by Brian Daley
"He's good," the breakabout conceded.
She didn't look aside at him, but seemed to have known all along that he was there. "Yes. He seldom loses."
There was an edgy silence. Alacrity couldn't for the life of him figure out what to say next. She spoke first.
"I shouldn't be talking to you, or listening either."
"Wait now, just because I got off on the wrong foot with your father doesn't mean that I—"
"There's no changing it." She met his stare now, big hazel eyes searching luminous yellow ones. "I mean that. Now, you were fun to dance and flirt with, but that's not worth seeing you get hurt—and you would be. My father is successful in a business that can be very rough. He's used to having his way."
"Why don't you let me worry about that, Heart?"
"Tch! Do you really think you're the first one to give me that he-man line? You're just not worth it, get me?"
"In that case, why should you care?"
"Because I don't want to see anybody hurt! I couldn't stand that again, don't you understand? Not again! I'm not asking you, Alacrity; I'm telling you."
She turned her back on him, but he wasn't through. "Not good enough, Heart. The martyr act's very dramatic, but you're not in any danger of pain. I think you enjoy this. You make it easy on yourself, and the hell with anybody else, and we both fucking well know it."
He put a hand on her shoulder, to force her to face him. She resisted. Just then Dincrist grabbed Alacrity's arm and spun him around roughly. "I warned you."
"I spoke to him," Heart blurted. Her father glared at her for a moment.
Admiral Maska came up and attempted to take Dincrist's elbow. "I believe I owe you a victory glass, sir." Dincrist didn't budge.
Floyt, who'd been dancing adroitly around Sintilla's questions, noticed what was going on. So did the freelancer, her mouth popping open as the older man said, "This is your final warning to stay away from me and my daughter."
"Sure, skipper—unless you'd care to play a little buzz-ball, that is."
Dincrist's face broke into a feral smile. "Indeed? Why, yes. I think you're right. Just the thing." He began fastening his mitts back on.
The Nonpareil said, "Alacrity, no!"
"Alacrity, yes!" he parried merrily.
"You're both insane!" she flared, and strode away.
Floyt reached the breakabout's side. "Alacrity, I told you, this sort of thing isn't—"
"This sort of thing isn't 'this sort of thing,' Ho. It's just a friendly little frolic. Doesn't have anything to do with our agreement, read me?"
Floyt saw that, short of invoking the conditioning again, he couldn't stop things. He remembered how that had felt the previous evening and, too, what his own reaction had been when Arlo Mote tried to blind him with boxing-glove eyelets. Moreover, a buzzball contest could be monitored, and stopped short of serious injury.
"Ah, go ahead then, if you must. Get it out of your system," he muttered, stepping aside in disgust, almost bumping into Maska.
Alacrity was fastening on a helmet as he eyed a selection of mitts. A considerable crowd had gathered, and more were converging from other parts of the field every moment.
"I don't know that this is such a wise idea, truly, Citizen Floyt," the Srillan said quietly, ignored by everybody but the Terran. While Floyt agreed, he was incapable of doing anything but hastily moving away from the alien.
The crowd watched the two players donning mitts, pads, and headgear. Maska, seeing the revulsion on Floyt's face, was silently rueful.
The contestants entered the tank, stretching and flexing arms and legs, wringing out their muscles. Alacrity bent at the waist to touch the floor of the tank with the palms of his flexible, reinforced mitts. Dincrist did slow deep knee-bends. They ignored each other.
As they tugged and settled their pads, the first warning sounded. They went into crouching ready positions. From the ejector port a white glow began to emerge, the buzzball building its matrix. The target ring appeared. The buzzball shot into the tank while the second warning was still sounding.
Dincrist, winner of the previous match, leapt to meet it. It was an easy catch-and-land, since the random gravity-changing mechanism hadn't, in its computerized wisdom, seen fit to alter things yet. Dincrist whirled and bounced, then threw.
But with the ball in mid-arc, gravity shifted. It seemed to the players that the world flip-flopped. The scoring circle had vanished. The buzzball struck a blank wall.
While Dincrist was the superior player, Alacrity had spacer's reflexes and was not tired. The breakabout bounced under the tycoon, off the erstwhile floor, to take the orb on its rebound. Pirouetting expertly, he whipped the popping energy ball at the black circle, so close that he singed the hairs on his arm. He made the first point of the match.
Alacrity pushed off the wall-now-floor smugly. Outside the tank, one or two of the onlookers applauded the goal, but Alacrity could hear nothing. From his point of view, they were all standing out horizontally from a verticle grass surface. It gave him an unaccustomed sense of vertigo. Sintilla, holding money aloft in one hand, was apparently trying to make a wager.
Floyt was watching stoically. The breakabout couldn't see Heart, but he caught sight of Seven Wars and Sortie-Wolf.
Dincrist payed no attention to those outside. He waited, breathing easily but deeply, poker-faced but plainly angry. Alacrity punched his heavy gloves together and smirked.
The sputtering, buzzing little sphere whizzed again. This time Alacrity grabbed it—almost. The gravity changed again; Dincrist's padded shoulder slammed into him just as he was stretched full length, leaping and reaching. The breakabout flew sideways, the wind nearly knocked from him, going oomph!
Dincrist reached, cupped, threw, and scored.
Alacrity picked himself up, now standing on the tank's ceiling. Dincrist the sportsman was oblivious to him, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. The gathered audience no longer mattered.
The charged orb took form again. Alacrity took a running leap, high up, to rebound off the wall. It was a gamble. If the gravity failed to shift, or didn't shift in such a way as to make his move useful, Dincrist would take another point and Alacrity might put himself into ignominy or a medical ward. But he figured the change he was banking for was due. And he was angry.
He was also lucky.
His move had been against eight-to-one odds, but had paid off. Gravity swung the two around again. Dincrist missed a leap, skidding even at one-fourth his normal weight and in skid-resistant shoes. Alacrity's momentum gave him a good bank off a wall that was on its way to being a floor. From the outside, they looked like they were floating around; to the players, the tank was rotating about them.
Alacrity scored. Dincrist checked him again, this time slightly after his release, padded elbow to unprotected rib cage. There'd been enough of an interval that it seemed intended, but this was a pickup game, and the niceties of tournament play didn't count for much.
They waited, panting, not meeting one another's gaze, as the warning signal heralded another buzzball.
Floyt, surveying the scene, saw that Dame Tiajo had arrived, followed by a covey of attendants and a number of Invincibles. The Earther hoped his companion would spot her; she would certainly notice any transgressions.
Presbyter Kuss was in the throng too, and First Councillor Inst. Except for Tiajo, just about everyone there was engaged in egalitarian jostling and jockeying for a better view of the match.
The players were on the move once more. Pretext had been dropped, Floyt noted with dismay; they were playing for blood. The buzzball flew like a sizzling meteor.
Alacrity caught Dincrist just right with his hip, but the older man spun away deftly, letting his whirling, padded elbow catch the breakabout. They both sprawled, Alacrity spirting blood in a scarlet mist. Then they had to scramble out of the way as the sparking buzzball bounced off the floor, zinging off on a new course.
The gravity altered once more. They f
ell toward the wall. Dincrist sought to extricate himself from the tangle of arms and legs by thrusting Alacrity downward, climbing over him in free-fall. Alacrity tucked in his head and pushed off with his feet, sending the other tumbling.
The buzzball, coruscating off the ceiling—now their wall—struck Dincrist on his unprotected bicep; he yelped in pain at the ball's jolting charge. Yet, for that moment, the buzzball was inert. Dincrist had the presence of mind to seize it. A second later, it glowed again as he sprang at the scoring circle. Outside, Floyt saw Tiajo snapping some indignant comment to an aide, no doubt on the thuggishness of the exchange.
All at once gravity reversed its dictates. This time, though, rather than gradually shifting or rotating, it simply increased. Both men were slammed against what had been one wall of the tank. Dincrist lost the ball, which fell away in a plume of light.
As abruptly as that had happened, the field altered again. The two plummeted back the way they'd come. It was clear that the tank's gravity was no longer at one-quarter gee, having increased.
"This is too dangerous," Floyt burst out. It wasn't his idea of a game, or even a sane way to fight.
"Something's wrong!" Heart cried. "The machinery's berserking! They'll be killed!"
She was right. The opponents were being rattled around like dice in a cup. The gee field was increasing in strength. If it went all the way up to Standard, both would be seriously injured at least, possibly killed.
Without warning, there was a new hazard. The buzzball, now zigzagging madly, shed lightning when it struck the walls. Its shock-level had been raised to one that could wound, perhaps kill.
Tiajo commanded that the match be halted. Alacrity and Dincrist frantically pressed the emergency—stop buttons on their mitts—to no avail. The buzzball continued its violent discharges and careening, while the players were hurled and dropped, then hurled again.
Redlock had appeared and was tugging at the manual release to the tank door, accomplishing nothing. The game's computer had overridden it, sealing the players inside. The Nonpareil hammered at the tank with her fists, screaming as her snowy curls whipped her face.
"Shut down the field unit!" Sortie-Wolf hollered in a parade-ground voice. Floyt joined the others who sprinted off toward it.
Endwraithe, the Spican banker, was first to reach the machine, only to discover that its protective panel was closed and that he couldn't open the latch; its mechanism was covered with a mass of epoxy from the repair benches, stuff that solidified to metallic hardness almost instantly.
Floyt, arriving on Endwraithe's heels, tried to help him, using every bit of strength, wrenching muscles, and tearing loose fingernails. It was hopeless. Into the Earther's mind flashed the image of Brother Grimm bending the barbell.
He shouted for Djinn, but Grimm, among others, was still attempting fruitlessly to get the tank door open.
Floyt started off to get the Djinn, even though it seemed a doomed effort. If the tank's gravity increased much more, those inside would be dashed to death before anyone could gain access to the controls.
Just at that moment Sintilla approached, yanking an Invincible officer along with her, tugging at his harness. Queen Dorraine was right behind. Taking in the situation at a glance, Tilla ordered, "Use your gun! Shoot the computer!"
The lieutenant was a loyal and courageous man, but only recently commissioned and not an individual of great personal initiative. Invincible officers were the only ones there who carried firearms, and the officer corps had been admonished by Grandam Tiajo in person to draw their weapons only in the event that some other person was using deadly force. She hadn't foreseen this eventuality, but one violated the orders of the grandam at the risk of general court-martial.
While the lieutenant was struggling toward a decision, Dorraine acted. She snatched the Invincible's pistol, a Nova Special, a cannon of a weapon, in a class with the Captain's Sidearm.
"You! Out of my way!"
Floyt and the banker needed no second invitation; they both dived for cover. Holding the Special cup-in-saucer fashion, the Agoran fired into the game's computer with one spectacular, sustained shot.
Smoke and brilliant eruptions, detonations and molten metal flew outward from the unit. Onlookers yelled in shock and fright. In the midst of the storm of scorching heat and flying debris, Dorraine cooly stood her ground and let the machine have it again.
Alacrity and Dincrist were sliding up a wall toward the ceiling when the field cut out. Luckily they hadn't gone far.
The artificial gravity yielded to the natural; they were abruptly headed for the floor at full gee.
They hit at the same instant and lay stunned, a meter or so apart. Alacrity levered himself up off his stomach so that he could see the Scoreboard which, for some reason, still worked. The score was still tied.
"Son … of … a … bitch!" he ground out.
Household physicians entered the tank and examined the players on the spot, scanning with instruments, probing and poking. Both men denied that there was anything wrong with them. Aside from cuts, sprains, and strains, and what promised to be a bumper crop of bruises, they were correct. They'd been padded and protected for buzzball, and that had saved them because the gravity hadn't climbed all the way to Standard.
Heart knelt by her father's side, avoiding Alacrity's eyes. The two men traded a dirty look, but their grudge had been set aside for the time being.
"A miracle they weren't crippled or killed," pronounced the Presbyter Kuss.
"Never mind that now," Tiajo said. She'd summoned her Chief of Staff for Security, a colonel with many years in grade, who now wore a worried look on her face. She promised to brief Tiajo shortly on what she and her people could discover from the game computer's remains. Alacrity could tell at a glance that that wouldn't be much. There'd been only one security drone drifting in the vicinity of the tanks during the game, and it had been aimed the wrong way.
So, while it was manifest that there'd been sabotage, there was no telling who'd violated the High Truce or why. Defense Minister Seven Wars and Theater General Sortie-Wolf therefore had little ground for complaint to Dame Tiajo.
Both Alacrity and Dincrist were ambulatory but required observation. To avoid further friction, the physicians elected to divide into teams and attend each man in his quarters. That met with no objection, and both were floated away on hover-gurneys.
"Let the Observances continue," Tiajo bade as they drifted off. Guests took up their diversions again, but the general attitude seemed to be that the day's high point had passed.
Sintilla accompanied Floyt back to Riffraff Alley, standing at his elbow as he coded open the suite door. It seemed only polite to invite her in.
Alacrity was sitting up on the gurney, in good spirits. He held the remote control unit for the suite's commo terminal. As Sintilla and Floyt entered, he casually chucked it aside.
The only altercation came when the breakabout refused a sedative. The doctors were thorough and competent, but as serving physicians to the redoubtable Tiajo, less prone than many members of their profession to insist on having their way.
Sintilla kept up a bubbly stream of prattle, gossip, and innuendo. The doctors, finishing, left Alacrity some medication and the advice that he rest. When they'd gone, Sintilla said, "There were so many people gathered around the tank, any one of them could've rigged the buzzball computer."
"Including you, Tilla?" Alacrity asked softly.
"Huh? Oh, I see. Yeah, I guess I'm a suspect too. Except why would I want to hurt you?"
"If I got killed or injured, that'd make it a lot easier to get at Ho."
Floyt protested, "Then why would Tilla practically drag that Invincible over to the control panel by his ankle?"
Alacrity colored with embarrassment. "I didn't know about that. Sorry, Tilla."
She made a mischievous moue. "You're just doing your job, high mover."
Alacrity snorted. "Besides, who says the whole thing wasn't about Dincrist?
"
"Dincrist?"
"Uh-huh. You should've heard him carrying on in that tank when we hit the heavy weather. I think he assumed somebody was out to get him, not me. One thing's for sure: he didn't have anything to do with it. And from what they tell me, he's got a lot more people who don't like him any more than I do."
Someone signaled at the door repeatedly, and kept it up. Rather than answer, Floyt, cautious now, activated the corridor pickup. It was Heart.
Aware that she was under surveillance, she bristled. "Damn your eyes, Fitzhugh! Open this door!"
"Speaking of suspects," Sintilla half sang.
"She does sound a tad hostile," Floyt agreed, surprised by the Nonpareil's pique.
Alacrity was neither surprised nor put off. "Let her in please, Ho."
Incensed, Heart stormed into the room. She'd changed from the maillot to a demure househabit that covered wrists and feet, its cowl thrown back to expose snowy curls.
"You really work at being a spoiled child, don't you?" she seethed at Alacrity. "I'd have thought you'd be more considerate, Inheritor Floyt."
"Wait! Calm down!" Floyt implored. "What's this all about?"
"You weren't in on it? The commo answering message?"
Before the breakabout could grab it, Sintilla pounced on the remote he'd been playing with when she and Floyt arrived.
"The terminal's set to refuse incoming calls." Sintilla manipulated the remote, and the terminal's answering device began to play lush ballroom music into the sound system. It was the same music Alacrity and Heart had danced to the evening before. After a few moments, the breakabout's solicitous voice announced, "Alacrity Fitzhugh has succumbed to acute indifference. Refunds available on unused portion with proof of purchase." The music continued until Sintilla shut the system off.
"Oh, Alacrity, how could you?" Sintilla asked.
"Arrested adolescence!" the Nonpareil fumed.
"How was I to know you'd mind?" was his innocent rejoinder.
Her eyes blazed at him. "I came over here to tell you what a spiteful thing that was to do. And I have something else to say to you while I'm at it."
