by Brian Daley
"And some pretty good trump cards," Floyt reflected. The words brought the ever-thinking, ever-observant Ash back to matters at hand.
"Yes. Well. You have a lot to tell me, I hope, Hobart Floyt. I hope you all do." He picked up the satchel and weighed it in his hand.
"Umm," Alacrity said, nodding his head toward Stemp, Bear, and Chin.
"Oh, yes," Ash said as though he'd completely forgotten them. "You men give them a hand, if you'd be so kind? We don't want them hurting themselves."
Chapter 25
Off Key On
Causality's Harp
"This one's it, I bet," Alacrity said, shading his eyes, watching the approaching aircar. "Looks new and shiny; it better be ours."
"Ours'll probably be disguised as a hazardous waste transporter," Floyt disagreed. "Half the population of Earth thinks we ought to be drawn and quartered for starting all this trouble."
"Drawn and quartered?"
"Capital punishment as practiced by people without access to airlocks."
"Oh." The car didn't seem to be headed toward them, though. Floyt wore the tuxedo he'd carried all the way to the stars and, somehow, back—white tie and black tails—along with his Inheritor's belt. Alacrity's suit was the trusty ice-blue one, and he had on his venerable pathfinders.
"I've just called; your vehicle will be here shortly," Citizen Ash said, coming up behind them. Floyt hoped he hadn't heard the capital punishment crack but doubted it; Ash missed little. "Can I rely on you both to show up in time for the next deposition taping? Don't fail me; I'm having enough trouble holding things together as it is."
He gestured to dozens of second-level Earth rulers waiting to one side of the landing stage in a gaggle, hoping for a few moments of Ash's time. They were kept back by a squad of peaceguardians who reminded Floyt of Severeemish. With the evidence in hand and virtually all Earthservice media under his usurpation, and all Alphas now under close arrest, Citizen Ash was de facto head of Terra's government. The Solarian, Srillan, and Spican forces canceled one another out and stayed out of the crisis for the time being.
Earth was poised for change. The Alphas were falling over each other trying to make deals with Ash; his position was secure for the moment. To the relief of Floyt and Alacrity, among others, Ash, too, recognized the need for a new shape of things and showed no inclination to become dictator.
"We won't," Floyt promised. "And tell Corva and Sintilla, if you will, that we'll be back by the time their tapings are over."
"I'll do that."
Another aircar arced into view, a soberly rakish unmarked peaceguardian craft. Citizen Ash bade them good-bye and strode from the landing area.
The car landed with two beefy senior plainclothesmen in it. The driver stayed at the controls and the passenger, the senior officer, climbed out, glowering at all the commotion. "You two Citizen Floyt and Fitzhugh?" Floyt nodded. "Okay; get in." He jerked his thumb at a rear door.
" 'Get in'?" Alacrity stepped forward; he was taller than the cop, lean and dangerous-looking. He yanked open the driver's door after a moment's fumbling with the unfamiliar lock. The driver looked up, frozen, knowing that he couldn't simply start clubbing people.
Alacrity grabbed him by his cheap Earthservice suit. "Move to the rear, Wide Load! Cap'n Floyt does all the piloting when he flies!"
The peacer started to stutter an objection. Alacrity hauled him out onto the landing stage. The senior officer's hand went toward his gun by reflex but stopped. Citizen Ash was looking on from the sidelines, and nowadays everyone on Earth knew just how much could happen when he got angry.
"You boys formerly working Alpha-bodyguard detail, were you? Well, don't push your luck." Alacrity jabbed a thumb at the passenger door. With looks of unspeakable resentment, the two plainclothesmen climbed into the rear.
Alacrity, holding the driver's door open, kowtowed briskly to Floyt. "Ready, Cap'n." The watching bureaucrats were transfixed.
"Um, Alacrity, do you think this is really such a good—"
"Dual controls," Alacrity growled under his breath. "Let's go."
Floyt carefully swept his tux tails apart, to avoid sitting on them, and slid into the driver's poz; Alacrity trotted around and belted in behind the copilot's duals. "See? It's a baby pram," Alacrity assured Floyt out of the side of his mouth. Alacrity pressed a button and the doors closed with a solid chack!
It wasn't so different from the airsedan on Blackguard, but Floyt's lift-off was a little rocky. Alacrity restrained himself from grabbing for the duals. Floyt headed them away over the urbanplex.
Psychprop holosigns and info flashers had either been blanked or reprogrammed to something neutral and nonxenophobic. The odd riot or demonstration had been quelled, but people were assembling to talk and argue almost everywhere, and so far Ash was letting them.
The dashboard had a simple satnav display, easy to follow. Floyt quickly got the feeling of the controls, and they sailed along, in no particular hurry, high over the Earth, drinking in the colors and the feeling.
Floyt located the control that raised a tinted panel between the front seat and the passenger compartment. "Did Citizen Ash say anything more about when you might get to leave, Alacrity?"
"Huh-uh." Alacrity was still studying the landscape. "He moves slowly and deliberately. He still hasn't released all the evidence we brought him to the offworlders." He chuckled. "Will you listen to me? 'Offworlders!' I'd give anything to know what's going on in the Srillan and Spican naval contingents.
"But no, he's been dodging talking about when any of us can leave. At least Tilla and Corva are happy."
"They are that," Floyt concurred, trying the aircar in a sharp bank. The peacers, belted in, made no objection.
Corva had righted a wrong for the entire Srillan race—or at least begun the process. The feat promised to be the new definition of a contrition-knight. He was standing by to put himself at the service of the Srillan envoy who would arrive soon to witness and take part in the Earthservice hearings being mounted by Citizen Ash.
And Sintilla had calmly recorded the entire scene on the Utah urbanplex rooftop. She'd somehow gotten Ash to agree that she would be the sole offworld press representative during the hearings. She was also working on two books about the whole episode, in addition to Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh Face the Menace of the Galactic Illuminati.
"I'd give anything to know what happened to the Stray," Alacrity said, "but the devil of it is, it would put the others in danger even to ask." Floyt watched the terrain roll by, helpless to say anything of comfort.
The role-playing commune where Floyt's wife, Balensa, was currently living with her lover, a Hemingway revivicist named Arlo Mote, was situated on the roof of one of the outer, lower exclaves of the urbanplex. The commune revolved around various artistic and literary figures of the period between Earth's first two world wars; it was a big, rambling garret with broad skylights, and miniaturized Parisian rooftops and skyline around it.
Floyt made a rather good approach and landing; the instrument displays and landing stage navlights made it almost foolproof. Balensa was waiting in the fore of the reception committee of Terran preterists, along with Floyt's daughter, Reesa, and Arlo Mote.
Balensa had been brought up in an extended-family/academic-group concentrating on the Italian Renaissance, but she was now dressed as an Apache dancer. Reesa, who'd been immersed in romantic reenactments of Pleistocene life when he'd left, was now turned out as a flapper. Mote wore faded safari clothes.
Behind them were such other members of the commune as had managed to get away or happened to be off when word had come that Floyt would be visiting. There was the odd hoplite or cowboy in the throng, but most were dressed in the right period.
Floyt, the lowly functionary third class, booted off Terra by a bullying Earthservice, emerged not from the passenger compartment of the Alpha-perk aircar but from behind its controls. The mass indrawing of breath by the crowd was clearly audible. Alacrity fell
in just behind Floyt's right shoulder. His shipsuit was cut to allow the silver-in-gray hair to hang free; the big, oblique, lamp-yellow eyes were uncovered. It wasn't so long ago that they'd gotten him attacked, in Macchu Pichu, as a freak. Now several female members of the crowd began making strong eye contact.
Balensa stepped over to them uncertainly. A few months hadn't changed her, but that somehow surprised Floyt. She had long brown hair and the slender figure of a teenager. Reesa came too, eyes shining. Balensa stopped a meter or so from Floyt.
"What's wrong? Why are you staring?"
"You're so different," she said.
"Well, no. Or only a little. We missed a few meals."
"No, Hobart, it's not just that. Did you really fly that thing?"
"You don't think he trusts me to fly, do you?" Alacrity asked. Reesa giggled. The other Terrans took up the laugh and Alacrity grinned lopsidedly.
In a way that changed nothing, but assuaged a lot, Balensa said to Floyt, "I'm glad you came back safe, Hobart. Welcome home." She closed the distance and kissed him soundly, and then it was Reesa's turn.
Reesa went on to hug Alacrity. When Floyt lifted an eyebrow, Alacrity mouthed, Oh, don't worry!
Reesa slipped one arm through towering Alacrity's and one through Floyt's, saying, "Please come in, both of you."
Alacrity whistled to get the cops' attention and waved them to come along. They looked at each other, then did.
Floyt was trying not to stare at Balensa. She'd returned to Mote, taking his hand. Floyt allowed his daughter to conduct him into the commune. He was reliving the vast tidal feeling he'd experience when he saw Earth through Harpy's viewpane and wondering if he would ever fit in anywhere again.
The role-playing commune showed them an old-fashioned Terran good time, complete with jazz, French cooking, wine, and reenactments. Alacrity didn't understand it all, but he had terrific fun. Floyt did too, but was preoccupied much of the time.
The Terrans pleaded for stories. Interest in anything off-world, vulgar if not downright illegal only a few days before, was now universal. Alacrity began with the story of the disastrous funeral on Way 'Long. Carbon Dioxide College had reestablished its terrestrial campus.
"Did you really captain a pirate ship?" people asked Floyt. "Did you truly come home through an exploding star?"
They did the Lindy, broke excellent bread, and all toasted one another; even the plainclothesmen had a reservedly good time. At last Floyt had to remind Alacrity that their brief furlough was almost over; the peacers were so distracted that they'd forgotten. The commune and its guests trooped back out to the landing stage. Floyt and Alacrity had various souvenirs. The peacers each carried a loaf of French bread.
There was a certain amount of confusion as a number of people jostled to look at the aircar and say good-bye to Alacrity, admonish him to come back, or get a photo or vid taken with him. He ate it up with noblesse oblige.
Floyt took the opportunity to draw Reesa aside. "They're starting to talk about letting Terrans offworld again, at least as a pilot program. Don't ask me why right now, dear, but I don't see how they'll be able to avoid it. The rules are about to change, like it or not."
Her face fell. "You mean you and Alacrity are leaving again so soon?"
"No! No, Ash and the others are planning to keep us busy right here for some time to come."
He took both her hands. "What I mean is, do you want to go? I think I can fix it. There are people of influence—beings of influence—who can arrange it, who would do it for me, I think."
"I don't know what to say! I'd like to go some day, I suppose; everybody's talking about it now, since you got back. But—just on the spur of the moment like this—I can't really think about it too clearly."
"I know; I should've realized. They made it easy for me; kicked me off Earth. 'Bring us your Inheritance!' "
They both laughed, and sniffed, near tears. Alacrity was warming up the aircar. Floyt turned over one of his daughter's hands and pressed something into it.
"Keep this for yourself, do you hear me? Don't tell anybody. It's my little piece of the Terran Inheritance, to give to you."
It was a small purse fat with the novaseed gems Floyt had earned on Way 'Long and most of the money he'd won at the Grapple with Amarok. "It's yours. Use it as you see fit." He closed her fingers around it.
They hugged, then he turned and made for the aircar. The other Earthers were listening to Alacrity, who was leaning on the aircar, holding court and providing a diversion. Balensa and Arlo Mote were waiting to talk to Floyt.
Mote was a little uneasy, though he and Floyt had made peace. He had one thumb hooked through his imitation leather belt with its ersatz Nazi buckle carrying the words GOTT MIT UNS.
"If we can help you, let us know," Balensa said.
"And you're welcome to stay here whenever you want, to get away from it all," Mote added. "To stay or go as you please."
Floyt knew for certain then that there was no reconciliation with Balensa coming; he could see it in her face and hear it. He wondered if it was because he'd gone from being too much a known quantity to too much an unknown. The oceanic gathering in him, from Harpy, stirred again.
"That's very nice of you. No one else on Earth has been that generous to me since I came back." He was about to go, but something occurred to him.
"See here, I have reason to believe Terra will be opened up, a little, anyway, to outsiders, in the not-too-distant future. Now, that's classified, and I don't know how you could best profit from it, but I have a modest suggestion."
They both leaned toward him.
"Lourdes," Floyt said. Balensa frowned and Mote was nonplussed.
"Lourdes," Floyt repeated. "Or better yet, that place, Vichy, where the healing waters were. That sort of thing; especially the ones in Japan. A lot of offworlders still believe in Earth's healing powers, on a mystical level. It's not a sure thing, but you might give it some thought."
"We shall," Balensa promised. She hugged him. Floyt thought, What the hell, and shook hands with Mote. Alacrity was calling for him; Mote held onto his hand a moment longer.
"Look here, old man. What's it really like out there?"
Floyt had heard the question more times than he could count since returning. At first he'd been confused, giving conflicting answers that didn't begin to do justice to the truth. With Mote and Balensa looking so intently at his face, he gave for the first time the answer that he was to use from then on.
"You'll have to find that out for yourself."
Nazca spaceport was a busier place than it had been the last time they'd been through, but they still ended up in the same terminal gate area, waiting for the selfsame lunar shuttle in which they'd left Terra initially, a whole different lifetime ago.
Most of the bustle was devoted to refurbishing landing, service, and terminal facilities. "What's going on over there?" Alacrity was pointing across the field to where a stupendous building was being renovated. "That's a starship hangar, isn't it? Don't tell me … "
"Our shuttle traffic has already quintupled, and that's just for the advance and liaison units of the Solarian and Spican investigative delegations," Ash told him. "No one's voiced it in public yet, but I don't see any avoiding it—starships will be coming again." He thought for a moment. "Like most people, I'm of very mixed minds on that one. The psychprop people have a generation's work cut out for them."
"What surprises me even more," Floyt put in, "is them." He meant the Terran bureaucrats and officials who jammed the waiting area, talking politics and jockeying for position, waiting to make inroads with the offworlders who were due in another minute or two. "It was only—not even—two weeks ago that offworlders were anathema." He was adjusting his tuxedo, and resettling the Inheritor's belt.
"Well, yeah, but you're forgetting one thing," Alacrity said. "They're all politicians, and the writing's on the wall. The name of the new graffito is Open Earth. And speaking of XTs … "
Sintilla
was charging in their direction with Corva in tow, recording her impressions on her proteus while pointing an audvid pickup around with her free hand. The Terran dignitaries stared frankly and curiously at the Srillan, and a few of the women even seemed to be studying him rather … appraisingly. He'd become a familiar figure on Terran screens and already Earthly children were imitating his stooping shamble, his droopy-eyed look, and his acerbic, nasal singsong, which scandalized their elders, which made it all that much more fun.
As she reached them, Sintilla rattled breathlessly, "The new rumor is that Stemp and Chin and the others are actually XTs from some superadvanced civilization in the Galactic Core area, all rigged out in human disguises, who for some unfathomable reason or other bothered to come all the damn way out here just to give Earth a hard time."
"That's interesting," Floyt said. "I heard that we were the aliens."
Ash didn't quite smile. " 'We'? You mean me as well?"
"Especially you, or so the rumor goes."
Ash's expression clouded for a moment. Then he said, "I heard reports that we're all clones controlled by the Illuminati, whoever they are."
Alacrity and Floyt looked off in different directions. Corva coughed behind his hand. Sintilla was the picture of innocence.
"Lunar shuttle arriving in sixty seconds," the PA said. The jostling became more intense, but peaceguardians kept the crowd back. The four from Harpy, standing with Citizen Ash, were immune to the indignities of crowd control.
"We must get a shuttle of our own operating soon," Ash mulled, hands clasped behind his back. "Do you think the Harpy would serve, Alacrity? A matter of planetary pride, you might say."
Alacrity hummed. "She'd do fine, for now. Especially for the V.I.P. treatment. You'd better start picking some of your best and brightest kids and getting some advice about offworld flight schools."
"Teh, oh, yes, yes." Sintilla shunted the subject aside. "What I want to know, Citizen Ash, sir, is when you're going to sit still for that interview you keep promising me. I don't think you fully appreciate what a celebrity I'm going to make out of you, you wonderful man!"
