“I’ve been there.” I pointed to my forehead. “That’s where I got the goose egg.”
Diana was suddenly huffy. She started to get up.
“It’s not like that, babe,” I said. I lowered my voice—not because anyone could listen in on us in the back, but so Diana, in her topless splendor, would have to lean in to hear me. “I, ah, let myself into her place. She had a, um, document that I needed to access.”
“Let yourself in?” Diana said coldly. “So her locks were programmed to recognize you?”
“No, sweetheart—honest. I removed the back window and snuck in. We fought, but I got away with the document. But prior to that, she attacked me and Pickover out on the surface—tried to kill us both.”
Diana frowned. “Pickover is a transfer.”
“Didn’t stop her from shooting spikes into his chest—or coming at me with a shotgun.”
“God!” A beat. “But what’s this all about?”
“She thinks we know where the Alpha Deposit is.”
“And do you?”
This time, my poker face didn’t fail me. “Of course not.”
“But she tried to kill you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you want to send me off to be alone with her?”
“Well, um, she doesn’t have anything against you.”
“Why do you need to get me into her house?”
“So you can plant a bug there, so I can listen in on her conversations. She’s got at least one more accomplice—someone helped her out today, I don’t know who, but I need to find out.”
“Why? What difference does that make?”
The difference was that at least one more person apparently knew the location of the Alpha Deposit—the person who had come to Lakshmi’s rescue there. Also, a bug in Lakshmi’s place might let me know if she was ignoring my warning and planning another trip to the Alpha. But I simply said, “Please, baby. I need you to do this.”
Diana sat back down but a little farther on the bench from me than before.
“Well?” I said, after she’d been quiet for a bit.
“Okay,” she replied. “But you’ve got to take me out.”
“I’d be happy—”
“To Bleaney’s.”
I frowned. Bleaney’s was the pricey nightclub where prospectors who had struck it rich went to celebrate. “Deal,” I said, leaning over and kissing her on the cheek.
I’d just put it on the expense claim I was going to give Pickover.
* * *
After leaving Diana at The Bent Chisel, I actually went most of the way back to Shopatsky House, since the Windermere Clinic was near there. Old Doc Windermere—a walrusy-looking biological with a handlebar mustache—would dig out a bullet or patch up a knife wound without feeling a need to involve those pesky folks at the NKPD; taking care of the bruise on my forehead was nothing by comparison, but I figured I might as well give him this bit of business, too. Gloria, his receptionist/nurse—a breathy little pink-haired bundle of energy—was always glad to see me, and, frankly, I rather liked seeing her, too. I think the doc watered his anesthetic down the same way Buttrick watered down his booze, but a gander at Gloria was usually enough to take the pain away, at least for a few minutes.
It was a slow night for fights, I guess; I didn’t have to wait to get in. Doc Windermere played a couple of healing beams over my forehead, and, as I could see in the cracked mirror opposite me, the swelling went down, and the purple color faded away.
I thanked the doc, paid Gloria in cash, and then headed over to Pickover’s place, figuring he should be finished reading Denny’s journal by now.
“Well?” I said after he let me into his apartment. “Anything exciting in the diary?”
“Yes, indeed,” he replied, taking a seat; I did the same. “Weingarten and O’Reilly contacted several people back on Earth, trying to arrange the sale of fossils in advance; the diary includes descriptions of some of the fossils—and it’s got the name of the collector they’d previously sold the decapod to!”
“The what?”
“The decapod! There’s only one known specimen—they brought it back on their second mission.” He held the diary up triumphantly. “My guess is that they were ancestral to the pentapods that came to dominate later—and now I know whose collection it’s in! I tell you, Alex, we may not even need to track down Willem Van Dyke!”
That sounded like my fees were about to dry up, so I quickly protested. “There are still some leads for him I’d like to follow up on.”
Rory was in an expansive mood. “Oh, of course, my boy, of course! Your field and