Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds (6 page)

"Out to Epiphany and back … " Alacrity said to himself, as though he hadn't decided. "You win. But just don't forget: we've
both
been scroodled, good and proper. Me because I was bugtrapped; you because you're sentencing an innocent man."

"I have no intention of forgetting it."

"Why aren't you trying to find out who did it to us?"

Ash looked at him for five seconds or so. "When I leave here, I will fly directly to the cell of a young woman who's been sentenced to death. She admits her guilt but refuses any alternative. She isn't as fortunate as you in having another way out. I will try to dissuade her from choosing execution, but I don't hold much hope. There are other cases, more than my office can properly deal with. And the backlog's growing worse. You're not the highest priority on my list, not anymore."

Alacrity said nothing. Ash was about to leave again when he remembered something. "By the way: your surname, 'Fitzhugh.' It's of ancient derivation, like mine. But I doubt it's your real one. What made you pick it?"

Alacrity grinned. "It was given to me a long time ago. My name's a
pun,
Citizen Ash. In your precious
Terranglish
."

CHAPTER 4—FIRM OFFER

Floyt drew a deep breath when he reached his apt doorpanel. "Open," he said to the pickup mesh; the lock snapped back, and the doorpanel slid aside.

He trudged between the neat stacks of boxes and cases that held a good part of the family's possessions. They were piled in the hallway because Floyt had appropriated the hall closet as a tiny workspace. Into it he had crammed a chair and minuscule table, desk-model accessor, and the accumulated reference materials and data of years of research. Balensa was fairly tolerant of the arrangement, in that he'd ceded her most of the rest of the apt.

And there'd been considerably more room once Reesa had moved from her alcove. The seventeen-year-old was engaged in a work-study program in pursuit of an advanced degree, deeply involved in a somewhat romantic recreation of a Pleistocene tribal group. Her parents were quite fond of her, but had been relieved when she'd relocated to the school dormitory in Lapland. Leaving flint chips in the hygiene chamber to ambush bare feet, singeing the carpet with sparks struck during firemaking attempts, and the aroma of artificial animal grease had severely tested her parents' affection. She'd been rather hurt when they'd drawn the line at joining her in primate grooming behavior; Balensa in particular had been dismayed at the thought of searching her family for vermin.

Floyt grew alert when he realized that someone was in the modest living room with Balensa—a female whose voice he didn't recognize. And it was no tete-a-tete, for the stranger's voice was cold and formal, even hostile.

There was an expectant pause in the conversation. They were looking his way when he appeared.

Balensa seemed subdued but vexed. She was still an attractive woman, petite, with chestnut hair, an unlined face, and the figure of a teenager. She was dressed in a reproduction, an Italian style from the latter fifteenth century, of synthetics posing as stiff, densely patterned blue velvet interwoven with gold, its V-shape front showing off her slenderness to good advantage.

The other woman was unknown to Floyt, but seeing her gave him a start of dismay. She wore a well-tailored office suit and the pleated brown robes of an Earthservice supervisor. He concluded at once that the corridor incident had been picked up by Peaceguardian surveillance equipment.

He forgot his emotional disarray, worried now that he'd been remiss in not reporting the trouble at once, that he'd violated a regulation and was in trouble for it. But he couldn't understand why such an encounter would merit the attention of a full supervisor, even granted that it involved an off-worlder.

At about forty, she was extremely young for supervisor's rank. Though tall and severe, she wore her long auburn hair loose. She looked him over with cold brown eyes.

"We've been wondering when you'd get home," Balensa said with a touch of nervousness.

"Supervisor Bear has been waiting for nearly an hour. Why weren't you wearing your accessor?"

"Greetings, Citizen Floyt," the supervisor said before he could become bogged down in explanations or excuses. Her tone was rather steely. "I'm Supervisor Bear, of the Resource Recovery Division. You and I have something to discuss."

Floyt moved into the room warily, clearing his throat. She'd addressed him as "citizen" instead of the more formal "functionary," so that might be a good sign. Though he was theoretically free to address her the same way, he would never have dreamt of doing so.

"I—I was going to report the attack as soon as I arrived home, Supervisor. 1 wasn't sure of the procedure, but I thought it would be safer than if I—"

Bear seemed to gather her self-restraint.
An hour or so with my wife has doubtless taxed it,
Floyt thought. Even a supervisor's cloak wouldn't have deflected all of Balensa's curiosity. Clearly, the subject of contract termination had been tabled by Balensa for the time being.

"Citizen Floyt," Bear interrupted, "be so kind as to sit down, if you will. My time's in rather short supply. Won't you have a drink?"

Floyt refused the drink and perched himself warily on the least comfortable seat in the living room.

Balensa was artfully arranged on the sofa, while Supervisor Bear had, of course, taken the cloud-rest lounger.

On the center table a small bottle of premium Scotch, and a setup stood on Balensa's best imitation-silver tray. The refreshments had undoubtedly been obtained from the apt's service unit with Bear's allotment code; the machine would've ignored such an order given with his own or Balensa's code.

Even in his agitated state, he registered the purchase with a twinge of envy—and resentment toward the service unit as well as Bear.

Balensa edged forward, intent on the supervisor. "You'll pardon me now," Bear said, "but it's necessary that I speak to your spouse in private. Perhaps you'd care to visit your rec-center or take a stroll. An hour should suffice."

Balensa looked as though Bear had hosed her down with ice water. "But, but—that is, as spouse, I think I have the right to know what it is—"

Bear let some peevishness creep into her voice. "The needs of Earthservice come first, and right now one of those needs is confidentiality. You're forcing me to use my rather limited time unproductively."

Balensa was up in a rustle of stiff costume, stalking for the door. "And, citizen … " Bear added.

Balensa halted. "Keep utter silence about this visit; this is an official warning. And don't press your spouse for details. You'll be briefed at the proper time."

Thoroughly put to rout, Balensa exited. Bear took another sip from a drink that was mostly melted ice. Floyt was completely bewildered and still shaken by the assault, but with a supervisor doing the investigating, it would be wiser to wait and learn what he could, tailoring his account and explanations to the circumstances.

"Citizen Floyt, your hobby is genealogy," Bear began. "You're quite knowledgeable about Terran and offworld lineages and histories."

He nodded mutely.

She seemed about to go on in the same vein, then digressed to ask him, "How did you come to be so expert? The subject has little to do with your assignment as an information accessor/interfacer."

"I was introduced to genealogy during a collating assignment about eight years ago. It caught my interest."

Bear gestured toward the hall closet. "Your spouse showed me your cubby."

"I use my rec-time allotment to interface with the information systems, Supervisor." It was all perfectly legal, but he suddenly wondered if he'd done something wrong. There were so many Earthservice regs; it was impossible to know them all. "And sometimes I do research at the workplace, but only during breaktime. And I always charge it to my code … "

Unconcerned with minor details, she was making a rejecting motion. "Your work has been reproduced off-world."

He felt himself blush. Interest in offworld things was considered eccentric, if not suspect. "I contributed a few trifles to the data banks. Some offworld accessor noticed them and offered Earthservice a repro fee, or so I was told."

"They were more than trifles. Three separate, comprehensive genealogies and two monographs." It was true. And the money involved must have been considerable, he'd always assumed, because a microscopic sum had actually been passed along to him, though Earthservice assessments on offworld earnings were all but total.

"Some of this business apparently came to the attention of a man named Caspahr Weir," Bear was saying cooly, with a proper disdain for offworld things. "He was interested in his misbred origins, I suppose. At any rate, he died recently and saw fit to leave you a bequest in his will."

Floyt was severely staggered, but first of all by that name. Weir! That Weir should've taken notice of Floyt's work gave him a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment, so much so that he almost missed the last part.

"Bequest?"

"You heard me correctly. You're mentioned in the will of a man who was director—monarch, really—of nineteen stellar systems."

"I don't know what … what I should—"

"By provision of the will, all heirs—'Inheritors'—must gather at Weir's home on a planet called Epiphany. There you'll attend a Willreading, which is to take place in approximately three weeks. Failure to appear will mean forfeiture of all claim to your bequest. The Earthservice intends you to be there."

All that had gone before was a gentle overture to the shock waves that began to crash through Floyt's nervous system. Offworld! Without realizing it, he poured himself a tumbler of straight Scotch and drank.

He gagged. "I can't."

"Why?"

"Why
?
Vertebrae deficiency: I haven't got the backbone for it."

"That's as may be, but go you will. We don't know what the bequest is, but the opportunity must be taken."

"But it might be worthless! The cost of fare alone would be … " He paused for a moment and wondered if Earthservice expected
him
to pay his way. No, impossible; the price would be more than a Functionary 3rd Class earned in a lifetime. Several lifetimes.

He gulped. If the Earthservice picked up the tab for his fare to Epiphany, only to find that his bequest was of little or no value, would the bureaucracy be willing to unpocket for a ticket home?

"Interstellar passage has been provided for by Weir's executors." Bear smiled thinly. "
Roundtrip
passage, citizen."

Under the circumstances, Earthservice had nothing to lose by sending him—except perhaps an easily replaceable Functionary 3rd Class.

The drink trembled in his hand as Floyt thought of the perils of offworld travel. Earthservice never stinted in stressing those to Terrans: injury, disease, death in uncounted forms, enslavement, and the possibility of being stranded forever in some fashion, unable to return home across inhuman distances.

The thought of danger reminded him of something. "An offworlder tried to kill me on my way home, Supervisor. Or at least she tried to do me more than a little harm."

Bear examined him fixedly, but she seemed to believe him. He answered her rapid-fire questions, finding to his surprise that exact details of the encounter had already become blurry. He sipped at his Scotch as she thought for a moment.

Then she activated her own accessor, a more sophisticated and ornate model than any he'd ever seen up close. When she keyed it, he was unable to hear a sound from her hurried conversation. When she signed off and he could hear again, she said, "There's little chance of finding her now, but a search will be made for your assailant."

"But she's fairly conspicuous."

"Her appearance has probably changed radically in the past hour. Now let's keep to the subject. I must say, for a citizen with such a high compliance quotient, you're being irksome."

"Sorry." He'd never heard of a compliance quotient before and wasn't sure he liked having a high one, but he obediently restricted his questions to the matter before them.

"Supervisor, how can I possibly hope to get to Epiphany, much less bring home some inheritance, whether it's of any value or not? I've no experience; I'm not trained for that sort of thing. This is insane!"

Bear answered, "We at Resource Recovery have provided for that. You'll be part of a new pilot program: Project Shepherd."

"It sounds very pastoral. Under other circumstances, I'd be reassured, but the demographics for Terran casualties during offworld travel are disheartening."

"True enough, citizen. Recovery of offworld resources claimable by Terran citizens has that drawback. But we can't let Terrans simply forfeit opportunities to claim payment, dun debtors, collect winnings, or—as in your case—accept inheritances. Imagine the value of even a minor part of Weir's wealth! Citizen Floyt, do you believe, as I do, that we owe Earth our all?"

"I … that is—"

"I knew you would! It's
our
Earthservice, after all; yours and mine!"

Naturally,
thought Floyt. What with the planet's severely limited resources, every Terran was a ward of the Earthservice and—all but a few—an employee as well. Floyt didn't mention the open secret that Earthservice was controlled by a tight hierarchy, supervisors among them, with Alpha Bureaucrats at the pinnacle.

She was looking at him with arch expectancy. He hastened to chorus, "Of course, Supervisor."

"Then you'll want to do your share," she said in a flat voice, eyes staring into his. He knew then that there'd be no avoiding it short of exposing a live power source in the hygiene chamber and taking a high-voltage bath.

He sighed, "Might I ask just what this Project Shepherd is?"

"It's
my
project," she said grandly, chin high. "We'll provide you with a suitable escort, someone experienced in the difficulties and dangers of star travel. A guardian, a guide—a shepherd."

"Oh. How long will I be gone? And my escort—who is he? Or she?"

Bear became curt. "You'll meet your escort quite soon and go through a brief orientation. You'll also be given your letter of Free Import."