by Brian Daley
And so at last, Spica. First magnitude jewel of the Virgin; blue, short-lived supergiant; homeplace of the mightiest Precursor work yet confirmed: the Carousel. Twenty-three E-type paradise worlds in a single impossible orbit, blazing gems in an imperial diadem, with no clues as to how the trick was done, confounding and enrapturing Homo sapiens (and incidentally giving lots of people the conviction that their species was the Chosen of the Precursors).
Spica, in the wrong place on the Hertzprung-Russell diagrams for its impossible brood, centerpiece of the human race in the wake of the Final Smear—the disastrous climax of the Human-Srillan War—at least until hapless, harried Hobart Floyt and misadventuring Alacrity Fitzhugh brought the Camarilla conspiracy down around the ears of some of the most powerful individuals in known space.
* * * *
Floyt and Alacrity weren't precisely back on their old footing, but their friendship had held and the tension was mostly gone. Floyt had tried to broach the matter of the causality harp only once during the trip; Alacrity refused to discuss it. Floyt gave the matter long and deep contemplation and then resigned himself that what would happen would happen.
The Lightning Whelk left Hawking with Alacrity prepared to point out a few of Spica's spectacular sights once he got his bearings and took care of the checking-in yangtwang the rules required. But the half-ducat sightseeing tour wasn't to be.
"Holy Shiva's snatch!"
"Alacrity, what is this? We've stumbled into a war, is that it?"
"Dunno yet. Sit tight." He was displaying more information on the media-mosaic, assigning the commo system to monitor and cull, to give him some idea what was going on. In the meantime, Floyt gazed by means of scopes and the late Plantos's vision enhancers at several flotillas of warships floating in the vicinity of Nirvana, the system's capital and most populous world, power base of the Spican sphere of influence.
Floyt couldn't resist gaping a bit. Strung along in that same orbit were Xanadu, Heaven, Utopia, Eden, and the rest, worlds that had no business being there except that the Precursors had seen fit to arrange things so. As for the warships, they appeared to represent a number of different governments or factions, but there were also an awful lot of Spican Navy battlecraft on the prowl and at full alert.
Alacrity had no time to spiel about Spica's tremendous energy runes, or the Five Great Anomalies, or the Shepherd Forces; he was venting spleen at the commo rig. "Psjakrew cholera! The White Ship Corporation's under a news and commo blackout as of yesterday! What is all this with our awful timing, anyway?"
The Spican Military was at max alert in part because of the upcoming board meeting and the visiting flotillas that were permitted then by law; it seemed several major shakeups were in the offing among the Interested Parties. (Wait'll they hear my scoop! Alacrity sneered to himself.) But a lot of the furor had to do with another vessel that had shown up.
News pickups showed the starship in a holding position down near Spica itself, in a more or less stationary spot relative to Nirvana and the White Ship, Alacrity noticed queasily. It was bigger than the White Ship, bigger than anything humans had ever made, and bigger than many of the worlds they inhabited.
"You just don't see many of those," Alacrity told Floyt a little numbly.
"What is it? It looks like—I don't know; some great big radiolarian made out of glow-filament, maybe?"
"For all anybody knows, you're right. That's a Heavyset starship. The Heavysets've never been much interested in what humans are doing, and if you ask me it was safer for us that way. But here they are."
"And, 'By the pricking of my thumbs … ' " Floyt quoted quietly, face lit by the displays.
"Huh? Oh, never mind! What in God's own data bank are Heavysets doing around Spica? Almost in Spica?"
Floyt bunched his shoulders and dropped them to show he couldn't supply the answer. "You're asking the wrong person. Maybe they heard we were coming?"
"Not funny. Look, there's no time for tourism; Nirvana Control's calling. Let's get down there and see what we can find out."
"If the Precursors could do this," Floyt said meditatively, scanning the magnificent Carousel as Alacrity made his approach, "and if they could make the causality harp and the Biomass of Rigel and all the things reports claim—if they could do that, then tell me why they never did any of the things mankind is still trying to do. Dyson spheres, and all the rest of that."
Alacrity made an impatient, nonanalytical sound, most of his concentration on his instruments. He wanted to holler at Floyt for not worrying about what he was worrying about. But they were more circumspect toward each other in the wake of the Lebensraum business.
So he said, "Why build high-density housing on Mount Fuji if a hermit's hut is what you really want? And all you need?"
When Nirvana Control came up, typically stern and condescending, for final approach, the little, outdated, ragtag Whelk was treated to some of the famous local surliness. Until, that is, Alacrity gave Control a business-affairs visa request accompanied by an ID code based on his White Ship stockholder's registration.
There was, as far as he'd been able to find out, no other Interested Party—no shareholder in the White Ship Corporation—who held fewer than ten thousand shares; few, indeed, all told. And for a generation, every other attendee at board meetings had been a mover and shaker on a scale transcending mere interstellar governments and alliances.
So there were perquisites and prerogatives in place for any Interested Party. Nirvana Control came back with a lot more verve then, jumping the Whelk to the front of the line for her landing, respectfully giving her a prime grounding spot and best wishes for a safe setdown.
Groundside, Alacrity and Floyt made no bones about having been through tough times. They stepped from the scarred, contoured snailshell of a ship in working clothes that had seen better days, Alacrity with his warbag and umbrella, and drew deep, satisfying breaths. Spica shone gargantuan and blue, its harmful radiation filtered out by the same human-friendly atmosphere that enveloped all the Carousel worlds.
There was no point trying to use aliases; in the Spican system they were famous and notorious, prominent in the scandal and fallout surrounding the Camarilla unpleasantness, which had already resulted in the imprisonment and in some cases the execution of dozens of important men and women. The Spican customs people didn't have much reason to delay them, except for a very courteous inspection to make sure Floyt's Inheritor's belt was on his declaration statement. Everyone was polite and in fact quite jolly; matters were concluded with dash.
The two friends asked no questions about the White Ship Corporation and deflected the few oblique ones that were asked them. Interested Party status won Alacrity—and Floyt, in the bargain—a permit to carry weapons, much harder to come by on Nirvana than on Luna. One thing it didn't overcome was woefully low exchange rate for their Bali Hai currency. Alacrity brushed the issue aside like it was pin money instead of the last cash he and Floyt had. Floyt concluded that it was the way in which an Interested Party was expected to behave.
A liaison officer was eager to get them conveyance to the White Ship Corporation's Nirvana headquarters but Alacrity declined; the two didn't dare go among enemies—especially certain former enemies—until they'd seen to a very critical item on their agenda. Alacrity grabbed his bag and he and Floyt boarded the golden VIP swan-boat that had been assigned to take them wherever they wished in the terminal complex.
Alacrity's first stop was a bonded warehouse, where he used a code in his proteus to claim a storage strongbox. "You left luggage here?" Floyt asked.
Alacrity shook his head. "My old man did, long time ago. So I could show the colors, I guess you could say."
Alacrity took the box and they proceeded to a rental spa. There they cleaned up thoroughly, lolling in it after the very limited comforts and conveniences of the Whelk. Floyt emerged from the max-regimen's abuses and indulgences, icewater-hosed and automassaged, pore-purged and at peace with Creation, to behold an Al
acrity he hadn't seen before.
"Good lord! You're an admiral? What time is the parade?"
"Awright, awright," Alacrity growled, but most of his attention was on the figure he cut in the vanity imager, adjusting his waist-length jacket.
He wore a captain's uniform of midnight blue spectra-flex, heavy with gold trim—embroidery and brocade, floral stitching, fourrageres at the shoulder, gleaming piping along the seams of his tight trousers. There were stripes of rank at his cuff, and on his stiff, high collar were insignia: the arc-and-cross symbol of the White Ship, same as the ones on the yellowed ivory grips of the Captain's Sidearm.
Floyt began donning the tuxedo the roboflunky system had prepared so exactingly to his specifications. "Well, at least we look the part—until someone hands us the bill."
"Moth balls!" Alacrity said, misusing a Terranism he'd come across. He checked minutely in the imager to make sure his cleaned and burnished pathfinders looked right with the uniform.
"I'm an Interested Party, Ho, remember? It says so on my visa. That's good for a lot of credit, if you know how to work it. "Alacrity buckled the shoulder strap of his Sam Browne belt, settling his father's pistol.
Once more Floyt was into his tailcoat, his stiff shirt and wing collar and white tie resplendent. His dancing pumps gleaming like polished onyx; he made sure the Webley was comfortable under his left armpit. His Inheritor's belt didn't clash with the outfit; the barbaric splendor of it somehow set off the impact of his Terran wonder suit.
"You mean we don't have to live in the Whelk, or a packing crate?" Floyt sounded amazed, adjusting his tie. The exact starting time of the meeting hadn't been announced yet, since those in charge were waiting to see who would attend. That left an uncertain amount of time to fill.
"Never again," Alacrity pronounced, fluffing the fringes on his shoulderboards. "Life's too good to waste on mere survival."
* * * *
An hour later, two stretch skylimos set down at the 250th floor landing stage of the Sceptered Isle, the best hotel on Nirvana and, in fact, a chartered duchy under local laws. The stage was crowded with the wealthy and privileged, the preeminent and astoundingly attractive. Dress ranged from depilated nudity to what looked like radiation suits; nonhumans abounded in outfits impossible to classify. Live porters sprang to offload the mounds of baggage stowed in the second stretch; the first carried passengers only, of course—two of them—since respectable people simply didn't ride with luggage. The steamer trunks, cased systemry, portmanteaus, pressurized containers, valises, data troves, and reinforced lockboxes passed from hand to hand to gravcart.
Floyt and Alacrity stepped forth into Spica's blue glory, the Inheritor's belt glinting against the high white and deep black of the tux suit, the White Ship captain's uniform speaking for itself with its insignia. They drew every eye there.
Conversations stopped midsyllable and people froze like statues. Everyone knew who they were from popular penny-dreadfuls and from the newsspews. An eroti-holo star who'd been getting healthy press coverage of his departure found himself abandoned by the reporters; mediaghouls flocked to the tall, lean-faced young man with the pistol on his hip and the Earthman with his air of authority and class.
Alacrity and Floyt got a perceptible nod of the head from the doorman, a looming, bioengineered Cossack of a man from Moloch who seldom deigned to give the run-of-the-mill tyrants or power brokers the raise of an eyebrow. Alacrity returned a Prussian dip of the head and Floyt a generous half smile.
The Wicked Wickiup would've fit in the lobby of the Sceptered Isle with room to spare for a trade fair. It was a tech-deco cavern, oozing a swank exclusivity that scorned the merely filthy rich. The lobby was busy in spite of—or perhaps because of—the hotel's severe admittance policies.
Their faces caused a minor upheaval among the otherwise unflappable clerks at the registration desk even before Alacrity showed his Interested Party visa. The two sidekicks were duly and almost instantly signed in, their luggage ushered away to a prime-class suite in the Imperial Domain tower. Floyt nearly had a fainting spell when he got a quick glimpse of the rates; Alacrity didn't even glance at them.
To cover his nervousness, Floyt plucked a gorgeous, outrageously costly blossom from an art-display floral arrangement, sniffing it ecstatically and inserting it in his lapel as a boutonniere. His pretended confidence was such that nobody thought to comment for fear of looking gauche.
It took stubborn insistence and an additional tip to convince the concierge that they preferred to find their own way to their own suite. Alacrity took Floyt's elbow and indicated the banks of guest liftshafts and shoot-chutes and carriers on the other side of a lobby the size of an amusement park. The scale of things was important; being noted and admired promenading around it was, for most guests, one of the main draws of the Isle.
Alacrity waved away whisk-platforms and flying lounge modules, preferring to walk. For one thing, it was a good time to start attracting a certain notoriety. For another, he liked floor level for the cover and fields of fire it offered, even though the hotel's security was legendary, and he doubted an ambush (or at least, a very good one) could be set up in so short a time.
He thought he had everything under control, but an unexpected hand settled onto one of his brocaded shoulderboards. Alacrity whirled, pulse hammering; he'd been just about sure nobody would try anything in the lobby.
She was, in Floyt's experience, short for a non-Terran, a few centimeters under his own height, slim and fragile looking, with a high-crested shako hairstyle in rust red and an all-over coat of zebra pattern dermafrosting that made her look like something good to eat. Her eyes were covered by a high-fashion wraparound commo visor. She wore minimal soleskins and no jewelry; Alacrity couldn't see any weapons, but that didn't mean she wasn't well furnished.
"Wait-wait-wait," she hastened. Alacrity, taking in her charms, let himself be importuned for a moment, there close by a pillar that resembled Waterford crystal. Floyt stood by with watchful curiousity, not missing the fact that his friend opened the thumbbreak over his pistol, and all the while Alacrity smiled right back at the girl like a Cheshire cat.
"You're going to the Imperial Domain?" she asked anxiously, almost vibrating. "You'll be living up there next to Circe Minx's place?"
"Flash that one past me again?" Alacrity wasn't quite sure he should shoot her, Floyt saw with relief.
"Circe Minx! Circe Minx!" she hissed with quiet annoyance. "Where've you been living, sport? In a cachesleep wrapper? Circe canceled her reservation at the Babylon and checked in here to shake the press. She wanted the whole Domain, but somebody else has the western suite and that's you, right? You'll be up where Circe Minx is?"
"Oh, she's the—" Floyt chose the word diplomatically. "Celebrity" would've done, but a lot of people would've substituted, variously, "sex icon," "siren," and in some cases, "hoyden."
"—actress?" Floyt finished.
"Aw, yeah, yeah," Alacrity placed the name. "So?"
"So, Circe Minx just got through diz-bonding her marriage to those three clone brothers she found on Tara," the zebra-hide said. "My name is Salome Price! If my network gets an exclusive on who her new dunk is, it'll mean a ten-point audience jump!"
Alacrity was by then fending her off. "Sorry, kid; I've got no idea what—"
Salome Price was fast, Floyt saw, as fast as she was hungry. She pressed an info-wafer into Alacrity's palm. "Attend: you tip me to anything you see or find out up there and I'll make it worth your while! I'll split the bounty!"
A reference to money got Alacrity's undivided attention. "Start again; what is it that you want to—"
He forgot what he was going to say next as a hand the size of a buzzball mitt closed on her shoulder. All around the three were big, alert, well-dressed men and women. They had the air of hotel security, but they were much tougher and more agile looking than most of the breed that Alacrity had seen before.
"You know the rules," a square-jawed, handsome
killer-type said to the scandal-hound. "You stay off the premises or we punish you." He and a woman had the girl secure with pinpoint nerveholds. She knew enough not to move.
"Nah, nah, it's all right," Alacrity intervened. "My mistake. Suppose she just leaves and we forget it, huh?"
The security people looked to their leader, the one who'd grabbed the newsghoul first, for a sign. He looked eye to eye with Alacrity for a second, then nodded. His crew closed in to escort the girl away. She was gazing at Alacrity, truly seeing him for the first time.
"Hey, hold on!" Salome Price breathed. "I know you! You're … Fitzhugh! And that's Floyt! Oh, Allah, Captain Fitzhugh, I want to talk to you!" She struggled. "Leggo!" The security crew paid no heed and in seconds she was gone.
The crew boss turned to Alacrity and Floyt, giving them an understanding smile; they mirrored it right back at him. The man apologized on behalf of himself and the Sceptered Isle. They assured him he should think no more about it.
He cleared his throat, hand going to the structured marsupial pocket of his expensive suit, which movement didn't quite make Alacrity reach for his gun again. "If you wouldn't mind, Captain Fitzhugh; Mr. Floyt? For myself and my severalmates and even more for the kids, you understand."
He held a slim, costly qwikgraf and a copy of Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh Versus the PSI-Mongers of the Yedeling Wormhole.
The western half of the Imperial Domain and its lift were theirs, the eastern belonging to Circe Minx and her entourage.
"I always like a sunset view," Alacrity explained.
The lift wasn't an elevator or chute; nothing so common belonged in a Domain of the Sceptered Isle. Alacrity and Floyt stood on a polished disc of semiprecious stone called tidalquartz, from Adam's Apple. It was fifty meters across and it began rising and kept doing so, past shaft walls lined with art objects and stained glass—so many things that Floyt couldn't begin to take them all in though he trotted this way and that trying, head swiveling.
"You're not supposed to." It came to him after a while. "Become familiar with all of this, I mean."