by Brian Daley
He stamped his foot on Pollolo's shell a few times to make absolutely sure the monster wasn't faking. He then indulged himself in a bit of revenge, tap dancing a few steps over the thing's braincase while Pollolo vibrated and chittered. Having done so, Floyt leapt down.
Now the creature could only make inarticulate sounds. Floyt looked the collar over; he'd been quite attentive, these past nine days or so. He located the commo feature and jabbed a laze-probe in where it would do the most good. There was a sput, discharge, and smoke.
He toed the collar over beneath Pollolo's antennules, which flipped and flopped on it. The claws stirred the merest bit; Floyt was back well out of reach with one frightened bound.
He backed of the magnetic field just a tick, trying not to picture what would happen if the light-duty field in the little baseplate burned out from the demands he was placing on it. Pollolo's antennules moved a little.
"You're not going anywhere," Floyt told him; Pollolo froze. "Just access the Most Secure Module for me and don't do anything else! I'll know if you do."
Pollolo didn't comply. Floyt ran the field all the way to the top again and held the tip of the laze-probe under the thing's sensors.
"One more chance, then I burn you smooth as a curling stone and plug this into your excretory passage!"
Floyt wasn't sure how much he was bluffing. Commo displays were already showing inquiries and contact signals addressed to Pollolo. How long could it be before somebody from the outer staff worked up the nerve to see what was wrong?
But when Floyt eased up on the field again, Pollolo's antennules flew feverishly to the collar. The Most Secure Module blipped, ready and accessed. Floyt increased the field again and took the collar back, sliding it aside and leaving the creature immobilized again.
Floyt's head was spinning and he felt faint. He fought the impulse to hyperventilate and brought up Diogenes on the MSM.
"Delver, this feels wonderful," Diogenes said. "What do you want me to do?"
"Um, you don't detect any fail-safes? Any booby-traps?"
"Not over the MSM, Delver."
If Diogenes was being forced to lie to him, Floyt would find out soon enough, he decided. "First, I want to make changes in the actijot system."
He switched his own code signal, then Alacrity's, burying them in the system, giving them both, in effect, unlisted numbers. A direct shot from a jot unit would still clean their clocks, but it could no longer be done by remote, nor could they be traced.
That left the problem of the spacefield defenses. But even Diogenes could only show the system to him; Mason hadn't managed to tap into it yet. As he was doing that, Diogenes reported an incoming command over the jot system—lethal charges to both Floyt's jot and Alacrity's, a little too late.
Floyt stared soberly at the Most Secure Module, wondering about the baron's timing. Mason had apparently decided to minimize his liabilities, like witnesses, right away, what with Dincrist coming—"
"Holy First Light! Diogenes!" Floyt hollered. A quick inquiry told him that Dincrist had already set down in the Lamia and left it, in the company of Sile and Constance, in Sile's space-boat, the Harpy.
Floyt patched through to a commo channel and got Sintilla. "Tilla! Can you get through to Heart?"
"Yes. What's keeping you?"
Floyt explained. "Tell her to meet us—ahh, at the central labor pool. Warn her that Dincrist has arrived on Blackguard."
"I'll do that right now, Hobart. Get out here; I'm waiting for you."
"I'm on my way. And tell them to hurry!"
Floyt broke the connection and got back to Diogenes. "Look, I don't want to leave you behind."
"That would sadden me, Delver—or shall I address you as Hobart?"
"Either. Is there any way to transfer you, or is there perhaps some form of storage?"
"I can transfer all that I am, through the MSM, into a storage cube, Hobart, circumventing Baron Mason's safeguards." A storage locker door controlled by the MSM popped open. In it were several blank memory cubes.
"Great. Is there any way you can arrange for this place to seal up when I—when we leave? Keep anybody from getting in or getting through to the MSM?"
"Oh, certainly, for a while at least. Shall I?"
"Not just yes, but hell yes!"
It took Floyt three tries to get a cube in right. While Diogenes was making the high-speed transfer, the Earther took a last look around.
He grabbed Pollolo's collar and, opening its seals and access panels, heaved it into the tank. There it produced sparks, discharges, and steamy minor explosions that made him feel good.
He thought about kicking Pollolo farewell, but that would only hurt his foot. Instead he took a stick of indelible stain marker from the storage locker. As Pollolo quivered helplessly, he scrawled HOBART FLOYT WAS HERE and TERRA FOREVER!! across the creature's back.
"Think of me next time you molt, Pollolo," Floyt said proudly, chucking the marker aside.
Diogenes' transfer was by then complete. Floyt ejected the memory cube and slipped it into his pocket, then pulled up his tunic collar to cover his naked neck and sauntered from the room.
Chapter 15
Chance, Kings,
And Desperate Men
"I'm not getting Fitzhugh's signal. Maybe he's not there?"
Constance frowned over the scope imager as Sile arrowed the Harpy toward the chalet. They were dressed in their regatta costumes again.
"He's there," Sile said, "and she's with him. That dimwit housemaid said Heart took the ring-key to the place." He trimmed the choice little spaceboat and dove for the landing oval outside the chalet's doors. "And besides, you don't pick him up anyplace else, do you?"
"No. Maybe Dincrist burned out Fitzhugh's jot with that long-range jolt he sent him?"
"Mm. Not likely." Sile kept the boat's chin gunpod trained on the chalet but saw no targets. "Maybe somebody's removed the jot."
"You mean that ice-bitch?" Constance smiled her dreamy, slit-eyed smile. "What Dincrist should do is give her to us."
Sile shot her a quick look. "Don't even joke like that; you're talking life-and-death trouble with Dincrist."
He came to an abrupt stop on the green-gloss oval. There was no sign of life.
"Well then, you must let me have Fitzhugh." She pouted, giving Sile's shoulder a caress. "And poor old dippy Hobart Floyt too. Promise."
"That's up to Dincrist, I'm afraid, my treasure." He checked the charge of a heavy-duty stungun. "After the jolt Dincrist sent through Fitzhugh's jot, he may not be able to feel much. I hope he's as strong as he looks; a shot like that could've killed him, and Dincrist doesn't want a corpse."
"Fitzhugh's strong," Constance purred, rising to follow him. She was wearing her long dueling pistols and, like Sile, had a jot unit on her belt. "Oh, yes; strong enough for lots of sweet education."
They carefully walked to the chalet's doors. Keeping to cover, peering in from either side, they saw Alacrity's body sprawled on the floor. There was no sign of Heart.
"Let's get him out of here," Sile said. "I don't like being so far from the Lamia with Dincrist and Mason due to go at it."
"What about dear, dear Heartsy?"
"If she's here, let me handle it. We don't want her hurt." He checked the doors. "The place isn't locked. You go around back. And take your spurs off."
Constance went, her fingernail sheaths making her hold her matched pistols a little oddly. Sile eased his spurs off, laying them aside, then waited, watching. Alacrity continued to lie motionless.
Sile went in, searching and pointing the stungun every which way as he moved to Alacrity. The rooms and alcoves and service nooks were all open, but there were hangings and draperies and a lot of other places for an ambusher to hide.
Alacrity still hadn't stirred; Sile debated hitting him with a stungun bolt or jotting him again before venturing to check him. If the young sod died, Sile could always blame it on the massive jotting Dincrist had transmitted just minute
s after arriving on the planet.
As Sile came a step nearer, weighing gun and jot unit, still deciding, Alacrity opened his eyes and shot him with the bos'n's pipe pistol Heart had given him. It had been difficult to judge the angles. Still, Sile took a pinbeam in the hip, leather breeches charring and burning, flesh boiled and steam-ruptured, and went off balance with a wailed obscenity.
He was bringing the stungun to bear, more used to it than the jot unit, when Alacrity fired twice more. Sile crumpled, pistol and jot unit falling from his hands.
Alacrity eased himself up, edging forward, getting a hand on the stungun. A sudden noise from the kitchen made him look around. Constance was just coming into the doorway, a presentation pistol in each hand.
He pegged a quick shot at her with the bos'n's pipe, but it was way off and she could see that even though she ducked away from it. Alacrity threw himself behind the cover of the pillowlift sofa. There was a whamming flash as Constance let fly at him, and a lance of flame shot clear through the sofa. It passed over Alacrity's back.
He started to creep forward, to shoot around the end of the sofa, but she outguessed him and blasted away at the spot, sending him shrinking away from the white heat and setting the rug afire.
"Come out, baby," she crooned.
He took a hasty look under the sofa—a very narrow space—and saw by her boots that she was still in the kitchen doorway, prepared to take cover if she had to. He reached up to pass his hand over a control in the sofa armrest.
"Show that pretty face," Constance sang, "and take it standing up." She put another beam through the sofa back. He hunkered, watching under the sofa.
Suddenly an insistent dinging sounded behind her, and Constance spun around, spitting in fright, letting go with both pistols, blowing to smithereens the cyberwaiter that was trying to come in answer to Alacrity's summons.
Alacrity was up by then, shooting repeatedly with the stungun. The bolts were weird, writhing patterns of green electricity. Constance screamed, her short hair standing straight up, and fell into the kitchen, rolling over the machine's ruins and coming to rest a little beyond.
Sile was dead and Constance was well and truly out. After checking them and beating out the several small fires started by Constance, Alacrity sank onto the smoldering sofa, trying to pull his thoughts together, reflecting on what would've happened if he hadn't recovered from the dart in time to realize the Harpy was landing.
He recalled a little of what the slavetaker and the dagger-dancer had said—enough to figure that Heart was at Grand Guignol by then. He was still a bit lightheaded from whatever they'd shot him with, but adrenaline had brought him around quite a bit, and he forced himself to concentrate.
He knew he wouldn't get very far wearing labor pool worker's attire; he looked around the chalet for something else to wear, but didn't have the Nonpareil's electronic access to closets and storage areas. The purple comic-opera outfits of Sile and Constance were both far too small.
What he did find in Sile's inner jacket pocket, though, was a lock transceiver. It was a beautiful instrument, solid and set with polished sunstreamers and glitterwheels. Alacrity stared out to where the Harpy sat.
He yanked a cloth off a serving table, sending its centerpiece flying. He bundled up guns, proteuses, purses, and jot units, took the transceiver, and hurried out to the landing deck.
The Harpy was an elegant craft designed like nothing he'd seen before, but reminding him of Aeroflow Neoclassic. She opened for him without ado.
Sile's idea of comfort was sumptuousness to a fault, decor in the idiom known as Narcississimo Industriale. But a quick recon told Alacrity the Harpy mounted a healthy arsenal and was fast and well equipped.
He located a medical kit and gave himself a half dose of Engine, to help counteract the effects of the dart, and did some pondering. Even with a buccaneer boat like Harpy, he doubted his chances of simply blasting his way in and grabbing Heart. Besides, the very capable Blackguard defense system would probably take unkindly to his shooting up Grand Guignol Compound.
The commo rig was blinking, having recorded a message after Constance and Sile disembarked. It took Alacrity a few moments to figure out how to replay it.
He was looking at the sweating face of Urtho Skate. "Sile, where are you? The security people are giving me a hard time about keeping the Mountebank up here in orbit. They had me shift to a new one and said that I might have to land or leave soon."
Orbital data flashed for a few seconds, then Skate's face reappeared. "What should I do? Contact me as soon as you can!" The message ended and Alacrity did some more thinking.
Recalling the Nonpareil's "Bright Eyes" hint, he tried Sintilla's proteus contact index, she having given him the nickname.
Sintilla answered in a quiet voice. "Bombastico here."
The connection probably wasn't being monitored—but then, he wasn't sure what the Blackguard security people were capable of doing, or how distracted they were. He addressed Sintilla by her pen name.
"Bombastico, this is some other Riffraff," he said, referring to Riffraff Alley, their housing area at Frostpile. "Listen, my sweetHeart's gone. I think she's at a party at Grand Guignol Compound."
"Oh! Well, I've got the Inheritor with me; shall we try to come get you?"
"No; I'll meet you there."
"Good. Don't worry, Bright Eyes; we know how to find you."
"Fine," Alacrity said, not quite understanding. "Um, do you have any idea where my date's father is?"
"No, but something big seems to be coming up."
"It's starting now. See you soon."
He scavenged around the spaceboat, trying to work out a plan as he went. He found clothing, but nothing he could squeeze into except a bedroom wrap.
Then he discovered a small locker containing costumes, masks, and other accessories, Blackguard stuff. Most of that was useless too, but he finally came across a suit-of-thongs, an asymmetrical one-size-fits-all network that glittered like black ice. He rummaged some more and turned up a matching gargoyle cod-cup of molded duraglaze, and a black kabuki-style demon mask with a crown of white plumage. There were also soleskins.
Single-size notwithstanding, the suit-of-thongs was a tight fit, especially where it stretched across his back and chest, but he could live with it. One of his worries was that the Harpy definitely wasn't the usual sort of Wild Hunt transportation and might attract the wrong kind of attention.
He had a sinister inspiration and moved quickly to the airlock. A few minutes later he was back in the pilot's poz, warming up the engines.
The ship had a control layout strange to him, with far more than the usual countermeasures and antidetection gear. The weapons systems were reasonably straightforward, though. Sile had landed in a high state of readiness, and Alacrity left things so.
He lifted off carefully, and got underway at a modest fraction of the speed Sile had used. It was a well-proven fact of the technological ferment of the Third Breath that presuming too much of an unfamiliar piece of machinery was a good way, as Alacrity himself put it, "to flunk out of life and get expelled."
He kept to low altitude, flew inexpertly and swore, all the while expecting the coup de grace from his jot. There had to be some reason Dincrist or Mason hadn't fried his follicles by now. The Slavetaker/Better had said his jot didn't register. What's going on?
He came into view of Grand Guignol Compound, an Omnidynamic-Sauvage pagoda lit up like the scene of an accident.
As Alacrity began his laborious approach, other fliers appeared and converged in a loose formation around the space-boat, like escorts.
At first he thought he was being challenged; he licked his lips, ready to yell fire commands at the weapons systems. Then he realized his new wingmen were only carousing Wild Hunters, perhaps returned late from a distant hunting ground or arriving at Grand Guignol after visiting other compounds.
He swore again and lurched to pull on the kabuki demon mask even though it made flying more d
ifficult. Its biocling microfield held the mask in position; the gargoyle cod-cup was already in place and even less comfortable.
There was again the nightmare mix of airborne fiends, animal figures, and threatening archetypes. They'd been doing some power-celebrating already; many were having trouble flying.
A crimson she-devil mailed in flecks of crucible-amber, her barbed tail coiling and lashing, swooped closer to the space boat on a jetstick with a goat's-head fairing. She showed long white fangs as, she moved in for a curious look through the cockpit canopy, then noticed what was strapped across Harpy's nose. Giving Alacrity a high sign, she rocketed on ahead.
He leaned forward a bit to make sure Sile's naked body was still secure across the spaceboat's downswept nose. It wouldn't do to lose his membership badge just then. Sile was still there, and so was the hunter's tag fastened to his heel by Alacrity. Alacrity's second shot had made it unlikely that anybody would recognize Sile.
Alacrity painstakingly brought the Harpy down on an open lawn just beyond the compound's walls. There was already a jumble of jetsticks and flight frames, hoverchairs and antigrav harnesses there.
Once down, Alacrity hid the bos'n's pipe gun behind a cushion on the couch in the main cabin. He left one of Constance's dueling pistols under the Harpy's Chippendale control console, tucking its twin into a hunter's game bag. Along with that went Sile's stunner and his jot unit.
The dusk had become a cool, starry, full dark. Sounds of revelry drifted over the walls. There were no exterior guards. Alacrity took the game bag and secreted Constance's other pistol by the convoluted, warty base of a thornbower tree. As he neared the incandescent arch that rode, free-floating, over the gate, a figure stepped from shadows into the half light and said to him in tradeslang, "You're a fool for coming here."
Alacrity grabbed for the remaining gun in his bag, then stopped. "Gute!"
Gute came a step closer, the lenses of his makeshift glasses reflecting the light. "There's nothing you can do in there, only die."
Alacrity had been about to let go of the stunner. Now he held on instead, keeping it out of sight. "What're you here for?"
