Collector's Item (BFBS audio story)

Collector's Item was the sixth story of the audio anthology The Christmas Collection.

Publisher's summary
After discovering an impossible sculpture on a small planet, Bernice decides to call in Braxiatel to help figure out what it could be - with alarming consequences for both of them...

Plot
''Benny is trying to decide what to get Braxiatel for Christmas, a task which is particularly difficult given that his future self often posts him what he wants the moment he decides that he wants it. She remembers something that happened years ago, before she started working at the Braxiatel Collection.''

Benny is hired by ALS to ringfence sites of archaeological interest on Juana Somata in the Piatek system and does not trust that the leader of her team, Professor Lucas Chilwell, has not been bought off. In her third week, she finds old stone buildings and a seemingly impossible glass sculpture which impresses Chilwell and Leeta, the ALS representative, but she does not think that evidence that the planet once had life will make ALS change their plans. She messages Braxiatel.

Braxiatel shows up at the camp and tells her that he has been pressuring ALS to resurvey the planet and scale back their plans and has contacted some local politicians that he knows. Benny shows him the sculpture and he notices that the material is not glass, as it does not reflect, and is not being held up by anything; he uses some equipment from his travelling case to confirm that the pieces are frozen in time. The stone ring above them rotates and light streams onto the panes of the sculpture, which begin to show images of different people and places.

Benny and Braxiatel come to the conclusion that the sculpture holds the history of the planet's former inhabitants and that they need a preservation order for the planet, but ALS are likely to appeal and could damage the sculpture and Braxiatel suggests that they steal it to move it to the Braxiatel Collection for its safety. Leeta takes Cairns, the boss, to see the sculpture, the properties of which Benny and Braxiatel are unable to display due to them not knowing how to activate the stone ring. After they leave, Chilwell and the team come to have a look and Benny keeps them busy whilst Braxiatel works out how to remove the sculpture.

After a long day of writing letters asking for support against ALS, Benny returns to camp and leaves Braxiatel with the sculpture. She drinks with Chilwell, whom she realises she has misjudged, and learns that ALS are attempting to replace the team. When she returns to Braxiatel, she receives a message informing her that a government panel is to be convened in the morning and that the site must be left undisturbed in the meantime. The next day, she goes looking for Braxiatel and the sculpture shows her images of him which look at her, pleading, before it and the tower vanish, leaving an unconscious Braxiatel floating in the air in his gravity well.

Benny gets Braxiatel down and finds that there is no evidence at all of anything having been there. She takes him back to camp and later tells the panel what happened, embarrassing them and ensuring ALS's victory. Afterwards, Braxiatel tells her that he has lost about ten years of his memory to the sculpture, which steals memories.

''Benny and Braxiatel have never discussed the lost decade of Braxiatel's life, although she knows that it still bothers him and that he has ensured that he will be alerted if the tower reappears again. She decides to get him a learning module containing memories of people that he knows and used to know, putting together his missing decade. He thanks her, but does not want to see himself as others see him.''

Characters

 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Irving Braxiatel
 * Lucas Chilwell
 * Leeta
 * Cairns

Worldbuilding

 * Anderson Lee Stractiphy mines the lucanol-rich deserts on the equator.
 * Bipedal tigers live on Juana Somata.
 * Leeta has children.
 * Braxiatel eats grapefruit.
 * Braxiatel reads the autumn 1959 issue of Man About Town magazine.
 * Benny has coffee, porridge and melon.
 * Benny and Braxiatel drink sherry.

Continuity
to be added