Jinx On a Terran Inheritance

by Brian Daley

  "They brought that woman here—the one in white, who saved you from the Hunter. Someone said she's Dincrist's daughter. The rest is not so hard to piece together. Just seeing her, I knew you'd be coming for her. I heard that your real name is Alacrity."

  Gute had his jot unit in his waistband and a shoulder bag weighted with something that might be a weapon. But he didn't appear to want a fight; Alacrity relaxed just a little. "Where is she, Gute?"

  Gute motioned to Grand Guignol. "The main hall, I guess. Baron Mason will have her before the compound Holders in a mass gathering. They know she shot that hunter today."

  "How?"

  "Not from me! I've kept clear of it. And so should you! They say her father, Dincrist, will be coming to defend her, or perhaps take her by force if he can. It's the confrontation between him and Mason."

  "Then I'm here in time?"

  "This isn't for the likes of us! Little men like you and me get crushed between when the Betters collide! Now, come away."

  "Sorry, Gute. But thanks for the warning."

  "Ah, I didn't think it would do any good. Pay attention to me: the baron was very confident up to a little while ago, but something's wrong, I think, something down at the Central Complex. I heard some things from a slave I know on his household staff. It's got to do with Delver Rootnose—if his name is really Floyt—only they can't find him."

  "I know."

  "I thought you might. The baron, it looks like he's got a lot of the Betters on his side, especially the Holders. That Dincrist has a lot of people mad at him."

  "That's what he's good at. Look, I'm going in, but thanks again, Gute. Any advice?"

  Gute scratched his groin ruminatively, adjusting his spectacles with his other hand. "My best is for you not to do this. Next best is, do not be rash. Dincrist should be here any time. And don't try to take a gun inside; they're detectos everywhere."

  "I figured. Thanks again."

  Gute looked the Harpy over. "What a lovely bird landed in your hand." He backed for the shadows. "I should be back at Central Labor. Just one thing more: I heard from my friend on Mason's staff—well, she's more than a friend, really—that Mason jotted your woman."

  "Actijotted?"

  "The thing is, my friend happened to be watching when they did it, only nobody knows that."

  "Gute, where? You know how important this is. Where did they implant it?"

  He could barely see the man now, scarcely hear the voice. The madness in the compound was louder. "Alacrity, I want to know something. Are all the other worlds as bad as this one? Do the Betters and the rest of you take this kind of life everywhere you go in your starships?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Just answer me!"

  "Some places are like this. Hell, a lot of them are even worse, I suppose. But most are better, at least the way I see it. Gute! Are you still there?"

  "Her left leg." The voice was low but clear. "Behind the knee, in her left leg is where they put the jot."

  Alacrity called again, but Gute was no longer there.

  Sile's stungun wound up behind a decorative icon prism just outside the gate. Alacrity undid the clingstrap lashings from the Harpy's nose and slung Sile's body across his shoulder. The jot unit was clipped to one of the braided thong loops banding his upper left arm; he hoped he looked the part of a Wild Hunter. Holding his breath, he passed under the glowing arch.

  None of the maroon guards were on the scene, and at Grand Guignol all slaves were collared. Compound guards—most of them slaves dressed as menacing imps—were taking advantage of their masters' distraction and the general confusion to sneak drinks, whiffs of Perkup and Voltage, puffs of weedstick and styrettes of Engine, along with hugs and kisses from the serving slaves.

  Slaves everywhere meant that most of the household jot barriers were down. Still, just about every Better carried some kind of jot unit: bracelet or swaggerstick, magic wand or cane.

  Most of the household automata, fuddled by the comings and goings of so many Betters and slaves, were operating at their lowest levels or shut down altogether. Alacrity swaggered into Grand Guignol.

  Chapter 16

  Durance Vile

  The place was decorated in repellent Post-Tech Seraglio Fantastique. The huge, organic-looking lamp sculptures and light integrants shone and beamed.

  Many of the serving slaves had been altered to suit the mood of the place by the Betters who owned it, turned into freaks and grotesques. Alacrity passed a beautiful woman who was wending among the guests with a tray of drinks. Carefully tended blossoms grew through apertures in her skin, bobbing and waving languidly as she moved. Her feet had been altered to give her hooves. There was a man circulating to offer tobacco, opium, guillotine, marijuana, and other smokables. His nose had been docked flat and his ears made enormous, fanlike things that swung slowly as he went. He kept his eyes lowered to the floor.

  At the outer fringes of the sabbat, Blackguard's overlords laughed and courted, boasted and roared in twos, threes, or a few more. None were armed. Alacrity stepped around a pair of satyrs who were coupling on the floor and continued on.

  Carrying proof of identity over his shoulder, he was greeted with an occasional raised goblet, congratulatory slap, or smile. But by and large he attracted little notice; a lot of other Wild Hunters had already appeared with their catches.

  He passed into the main hall of Grand Guignol. It was the size of several indoor sally ball courts, with a balcony three meters or so above the main floor, running completely around the room. The celebration was a madhouse.

  Displayed along the side walls were some of Blackguard's other fauna: bunches of game flyers, a great-antlered beast burned nearly in two, sinewy predators now almost comically elongated in limp death, and a thing like a wheel of scaled muscle.

  But the entire far wall was lined with tagged human bodies, quarry hung by their heels or from hooks. Some were marked by energy shots, others by pellet weapons. Many carried marks of energy scourgings.

  In the crowd were Betters he recognized from various labor details, but he couldn't see Baron Mason or Heart. A lot of the more important Holders and other Betters were gathered near the fireplace at the far end, by the ranked quarry. They stood on a transept a half meter above the rest of the crowd.

  Around the room large screens, projectors, and image tanks played scenes from the hunt, which most of the guests ignored unless they had been involved in the particular kill or chase being shown.

  Alacrity moved off along the balcony, above the main bedlam. To his left a servant was jostled, spilling a drink. A drunken Better cursed when the liquor splashed his bare leg. He whipped out a jot unit and fired a powerful jolt. The edge of the beam caught Alacrity.

  He missed a step, almost fell, grabbing a lamp sculpture for balance, and bit his lip hard behind the kabuki mask to keep from yelling out. There was laughter and jeering.

  "Stea-deee!"

  "Stop off on the way, did you?"

  "Need a little rest, honey? I'll show you where to lie down!"

  Two servants ran to lift Sile's body and hustled it down to be hung with the others. Alacrity reached to take a drink from a passing tray then opted not to; the dart and the Engine had been more than enough chemical trouble for the time being.

  Seconds later he forgot about that completely. A side entrance opened, an enormous circular stone slab that rolled aside, and Mason strode out onto the transept, dressed in formal robes rather than hunt clothes.

  Behind Mason followed two of the maroon-suited guards, male and female, both unarmed. Between them they held Heart. She looked as if she was groggy but seemed otherwise unhurt. She was still in her white-on-white valkyrie getup.

  Alacrity shouldered around a Better who was yelling details of his catch, and was about to work his way down a short, broad stairway thronging with drugged and drunken Betters, when he found his path blocked by a short, solid-looking Better in a suit of copper wire. He looked like a wound armatu
re, his mask a sequined casque with a mime face. At his side was a small woman with a sturdy grace to her and an ethereal facemask. Alacrity was about to edge around them when the woman spoke to him. "Buy you a drink, Bright Eyes?"

  "Over this way," Floyt said from his mime mask. He led them around the balcony to a little alcove from which they could see Baron Mason and Heart. In a niche there was a household systems terminal.

  Mason was standing with the other Holders and Betters, chatting calmly but not drinking or laughing. Heart had been seated on a chair with a maroon on either side of her.

  "Don't tell me you traced me," Alacrity said. "I don't show up on the tracers any more, or something."

  "You don't show up under your old code," Floyt corrected. "We've both got new ones. I'll tell you about it later."

  "Do either of you know what Dincrist's doing, or where he is?" Alacrity said.

  "From what we could find out, he's been working on damage control since he got here," Sintilla said.

  "It's all coming to a boil between him and Mason," Floyt added.

  "They deserve each other," Alacrity snarled, rapping his knuckles harder and harder against a stone corbel.

  "Hobart's done some sabotage," Sintilla said. "Mason and Dincrist both know it by now, but they're too busy with the main event to worry about us."

  "The maroon guards and the other free staff will probably stay neutral in the power struggle," Floyt predicted. "But if the Betters all side with one of the two, the other's going down in flames."

  "I've got Sile's spaceboat outside," Alacrity said. "I don't know how long it will be before somebody figures out what's going on. We've got to get Heart somehow and get to the spacefield—"

  "Hobart's got a plan," Sintilla announced, "a pretty cute one."

  Floyt nodded. "But we have to wait," he said.

  "For what, Ho?"

  "Dincrist."

  "No-no-no! That might be too late! They've implanted an actijot in Heart."

  Floyt drew a deep breath, light glittering across his copper windings. "I know the timing is tight. Hell, they might break into the Inner Sanctum any time now."

  "I don't know what that means, Ho, but it sounds bad."

  "It could be. Still, we have to have both Dincrist and Mason here together for this thing to work."

  "For what to work? What've you got—"

  He shut up as the volume of noise in the room dropped. Dincrist had appeared. He was backed by a cluster of other Betters and Holders. They were all turned out in formal dress, all masked except for Heart's father.

  The merrymakers parted before Dincrist and his supporters, who came down the very center of the hall. Mason looked steady, but his contingent closed in behind him. He put one hand on the Nonpareil's shoulder, the other on the jot unit hooked on his belt.

  When Heart recognized her father, hope came into her features. She started to rise. Mason pushed her back down in her seat and whispered something to her. She stayed put.

  Dincrist came up to the transept, halting a few paces from his daughter. The two factions measured one another silently for a few moments.

  "I'm here for my daughter," Dincrist finally said. He turned to take in the crowd with a swing of his hand. "And I'm here to say something to all of you as well!" The crowd was interested and eager, still filled with bloodlust.

  "You speak when I permit you to speak," Mason said.

  "Your Citadel Compound is controlled by my people right now," Dincrist informed him. "And there are others here who'll stand with me when they hear what I have to say."

  Mason smiled coldly and filled the room with his voice. "An arriviste like you is always shocked when he learns how wrong he can be."

  "I want my daughter back."

  "You may take her when you leave, Captain Dincrist, as I promised you. But first I'd like the Betters of Blackguard to see something."

  He gestured. Scenes from the hunt disappeared from the screens and projectors, replaced by other images.

  Data began running, showing Dincrist's attempts to bribe and intrigue his way into control, to secure financial and blackmail leverage against the Betters. People in the audience who saw their corporations or governments or confidants mentioned—who understood then what Dincrist had been trying to do to them—hollered or bellowed as though they'd been gored. Others caught the fear and anger like a plague, taking up the outcry.

  Dincrist glanced around impassively at the shaking fists and concealing masks. He didn't answer.

  It would only make them madder, Alacrity saw. Floyt watched with a certain professional detachment; some of the material was stuff he'd gathered for Mason, and he'd wondered how the baron was going to use it.

  Mason didn't have to defeat Dincrist physically now. Dincrist would be lucky to get off Blackguard in one piece. In any case, his influence among the Betters was broken; even his own supporters were drawing away from him.

  "I hate to see Mason win, but I'd've hated to see Dincrist win even worse," Sintilla said.

  "They're gonna tear him apart in a second," Alacrity yelled to Floyt over the uproar. "They might go for Heart too! Do something!"

  Floyt was making putting-off motions to him, fiddling with the systems terminal, into which he'd inserted an AI memory cube. After an interminable wait, the familiar voice came like a miracle. "Are you safe, Hobart?"

  "Yes, yes, Diogenes, for the moment. Can you run that information for me?"

  "Beginning now."

  The incriminating evidence against Dincrist stopped flowing and everything went blank as Diogenes assumed control of the household systems. The AI began displaying the information Mason had had Floyt digging up.

  The assembled Betters were treated to an overdub of Mason's instructions to Pollolo and Floyt, while they scanned the damning exhibits. Mason was quite simply dumbfounded.

  "What have you been up to?" somebody howled.

  "They're in it together!"

  "Traitors!"

  The mob started closing in on the two factions, pointing fingers, waving fists and riding crops, cigar holders and ashtray stands. Punches were exchanged. The slave guards were forced aside or downed by jot charges. Alacrity and Floyt ducked back, to avoid stray jolts.

  "Look alive!" Sintilla yelped. "This is it!" She was off at a run, the two friends right behind her, around the balcony to a spot above the commotion. With all that was going on, few people noticed or cared when the three climbed over the rail and dropped onto the transept.

  "Get her and stay close behind me!" Alacrity shouted. He wormed his way through the crowd in Mason's direction.

  The baron and Dincrist were immobilized by the vengeful Betters, while their followers tried to reason with the mob. Information was still flashing, even though Floyt had recovered and pocketed Diogenes; the AI had dumped enough data into the household system to keep the screens and displays lit for some time to come. Every so often a man or woman in hunt disguise would wail as some personal matter or secret was illuminated. The crowd milled and struggled.

  No one was watching Heart as Floyt and Sintilla barged their way to her and pulled her out of the chair. Even stronger and more agile than she looked, Sintilla did her share of the blocking. Floyt saw a hefty male Better back up against her; she sent him tumbling with a leg trip. With Heart half in tow, half on her own, Sintilla and Floyt began fighting their way through the press.

  Alacrity, capitalizing on height and strength, made good headway through the thronging Betters. Many of them were taller and far heavier, but the breakabout was well trained, in good shape, and highly motivated.

  He reached Mason, who was turned toward another Better, exchanging loud accusations. The other had removed his mask; it was Matterse, who'd used the garderobe when Alacrity and Floyt were down below.

  "You Judas!" Matterse was bellowing. "You treacherous old bugger!"

  "Shut up, you ignorant young parvenue! Shut up! And take your hands off me!"

  Alacrity eased up behind Mason a
nd grabbed his right arm. Plenty of people were accosting the baron and jabbing fingers at him, but Alacrity's move opened the floodgate, unleashing real violence and determined layings-on of hands.

  Alacrity worked fast, unclasping Mason's proteus and dragging it off his wrist. Mason's indignant protest was lost in the melee, but he managed to swing his head around, seeing the silver-in-gray banner of hair waving behind the black kabuki mask. "Fitzhugh!"

  Mason went after him but was held fast by the press of his accosters. Alacrity, disappearing into the crowd, waving the proteus tantalizingly, called, "See you in the garderobe!"

  Mason was excoriating everyone around him, pointing to Alacrity, crying, "Stop him! He's the one behind all of this! He and his friends! Stop them, you fools!"

  But at that moment a new image came on all the visual units. It was the logo and lead-in music of the New Pathé News Service, with its crowing rooster.

  The mob of Betters, terrified before all else of exposure, stood rooted for slow seconds, still holding Dincrist and Mason.

  "Oh, suffering Shiva!"

  "The newsspews! It's on the newsspews!"

  "I'm ruined! Ruined!"

  Mason took advantage of the confusion to shake loose the clutching hands and leap up, hauling himself over the balcony railing. Betters swarmed after in pursuit. Dincrist tried to emulate the baron but didn't get far.

  Alacrity caught up with Sintilla and Floyt, moving in under the Nonpareil's arm to bear part of her weight.

  She smiled at him wanly. "Hi, handsome. I think we're even now."

  "Had to look after you; I think you might be an heiress soon."

  Alacrity showed the proteus. "I took this away from Mason; he's gonna have trouble borrowing a spare or using the house commo. But we've gotta be away from here fast."

  "Then let's. I can make it." She pushed free and took his hand. He drew her along as he followed Floyt and Sintilla through a side door and into the night.

  Sintilla was for grabbing the first decent-size craft they came to, but Alacrity insisted on the Harpy. He was trying frantically to think what he should do about the jot behind the Nonpareil's knee.