by Brian Daley
The White Ship was a lightning rod of intergovernmental conflict, corporate bloodletting, and a near war or two. Who controlled the secrets of the Precursors stood to control the galaxy, or perhaps all of Creation.
Small wonder that a lot of people were eager to cancel Alacrity's postage and that "Alacrity Fitzhugh" wasn't the name given him at birth, but one of many aliases he'd picked up being raised by various breakabouts and serving as one himself.
The whole business of Floyt's inheritance and the destruction of the Camarilla moved Alacrity squarely into the public eye and splashed his name across the light-years. Then there were Sintilla and her books about Alacrity and Floyt. From what little Floyt knew, Langstretch Detective Network had a standing high-figure contract on the life of the man sitting there in the capsule with him. And Floyt had already seen how very effective Langstretch personnel could be.
He resettled himself and thought about his own decision, to put Terra behind him and venture out among the stars. Earthservice had originally had to kick him off the planet, force him to go claim his inheritance from Weir. But somewhere along the way some new, inner Floyt had emerged. Unable to go back to his pigeonhole as a nameless functionary third class, he'd thrown in his lot with Alacrity.
Floyt realized that he was tapping his lips, which were numb, and it came to him that they'd been that way for a while.
"Alacrity? It's no great matter, I know, but I've been noticing a certain, um, lack of sensation lately, in my fingertips, my lips—"
"Peripheral neuropathy," Alacrity said. "I've got problems with it, too. Look, we've been stungunned, gassed, actijotted, and whatever the hell else these last few weeks. All those zap-naps are murder on your nervous system. No immediate crisis, but we'll get it treated the first chance that comes our way."
He was silent for a moment, then added, "And we can get those friggin' actijots dug out of us at the same time."
It had been weeks since Floyt had spared any thought for the minute control devices implanted in the two back on Blackguard. One of the advantages of constant peril and turmoil, he'd come to see, was a certain preoccupation with the immediate.
The capsule viewscreen, which was showing the route's surface scenery relayed from a string of above-ground pickups, brought the ruins of This End Up City—"Upsie"—into view. It was history's first box-town, collapsed now and deserted for more than a century.
Soon after, the abandoned catapult head of Luna's original and smallest mass driver came into sight.
The capsule began to slow and Alacrity again blinked open his great eyes, their irises glowing an unearthly, radiant yellow, striated with red and black.
"Maldkas! I hope the Sockwallet Outfit's still here."
So did Floyt, thinking hopefully of a chilled mug of Old Geyserfroth beer, or a Gunga Din gin and tonic. He almost asked Alacrity why he hadn't made a few inquiries about the Sockwallets at Lunaport, then realized that was no way to keep a destination secret.
Alacrity opened his holster's thumbbreak. If there were Forager guards on the platform, he'd be expected to hand it over. If not, he might need it.
Floyt stood when Alacrity did, finding his balance with only a bit of difficulty. He made sure his smock was open, the Webley's butt accessible. The capsule came to a smooth halt at the abandoned catapult head's subsurface station.
The pair froze, looking for the loitering guttersnipes—Third Breath updates of Dickens's street urchins—who were the very canny Forager sentinels.
Instead, the platform put Floyt in mind of the sewers of ancient Paris, stories of the long-gone Casbah, and pictures he'd seen of hobo jungles. Someone was making music with sonic withe, synthesizer, and tin whistle; shabbily dressed children were doing an odd, flapping-scarecrow dance in the light gravity.
With darting glances Alacrity took in everything. He passed over the few foodsellers and their meager stocks; the end-of-the-line sex rentals who could no longer cut it in Lunaport; the fences with nothing worth buying; and the begging terminal cases. He registered the hawkeyed gang kids and lounging strongarm types, weighing dangers and options.
The squalid smell of the place nearly rocked Floyt back on his heels as he caught sight of the vacant-eyed faces, recalling a similar place light-years away where the stench had been different and yet quite emphatically the same.
"Boxtown," Alacrity muttered as they stood at the open capsule doors. "The Sockwallets are gone, and the down-and-outers've moved in and turned the place into a boxtown."
"Do we get off or pass?" Floyt preferred the latter. The capsule doors were about to close again.
"There's nothing for us in Hubble City. Stick close, and for Shaitan's sake keep an eye on my backpack. Everything we've got's in it, and I'm a sitting pigeon for pickpockets and cutpurses."
"Sitting duck," Floyt corrected automatically, taking up his station behind Alacrity and a hair to the left. They stepped out of the capsule. In that arrangement, one Alacrity had taught him, Floyt's right hand and arm were blocked from view and he could reach for the Webley with a certain amount of concealment. The capsule's doors closed and it slid away silently except for a rushing turbulence in the air.
Four of the healthier-looking idlers, three men and a woman, casually moved to take a better look at the new arrivals, obstructing the way. Floyt waited for a signal, sweat starting in his mustache, but Alacrity gave none.
As they closed on the strongarm group, Alacrity simply stopped, resettling his pack a bit, and put his hand on the grip of the Captain's Sidearm. Floyt kept watch on what was going on to the sides and behind them.
The music stopped and the dancers edged toward cover. The banter and goofing died away too as people took prudent steps to avoid possible lines of fire. Quite a few hungry, fearful glances were turned their way and Floyt compelled himself to glower in return.
The muscle were watching Alacrity. He sneered at them in some language Floyt hadn't heard before, tugging at his own clothes and pack, and gesturing to Floyt. The challenge wasn't too hard to figure out, given Alacrity's previous attitude in that kind of crisis. The two companions were more prosperous looking than most boxtown visitors, but they were armed and knew the ropes. Alacrity's question, in slum patois, conceding that pack and clothes had some value, had to be: But are they worth your lives?
Floyt drew the Webley, letting the lanyard ring at its base swing and clink, putting a hard squint on his face, keeping watch on their rear and flanks for a sneak attack. There was a profound silence on the platform.
In the midst of it, Floyt thumbed back the revolver's hammer, a sound that hung in the air. Not many hours before he'd been in the somewhat ensnaring lap of luxury, Hero of the Terran Weal, seemingly Earthbound for life. In retrospect, that fate had certain points to recommend it.
The muscle began to spread out to either side, to outflank them. Alacrity yanked out the Captain's Sidearm. It was a big, matte-black weapon with a basket hand-shield to protect the firer from blast and backlash.
"Ah! Now just go back and sit where you were, or we start hosing!"
Floyt brought the revolver up into the clear. The muscle looked at one another. Floyt had seen Alacrity kill their kind in another boxtown, not so long before. Then Floyt hadn't been obliged to fire; now it looked different. An altogether inappropriate time, but he found himself wrestling with his doubts.
The eyeing and silent debate among the muscle ended. They started a retreat to the main corridor that led up into the boxtown proper, seeming to surrender the field.
"Uh-uh!" Alacrity hollered, waving the energy pistol's muzzle, which was wide enough to fire walnuts. "You stay here. Get back where you were, or you'll all four of you get a real hot bath!"
They didn't like it, but they obeyed, eyes on his.
"Sit all the way down, pants on the pavement. And sit on your hands while you're at it!" Alacrity snarled, and they did. Guns held at waist level, Alacrity and Floyt backed into the corridor.
Floyt glanced back
over his shoulder every few paces—or, more accurately, skips—until Alacrity advised, "Don't bother. You'll only trip their predator instincts. Besides, they won't try anything else, at least for a while."
"What if they have guns?"
"Anybody in boxtown with a gun or the price of a gun wouldn't stay long."
Floyt forced himself to keep looking ahead. When he began taking in the scene, shock made him forget about the muscle.
The last time he and Alacrity had been through there, when it was a Forager lashup, it was clean, well maintained, and neat. Now it was seedy, walls covered with graffiti and smears of filth. Dirt and debris were everywhere, and the place smelled like a latrine. None of the make-do shelters resorted to by boxtowners cluttered the corridor yet; Floyt concluded that the rambling lash-up hadn't reached capacity.
Much of the lighting and power systemry had been scavenged, leaving the place in semidarkness. Recalling how proudly the Foragers had kept house in their temporary settlement, Floyt found himself deeply offended.
The main airlock was open, unsecured, something the Foragers would never have permitted, being meticulous in preventing danger to their lashup from air leaks. The inner surface of the inner hatch still showed the effects of a bolt fired from the Captain's Sidearm, weeks before.
"Are you sure it's safe laying up here?" Floyt asked.
Alacrity's long eyebrows lifted. "The Sockwallet Outfit didn't leave too long ago, from the looks of things. There should still be room. It's a question of taking what we want. If we can, it's ours. Very Darwinian, box-towns."
The lock had been stripped of all its insignia and emblems. Waiting there was another gang of bystanders, less menacing than the platform muscle.
"You looking for something?" a slender, swarthy little man asked. He had a suppurating wound on his neck, a healing energy-gun wound, Floyt thought.
"A flop," Alacrity bit out. "We lockered here with the Foragers, so we've got a claim."
The man was shaking his head disdainfully. "You don't stay nowhere unless we say so. We're the town council of New Upsie, and I'm the legal mayor, see? It's gonna cost you, bigboy."
Floyt was so outraged over what had been done to the lashup that his natural caution evaporated; he was fiercely glad when Alacrity's gun appeared again. Floyt raised the Webley.
"It's gonna cost you if you don't get out of our way, kumquat." Alacrity bristled. "Make up your mind; it doesn't bother me stepping on muttshit, but I hate to waste time."
The man glared at him. "Better think what you're doing, Stretch." But the rest of the New Upsie town council was already moving aside, Floyt covering them. The swarthy mayor saw he was alone and slouched aside.
Alacrity called out, "If we get any more trouble from you, or if you look at us cross-eyed, I'm gonna push you out a lock, read me?"
Floyt followed Alacrity into the onetime lashup proper. When they'd gone, the mayor of New Upsie turned to his council, snapping his fingers. "Who's got a commo token? C'mon, c'mon! I gotta call somebody in Lunaport!"
One of them surrendered a token unwillingly. "Look, we don't want any scuffle with the cops, or—"
The mayor cuffed his ear. "I don't deal with cops! Just stay away from those two highbeams, but keep track of 'em. I'll be right back."
* * * *
The big gathering-area dome that Floyt recalled with such fondness, where the Sockwallets had thrown the best party he'd ever been to and changed all his attitudes about non-Earthers, was the worst shock yet. The central pylon, assemblage of trinkets, mementoes and keepsakes, accreted record of the long history of the Sockwallets, was gone, naturally, with the Foragers. But the place had been stripped by boxtowners scrounging for materials to sell, trade, or use in their own makeshift subdivisions. Even the Foragers' sacrosanct hatches weren't safe; some had been removed completely, while others were cored of usable systemry or saleable parts.
Floyt had expected that; what he hadn't expected was senseless defacement, mindless vandalism. Worse, there was a long crack near the base of the dome, where some uncaring squatter had removed an environmental unit by main force. The clear material of the dome had held, the crack sloppily patched. The sight made Floyt's hair stand up. So dangerous.
"Will it hold?" Floyt wondered anxiously.
"I guess so. Hope so." Alacrity looked to the sunlight heating the lunar landscape only meters away. "Piss fire and save the matches! Now I know we can't hang around here for long. Come on; I want to check something."
There were only a few dilapidated shelters in the dome; it was too open to intrusion and weakened to boot. Too, it looked like the abandoned lashup hadn't filled to anything like capacity yet. The few makeshift doghouse dwellings, mostly packing crates and slapped-together coops, were scattered around the base of the dome. It occurred to Floyt to wonder if a Pleistocene cave had smelled any worse. People in rags and castoffs peered at the twosome, unblinking and resigned.
Armed and healthy and well fed, Alacrity and Floyt had little to fear, but were on guard anyway as the bolder and more desperate ones approached, palms extended, begging for money, food, anything.
Alacrity had his long, sturdy breakabout-model umbrella out, his "brolly," a Viceroy Imperial. As the first of the rabble got to him—a fleshy man with a snarled beard, layers of dirt on him, wild bloodshot eyes, and a thick reek—Alacrity came en guarde.
"Stay back!" Alacrity had removed the brolly's ferrule cap, exposing its wicked point. The man disregarded him, coming closer, pawing for him, trying to get close enough to force alms from him or just make a grab for whatever Alacrity had to be stolen.
Alacrity jabbed him hard with the spike, making blood flow. The man screeched, clenching his bleeding forearm. Alacrity thwacked him on the head with the brolly. "I warned you!"
The other boxtowners fell back, Floyt following them with the Webley. Alacrity swung right and left, driving them even faster. The man he'd stuck was on his knees, moaning theatrically, cradling his head. "You've killed me! Give me money or I'll report you, you murderer!"
He was quick enough to scuttle away when Alacrity took a step in his direction, though. Alacrity waved the brolly. "If anybody even steps in my way again, so help me, I'll stick 'em full of holes like an ocarina!"
Alacrity checked his proteus, the do-all cyberinstrument on his wrist, for the time. Then he and Floyt crossed to the lock on the far side of the dome and skid-hopped into boxtown.
Chapter 2
" … And Cauldron Bubble … "
"Darwinism" was the operant word in boxtown, all right: a person could have just as much space, comfort, food, and status in New Upsie as they could wrench free and hang onto.
Alacrity and Floyt walked down a trash-cluttered passageway in a salvaged hull portion from an old Virago-class Solar Pact warship. The Sockwallets had refitted it as living quarters for couples and severals.
But now it was a smokey, dimly lit maze of gerry-built lay-ups, minuscule sleeping niches and nooks not much bigger than so many sarcophagi. Among the human discards in residence there was a total inertia, an absence of hope or thought. The adults had heads hung in misery, or stared off at nothing with lost eyes; children were torpid, too weak to go gang-jamming or looking for some minor score.
"Not crowded yet," Alacrity observed. "The Sockwallets couldn't've left too long ago. Air circulators are still working, sort of; utilities haven't been completely stripped away. I figure, not more than a week or so."
There were sounds of construction, people improvising shelter in compartments, holds, and even storage lockers, using pulpboard, mineralsheet paneling, and whatever else came to hand.
Prime real estate was close to the air duct outlets and had access to plumbing. "There'll be a lot of arguments over water rights," Alacrity predicted as the two made their way, hop-scuffing through the Virago's lock into a long pressure-quonset that was being subdivided. "People get killed over stuff like that in a sealed-environment boxtown."
"But how much lo
nger can this place support life?" Floyt wondered. The basic utilities and air system, stripped and vandalized as they were, with no Foragers to run or maintain them—the thought of that had him looking around uncomfortably. "It could become a deathtrap at any moment."
Alacrity nodded, picking his way around a coughing old man who spat blood into a soiled rag. Floyt gave thanks that his immunizations were up to date.
Alacrity said, "If they're dumb enough to let that happen, they'll either have to scramble for a new lay-up or hammer out some kind of system to keep things running. That's when a sealed boxtown usually goes through a shakedown and organizes, at least half-assed, even if it takes a few turf wars. Anyway, I think we're safe for a bit."
"Huh? Alacrity, we can't stay here!"
"Don't pop an aneurism; I'm with you. But we've got to take a second, here, and figure out what to do next. Besides, there's something I have to see." He led the way toward the end of the quonset. A group of box-towners stood there, looking apprehensive rather than mean. Floyt could see a few knives and a bo stave among them, and one tall, equine woman cradled a thing that looked like a crossbow built from metal scraps. On the floor lay a discarded vacsuit they'd been repairing; patching materials and spare parts lay all around.
"Just the local protection committee," Alacrity said out of the corner of his mouth. "They're not part of the extortion gangs."
No one impeded their way. Beyond the quonset, a kid who looked fifteen or so lazed on a mound of carpet that had been ripped up from some lashup deck. He looked better fed and bolder than most, and wore a colorful paisely jumpsuit and a skullcap sewn with shimmerettes. He gave them a lackadaisical grin and held his hand out to block their way, palm up, rubbing his fingertips. "I'm in need, burghers, and you look like you've got it to spare."
"No," Alacrity said tersely, about to shove the hand aside. Floyt knew his friend was generous to the needy but absolutely refused to give to the able-bodied.