Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds (20 page)

The bouyant little freelancer literally took them in hand, walking between the two as they entered the cyclopean dining hall.

The Inheritors were few, but there were hundreds of family friends, escorts, consorts, cohorts, representatives, acquaintances, and observers. As regarded attire, the gathering made the merriment at the Sockwallet lashup drab by comparison. It resembled a combination Mardi Gras, costume ball, and saturnalia, in dress if not in behavior.

Though many were no taller than he himself, Floyt was again impressed with the extreme height so common among non-Earthers. Even Alacrity was far from being a standout in that crowd.

One young couple apparently felt completely proper in the nude and depilated except for dramatized brows and lashes, and emitting glowing auras, he in red and she in blue. Alacrity suspected that the generators were hidden in their abundant jewelry.

A resident of Harvest Home lumbered by in his segmented, artificial carapace. A Konigswold grandee swaggered past, bereft of his traditional weapons harness for the duration of the High Truce.

Thanks to the Earthservice psychprop planners, though, Floyt drew attention from all quarters. He wore white tie and black tails, batwing collar, dancing pumps, starched shirt, vest, and pearl studs. He also wore a watch chain, without a watch, but with his wonderment for a fob. His Inheritor's belt somehow managed not to look incongruous with his formal attire. Floyt couldn't have been more a figure out of legend if he'd worn the Regalia of Pharaoh.

Alacrity somehow felt proud when he saw all those O-shaped mouths aimed their way as he, Floyt, and Sintilla wound toward their table. The breakabout was wearing a dress shipsuit, a tight-fitting garment that made him look like a jetskate racer. Sintilla wore a riotously multicolored variation on her trademark rompers.

The hall was a looming, endless-seeming place warmed by every manner of light effect: free-floating and circulating, reflected and directed. They were of all colors, ranging from muted to dazzling. Alacrity spotted drones sailing lazily overhead, roving inconspicuously.

Tables and seating, eating and drinking utensils, and place settings had been painstakingly arranged, individualized for the outlandish assortment of guests. Some tables floated; one, for the Overseer of Wayward, looked very much like a well-anchored trough. Around the room, stemware glittered and alloys shone; rich fabrics vouched for Tiajo's hospitality.

Gently luminescent seating holos hovered over the crowd, descending and rising in a stately cycle to indicate tables. Some of the tables had been constructed for nonhuman diners, a few of whom were in environmental containers of various types; their gathering at one particular table put Alacrity in mind of a space station with wildly different vessels moored around it.

Floyt noticed that, unlike the
Bruja
and the sealed habitats of Luna, Frostpile permitted smoking; a bewildering intermixture of fumes drifted to him. Just then he was approached by a portly man with a carefully tended white beard and an engaging smile. The man wore fine robes and a sort of surplice and an Inheritor's belt. He offered his hand, Earth style.

"Citizen Floyt? I've been looking forward to making your acquaintance, sir! Allow me to introduce m'self; Endwraithe, board member, Bank of Spica."

Alacrity was watching carefully. The Central Bank of Spica was the closest thing humanity had to a common banking house. Floyt's own travel voucher had been drawn against it, and its notes were the most reliable medium of exchange there was. And here was one of its senior officers buttonholing Functionary 3rd Class Hobart Floyt.

"This isn't the time or place for it, but I'd just like to talk to you at some point in the near future. The bank is always interested in opportunities for proper placement of its venture capital, or in discussing matters with a prospective major investor."

The Earther stammered a reply. The banker patted his arm. "I'll be talking to you, m'boy." He departed through the crowd.

Sintilla said, "Hobart, I don't know if you realize this, but there're whole mercantile dynasties that'd cheerfully sacrifice their firstborn for an offer like that."

"I haven't really felt normal since I climbed off that bicycle," Floyt sighed. "Alacrity, what did you—"

But the breakabout wasn't listening. A woman was wending her way in their general direction. Sintilla followed Alacrity's gaze and clucked disappointedly. "Is
that
your taste? An ice sculptor's wet dream?"

She looked to be about Alacrity's age. Certainly she was close to his height, slim-waisted, with ample breasts and hips. Weighty ringlets of chalk-blond hair framed her face and tumbled around athlete's shoulders.

She wore sandals of strung cornelian, their color matching her lips, and what looked like a strategic black fog, which drifted in slow migration around her body without ever quite making complete revelations. Her skin was a taut, almost gleaming white with little flesh tone to it.

"Probably gene-engineered." Sintilla
humphed.

Alacrity, eyeing the woman's wide, mobile mouth, discovered that his own lips had parted. It took him only an instant to conclude that her high-cheekboned face was perfect.

"Don't you ever think about anything but your libido?" Floyt reproved.

"I'm at that awkward stage: adulthood," Alacrity threw back over his shoulder as he moved off to intercept her.

She took in the working spacer's outfit, the wide, oblique eyes that might almost be an animal's, and the wavy, silver-in-gray banner of hair. Her expression was all good-natured weariness,
Oh, go ahead
and try, then, if you really must.
All in the midst of his infatuation, he was irked.

Long-necked, she held her squarish chin low, so that her big hazel eyes gazed up at him through sooty lashes.

"Is she really?" Floyt asked Sintilla. "Gene-engineered, I mean."

The journalist shrugged. "That's one rumor. She's the Nonpareil, Dincrist's daughter." When she saw the Terran's blank look, she amplified, "Another Inheritor, a very important man in interstellar shipping.

She's his only child."

Floyt plunged after his escort with a feeling of dread, drawing near just in time to hear him introduce himself.

"Good evening; my name is Alacrity," he said with a lopsided fleer. "I'm with the athletic certification board. When will it be convenient for me to try out your recreational equipment?" He was counting on the idiotic look to make it work.

Arriving at the breakabout's side, Floyt smothered a groan. But the Nonpareil burst out in a full-throated laugh, managing, "Well, the name fits you!"

"Fitzhugh is right. Oh, er, this is Hobart Floyt."

She saw the Inheritor's belt and took in the swank formal outfit as she extended her hand. "A pleasure."

Floyt took it, not sure what to do with it. Just then a man appeared at the Nonpareil's side. He was taller than Alacrity, very fit-looking in a patrician way, middle-aged, with hair the color of his daughter's.

He had the handsome tan of a titled outdoorsman, though, and wore an Inheritor's belt over his stylish dalmatica. He looked apoplectic.

"Oh dear me," Sintilla said softly from where she'd brought up the rear behind Floyt.

The Terran inserted himself into the situation with a confidence he didn't feel.

"Ah, Citizen Dincrist and, ah, Nonpareil, good evening. I am Hobart Floyt, of Terra." Without turning aside, he told his companion, "Our table is
this
way, Alacrity."

Dincrist seemed puzzled by Floyt's origin and the matchless white tie and tails. He said, "Nice to have met you, sir. In the future, please be kind enough to remember that I am
Captain
Dincrist. Come, my dear."

She inclined her head to them, one white curl bobbing across her eye, making her look mischievous.

Then the Nonpareil went off on her father's arm.

"Alacrity, you have all the subtlety of an equivalent mass of falling masonry."

"Just being sociable, Tilla."

"You should've ignored her, Alacrity," Floyt put in. "Our mission, remember?" He didn't see Sintilla's eyes shift from one to the other.

Alacrity sighed in the Nonpareil's wake. "There isn't that much conditioning in the entire galaxy, rig."

The journalist took him by the elbow. "Feeding time, Fitzhugh."

Sintilla had filled them in on those other least welcome mourners and Inheritors who infested Riffraff Alley. They began to show up as the trio was getting seated at a table set as far to one side as it was possible to be.

There was a woman known as Stare Skill, a naturalist and xenologist, wearing her belt. A sad-eyed, lean woman in her fifties, she was famous for her work among the native sapients of a planet humans called Ifurin, which lay within the late Weir's realm. She wore no makeup, and her hair was short, for easy tending. She was dressed in a simple frock and low-heeled, comfortable shoes.

She arrived with her traveling companion, a member of the species she'd spent most of her adult life studying. Most humans found their language extremely difficult to pronounce. Weir's task-force commander, upon making regrettably warlike first contact with them on their home-world, had called them
Djinn.
The name had endured.

This one was typical of the breed. If a satyr had evolved under more than one and a half gravities, developing the rolling gait and intermittent knuckles-walking of an ape, he might resemble a Djinn. This one was shorter than Sintilla while walking erect, and a good deal more so now. He was a being of enormous cross section, with amazing musculature bulging on his long arms and bandy legs. He had jaws like a rock crusher, and jutting tusks.

He had glittering black claws, projections on his horn-covered knuckles. There were also spiky prongs on knees, elbows, and shoulders. His broad, hard hooves had been shod in thick, resilient pads for the visit. He brachiated up into his chair effortlessly as Stare Skill seated herself.

Sintilla made the introductions. The Djinn's chosen Terranglish name was Brother Grimm.

"Good warrior's name, huh?" Alacrity commented, eyeing the creature.

"No," the Djinn replied. Turning to Floyt, he went on, "It's in honor of the two brothers from your planet. The writers."

"He adores their stories," Stare Skill supplied. With some exertion, Grimm convoluted his hideous face into what Floyt presumed to be a smile.

He asked the Terran anxiously, "Would you know any of their descendents, Citizen Earther? The brothers, I mean. You're the first Terran I've met."

Floyt's ingrained hostility toward nonhumans vied with amusement and a certain regret, as he replied that he did not. The Djinn's disappointment showed, in spite of his inhuman features. "A pity, a pity … "

Alacrity, chin on fist, elbow on the table, tried to recall when he'd seen such a soft heart in quite so scary an exterior. Sintilla smiled, crinkles appearing beside her eyes, nose, and mouth.

Servicers started bringing open-top globes of marinated Epiphany fruit and mixed nuts. Sintilla caught Floyt's hand, inveigling him, "Tell me more about good ol' Earth. Please? It's all grist for the mill."

Floyt politely disengaged himself. "We've already been thoroughly gristed, Tilla."

The last of their tablemates showed up. "William Risk, at your service. For the right money."

"Billy Risk?" Alacrity erupted, almost upsetting the table as he rose and extended his hand.
"Kid
Risk?"

William Risk nodded resignedly, clasping wrists with the breakabout. He was slight, almost emaciated, with smooth salt-and-pepper hair and goatee and eyes a deep brown-black. He was several centimeters shorter than Floyt, and had a lifelong tan and deeply lined face.

He wore a faded yellow uniform of some sort, with pleated sleeves and fringed epaulets, but without insignia or rank. He looked sleepy, but was nevertheless one of the deadliest things that walked, or so Sintilla had said. Alacrity had recognized the name at once when she'd first mentioned it.

Alacrity saw the way the old man reacted to the name he'd used as a triggerman; the breakabout let it drop, and resumed his seat. Kid Risk, mercenary and gentleman, bounty hunter and survivor of the Illyrian Vendetta, found his seat next to Stare Skill. He greeted Brother Grimm, Sintilla, and Stare Skill; the journalist and the Djinn replied, but the older woman put a chill in the air with her barely civil nod of the head.

Alacrity caught himself gawking, and stopped. "My name's Alacrity Fitzhugh. Y'know, I used to read all those books about
you: Kid Risk Stands Alone, Death Card for Billy Risk."

Floyt realized that this was another figure out of the new penny dreadfuls. Risk gave Alacrity a pained smile. "Well, I'm sure a sharp young fella like you knows enough not to believe everything he reads."

"Oh. Sure, well,
naturally,"
Alacrity recovered.

"Those books gave me more trouble than just about anything else that ever happened to me," Risk told the table at large. "But there's not a lot you can do to defend yourself once somebody starts writing about you."

"How d'you mean, Captain Risk?" Brother Grimm asked. "Are the stories lies?"

"Not altogether, but they sure don't hew too closely to the truth. No. What I meant was, people started to come after me, for this reason or that."

"No denial ever catches up with a rumor," Floyt put in. The old man inclined his head. Sintilla was staring down at the table.

"The books and real life sort of got mixed up too," Risk recalled softly, looking to Stare Skill. "I had some awfully wrong ideas about myself there for a while, when I started believing them." The xenologist refused to meet his gaze.

After a moment, the old man shunted aside some sad preoccupation. "And you'd be Mr. Floyt," he ventured, using the ancient form. "I never met an Earther before." He hooked a thumb in his Inheritor's belt.

"A common failing around here," Floyt observed.

Kid Risk chuckled. Floyt's head swam a bit. It was only hours since Captain Valdemar had cut out the Breakers, and he'd already been involved in encounters so incredible that he doubted anyone on Earth would credit the story. He looked at his tablemates and thought, a bit spitefully, of what his wife Balensa would have given to share his meal.