The Empress File

Dessusdelit. “There are rumors of Gypsy blood in my family, way back, and this ball supposedly came from them.”
    “It’s so heavy,” Dessusdelit said, marveling at the size and weight. The ball was a perfect sphere,but the interior was a complicated geological dance of inclusions and tiny fractures. A rainbow of colors flickered inside, depending on how the light hit it.
    “Just sit and hold it,” LuEllen said.
    “Lots of colors in there,” Dessusdelit said, peering into it.
    “Let your mind go, but try to track the color,” LuEllen said. “Look for greens for opportunity, red for danger or conflict. Those were my grandma’s interpretations.…”
    “OK,” said Dessusdelit, fascinated.
    “I think yellow might have something to do with prosperity, blue with peace; black, I think, is death.… Orange is warm; I think that may mean excitement in the good sense or pleasure. I saw a lot of orange in the ball before we started down the river. This whole trip is kind of new for me, kind of exciting.…”
    “Wonderful,” Dessusdelit said. She was rolling the ball in her hands. “I don’t see too much just now. Maybe if I were closer to the window and the light…”
    “No, no, stay where you are,” LuEllen said. “I put the good chair there for a purpose. You should be comfortable. Don’t worry, if you have the ability to see things, the colors will come.”
    That’s when she gave the laser a goose with a foot pedal we’d wedged under the rug. The laser, a little two-hundred-watt deal with an outputthat was no bigger in diameter than a filament of spider web, was mounted in the bedroom. I’d fixed it to do a skittering scan across the area of the chair, a tiny dot of light moving so fast it was virtually invisible. Except when it hit the ball. When it hit the ball, the crystal fluoresced, and the veil lit up with some of the pulsing reaction of the northern lights. I knew when the laser hit because Dessusdelit suddenly caught her breath.
    “It… did something,” she said.
    “I thought it might,” LuEllen said. “I thought you had the power when I saw you in the restaurant. Were you able to pick out any particular colors?”
    “Well…” Dessusdelit was rolling the ball in her hands. “There was green.”
    “Opportunity, that’s wonderful. Maybe it means the opportunity to explore your psychic self,” LuEllen gushed.
    “Is that what it usually means?” Dessusdelit asked, looking up. She was hooked.
    “It can mean any kind of opportunity—often money, frankly—but in this case… unless you’re expecting some money?”
    “No, no, nothing special. In fact, there have been some problems in town.…”
    “Then it may simply be the opportunity to explore yourself,” LuEllen said, brushing away the hint at the burglaries. She touched the laser again.
    “There it is,” Dessusdelit said, brought back tothe ball. “There’s a lot of red, and my God… I can feel the power. And I thought I saw…”
    “Yes?” LuEllen prompted.
    “My mother’s face. She’s been gone now for ten years.… Is this possible?”
    “Anything’s possible if you have the power and the right crystal,” LuEllen said.
    I broke in. “This is not my style, I’m afraid. I’ll leave you alone. I’ll be on top.”
    “I think that would be best,” LuEllen said, her voice now dreamier than ever. “I think Chenille and I have some work to do.… Red, you say? Red sometimes means danger.…”
    T HEY WERE at it for an hour. I was deep into the painting again, sucking on a Dos Equis and cursing the asshole who invented Hooker’s green, when the door popped open. LuEllen stuck her head out and called, “Chenille’s got a favor to ask. She wonders if you could do a quick spread.”
    “Oh, boy,” I said. I didn’t want to read for her without notice. I wanted the deck ready, so it’d read
my
way. “That would be… my head’s just not right for it.”
    “That’s all right,” Dessusdelit said from inside the cabin, but I could hear the disappointment in her voice.
    “How about if we cut the deck just for a taste?” I asked.
    “Would that work?”
    “Sure, just for a taste,” I said.
    I dropped down into the cabin, got the Polish box, took the silk wrapping off the deck, and shuffled. Seven times. Nothing mystic in that; the good gray
New York Times
Tuesday science pages carried an article that said a good seven shuffle gives you the best approximation of a random distribution. When the