Jayne Castle - After Glow

"I know just how you feel, sir," Lydia replied. "No one from my old department at the university even bothered to invite me to join their crew as an outside consultant."

"It's your own fault, if you ask me," Melanie said. "You should never have given your ex-colleagues in the department the secret to getting through that illusion wall."

"I know, I know." Lydia spread her hands. "The thing is, it was clear that they were going to attempt to de-rez it on their own. If someone had screwed up, there would have been a terrible accident. I didn't want that responsibility on my shoulders."

Shrimpton snorted. "The bottom line here is that we've got nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for our contributions to this momentous discovery. In fact, we actually lost something: a perfectly good sarcophagus. Those things don't grow on trees, you know."

"I have it on good authority that the Guild will see to it that the sarcophagus is returned," Lydia assured him. "Emmett says it's the least the hunters can do under the circumstances."

Shrimpton huffed. "Well, that's something to be thankful for, I suppose. But who's going to compensate us for losing you, Lydia?"

"You've still got me, sir," she said quickly.

"Yes, yes, of course we have you as a member of the staff," he continued, "but let's face it, the moment London steps down from his position as the boss of the Cadence Guild, you'll no longer be the big draw you've been lately."

Melanie chuckled. "Sad to say it, Lyd, but he's right. When you are no longer Mrs. Guild Boss, I doubt if we'll be able to convince folks to pay extra for a private tour of the museum conducted by you."

"Like I said, we get zip-squat," Shrimpton concluded mournfully. "Be lucky if this institution even gets mentioned in a footnote in one of the countless articles and books that will be written about that alien library."

Lydia had been waiting for this very moment. "I regret that I will no longer be a major attraction here at Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors, sir, but I think I can guarantee that this museum will get a bit more than a footnote out of this affair."

He blinked a couple of times. "How's that?"

"Mr. Shrimpton," she said very earnestly, "you gave me a job when no one else in the city would even consider of hiring me because they thought I'd been burned out. In addition, you have been very generous about allowing me to develop a private consulting business outside my duties here. And then there was all that time off you gave me to prepare for the Restoration Ball. I owe you a great deal."

"Nonsense." Shrimpton turned an odd shade of red and flapped a hand. "You've been an excellent addition to the staff. Happy to have you with us."

Lydia sniffed a couple of times and managed a watery smile. "The point I'm trying to make is that, regardless of my outside activities, I consider myself first and foremost a member of this, uh, institution's staff. My professional loyalties lie here at Shrimpton's, not up at the university."

Shrimpton dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at his cheeks. "Very touching, my dear. Very touching, indeed."

Melanie sighed. "If you two are going to burst into tears, I'll have to leave."

Lydia wiped her nose and quickly got to her feet. "Because of my allegiance and affection for this museum, I wouldn't dream of allowing it to come out of this business with nothing but zip-squat."

"Yeah?" Melanie began to look interested.

Shrimpton put his handkerchief back in his pocket. "What do you mean?"

Lydia reached down, opened her bottom desk drawer, and took out the large cardboard box she had placed there when she had arrived at the office that morning. Setting the box on the desk, she removed the lid with a flourish.

Shrimpton shuffled forward to take a closer look. Melanie leaned over the desk. They both stared at the book that Lydia had brought out of the alien library.

"Oh, my goodness," Shrimpton whispered. "Is that for us?"

"For a while," Lydia said wryly. "Sooner or later we'll have to let the university experts examine it. But they're going to be very busy for quite some time inside that library. I figure we can put this book on display as soon as we get the Guild to arrange security, say, this week. We should be able to exhibit it for at least a month or longer before the crowd up at the university realizes what's going on and starts screaming bloody murder."

"Well, well, well." Melanie grinned. "I do believe Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors has got its next big attraction."

Shrimpton was dazzled. "People will be lined up all the way to the river to see this book."

"They sure will," Lydia said. "Especially when they find out it has pictures."

" Pictures !" Melanie exclaimed. "Are you serious?"

"Oh, my," Shrimpton said, aghast at the prospects. "Oh, my goodness gracious. Pictures?"

"There is a tiny bit of psi-energy coming from it," Lydia explained. "I wanted to be sure it was safe. Yesterday I took it to a private lab to get it checked out. The techs did some fiddling and testing. They figured out that anyone who can rez a lightbulb or a door key can operate this thing."

Very carefully she opened the quartz covers and turned to the place she had marked.

Melanie and Shrimpton looked at the small section at the bottom of the page where the quartz paper seemed to shimmer and waver.

"It's easy enough to do once you get the hang of it," Lydia explained. "Watch this."

She sent out a small pulse of psi energy. The shimmering section snapped into focus. A clear holographic picture formed in midair above the page.

"Isn't he adorable?" she said. "He looks just like Fuzz."

They all gazed in wonder at the life-sized picture of a dust-bunny. There were two versions; one showed the creature with just its baby blues open. The other showed it with all four wide open.

"We rezzed each of the photos in the book at the lab," Lydia explained. "Every single one is a picture of an animal commonly found here on Harmony. The lettering seems large for the size of the page."

Melanie's face lit up with sudden comprehension and delight. "Oh, my goodness. A children's picture book of animals."

Lydia touched the page reverently. "So unimportant and insignificant that it was overlooked and left behind when the aliens packed up the contents of that chamber and left town. But the clear connection between the pictures and the lettering will give the experts a crack at decoding Harmonic writing at last."

Shrimpton beamed. "Our very own Rosetta Stone," he whispered.

Lydia and Melanie both looked at him.

"What's a Rosetta Stone?" Melanie demanded.

"I don't understand, sir," Lydia said. "It's not a stone, it's a book."

"Bah, that's the trouble with the modern educational system," Shrimpton declared. "They don't teach the history of Old Earth archaeology in school the way they did when I was a lad." He grinned with benign satisfaction. "Never mind. The important thing is that Lydia is right. This is going to be an even bigger draw than having the Guild boss's wife on the staff."

Emmett delivered the news when he walked through the door of the town house that evening.

"They found Herbert's body this afternoon," he told Lydia while he peeled off his jacket. "Or maybe I should say Troy Burgis's body."

"Dead?"

"Suicide. He used a mag-rez gun. Messy."

Fuzz hopped from Lydia's shoulder to Emmett's and settled down to finish a pretzel that he had been munching.

"I'm not surprised, if you want to know the truth." Lydia handed Emmett a glass of wine. "The destruction of his underground operation meant the end of his driving obsession with Vincent Lee Vance."

"He probably would have been real disappointed to find out that there was no tomb after all, just a library with only one book." Emmett took a swallow of wine and followed Lydia into the living room. "I can't say that I'm sorry the son of a bitch is dead, but it would have been nice to get some more answers out of him first."