The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

“Suterbilt is a criminal,” Evie said from the lobby. She sat in an upholstered chair, knitting as her eyes stared into time. “He’s no better than the thugs he bankrolls.”

“Now, Evie, you know we shouldn’t say things like that,” Georg said. “But Suterbilt has, well, a financial stake in L’Escorial. That’s personal, not TST.”

The innkeeper was setting up a table-model hologram projector. Niko moved to help him. The unit had a lot of flash and glitter, but it looked clumsy compared to the trim projectors in use on Nieuw Friesland.

“So a shotgun sale?” Margulies pressed. The story would probably come out, from Mistress Hathaway if not from her husband, but Margulies didn’t want to wait.

“Not that either,” Georg said. He obviously felt uncomfortable speaking about the gunmen and their masters, though the chance to gossip with these folk had attraction as well.

“Not really, at least,” he continued. “Pedro had been taking a lot of gage, mostly gage, because he’d loved Suzette so much. He wouldn’t have sold at all if he hadn’t been, well, if he’d been in better condition. Because Suzette’s greatest masterpiece is a part of the home where they’d lived, you see.”

“And then he lost the money,” Evie added harshly. “He was drugged silly, and he gambled, and he lost every peso of the price.”

“The price had been a good one, though,” her husband said quickly. “Master Suterbilt didn’t cheat him, not really, since the art can’t be moved and its value’s only what it’s worth on Cantilucca.”

“Suterbilt didn’t cheat him in the notary’s office, you mean,” Evie said. “He left that job for his friends at the roulette table.”

Her fingers clicked the needles with mechanical precision. Moden thought of the old women watching the guillotine; and realized for the first time how much, and how rightly, they had hated the aristocrats being beheaded.

“Why can’t the PA be moved?” Daun asked in surprise.

“What?” said Georg. “Because it’s built into the fabric of the room, sir. You’d destroy the whole thing to try to move it.”

The technician frowned. He didn’t argue, but it was obvious that he couldn’t understand the problem.

“There,” said Hathaway. “Watch this. It’s the holographic draft Suzette did before she created the ambiance itself.”

He dimmed the alcove lights. The policemen were watching from their table. Larrinaga reappeared from the rest room. He stood in the archway instead of reentering the saloon.

A psychic ambiance was just that, a recorded vision—a waking dream—capable of being transferred to recipients in the focal area. It couldn’t be copied, because it depended on inputs too subtle to survive the duplication process. Though the PA was immaterial, the artist normally started with a visual or auditory sketch, just as medieval fresco artists drew cartoons on the wall before applying a coat of fresh plaster on which to fix the paint.

Suzette worked visually. The holographic sketch was of a verdant paradise, a mythic place in which fountains played and the geologic features seemed themselves alive though immobile.

No animals could be glimpsed, though the movement of plants hinted their presence. Above all, the shifting holographic image was suffused by light and a warmth for which the objects described could not themselves account.

The sketch began to repeat itself. The second time through, individual facets merged into a whole greater and quite different from its parts.

Daun frowned. He could almost grasp the unity to which the intersections of light beams were building in this holographic shorthand.

“It’s her, you know,” Larrinaga said abruptly. “It’s Suzette. She did a self-portrait, she built it into our house so that I’d never have had to be without her. And I threw it away!”

He began to weep openly. Georg Hathaway shut off the chip projector; Margulies brought the lights back up. Though Hathaway House was a fortress, the bright internal illumination prevented the weight of the protective walls from crushing the souls of those within it.

“There, there, Pedro,” Georg said awkwardly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. I know it bothers you.”

“Everything bothers him,” Evie said, knitting with tiny clicks unaffected by her words. “It’s Pedro’s life now, being bothered.”

“It’s still possible to see the PA, isn’t it?” Niko asked, looking from Georg to Larrinaga and quickly away again.

Hathaway pursed his lips. He started to say something, then glanced toward the archway.

“Can I have another beer, Georg?” Larrinaga asked. “It’ll have to be on credit, of course.”

“Why of course, Pedro,” Hathaway said enthusiastically. “You’re not a patron here, you’re our friend.”

He gestured Larrinaga toward the serving counter instead of drawing the mug himself. A transaction had taken place, and everyone within earshot knew it.