Fall of the White Ship Avatar (33 page)

Fortunately the partners' visas hadn't expired and still showed gold in the computer system. The only hitch was when an officer reviewed Floyt's initial declaration to make sure the Inheritor's belt wasn't some kind of smuggled artifact. Take-off and field access clearances from the Bali Hai officials were
pro forma.

They walked out across the wet hardtop of the grounding area under floodlights, slick rainbows of spilled lube splashed here and there under their boots. A few freighters and ore-lifters were around, and lit with worklights and preparing to make weigh, a beat-up ten-passenger intrasystem shuttle was being serviced. The
Lightning Whelk
rested where they'd left her, a contoured, tired old seashell in the glare.

As the pair walked along, a shadow separated itself from others and joined them. "Made it, huh?"

Alacrity grunted.

Paloma chuckled, twirling a lock of hair around her glamornailed finger. "Oh, that Tepilit—he always had an eye for my second-best sunstreamer choker. Shall we go?"

She took Floyt's arm to head for the
Whelk,
but Alacrity stood in their way. He gestured with his head to the interplanetary shuttle.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (167 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:14

[Fitzhugh 3]-FALL OF THE WHITE SHIP AVATAR

"She's lifting for Shalimar in three hours," he said. "I checked while we were processing. You'll be there in eight hours, Paloma. If you don't have the fare, we'll give it to you. She's a Shalimar vessel, so once you're inboard your troubles are over and the company can't fool with you."

She spoke slowly, stunned. "Your word never meant anything to you. You don't care shit about Pokesnout or the herd or anything, do you?"

Floyt groped, "Alacrity—"

But Alacrity cleaved the air with his hand. "Think what you like! I promised Shalimar, and that's where you're going. But I have to get to Spica
now,
not later."

Her lips were drawn back, teeth locked. "And you end up with one less competitor, how perfect, eh?

What if I say, 'Fine, let's up-ship for Spica?' And we make it back and find the company's wiped out all the gawks? Could you live with it?"

Alacrity met her stare. "I can't help any of that."

Floyt, a deep breath held, let it out and set himself in front of Alacrity before Paloma could launch herself at him. "This is beneath you. And it's pointless; the White Ship isn't going to be yours, Alacrity.

Ever."

Alacrity drew his chin back and aside a bit, as if Floyt had taken a swing at him. "Listen, I know how you feel about Pokesnout, but—"

"The White Ship won't be yours! So stop deluding yourself and at least help someone who's helped you!"

"God
damn
you, Ho, I don't have time to get into this with you right now—"

"Oh, yes you do! You were wrong about the causality harp! Shall I tell you why? Because you saw what you wanted to see! Alacrity, I changed the input before you went out on the gantry and touched the harp.

Is this getting through to you?
The harp was answering a different question
!"

Alacrity was breathing as heavily as if he'd just run to Horselaugh from the Precursor site, or fought an army of enemies. He was long moments answering. He sounded almost calm.

"It's Paloma, isn't it? Go; go with her. I don't blame either of you, I mean that! I'll come back for you if I can. Or send somebody if you prefer … "

Floyt went to throw himself at his friend. "You're not some kind of avatar! Your family failed and you'll fail!
I'm not letting you get away with betraying people and wronging them just so you can live some
fantasy
!"

But Floyt's grasping hands missed because Paloma pulled him back, restraining him. She was taller than file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (168 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:14

[Fitzhugh 3]-FALL OF THE WHITE SHIP AVATAR

Floyt, strong, and, moreover, had gotten him in some sort of very effective hold. He couldn't shake her loose.

"It's no use, Hobie! He heard Fate play his tune on that harp!"

"
I don't care if he heard Krishna blow it through a tuba for him!"

Alacrity caught one of Floyt's clawing hands and slapped the rest of their cash into it."You two're gonna need this more than me. I'm lifting as soon as the
Whelk's
warmed up." He hesitated. "You're gonna be great together." He pivoted and went off.

Floyt subsided, watching him go; Paloma eased off her grip. "God, I hate it when he acts noble," Floyt seethed. "Worse than when he acts like a shitheel, even! Did you hear him?
Exit speeches
!"

Paloma hummed a short laugh. "You'd better get moving, Hobie."

He spun on her. "But—the herd—"

"Oh, I guess I can handle that. No, let's be honest: I know I can. But I'm not so sure you two can deal with whatever he's about to get you into, so watch yourself."

Floyt clasped handfuls of his thinning hair. "He wasn't always like this, you have to trust me." He felt like weeping. "He didn't leave me to fend for myself when he could have and had every right to. And maybe should have, given what's happened since."

"If you say so, citizen. You'd best get going, before he raises without you. But I
mean
this—"

And Paloma Sudan put her arms around Floyt's neck and put her lips close to his, so that he inhaled her sweet breath. "I almost made the wrong pick, there, once or twice, Hobart. I hope we find each other again. I want that a lot."

He had her in his arms and kissed her, embracing forcefully, just as content to make it a grinding, snail-tongued kiss as she was. It conveyed more feeling, meaning, and intent than any other language Floyt knew. The world pinwheeled.

And they were apart. She caressed his cheek; he kissed the palm of her hand. Then she was just beyond his reach, pulling up the collar of her flight jacket. Paloma made for the shuttle, heels clacking on the hardtop. He watched her until she'd disappeared up the boarding ramp, but she never looked back.

Alacrity had left the
Whelk's
hatch open; Floyt secured it behind him. An odor caught his notice as he moved cockpitward, and he traced it to the minuscule ship's head. The smell of undertow hung above the basin and drain. The empty bottle was in the refuse bin.

Floyt seated himself on the pulldown jumpseat, saying nothing, watching Alacrity ready the
Whelk
for file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (169 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:14

[Fitzhugh 3]-FALL OF THE WHITE SHIP AVATAR

liftoff.

"We forgot to lay in supplies," Alacrity said after a while, still tending his boards. "We'll be on emergency spansules most of the way."

"Alacrity—"

Alacrity swung the pilot's chair around to face Floyt, control banks and instrument panels automatically moving out of his way. He'd seen the farewell kiss from the bridge, realizing that nothing had happened between Floyt and Paloma on the entire Long Trek, and didn't know what to think or say.

"Look, please, Ho … you're the best friend I've ever had, that's all I have to tell you. But—let's not talk for a while, okay?"

Floyt settled back in his seat to wait, as the starship's engines came up.

CHAPTER 15—DAMNED IF WE DON'T

And so at last, Spica. First magnitude jewel of the Virgin; blue, short-lived supergiant; homeplace of the mightiest Precursor work yet confirmed: the Carousel. Twenty-three E-type paradise worlds in a single impossible orbit, blazing gems in an imperial diadem, with no clues as to how the trick was done, confounding and enrapturing
Homo sapiens
(and incidentally giving lots of people the conviction that their species was the Chosen of the Precursors).

Spica, in the wrong place on the Hertzprung-Russell diagrams for its impossible brood, centerpiece of the human race in the wake of the Final Smear—the disastrous climax of the Human-Srillan War—at least until hapless, harried Hobart Floyt and misadventuring Alacrity Fitzhugh brought the Camarilla conspiracy down around the ears of some of the most powerful individuals in known space.

Floyt and Alacrity weren't precisely back on their old footing, but their friendship had held and the tension was mostly gone. Floyt had tried to broach the matter of the causality harp only once during the trip; Alacrity refused to discuss it. Floyt gave the matter long and deep contemplation and then resigned himself that what would happen would happen.

The
Lightning Whelk
left Hawking with Alacrity prepared to point out a few of Spica's spectacular sights once he got his bearings and took care of the checking-in yangtwang the rules required. But the half-ducat sightseeing tour wasn't to be.

"Holy Shiva's snatch!"

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (170 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:14

[Fitzhugh 3]-FALL OF THE WHITE SHIP AVATAR

"Alacrity, what
is
this? We've stumbled into a war, is that it?"

"Dunno yet. Sit tight." He was displaying more information on the media-mosaic, assigning the commo system to monitor and cull, to give him some idea what was going on. In the meantime, Floyt gazed by means of scopes and the late Plantos's vision enhancers at several flotillas of warships floating in the vicinity of Nirvana, the system's capital and most populous world, power base of the Spican sphere of influence.

Floyt couldn't resist gaping a bit. Strung along in that same orbit were Xanadu, Heaven, Utopia, Eden, and the rest, worlds that had no business being there except that the Precursors had seen fit to arrange things so. As for the warships, they appeared to represent a number of different governments or factions, but there were also an awful lot of Spican Navy battlecraft on the prowl and at full alert.

Alacrity had no time to spiel about Spica's tremendous energy runes, or the Five Great Anomalies, or the Shepherd Forces; he was venting spleen at the commo rig.
"Psjakrew cholera!
The White Ship Corporation's under a news and commo blackout as of yesterday! What
is
all this with our awful timing, anyway?"

The Spican Military was at max alert in part because of the upcoming board meeting and the visiting flotillas that were permitted then by law; it seemed several major shakeups were in the offing among the Interested Parties. (
Wait'll they hear
my
scoop
! Alacrity sneered to himself.) But a lot of the furor had to do with another vessel that had shown up.

News pickups showed the starship in a holding position down near Spica itself, in a more or less stationary spot relative to Nirvana and the White Ship, Alacrity noticed queasily. It was bigger than the White Ship, bigger than anything humans had ever made, and bigger than many of the worlds they inhabited.

"You just don't see many of those," Alacrity told Floyt a little numbly.

"What is it? It looks like—I don't know; some great big radiolarian made out of glow-filament, maybe?"

"For all anybody knows, you're right. That's a Heavyset starship. The Heavysets've never been much interested in what humans are doing, and if you ask me it was safer for us that way. But here they are."

"And, 'By the pricking of my thumbs … ' " Floyt quoted quietly, face lit by the displays.

"Huh? Oh, never mind! What in God's own data bank are Heavysets doing around Spica? Almost
in
Spica?"

Floyt bunched his shoulders and dropped them to show he couldn't supply the answer. "You're asking the wrong person. Maybe they heard we were coming?"

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (171 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:14

[Fitzhugh 3]-FALL OF THE WHITE SHIP AVATAR

"Not funny. Look, there's no time for tourism; Nirvana Control's calling. Let's get down there and see what we can find out."

"If the Precursors could do this," Floyt said meditatively, scanning the magnificent Carousel as Alacrity made his approach, "and if they could make the causality harp and the Biomass of Rigel and all the things reports claim—if they could do that, then tell me why they never did any of the things mankind is still trying to do. Dyson spheres, and all the rest of that."

Alacrity made an impatient, nonanalytical sound, most of his concentration on his instruments. He wanted to holler at Floyt for not worrying about what
he
was worrying about. But they were more circumspect toward each other in the wake of the Lebensraum business.

So he said, "Why build high-density housing on Mount Fuji if a hermit's hut is what you really want?

And all you need?"

When Nirvana Control came up, typically stern and condescending, for final approach, the little, outdated, ragtag
Whelk
was treated to some of the famous local surliness. Until, that is, Alacrity gave Control a business-affairs visa request accompanied by an ID code based on his White Ship stockholder's registration.

There was, as far as he'd been able to find out, no other Interested Party—no shareholder in the White Ship Corporation—who held fewer than ten thousand shares; few, indeed, all told. And for a generation, every other attendee at board meetings had been a mover and shaker on a scale transcending mere interstellar governments and alliances.

So there were perquisites and prerogatives in place for
any
Interested Party. Nirvana Control came back with a lot more verve then, jumping the
Whelk
to the front of the line for her landing, respectfully giving her a prime grounding spot and best wishes for a safe setdown.

Groundside, Alacrity and Floyt made no bones about having been through tough times. They stepped from the scarred, contoured snailshell of a ship in working clothes that had seen better days, Alacrity with his warbag and umbrella, and drew deep, satisfying breaths. Spica shone gargantuan and blue, its harmful radiation filtered out by the same human-friendly atmosphere that enveloped all the Carousel worlds.