Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds (7 page)

"Free Import?"

"Yes. But all that will be explained in good time. In the interim, put your affairs in order at home and at your workplace. Then hold yourself in readiness." She stood, and he did too.

"There's one more thing, citizen." She'd left a shoulder bag at the end of the sofa. Now she opened it and drew out a wide, flashing band of some golden-red alloy. "You're to wear this, beginning immediately."

He took it from her in astonishment. It was a belt of placques so heavy that they dragged at his hand.

Each was decorated with cryptic characters and odd symbols. And each bore the same device, a broken slave's collar. The craftsmanship was superb; the placques glittered and chimed as they struck one another.

Deeply engraved on the back of the buckle was the name

HOBART FLOYT.

"It's an Inheritor's belt," Bear explained. "The executors' instructions require that you wear it from now until the Willreading." Her eyes lingered on it covetously. "It's too bad it can't remain here while you're gone."

She looked him in the eye. "Did I mention that it appears to contain some mechanism we don't understand?"

Floyt was foursquare opposed to putting it on, but she glared at him pointedly. With a sigh of surrender, he drew the belt around his waist and clasped the buckle. It closed with a heavy click. It was a perfect fit.

"It wouldn't shut for me," she said absently, her gaze fixed on the flashing, barbaric splendor of the thing. "It wouldn't shut for anyone. We didn't dare tamper with it."

Floyt considered that. "It perhaps read my DNA code? Or pore pattern or—but no, how would offworlders have known those?"

Bear gave him a hard stare then, without answering, turned to the door. "I'll be in touch with you when I've picked the person I want to serve as your escort. Precisely the person I want."

When she was gone, he removed the belt and examined it, reading his own name again, running his fingertips across the letters. It was odd to think that the artifact had crossed light-years. His heart sank once more at the thought of the danger and hardship the Inheritor's belt represented.

He stood looking at it for a long time there in his cluttered hallway, and reflecting upon his high compliance quotient. Resignedly, he replaced the belt around his middle.

When he clasped the buckle, it engaged with a sound of finality.

CHAPTER 5—VOLUNTEERS

Floyt had finally wrapped up his work. it took him longer than it should have; his mind was elsewhere.

He'd spent a good deal of his time distracted by fear of what was to come—of a thousand horrifying forms of death or mutilation, and of never being able to return for any of an almost infinite number of reasons. Inventing new and even more terrifying possibilities seemed to be the only thing at which his mind could work with complete clarity.

He damned Earthservice in his heart. He raged silently against Caspahr Weir. He hated Balensa and anyone else who didn't share his bad fortune. He condemned the job assignment that had long ago brought him into contact with genealogies.

He'd been able to ignore his immediate superiors' unspoken resentment—that was one small consolation. No one, peer or boss, even mentioned the Inheritor's belt he now wore throughout his waking hours. Word had obviously been passed that Floyt wasn't to be questioned or bothered.

His fellow workers had wished him well, in ones and twos, briefly and surreptitiously, on his "new assignment."

Supervisor Bear called just as he'd completed his conscientious efforts at an orderly departure, instructing him to return to his apt within the hour.

Now Floyt, Balensa, and Bear were in the little living room again; Balensa was quite cheery.

"Citizen Floyt may be gone for some time," Supervisor Bear was saying. If she seemed warmer to his wife, she was no more cordial to Floyt himself. "In the meantime, Earthservice will provide for you and your daughter, home-front heroines in a new kind of struggle."

Balensa touched up her hair; Bear couldn't have taken a tack that would have appealed to her more.

She was dressed in an outfit that would have been appropriate for marrying into the Borgia family.

Claiming the guest seat, Bear occupied couch center. Floyt had tried to keep himself out of the spotlight.

Now Bear leaned toward Balensa, who sat beside her. "During Citizen Hoyt's absence, you and your daughter will receive a special hardship allocation." She made a pass like a magician over a hat.

"Quarters and consumption allotments equivalent to those of a Bureaucrat Fifth Class, in recognition of your sacrifice."

Balensa was more than elated; she could hardly wait to see her husband go. Under the circumstances, Floyt couldn't much blame her. With the new situation occasioned by Weir's will, all thought of dissolving the marriage had of course been dropped, and, with an overly cheerful superficiality, Balensa was once again his wife.

"Of course," Bear cautioned, "we'll be counting on you to make yourself available for psychprop interviews, public service spots, morale campaigns, and so forth."

Balensa agreed fervently. Floyt knew Bear would get gallant, stoic, silently overjoyed support from that quarter. He also suspected that one of the people who would benefit most from the whole episode was Arlo Mote.

Floyt had had little time for personal preparations; somehow or other Earthservice had selected his guide-escort within a day or two of his first interview with Supervisor Bear. Now a huge plainclothes Peaceguardian waited outside the apt door. He or a colleague had accompanied the new Inheritor everywhere outside of workplace or home since Floyt had put on the belt. Floyt felt himself more prisoner than hero of the public weal, but no further attempts had been made to waylay him.

Floyt put a hand on the modest travel bag he was to take with him. Bear and Balensa had both assured him that his precious files and genealogical data would be safe. He was disinclined to believe them, but that hardly mattered to him by then. He worked at achieving a dulled, fatalistic acceptance of the fact that he had no choice but to go to Epiphany.

"This person who's to travel with me," he said abruptly, "who is … he? She?"

"He,"
Bear clarified. Balensa, whose countenance had suddenly filled with concern over the possibility of a female escort, now brightened.

"A veteran spacer named Alacrity Fitzhugh," the supervisor added. She knew her own inner relief—that after things had gone so terribly awry at Machu Picchu she'd been able to put them back on course again.

She'd been almost giddy with her own daring in the aftermath of that calamity. Fitzhugh had seemed an ideal candidate despite the fact that she'd been able to discover almost no truly reliable background data on him. What mattered was that he was, though young, a seasoned and widely traveled breakabout who'd survived dangerous situations and thrived in alien surroundings.

Perhaps as important, as a member of various guilds and unions, he could deadhead aboard almost any ship on which his principal, Floyt, might book passage, saving Project Shepherd enormous expense.

That was critical; the project's disastrous pilot mission had depleted the major part of its funding. Even if Bear had wanted to hire a qualified escort and pay his transportation costs, rather than flimflamming him into it, her funding wouldn't have allowed it, and the Alpha Bureaucrats were hardly of a mind to give her more money.

Until the fantastic luck that was the Weir legacy, which promised to make real her all-consuming desire to be an Alpha, her most likely mission scenario had involved dispatching a Terran spaceport worker to Mars for a paternity suit. The man had fathered a child by a female shuttle navigator, a Martian citizen, and their son had grown into a prodigy on the eerie Martian glass harmonica, becoming the rave of the planet. Under Martian filial law, the father had a right to share in the earnings, but round-trip passage for one to Mars would have taken a fearful bite from Bear's budget, and the outcome of the suit was far from a sure thing.

Despite that, it had been her best hope against cancellation of her project; she'd
had
to do something fast. And so Fitzhugh had been granted his visa; after studying his itinerary, she'd arranged for the mob and the incident.

Then, like a miracle, literally out of the heavens, Weir's executors had contacted Earthservice. The will not only promised the possibility of a major inheritance but provided for Floyt's roundtrip passage.

The expense of such a mission would be negligible. The Machu Picchu operation had gone ahead as scheduled, and the functionary had been duly conscripted.

Supervisor Bear still fumed at the fanaticism—and just plain bad luck—that had led to the villager's death. The matter of commutation no longer lay with the bureaucrats with whom she'd made secret deals.

It rested with Citizen Ash. Like almost everyone on Earth, she dreaded any involvement whatsoever with the man.

Suddenly much more had been riding on the outcome than her ambitions. Bear had been at risk of being charged with crimes that would bring her under Ash's jurisdiction.

Compared to that, even Project Shepherd was of secondary importance.

But she had reasserted her icy self-control, moving quickly and decisively. She convinced or coerced those who were already involved into helping her in a desperate cover-up, framing Alacrity Fitzhugh for the killing. It had entailed the slaying of the real killer, in order to keep him from recanting his perjured testimony, and insuring by various means that no other witness would speak up.

Ash had commuted the breakabout's sentence. That was both a help to Project Shepherd and an unnerving hint that the executioner thought there was more to the killing than did the court that had found Fitzhugh guilty. Bear had gone forward with her plan nonetheless; she couldn't afford not to. However, she'd tabled, indefinitely, pending plans to entrap other escorts.

She rose from Hobart Floyt's couch, the stiff pleats of her cloak of office rustling. Floyt and Balensa automatically stood. "And now, Citizen Floyt, we must be off." To Balensa, Bear added, "The household liaison team will arrive at the beginning of next shift."

Floyt's wife and the supervisor embraced and kissed like family. Floyt resignedly took up his bag and fell in behind Bear as she swept through the doorway.

Ash entered the room with a drawn, tense Floyt at his side. Supervisor Bear followed a circumspect pace behind and to the left.

The decor had been chosen to aid Floyt's peace of mind, not Alacrity's; it looked not at all like an advanced conditioning facility, but, in deference to fashion, resembled a chamber from the planet's vaunted past, a Victorian drawing room. The functionary became visibly less nervous when he entered.

Alacrity felt differently.
Prism-trimmed lampshades, tasseled pillows, and red-plush loveseats
don't have any business here,
he thought huffily. No doubt the antimacassars were wired.

He and Floyt eyed one another. The breakabout saw a subdued little groundling—well, short, anyway. But he
did
look solid.
No wonder these poor marks are happier hiding in distorted reveries
and vanished glory. No wonder they can only find courage in mobs.

Floyt saw a cocky, glowering young alien, not realizing that the breakabout was irritated in part by having to wear a patient's disposable suit. The adhesive seams had a way of coming open at unpredictable times, or stubbornly remained closed when it was least convenient. Alacrity was sick of sudden drafts striking his posterior in the middle of a conversation, or hopping around the lavatory engaged in desperate conflict with the crotch seam. Little wonder Floyt thought him surly-looking.

Floyt, educated by Earthservice psychprop, saw what he'd expected: a not-quite-human with no respect for Terra or her past. Arrogant, no doubt, in his sole talent, which was to hop here and there around the void, contemptuous of Earth, uncaring that the virtues and nobility of the race had been fostered
here,
on
this
planet. Interesting in a freakish way, perhaps, with those eyes and the silver-gray mane, but a mongrel still and all.

Supervisor Bear offered terse introductions of the three conditioning techs, wishing to attract as little attention to herself as possible. Chief Behavioral Engineer Skinner was a heavily muscled, white-bearded man who'd adopted his name from that of one of his childhood idols. With him were his assistants, Clinicians Subutai (a tall, freckled, brown-haired woman, attractive in a rangy sort of way) and Seism (a thin, balding man with a pronounced squint and quite the darkest skin Alacrity had yet seen on Terra).

Bear gave them all a basilisk smile. "I trust you'll all get along satisfactorily." She left before Alacrity could make out much more about her than the fact that he hated her.

Subutai and Seism retired behind what looked to be a Chinese screen, replete with dragons and landscape motifs, to a hidden monitoring station. Alacrity saw no guards or security system, but had no doubt that both were nearby. He was sitting on the very edge of a heavily upholstered wingback chair.

Skinner invited Floyt to sit in another near it, then said, "Please, do sit back in your seats, citizens, and I shall—"

"I'm not one of your damned citizens!" Alacrity glared at Floyt. Behind the screen, Subutai and Seism smiled and nodded to one another over their instruments.

Skinner smiled blandly. "You're right. I beg your pardon, Alacrity. Now, both of you, please try to relax."

Floyt complied as best he could; Skinner's appearance, dress, and manner were all calculated to reassure an Earther, and that helped. Alacrity edged back unwillingly, spine in contact with the crimson velvet, but sitting bolt upright. Pickups in the chairs fed more data to the clinicians.

Skinner began a rambling explanation of why they were all there. The breakabout interrupted, almost in monotone. "Hold it. I promised I'd go through with this, but I never agreed to pretend to like it. Or to be genteel." He turned to Floyt; Subutai and Seism read some interesting data from both chairs. "And I won't pretend to like you, either."