Free The Medusa Encounter by Paul Preuss

better not hang around here waiting for the authorities to begin their tedious inquiries.
    The hypersonic aircraft outraced the sun across the sky. It was still early morning when Blake landed on Long Island, and only a little after 10:00 A.M. when he let himself into his parents’ Manhattan penthouse.
“Blake! Where on Earth have you been?”
     
“Mom, you look terrific. As usual.”
    Emerald Lee Redfield was a tall woman whose pampered skin, careful makeup, and exquisite clothing— today she was wearing a gray wool suit and a blouse of blue watered silk—always made her look thirty years younger, at least in the eyes of her son.
    For all her elegance she was not skittish. She hugged him with enthusiasm. Then, keeping her grip on his shoulders, she studied him at arm’s length. “I wish I could say the same for you, dear. Did you sleep in your clothes?”
He laughed and shrugged.
    “Come.” She took his hand and led him toward the sunny living room. Eighty-nine stories up, it had a 120-degree view of the towers of lower Manhattan and the surrounding shores. “What are you doing home? Why haven’t you called? We were so worried! Your father contacted practically everyone he knew, but no one . . .”
“Oh no!”
     
“Discreetly, discreetly.”
     
“I’ll have to have a talk with Dad. When I’m on the trail of a rare acquisition, I sometimes have to sort of . . . go underground. I must have explained all this a dozen . . .”
     
“Blake, you know how he is.”
    Edward Redfield had endlessly criticized Blake’s career choice—that of a consultant specialist in old books and manuscripts—and occasionally launched into angry tirades against the money Blake was “throwing away” (money Edward could not control, as its source was a trust left to Blake by his grandfather). For Edward was of that class of old-family Eastern Seaboarders who were not required to do anything to make a living except watch over their investments—not that that was an insignificant task.
    But noblesse oblige , and the Redfields were busy in the administrative and cultural affairs of Manhattan —this model city, the center of the Middle-Atlantic Administrative District. Indeed, so active had generations of Redfields been in public life that the present organization of the continent of North America (which no longer included a United States, except as a geographical fiction) owed much to their efforts.
Emerald seated herself on an Empire chair upholstered in blue velvet and pressed a button on the table beside her. “And I really did emphasize that he should act with discretion.”
     
Blake fell back into an overstuffed, brocade-upholstered armchair. “Well, anyway, here I am. And, as you see, in good heath.”
     
“This quest of yours . . . did you succeed?”
     
“Perhaps I’ll be able to tell you when the, uh, transaction is complete.”
     
“I understand, dear.” A maid had appeared in response to Emerald’s signal. “Your father and I are having lunch in today. Will you join us?”
     
“Love to.”
     
“Another setting for lunch, Rosaria.” The woman nodded and left as silently as she’d come. His mother smiled brightly at him. “Now Blake, what happened? ”
     
“I got home this morning to find that my flat—not just my flat, the whole building—had burned to the ground. Everything I owned.”
     
“My poor boy . . . your furniture? Your clothes?” She peered at his soiled canvas slippers.
     
“Not to mention the books, the art.”
     
“So depressing, dear. You must be in a state . But of course you’re insured.”
     
“Oh, yes. Insured.”
     
“That’s a comfort, then.”
     
“Well—I’ll tell you all about it at lunch. Will you excuse me long enough to change out of these sweaty clothes?”
     
“Blake . . . it’s so good to have you home.”
    He headed for the room that was always there for him, furnished precisely as he’d left it when he’d graduated from college. Despite the