Requiem For A Ruler Of Worlds

by Brian Daley

  "Of course! I explained the whole thing to you twice!"

  "You did not," Squeeb contradicted crisply. "I was under the impression that this was some kind of Tarot game involving wagering for confections, and attended by sexual badinage." He held up one of the tiny habitat domes. "This, then, does not represent some sort of bonbon?"

  "It's a house you dumb-ass legume!" Juan-Feng screamed. "You build it on your ramazz!"

  The Hyperbolarian was trembling, eyeing his deeds. Alacrity remembered what Gabriel had said; how the Hyperbolarians' consuming drive in life was ramazz.

  Suddenly, Squeeb scooped up the game box's lid, making minute examination of the rules with one eyestalk. Several more roamed the board, and the last two watched his tentacles take stock of his money and holdings. Before anybody could stop him, he delicately marked each deed with a minuscule dab of territorial scent. He was now shuddering and rippling.

  "What're you doing?" Juan-Feng screeched. "Calm down or I'll turn a fire extinguisher on you!"

  "Now then," Squeeb said in a precise tone. "It's my turn. I'm going to purchase two habitats. Also, we've been putting money in the Free Docking square that doesn't actually belong there; that must stop." He was turning the dice in his tentacles, getting the feel of them.

  Alacrity curled his lip at Juan-Feng. "You had to go and open your big air scoop."

  "All right, all right," Juan-Feng soothed, slipping the human players a wink. No doubt he figured they could gang up and squeeze the Hyperbolarian out of the game. Alacrity wasn't so sure about that, but he was pretty sure he knew what was making Squeeb shudder as the creature fondled his ramazz deeds and set out to acquire more.

  Alacrity was pretty sure it was sexual rapture.

  * * * *

  Floyt settled in, exploring the cabin and amusing himself with its various comfort, service, and environmental controls. The compartment was spacious, and if the accommodations weren't sumptuous by the standards of a passenger liner, they were more than comfortable to an Earthservice functionary.

  Bruja's officers and crewmen had treated him with the distant civility due a groundling passenger whose fare had worked miracles for the balance sheet. The Earther found their odor strange, owing to the foods they'd eaten, the substances with which they'd come in contact; as strange as the Sockwallets' and yet very different.

  If they were curious about his Inheritor's belt, they refrained from showing it.

  The ship's atmosphere was odd to him too, duplicating that of the vessel's homeworld. Gravity was slightly heavier than Terran. Floyt's main objection was that the Bruja ran on the day-night cycle of Bolivar, which was slightly over thirty-three hours long.

  But most services-including the passenger lounge bar and recreational facilities—were accessible during all five watches. He decided to keep to his accustomed twenty-four-hour day as well as he could. He also thought it would be wise to wait for a while before touring the ship; that way, he wouldn't cross paths with Alacrity. He addressed himself to the task of becoming familiar with that part of the briefing file dealing with Weir himself.

  Shorn of the psychprop editorializing and sermonizing, the story of Caspahr Weir was the stuff of legend.

  He'd been born into slavery in the household of a planetary subruler under the Grand Presidium. His parents died when he was still a boy; a baby sister, Tiajo, was his only kin.

  As a boy, he'd been extremely fortunate to be selected as servant-playmate to his owner's grandson. He'd been educated and had even traveled a little. Weir showed nothing but loyalty to his owner and satisfaction with his lot in life until he reached the age of—Floyt used his new proteus to make the conversion—sixteen Terran years.

  The file wasn't clear as to what happened then; Floyt couldn't make out whether that was a shortcoming of Earthservice's data-collection capability or simply due to an absence of information of any kind. What was certain was that Weir's playmate-master was murdered and Weir and Tiajo fled with certain unspecified data snippets.

  Caspahr and his sister joined a failing underground movement. Within five Standard years, Weir turned it into a fullblown revolution. Within another two, he was effective ruler of the planet where he'd been born a slave. By the time he was thirty, he'd eradicated the Grand Presidium.

  From there he went on to forge a realm of nineteen stellar systems, binding many of them to him with oaths of personal fealty. For all the shortcomings mentioned in the file—warfare, cronyism, stupendous problems with displaced persons, and the failure to achieve universal suffrage—Weir's rule had come as a very nearly divine deliverance to the former subjects of the Presidium.

  Floyt took his meals in his cabin and began dipping cautiously into the Bruja's data banks. He abandoned his twenty-four-hour regimen and napped when necessary. Eventually, satisfied that he'd absorbed all the data he could assimilate, he cleaned up, changed his clothes, and went to tour the vessel, even though there wasn't supposed to be much to see in transit.

  He stepped into the passageway and almost put his foot on a spiny little mass like a hyperkinetic sea urchin. It burbled in fear and zipped out from under with blurring speed. To his relief, it didn't seem inclined to go for his jugular.

  A passing crewman called, "Don't you worry, sir, that's only Bartleby."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Ship's cat." The fellow disappeared around a corner.

  "Cat?" The oily thicket named Bartleby extended a snorkle of some kind, an extremity like a moist green drinking straw. It sniffled at Floyt, then retracted. Bartleby flowed up onto the bulkhead and wandered off down the passageway, leaving no trail or scent that Floyt could detect.

  Floyt was undaunted in his journey of discovery. It occurred to him that Earthservice might even let him publish something on the experience if he hewed to psychprop guidelines. Consulting a map of the ship's layout that he'd transferred from his cabin's terminal to the proteus, he proceeded.

  Floyt passed the vessel's sensory deprivation tank. He'd enjoyed sensedep on Earth, and found it restful. Still, he didn't care to float in darkness listening to his eyelids blink and all that while there was a starship to be seen.

  He knew he could borrow an induction helmet and sample its artificial stimuli, but he wasn't sure that would be wise; after they'd disembarked from Mindframe, Alacrity had made very disparaging remarks about "skull-to-hull hookups."

  Next along was the Bruja's sensorium, a miniature multimedia theater. Its menu offered none of the perversions the psychprop officers had warned against; Floyt didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

  He ordered up a seat for one in the center of the modest compartment. Sitting, he selected a program, something called "Ball-Struggle."

  He found himself surrounded by a shoving, struggling mass of shouting, sweating men in skimpy white loincloths. They laughed and roared and babbled in some offworld language.

  He felt the breeze and the sun's heat, or something very like them; he seemed to smell dust and perspiration and incense. He couldn't help shying away from the pushing, heaving teams.

  Rechecking the menu, he discovered he'd summoned up Hakozaki-gu no Tama-seseri, a ritual recorded at the rebuilt Hakozaki Shrine on Fukuoka, but originated in Terra's Japan.

  The straining mob fought and grabbed at the prize ball, some sitting on their teammates' shoulders. From the sidelines, priests hosed water onto the melee.

  Floyt was openmouthed. Earth had nothing like the sensorium, at least not for functionaries. He picked another sequence.

  He hung in space, near the center of a globular star cluster, lost in brilliance shed by half a million distant suns …

  * * * *

  Floyt mustered his self-control and canceled the sequence before and around him. A limitless, rust-colored plain, spread under a fey red sun, vanished. It took with it tens of thousands of hooded, chanting worshipers before their human sacrifice could be carried out at his feet.

  He sat for a few moments, shaken. At last
he returned to the passageway. When he'd meditated for some seconds on why the sensorium would never, never be allowed on Terra, he continued his wandering.

  He came to an open hatch and peeked into an empty compartment. Crew quarters. He eyed the knickknacks and souvenirs, erotica, art, and pornography the breakabouts had picked up in their travels. Every item was secured against weightlessness or maneuver forces.

  The sound of a nearby hatch made him yank back into the passageway. An outrageous being appeared, gurgling Terranglish, which he supposed to mean that it wasn't a colleague of Bartleby.

  To his credit, Floyt stood his ground. His experience in the Bruja had been unnerving at times, but nothing, he'd decided, to excuse unreasoning panic.

  "Oh, thank you! Thank you so much, Gabriel," the thing was gushing, "for the loan of your token." It held up a little doodad of some sort in one tentacle. In another, it clasped a bulging bag that clinked and swung heavily. A third embraced a Monopoly game; others caressed the deeds from the game—all of them.

  "My pleasure, Squeeb," Gabriel said, following the Hyperbolarian out into the passageway from his cabin.

  One of the eyestalks had caught sight of Floyt, but Squeeb's attention was still on the broker. "Do you think … that is, the token is doubtless an heirloom—"

  "It's been in the family forever," Gabriel conceded.

  "But I'd hoped you could see your way clear to … it's been so lucky for me—"

  "Fifty ovals?" Gabriel suggested.

  "Done!" The creature dipped into its sack and counted out the sum. Floyt did a quick conversion in his head and concluded that this Squeeb had had himself a streak of luck. Gabriel's smile couldn't have been any wider without injuring his face.

  The two parted in mutual affection. The being waltzed happily in Floyt's direction. "Greetings upon you," it chirped. "Citizen Floyt, are you not?"

  "I am."

  "How do you do? I am Apprentice Squeeb, and this Monopoly game is the craze that will soon grip all Hyperbole."

  "Oh? Er, good." At least, he hoped it was.

  "I must be off," Squeeb told him. "But you must promise to tell me about your Earth. Some of Bruja's tapes gave me knowledge of its history. Observe!"

  Squeeb shifted his various burdens and placed one tentacle reverently over the region of his heart. He then began to sing with great feeling.

  "Oh, I wish I were in Disney, Away! Away!

  In Disneyland I'll take my stand,

  To live and die in Disney!

  —That's one of my favorites!"

  Floyt coughed, "Yes, well, we'll have to talk about that sometime."

  "Tickety-boo! Bye for now!" Squeeb sallied off to gloat over his ramazz and his entrepreneurial future.

  "Citizen Floyt," Gabriel said, who'd watched the whole thing, "you're the man I've been looking for."

  "I'm afraid that board games really aren't my strong suit."

  "Mine either. I have something that might interest you, though."

  The keepsakes in the crew quarters had aroused Floyt's acquisitive urges. He entered the broker's booth of a cabin and accepted a seat on the bunk while Gabriel perched on the desk. They were practically touching knees. It reminded Floyt of his hall closet study on Earth. "What did you want to show me?" he asked.

  "This," answered Gabriel. He held an auto-styrette in his hand.

  Chapter 9

  Transports of Delight

  Some inner watchdog that had been on guard since the woman had ambushed him on Terra acted now.

  Floyt pushed himself to one side almost instantly, lashing out with his feet. He made contact; Gabriel yelled as Floyt, unable to get past him, leaped on him, clutching the hand that held the injector. They lurched together for a few seconds, then tumbled into the passageway, falling to the deck.

  "The captain has the power to marry you, y'know," Alacrity said, bending over them.

  "He's crazy! Chinga!" Gabriel hollered, struggling to his feet.

  "I—he—" the Earther floundered as Alacrity helped him up.

  "C'mon," Alacrity cut him off, snatching up the styrette and glancing around to make sure they hadn't been seen. Floyt allowed himself to be crowded into the cabin again.

  Gabriel was still boiling with oaths. "He should be locked up, that's what!"

  Alacrity persuaded Gabriel to palm a hidden lock on his bunk. Noiselessly a huge tray slid out of concealment. Floyt gaped at niches holding expensive recording gear and other instruments, jewelry, phials and bottles of liquid, capsules and spansules and tablets, styrettes and inhalers. There were info slugs, costly proteases, and false documentation.

  Floyt saw that he'd interrupted a sales pitch, not a murder attempt. "I'm so sorry! Commerce never occurred to me."

  "What's in the styrette?" Alacrity asked.

  "A mnemonic drug." Gabriel looked to Floyt. "I mean, you're doing research, aren't you? That's why you're traveling, right? I thought you could use it." His anger had ebbed. "You made an honest mistake, I guess."

  "You've got to be more careful around my associate here," Alacrity cautioned. "You're lucky I came along when I did." He slipped Floyt a wink.

  As they made their way back to their cabin, Floyt noticed Alacrity's bleary eyes and surmised, "Monopoly?"

  "Ever since I left you. I got cleaned out," he sighed. "People who enjoy a game are one thing; life forms who get sexual gratification out of it—"

  "Maybe we can get your cross back from Gabriel. I assume that was your cross in his treasure trove."

  "Yes. Well, Sim knew she was bankrolling me with it when she gave it to me."

  Back in the cabin, Alacrity handed Floyt a fistful of data slugs. "I borrowed these for you. I figured you'd be through with that Earthservice manure pile you call a briefing file by now."

  Floyt sorted through the little lozenges, activating their labels. Lurid graphics with an emphasis on passion, violence, and sensationalism popped into view.

  "Caspahr Weir Versus the Transuranic Flame Goddesses of Death," he read from the first. And from the second, "Caspahr Weir and the Invasion of the Time Maggots—Alacrity, what in the world are these?"

  "This title's my personal favorite." Alacrity singled one out. "Caspahr Weir Meets the Teleporting Pygmies from the Galactic Core."

  The books had all been written by, or at least published under the pseudonym of, Bombastico Herdman. "Weir was one of those characters nobody really knew much about," Alacrity explained, "even while he was making history. But a lot of people were curious, so somebody fictionalized him."

  "Penny dreadfuls!" Floyt cried. "Dime novels; shilling shockers; pulps."

  Now it was the breakabout's turn to look nonplussed. "Lofty examples of early Terran literature," Floyt clarified.

  Communications on Earth were instantaneous, of course, or near enough as made no difference. But the fastest that information could travel among the stars was the speed of a messenger ship. Too, the use of modern recording equipment wasn't always feasible, for a staggering variety of reasons. There was also an incalculable amount going on, constantly, everywhere.

  All of this had brought about a renewal of the human powers of description. It had revived as well certain of the earliest forms: tall tales, the traveler's narrative, legends, and folklore. And these books. Floyt recalled that the opening of the American West was as much invented on the spot as chronicled.

  "The bos'n I borrowed them from said that this Bombastico guy doesn't write about Weir anymore. But I thought there might be something useful in with all the swash."

  Floyt held the "penny dreadfuls"—that was how he thought of them—in his hand. "Thank you, Alacrity. I appreciate it."

  Alacrity was fiddling with his Monopoly piece. "Look, I want to get this deal behind me, I admit that, but I want to do it the right way. I don't know if it's occurred to you, but there're things I'd prefer to be doing right now, too."

  He thought for a moment before adding, "Things that are very important to me."

>   "I see."

  "Capital Veldemar's due to cut out the Breakers in about another couple hundred hours," Alacrity announced. Then he stretched out, silver and gray mane cradled on his interlaced fingers, face to the bulkhead. He was snoring softly within seconds.

  * * * *

  Despite Bruja's purification system, the air carried more than a hint of incense when the skipper conducted mass. Floyt came down with a slight case of what Alacrity referred to as the "flow-flows." The breakabout said, "It happens to everyone, sooner or later," and gave him one of the powerful nostrums that were common among travelers. Alacrity somehow managed to get back into a marathon Monopoly game, winning back a small measure of what he'd lost. Floyt read the books of Bombastico Herdman, delighting in their outrageous fabrications.

  Time passed.

  In the Bruja's entertainment banks, the Terran discovered, among other things, recordings of long-ago Earth radio and television broadcasts, recaptured when humanity's expansion had outraced the speed of light. Floyt found them engrossing, if frequently incomprehensible. Fibber McGee's closet made him howl with delight, though, while original footage (that incredibly outdated word!) of early space exploration stirred him in spite of Earthservice indoctrination.

  He discovered recordings of a contemporary series, an extremely popular program called "Doomsday." To his amazement, it concentrated solely on disasters of planetary dimensions. Worldwide deluges, complete social breakdown, and global quakes were among the things relentlessly catalogued and rated for destruction and misery.

  When he mentioned it to Alacrity, the breakabout's voice became brittle with animosity. "Yeah, if some poor bastard's home's been hit by an asteroid thirty kilometers wide, you can bet there'll be a ghoul from 'Doomsday' on the scene, sticking a pickup in his face and saying, 'How do you feel at this moment, sir?' Some places, they run that show all day and all night, the All-Doomsday Channel. Myself, I can't stomach it."

  Neither could Floyt. He dismissed the program as a mental disorder.