Requiem For A Ruler Of Worlds

by Brian Daley

  Other members of the outfit were waiting in the lock. They closed in on Alacrity and frisked him again, thoroughly and with his silent cooperation. Floyt emulated his companion. The search was, again, complete but not rude. In the meantime the guards were handing over their weapons, which were stored in an arms room to one side of the airlock.

  Alacrity's proteus was confiscated, as was Floyt's. "Part of the hospitality." The breakabout shrugged. Gunny laughed mountainously, but held on to the Captain's Sidearm, which seemed to raise no objections from anyone. The travelers' luggage, which had been examined once more, still wasn't returned to them.

  "They've got to be cautious," Alacrity explained quietly to Floyt as the inner hatch swung open noiselessly. "If anything ever happened to a bubble or lock or seal, the whole lashup could go, and everybody in it."

  They moved out under a soaring, crystal-clear dome thirty meters high. "God in the Void," Floyt said, borrowing Alacrity's oath.

  Filtered by the dome, sunlight streamed down on them. Connecting tunnels radiated in all directions—none of the construction matching, nothing uniform—to the disparate structures of the lashup. The inner hatch was already swinging shut behind them. Keeping all interior hatches and doors secure was instinctive with the Foragers.

  "Are the lunar authorities aware of all this?" Floyt asked Alacrity.

  Gunny Readyknob had caught it. "We pay our taxes, Delver, and plenty of squeeze besides. And we mind our own business, too." Floyt supposed that would make anybody acceptable on the Moon.

  The Sockwallet Outfit had built their lashup on the surface because, unlike Lunarians, Foragers preferred views and vistas, landscapes and the feeling of plenty of room. They built with whatever was available when they stopped somewhere. On their migrations, they took only themselves, tools and equipment to make their living, emergency shelters and weapons, personal belongings, and the sacred artifacts of the Outfit.

  In the middle of the dome was a pole eight meters or more in height, a bizarre pylon made of many miniature charms and constructs, stylized faces, symbols, fetishes, mementos, and trinkets, layer upon layer of them, fused into a mass representing an informal history of the events and fortunes of the Sockwallet Outfit.

  Alacrity skimmed over to it, with Floyt in his wake. If it could be avoided, Foragers preferred not to equip their lashups, which were always temporary, with artificial gravity. The Terran was glad he took fairly well to the Moon's one-sixth Standard.

  The breakabout kissed his fingertips softly and laid them against the strange column in a reverent gesture. Floyt held back, sensing that he didn't have the prerogative. The reactions of Gunny, Sim, and the rest showed approval of both men.

  Gunny beckoned, and they passed from the dome into the lashup itself. It had a haphazard look to it at first glance, since it incorporated the forms of salvaged vessels and vehicle hulls, building shells, and parts thereof. But the construction was all first-rate craftsmanship. The muddled architectural scheme had a certain consistency: variety and disregard of convention.

  The lashup was carefully designed for its environment, but each of its component sections had a character and feel of its own.

  "C'mon in, rigs," Sim bade them, "and join the fun."

  Below, on the depot platform, the guards went on alert as another capsule arrived.

  Its doors slid apart, and a tall, muscular man stepped out. He had a heavy-browed, blunt-nosed face; his pink scalp gleamed, hairless. He wore the loose plaid culottes and pleated shirt favored by many Venerian businessmen, and carried a slim attache case, an expensive Aladdin model.

  He was pulling on a stylish mandarin hat, eyes to the ground. When he looked up, he stopped dead in his tracks. The Sockwallet guards were amused that such an intimidating face could show such bewilderment. They saw his fear of them, and the dawning realization that he'd stepped off at the wrong stop, written clearly on the rugged countenance.

  He heard the capsule doors closing and turned, lurching frantically to hold them open. Plainly unused to lunar gravity, he got his feet tangled.

  One guard laughed, not unkindly, "Hubble City's one more stop, rig." The man grinned sheepishly and called thanks in Terranglish accented with Venerian Crosstalk.

  But as the capsule pulled away from the platform, a change came over the muscular man's features. He returned to his seat with movements that proved he was well accustomed to Luna's gravity and sat next to the only other passenger in the capsule, a small, dapper man who wore gaudy knee breeches and stockings, tricorn hat, and frock coat.

  "Fairly standard Forager lashup, Page," the big man reported distractedly, considering the problem.

  Page sighed. "Do we wait for another time, then?"

  "Nix. They might evade us again. We'll take them inside the lashup."

  "Inside? How're we gonna do that, Shilly?"

  Shilly rubbed his block of a jaw. "I think I've got a way. When we get to Hubble, call Jord at the High Movers' Stop. Tell him we'll meet him in one hour, and that we'll need some special arrangements."

  Chapter 7

  Wonderments

  "The main thing to remember," Alacrity cautioned Floyt, "is that most of the unusual taboos in a lashup have to do with the air supply. Safeguarding the integrity of the seals and locks and hulls. No jokes about vacuum or leaks or anything like that."

  "Alacrity, I don't know any jokes about air leaks." Floyt frowned as he tried to knot his floppy red-silk four-in-hand necktie properly. "Do you? Why in the world would anybody joke about such a thing?" He was more convinced than ever that all offworlders suffered from congenital mental disorders.

  "Some of us do it to ease the tension. 'The air's always fresher on the other side of the hatch,' know what I mean? Oh, never mind! Just remember that that kind of talk's bad manners around here."

  The Foragers had insisted on lending them festival clothes and Alacrity was examining himself, pleased with his image. He wore a shimmering, close-fitting shirt of spectraflex that rippled with color-shifts as he moved, its collar and shoulder seam raffishly agape. Along with it he wore metallic green tights and mantlet.

  Floyt was resplendent in saffron yellow blouse with extended shoulders and sleeve billows, crimson tie, and brown taperslacks, along with his Inheritor's belt; Alacrity had insisted that a guest was perfectly safe, even from prying, in a lashup.

  Guest quarters were the scavenged forward section of a Virago-class patrol craft from the old Solar Pact navy. Floyt had marveled at how the lashup was cobbled together with dome fitted to nacelle, pressure-quonset to hull, tunnel to warehouse. One missing panel in their quarters had been replaced with a big blister of stained glassplas, depicting a magnificent fleur-de-lis, out of some vessel's chapel.

  The Earther, who'd avoided using Mindframe's complicated and highly unorthodox-looking head, had immediately tackled their lunar lavatory and found the experience comfortable, sanitary, and simple. One of his major fears about space travel had been dispelled, contributing considerably to his good mood. Still, he said, "Alacrity, I'm telling you, I'd rather not have anything to do with this Sockwallet festival."

  He saw the breakabout's sour look and amended, "I mean, Shipwreck, I don't want—"

  "They're just showing us a little hospitality. You don't want to offend them, do you? Bad for the mission."

  Alacrity had started playing Floyt's conditioned commitment to his mission against his natural aversion to non-Terrans. The breakabout had guessed shrewdly about the tack selected by the behavioral engineering team, and when he put things that way, Floyt found, the company of off-world mongrels didn't seem so detestable.

  But Floyt hated feeling manipulated; Bear and Earthservice had done quite enough of that. "We're strangers to them. I don't see why they should care whether we enjoy ourselves here anyway," the Terran huffed.

  "It's as much for the Sockwallets as for us. Foragers don't let many outsiders inside their lashups, you know. This gives them an excuse to whoop it up and show off t
heir kids." He turned sideways and eyed the dressing-imager critically.

  "Children? Why is that so important?"

  "Makes them feel like part of the group." Alacrity adjusted his mantlet fastidiously. "Loved, appreciated. Common to a lot of cultures."

  "Common in Terran cultures, once," Floyt mused, gazing through a thick bull's-eye porthole at the stark lunascape.

  Gunny appeared at the lock just then. "Shipwreck! Delver! You're keeping people waiting, boys!"

  Foragers let outsiders think them malodorous tramps. They proved differently to their guests. The Sockwallets turned out under the great inverted bowl of the main dome, gathered around their pylon. Toddlers to oldsters, they were scrubbed and groomed, scented and attired in every sort of finery. Floyt could now appreciate how beneficial it was, in a sealed environment like the lashup, to place heavy social emphasis on hygiene, filters and purifiers notwithstanding.

  Since leaving Earth, he'd been subjected to a number of different scent-ambiances, Mindframe and Billingsgate Circus among them. But the lashup's was the most pleasant, with its suggestions of flowers and fresh breezes, open sky and summer rain! Floyt wondered how they did it.

  The pre-adults there, in particular, were preening. Arrayed in the very best clothing they owned or could beg or borrow, they were doing their best to look formal and grown-up, even while they blushed or indulged in a bit of horseplay.

  About a hundred people were already present, with more arriving all the time. The dome had been polarized a bit to cut the sun's glare. Tables and chairs, in mismatched variety, had been set out.

  As Floyt watched, the Sockwallets rolled out kegs of Old Geyserfroth, the superlative pilsner that had been brewed on Luna since the First Breath. They uncrated noble, prismatic bottles of Gunga Din Gin brought with them from Raj, planet of their previous lashup. Assorted other beverages and concoctions appeared in squeeze bottles and decanters, demijohns and skins, and various punch bowls, some of which were big enough to wade in.

  The light gravity helped the tables bear up under the prodigious weight of the smorgasbord set out. Despite Earth's isolationism, the moon had a comfortable, even thriving economy, being a tax haven, manufacturing center, trade nexus, and main intermediary for Terra. The Sockwallets had done well here, and this was their opportunity to indulge themselves and celebrate.

  The Foragers fell to with unrestrained gusto. Self-appointed hosts and hostesses began pressing drinks of all types on their guests. Alacrity gratefully accepted a Geyserfroth, and Floyt was introduced to a formidable, fruity libation called "Fireman, Save My Child!" that was reputed to be an effective antiscorbutic. Gunny held a tall, moist tumbler filled to the brim with a lovely verdant drink he called a Kamikaze.

  Music drifted through the dome; the chatter nearly matched it in volume. The Foragers switched from language to language without hesitation, though Terranglish seemed most popular. Gunny seated the guests of honor in hand-molded chairs at a long table near the pylon, then lowered himself into a mammoth seat of his own as the celebration picked up intensity all around them.

  "How do you like the music?" Alacrity shouted to Floyt.

  "I just hope no one asks me to dance. But it's very sprightly," he conceded.

  "Don't worry. They don't do much formal dancing. The Outfits move around too much; zero gee, heavy gee, and everything in between. Lots of Terran dances'd get you a concussion on Ceres, if you were silly enough to try 'em, or a broken leg on Mammon."

  The Sockwallets were having a grand time nevertheless. Some played conventional instruments, sound synthesizers, and improvised noisemakers. Others used offworld devices Floyt couldn't identify. The lashup residents sang out wholeheartedly. Some of it sounded eerie, having been created for and in other atmospheres.

  There was dancing of a sort, sidling and bouncing, jump-spinning and strutting, improvised in the light gravity. There was also a lot of drinking and joking and eating and merriment and more drinking.

  Sockwallets were now fetching the visitors samples of this and that from the smorgasbord.

  "Poached yabs," Alacrity called as Floyt poked at a mass of gelatin beryls, "from Aphrodite, where all the founding fathers were mothers."

  They weren't bad. Floyt pointed to a basket of stuff that looked for all the world to be a pile of stir-fried lint. Alacrity shrugged, baffled.

  "Cider floss, from Conniption," Gunny called, resolving the mystery. "Not a bad planet, as a matter of fact—practicing law for money there will earn you public impalement."

  Some of Gunny's own vaunted Space and Thyme Ragout appeared, followed by shot glasses of a liquid called ratafee, then creamed tuft-scuttler roe, which Floyt thought resembled blobs of zinc ointment.

  He tasted something that might very well have been corn-bread stuffing, a dish he'd sampled in a history seminar. Marveling, he tried short ribs. Protein still on the ossicle! The sauce was sinfully good.

  Floyt was amused by the Forager names, which had been handed down proudly since the strange culture had come into being in the First Breath. He met Scurry Clutchbuck and Honeytongue Wampum, Bigwig Swellbundle and Coaxer Reampocket.

  The Sockwallets were cordial and folksy, touching in their earnest efforts to make a good impression. Somewhere in the midst of greeting Itchpalms and Lustducats and Moneymoils, Hobart stopped pretending to be civil and actually began liking them.

  The crowd swelled, filling the dome. Simoleanna Coup somehow ended up sitting next to Alacrity. She was quite striking in a snow-white, sequined sheath gown cut rather high on the hip, with matching cloche and high-heel shoes. She and the breakabout were engaged in exploratory conversation.

  Gunny proposed toasts to the guests; toasts to the Outfit; to Luna and Earth; a safe trip for Alacrity and Floyt; peace; prosperity; and anyone anywhere who had ever screwed over a customs official in any way, shape, or form.

  Alacrity and Sim nuzzled and whispered in each other's ears. Floyt found himself wondering dizzily if all this debauchery wouldn't prejudice Earthservice against him, and began thinking about how he could gracefully withdraw from the bash. Just then he realized that Gunny was talking to him.

  "Yessir, Delver," the Forager averred, splashing a little Gunga Din and tonic, which fell with leisurely beauty. "The Third Breath will be the one, you'll see. Third time's the charm! Haven't we known that all along? No more dark ages!"

  "Are you talking about the—whatsit—the Cooperative of Species?" It was an embryonic organization, Floyt knew; his orientation hadn't mentioned it in detail. He only recalled that it wasn't given much hope of enduring; his brain felt fuzzy.

  Gunny had set sail on a stately voyage of discourse. "Naw, not that debating society! We're discussing the real item, human reciprocity—lifeform reciprocity—on an interstellar scale. Progress! Freedom! And this time it's gonna last."

  The Sockwallets' boss looped a large arm around Floyt's shoulders. "The word's gettin' around, you see." He began nodding to himself, blinking, breathing high-octane fumes on his guest. "To poor miserable beaten-down sods everywhere. The caste-imprisoned and the class-encysted. Worlds and worlds of 'em."

  Floyt's brow furrowed. "What word, Gunny?"

  The boss swept his glass through a gesture that took in the majority of Creation. "That! Opportunity! Get 'em to understand that the galaxy's accessible now and they fill in the rest! Revelation! Renown! A true and perfect love!"

  "Damnation!" threw in a Forager who was passing by with eight liter-mugs of Old Geyserfroth in her fists. "Paradise!"

  "Change," somebody laughed from the sidelines.

  "Power!"

  "Hope," Sim added quietly from her seat on Alacrity's lap. Alacrity said nothing, studying Floyt and listening, to decide whether he ought to divert the conversation.

  "Maybe the secrets of the Precursh—cursh—Precursors, damn it!" a tall redhead finally got out; the crowd whistled and cheered his success.

  "Or the key to the universe!"

  "Same thing!"
<
br />   "A grand spree across Immensity!" Gunny trumpeted. "A chance to find out who they are and what they can do. And the word keeps getting around. No matter what the paranoid little local rulers do to suppress it—the single-system politburos, the phony popes, and planetary strongmen. The word gets out!"

  "You mean, 'in'," Alacrity corrected mildly.

  "How does the word get around, Gunny?" Floyt asked in a neutral voice. "Who gets it around?"

  "Nobody." Gunny shrugged ponderously. "Anybody."

  Sim flung her hand up in a graceful gesture. "Sometimes, Delver Rootnose, if it isn't too much trouble, we do." She, Gunny, and the other Foragers laughed, but Alacrity didn't join in.

  Floyt blushed, feeling that he was the butt of their joke. He'd heard enough; it all struck him as anti-Earthservice. More, a secret part of him found it too delirious to dwell upon.

  He gathered himself to leave, whether it was rude or not. Gunny, shaking his head like a buffalo, said to no one in particular, "Got all interested in hearing m'self talk, there." His head cleared a bit; he slid a splendidly painted porcelain dish toward Floyt. "Almost forgot; here're your wonderments, Delver."

  In the dish lay two delicacies that looked like folded pastries or turnovers, one with white icing and the other, orange. Floyt was halted in mid-rise.

  "Wonderments?"

  "Guest gifts," Alacrity clarified, making a long arm for one while holding onto Sim. She reached, stopped him when he would've taken the white one, and guided his hand to the other.

  Floyt wavered, then took the remaining wonderment dubiously. Gunny showed him how to open it. Inside was a commemorative coin with the dates April 12, 1961—April 12, 2461 and the inscription terra: 500 years in space, circling a portrait of Yuri Gagarin.

  Floyt gasped. A coin like that, struck in the bright noonday of the Second Breath—the gift was overwhelming.

  "Safe landings, rig," Gunny bade.

  "I—Gunny, I can't accept a thing like this."

  "Um, that is, y'see, Delver"—Gunny's thick eyebrows danced—"I'm afraid it's not what you could really call authentic. Luna's lousy with ersatz souvenirs. But it's the thought that counts."