Artifact

Feeling for all the world like one of Siegfried and Roy's caged white tigers, Ray paced around his Las Vegas penthouse. Even after a year of living in the apartment, its triangular shape, like that of the hotel beneath it, made him vaguely uncomfortable.



He stalked through what he thought of as the great room, with its sixty-foot-long wall of tempered, tinted glass, its twelve-foot ceiling and comfortable groupings of chairs and sofas.



Trying to clear his mind, he took in the view.



The windows and sliding door at one end faced west across his private helipad to Palace Station Casino and the mountain ranges beyond it. He could just make out the bloodred rock formations of Red Rock Canyon at the corner. The main wall of windows faced southeast, giving him a perfect view of Circus Circus and the rest of the Strip, with the Sahara across the street at the easternmost corner. If he stepped right up to the glass, he knew, he'd be able to look down at the head of the fifty-foot-tall lizard that appeared to be crashing out of the hotel's outer wall. The latest battle between his stuntmen-performers and the animatronic beast should just have finished. Inside the casino, the creature's tail would have stopped its periodic waving just below the ceiling.



He prowled down the back hall past the guest rooms, and ended up on the balcony off his own bedroom. From that vantage point, he could look northeast at Stratosphere Tower and downtown, and he could see the glow of the spinning neon Daredevil Casino sign on the nose of a replica of a space shuttle that jutted at a steep angle out of the side of his hotel's tenth floor, with the tail and cargo doors angled away from the building. It looked as if the building were the shuttle's external fuel tank and the craft was separating on its way toward the stars. The sides of the shuttle had dozens of viewing ports; the nose cone was glass, allowing tourists to get a one-of-a-kind picture of themselves suspended against the Las Vegas skyline. In what would have been the cargo bay, Ray's high rollers could enjoy a five-star meal served in a multitiered restaurant. Each table was set against the cargo doors, which were made of specially tinted glass, creating the perfect setup for patrons to see the Stratosphere and the lights of downtown.



All very impressive, Ray thought, yet nothing in the spectacle of his hotel, or Las Vegas itself, held his attention. The Daredevil Casino was already showing a huge profit, enough for him to seriously contemplate buying land to build the Rig, an idea that had stayed with him since his visit to theValhalla; yet he felt edgy. Restive.



What he really needed to cure his restlessness was a new stunt job.



No, he thought. The way he felt was only partially due to his lack of a film job in the offing. More likely it was a symptom of withdrawal after the jungle battle against Green Impact. He had long since admitted to himself that he was a risk addict, and this sitting around was making him itch for the rush of adrenaline he'd felt as the bullets flew and explosives roared through the Delta Amacuro swamps.



Perhaps, he thought, he should coin a syndrome for what ailed him: danger deprivation syndrome. DDS. Sounded painful and impressive.



He passed through the dining room, where he could see northwest over his hotel's thrill rides, and reentered the great room from the corner.



Walking through the apartment's main room, past the recessed security screens that allowed him to watch the action downstairs, he opened the door that led to his private lab, a windowless, environmentally stabilized room in the middle of his penthouse. It always amazed him how cramped the lab felt, though he knew it to be as big as his bedroom, which comfortably fit a California king- sized bed, a separate sitting area for very private conversations, and an anteroom for his morning workout equipment.



His lab, on the other hand, was crammed with storage cabinets along the wall on both sides of the door. In the middle of the room stood a giant table covered with metal frames and cables and bits of equipment he hadn't put away. To his right, a Peg-Board took up half of the wall, with tools and safety equipment hanging from seemingly random hooks. Below that, more storage cabinets held larger pieces of equipment and supplies. The left-hand side of the room held his desk and file cabinets. Several dry-erase whiteboards hung above them, filled with reminders about appointments and notes about Frikkie's strange artifact. The left half of the back wall was taken up by a giant screen.



Ray sat down at his desk, tapped a key to wake up his computer, and swiveled around to stare at the computer model on the wall screen. It was a three-dimensional image of what the artifact would look like when put together. After Frikkie had sent him the surface dimensions and other characteristics of the piece Simon had died finding, Ray had updated the model. Now it looked a lot like a strange geode, roughly spherical but with odd bumps and depressions. The figure-eight section from the original assembly Paul Trujold had discovered stuck partway out on one end. He thought irreverently that it looked like Mr. Potato Head with only his nose attached.



The telephone rang, startling him out of deep contemplation. He leaned back in his chair and automatically picked up the receiver, without twisting to look at the caller ID. There were fewer than a dozen people to whom he had given this number anyway, and several of them were dead, so they no longer counted.



On the phone, dogs barked in the background. He recognized them as Sheba and Maverick.



"Yeah, Frik."



"We have to be subtle. I'm calling from Grenada. I'm here for Carnival."



"When you're king of the universe, the first thing you can do is change the Grenadian phone system." Ray was only half joking.



"Peta just left," Frik said, apparently unconcerned by Ray's biting comment. "I told her that I saw the piece of the artifact around her neck during the newscast in New York. She's bringing it to me tomorrow."



Ray was silent for a little too long. What on earth could have induced Peta to agree to that? he wondered.



"Are you there?"



"I'm here."



"You sound surprised. I was sure you knew that she had one." Frik sounded hugely pleased with himself. "McKendry is still on the job searching for Selene to get the pieces Paul sent to her."



"That leaves Arthur's," Ray said without thinking.



It was Frikkie's turn to be surprised. "What do you mean, Arthur's? I didn't know that he had a piece. How do you know? Why didn't you tell me before?"



Shit, Ray thought. He'd been so surprised by Frikkie's knowledge of Peta's piece that he'd assumed the Afrikaner would also know about Arthur's. He said as much over the phone. "I guess it's true what they say about assumptions."



Ray glanced across at his door, as if he'd momentarily forgotten that he was alone in the penthouse. Swiveling all the way around, he unlocked the top drawer of his desk and took out an odd-shaped blue- green object.



"Damn it! I must have that piece, Ray."



"The NYPD has it, Frik. No way to get it out."



"I'll pull strings. You'd be amazed at what a large enough donation to the Policemen's Fund can buy. They'll be glad to help me."



As Ray turned the piece over and over in his hands, it reflected the light from the wall screen. Playing with it as if it were a worry stone, he watched as it seemed to warp the light such that its own image, and not the rest of the model, was visible like an afterimage on the irregular surface.



"I tried that," he said. "Remember, I have a lot of friends in that precinct. I've done more than my share of filming there. They won't release it to anyone other than Peta. She signed a priori for Arthur's effects."



Peta would feel safe as long as Frik thought she was the only one with access to Arthur's fragment, Ray thought. He needed her to be fearless.



"Peta said something about going to New York on her birthday as a kind of statement. Since she's being so cooperative, why not ask her to retrieve the piece from the precinct and bring it along to Vegas at New Year's?"



The Afrikaner's frustration seemed audible, even before he said, "I can't wait that long."



"What's so almighty urgent?" Ray was aware of the rush he was getting from the conversation and happy to discard his recent ennui. "She'll bring Arthur's fragment here on New Year's Eve. You'll be lucky to have Selene's piece by then anyway."



"I suppose you're right," Frik said, though to Ray he didn't sound entirely convinced. "By the way, have you been able to work anything out with your computer models?"



"Not that I could say over an unsecured line if I had, but no. I know its shape, and I know the reactions from Paul's notes. Other than that, it's a complete mystery."



"Well keep working on it, would you." If possible, Frikkie's voice seemed to hold more frustration than before. "As for the other matter, I suppose you're right. I can wait for New Year's Eve to get the other pieces. I want the whole Daredevils Club there when we put this together and find out what it really does."



I bet, Ray thought, but all he said was "Good-bye." He hung up the phone and held Arthur's piece between thumb and forefinger. Angling it, he tried to line up the fragment with the image on the wall screen. As the images merged in his vision, he felt his head swim, and a wave of nausea overcame him.



Centering the piece on his desk, he stared at it, shook his head as if to clear it, and closed his eyes. After counting to five, he reopened them and refocused on the object.



Nothing had changed; his nausea and the illusion of the artifact's curious reflection of itself remained.