Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds (2 page)

The assailant returned the player to Weir's lap, pondering. What could the inheritance left to an obscure Earther possibly be?
What machinations had Weir set in motion
?

CHAPTER 1—THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

The yearning's too big for the learning.
His father's words came back to him as Alacrity Fitzhugh gazed down into the abyss. The cold, eternal solidity of the granite blocks around him and the Earth beneath him brought back that observation about the Third Breath of humankind.

Sol's light had already brightened the peak of Huyana Picchu, high above and to the left. Now it touched Machu Picchu itself, casting long, vapor-filtered rays among the broken walls of the ages-old Inca fortress city. Looking down, he saw mist breaking as it rose off the dark serpentine of the Urubamba River more than half a kilometer below him.

He inhaled it, a unique moment. Alacrity had overcome tremendous obstacles to make his way to Earth and secure permission to walk its land, to see its seas and skies. A time of decision was drawing near; he wanted to feel connected to something larger than himself, something kindred, while he pondered. No surprise, then, that the words should come back to him.

"The yearning's too big for the learning," his father and captain had said. "Too big for measurement and too big for poetry. The wishes and dreams are always there, in most of the sentient species. But comes a time like this, when the dreams suddenly feel like they're within reach—then an upwelling comes, too big for the normal boundaries of life."

That seemed like poetry to Alacrity, and measurement, too, the thing his late father had said.

A fine, tenuous moisture, an evaporating cloud, was all around Machu Picchu, but it would be a clear day. Alacrity eagerly anticipated seeing the Andean snowcaps from this spot. The weather was being cooperative; now if only the damned groundlings would follow suit.

The site, in what had been Peru before the Terran Unification, was one of those he'd wanted most to visit, one of the oldest. There were few enough left, thanks to the Human-Srillan War.

Giza was radioactive glass; the Parthenon had been hit during the last, mutually catastrophic Srillan attack—what the Earthers called the Big Smear. Jerusalem was gone, Shih Huang-ti's tomb, Mecca, Bethlehem, and Dharmsala. The old religions were only historical oddities here.

Srillan military thinkers, like their human counterparts, tended to target population centers in that war.

Aside from the people who'd been annihilated, most of Rome and its treasures had been vaporized, and New York with its newer but still precious history. Sian and Moscow, Brazilia and Sydney, the same.

The attack was so suicidal that surviving, lower-rank Srillan officers, upon their surrender, had been unable to explain the actions of the High Command, all members of which were dead. The belated arrival of the Spican fleet had turned a Srillan Pyrrhic victory into an utter disaster, but the curtain had been rung down on the Second Breath of humankind.

Long ago. More than two hundred Terran years.

Now, the Hawking Effect was bringing sundered humanity together, along with the other sentient races. The upwelling mentioned by Alacrity's father had been building for nearly eighty years. People across human space were beginning to feel that they had a real opportunity to seize a place in history, power, glory, riches-some great destiny or perfect fulfillment.

And some of them might even be right.

Alacrity drew Terran air into his lungs, tasting its strangeness, feeling the immense weight and timelessness of the Inca-carved stone. Several of the sacred llamas meandered through the deserted site, stepping delicately, dipping long necks to graze and coming erect again warily. The fog rose toward the city's ruins to disappear in the light and growing warmth.

Alacrity was like any number of humans—though the Earthers would call him
alien,
he knew resentfully—who knew little more about their origins than that the human race had begun there, on that hard-luck, xenophobic little planet.

The thin air two and a half kilometers above sea level was chilly, making him want to cough. He was more accustomed to the richer atmosphere of a starship than to any other. It had been so in his family for generations.

In the eight days he'd spent crisscrossing the planet, Machu Picchu had brought him closest to something he'd been hoping for—a kinship with his species at large, the groping beginnings of understanding of his place in the scheme of things.

The Inca Trail lay behind him as well as before. Old when Terra's space age had begun in humanity's First Breath, it was still passable. He'd descended to Machu Picchu through the Inca Gate, down decayed and tilted stone steps. He planned to leave over Huyana Picchu.

Alacrity resettled the Earth-style shoulder bag that contained the few personal articles he'd brought with him, none of them of off world origin. He wore clothes a Terran history buff would favor for the visit: serape, jacket and trousers of imitation llama and vicuna, and rope-soled sandals.

Under the scrape, though, he wore a hooded shirt, the hood pulled up. A pair of polarized wraparound glasses covered his eyes as well; he was trying his best to pass as an Earther for very good reasons.

Now he set his foot on the first step toward the laborious, rather dangerous trail up Huyana Picchu.

Behind him, a harsh voice called out in badly pronounced Interworld Tradeslang.

"You!
Alien
!"

The spell had been broken. Earth was no longer the place of racial origins; it was only a hostile, almost closed world. Alacrity pivoted slowly, so as to give no provocation. Earthers were quick—even avid—to take offense, resentful of outsiders.

An Earthservice Peaceguardian stood there, and from the looks of him, the blood of the region ran strong in him. In those rugged mountains, one of the last habitable wild places on the globe, a few people had managed to avoid mass housing, forced emigration, and cultural assimilation. But the Earthservice was still in control. The short, thickset, barrel-chested man wearing lieutenant's tabs on his shoulders looked very much the trained Peaceguardian, humorless and severe, his holstered weapon and other equipment gleaming from harness carriers. The brassard on his helmet shone.

The Peaceguardian stepped up to him, pointing a white-gloved finger. "You're the offworlder, Spacer-Guildsman Alacrity Fitzhugh."

Little point in denying the statement. The lieutenant was glancing now from Alacrity to a hand-held screen, undoubtedly comparing the offworlder's long, pale face to that of his visa registration ID. Alacrity gazed down at him from his lanky 197 centimeters. He answered as cooly as he could, "That's correct, officer," in clear Terranglish. "How may I be of service to you?"

The peacer glared up at him through his tinted helmet visor. Here in Machu Picchu no antioffworlder slogans flashed from holoprojectors or blared from PA systems. But the fortress was itself a reminder of a greatness gone by and of the fact that Earth was avoided by all but a few extraterrestrials and derided by most.

Two more Peaceguardians appeared from behind massive stones. The lieutenant continued to address Alacrity in barbarously accented Tradeslang, ignoring the fact that they had Terranglish in common. "You're to leave here
now.
Your visa has been voided. You will return to the spaceport and leave Earth."

Alacrity responded carefully. He was only twenty-two Standard-Terran-years old, but he'd been through tight situations on dozens of worlds, and in between. He knew better than to show anger.

"Why? I've done nothing wrong. This has to be a mistake."

"Negative! Witnesses saw you at old sites. You climbed the stelae and broke off pieces. You poked around sacred places with instruments. You desecrated; you vandalized."

Alacrity did his best to keep his temper; if he lost it now, the feces would really hit the flywheel. But he couldn't stop himself from snapping, "That's not true!"

The cop only scowled harder. "The testimony has been sworn. You
will
leave." He pointed to the Urubamba, far below, where there was a tiny village and a tubeway station. "The next cartridge leaves in just over an hour," he growled. "Be on it."

Thinking,
How would you like a face-ectomy, you little shit heap?
Alacrity stared at the lieutenant.

But one of the other peacers had his palm on the butt of his pistol, and his partner was hopefully fingering a pair of nunchaka; the offworlder didn't voice the proposal.

Alacrity was, of course, unarmed, and had no desire to have his skull cracked or a kneecap burned off. The spacer spoke with the self-restraint he'd learned over a relatively short but singularly eventful life as a breakabout—a star rover. High movers, those who followed his trade were sometimes called, or go-bloods.

"There was no desecration. Earthservice visa briefings warned against it. I complied."

"The witnesses gave testimony."

Lines appeared around Alacrity's mouth. "What witnesses? I want to speak to them."

The lieutenant spat at Alacrity's feet, missing by millimeters. "You see no one. You go back to the spaceport and leave Earth soonest." One of his subordinates sniggered.

"Do you have any idea what that visa cost me? In time and money and effort?"

Visas
had
to be available, at least theoretically, to keep up appearances. Even Terra had no desire to be branded a closed world. But obtaining one had been an expensive, frustrating ordeal, and time-consuming into the bargain. Still, drawn by tales of Old Earth and the urge to tour humanity's Homeworld, the breakabout had persevered when other offworlders had scoffed and Earthservice functionaries and bureaucrats had rebuffed him.

Perhaps that had had something to do with his upbringing, son of two starship officers, grandson of another, born in transit, with no birthworld. But his patience with the delay and the bleak life of the closely guarded spaceport enclave had been nearly exhausted when, almost miraculously, the visa had been granted.

Roaming the planet, he'd been alternately exhilarated and disillusioned, proud and ashamed, puzzled and thrilled by revelation.
Only to come to this! Never to see the Forbidden City, the Serengeti, or
Angkor Wat! Or the remains of an evolutionary climb millions of years long.

He sighed. "At least let me send for an aircar. It'll be faster than the tubeway; I'll be gone that much sooner."

The peacer's smirk was ugly. "You go by cartridge! Who d'you think you are, an Alpha Bureaucrat?

Bad enough you'll ride
beneath
our Earth; you won't foul her skies!"

Transportation up and down the mountain was usually provided by a bucket railcar. But with malicious satisfaction, the attendant told Alacrity that line wasn't in operation, even though the breakabout had seen it running only a half hour earlier.

Nothing for it but to plod down the unpaved switchback road on foot. He balanced his shoulder bag from long practice, and panted along in the thin air. The Peaceguardians, used to the road, followed without discomfort. The single vehicle that passed, a surface-effect truck, sped downhill in a swirl of dust.

Alacrity halfheartedly tried to flag it down; the driver and his assistant showed white, hating smiles as they left him in their wake.

Alacrity coughed and spat out dust, then resumed trudging. The peacers spoke among themselves, laughing coarsely at jokes shared in some language Alacrity didn't understand.

The young offworlder left off his silent cursing of Terrans and his own luck and began worrying about his dilemma. He could see little to do except obey the peacers; there was no other authority to which he could appeal at the moment. The truckers' reaction proved that word of the allegations against him had already spread. He began to feel better about the cops' presence.

He glanced at the proteus on his wrist. He'd been moving as quickly as he could; now he began to slow, not wanting to spend more time than necessary in the village.

He gradually descended toward the little bubble of the tubeway station, in the middle of the collection of angular, pressformed buildings that were the quarters of the locals. The station faced a plaza layered with windblown dust and debris. It was still murky down there.

A crowd had gathered, twenty people or so. Not many showed the strong racial characteristics the lieutenant did. Centuries of interbreeding and acculturation, emigration and immigration had seen to that.

The majority of the men and women there might have been from any broad mixture of Terran genes.

Many of them were dressed in clothing like Alacrity's, modern reproductions of attire from the past, a custom encouraged by Earthservice. Others wore coveralls, work-suits, or the uniforms of the guide staff. Nudging one another and pointing up toward him, they watched the breakabout approach and muttered among themselves. None displayed weapons as such, but many had tools or equipment that would serve nicely: torque bars, energy probes, and heavy spanners. Alacrity approached them slowly.

Over the smooth white bubble of the tubeway station a luminous Earthservice Infoprop displayer flashed: earth is our mother—terra for terrans. Another, smaller displayer registered two minutes until the next cartridge.

The breakabout stopped and turned to the Peaceguardians. They were wandering away in different directions; the crowd showed no such inclination. Alacrity called out to the lieutenant, but the man entered the peacers' little HQ-barracks building and the door segments spiraled in, shuttering.

Alacrity took a step toward it, then stopped. He was unlikely to find any help there, and the displayer now read less than one minute to cartridge arrival. Settling his bag, preparing himself, he strode toward the station, unarmed but not defenseless.

The crowd gave way before him, and his hopes rose; he could see through the station's viewpanes that the tiny waiting area was unoccupied, as was the platform beyond. He willed himself not to break into a sprint.

But as he was about to step through the station's entrance, the displayer changed to read: next cartridge due in 1 hour 00 minutes.