Fall of the White Ship Avatar (15 page)

Her eye makeup made her look like a female pharaoh; her thick, musky perfume mingled with the cosmetics' smell, her perspiration, and the fragrances of the flowers. She looked to be a biological age of twenty or so, Alacrity saw, and had bright-red duraglaze glamornails on every finger.

She was pouring herself a shotglass of some violet liquor and inspecting them curiously, dark eyes file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (73 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

[Fitzhugh 3]-FALL OF THE WHITE SHIP AVATAR

shining and penetrating. "How'd you like the show?" She flipped the drink back and started pouring another.

"I thought you were superb," Floyt declared.

She raised her shoulders casually, accepting her due. She looked to Alacrity for another compliment but he blankfaced. "Do I know you two?" She rested the heel of one hand on a pistol butt.

Alacrity'd been ready to swear they weren't real weapons she was hauling, but suddenly he wasn't so sure. "Yes and no," he replied. "We've got something for you."

"And what might that be?"

"Some news," Floyt put in. "And an offer."

"We know about Loebelia Curry," Alacrity went on. "We know about her stock in the Ship. If
we
can find you, believe me, other people can, too. We've come to strike a deal. If you won't vote your stock, I want you to empower me to." He began slipping off his proteus.

She'd become uneasy. "I think you'd better go. We have nothing to discuss."

"Before we do, we should warn you," Floyt interrupted calmly. "Whoever you are, you're in over your head pretending to be Hecate. Your life's in danger, or will be soon if anybody's picked up our trail."

She was on her feet, taller than he. "What d'you mean, 'pretending'?"

"You enjoy the spotlight, wealth, and presents, and you still remain on Lebensraum. If you truly
were
Hecate you could have more of those than just about anybody alive, simply by going and claiming them."

Her eyes were slits painted for drama as her teeth clenched. "The company
did
send you to make trouble for me, didn't they? All I have to do is yell for help—not that I need it—and you two'll be ripped into such little pieces they won't be able to find you without
litmus paper
!"

"We didn't expect to meet you!" Alacrity protested. "We came looking for the real Hecate! You gonna have us killed for a thing like that?"

"I may have to." But her hands hung at her sides. Alacrity and Floyt relaxed minutely. There was a knock at the door.

"Well?" she yelled.

Another of Cerberus's heads poked into the room. "Crowd's gone and we're closing down the house, Hecate. The landau's ready, but some o' those lover folks are still hanging around the back exit."

She thought for a moment. "I have business to talk over with these two. Wait about ten minutes, then file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (74 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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drive around to the front. I'll let us out the main entrance and meet you there."

When he showed hesitation, she stamped her heel. "I said get going!" He got.

The woman who claimed to be Hecate was hooking a travel pouch on her gunbelt and swirling an expensive spectralux evening shawl around her shoulders. She fastened a proteus, a pricey bracelet thick with lava pearls and ardors, around her wrist over her long bodysuit sleeve.

"All right, what's this about? When you said Ship you were talking about the White Ship, right?"

Floyt looked to Alacrity for a cue. Alacrity thought it over. "We were gonna lock down a deal with the real Hecate; mutual profit, and all of that."

She was looking at him thoughtfully. "Well now, maybe we can still do a little business here. After all, I
am
Hecate, hmm?"

But he was shaking his head. "This kind of con will get over on a bilge-class world like Lebensraum, but fooling the people
I
have in mind would be just about impossible. They'd run a full I.D. scan on you, and you'd need access codes and computer passwords. The only thing
you'd
get us is shot straight into the Null Set. Sorry."

"Don't be so hasty!" She pounced at him. "Give me a second to think about it, here, mystery man!"

"Perhaps you could tell us what happened to the real Hecate?" Floyt suggested delicately, to head off what would most probably have been a snide rejoinder from Alacrity.

She shrugged again, the layered flaps over her shoulders rising. "Take your pick of the rumors. Most have her dying, or heading offworld never to come back. Some say she never returned from her last expedition into the wilds. She was supposed to be pretty dough-brained by that time anyway. My guess is that the marrowbugs and drillworms recycled the last of her a long time ago."

"Any heirs?" Alacrity asked.

"None that I ever heard of. Except that I cashed in on her name."

"And you appear to have done quite well," Floyt commented.

She put on a half-pleased, half-ironic smile. "It's not easy. But I grew up on a saroo ranch, and I put in a stint with the First Mounted Rifles on Mephisto. Oh, I've been here and there. I taught dancing and survival skills and I picked up quite a bit of cash modeling. It all seemed to come together in the Wickiup."

They followed her out and waited as she locked her dressing room, then fell in three abreast—with Alacrity taking the center, naturally.

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"What happened was," she resumed, "I was a little too smart for my own good, or a little too choosy. I thought I had myself a free ride with a high-roller who had his own starship. But when we got here, out at a company executives' retreat, he told me my end of the bargain. Gentlemen, I'm all for a good time, but there are some games
this
dame doesn't play. So he stranded me. No money, no way home, no documents.

"But I
did
meet the house surgeon. He was a sharp old duffer, a Hecate buff from when he was a kid, and he had a plan. I was a pretty close match as it was, and he tailored the rest to fit."

"So you just pretended to wander in from the wilderness?" Floyt asked. "And they bought it?"

She paused as they came to the entrance to the arena. "Doc pulled a few strings and got some company records altered so I scanned out as Hecate. And what the hell, people loved the show, even when we started out small. You can see how things've been going."

She gestured around proudly at the Wicked Wickiup, then saddened. "Only the good life was a bit too much for old Doc. The pile he made by being my silent partner was enough for him to whoop it up all the way to the mortuary." She thought for a moment. "I'll say this for him, though: he went out laughing."

"Well, good," Alacrity said, "but all that doesn't help us very much."

"Wait, now," she said. "Don't rush me; I'm thinking. It's time I got off Lebensraum anyway."

That brought Alacrity up short. "Yeah? Why? And why'd you think we were someone the company sent around to give you problems?"

She gave him a guileless look. "Because men tell me things."

"Oh?" Floyt asked, uncomprehending. She put her hands on her sleek hips, arching her back, holding her head just so, the shawl falling open. The effect was devastating.

"Oh … " Floyt said.

"Knowledge is power," she went on, "and there're a few things I know about the company that'll stand this place on its ear. And I can help you, if you get me off this rock. After all, I'm
already
Hecate as far as the company's records are concerned."

"There is possibly some angle there that we can exploit, Alacrity," Floyt ventured. Alacrity inclined his head slowly.

She clapped her hands. "We can leave tonight! I know a way I can get to your ship without the cops causing any problems. What d'you say, gents?"

They walked together across the shredded celluline of the empty ring. She was wide-eyed with file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (76 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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excitement, practically panting. "I just have to get a few things from my townhouse."

"Nothing that's going to make your bone-breakers or anybody else suspicious," Alacrity cautioned.

"I
know
how it's done, big boy."

Floyt broke in to head off another exchange. "Ah, what shall we call you?"

She spun on him angrily. "Hecate! Get that through your head; that's who I am: Hecate."

A sudden sound rose, a banshee wail that grew and grew as they realized they weren't alone. Floyt glanced up to the source. In the box was the hooded figure he'd seen before, slowly rising to its feet, pointing down at them like Death itself as the wail got louder still.

"Whatinthehell," Alacrity muttered. And inside the Wicked Wickiup,
a wind began to rise.

The hood fell back and for a second or two the trio below couldn't tell if the apparition was male or female. Yellow-white tangles of meters-long hair snapped and fluttered in the gale. Eyes like glowing coals beamed light down upon them. The robe blew back to show layers of crudely tanned skins and furs over tattered synthetics. A moldering gunbelt held a pair of rotting pistol scabbards to its sides.

Then it spoke—an old, cracked voice, incredibly loud and very high. A woman's. It was extremely angry.

"Hecate? You think it's that easy to steal
my
name? Slut!
Puta
?"

The young woman Floyt and Alacrity had come to know as Hecate moaned and made to back away. The vengeance demon wasn't having any of that, though, and gestured. Lightning bolts crashed overhead and a cyclonic wind blasted the celluline up around them. The gorgeous evening shawl was torn loose, to disappear into the swirling Jetstream like a crippled highsheen bat. The arena's equipment and rigging swung and clanged like bells. Floyt dimly heard roars from the menagerie.

"What do you know of Hecate? What do you know of the First Ones?" the old woman ranted. "Nothing!

Nothing!"

The ground suddenly threw them from their feet. Impossible as it seemed, Alacrity knew, it wasn't seismic activity or a local nuke that was doing it.

"We've got to get outside!" Floyt hollered, but they couldn't even get to their feet. The air was hotter and thinner than it had been, difficult to breathe, charged with ozone.

Of all the rotten breaks we've had,
it occurred to Alacrity in a split second,
this takes first prize! Getting
here just in time to be killed for something we even didn't do!

A tornado funnel of black wind and spitting starflare foamed around the real Hecate. "Do you have any file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (77 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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idea how badly you've
pissed me off
! I heard you; I heard you all! And I heard you on the commo, playing the First Ones' tones!"

Floyt tried to get some words out, wondering how and why the madwoman monitored the
Lightning
Whelk's
ship-to-ground communications. But she wasn't giving them a chance to answer.

"I'll show you how far short you fall of Hecate, you miserable mortals! I'll show you all!"

She gestured. The dome overhead suddenly lofted away through the air as if were a paper hat lobbed up and out of sight. The cyclonic wind howled louder as arcs and serpents of crackling electrofire snaked and spat. Alacrity grabbed Floyt's shoulder and started a desperate low-crawl escape, but they were yanked up from the floor and sucked into the funnel. Space and gravity didn't feel like they were doing business as usual, and it seemed time might be engaged in a job action, too.

Alacrity heard the fake Hecate's cry and a yell from Floyt that was cut short. And above it all sounded hysterical shrieks and laughter from the woman who'd assumed the name of an ancient night goddess and ruler of the Underworld.

CHAPTER 8—WISH WE WERE THERE

"Wake up! Hey, whatever your name is, snap out of it!"

Alacrity didn't want to. He had the vague feeling it would be a bad move. But somebody was slapping his face. "Wake up, both of you! That crazy woman will be back any second; we've got to do something!"

The fake Hecate shook Alacrity again and he felt the first stirrings of a monster headache. As he was trying to open his eyes, he heard Floyt moan nearby, stirring. " 'As the world comes back into focus … ' "

"Before I go to the trouble, Ho: is it worth it?"

"
Mff
! Why … yes, I think you'll find this amusing." Alacrity rolled over onto his stomach to lever himself up. He was lying on a cold flat surface that felt like it was spinning under him and he tried to clutch at it.

The place was enormous. The ceiling was lost in a void, but the smell made him suspect he was underground. It was an indefinable scent he'd first encountered in the subsurface Precursor site on Epiphany.

Floyt was rubbernecking from a sort of front-end pushup pose. They lay on a niellolike surface in an file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (78 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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open space two hundred meters across or more. In all directions, rearing up in levels like a jungle, was what Floyt recognized after an addled moment as an intricate, artificial construct of some kind, nothing organic, though that was what its form suggested. The components weren't pipes, wiring, or anything else so obvious and there was a certain flow to everything, like a water sculpture. Some of it suggested shapes Floyt had seen in the causality harp.

"Alacrity, it feels like—back on Epiphany. Are we in another Precursor site?"