sole purpose of this small piece of junk was to receive guests in an elegant manner.
“Good morning, Bruna Husky. Follow me please,” said the gadget in its singsong voice, walking down the hallway on its short legs.
They crossed living rooms with picture windows looking out over the city and the neighboring park, then more corridors, more living rooms and offices. Then they finally entered a fairly small, dimly lit room painted dark blue. Small transparent urns lined the walls, and something inside them was emitting subtle flashes of crystalline fire.
“Please wait here, Bruna Husky. Mrs. Loperena will be with you in a moment.”
Diamonds. The urns contained diamonds. One gem per display case, and there were about twenty of them. Bruna looked around. There were no windows; the room was reinforced. Basically, she was inside a safe. She examined the urns more carefully. Each held a small portrait as well as a diamond. In some cases the portraits were holograms, while in others they were ancient photographs. Bruna mentally reviewed the facts about Rosario Loperena, recently widowed wife of Alejandro Gand. She’d hurriedly searched the Central Archive for the name that very morning after receiving Loperena’s call. Given the disturbing information Lizard had given her the day before, the rep had considered stopping off at the hospital this morning to talk to the doctor, but the widow had seemed anxious about meeting, and Bruna was not in any position to pass up a client, especially one with so much money. Rosario Loperena was from an aristocratic family and had her own inheritance. Her second marriage was to Gand, regional director of Texaco-Repsol for more than twenty years, who had retired six months ago and died four weeks ago in an accident involving his minijet. How rich do you have to be to own a minijet? marveled Bruna. The price of the small private vehicle, a car-plane hybrid, was nothing compared to what it would cost to acquire the necessary and incredibly expensive fuel.
“I see you’re admiring my gallery of ancestors.”
The rep turned around. Rosario Loperena was of uncertain age and had a rather strange face. How odd that a woman of her social standing would have such disastrous plastic surgery, although Bruna knew that some people insisted on cutting and stuffing and stretching over and over again, until they turned into absolute monstrosities.
“Bruna Husky,” stated the woman rather than asking, as if she were bestowing the name on her.
Arrogant, very arrogant. One of those people who managed to seem as if they were looking down their noses even at people who were much taller than they were.
“Indeed. And you are Rosario Loperena, I presume.”
“Who else? Apart from which, I’m sure you’ve already seen my face. I’m sure you researched me before coming, right?”
“Of course,” Bruna replied, but she didn’t add that her prospective client looked much more natural in the pictures, which probably just meant that the pictures had been photoshopped. The world was a mad game of appearances. “Did you say this is your gallery of ancestors?”
“Yes. My family, as you no doubt know, is very old. My mother decided that after her death we should convert her ashes into a synthetic diamond. It was my husband who had the idea, a few years ago, that we should exhume the remains of all my ancestors, cremate them, and convert them into diamonds. The poor man didn’t realize that he would soon find himself here as well.”
The woman’s overfixed face wrinkled slightly in what might have been an expression of sorrow.
“I thought the body had never been recovered—your husband’s. I read that the minijet crashed and burst into flames.”
“True. It was almost totally destroyed, but they found a few bits that hadn’t burned, among them some pieces of arm. The diamond is mainly made from those remains, but I also added a few bits of the minijet in the hope that my husband’s heart and
“Good morning, Bruna Husky. Follow me please,” said the gadget in its singsong voice, walking down the hallway on its short legs.
They crossed living rooms with picture windows looking out over the city and the neighboring park, then more corridors, more living rooms and offices. Then they finally entered a fairly small, dimly lit room painted dark blue. Small transparent urns lined the walls, and something inside them was emitting subtle flashes of crystalline fire.
“Please wait here, Bruna Husky. Mrs. Loperena will be with you in a moment.”
Diamonds. The urns contained diamonds. One gem per display case, and there were about twenty of them. Bruna looked around. There were no windows; the room was reinforced. Basically, she was inside a safe. She examined the urns more carefully. Each held a small portrait as well as a diamond. In some cases the portraits were holograms, while in others they were ancient photographs. Bruna mentally reviewed the facts about Rosario Loperena, recently widowed wife of Alejandro Gand. She’d hurriedly searched the Central Archive for the name that very morning after receiving Loperena’s call. Given the disturbing information Lizard had given her the day before, the rep had considered stopping off at the hospital this morning to talk to the doctor, but the widow had seemed anxious about meeting, and Bruna was not in any position to pass up a client, especially one with so much money. Rosario Loperena was from an aristocratic family and had her own inheritance. Her second marriage was to Gand, regional director of Texaco-Repsol for more than twenty years, who had retired six months ago and died four weeks ago in an accident involving his minijet. How rich do you have to be to own a minijet? marveled Bruna. The price of the small private vehicle, a car-plane hybrid, was nothing compared to what it would cost to acquire the necessary and incredibly expensive fuel.
“I see you’re admiring my gallery of ancestors.”
The rep turned around. Rosario Loperena was of uncertain age and had a rather strange face. How odd that a woman of her social standing would have such disastrous plastic surgery, although Bruna knew that some people insisted on cutting and stuffing and stretching over and over again, until they turned into absolute monstrosities.
“Bruna Husky,” stated the woman rather than asking, as if she were bestowing the name on her.
Arrogant, very arrogant. One of those people who managed to seem as if they were looking down their noses even at people who were much taller than they were.
“Indeed. And you are Rosario Loperena, I presume.”
“Who else? Apart from which, I’m sure you’ve already seen my face. I’m sure you researched me before coming, right?”
“Of course,” Bruna replied, but she didn’t add that her prospective client looked much more natural in the pictures, which probably just meant that the pictures had been photoshopped. The world was a mad game of appearances. “Did you say this is your gallery of ancestors?”
“Yes. My family, as you no doubt know, is very old. My mother decided that after her death we should convert her ashes into a synthetic diamond. It was my husband who had the idea, a few years ago, that we should exhume the remains of all my ancestors, cremate them, and convert them into diamonds. The poor man didn’t realize that he would soon find himself here as well.”
The woman’s overfixed face wrinkled slightly in what might have been an expression of sorrow.
“I thought the body had never been recovered—your husband’s. I read that the minijet crashed and burst into flames.”
“True. It was almost totally destroyed, but they found a few bits that hadn’t burned, among them some pieces of arm. The diamond is mainly made from those remains, but I also added a few bits of the minijet in the hope that my husband’s heart and
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