Jinx on a Terran Inheritance (25 page)

The Blackguardians looked the two over, talking among themselves in a local tongue that sounded like it might have Germanic roots. It was getting dark, and the only light came from area illumination banks and spotlights around the field. Men began preparing to go to sleep. Alacrity saw that he and Floyt had missed supper.

Most of the locals wore clothing similar to what Gute had issued Alacrity and Floyt, but a few wore odd costumes, suggesting various historical periods and assorted cultures. Everyone began settling in for the night.

In spite of the snoring, the coughing, and the other sounds from all around, Floyt and Alacrity spent most of the night sleeping, their bodies famished for real rest after the prolonged cachesleep.

They were rousted around sunrise, by Gute and others hitting the doorframe with long, flexible sticks. A fog had settled over the spaceport; the sounds of automata and insects could be heard, mingled with strange sounds from the forest.

Men hawked and spat, blew their noses with their fingers, and went off to relieve themselves. They scratched, broke wind and yawned, complained and grunted.

"When I grow up," muttered Alacrity, hauling himself out of his nook, to Floyt, who was also emerging,

"I want to live in a seraglio." Still, he felt much better, and Floyt did too.

They stowed their blankets, then filed out to the messhall. After a breakfast indistinguishable from file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (129 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:29

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yesterday's lunch, the other men left for their assignments. Floyt and Alacrity, chivvied out by the cook, were left shifting from foot to foot indecisively, wondering what they should do. Alacrity was thinking about the ships sitting on the hardtop and wondering how good local security was. But almost certainly, anybody with an actijot inside him was asking for trouble by going into restricted areas.

Before Alacrity's plans had advanced very far, Gute appeared, driving a surface-effect runabout. Hitched behind it was a jarringly incongruous two-wheeled cart made of roughcut wood. In the primitive cart were several tools and a large coarse sack.

Gute was smiling, which gave the two pause. At his instruction, they piled aboard. Alacrity took a whiff of the cart bed. "Barn duty, Ho."

The tools supported that; they were manual implements of wood and crudely forged metal, unearthly variations on the hoe, shovel, broom, and scoop.

"Oh, well; that's not
so
bad." Floyt shrugged. At least it sounded better than being remanded to a place with a name like School for Scandal. Then he recalled some of the savage creatures he'd seen being used as saddle beasts on Epiphany, and he wasn't so sure.

The runabout's controls were childishly simple, but Gute sat stiff and erect and handled them with the dignity of an admiral commanding a battle wagon. They swung out across the field for the main gates.

Floyt elbowed Alacrity. "See if you can spot the
Astraea Imprimatur
."

The
Mountebank
was still present, as well as a number of other craft, but none had the markings they were looking for. Floyt was tempted to ask Gute, but thought better of it. There was no telling who might then get wind of their interest in the ship.

They went through the gate and down a wide road of well-kept squeezebond. Blackguard's foliage was rank and high, with an odd yellow-blue tint to it, looking vaguely Jurassic. They could see numerous trails and what looked like bridle paths. Once a glassy white swan-boat passed by overhead, music and laughter trailing from it; apparently the partying and carousing went on at all hours of the day and night on Blackguard. They met no other ground traffic.

As they came over one rise, Floyt thought he smelled an oceanic, salty aroma. Gute passed by the turnoff for the large complex, which shone like a mirrored beacon, and wound down toward the big, forbidding castle keep they'd noticed the day before. The place looked authentic, if unweathered, and a strange architecture showed what seemed to be Moorish and Asian influences. Some features baffled them, like the enormous polyhedron at the summit of the central tower. Shrine or command center?

Observatory or hangar?

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Gute stopped in a clearing to one side of the road, just at the edge of the forest, and shut off the engine.

Digging into the sack, he began throwing items of clothing at Alacrity and Floyt, saying, "From here we go afoot. Put these on and get the cart unhitched."

There were baggy diapers of lumpy, loosely woven homespun the color of oatmeal. Their intricate knotting had been fastened into place with hidden stitches; convenient stat-hesive closures, also concealed, were provided for use by the novice. There were, in addition, floppy knee waders made of some synthetic that looked like natural gum.

"The garb of Waldenian manuremen," Gute informed them, removing his spectacles and leaving them in the runabout.

"Very much in vogue these days," Alacrity noted. But he and Floyt had already agreed that there was no future in antagonizing Gute. Gute handed each of them an unbelievably archaic slave collar. They dutifully clicked them on; the silly things didn't even lock. The collars were only required costume, Gute had explained, at some of the compounds, where certain of the Betters obtained their pleasure from seeing fellow humans debased.

Under the Blackguardian's supervision, the two unhitched the cart and began pulling and pushing it up the long incline to the castle. In moments they were sweating heavily, the collars vexing them. The diapers began chafing at once.

For the most part, the place was built of gargantuan stones, not much of a feat given modern equipment and transport, but it plainly replicated the traditional keep of some lapsed, nontech culture. Floyt and Alacrity both spared a moment's uneasy thought over what a job building one of the originals must have been.

On the battlements stood figures in long outdated war-dress, armor, and the fighting regalia of a half-dozen worlds and a few of Terra's historical periods. Gute signaled, and the portcullis was raised. With Gute in the lead they passed over the drop-away drawbridge and under murder-holes and other defenses.

The place was only lightly tenanted, by people living out roles as nontech warriors and other romantic stronghold residents. Most of them affected a single glove tucked through belt or sash: embroidered, gilt, and jeweled ones for the unarmored; heavy gauntlets for the ironclads.

Traditional, for giving or accepting challenges,
Alacrity concluded.
Mark of nobility
—
they're playing it
to the hilt, all right.

Only a few servants were in evidence, and none of the workforce of serfs or slaves it must've taken to run such a place for real. That made sense; many of the compounds were probably only occupied part file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (131 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:29

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time. It was only logical to keep the in-house staff as small as possible, with augmentation as necessary from Central Labor.

"I guess none of the paying customers are anxious to take part in the authentic dung detail," Alacrity groused as he and Floyt shouldered the cart over a courtyard of big, square cobblestones.

"Shut up!" Gute whispered harshly. "Spoiling their illusion is the surest way of getting them angry!"

Then he began tugging his forelock in all directions, going through strange, gyrating genuflections.

Ersatz warriors and courtesan looked down on them, lording it. Floyt noticed more than one pair of Betters joining hands or embracing.
Being jaded sure leads to some odd ways of getting your newtons
loose,
he decided.

The citadel compound was rather austere, with no contemporary conveniences that they could see, except that the unglazed windows on the higher levels—the Betters' domain—seemed unwisely large for a bow-and-catapult society. The three passed through the inner curtain and followed a dim passageway lit by occasional slit windows.

The place was cool and a bit stuffy, but without the indefinable smells of age. Gute halted them by a low, thick stone slab door framed in iron. He took big swaths of cloth from the sack, giving one each to his unwilling helpers and keeping one for himself. Both were puzzled; there didn't seem to be anything like a stable nearby. But when Gute tied the cloth around his nose and mouth they were quick to imitate him.

Gute turned the rotor of the door's peculiar disc-lock and shouldered it open. The smell that wafted out made it easy to tell that they were peering into an open sewer.

"Cesspit," explained Gute, taking a pair of torches from the sack and glancing around to make sure nobody was watching. He lit them with a thermonode he'd hidden in the folds of his diaper. The two friends shied away at once, certain that there'd be a methane explosion, but none came.

"There's no drainage for the Betters' garderobes because they're between the inner and outer curtains—

just like the originals," Gute continued, handing each man a torch. "So you two clean it out."

He lit a third torch from Alacrity's and ducked into the cesspit. They followed. The place was two meters or so wide and perhaps twenty long. Far overhead, the darkness was broken only by faint light coming through a string of ominous round holes.

"Actually, you are lucky," Gute asserted. "This place wasn't due for cleanout for another month. But they're getting ready for some kind of big fest, so you get to do the job in knee boots instead of hip waders."

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The contents of the place had accumulated in little hillocks and splattered the walks. Holding his torch high, Alacrity saw that minute lifeforms had created a city of their own. They squirmed and scuttled away from the light; he sighed inconsolably.

Under Gute's supervision, they backed the cart in and chocked it, the bed tilted for more convenient shoveling. "Why don't they just put in plumbing?" Floyt barked, scandalized. "Is this supposed to be a resort, or not?" His voice sounded strange, muffled by the cloth.

Gute shrugged. His muffled answer was "The Betters don't want anything modern in the citadel.

Damned uncomfortable, if you ask me. Candles, praying cells, halls of feasting and watchtowers … garderobes. There's lots of trysting around here."

He too sighed. "Myself, I'd give anything to do it up there where the stars are, and you don't weigh anything—or so they say. Or on a luxury compound."

But Gute didn't come from some overgroomed world, or a sealed environment on a hostile planet where every last part of the environment was closely monitored, or where social pressures made any sort of role playing impossible. Alacrity shook his head, thinking about it, limbering up his shovel. Perhaps the most important thing to the Betters was that they had absolute power on Blackguard—at least over their offworld captives.

Besides which, they don't have to deal with these cesspits,
Alacrity reflected.

He craned to look at the holes high above, garderobes of the inner curtain. "What about those, Gute?

Can't you block them off?"

"Or at least give us umbrellas?" Floyt suggested.

"The garderobes have been marked out of service," Gute explained with rising impatience. "So now, be about your work. Work hard; behave; do not be nuisances. It isn't too late for you to be assigned to the Wild Hunt."

"Dig in, Ho," Alacrity urged. "It'll put hair on your chest."

Floyt gave in. "Right-o; just pretend they're daisies."

Saying he'd be back soon, Gute left, closing the door behind him. Rank odors might be part of castle life, but the attitude around the citadel seemed to be one of realism in moderation.

The air was thick, and their eyes stung a bit at first, but aside from that the job wasn't all that bad. Still, Floyt cast occasional apprehensive glances at the holes overhead. They wedged their torches into sockets drilled into the stone and set to work.

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"Could be worse," Alacrity commented after a while.

"And how would you know?"

"Worked on a honeywagon once when I was a kid. When we were hard up."

"What's next?" Floyt said.

"When we get it all shoveled, we sweep the place out, I guess."

"No, no! I mean
us
! And
Astraea Imprimatur,
and especially about Dincrist. Alacrity, I'm not doing a very good job of not thinking what he's going to do with us when he gets his hands on us."

"Me either. Well, it sounds like we have a little breathing space, anyway. Just be glad Constance and Skate aren't keeping us entertained."

"Granted, but that could change any time."

"All we can do is keep our ears open, find out how things work. There are always angles."

"Alacrity! Do you think there might be another Inheritor here? Besides Dincrist, I mean? I could appeal for help—" Floyt was suddenly crestfallen. "But then, we don't even know where my Inheritor's belt
is
."

"Shh!" Alacrity hissed quietly, having heard voices floating down through the holes in one of the garderobes. They were the processed voices of Betters.

"Empty, right enough," one said. "Just the place."

"Fine, fine," said a second. "Damned fine idea, m'lord, to get away from that uproar for a while."

"I must say, much as I cherish tradition, the Nightwatch Fete makes one realize there's such a thing as too much ceremony. Care for a lick or two of synaptiflake?"