Regan browsed her way through the collected cultural artifacts of Rylea, speaking knowledgably and at length to anybody who would listen about the origin, history, and provenance of each of various objects and paintings she herself had never heard of.
This lasted until one of the official tour guides became a little miffed that he’d lost his audience to a strutting barbarian who claimed that a noted Old Earth painter’s “blue period” was the inspiration for the liquid used in commercials for absorbent feminine hygiene products for most of the twentieth through twenty-third centuries.
The fact that in many cases the actual history of the items involved was shrouded in the mists of time, of course, only made it more frustrating.
After a brief altercation in which the museum’s esteemed guest was (to Director Selmar’s regret) not the belligerent party, it was suggested that Designate Bard might like to visit one of the National Palace’s gift shops or the dining room.
A blushing Galatea, meanwhile, had been coaxed down off her perch. She insisted straight-faced that the statue had taken unfair advantage of her and ought to be removed from display so it could not victimize any more decent people like herself.
Owing to her flustered and obviously agitated state, she received an offer to be shown to a private office so she could lie down.
Actually, she received offers to be shown to a succession of private offices so she could lie down, but before she could make up her mind about which to accept, Selmar intervened and ordered the lady be shown as quickly as was courteous to the nearest exit.
He had good reason for not wanting to disrupt the flow of guests through the National Palace. Museums were big business. Networked faster-than-light communication meant that information and entertainment could be had from any point in the known galaxy, but people would still pay for the chance to catch a first-hand glimpse of unique artifacts from the early days of colonization, or the original copy of a legendary Old Earth treasure like David’s famous statue of Michelangelo or Edvard Munch’s well-known poster Skrik.
Once the spectacle of the rocket-riding patron had come to its conclusion, Selmar had originally had every intention of heading back to his office and drawing a bath, but he found his eye going back to the monitor which was following Designate Regan Bard’s every move.
“Hey, now!” the diminutive figure on the screen said, shouting after somebody. “Ya dropped somethin’, like!”
She bent and picked up one of the wristband computers full of supplemental information and personal guided tours that the museum loaned to guests. A man–about as ordinary and clean-cut as one could be, and decent-looking in a plain sort of way–stopped and then turned around at her voice.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“Ya dropped this,” Regan said again, pushing the device into his hands.
“Oh, thanks,” he said.
“Did he?” Selmar asked the monitor watchers.
“I… uh… guess so,” one of them said, replaying the past several seconds of feed in an inset window. “There weren’t really any eyes on him, though. Bard definitely got the wristcomp off the floor.”
“You don’t think she passed something to him?” the security chief asked.
“Let’s find out,” Selmar said.
“We need a low-key intervention on a guest in the starboard wing, human physical profile #3BF3,” the chief said into his console. “He’s just headed around the corner into Asiatic Artifacts.”
“Roger that, and… uh… we have three guests matching that profile,” the operative said.
“That’s impossible,” Selmar said.
“It is a fairly nondescript profile,” the security chief said.
“Check again,” Selmar said.
“Check again,” the security chief said.
“We have three guests in the Asiatic Artifacts gallery matching physical profile #3BF3.”
“Bring them up on monitors,” Selmar said. At an operator’s keystrokes, three monitors switched to show… the same view of one man, examining a painted scroll while leaning against a waste receptacle.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the operator said. “It’s using the same search pattern, keyed to the same profile. I can get the other two, but it’ll take a moment…”
“Just get them,” Selmar said. “And, have a museum ambassador politely ask each of them what they’re carrying and while they’re standing still run a scan on them.”
“Sir, if you think something’s up, shouldn’t we lock down the wing?” the chief asked.
“Believe me, I would love to,” Selmar said. “But we’ve had more outlandish guests than a revivalist potentate, an exhibitionist, and a set of identical triplets before. I’m not going to disrupt the most profitable tourist attraction for five hundred light years on a hunch.”
“I’ve got them,” the monitor operator said, and two of the monitors changed to reflect other views.
“Trash cans,” the chief said, looking at the pictures.
“What?” Selmar asked.
“They’re each standing by a trash can,” the chief said.
“I have an ID,” the operator said. “Nicholas Bradley.”
“Which one’s he?” Selmar asked.
“He’s… all three of them,” the operator said.
“Clones,” Selmar said. It sounded like an oath.
“Well, that would explain why they’re… uh… he’s all in the same gallery at the same time, wouldn’t it?” the chief said. “I mean, it would be more suspicious if there were three identical men hanging around with no obvious connection between them.”
“Damn it,” Selmar said. “I can’t throw somebody out for being clones. The last thing we need is to be picketed… do you know how big a crowd those people can make?”
“Scans turn up no contraband,” a voice from the console reported.
On the screens, smiling docents appeared and made seemingly casual conversation with the Nicks. Each of them separately had a wristcomp and nothing else in their hands.
“Scan the bins,” Selmar said. “And that vase the one is next to.”
When that turned up nothing, he ordered the containers searched manually.
“If that one-eyed bureaucratic nightmare smuggled something past our screen, I want it found and contained or destroyed, as appropriate,” he said.
“What if the search turns up nothing?” the security chief asked.
“Then I’m going upstairs and taking a bath,” Selmar said. “Maintain the level two watch.”
Inside the ventilation shaft, behind the grate which one of the Nicks had been leaning against, Autonomous Biological Unit HC000311417B–better known to us as Handy–transferred a small pouch from one of her hands to her mouth and then resumed her silent scurrying through the bowels of the National Palace in the direction of the Contemporary Masters wing.
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