by Brian Daley
"Oh yeah? Well if you ask me, those goons'd still probably kill somebody just to fill up a lull in the conversation."
Then: "So Dorraine's been the fair-haired princess to them. But Redlock—"
"No, no! I still haven't gotten to the part about the war."
"Listen, we haven't got all day, y'know." Halidome, Epiphany's star, had grown appreciably brighter and slid across the great shield of the viewport as they talked.
"Tch! Keep your dainties on, rig! Some bunch of ravaging Visigoths invaded Agora and took over when Dorraine was still a child. The whole royal family was killed, except for Inst and his daughter.
"He got her away in disguise, but they were rounded up and imprisoned. They spent years together in a succession of concentration camps on several planets, under assumed names."
"Those two?" Alacrity marveled. "They must be a lot harder than they look."
"I'd say so. Somehow they kept each other alive through starvation, forced labor, beatings, and liquidations. And, I suppose, when Dorraine was older … other things. Until one day when they woke up and the sky was full of Redlock's ships.
"Inst identified himself and proved his claim. The Agorans were still fiercely loyal to their constitutional monarchy. Since Inst had only been royal consort, he wasn't in the line of succession. Redlock set Dorraine on the throne and made Inst regent.
"Agora swore allegiance to Weir through Redlock. Dorraine's rule has been the most popular in about a hundred years and Agora's a bulwark of Weir's realm. Oh, and of course, Redlock married Dorraine."
"Of course. Do we get to the part about the Severeemish being a bunch of soreheads anytime soon?"
"Go piss in a socket! By that time the Severeemish were a confederacy of three planets, and they'd built themselves into a formidable military power. They saw their chance to do a little land grabbing in Agora's system during the Agoran subjugation, but it led to war once Redlock was on the scene."
"Good old Redlock. I heard something about this. The Severeemish fought Weir to a standstill, right?"
"I suppose that's fair enough to say, but it cost them terribly. They'd already sworn never to surrender. To save them face, they were allowed to vow fealty through Dorraine. They still remembered their debt to her ancestors."
"Their memories were set on selective."
"Uh-huh. The Severeemish Confederacy became a sort of client state."
"Not bad. Economical."
"Weir's specialty. And in return, Weir promised to abide by their Observances and Usages, and all the protocols that go with them. It'll probably make his funeral quite a shindig."
"But why do they want trouble? At least, that's how I read them."
"They're nothing if not stiff-necked. I suppose they'd love a chance to get out of their oath, now that they've rebuilt their military. But they're too scrupulous about their oaths to just renege on one. Too feudal, too militaristic; it would rock their whole social structure. So they're trying to provoke a rift."
They watched the starscape swing by. Alacrity discovered how to get the dispenser to cough up an extraordinary Epiphanian champagne; Floyt sampled it with delight. All too soon, by Floyt's reckoning, the major of Celestials appeared to show them to the flight deck, and the Blue Pearl.
Chapter 10
Mixers
The Blue Pearl resembled exactly that, a ball some forty meters in diameter, made of smoky blue glass with a silvery reflectiveness to it.
The companions had long since stopped worrying about guns and luggage. The High Truce declared for Weir's funeral was all-encompassing. Celestials, looking like so many lethal orchestra conductors, waved weapons-detection wands around them before they boarded.
Power source and crew, detectors and weaponry and other machinery were tucked out of sight in the Pearl's bottom. There were terraced decks and lush foliage in well-anchored planters; there were deep carpets and a live string quartet of females dressed in classic black gowns and wearing bluish cultured pearls. There was a catering board tended by nubile young women. There were also handsome young men among the staff, but the breakabout only noticed the ones who were carrying drink trays.
"Oboy! D'you think a feature spread on this thing would go under 'Modern Spacecraft,"Opulent Lifestyles,' or 'Outdoor Living?' " He plucked a tangerinelike fruit from a tree and looked around in excitement.
"Relax, Fitzhugh," Floyt advised.
Dorraine and Redlock were present, in conversation with the two Severeemish. The queen had apparently achieved the incredible—she had charmed the minister and the general into something resembling civility. Redlock turned a warning eye toward the Terran and the breakabout.
"I don't think he's dying to get to know us right now, Ho."
"I'd say you made a good call. Come; I'll buy you a drink."
Lesser personages floated about, crew and civilians, and a number of Celestials, though no one but Dorraine and Redlock, Seven Wars and Sortie-Wolf and Floyt wore an Inheritor's belt.
Alacrity made elaborate overtures to the bartender, who bore it with the good grace necessary to her calling. But his wide, tawny eyes roved the Blue Pearl, weighing, assessing. He and Hobart joined the others in exclaiming as the craft moved off the flight deck and Epiphany loomed near.
The planet was mottled in greens, grays, and browns, aswirl with blue-white clouds. It rolled under them as the Pearl descended.
Alacrity noticed two more Severeemish off to one side. The bartender told him that these were Corporeals, members of a special corps of bodyguards and shock troops. The Corporeals and the lithe, dangerous Celestials eyed one another with relaxed, chilly calculation. The breakabout wasn't sure where he'd put his money if it came to a fight.
The flight to Epiphany took them on a long, curved course in order to show off some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet. Floyt found it extremely novel to hear conversation, laughter, and the glancing of bottles and drinking vessels as the Blue Pearl flashed along high over Epiphany.
They saw sheer, razorback mountains thick with undergrowth and cloud forests, enclosing inaccessible ripples of valley. They hurtled over swamps and tangled jungle, lava-lakes and geysers, snarled rivers, and an archipelago like a necklace out of heaven's lapidary. They gazed down on angry seas, and snow-crowned peaks that topped 14,000 meters. Floyt's determined loyalty to Terra's beauty was severely tested.
Frostpile was an assemblage of forms that shouldn't have coexisted in such harmony but did. The effect was one of a city of intagliated crystal. It rose in twisted spirals like unicorn horns, and turrets resembling rampant hooded cobras; towers that put Floyt in mind of toadstools; finials; fans; pinions. There were grand esplanades and arcing fountains.
Frostpile had projections like battering rams and subsections that might have been tethered dirigibles; spidery bridges and lacy miradors. All of it was flawlessly integrated, and there was an apparent weightlessness to it. There was a good deal of sky traffic: touring hansoms, troop carriers, patrolling air-cutters, a hover phaeton, and individuals in grav-harness.
Alacrity picked out fortifications, and plenty of them. Frostpile was one sugar candy that no one was going to swallow at a gulp.
The Blue Pearl landed on top of a central tower, its roof more than a quarter kilometer on each side. No sooner had the ship touched down than Weir household troops, the renowned Invincibles, formed up. Liveried servants and porter automata and under-seneschals swarmed forth.
Floyt and Alacrity, among the last to disembark, found themselves on an acre or so of midnight-black carpet worked in gold thread with the Weir coat of arms, whose most prominent device was a broken slave collar.
Dorraine, the governor, Inst, and the Severeemish were the center of the attention of the massed household personnel, and the warm, tangy afternoon air was filled with martial music. Floyt saw that Alacrity was watching him expectantly. Then the Terran realized that the Inheritor's belt was their only credential. It made Floyt feel that much more estranged from
Terra and resentful of Bear, if not Earthservice, conditioning or no. He tried to put it out of his mind; it could only mean trouble at his debriefing.
The breakabout guessed what was running through Floyt's mind. He patted the Earther's shoulder. "Just don't pick up any good habits, Ho, and you'll do fine."
An assistant under-seneschal found them and festooned their bags about an autoporter. At his invitation, they seated themselves on jumpseats that folded down from the machine's sides. The man instructed it, and the robot hummed off toward their quarters. Everyone else there ignored their departure.
The porter floated down a long ramp within the tower, the winding descent leading it into a side corridor. The place was built on a scale suitable to titans. Walls, floor, and ceilings were smooth and translucently bone-white. There was constant, bustling traffic.
They were halted once, at a junction checkpoint where Invincibles scanned for weapons. When they'd resumed their way, Floyt glanced out an observation deck window and saw that they were headed for one of the captive dirigibles.
The under-seneschal brought them to a suite on the upper sweep of the form, well away from the central structures of Frostpile. Its front door, a cluster of curved, overlapping surfaces, didn't simply swing or slide out of the way; to Floyt's astonishment, it blossomed open.
They stepped through into a spacious living-receiving room. Half the room lay under a broad shield of skylight that gave them an enviable view of Weir's stronghold. The suite was decorated in the sumptuous, excessive New Elegance style originated on Laissez Faire. The deep pile of the aquamarine carpet brushed their ankles. From the lighting tendrils drifting overhead to the floor's texture and temperature controls, the suite was obediently, indulgently, exhaustively luxurious.
Floyt wandered out into it, mesmerized by the beauties of form, space, light, and scent. Alacrity cut short the under-seneschal's explanation of the suite's environmental system, service, and commo arrangements, and the layout of Frost-pile.
Departing, the man told them, "There's an orientation program available from the communications terminal. It explains the behavioral constraints now in force." He left in haste; other, important, guests were to be seen to. The two visitors had barely begun sorting themselves out when the door flowered open again and a woman strode exuberantly—very nearly bounced—into the suite.
She scarcely topped 150 centimeters, plump and round-cheeked with a halo of tight brown curls and cheery eyes the same color. Over a light blouse she wore a loose one-piece garment that reminded Floyt of rompers. Altogether, she put him in mind of a very animated child.
"Welcome to Riffraff Alley." She beamed at them. "I'm Sintilla."
Alacrity found himself grinning back at her while Floyt made the introductions. "Riffraff Alley?" the breakabout echoed.
"That's my name for it." She waved a hand to include the dirigible in general. "Old Grandam Tiajo stuck all of her least welcome guests out here."
"Weir's sister, right?" Alacrity asked. "Chief executrix and all that?"
Sintilla nodded.
"If this is exile, I'll endure it somehow," Floyt allowed.
Sintilla smiled again. "Oh, it's passable, but you should see how the gentry in the core districts live." She eyed the Terran speculatively. "So, at last I get to meet the mystery man from Earth."
"What's that mean?" Alacrity pounced, natural and programmed suspicions flaring.
She scrunched her nose at him merrily. "I might as well confess right now: I'm a journalist. I'm here to cover the funeral rites, but there'd be plenty of interest in a story about a native Terran. A lot of people are curious about Hobart. But Tiajo isn't one of them; she's just plain piqued."
"At me?" Floyt cried. "Whatever for?"
"At her brother, too—except that she'd never admit it—for adding you to his will at the last minute without consulting her. That's why you two are here with the rest of us undesirables."
"Suits me," Alacrity huffed.
"At any rate, we're not interested in being interviewed, thank you," Floyt told her.
"Now, wait! There're things I can do for you too, y'know. I'm conversant with most of the who, what, and why around here."
"So?" Alacrity was attempting to adjust his proteus to Frostpile's system, without much luck.
"I can fill you in on things. For starters, you might as well not bother trying to patch into the commo systems with your own equipment."
Alacrity stopped fiddling. "What're they, all on-line encrypted?"
She shrugged. "Not my line of work. All I know is, if you want a comset that works, you have to use one of theirs. Accessors, proteuses, interfacers—they're not much use on Epiphany."
"That seems unduly restrictive," opined Floyt, who was once again beginning to miss his accessor, "even for security's sake."
"Anyway, that's something we would've found out for ourselves," Alacrity pointed out.
Sintilla gave him a look of clownish pity. "Yeah, and you can screen the protocol orientations, but that's just not the same as having a pal who knows the ropes, is it? Look, I don't want to grill you guys; I just want to see how things go for you here, same as for all the others."
In spite of the Earthservice warning against unnecessary fraternization, Floyt could see where knowledgeable advice might be of great help to his mission; even Alacrity seemed a bit out of his league in Frostpile.
"Very well," he said, surprised to find himself making decisions. Alacrity withheld any objection; her story would be easy enough to check out, and in any case, he had no intention of trusting her or anyone else. Besides, he was prone to sympathy for a fellow underdog.
"Jubilation!" she laughed, clapping her hands. "Did anybody offer to show you around Frostpile? No? Well then, I'll do it, unless you're too tired."
They were both restive from shipboard confinement. Sintilla summoned a corridor tram, and they were off, descending into the main part of the stronghold.
The corridors teemed with robotry and automata, Invincibles and other household members. The Weir guardsmen were a more heterogeneous group than Redlock's Celestials or the Corporeals of the Severeemish. A good many older men and women wore the heavily braided and decorated red and gold uniforms; Sintilla explained that many had been Invincibles all their adult lives. More than half were liberated slaves; all were unsparingly loyal to the Weir family.
Floyt was fascinated with the variety in dress and appearance of those traveling the corridors afoot and on trams. He saw one young woman in a glittering outfit like a matador's suit of lights; she looked like some sort of royalty.
"Food technician," Sintilla explained when he asked.
The journalist pointed out assorted places and things of interest or importance and filled them in on the history of the place. Originally, Tiajo had planned to select one of several high-flown names for the Weir seat of power. But during the construction, her brother had, with typical lack of reverence, taken to calling it Frostpile. The name had caught on, and to Tiajo's consternation, she had never been able to dislodge it.
"Is Weir laid out in state?" Alacrity asked. He had no idea what the local custom was.
"Uh-huh, in the family complex," Sintilla supplied. "But no outsiders will be permitted until the ending ceremony."
Three times Invincibles at security checkpoints flagged them down for quick, courteous but thorough detector searches. And, detectors swiveling, floating surveillance drones drifted along the corridors.
"What're they afraid of?" Alacrity wondered aloud.
"That somebody'll violate the High Truce," Sintilla said. "That's why Tiajo wouldn't let any of the Inheritors or guests bring along a big retinue or entourage. Only one or two companions apiece, like Hobart."
"Or the Severeemish, with those Corporeals," Floyt mulled.
"Don't the privileged classes miss their concubines and nannies and hiney wipers?" Alacrity wondered.
"Frostpile can provide any and all on request." Sintilla giggled. "Every one of
'em loyal to Tiajo."
"And so all the visitors are on a fairly equal footing, regardless of rank," Floyt realized.
The little journalist nodded. "There are plenty of grudges and feuds among the various parties. Everybody's salivating for his slice of the Weir fortune and realm, too. Not to mention the trouble you're bound to run into anytime a mixed crowd like this one gets together. It's a good idea not to discuss religion or politics."
"Or history or art," Alacrity added.
"Or sports or sexual credos," Floyt contributed. He wondered if the Invincibles were also keeping their eyes open for stray medical styrettes.
"Actually, the guards are trying to be very discreet about all this searching," Sintilla told them. "When the Daimyo of Shurutzu arrived, the Invincibles scanned his baggage and got a strong reading. Turned out he'd packed along a favorite biosynergic, um, 'marital aid.' Impressive, but not lethal. Anyway, wasn't there a flap about that! Now the guards are being more circumspect."
They arrived at the Hall of Remembrances and dismounted. The place was crammed with memorabilia collected during Weir's long, eventful life. Just within the entrance was the flying throne in which he'd been sitting when he'd died, out in the meadow beyond Frostpile. Rows of shining exhibition cases, display cabinets, and shelves were lined with weapons, trophies of war, and ceremonial artifacts and clothing.
The place was nearly a maze, with orientation supplied by floating holos and illuminated floor strips. With a jaunty stride, Sintilla led them into it, calling back, "This is one of my favorite places in Frostpile."
There were personal keepsakes and lavish gifts of state. The precious items—scepters, crowns and diadems, jeweled staffs and batons, and similar symbols of Weir's accumulated titles and ranks—were arrayed in special security cases, monitored by elaborate alarm systems and closely watched by sharp-eyed Invincibles.
Less grandiose items were shown as well. Among these was the original hard copy of the famous message from the Srillan admiral, Maska. Weir had attempted to expand into Srillan territories while the aardvarklike aliens were occupied elsewhere. Maska, then Srilla's youngest flag-rank officer, had somehow managed to bluff his other enemies and throw together a huge armada with which to confront Weir.
