City of Night

Chapter 43

In the windowless Victorian drawing room beyond the two vault doors, Erika circled the immense glass case, studying every detail. At first it had resembled a big jewel box, which it still did; but now it also seemed like a coffin, though an oversized and highly unconventional one.

She had no reason to believe that it contained a body. At the center of the case, the shape shrouded by the amber liquid — or gas — had no discernible limbs or features. It was just a dark mass without detail; it might have been anything.

If the case in fact contained a body, the specimen was large: about seven and a half feet long, more than three feet wide.

She examined the ornate ormolu frame under which the panels of glass were joined, searching for seams that might indicate concealed hinges. She could not find any. If the top of the box was a lid, it operated on some principle that eluded her.

When she rapped a knuckle against the glass, the sound suggested a thickness of at least one inch.

She noticed that under the glass, directly below the spot where her knuckle struck it, the amberness — whatever its nature — dimpled as water dimples when a stone drops into it. The dimple bloomed sapphire blue, resolved into a ring, and receded across the surface; the amber hue was reestablished in its wake.

She rapped again, with the same effect. When she rapped three times in succession, three concentric blue rings appeared, receded, faded.

Although her knuckle had made only the briefest contact, the glass had seemed cold. When she flattened her palm against it, she discovered that it was icy, though a few degrees too warm for her skin to freeze to it.

When she knelt on the Persian carpet and peered under the case, between its exquisitely sculpted ball-in-claw feet, she could see electrical conduits and pipes of various colors and diameters that came out of the bottom and disappeared into the floor. This suggested that a service room must lie below, although the mansion supposedly had no basement.

Victor owned one of the largest properties in the neighborhood and in fact had combined two great houses so elegantly that he had earned plaudits from historical preservationists. All of the interior reconstruction had been undertaken by members of the New Race, but not all of it had been disclosed to — or permitted by — the city’s building department.

Her brilliant husband had achieved more than entire universities of scientists. His accomplishments were even more remarkable when you considered that he had been forced to do his work clandestinely and since the regrettable death of Mao Tse-tung, without grants from any government.

She got to her feet and circled the case once more, trying to determine if there was a head or foot to it, as there would be to any bed or casket. The design of the object offered her no clue, but she at last decided, sheerly by intuition, that the head of it must be the end farthest from the door to the room.

Bending forward, bending low and lower, Erika put her face close to the top of the case, peering intently into the amber miasma, close and then closer, hoping for at least a faint suggestion of contour or texture to the shadowy shape within the liquid shroud.

When her lips were no more than two inches from the glass, she said softly, “Hello, hello, hello in there.”

This time it definitely moved.