Fall of the White Ship Avatar

by Brian Daley

  In the meantime, Albrecht unfolded and extended two of his arms. The ends were equipped with odd fittings Floyt didn't recognize, and began to glow and tone-sound. A bright nexus blossomed between the metallic palm-gadgets, gathering light and energy around it. It pulsed and whirled like a miniature sun, throwing off swirls of radiant spindrift.

  Albrecht held it out to Vinzix, who took it in one armored palm. Floyt wondered if the energy ball had any substance, heft, or mass, or if it were just a balanced skein of forces.

  Vinzix cupped it in both hands like a cricketeer and made a kind of prancing approach to the foul line. With a powerful windup that gathered all the fibrous muscles of his back and left arm, he released the energy globe at the target. As he did, his right foot crossed the foul line.

  The light projectile flamed and spun away downrange, looping and curving a bit; Floyt had no idea how Vinzix could've judged what it was going to do, or calculated his aim.

  The whirling sunball just missed a thick limb, then looped in to hit the pawing target holobeast on the withers, high up.

  There was a spectacular outburst of light and sparks along with a crash of sound from somewhere, and the target was gone.

  Alacrity saw that Vinzix was aware he'd crossed the foul line, but contrary to sportsmanship and form, the Dar ignored it when he should've reshot or conceded a point. Marcus saw it, too, and that the humanoid wasn't being a gentleman. The old man shrugged it off.

  "My turn, I think," Lord Marcus said as Vinzix stepped out of the way with an upturned nose. "Alacrity, young friend, now what would you suggest for this shot? A novaglobe like my opponent's?"

  "I'm the wrong one to ask, Marcus. By the way, are you playing evens?"

  "Well, no; that is to say, it is my home ground, after all, even though it's a new course," Marcus said. "I spotted Vinzix two extra bolos and a dartspread. Only sporting."

  Alacrity nodded, thinking, I wonder what you'd say if you knew Vinzix thinks sportsmanship isn't worth voiding his scent sac on?

  "Very well, then," decided Lord Marcus, rubbing his encased palms together. "I think we'll have the blazing twirlspear. Might as well open up with my best, eh? Albrecht, if you will?"

  Albrecht used one of the arms he'd used to make the novaglobe and a third, equally strange-looking one. Floyt couldn't help shrinking back from the process, worried about what might happen if all that tame energy somehow got out of hand.

  Albrecht's palms, pressed together, sprang apart; between them a blazing rod of blue light grew. Small electrical arcs writhed and spat along it. Floyt let out an involuntary yip, boggled by the thought of what the technology involved might possibly cost.

  Marcus took the spear of light, balancing it on his palm, squinting at his target, the holobeast having reappeared. He made his approach to the foul line, very like a javelin thrower, and released.

  The spear twirled and crackled as it blazed away downrange. It didn't fly quite true, vibrating and waffling a bit in ways that weren't like a real spear at all, but more like it was alive.

  Yes; this has to be a very, very expensive playground, Floyt concluded.

  Lord Marcus had gauged his release against the timing of the hololoop, the rearing and pawing of the target. He'd gotten that right, but not the path of flight. The spear clipped through a hanging garrote vine, blowing it aside in a fierce discharge, deflected by it, missing the target. The energy spear struck a tree root to the left of the image and yielded the rest of its charge there.

  Well, it's not all light effects. Floyt determined, gazing at the smoldering ends of the vine.

  "Shall we proceed?" Marcus said. Albrecht translated for Vinzix, who strode off downrange, ignoring the humans.

  Alacrity and Floyt trailed the two players. There were no easy routes through the undergrowth and trees between the casting point and the target. Except for Albrecht, who floated above, they were all obliged to bushwhack their way along. Lord Marcus seemed to enjoy it; Floyt and Alacrity simply put up with it—they were getting very good at that sort of thing. Vinzix muscled his way through, sometimes leaping over or wriggling around the more substantial obstacles. There was apparently some point to the added hardship, but it eluded Floyt. Eventually Lord Marcus beckoned them onto a narrow path like a game trail.

  When the bush thinned a bit, Marcus said to Alacrity, "Oh, before I forget … " He passed over an intricately woven gilt document bearing ribbons and stamps. Alacrity took it and examined it closely.

  "Exactly one voting share in the White Ship, made out in your name," Marcus said. "I've already registered the formal transfer, although how much good that will do you I can't really say, Jordan."

  Alacrity opened an inside pocket to tuck it away. "More than you know; it'll get me into the next board meeting. That's all I need."

  "Ah, yes," Marcus said, armored hands clasped behind his back. "Don't take this the wrong way, m'lad, but you really have two choices, the way I see it. Vinzix and I are cooperating on our, own plan regarding the White Ship, you see. You can confide in me and let me help you—and I wish to, believe me—or you'll have to pretty much go it alone, although I'll do what I can for you, of course."

  Alacrity wore the withdrawn expression Floyt knew so well. Albrecht was keeping up a running translation for Vinzix, who watched Alacrity closely.

  "And don't get me wrong, Marcus," Alacrity said at last as they came up the rise to the target area with its scorched tree roots and vanished holobeast. The next castway lay just beyond, and from where they were they could see the target.

  "I'm grateful to you," Alacrity went on, "but it's just not that simple. I have an obligation to—someone, to make sure the information I've got isn't used the wrong way." He was thinking of Heart and how much more she would hate him if she thought he'd used the data he'd stolen from her father to profit some outside party; as it was, she had little enough sympathy for his personal quest for mastery of the White Ship.

  "Wouldn't you say you owe some debt or obligation for the help you've been rendered here?" Albrecht translated, after hearing out Vinzix's rasping, hissing remark. Alacrity was sure the gist of it was closer to fighting words.

  "Son, you have to trust someone sometime," Lord Marcus said softly.

  He's right there, Alacrity admitted to himself. I trusted Ho, and it got me the only friend I have.

  "All right, Marcus. Um, lemme see, here … " He stepped back, shielding himself with his body as he worked on his proteus and studied the data he'd seized from Dincrist at the start of the Regatta for the Purple. When he turned back, the proteus was inert again.

  Alacrity said, "Here's one for openers. There's a very sizable block of voting shares that's been inactive for a long, long time. Nobody's supposed to know who owns it, of course, under board procedures, but it's some woman named Loebelia Curry."

  "Loebelia … Loebelia Curry?" Lord Marcus exploded. "Hecate! Hecate!"

  Alacrity looked baffled. "Are you saying this Loebelia Curry was Hecate? The one my parents were always talking about?"

  Floyt was looking at them blankly. "Who's Hecate?"

  Lord Marcus was belly-laughing. Albrecht was translating to the impatient-looking Vinzix. Alacrity told his friend, "Hecate was—well, was one of the great eccentrics and—an adventurer, I guess you could call her. I wasn't even sure she was real."

  He looked to Lord Marcus Perlez. "It looks like you're right about a partnership. I knew one thing and you knew another and now we've got something going here."

  "We have indeed, we have indeed," Marcus said. "What else did you find out?"

  Alacrity cocked his head at the old man. "Don't you think we ought to reach some kind of deal before we go into details? Make sure we have an understanding?"

  Marcus was nodding, Albrecht still translating, and Vinzix regarding the humans with detachment. "I suppose that's fair enough," Marcus said. "I'll tell you what: we can take a shortcut back to Ends Well at the finish of the next castway and put it all down in legalese
. And in the meantime I'll tell you a bit about what we've found out."

  "Suits me. But what about Hecate?"

  "Oh, she was very much a part of things in the old days. I never knew she had a large voting block, though."

  "Can we find her? Is she still alive?"

  Marcus thought it over. "I don't think she's been heard from in years, but I have a very comprehensive Whereabouts listing. We'll check when we get back to Ends Well."

  The next castway was uphill, over thick jungle growth, the target a hopping, flashing animated figure resembling a big green imp. It rose and ducked behind the crest of the hill, circling a bit, appearing at random, so that the cast had to be made with sharp reflexes and a certain amount of precognition.

  Albrecht went into his fireworks act once more, giving each contestant a missile from the allotted quota. Vinzix, after one false start, hurled a thing like an incandescent boomerang, his follow-through all grace and power. The boomerang-lightshape spun and flashed, catching the imp target from behind, obliterating it in a shower of sparks.

  Lord Marcus chose an arcing, radiant bolo, casting with good form like a gaucho, but missing. In its caperings, the imp brushed past an overhanging frond that swayed aside, proving that the meshed energy fields of the target holos exerted gross physical force.

  "Difficult 'way, this," he muttered, grinding the big white teeth. Vinzix seemed pleased, though it was hard to read him. For his next cast, Marcus elected to use his dart-spread, to be certain. The lightning sheaf fanned out, like a fall of meteors; the imp again boiled away into nothingness.

  "That's what comes of lack of practice," Marcus said as they advanced on the undergrowth again. "I just don't have time to keep up on my game. Sometimes I wonder why I had this silly blooming thing built."

  Floyt was puzzling over that a bit, too, wishing Lord Marcus had installed a skyseat ride between release points, for nonplayers at least, as long as he was going to all the expense.

  "Lord Marcus," Floyt said abruptly, "I'd like to ask you a question: who d'you think the Precursors were? Why did they disappear, and all the rest of it?"

  Lord Marcus Perlez, squinting at the target area, gave a crusty grin, tugging at his tam-o'-shanter. "Let me just put my convictions to you this way, Mr. Floyt: if ever the intelligent life forms of this galaxy get to confront the Precursors before some higher power, I believe we shall be able to have them adjudged guilty of pet abandonment."

  Floyt meditated upon that as the four reentered the forest. All around were strange plants, stranger sounds. It was hot, difficult, pointless inconvenience, which was pretty much Alacrity's definition of most sports.

  Floyt wasn't quite sure how he became separated from the others, but given the jungle landscaping, it was no surprise. He could see the top of the target hill, and so pressed on that way.

  Alacrity thought everybody was following his lead as he pushed and beat his way along. It took him a while to realize that nobody was behind him. He had a traumatized feeling there in the stillness and called out, but the undergrowth drank up all the sound.

  He was edgy, forging on with his hackles up. He stopped calling out and moved furtively, stopping every four paces to look around. He came to open ground near the top of the hill but instinctively stayed in the cover of the forest.

  At the top of the hill, where the target imp had been, Alacrity saw the hunched figure of Floyt, recognizing Plantos's jacket and the big petasos hat. Alacrity still couldn't put his finger on what was wrong, but decided he'd better give Floyt a whistle and summon him to cover until Vinzix and Marcus appeared.

  Just then a spinning curvature of energy, another of Albrecht's missiles, came slicing up from the jungle and struck the reclining figure, crashing around it in a thousand tiny sunflares as it collapsed in on itself with an outpouring of energy discharge and smoke.

  Chapter 6

  Loggerheads

  Alacrity barely kept himself from yelling out; the warning wouldn't do Floyt any good now. Unable to absorb the fact of Floyt's death, he froze, waiting for the next firebolt to appear, with his name on it.

  Fiddleheads of smoke and vapor wafted up from where Floyt had been crouched; there wasn't even a sign of remains. Maybe Albrecht had boosted the power. In any case, Lord Marcus and Vinzix were good with their chosen weapons and smart enough to know that they'd have to nail Alacrity at once.

  That thought got him moving again, quietly circling away from where the boomerang had seemed to come, trying to look every which way at once. Something clambered up his leg. He slapped at it, and the little creepy-crawlie fell away. Then he cursed himself for making noise and resolved to let the next pest creep where it would; a sting would be a better risk than giving away his position.

  He found a fallen branch and hefted it. It was fragile for a club and gave him little confidence. He backed and slunked along, not daring to rise, running through his options. Going back to Ends Well just gets me killed sooner.

  He looked around at the trees, alarmed that they might have surveillance remotes, but he saw no detectors or security drones. Which way's town? Where's the nearest habitation? And then he recalled that Ends Well lorded over several river valleys.

  Just at that moment, something grabbed his ankle.

  Alacrity spun, resisting the arge to cry out, raising the club, heart about to beat its way out of his chest. Floyt had a hand up to ward off the blow; he said nothing, but motioned, Sh-hh! very quietly.

  His coat, borrowed from Plantos's locker, and his petasos hat were gone. Of course, blown to smithereens. Alacrity understood all at once. A decoy. And this is the guy Earthservice kept passing over for promotion!

  Floyt drew Alacrity a little farther downslope next to him and mouthed Let's get out of here!

  Alacrity nodded enthusiastically, miming But which way?

  Floyt gazed around, confused, and shrugged. At that moment they caught an exchange between Marcus and Vinzix, mediated by Albrecht, in slightly raised voices. They had a glimpse of the robo floating over a tangle of vines a few dozen meters away, uphill and to their right.

  Marcus, in the target clearing, had found out that Floyt wasn't dead. He held up in gauntleted fingers a few shreds of cloth.

  "Nobody was around, so I was playing with some of the target equipment," Floyt explained into Alacrity's ear in a whisper. "The imp reappeared, and I found out that those meshed force fields would support my hat—like the imp was wearing it. I was just passing time, experimenting. Then I tried my—Plantos's—mantle on him for size. Then I heard a sound and stepped off to one side to see what's going on. And all at once I've got Zeus Almighty displeased with me!"

  Lord Marcus tossed the char aside angrily, beckoning Albrecht. Vinzix emerged at the edge of the undergrowth, carrying a lightshape boomerang.

  As Albrecht summoned up a new weapon for Lord Marcus from thin air, Marcus and Vinzix made some rapid, soft-spoken exchange intertranslated by the robo, the two of them peering this way and that. Floyt and Alacrity hunkered to the ground, watching.

  Albrecht manipulated another nexus, layering energy warp and woof around it, to give Marcus a weapon like a long double helix of bright plasma, a DNA lightning bolt. Marcus balanced it in his gauntleted hands, scanning the undergrowth, then went up over the top of the hill. Vinzix disappeared back into the treeline. Albrecht seemed to debate for a moment, then floated off after Vinzix. Alacrity was tentatively relieved, fairly certain that Albrecht had no special detection or hunting capabilities—witness the fact that he wasn't all over Alacrity and Floyt already. Likely, Albrecht could keep efficient track of only those people wearing player's gauntlets.

  The would-be killers would play out the drama very carefully, Alacrity knew. The Windfall cops are sticklers. It's gonna have to look like a sporting accident for those two to get away with murder.

  But Marcus and Vinzix had a good shot at it; all they'd have to do, if they got Alacrity and Floyt, would be to move the remains up to the target area. If the
killers phonied up the evidence right, there was every chance the police would buy the story that way, of two ignorant offworlders stumbling into the line of fire. That would eliminate Alacrity as a problem, leaving them his proteus and all its information, if they could crack it. Still, the assassination attempt seemed rushed, and he wondered why.

  Vinzix and Marcus had no other choice now; attempted murder was a high dive on Windfall. Alacrity still couldn't figure out why they hadn't waited though—strung him along a bit more, or even gotten Floyt and himself offworld somewhere, where murder was easier.

  Alacrity touched Floyt's shoulder and pointed; they moved off downhill and to the right. With no idea what the hunters' plan was, their best bet was to try to disengage, slowly and cautiously exfiltrating the area, then make their way to some nearby human outpost.

  Alacrity figured that when Lord Marcus and Vinzix found their prey had eluded them, they'd try to get a jump in the matter of accusations, perhaps accuse the duo of attempted fraud or extortion or something that would similarly torque the jaws of the Windfall police. And Marcus had a houseful of identical concubines to back his testimony.

  We'll dip that nacho when we come to it. Alacrity thrust the worry from his mind. The thing now is to keep from getting sent to Holo-target Heaven.

  On the plus side, Alacrity knew that Marcus and Vinzix must be awfully edgy; they'd gambled on a quick kill and lost. They apparently couldn't carry more than one thunderbolt at a time, and Albrecht couldn't be with both of them at once. If one of them missed or used up his shot, it might take some time before the robo could rearm him; that had to give the old man and the humanoid some upstanding neckhair.

  Alacrity lifted his head, craning for a view. Marcus Perlez might be hard to see, but Vinzix, with the gleaming Albrecht hovering near, should be easy to spot. Alacrity caught a silvery glitter farther downslope, almost directly along the path he and Floyt had been following. Vinzix must have been telepathic, a very good hunter, or astoundingly lucky.