“Nope. It couldn’t perform its functions here.”
“What’s so special about its functions, anyhow?”
“A lot of theoretical crap involving space and time and some notions of some guys named Everett and Wheeler. It’s only amenable to a mathematical explanation.”
“You sure?”
“What difference does it make, anyhow? I’ve got no product, we’ve got no company. Sorry. Tell Martinez and associates it was a blind alley.”
“Huh? Who’s Martinez?”
“One of your potential investors in Corey and Raynard, Inc.,” I said. “Dan Martinez-middle-aged, a bit short, kind of distinguished-looking, chipped front tooth . . .”
His brow furrowed. “Merle, I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about.”
“He came up to me while I was waiting for you in the bar. Seemed to know an awful lot about you. Started asking questions on what I can now see as the potential situation you just described. Acted as if you’d approached him to invest in the thing.”
“Uh-uh,” he said. “I don’t know him. How come you didn’t tell me sooner?”
“He beat it, and you said no business till after dinner. Didn’t seem all that important, anyway. He even as much as asked me to let you know he’d been inquiring about you.”
“What, specifically, did he want to know?”
“Whether you could deliver an unencumbered computer property and keep the investors out of court, was what I gathered.”
He slapped the wheel. “This makes no sense at all,” he said. “It really doesn’t.”
“It occurs to me that he might have been hired to investigate a bit-or even just to shake you up some and keep you honest-by the people you’ve been sounding out to invest in this thing.”
“Merle, do you think I’m so damn stupid I’d waste a lot of time digging up investors before I was even sure there was something to put the money into? I haven’t talked to anybody about this except you, and I guess I won’t be now either. Who do you think he could have been? What did he want?”
I shook my head, but I was remembering those words in Thari.
Why not?
“He also asked me whether I’d ever heard you refer to a place called Amber.”
He was looking in the rearview mirror when I said it, and he jerked the wheel to catch a sudden curve. “Amber? You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Strange. It has to be a coincidence-“
“What?”
“I did hear a reference to a kind of dreamland place called Amber, last week. But I never mentioned it to anybody. It was just drunken babbling.”
“Who? Who said it?”
“A painter I know. A real nut, but a very talented guy. Name’s Melman. I like his work a lot, and I’ve bought several of his paintings. I’d stopped by to see whether he had anything new this last time I was in town. He didn’t, but I stayed pretty late at his place anyway, talking and drinking and smoking some stuff he had. He got pretty high after a while and he started talking about magic. Not card tricks, I mean. Ritual stuff, you know?”
“Yes.”
“Well, after a time he started doing some of it. If it weren’t that I was kind of stoned myself I’d swear that it worked-that he levitated, summoned sheets of fire, conjured and banished a number of monsters. There had to’ve been acid in something he gave me. But damn! It sure seemed real.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anyway,” he went on, “he mentioned a sort of archetypal city. I couldn’t tell whether it sounded more like Sodom and Gomorrah or Camelot-all the adjectives he used. He called the place Amber, and said that it was run by a half mad family, with the city itself peopled by their bastards and folks whose ancestors they’d brought in from other places ages ago. Shadows of the family and the city supposedly figure in most major legends and such whatever that means. I could never be sure whether he was talking in metaphor, which he did a lot, or just what the hell he meant. But that’s where I heard the place mentioned.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Melman is dead. His place burned down a few days ago.”