Jinx on a Terran Inheritance (2 page)

"You two going with the gov'nor?" a ground crewman called from a low service dome.

"Yeah, what's the holdup?" Alacrity shot back.

The man trotted over to them. "The
Pearl's
waiting for the Severeemish, Queen Dorraine, and one or two others. Then they'll light here for you two. You're that Earther groundling and the other one, right?"

"I'm the Earther; so what?"

Alacrity frowned, knobby fists clenched. He was lean but surprisingly broad through the shoulders; for all the gangliness, there was a lot of muscle to him. He didn't like people giving his friends a hard time.

"I'm the other one." Floyt went along with it.

"Just checking, just checking. No offense meant. You can wait out here or inside, as you like." The ground crewman seemed to recall something urgent, and left.

The two looked up to where the incandescence of Frostpile met the night of Epiphany. Air cabriolets and sky gondolas, hover pavilions and skimmer pods, glided and drifted overhead, elegant and graceful.

"I'm going to miss this place," Floyt found himself saying. For him, at the very optimum, there would be the claiming of
Astraea Imprimatur
and the irrevocable return to Earth, where he would live out his life.

"Me too," Alacrity agreed, throat taut and almost vertical as he watched the gorgeous fliers. "Oh, me too." His gaze strayed to where Weir's catafalque had been and where the late Director's remains had been projected out into the Infinite a few hours earlier.

Floyt said something Alacrity didn't pay attention to right away. Then it sank through. "What data station? Hey!"

Long-legged and hurrying, he caught up with the Terran as Floyt entered the dome. No one was around.

They confronted the data station.

"I know Dame Tiajo said she didn't have any information on the
Astraea Imprimatur"
Floyt said, "but I thought I'd check—in case she, ah, overlooked something."

"Um. Good idea, Ho."

Floyt went to work, shooting back his floppy sleeves. A trained Earthservice info accessor, he'd quickly made himself familiar with Frostpile's system. He slipped off his proteus and seated it in a peripheral.

But there was nothing to record.

"No registration for a ship by that name," Floyt reported.

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[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

"What's it mean, Ho?
Astraea Imprimatur
!"

Floyt worked for a moment. "Latin, of course. 'Imprimatur' is permission to publish, or make known.

'Astraea,' uh … " He scanned some more. "Has to do with the Roman goddess of justice and innocence.

Also refers to the stars, naturally. It could mean 'let it be sanctioned by Astraea,' I guess."

"Let it be … huh." Alacrity shook his head. "But nothing about a ship?"

"Tiajo said Weir kept everything about it in his head, remember? I guess she was right. At least, there's nothing unclassified about it."

"How about Blackguard?"

"Just a tick." The displays flashed. "Not much. Allusions to illegal activities. Someone calls it a

'kleptocracy' here, just like Tiajo did."

"Big help. Let's get back outside."

"Wait a second." Floyt transferred the meager data, just in case, then reached for the proteus, but hesitated.

"What's the holdup?" Alacrity said.

"I dunno; some glitch. What's your hurry?"

"Unless you'd care to stick around here,
that's
my hurry, there."

Floyt looked up. The
Blue Pearl
was drifting in their direction, light as a soap bubble, smaller craft making way for her, an arresting sight even in the aggregate glory of Frostpile's nighttime.

"Okay; whatever it was, it's all set now." Floyt clamped the proteus back onto his wrist.

They hoisted their bags as the
Blue Pearl
settled onto the roof without a jar or a whisper. Nothing happened for a moment, then a circular hatch appeared in her lower hemisphere and a gangplank extended itself as music, laughter, conversation, and the clink of drinking vessels drifted out into the night air.

They jogged toward the shuttle, slowing a bit as they crossed onto the grand black and gold carpet.

"Hobart!" It came from afar. "Alacrity!"

Floyt paused. "Alacrity, did you hear what I—"

Sintilla, afoot, was just emerging onto the roof through a distant door. She had a small travel bag over her shoulder.

"
Trois fois merde
!" Alacrity spat. "Run for it!"

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[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

They pounded across the last meters of carpet to the
Pearl,
bags tugging and slapping, robes fluttering like disheveled banners. Floyt, almost twice Alacrity's age, stayed neck and neck. They galloped up the plush gangway.

At the hatch a Celestial waited in dress uniform. As they charged inboard, Alacrity yammered, "Present-and-accounted-for. Let's-get-this-crate-moving!"

The interior of the shuttle was a striking salon of terraced gardens, furnished alcoves, split-level dance floors, and assorted mingling spots, under a translucent three-quarter sphere. Servants circulated quietly with trays of delicacies, beverages, and other treats.

Passengers paused in their conversations to stare curiously at the two harried-looking late arrivals. The Celestial—like all the others they had seen, a big, tough specimen—gave them a dubious glance, then signaled the
Pearl's
bridge, which was concealed in her base.

The gangway retracted and the hatch swung back into place. The ship lifted away smoothly, without a sound. The chitchat of the passengers resumed.

Out on the roof, halfway across the carpet, Sintilla slowed to a disappointed trot, then stopped.

She was a small woman, barely 150 centimeters, who at times seemed a lot like an energetic adolescent.

She had a dimpled, winsome face and a mop of ginger-brown hair worn in kinked curls. She was dressed in dazzling, metallic cinnabar rompers.

"You
bums
! she yelled up at the departing Alacrity and Floyt. "Just you wait!"

She glowered at the
Blue Pearl
as it drifted grandly over Frostpile, allowing the passengers a final look.

Sintilla pondered whom among the stronghold's personnel she might buttonhole to find out what had happened to the breakabout and the Earther just after the Willreading. All sorts of delightful rumors were bouncing around the scuttlebutt circuit. She also wanted badly to know where they were bound.

Then she spied the ground crewman, lounging against the door of the service dome. Through the door she saw the data station. Putting on a cheery smile, she headed that way in her resilient, peppy stride.

Floyt and Alacrity, meanwhile, set down their bags as several servitors closed in on them with trays of goodies and others took their luggage. Selecting a long-stemmed goblet of greenish wine and a stylish little Perkup nasal inhaler, Alacrity sighed. "Now maybe we can take a few minutes out for a nice, relaxing attack of the shakes."

Floyt, munching a marvelous little hors d'oeuvre, a red ceramic mug of lager in his right hand, nodded.

"I endorse that plan." He gazed around.

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[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

The shuttle was a splendidly airy place, with sculpture and foliage, flowers and small trees in abundance, the plants buoying the air with their fragrance. The lighting was pleasantly subtle, the carpets were handwoven masterworks.

There weren't many other passengers. Queen Dorraine was standing alone in a small, lecternlike structure high and off to one side in the dome, staring out into the night, lost in thought. Her father—first Councilor Inst—had died only that morning.

The Severeemish envoys, Minister Seven Wars and Theater General Sortie-Wolf, father and son, stood with their two bodyguards. The four hulking males of a genetically engineered and selectively bred race, they dwarfed everyone else inboard.

In Floyt's opinion, they couldn't really be called human at all. They had long, bony, top-heavy skulls, putty-gray skin, nails like metal talons, and hair resembling white steel wool. They were on their way home, taking along Redlock and Dorraine in order to work out an urgently needed alliance.

In the middle of the
Pearl's
central dance floor, which was empty, a small pedestal of ornate Epiphanian wheywood supported a small, smooth, white porcelain box. Floyt wondered if it were some sort of goodwill offering.

No longer the center of attention, the two made their way to an observation point—the shuttle being mostly observation points—for a last look at breathtaking, ethereal Frostpile.

"There's Weir's suite," Floyt said. "You can tell it from the whatsit on the terrace."

"Causality harp," Alacrity supplied, his eyes locked to it. "That's what old Dame Tiajo called it." The causality harp was a shifting, glowing nebula five meters high, hanging stationary, filled with mists of light, shimmering phase-portraits, and hazy half images. Floyt could almost hear its eerie tonalities and deep, nearly subsonic hum. Tiajo had said it was comparable to wind chimes.

"Was she serious, d'you suppose? Alacrity?"

Alacrity shook his head slowly, not to signify no, but to show that he didn't know.

The
Blue Pearl
put Frostpile behind her. They realized someone was coming their way.

Governor Redlock was only a bit taller than Floyt, but broad as a door and powerful-looking. He had battered, canny features and a lumpy pug nose; the topknot that gave him his name was going gray. He wore the black dress uniform of his Celestials and a crescent gorget with nine assorted sunburst insignia picked out in glittering gemstones against black enamel, to represent the star-systems under his governance. He also wore an Inheritor's belt.

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[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

"You needn't have run, gentlemen," he said with a half smile.

"We, ah, needed the exercise," Alacrity explained lamely.

The governor looked from one to the other. "But, of course; that's understandable enough. After all, you two haven't been in any trouble for—what is it now? Nearly an hour?"

While Alacrity stammered, determined not to mention Sintilla, Floyt filled in. "At any rate, we're very, very grateful to you and Queen Dorraine. If you hadn't offered us a ride, we'd have been in an awfully bad fix."

He didn't need to add that they were destitute and desperate for the reason that Dame Tiajo, Redlock's sovereign, had denied them any funds for travel to Blackguard. Like her late brother, she disliked Earthservice; she therefore detested Floyt's aim to take the starship back home for the profit of the bureaucracy.

She was unaware of the conditioning that compelled Alacrity and Floyt to carry out their mission, and they were prevented by that conditioning from mentioning it.

"Quite all right. Dropping you at the spaceport's no inconvenience. I wish we could do more, but—"

Redlock waved one thick hand to indicate that that was the way things went. But they already knew the way things went, and one of the ways things
didn't
go was for even a strong and independent governor like Redlock to defy a hard-nosed old bat like Tiajo once her mind was set on something. Especially for some inconsequential interstellar spindrift the likes of Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh.

"At any rate," Redlock continued, "there were one or two things I thought I should bring up, the first being how you will prove your claim to your inheritance."

"I'd wondered about that," Floyt admitted, "but we never got a chance to ask anybody, so I was hoping you'd tell me. Don't I need documentation, or authorization from Tiajo? Or
something!"

"Your proof is right there," Redlock explained, waving at Floyt's belt. "Provisions were made by Director Weir—and don't bother asking me what they were in your case, because I don't know. But I do know that the belt is all the identification you'll need."

While Floyt was expressing his thanks, musical instruments began tuning up over by the main dance floor. Four young women—the same ones who'd played as a string quartet during the
Pearl's
voyage to Epiphany—struck up "frisking music" in the lively style originated on Murphy's Law. They played jingle sticks, sonic withes, ocarina, and fingerdrums. They looked the part of a traditional Daubin' Band too, dressed in one-shoulder shimmerskins with mitered vertical black-and-white stripes, pageboy hairstyles, and whiteface makeup.

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[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

The music sounded so jaunty that Alacrity and Floyt both looked up at Queen Dorraine, who was still silent and distracted in the lectern. But she didn't seem to hear, and Redlock didn't appear inclined to halt it. Clearly Dorraine's mourning rituals didn't require that everyone else take part.

"By the way, since you're here, Governor"—Alacrity seized the moment—"there's something else. Our guns, I mean. There're still in
King's Ransom,
I guess?"

"The fact of the matter is, Alacrity, I had them transferred; they've been inboard the
Blue Pearl
all along.

You may have them back when you disembark."

Now it was Alacrity who said thanks, and even the peaceable Floyt was glad he wouldn't have to face the glaxay without an equalizer.

In the meantime, another passenger padded up behind Redlock soundlessly. Alacrity focused in on her right away.

Typical,
Floyt thought, looking at his friend.
I know he really loves Heart, and I believe him when he
says he's going to find her no matter what, but his libido's always set on SCAN.