Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

“Wonderful,” she said, with a breaking voice.

Alex beamed. He was the picture of philanthropic content. It was so nice to be of assistance. Our cut, of course, would be the standard ten percent of the eventual sale price. I knew him well enough to be aware that his minimum bid was conservative.

I thought for a minute she was going to come apart. Fluttering handkerchief, brave smile, giggle, and an apology. Sorry, it’s such a shock.

“Now,” said Alex, “I want you to do something for me.”

“Of course.”

The waiter arrived, and we took time to order, although Amy was no longer paying much attention to the menu. When he was gone, Alex leaned across the table. “I want you to tell me where it came from.”

She looked startled. Fox and hounds. “Why, I told you, Mr. Benedict. My exboyfriend gave it to me.”

“When would that have been?”

“I don’t know. Several weeks ago.”

Alex’s voice dropped even lower. “Would you be kind enough to tell me his name?”

“Why? I told you, it belongs to me.”

“Because there might be more of these objects around. If there are, the owner may not be aware of their value.”

She shook her head. No. “I’d rather not do that.”

Breakup city. Alex reached across the table and took her hand. “It could mean a great deal to you,” he said. “We’d arrange things so you got a finder’s fee.”

“No.”

He looked at me, shrugged, and changed the subject. We talked about how nice it was to have an enormous amount of money fall out of the sky, and how the cup was a valuable artifact. The meals came, and we continued in that vein until Alex caught my eye again. I understood what he wanted, and a few minutes later he excused himself.

Time for girl talk. “Bad ending?” I asked in a sympathetic voice.

She nodded. “I hate him.”

“Another woman?”

“Yeah. He had no right.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay. I let him get away with it a couple times. But promises don’t mean nothing to him.”

“You’re probably better off. He sounds like a jerk.”

“I’m over it.”

“Good.” I tried to look casual. “If he has more of these around somewhere, it could mean a lot more money for you.”

“I don’t care.”

“We could handle it so he wouldn’t know where the information came from. It would not involve you. He’d never know.”

She shook her head. Absolutely not.

“How about this? If he has any more artifacts like the cup, we’ll keep you out of it, and we’ll make him an offer without telling him what they’re really worth. Then you and I can split whatever we make.”

That would have been a trifle unethical, and Alex would never have gone for it. Me, I wouldn’t have had a problem. I was beginning to feel some sympathy for Amy, so I had no trouble taking her side.

She started having second thoughts. “You’re sure he’d never find out? About me?”

“Absolutely. We’ve handled these things before.” If we could get a name, it would be easy enough to look into the situation without alerting him. If it turned out there were actually more souvenirs from the Seeker lying around, then we could go back and negotiate some more with Amy.

“He would know it was me the minute you mentioned the cup.”

“We’d be careful.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’d know.”

“We wouldn’t mention the cup.”

“Don’t bring it up at all.”

“Okay. We won’t. We won’t say a word about it.”

She thought about it some more. “His name’s Hap.” Her face tightened and I thought she was going to cry again. It was turning into a weepy evening. “Actually, it’s Cleve Plotzky. But everybody calls him Hap.”

“Okay.”

“If you tell him, he’ll come after me.”

“He’s assaulted you,” I said.

She wouldn’t look at me.

“Does he live in Andiquar?”

“Aker Point.”

Aker Point was a small community west of the capital. Most of the people who lived there were either unable to hold a job or satisfied subsisting on the minimum ration.

I saw Alex loitering across the room, pretending to examine the artwork. He figured out that the negotiation had ended, lingered another minute or two, said something to a waiter, and rejoined us. Moments later a fresh round of cocktails arrived.

Cleve (Hap) Plotzky did work for a living. He was a burglar. But not a very successful one. We got that much from the public record. He was good at rigging devices that shut down security systems, but he always seemed to make a beginner’s mistake.

Sometimes he got caught trying to move the merchandise. Or because he sneezed and left his DNA on the property. Or because he bragged to the wrong people about his skills. He also had a record of assorted assaults, mostly against women.

So we went back to see Fenn Redfield. The police inspector had been a burglar himself at one time, sufficiently prone to the profession that the courts eventually ordered a mind wipe. He knew none of this, of course. His memories of his past life, up to about fifteen years earlier, were all fictitious.

He let Alex look through the court documents regarding Hap but could not show him the police reports. “Against the rules,” he said. “Wish I could help.”

The court documents didn’t go into sufficient detail about what had been stolen.

“How about,” Alex said, “if I tell you what I’m looking for, and you tell me if it was among the stuff this guy took?”

So Alex described the cup with its English inscription, and Fenn looked at the record and said no. “It’s not listed.”

“Is anything like that on the list? Any kind of drinking vessel?”

Fenn explained that Hap Plotzky only took jewelry. And ID cards if he found any.

And maybe electronic devices that were lying around loose. But pots and dishes and collectors’ items? “No. Not ever.”

Our next step was to talk with Plotzky himself.

We put together a mass-distribution ad. Jacob gave us an attractive female avatar, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, lithe, long-legged, with spectacular bumpers, and we had her sit in a virtual office surrounded by virtual antique dishware. We used my voice, which Alex told me was sexy, then smiled to let me know he was kidding. And we wrote a script.

“Hello, Cleve,” the avatar would say, “do you have some old pottery or other similar items that have been around a long time and are just gathering dust? Turn them into instant cash with us…”

We used “Cleve” instead of “Hap” because we wanted to be sure he concluded this was a mass mailing and not a message directed specifically at him. We figured this guy wasn’t very bright.

“Will it get past the AI?” I wondered.

“Sure,” said Alex. “Plotzky will have a basic, no-frills model.”

So we sent it off.

We got no response, and after a couple of days we went to Plan B. If Hap had given the cup to Amy, he had no idea of its value. That made it likely any similar object he owned wouldn’t be locked away. It would be on a shelf somewhere. All we really had to do was gain entry.

Jacob connected me with Hap’s AI. I introduced myself as a researcher with the Caldwell Scientific Sampling Survey and asked to speak with Mr. Plotzky. The AI gave me an avatar to look at, a large, hostile, ill-kempt female. The sort of woman you might find enjoying a good fight. That image told me everything I needed to know about Hap. In fact, you can tell quite a lot about people from the images their houses show you. Anyone who calls Alex, for example, first sees a well-dressed, polished, impeccably polite individual. It might be a male or female figure. That’s left to Jacob’s discretion. But there’s no question it holds a master’s degree from New London.