Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds (11 page)

The guards were grimy and looked both hungry and dangerous. Floyt opened his mouth to invoke Alacrity's conditioning if he had to, in order to leave as promptly as possible. The breakabout spoke first, though.

"Which outfit is this?" he queried in loud, curt Terranglish.

"Who wants to know?" a thin young woman asked in the same language but with an exotic accent like nothing Floyt had ever heard before. Her straight brown hair was very close-cropped, her gray eyes canny and direct. She wasn't beautiful, Floyt thought, but attractive in her intensity and command of self.

"Shipwreck Mazuma," Alacrity answered. Floyt looked to him in open surprise, and the Foragers didn't miss that either. "I got that name from the Doghouse Outfit, from Freebie Giveaway himself. By spit and by split, divvies and blood. That was back on Blue Ribbon."

The Foragers glanced to one another uneasily. "Well?" Alacrity shouted, suddenly looking cantankerous. "I'm claiming my entitlements. What're you going to do about it?"

"What about him?" the woman asked, nodding toward Floyt.

"He's with me. I'm not asking for gens privileges, darling; just a place to locker." Floyt wondered why that made the woman blush angrily and the men chortle.

She approached Alacrity warily and offered her hand. The Terran didn't see the recognition technique as they clasped one another's wrists. Nevertheless, when they released, she nodded, saying, "He knows the get-in."

The rest relaxed just a hair, lowering weapons. "This is the Sockwallet Outfit," she informed them.

Then, turning from them a bit, she spoke softly into a comclip concealed in the folds of her tattered scarf.

When she turned her attention back to them, she said to Alacrity, "Gunny's going to meet us at the main lock. He's our boss." She held out her hand again. Alacrity shucked his Sam Browne belt and handed over the Captain's Sidearm.

Foragers moved in and searched their baggage and persons with hands and surprisingly sophisticated instruments. They did it so thoroughly that Floyt almost objected until he saw that the breakabout, headstrong and quarrelsome as he might be, was accepting the inspection with good grace.

Half the guards remained behind. The two travelers were surrounded by their tatterdemalion escort and convoyed toward the lashup.

In a larger warehouse area beyond the platform, the newcomers saw much more equipment and cargo, salvage and scrap. It was all carefully sorted and tagged or stenciled, stacked, crated, and orderly. The jumble on the capsule platform had been camouflage.

The party skim-hopped up an incline toward the mass-driver's former control complex and catapult head. The members of the Sockwallet Outfit kept a sharp watch on their visitors. "How'd you fall in with the Doghousers?" the woman asked.

"Met up with them after they hit some trouble on the
Bragging Dragon
job."

She was impressed. "You too?" she asked Floyt. Having no idea what they were talking about, he simply told the truth. "No."

"What's
your
name, by the way?"

Alacrity answered for him. "Name's Delver Rootnose. He's not Forager, as you can see. Neither am I, really. We buddied a while ago."

Floyt held his peace, reflecting that Alacrity hadn't created a bad alias for someone interested in genealogies. "What do they call you, rig?" Alacrity asked.

"Simoleanna Coup."

"Simoleanna?"

"S'right. My father's name was Simolean Coup. And they don't call me Anna and they don't call me Mo. It's Sim. Got me, rig?"

"Sim. Got you."

The group sequenced through gates and open locks, up toward the lashup. The tunnel was vast, its floor, walls, and ceiling of seamless rockmelt.

They passed a trio of guards skip-sliding down to reinforce the detail at the capsule platform, and saw others posted, Foragers of all ages past adolescence, and both sexes. They were well armed, with energy weapons and flechette burpguns. Alacrity congratulated himself on picking the safest place on Luna.

They ascended to the outer door of the final airlock, which was secured shut. A monstrously obese man waited there; Floyt judged him to be of old-time Polynesian descent. He wore a gorgeous handmade sweater of off-white wool from Dunrovin and loose black pantaloons, with scarlet velvet slippers.

"Gunny, this is—"

He gestured Simoleanna to silence, gliding over to them like a balloon. He stopped before Floyt, jabbing a thumb into his quivering chest and announcing, "Gunny Ready-knob is my name. What's yours, rig?"

"Delver Rootnose," the Earther responded promptly, not without trepidation.

The Sockwallets' leader looked to Alacrity. "And that'd make you Shipwreck Mazuma, huh?"

Alacrity nodded.

Gunny Readyknob went on, "Well, if you were
really
in Freebie Giveaway's outfit, you know what Freebie keeps up his right sleeve. Now what d'you think that would be, rig?"

Alacrity raised one eyebrow. "Freebie's got nothing up his right sleeve, Gunny. He's left-handed.

That's where he keeps his neurosap."

Gunny switched to a language Floyt didn't recognize, filled with rasping clicks and aspirants. The Terran caught the rising inflection that made it a question, though. "Shipwreck" replied in the same tongue, finishing with the strangely Terranglish word "Shibboleth."

Whatever it all had meant, Floyt saw, it convinced Gunny Readyknob. He laughed monumentally, rippling, and plucked up Alacrity, placing a sound, smacking kiss on his forehead. The other Foragers guffawed; the breakabout endured it with a blush.

The guards slung arms. The whole group began to pass into the main airlock. Floyt's fears for his own safety had submerged his distaste for offworlders until now, but he found his revulsion for the grubby space tramps growing. Safety or no, he wasn't certain that he could tolerate their company in close quarters for long. Simoleanna Coup was eyeing Alacrity curiously. The breakabout seemed at ease.

The outer hatch, a gargantuan metal plug, swung shut, moving silently and smoothly. Floyt couldn't see how it was hinged. The lock had once been external, giving access to the lunar surface. It had fallen into disrepair and been stripped once the mass-driver had gone out of service. The Foragers had refurbished the lock soundly, though, and with great craftsmanship, connecting it to the lashup they'd established aboveground.

The Foragers were such meticulous engineers that there was no discernible change in pressure or sound as the hatch closed. The airlock was decorated with escutcheons, bow shields, and interior emblems from various spacecraft, like some medieval throne room.

Other members of the outfit were waiting in the lock. They closed in on Alacrity and frisked him again, thoroughly and with his silent cooperation. Floyt emulated his companion. The search was, again, complete but not rude. In the meantime the guards were handing over their weapons, which were stored in an arms room to one side of the airlock.

Alacrity's proteus was confiscated, as was Floyt's. "Part of the hospitality." The breakabout shrugged.

Gunny laughed mountainously, but held on to the Captain's Sidearm, which seemed to raise no objections from anyone. The travelers' luggage, which had been examined once more, still wasn't returned to them.

"They've got to be cautious," Alacrity explained quietly to Floyt as the inner hatch swung open noiselessly. "If anything ever happened to a bubble or lock or seal, the whole lashup could go, and everybody in it."

They moved out under a soaring, crystal-clear dome thirty meters high. "God in the Void," Floyt said, borrowing Alacrity's oath.

Filtered by the dome, sunlight streamed down on them. Connecting tunnels radiated in all directions-none of the construction matching, nothing uniform-to the disparate structures of the lashup.

The inner hatch was already swinging shut behind them. Keeping all interior hatches and doors secure was instinctive with the Foragers.

"Are the lunar authorities aware of all this?" Floyt asked Alacrity.

Gunny Readyknob had caught it. "We pay our taxes, Delver, and plenty of squeeze besides. And we mind our own business, too." Floyt supposed that would make anybody acceptable on the Moon.

The Sockwallet Outfit had built their lashup on the surface because, unlike Lunarians, Foragers preferred views and vistas, landscapes and the feeling of plenty of room. They built with whatever was available when they stopped somewhere. On their migrations, they took only themselves, tools and equipment to make their living, emergency shelters and weapons, personal belongings, and the sacred artifacts of the Outfit.

In the middle of the dome was a pole eight meters or more in height, a bizarre pylon made of many miniature charms and constructs, stylized faces, symbols, fetishes, mementos, and trinkets, layer upon layer of them, fused into a mass representing an informal history of the events and fortunes of the Sockwallet Outfit.

Alacrity skimmed over to it, with Floyt in his wake. If it could be avoided, Foragers preferred not to equip their lashups, which were always temporary, with artificial gravity. The Terran was glad he took fairly well to the Moon's one-sixth Standard.

The breakabout kissed his fingertips softly and laid them against the strange column in a reverent gesture. Floyt held back, sensing that he didn't have the prerogative. The reactions of Gunny, Sim, and the rest showed approval of both men.

Gunny beckoned, and they passed from the dome into the lashup itself. It had a haphazard look to it at first glance, since it incorporated the forms of salvaged vessels and vehicle hulls, building shells, and parts thereof. But the construction was all first-rate craftsmanship. The muddled architectural scheme had a certain consistency: variety and disregard of convention.

The lashup was carefully designed for its environment, but each of its component sections had a character and feel of its own.

"C'mon in, rigs," Sim bade them, "and join the fun."

Below, on the depot platform, the guards went on alert as another capsule arrived.

Its doors slid apart, and a tall, muscular man stepped out. He had a heavy-browed, blunt-nosed face; his pink scalp gleamed, hairless. He wore the loose plaid culottes and pleated shirt favored by many Venerian businessmen, and carried a slim attache case, an expensive Aladdin model.

He was pulling on a stylish mandarin hat, eyes to the ground. When he looked up, he stopped dead in his tracks. The Sockwallet guards were amused that such an intimidating face could show such bewilderment. They saw his fear of them, and the dawning realization that he'd stepped off at the wrong stop, written clearly on the rugged countenance.

He heard the capsule doors closing and turned, lurching frantically to hold them open. Plainly unused to lunar gravity, he got his feet tangled.

One guard laughed, not unkindly, "Hubble City's one more stop, rig." The man grinned sheepishly and called thanks in Terranglish accented with Venerian Crosstalk.

But as the capsule pulled away from the platform, a change came over the muscular man's features.

He returned to his seat with movements that proved he was well accustomed to Luna's gravity and sat next to the only other passenger in the capsule, a small, dapper man who wore gaudy knee breeches and stockings, tricorn hat, and frock coat.

"Fairly standard Forager lashup, Page," the big man reported distractedly, considering the problem.

Page sighed. "Do we wait for another time, then?"

"Nix. They might evade us again. We'll take them inside the lashup."

"Inside?
How're we gonna do that, Shilly?"

Shilly rubbed his block of a jaw. "I think I've got a way. When we get to Hubble, call Jord at the High Movers' Stop. Tell him we'll meet him in one hour, and that we'll need some special arrangements."

CHAPTER 7—WONDERMENTS

"The main thing to remember," Alacrity cautioned Floyt, "is that most of the unusual taboos in a lashup have to do with the air supply. Safeguarding the integrity of the seals and locks and hulls.
No
jokes about vacuum or leaks or anything like that."

"Alacrity, I don't
know
any jokes about air leaks." Floyt frowned as he tried to knot his floppy red-silk four-in-hand necktie properly. "Do you? Why in the world would anybody joke about such a thing?" He was more convinced than ever that all offworlders suffered from congenital mental disorders.

"Some of us do it to ease the tension. 'The air's always fresher on the other side of the hatch,' know what I mean? Oh, never mind! Just remember that that kind of talk's bad manners around here."

The Foragers had insisted on lending them festival clothes and Alacrity was examining himself, pleased with his image. He wore a shimmering, close-fitting shirt of spectraflex that rippled with color-shifts as he moved, its collar and shoulder seam raffishly agape. Along with it he wore metallic green tights and mantlet.

Floyt was resplendent in saffron yellow blouse with extended shoulders and sleeve billows, crimson tie, and brown taperslacks, along with his Inheritor's belt; Alacrity had insisted that a guest was perfectly safe, even from prying, in a lashup.

Guest quarters were the scavenged forward section of a Virago-class patrol craft from the old Solar Pact navy. Floyt had marveled at how the lashup was cobbled together with dome fitted to nacelle, pressure-quonset to hull, tunnel to warehouse. One missing panel in their quarters had been replaced with a big blister of stained glassplas, depicting a magnificent fleur-de-lis, out of some vessel's chapel.

The Earther, who'd avoided using
Mindframe's
complicated and highly unorthodox-looking head, had immediately tackled their lunar lavatory and found the experience comfortable, sanitary, and simple.

One of his major fears about space travel had been dispelled, contributing considerably to his good mood. Still, he said, "Alacrity, I'm telling you, I'd rather not have anything to do with this Sockwallet festival."

He saw the breakabout's sour look and amended, "I mean, Shipwreck, I don't want—"

"They're just showing us a little hospitality. You don't want to offend them, do you? Bad for the mission."