Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds (23 page)

"If so, you'd have a difficult time proving it," Floyt pointed out.

"The situation here is so very peculiar," Brother Grimm declared, once more the mild-mannered companion. "It reminds me of the story of the wolf and the fox … "

While the Djinn drew his parallel, they made their way to the buzzball tanks. There were three, of which only one was in operation. The tanks' controls and those of other equipment nearby were linked to a games computer, a field unit. Close by the unit was an area for maintaining mitts, helmets, and other protective and playing gear. Tools, tubes of adhesive, and bottles of spray insulation littered the place, along with odds and ends of padding and webbing.

The five stopped by the first tank, inside which Admiral Maska was playing against Dincrist. Floyt stared, intrigued. It was the first such game he'd ever seen. He felt bad about what had happened the previous evening, and did his best to keep his aversion to aliens from coming to the fore.

Maska was a strong competitor. He and Dincrist bounced off the walls, ceiling, and floor of the tank, turning in midair as the gravity field was rotated, tumbling and landing neatly, rebounding from the resilient, transparent panes. They hurled and batted with their bulky, insulated mitts, throwing the charged, cracking white ball of energy at the black scoring ring. The ring disappeared from the center of a wall or other surface, to reappear elsewhere, whenever the gravity shifted. The two wore safety helmets and assorted pads.

The tank's field was set at one-quarter gee. Srillan gravity was close enough to Standard that neither player had an advantage in that respect. Dincrist, smiling and tanned, wearing white shorts, his silver hair waving and flashing, was the image of the aristocratic sportsman. He was also a pretty good buzzball player.

Alacrity had found out a little more about the man and his daughter. For one thing, Dincrist's claim to the rank of captain was based on a mere two voyages made as figurehead commander of one of his family's luxury cruise ships while a real skipper actually ran things. Alacrity himself had considerably more command time than that, if in vessels of less prestige.

The Nonpareil had been raised in a protective, almost cloistered atmosphere until her mother's death.

An only child, she now supervised the running of her father's numerous large homes, acted as hostess, and aided Dincrist in the family business. Dincrist's company and Weir had had many dealings over the years, and it was said that in recent years the Director had sometimes solicited Dincrist's advice.

Now Dincrist pressed hard for a final goal, the score standing at eight-all, the winning point available to either player. Random changes generated by the field unit kept both contenders cautious. Dincrist propelled himself upward and hurled the spitting, glowing sphere with one mitted hand, just as the gravity shifted.

The floor under him became a wall. He spun, to land well, while Maska made the change with an agile hop. The buzzball arced from its intended course, its ballistics changed by the gee shift. The target circle had moved to the center of what had been the ceiling but was now, to those inside the tank, a wall.

To those watching from outside, it was still the ceiling, and the players were standing on the wall, the soles of their shoes presented to the onlookers. Maska leapt and caught the buzzball.

Dincrist moved for a blocking jump, but the Srillan kicked off a wall and changed directions. He hurled with both mitts, overhand.

Somehow, Dincrist was suddenly there, canny as an old pro. He caught the flaring globe in midair, coming dangerously close to receiving a painful shock from the scoring ring. Then he whirled, with impetus built up on his leap, released the energy ball neatly, and scored.

The stroboscopic Scoreboard flashed Dincrist's victory. Maska relaxed languidly. The gravity gently returned to normal, drawing the contestants to the true floor. Sideliners entered the tank to hand Dincrist a towel and Maska a scent cloth, congratulating both on a good game. Several tried to claim a match against the winner.

Alacrity saw the Nonpareil standing nearby, taking it all in proudly. She wore a daringly cut exercise maillot of clinging, glistening opalescent fabric.

"He's good," the breakabout conceded.

She didn't look aside at him, but seemed to have known all along that he was there. "Yes. He seldom loses."

There was an edgy silence. Alacrity couldn't for the life of him figure out what to say next. She spoke first.

"I shouldn't be talking to you, or listening either."

"Wait now, just because I got off on the wrong foot with your father doesn't mean that I—"

"There's no changing it." She met his stare now, big hazel eyes searching luminous yellow ones. "I mean that. Now, you were fun to dance and flirt with, but that's not worth seeing you get hurt—and you would be. My father is successful in a business that can be very rough. He's used to having his way."

"Why don't you let me worry about that, Heart?"

"Tch
! Do you really think you're the first one to give me that he-man line? You're just not worth it, get me?"

"In that case, why should you care?"

"Because I don't want to see anybody hurt! I couldn't stand that again, don't you understand?
Not
again
! I'm not asking you, Alacrity; I'm telling you."

She turned her back on him, but he wasn't through. "Not good enough, Heart. The martyr act's very dramatic, but you're not in any danger of pain. I think you enjoy this. You make it easy on yourself, and the hell with anybody else, and we both fucking well know it."

He put a hand on her shoulder, to force her to face him. She resisted. Just then Dincrist grabbed Alacrity's arm and spun him around roughly. "I warned you."

"
I
spoke to
him
,"
Heart blurted. Her father glared at her for a moment.

Admiral Maska came up and attempted to take Dincrist's elbow. "I believe I owe you a victory glass, sir." Dincrist didn't budge.

Floyt, who'd been dancing adroitly around Sintilla's questions, noticed what was going on. So did the freelancer, her mouth popping open as the older man said, "This is your final warning to stay away from me and my daughter."

"Sure, skipper—unless you'd care to play a little buzz-ball, that is."

Dincrist's face broke into a feral smile. "Indeed? Why, yes. I think you're right. Just the thing." He began fastening his mitts back on.

The Nonpareil said, "Alacrity, no!"

"Alacrity, yes!" he parried merrily.

"You're both insane!" she flared, and strode away.

Floyt reached the breakabout's side. "Alacrity, I told you, this sort of thing isn't—"

"This sort of thing isn't 'this sort of thing,' Ho. It's just a friendly little frolic. Doesn't have anything to do with our agreement, read me?"

Floyt saw that, short of invoking the conditioning again, he couldn't stop things. He remembered how that had felt the previous evening and, too, what his own reaction had been when Arlo Mote tried to blind him with boxing-glove eyelets. Moreover, a buzzball contest could be monitored, and stopped short of serious injury.

"Ah, go ahead then, if you must. Get it out of your system," he muttered, stepping aside in disgust, almost bumping into Maska.

Alacrity was fastening on a helmet as he eyed a selection of mitts. A considerable crowd had gathered, and more were converging from other parts of the field every moment.

"I don't know that this is such a wise idea, truly, Citizen Floyt," the Srillan said quietly, ignored by everybody but the Terran. While Floyt agreed, he was incapable of doing anything but hastily moving away from the alien.

The crowd watched the two players donning mitts, pads, and headgear. Maska, seeing the revulsion on Floyt's face, was silently rueful.

The contestants entered the tank, stretching and flexing arms and legs, wringing out their muscles.

Alacrity bent at the waist to touch the floor of the tank with the palms of his flexible, reinforced mitts.

Dincrist did slow deep knee-bends. They ignored each other.

As they tugged and settled their pads, the first warning sounded. They went into crouching ready positions. From the ejector port a white glow began to emerge, the buzzball building its matrix. The target ring appeared. The buzzball shot into the tank while the second warning was still sounding.

Dincrist, winner of the previous match, leapt to meet it. It was an easy catch-and-land, since the random gravity-changing mechanism hadn't, in its computerized wisdom, seen fit to alter things yet.

Dincrist whirled and bounced, then threw.

But with the ball in mid-arc, gravity shifted. It seemed to the players that the world flip-flopped. The scoring circle had vanished. The buzzball struck a blank wall.

While Dincrist was the superior player, Alacrity had spacer's reflexes and was not tired. The breakabout bounced under the tycoon, off the erstwhile floor, to take the orb on its rebound. Pirouetting expertly, he whipped the popping energy ball at the black circle, so close that he singed the hairs on his arm. He made the first point of the match.

Alacrity pushed off the wall-now-floor smugly. Outside the tank, one or two of the onlookers applauded the goal, but Alacrity could hear nothing. From his point of view, they were all standing out horizontally from a verticle grass surface. It gave him an unaccustomed sense of vertigo. Sintilla, holding money aloft in one hand, was apparently trying to make a wager.

Floyt was watching stoically. The breakabout couldn't see Heart, but he caught sight of Seven Wars and Sortie-Wolf.

Dincrist payed no attention to those outside. He waited, breathing easily but deeply, poker-faced but plainly angry. Alacrity punched his heavy gloves together and smirked.

The sputtering, buzzing little sphere whizzed again. This time Alacrity grabbed it—almost. The gravity changed again; Dincrist's padded shoulder slammed into him just as he was stretched full length, leaping and reaching. The breakabout flew sideways, the wind nearly knocked from him, going
oomph
!

Dincrist reached, cupped, threw, and scored.

Alacrity picked himself up, now standing on the tank's ceiling. Dincrist the sportsman was oblivious to him, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. The gathered audience no longer mattered.

The charged orb took form again. Alacrity took a running leap, high up, to rebound off the wall. It was a gamble. If the gravity failed to shift, or didn't shift in such a way as to make his move useful, Dincrist would take another point and Alacrity might put himself into ignominy or a medical ward. But he figured the change he was banking for was due. And he was angry.

He was also lucky.

His move had been against eight-to-one odds, but had paid off. Gravity swung the two around again.

Dincrist missed a leap, skidding even at one-fourth his normal weight and in skid-resistant shoes.

Alacrity's momentum gave him a good bank off a wall that was on its way to being a floor. From the outside, they looked like they were floating around; to the players, the tank was rotating about them.

Alacrity scored. Dincrist checked him again, this time slightly after his release, padded elbow to unprotected rib cage. There'd been enough of an interval that it seemed intended, but this was a pickup game, and the niceties of tournament play didn't count for much.

They waited, panting, not meeting one another's gaze, as the warning signal heralded another buzzball.

Floyt, surveying the scene, saw that Dame Tiajo had arrived, followed by a covey of attendants and a number of Invincibles. The Earther hoped his companion would spot her; she would certainly notice any transgressions.

Presbyter Kuss was in the throng too, and First Councillor Inst. Except for Tiajo, just about everyone there was engaged in egalitarian jostling and jockeying for a better view of the match.

The players were on the move once more. Pretext had been dropped, Floyt noted with dismay; they were playing for blood. The buzzball flew like a sizzling meteor.

Alacrity caught Dincrist just right with his hip, but the older man spun away deftly, letting his whirling, padded elbow catch the breakabout. They both sprawled, Alacrity spirting blood in a scarlet mist. Then they had to scramble out of the way as the sparking buzzball bounced off the floor, zinging off on a new course.

The gravity altered once more. They fell toward the wall. Dincrist sought to extricate himself from the tangle of arms and legs by thrusting Alacrity downward, climbing over him in free-fall. Alacrity tucked in his head and pushed off with his feet, sending the other tumbling.

The buzzball, coruscating off the ceiling—now their wall—struck Dincrist on his unprotected bicep; he yelped in pain at the ball's jolting charge. Yet, for that moment, the buzzball was inert. Dincrist had the presence of mind to seize it. A second later, it glowed again as he sprang at the scoring circle. Outside, Floyt saw Tiajo snapping some indignant comment to an aide, no doubt on the thuggishness of the exchange.

All at once gravity reversed its dictates. This time, though, rather than gradually shifting or rotating, it simply increased. Both men were slammed against what had been one wall of the tank. Dincrist lost the ball, which fell away in a plume of light.

As abruptly as that had happened, the field altered again. The two plummeted back the way they'd come. It was clear that the tank's gravity was no longer at one-quarter gee, having increased.

"This is too dangerous," Floyt burst out. It wasn't his idea of a game, or even a sane way to fight.

"Something's wrong!" Heart cried. "The machinery's berserking! They'll be killed!"

She was right. The opponents were being rattled around like dice in a cup. The gee field was increasing in strength. If it went all the way up to Standard, both would be seriously injured at least, possibly killed.

Without warning, there was a new hazard. The buzzball, now zigzagging madly, shed lightning when it struck the walls. Its shock-level had been raised to one that could wound, perhaps kill.