by Brian Daley
Around the field's perimeter were a variety of structures—hangars, offices, servicing facilities, and so forth, Floyt supposed—done up in elaborate rococo. Standard employee attire appeared to be maroon. Beyond the field was a ring of tall pylons maintaining the ghostly backdrop of an energy curtain.
The sky was busy with local traffic, as Frostpile's had been. But where there'd been variety in Frostpile's assorted vehicles, here there was something more like disparity: a glassy swanboat and a primered replica P-38 fighter; a flying chariot drawn through the air by stallions that Floyt took to be robotic; and a modern fast-attack patrol flier weighted with the latest in weaponry and detectors.
As Merrywell and others had mentioned, Blackguard was a place of masks, at least for the ruling class. A woman floated by overhead on a graceful vehicle that was a cross between a speakers' rostrum and an abstract sculpture, her face concealed behind a winged veil of gauze and sequins. The long, filmy train of her gown rippled and swayed ten meters behind her. Nearby, the occupant of a hovercoracle wore such a massive headdress that it was impossible to gauge sex, size, or anything else.
The two revivees labored to sit upright on the skid, trying to focus, looking around. Ground personnel and other members of the lower orders were for the most part unmasked. They were, as far as Alacrity could see, a cross-section of human types, some identifiable, some not. Except for one or two cargo vessels, starships grounded on the field ran to pricey private executive craft and luxury yachts.
Even in the midst of his suffering, his conditioning stirred Floyt and he tried to spot the Astraea Imprimatur. He could see no vessel with that marking.
Steadying his gaze and straining to focus, Alacrity studied the other captives—slaves, prisoners, whatever—moving around the spaceport. It was easy to tell who they were; they were unmasked and doing menial jobs and manual labor, some wearing those collars, none in maroon. And as Alacrity watched, one looked around, made sure nobody of any significance was watching, and opened his slave collar. He rubbed his neck and wiped the sweat away from beneath it, then clamped it shut again.
The typical local ran to Floyt's height or less and was inclined toward obesity. They were all well tanned from exposure to Invictus, Blackguard's primary, but looked to be of fair-skin stock, with light hair often bleached to yellow-white.
Some wore castoff outworld clothing, adapted as shorts or loincloths and halters. Others had on what had to be native attire, of pretty much the same in coarser fabric.
They heard footsteps and looked around dazedly. Skate was approaching, followed by two other men. One of these was also an offworlder; his maroon skinsuit had extravagantly padded shoulders and codpiece and he was tall, taller than Alacrity.
The other was a local, who wore shorts and eyeglasses that appeared to have been tinkered together from scavenged metal scraps and wire, the lenses mismatched.
The faces the three made as they approached told Alacrity and Floyt that they smelled just as bad as they felt. The fellow in maroon consulted a handheld unit. He was evidently satisfied with the readings.
"All right, Skate; both jots check out functional."
Alacrity closed his eyes, fighting to keep calm. At some point Skate had implanted almost microscopic actijots into Floyt and Alacrity. It was obvious why slave collars were superfluous.
With actijots to control, track, I.D., or punish slaves, nothing more was required.
Alacrity knew there wasn't any point in inspecting his sore, encrusted, repugnant person trying to find where Skate—or had it been Constance?—had implanted the jot. When the procedure was done right, the minuscule puncture healed virtually at once.
Floyt had come around, sort of. Looking over the bespectacled local, he concluded that Blackguard saw little traffic with the galaxy at large. The man had pockmarks and subcutaneous cysts, a missing tooth and two missing toes on his right foot, a fracture of the femur that had healed badly, and a disfiguring scar across his cheek. A misalignment of his teeth had given him a severe malocclusion that any advanced medical treatment could've fixed quickly; obviously, native Blackguardians weren't indulged with that sort of care.
Thinking of the actijots brought a blurry, fragmented memory to Alacrity, of some poor woman he'd heard of, a POW with an escape plan. She'd been certain she'd located her jot and done a crude amputation of her own right hand.
But she'd gotten it wrong and was recaptured. How'd the rest of it go? his mind reeled. She tried again, only this time she went digging and probing around an eyeball. Probably crazy by then; I can see how it'd happen …
He gave his head a painful shake, forcing his thoughts back on track. "Water," he forced himself to croak.
The local had a collapsible water bottle slung over his shoulder. Soliciting permission from the man in maroon by eye, he poured sparingly; a kindness, given Alacrity's condition. The breakabout drank; nothing in life had ever been so good. Finally, though it felt like there was no slaking his thirst, Alacrity forced himself to move aside so that Floyt could take a turn at the bottle.
"So then, everything's in order, right, Zenyo?" Skate was saying to the official. "Well, then, I'll be getting these two over to Orion Compound—"
"Correction: they stay right here, in the central labor pool," Zenyo stated coldly. "Captain Dincrist can claim them when he arrives."
"Huh? No, no, that isn't—" Skate sputtered as Alacrity and Floyt looked to one another in utter defeat. "These two are a special consignment, Zenyo; orders from Captain Sile. They're to be held under close guard at Orion."
Zenyo shook his head. "I know nothing about that, but I have my orders. They go to Central Labor until Captain Dincrist vouches for the transfer."
"But he didn't know I was bringing them!"
Alacrity inconspicuously put a fingertip to his lips. Floyt kept mum. Anything that distanced them from Dincrist was to be accepted.
At that moment Constance appeared, turned out in her purple cavalier getup, piloting a small hovertruck. Manacles were bolted to the truck bed, actijots or no.
In seconds she was in the middle of the dispute, hands on the gold-and-horn butts of her dress pistols.
"Listen carefully, Zenyo. I'm Captain Sile's second-in-command. These two here go to Orion Compound and that's final." She showed her rather long canines in a challenging snarl, half pulling a pistol. "Or do you want to test me?"
Zenyo rolled his eyes, chuckling. "Are you insane? Woman, this is Blackguard! Pull that gun on me and you're scorched meat." He gestured to the guard towers that were located around the hardtop's perimeter.
"So now," Zenyo went on, "try it if you don't believe me. And when you're a pile of stinking ash, things will still go just the way I've said they will. That is Baron Mason's decision."
Constance's breath rushed out between clenched teeth. She stamped one foot; the rowls of her ridiculous spurs clashed. She rammed the pistol back down into its scabbard.
"I'll just see about this," she seethed. "In the meantime, nothing had better happen to these two, or I'll make sure Captain Dincrist gives you to me, sweet baby."
She turned to the addled, rank, and dejected Alacrity and Floyt. "As for you two, Shipwreck Mazuma and Delver Rootnose, keep your mouths shut and don't go starting trouble. I'm warning you."
Then she went legging back to the hovertruck, spurs clinking, leaving Skate to catch up at an ungainly lope. The hovertruck shot across the hardtop, headed for the spaceport gate. Alacrity wondered why she'd practically ordered them to use their Forager names.
Zenyo then addressed Alacrity and Floyt. "Do you two know what'll happen if you get out of line or try to escape? Or do you need proof?"
Alacrity waved an arm in abnegation. "No, no; we believe you."
"Good, because the first warning is agony. Neither of you wants to know what real punishment feels like." He signaled the local. "Gute, get 'em cleaned up and billeted." He strode off.
Gute considered the two, adjusting his improvised glas
ses, and gave them the water bottle again. "Feel bad, hmm?" Gute asked in tradeslang.
"Very," responded Alacrity. "But my friend here mostly talks Terranglish."
"Oh." Gute sniffed loftily, then shifted to that language. "Well, just behave and you'll be feeling better in no time."
He beetled his brows at them as they slugged water. "But you start trouble, and we're going to have some problems."
Alacrity traded evaluating looks with Gute. The local stood some 180 centimeters and was less given to corpulence than most of his fellows. His safari shorts had been expensive when new, possibly a donation from a patron, or perhaps something he'd lifted somewhere. Gute wore a pendant necklace, anklets, and headband of intricate metallic beadwork, and worn but serviceable shoes.
Gute looked to be in good shape, and aside from the fact that Alacrity felt like a wrung-out rag, he had the actijot somewhere within him, ruling out any meaningful resistance.
Alacrity gave Gute a slow nod, saying, "We understand." That seemed to satisfy him.
Floyt finished the last of the water and returned the bottle to Gute.
"Now we go get you two cleaned up," Gute announced. "Get you some more water and some food."
That got them both unsteadily to their feet. They shuffled off after Gute in the warmth of what felt like late midday.
"Central Labor's not so bad," Gute philosophized as they went along. "It could've been worse. Offworlders who come in like you, jotted and all, they usually go to Grand Guignol Compound, or Circus Maximus, or one of the other bad ones."
"What about Orion?" Alacrity asked, stepping along uncomfortably, the hot hardtop searing his bare feet.
Gute made a birdlike gesture of the head, canting it from side to side, apparently to indicate that he didn't know. "Mostly games, lots of hunting. Dincrist sure loves that."
Floyt and Alacrity had already found that out. "Wait a second!" Alacrity paused, grabbing Gute's arm in excitement. Gute frowned at the hand until Alacrity removed it.
"Is there a woman at Orion Compound?" Alacrity almost shouted. "Tall, almost as tall as me; white-blond hair; very, very fair skin? They call her Heart, or maybe the Nonpareil?"
Gute eyed him dubiously, then answered slowly. "Never heard of her. But a lot of the Betters have masks on just about all the time, at least when anybody's around to see them. Many use names that aren't their birth names, I think."
Alacrity was about to press the subject. Gute gave him a shove in the direction of the central labor pool. "No more questions, you! Get going!"
Alacrity tried to accept the manhandling with good grace; there wasn't much else he could do.
Every structure on the field, even meldslab hangars and squeezebond repair domes, had been prettied up with all sorts of baroque trimmings and gingerbread. The control tower was a neotech minaret, heavily decked with detector and communications equipment.
Beyond the field's energy curtain they could see a sizable complex of gleaming spires among elaborate, lacy buildings. All sorts of air traffic moved around it at various levels.
Elsewhere, farther away, the uppermost portions of what had to be satellite structures stuck up out of the thick forest cover that began just beyond the curtain. There was a place built on the style of the Acropolis, another like a monolithic stone fortress, and a third that was all froth and flying bridges.
Gute led them to a row of low buildings tucked in one corner of the spaceport. As they went, he made sure the two were aware of basic laws of existence for labor pool workers. Most of it boiled down to a warning that if they worked and behaved everything would be all right. Alacrity knew how an actijot could turn the human nervous system into a grill of unendurable pain; he made a mental note to impress that on Floyt, and solemnly acknowledged Gute's instructions.
To hear Gute tell it, the work wasn't usually all that bad. What was important was to keep the Betters—Blackguard's offworld overlords—happy, especially by acknowledging their superiority.
They came to the central labor pool, low blockhouses with a minimum of baroque decor. Gute took them into a hygiene station and hosed suds onto them, supervising from one side as they lathered with broad-spectrum disinfectant-vermicidal soap. Much as it stung, they both welcomed it. They used dental lavers as they dried before warm streams of forced air.
When they were dry, Gute gave each a pair of threadbare shorts and a set of soleskins. Then he took them to a mess hall large enough for a hundred or so people. No one was there but the cook staff and helpers. After a short argument with a sweating, fleshy cook, Gute got them two trays of cold leftovers.
They ate tiredly but enthusiastically. There was fish stew and a herb-and-vegetable mash, along with fried dough. The sullen cook, seeing the shape they were in, had given them plenty, more than they could finish.
Nearly out on their feet, they followed Gute into a barracks. It was set up in small cells. In each cell were two rows of nooks, one atop the other, to either side: twelve claustrophobic sleeping spaces to a row, lined up like open-ended coffins, less than fifty centimeters wide and high. That made forty-eight in a low-ceilinged room five meters wide and about as deep. There was no plumbing except for a small drain in the middle of the floor, no heating or cooling, no air circulation or light beyond what came from the door.
Gute threw each a light sleeping cover, then assigned them nooks. "Sleep for now," Gute told them gruffly. "But hear me!" He cuffed Alacrity's shoulder; Alacrity endured it silently.
"Tomorrow you both start work. Work hard; no complaints. Or else I may think of you next time they want someone for the Wild Hunt or a little fun in the cages, understand?"
They understood well enough to agree to do their best. When Gute was gone, the two hauled themselves exhaustedly onto the ledge that ran along the lower row of nooks. Floyt had been assigned a place in the bottom row, Alacrity the one directly above. The spaces smelled of disinfectant.
"Feet in? Head in?" Floyt wondered. His eyes were slits; his bottom lip hung slack, exposing his lower teeth.
Alacrity decided, "Might as well sleep feet in; get to know the neighbors when they come back."
They slid into their spaces slowly, aching and groaning. The material of the nooks was somewhat resiliant, more comfortable than it looked. It was usually Floyt's habit to curl up on his side, especially in his bunk in the Pihoquiaq. Here, that was uncomfortable for him—even worse for Alacrity.
"I don't know what's going to come now, Ho; I just don't know what we're going to do next."
"We'll think of something, Alacrity. Get some sleep."
They could've fallen asleep on gravel; the lassitude of the cachesleep hangover put them out with a vengeance.
Floyt drew his cover over him. He dreamed of Earth, and his wife and daughter, and a life of comforting uneventfulness as a functionary third class.
Their barracksmates, who began wandering in as Invictus lowered toward the horizon, were a mixed bag of locals.
The two companions roused enough to discover that the men stored their few possessions in hinged compartments under the bunk tiers' ledges. Alacrity didn't see any one chief bully, something he'd been worried about, the type he'd encountered in boxtowns and crew quarters before. He breathed a little easier; he was in no shape to go up against somebody like that, even with Floyt to help.
The Blackguardians looked the two over, talking among themselves in a local tongue that sounded like it might have Germanic roots. It was getting dark, and the only light came from area illumination banks and spotlights around the field. Men began preparing to go to sleep. Alacrity saw that he and Floyt had missed supper.
Most of the locals wore clothing similar to what Gute had issued Alacrity and Floyt, but a few wore odd costumes, suggesting various historical periods and assorted cultures. Everyone began settling in for the night.
In spite of the snoring, the coughing, and the other sounds from all around, Floyt and Alacrity spent most of the night sleeping, their bodies famished for
real rest after the prolonged cachesleep.
They were rousted around sunrise, by Gute and others hitting the doorframe with long, flexible sticks. A fog had settled over the spaceport; the sounds of automata and insects could be heard, mingled with strange sounds from the forest.
Men hawked and spat, blew their noses with their fingers, and went off to relieve themselves. They scratched, broke wind and yawned, complained and grunted.
"When I grow up," muttered Alacrity, hauling himself out of his nook, to Floyt, who was also emerging, "I want to live in a seraglio." Still, he felt much better, and Floyt did too.
They stowed their blankets, then filed out to the messhall. After a breakfast indistinguishable from yesterday's lunch, the other men left for their assignments. Floyt and Alacrity, chivvied out by the cook, were left shifting from foot to foot indecisively, wondering what they should do. Alacrity was thinking about the ships sitting on the hardtop and wondering how good local security was. But almost certainly, anybody with an actijot inside him was asking for trouble by going into restricted areas.
Before Alacrity's plans had advanced very far, Gute appeared, driving a surface-effect runabout. Hitched behind it was a jarringly incongruous two-wheeled cart made of roughcut wood. In the primitive cart were several tools and a large coarse sack.
Gute was smiling, which gave the two pause. At his instruction, they piled aboard. Alacrity took a whiff of the cart bed. "Barn duty, Ho."
The tools supported that; they were manual implements of wood and crudely forged metal, unearthly variations on the hoe, shovel, broom, and scoop.
"Oh, well; that's not so bad." Floyt shrugged. At least it sounded better than being remanded to a place with a name like School for Scandal. Then he recalled some of the savage creatures he'd seen being used as saddle beasts on Epiphany, and he wasn't so sure.
The runabout's controls were childishly simple, but Gute sat stiff and erect and handled them with the dignity of an admiral commanding a battle wagon. They swung out across the field for the main gates. Floyt elbowed Alacrity. "See if you can spot the Astraea Imprimatur."
