guests who wanted to ‘commune with Nature’ without going too far from civilization.
Thus it was only natural that such a hotel would become the stopping place of Carlos and Carmen Velasquez, those flamboyant and flashy Citizens of Earth. Their arrival there created a small whirlwind of activity, and they quickly established themselves as favorites of both management and staff. Not only because they settled into the penthouse suite – at a thousand rubles a night – for what promised to be a long stay; not only because they were outgoing, gregarious and fun-loving; but also because they did not seem to realize that money came in denominations smaller than fifty Imperial rubles.
Though publicly they remained unflappable, privately the scale on which they were living frightened them a bit. ‘We could camp half our family in here,’ Yvette said when first they were alone in their suite, ‘and still have room left over there in the corner for tumbling mats.’
‘It’s all in a good cause, though,’ Jules said, going over to one of the suite’s four enormous vibrobeds and sprawling out on it. ‘I know it’s hard, but we’ll have to learn to live with luxury for a while.’
‘I’m just afraid I’ll get used to it, that’s all!’
The two visitors quickly settled into a regular routine of seemingly relaxed activity. They never rose before eleven and, after a light brunch, engaged in games of tennis and rondola by themselves, or played in team sports with other guests. Then came a brisk swim in the indoor pool, followed by a midafternoon snack. They retired to their suite until dinner, after which they walked for at least one hour through the relatively deserted pathways of the hotel’s planned forest. Unsuspicious activities for two people on a vacation for the purposes of relaxation.
But those walks in the late evening played a central role in their plans. Heretofore, all the SOTS agents who had investigated the criminal activity on Algonia had gone looking for it. They had found it, of course, but it was Yvette’s theory that perhaps they had only found what was meant for them to find. Perhaps the d’Alemberts would have more success if they let the criminal activity find them.
Their hikes on the first few nights were exploratory more than anything else. But after a while they hit upon a path that they particularly liked, and stuck to it monotonously from then on. Every evening they would take their rented car and drive it from the hotel to the corner of the grounds where the forest began; then they would park it and begin their six kilometer hike along a dark, heavily wooded area of hills and rocks. It was a route on which they encountered no other people; a route that had five places to order for an ambush; and a route that they had gone to much trouble to publicize.
For six nights they swung along their chosen path at a steady eight-kilometers-an-hour gait, swathed in complete silence …
Complete silence? Yes. Their flashy but sturdy walking boots made not even a whisper of sound as they trod across the soft ground; no item of their apparel or equipment rattled or tinkled or squeaked or even rustled – everything had been designed that way. They could hear, but they could not be heard. Anyone lying in wait for them would have to spot them before moving into action – and the d’Alemberts themselves had very acute hearing and aerialists’ eyesight.
As they reached a clearing with minimal potential for danger, Yvette asked, ‘Do you suppose we goofed, Julie?’
‘Uh uh, pretty sure not. I’ve learned to trust your intuitions. I think it’s just taking them some time to get the operation set up. Consider: Senor and Senora Velasquez can’t just disappear into thin air – it would raise entirely too many questions. Also, besides the king-sized fortunes we’re wearing, everyone knows we’ve got enough capital tucked away in the Splendide’s safe to start a bank. They’ll want to get their hands on that, too. I think they’ll want to use substitutes for us, after getting us out of the way- and that will take a bit of planning. We didn’t specifically design these three quarters naked outfits of ours to make it hard to impersonate us, but it worked out well that way. There aren’t too many people around who could carry off that imposture.’