The Waylaid Count (4)

 4

I went directly to the reception area on Deck 6 of the cruiseshuttle, and met my father as he was exiting the Shuttle Bar next to it.

“You will be amazed at what I discovered! In some mysterious manner, the news of the change of proprietorship had worked its way down to the lowest strata of the cruiseshuttle’s cosmos. The corridors hummed with it, and even lowest employees were discussing the thing, just as though it mattered to them,” her father said, leading me to the back of the reception area behind a glass wall where a mousy woman stood. 

Dressed in plain blue satin, with a small diamond brooch, immaculate bracelets, and frizzed yellow hair, she had one of those faces that made it difficult to determine her age. 

“Vixie, I would like you to meet Miss Surcer,” he said, introducing me to the reception manager. “I want to see Mr. Ritzavoy,” he continued.

“I am afraid—,” she began as she leisurely raised her flaxen head, but then stopped when she saw who was addressing her.

“This is business. I must see Mr. Ritzavoy at once on an affair of the utmost urgency. He should be expecting me.”

“Raskelis?” questioned a voice at the far door, with a slight foreign accent.

I saw a rather short, French-looking man, with a bald head, a grey beard, a long and perfectly-built frock coat, eyeglasses attached to a minute silver chain, and blue eyes that seemed to have a transparent innocence.

“You are ready for a rundown, then?” the newcomer asked.

“Yes. Mr. Ritzavoy, I would like to introduce you to my daughter, Major Elevixie Raskelis.”

“Charmed,” I said, extending my hand and my most stunning smile to him.

“The pleasure is mine, miss,” he said, kissing my hand instead of shaking it. It was so tough for me to be tolerable and not try to flip him on his back. 

With a gesture Mr. Ritzavoy invited us down a side corridor where Mr. Ritzavoy’s private suite, a design miracle of ancient Louis XV of Earth furniture replicas and tapestries. Like most unmarried men with large incomes, it appeared Mr. Ritzavoy had tastes of a highly eccentric and expensive sort. The former owner sat down in a giltwood armchair opposite of us. 

“As you know, I have long wished to retire. And now that the moment has come—and so dramatically—I am ready. I shall return to Samh. One cannot spend much money there, but it is my native land. I shall be the richest man in Anorraq—except, perhaps for our Count.” He smiled with a kind of sad amusement.

“I suppose you are fairly well off?” I asked, in an easy familiar style.

“Besides what I shall receive from your father, I have tens of billion-notes invested.”

“I congratulate you,” I said Raskelis. “You are a very shrewd businessman.”

“Might I ask your wealth, sir?” Feliste Ritzavoy looked at my father.

“I do not know, actually. Maybe a hundred billion-notes or so,” said her father sincerely. I did not let on that I thought not only was this amount lower than the actual, but also that my father probably knew his wealth exactly to the note. 

“You have had anxieties, Baron Raskelis?” the former owner asked.

“Still have them. I am holiday-making here with my daughter in order to get rid of them for a time.”

“Is the purchase of cruiseshuttles your notion of relaxation, then?”

Her father shrugged his shoulders. “It is a change from mines,” he laughed.

“Ah, my friend, you little know what you have bought.”

“Oh! yes I do,” returned my father; “I have bought the finest cruiseshuttle in the galaxy.”

“That is true, that is true,” Ritzavoy admitted, gazing meditatively at the mock-antique Persian carpet. “There is nothing, anywhere, like my cruiseshuttle. But you will regret the purchase, Baron Raskelis. It is no business of mine, of course, but I cannot help repeating that you will regret the purchase.”

“I never regret.”

“Then this will be your first time. However, you will begin very soon—perhaps tonight.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the Ritzavoy XI is the Ritzavoy XI. You think because you control a mine, or an iron-works, or a line of transports, therefore you can control anything. But no. Not the Ritzavoy XI. There is something about the Ritzavoy XI—” He threw up his hands.

“Employees rob you, of course,” I stated.

“Of course. I suppose I lose a few thousand-notes a week in that way. But it is not that I mean. It is the guests. The guests are too—too distinguished. The great ambassadors, the great financiers, the great nobles, the great generals, all the men that move the galaxy put up on this ship. Once I had the Sultan and an Empress staying here at the same time. Imagine that!”

“What a great honor, Mr. Ritzavoy. But wherein lies the difficulty?” my father asked.

“Baron Raskelis,” was the grim reply, “what has become of your shrewdness—that shrewdness which has made your fortune so immense that even you cannot calculate it? Do you not perceive that the ship which habitually shelters all the force, all the authority of the galaxy, must necessarily also shelter nameless and numberless plotters, schemers, evil-doers, and workers of mischief? The thing is as clear as day—and as dark as night. 

“Baron Raskelis, I never know who surrounds me. I never know what will happen next. Only occasionally do I get hints, glimpses of strange acts and strange secrets.

“You mentioned my employees. They are almost all good employees, skilled and competent. But what are they besides? For anything I know, my fourth sous-chef may be an agent of the Xiepvuian Government. For anything I know, my invaluable Miss Surcer may be in the pay of a Themistan banker. Even Mr. Rocco may be someone else in addition to Rocco.”

“That makes it all the more interesting,” I remarked, completely intrigued.

“Have and a mouthful of the oldest cognac in all Upsilon Andromedae,” said the urbane Mr. Ritzavoy.

Soon, my father and Mr. Ritzavoy began talking rapidly about the job before us. I was astonished at my father’s capacity for absorbing the details of cruiseshuttle management. I soon decided Feliste Ritzavoy must be a prince of cruiseshuttle managers. It had never occurred to me before this time that to manage a cruiseshuttle, even a large cruiseshuttle, could be an interesting affair, or that it could make any excessive demands upon the brains of the manager. However, I soon came to see that I had severely underrated the challenges associated with my father’s newfound position. It took my father, with all his genius for organization, exactly half an hour to master the details of the cruiseshuttle laundry-work. And the laundry-work was but one branch of activity amid scores, and not a very large one at that. The machinery of checking supplies, and of establishing a mean ratio between the raw stuff received in the kitchen and the number of meals served in all the dining areas, and  cleaning the private rooms without interfering with guests, was very complicated and delicate. My father and I occasionally interrupted with suggestions of some improvements, and this would always lead to a long theoretical discussion, and that discussion led to digressions. Finally, in a moment of absent-mindedness, I yawned.

My father looked at the gilt clock on the high mantelpiece.

“Great Scott!” he said. “It’s 3:00! Mr. Ritzavoy, accept my apologies for having kept you up to such an absurd hour.”

“I have not spent so pleasant an evening for many years. You have let me ride my hobby to my heart’s content. It is I who should apologize.”

My father and I rose.

“I should like to ask you one question,” said Ritzavoy. “Have either of you ever had anything to do with cruiseshuttles before?”

“Never,” my father said as I shook my head.

“Then you have missed your vocations. You both could have been the greatest of all cruiseshuttle-managers.”

“You flatter us, Mr. Ritzavoy,” I said, smiling.

“I? Flatter? You do not know me. I flatter no one, except, perhaps, now and then an exceptionally distinguished guest. In which case, I give suitable instructions as to the bill.”

“Speaking of distinguished guests, I am told that a couple of South Quaros leaders are coming here tomorrow.”

“That is so.”

“Does one do anything? Does one receive them formally—stand bowing in the reception area, or anything of that sort?”

“Not necessarily. Not unless one wishes. The modern cruiseshuttle proprietor is not like an innkeeper of the ancient Earth, and even leaders do not expect to see him unless something should happen to go wrong. As a matter of fact, though General Ribereus and Count Yougen have both honored me by staying here before, I have never even set eyes on them. You will find all arrangements have been made.”

“Thank you for all the information. Pops, we really need to get to bed,” I said.

 “Let me see you to your rooms. The elevators will be closed and the place will be deserted.”

“No, thanks,” said my father. “Let us explore my cruiseshuttle unaccompanied. I believe I can discover our rooms.” 

However, once we got out to the main throughway, my father was a little less confident. 

“I believe my room was number 07 and yours 11, but he had forgotten whether it was on the seventeenth or eighteenth deck.”