Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds (15 page)

Ortega, the dignified senior crewman who was acting as banker, silently registered the transaction on his master till. Everyone trusted him; he was also keeper for several of the ship's hand-throws, wherein crewmen pooled their money and took turns spending the jackpot groundside.

Ortega officiated without payment, for the prestige and respect involved. In the case of the game, someone had to make sure nobody smuggled in extra money.

"I always preferred dominoes anyhow," groused Alacrity, who'd lost quite a few gamebucks when the Chance card designated him Chairman of the Board. He'd been in Monopoly games where bluffing and side bets raised the ante, but this one was straight entry stakes, winner take all. It promised to be a long game.

A dozen men and Squeeb were present. The Hyperbolarian wasn't devoting much concentration to the game; he hunkered in his place, bouncing happily every now and then, the powerful aroma of his Shore Leave dissipated. His comprehension of the rules was vague, but he wasn't particularly worried about losing. He was doing his best to take part in the wisecracking and camaraderie.

"You sure the captain won't figure out something's going on?" Alacrity asked Juan-Feng. Only paying passengers were supposed to be able to carry on in
Bruja,
but covert rips were common on most ships where they were prohibited.

"Valdemar's too busy cooking the books, covering what he skims," was the answer.

Juan-Feng gloated over the money Alacrity had paid him, passing his benefactor a hip flask of knurled silver. Alacrity took a swig; his eyes popped and he fought for breath.

"Zhopa s ruchkoi,
you scum! You got a prescription for this stuff?"

"Piquant, isn't it?" Juan-Feng took a long pull at the flask.

The board had been set up in one corner of the lock, the six players and the banker crowded around it. The set was a breakabout's model, and could have been used in freefall or on the bulkhead or ceiling.

Onlookers circulated between the game and the general mingling. Someone was playing torrid love songs sung in Spanglaterran by a woman with a pure and sultry voice. Drinking vessels clinked and sloshed. A fragment of conversation drifted to Alacrity, " … so we houdini'd out of there before you could say, 'Breakers, please!' "

"Who were you running from?" someone asked.

"Langstretch."

There were growls and guffaws. The Langstretch Detective Agency's network of operatives was more widespread than any government, and for the right money, Langstretch was relentless.

"Can I have your locker when they come and get you?" Juan-Feng called playfully.

"I heard the Spicans are thinking about sending another expedition to the Core," Abascal, who'd just come in, was saying. "It'll take years and years."

"It won't come back, anymore than the others," said Duarte, a lean, handsome youngster who held a beaker of effervescent red stuff. He sipped it, staring at the bulkhead. Listening with one ear, Alacrity was contemplating building a habitat dome on Ventnor.

"Why not?" someone objected. "The Heavysets do it all the time, and they do it a helluva lot faster."

"Heavysets also think going through the middle of a blackhole's a religious experience," Duarte shot back. "And they ain't about to teach us how they do it."

I've heard this conversation a thousand times,
Alacrity thought.
Any second now, somebody's
gonna bring up the Precursors.

"The Precursors traveled faster than the Heavysets can," challenged the other crewman.

Duarte sneered, "The Precursors are long gone, brother, and nobody's ever gonna figure them out."

Juan-Feng landed on the Energy Syndicate and Alacrity collected his rent. Squeeb, swaying with the music, hadn't noticed Conklin's landing on one of his properties. Now Conklin rolled and moved, raising a middle finger to the Hyperbolarian. Squeeb wasn't in the least upset. Twittering,
"Salud!"
he merrily tried to return the gesture. It translated poorly in terms of tentacles.

Unexpectedly, Ortega commented, "1 don't know that that's true—about the Precursors. I once saw the White Ship, saw them working on her. There's never been anything like her."

Alacrity gauged the responses around him. The White Ship had been conceived to solve the mysteries of the vanished Precursors. Thirty years abuilding, she was more legend than starship. She'd been designed, begun, halted, redesigned, fought over, and redesigned again. She'd been the subject of endless corporate and bureaucratic bloodletting and very nearly caused several wars. Her official name had been changed a number of times, but she remained the White Ship, unfinished.

"Hell with it," Duarte spat. "Me, I'd rather crew for some rich man in the next Regatta for the Purple."

"Or rich woman!"

"Especially
a rich woman." Duarte grinned.

"That's not for you," Abascal scoffed. "Those high and mighty amateurs racing around in their little butterflies. That's not for a working spacer."

"But the money, old-timer," Duarte crooned. "And the good living. And the women, more beautiful even than a ship." A number of those present went along with that.

Squeeb happened to notice that Juan-Feng's token, a scotty dog with prominent tusks and a single horn, had landed on one of his properties. The crewman handed over the rent smugly. "I'll get it back soon anyway." He motioned to Squeeb's wheelbarrow, "You're bound to land on my real estate soon, Squeeb."

"Real estate?"

"Property. Land. Um … " Juan-Feng closed his eyes for a second, concentrating. "What d'you Hyperbolarians call it? Ramazz!"

The effect was amazing. Squeeb froze. "Ramazz?" He singled out one of his deeds with a tentacle tip.

"You mean, this represents ramazz?"

"Of course! I explained the whole thing to you twice!"

"You did not," Squeeb contradicted crisply. "I was under the impression that this was some kind of Tarot game involving wagering for confections, and attended by sexual badinage." He held up one of the tiny habitat domes. "This, then, does not represent some sort of bonbon?"

"It's a
house
you dumb-ass legume!" Juan-Feng screamed. "You build it on your ramazz!"

The Hyperbolarian was trembling, eyeing his deeds. Alacrity remembered what Gabriel had said; how the Hyperbolarians' consuming drive in life was ramazz.

Suddenly, Squeeb scooped up the game box's lid, making minute examination of the rules with one eyestalk. Several more roamed the board, and the last two watched his tentacles take stock of his money and holdings. Before anybody could stop him, he delicately marked each deed with a minuscule dab of territorial scent. He was now shuddering and rippling.

"What're you doing?" Juan-Feng screeched. "Calm down or I'll turn a fire extinguisher on you!"

"Now then," Squeeb said in a precise tone. "It's my turn. I'm going to purchase two habitats. Also, we've been putting money in the Free Docking square that doesn't actually belong there; that must stop."

He was turning the dice in his tentacles, getting the feel of them.

Alacrity curled his lip at Juan-Feng. "You had to go and open your big air scoop."

"All right, all right," Juan-Feng soothed, slipping the human players a wink. No doubt he figured they could gang up and squeeze the Hyperbolarian out of the game. Alacrity wasn't so sure about that, but he was pretty sure he knew what was making Squeeb shudder as the creature fondled his ramazz deeds and set out to acquire more.

Alacrity was pretty sure it was sexual rapture.

Floyt settled in, exploring the cabin and amusing himself with its various comfort, service, and environmental controls. The compartment was spacious, and if the accommodations weren't sumptuous by the standards of a passenger liner, they were more than comfortable to an Earthservice functionary.

Bruja's
officers and crewmen had treated him with the distant civility due a groundling passenger whose fare had worked miracles for the balance sheet. The Earther found their odor strange, owing to the foods they'd eaten, the substances with which they'd come in contact; as strange as the Sockwallets'

and yet very different.

If they were curious about his Inheritor's belt, they refrained from showing it.

The ship's atmosphere was odd to him too, duplicating that of the vessel's homeworld. Gravity was slightly heavier than Terran. Floyt's main objection was that the
Bruja
ran on the day-night cycle of Bolivar, which was slightly over thirty-three hours long.

But most services-including the passenger lounge bar and recreational facilities—were accessible during all five watches. He decided to keep to his accustomed twenty-four-hour day as well as he could.

He also thought it would be wise to wait for a while before touring the ship; that way, he wouldn't cross paths with Alacrity. He addressed himself to the task of becoming familiar with that part of the briefing file dealing with Weir himself.

Shorn of the psychprop editorializing and sermonizing, the story of Caspahr Weir was the stuff of legend.

He'd been born into slavery in the household of a planetary subruler under the Grand Presidium. His parents died when he was still a boy; a baby sister, Tiajo, was his only kin.

As a boy, he'd been extremely fortunate to be selected as servant-playmate to his owner's grandson.

He'd been educated and had even traveled a little. Weir showed nothing but loyalty to his owner and satisfaction with his lot in life until he reached the age of—Floyt used his new proteus to make the conversion—sixteen Terran years.

The file wasn't clear as to what happened then; Floyt couldn't make out whether that was a shortcoming of Earthservice's data-collection capability or simply due to an absence of information of any kind. What was certain was that Weir's playmate-master was murdered and Weir and Tiajo fled with certain unspecified data snippets.

Caspahr and his sister joined a failing underground movement. Within five Standard years, Weir turned it into a fullblown revolution. Within another two, he was effective ruler of the planet where he'd been born a slave. By the time he was thirty, he'd eradicated the Grand Presidium.

From there he went on to forge a realm of nineteen stellar systems, binding many of them to him with oaths of personal fealty. For all the shortcomings mentioned in the file—warfare, cronyism, stupendous problems with displaced persons, and the failure to achieve universal suffrage—Weir's rule had come as a very nearly divine deliverance to the former subjects of the Presidium.

Floyt took his meals in his cabin and began dipping cautiously into the
Bruja's
data banks. He abandoned his twenty-four-hour regimen and napped when necessary. Eventually, satisfied that he'd absorbed all the data he could assimilate, he cleaned up, changed his clothes, and went to tour the vessel, even though there wasn't supposed to be much to see in transit.

He stepped into the passageway and almost put his foot on a spiny little mass like a hyperkinetic sea urchin. It burbled in fear and zipped out from under with blurring speed. To his relief, it didn't seem inclined to go for his jugular.

A passing crewman called, "Don't you worry, sir, that's only Bartleby."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Ship's cat." The fellow disappeared around a corner.

"Cat?"
The oily thicket named Bartleby extended a snorkle of some kind, an extremity like a moist green drinking straw. It sniffled at Floyt, then retracted. Bartleby flowed up onto the bulkhead and wandered off down the passageway, leaving no trail or scent that Floyt could detect.

Floyt was undaunted in his journey of discovery. It occurred to him that Earthservice might even let him publish something on the experience if he hewed to psychprop guidelines. Consulting a map of the ship's layout that he'd transferred from his cabin's terminal to the proteus, he proceeded.

Floyt passed the vessel's sensory deprivation tank. He'd enjoyed sensedep on Earth, and found it restful. Still, he didn't care to float in darkness listening to his eyelids blink and all that while there was a starship to be seen.

He knew he could borrow an induction helmet and sample its artificial stimuli, but he wasn't sure that would be wise; after they'd disembarked from
Mindframe,
Alacrity had made very disparaging remarks about "skull-to-hull hookups."

Next along was the
Bruja's
sensorium, a miniature multimedia theater. Its menu offered none of the perversions the psychprop officers had warned against; Floyt didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

He ordered up a seat for one in the center of the modest compartment. Sitting, he selected a program, something called "Ball-Struggle."

He found himself surrounded by a shoving, struggling mass of shouting, sweating men in skimpy white loincloths. They laughed and roared and babbled in some offworld language.

He felt the breeze and the sun's heat, or something very like them; he seemed to smell dust and perspiration and incense. He couldn't help shying away from the pushing, heaving teams.

Rechecking the menu, he discovered he'd summoned up
Hakozaki-gu no Tama-seseri,
a ritual recorded at the rebuilt Hakozaki Shrine on Fukuoka, but originated in Terra's Japan.

The straining mob fought and grabbed at the prize ball, some sitting on their teammates' shoulders.

From the sidelines, priests hosed water onto the melee.

Floyt was openmouthed. Earth had nothing like the sensorium, at least not for functionaries. He picked another sequence.

He hung in space, near the center of a globular star cluster, lost in brilliance shed by half a million distant suns …

Floyt mustered his self-control and canceled the sequence before and around him. A limitless, rust-colored plain, spread under a fey red sun, vanished. It took with it tens of thousands of hooded, chanting worshipers before their human sacrifice could be carried out at his feet.

He sat for a few moments, shaken. At last he returned to the passageway. When he'd meditated for some seconds on why the sensorium would never, never be allowed on Terra, he continued his wandering.