Звезда Пандоры

The gondolier’s face brightened at the sight of the money. “Sure. Okay. You’re the captain, I’m just the engine room.” He changed the angle of the pole, and slid it into the muddy water. The gondola’s prow slowly came around, and they began to head back down the Rovigo. A multitude of crispy dry violet petals continued to drift down over Adam’s clothes as they retreated at a speed that was barely above walking pace. He refused to look around. That would be a stupid weakness. He knew exactly who he’d seen sitting there outside the café. After all this time he could recognize Chief Investigator Myo’s profile from almost any angle and distance. She was wearing a blond wig, and large sunglasses, but that couldn’t disguise her from him. Her posture, her gestures. That suit! Who the hell else would wear a business suit in the middle of Venice Coast’s siesta?

His limbs were starting to shake as he realized how close he’d come to the end of… well, everything. He must have just used up every scrap of luck from the rest of his lifetime. If he’d been looking the other way… If Myo hadn’t been on duty at this time of day… He’d undergone cellular reprofiling, of course, giving himself a new image, a drawn face with dark skin. But he knew that wouldn’t have worked with the Chief Investigator. She would know him as easily as he knew her. They could never hide from each other.

…

He walked into the Nystol Gallery by the front door, knowing the Agency team would have his image on record. It didn’t bother him.

The reception hall had an arching roof of white-painted brick, and a flagstone floor. Before being converted into a gallery, the building had been a storage warehouse, which made it an ideal place to house EK pieces. The receptionist sat at a desk in front of a smoked-glass doorway that led into the gallery’s display chambers. She was staggeringly pretty, with a sylph body, Nordic white skin and red-gold hair that hung halfway down her back. Her flimsy brown and emerald dress belonged on a couture house’s runway. She smiled automatically at him, which deepened to mildly flirtatious as he walked over. “Hi, can I help you?”

“No.” He shot her through the temple with a microdart from his arm dispenser. Its n-pulse locked her muscles solid, an instant rigor mortis, holding her upright in her seat. Anyone peering in from the street would see her behind the desk as usual.

His e-butler opened a channel to the desk’s array. A brief software battle ensued as he took control of the building’s electronics network. As it progressed, the weapons and defense systems wetwired into his body powered up, bringing him to full combat status. He disconnected the gallery’s network from the planetary cybersphere, then deactivated all the internal alarms. The front door was locked. Where possible, fire doors were silently sealed, compartmentalizing the gallery. Sensors fed directly into his virtual vision, showing him the location of several people, although he knew there were at least three rooms without sensors.

The first chamber housed a three-meter-high EK gryphon, with a body made from thin sheets of jewel-encrusted brass that moved with fluid grace as they were manipulated from within by hundreds of small cogs and micro-pistons. It was as if Leonardo da Vinci had animated a sculpture with a difference engine. An old couple were walking around it, making admiring noises as they pointed out features to each other. He shot both of them with an ion bolt. The gryphon cooed loudly as he moved into the second chamber.

On the second floor, the fifth chamber had a single strip of machinery running its entire length, each component coming from the same aircraft, and broken in some way so instead of the smooth movement associated with the aerospace industry they jerked around like a damaged bird when power was applied. Ripples of motion ran up and down the strip, each one different to the last. A gallery guide was walking along the side of the piece, with a frown on his face as he came to investigate the strange sounds that had burst out of the fourth chamber.

The ion bolt vaporized the top of his skull. Blood-steam misted the workings of a wing flap electrohydraulic activator, slowing its motion. Loud rattling sounds began to issue up and down the whole length of the EK piece as its synchronization was thrown off and stresses built up.

He went up to the third floor. Valtare Rigin’s office was the second door along the hallway. Like the chambers below, it had a vaulting brickwork ceiling. At the far end, an arched window gave a splendid view out over the Cesena district, with StPeter’s mirror-chrome spire framed almost dead center. Rigin looked up in surprise from behind his desk, where he’d been struggling with his crashed network interface. “Who the hell are you?”

“You are Valtare Rigin?”

Rigin smiled thinly. “Roberto,” he called quietly.