Jinx on a Terran Inheritance (3 page)

Exquisite was the word that came to mind first. She wasn't much taller than Sintilla, which made her all the more unusual to Floyt, what with most offworlders ranging from gangling to behemoth. She had golden skin, long, straight black hair that fell to the level of her hips, and dark almond eyes with a slight epicanthic fold. The delicate perfection of her face started Floyt's own pulse quickening.

"I don't believe you two have been introduced to Yumi," Redlock said. "She's part of the Daimyo's entourage."

The Daimyo of the planet Shurutzu had been a minor sensation at Frostpile owing to some fairly zany misadventures.

"Oh, right," Alacrity said, smiling, heavy-lidded, at her. "Didn't recognize you with your hair down and without the kimono."

She was wearing a feathery white neck frill, crossed bandeau top of wetsheen, fringed hip-yoke, and high-heeled sandals. Around her upper right arm, her proteus was disguised as a serpentine of rubies, moonpures and kaleidobursts. Her presence brought a subtle odor of jasmine to the air.

"Stop drooling, before your robe gets soggy, Alacrity." Alacrity looked at Floyt, but just grinned wider, anticipating.

However, once Redlock had finished the introductions, Yumi began in a strangely accented sing song:

"Citizen Floyt, my master the Daimyo bids me come before you with an earnest request, which I entreat file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (11 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:28

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

you to hear."

"Uh? Ah, oh … " was all Floyt could get out for the moment.

Alacrity, at least as astounded and feeling put upon, broke in, "Request? For what? I'm the bodyguard here, so I guess I should be the one to talk to you about it before you—"

"Oh, no; that's quite all right, Alacrity," Floyt headed him off. Redlock looked on expectantly, enjoying the show.

Yumi smiled, and their little region of the
Pearl
brightened. "Citizen Floyt, what the Daimyo asks, in fine, is whether you might deign to consider parting with one half liter of your very esteemed and illustrious Terran blood."

"My blood?"

"Not a chance," Alacrity decreed, from conditioning and from habit, apprehensive
and
disappointed.

"You will pardon my speaking bluntly, since time is limited. The Daimyo would place great value on such a gift, Citizen Floyt. Your blood, produced in the hallowed biosphere and magnetic fields of Earth, containing vital potencies and unique essences available nowhere else in the universe—it is the true elixir of Manhome."

"You can tell that superstitious, priapic old vampire for us, that—" Alacrity began.

"My master the Daimyo would of course wish to make a gift in return," Yumi interjected. "Three thousand ovals, to be precise."

"Are you sure a half liter's enough?" Alacrity asked eagerly. "He's got plenty. I could jump up and down on his chest for you. He's the only Earther you're ever going to see, after all."

"I guess I'll do it," Floyt decided.

Yumi smiled again, and they found themselves reciprocating. "Most puissant Governor Redlock has permitted me the use of a private compartment in
Blue Pearl.
If you'll follow me, most generous Citizen Floyt?"

Redlock caught the wary flicker that crossed Alacrity's face then and gave him a reassuring nod. That was good enough for Alacrity.
Worse luck,
he grudged. "Cash before splash, no IOUs," he cautioned his friend as Yumi slipped an arm through Floyt's. Floyt looked dazed but happy.

"Won't this hold you up?" Alacrity asked Redlock.

The governor shook his head.
"King's Ransom
won't rendezvous with us at the spaceport for another two hours, so I was planning on taking a roundabout course there. I wanted time for some uninterrupted talk file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (12 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:28

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

with Seven Wars and Sortie-Wolf, among other things."

Alacrity understood. Things like giving Alacrity and Floyt a chance to pick up a little traveling money, where Tiajo couldn't interfere. "Thanks very much, Governor. I hope we can make it up to you, one day."

Redlock inclined his head. Then he looked up to where his wife meditated alone on the cold stars. The
Pearl's
hull had been shifted to full transparency and her lights dimmed a bit. Alacrity spotted The Strewn, the open star cluster that was the brightest ornament of Epiphany's night, after her two moons.

"Make yourself comfortable," Redlock invited as he moved off to join Dorraine. "Why don't you begin by changing out of that drogue chute you're wearing?"

CHAPTER 2—RHAPSODY IN BLUE PEARL

The compartment in the
Pearl's
lower hull was just off the crew lounge, with a big, padded card table lowered to serve as an examining table.

Yumi was cordial but briskly efficient as she readied medical instruments. A superb little
bento
tray, holding four chocolates, had been set out. Floyt, sitting on the table, helped himself to one. It was delicious beyond compare, with a sweet, syrupy liqueur center. He couldn't resist a second.

Meanwhile, she scanned his heart and blood pressure, scoped his chest, and made similar assessments.

Then she drew the robe from his arms and upper torso and pressed him down flat on his back.

The thing she used to draw the blood was like nothing Floyt had ever seen before, a flat tube with a shrunken sac the size of a walnut at its far end. It had a veined, organic look to it, nothing like a man-made object, and glistened wetly.

Yumi laid the open end of the tube into the hollow of Floyt's right elbow; it made itself fast, numbing the surrounding flesh. A few moments later the sac began to swell, and Floyt could actually see the tube

—blood vessel, whatever—pulsing with his blood.

He shifted uneasily. "Is it alive?"

"Not in any significant sense, except in that it serves this purpose very well." She moved to stand behind him. Closing his eyes with soft fingertips, she began gently massaging his forehead and temples, her small hands cool, strong, and skilled.

At length Floyt said, "I saw you in your kimono too, Yumi. It was rose red, with big hibiscus on it."

"Yes. Your own traditional regalia caused much, much talk in Frostpile. My Daimyo is having a suit file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (13 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:28

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

such as that made for him. What do you call such garments?"

"A tuxedo. White tie with black tails."

"You were a splendid figure, like a man from legend. You were the envy of Frostpile."

That came as such a revelation to Floyt, who'd been treated more like a gatecrasher, that he was silent for a time.

"Do you believe it, Yumi?" he asked dreamily after a while, the slow massage having set him drifting.

"Do you believe that Terran blood is something magical?"

"I know that my master believes so." Her fingertips caressed his temples. "And if it makes a dear old soul imagine he is a strong young man instead of an aged, infirmed one, then it is worth any price, and I am happy."

The fingers went to the muscles of his neck. He felt as if he were floating, but at the same time he could feel every nerve ending in his body.

"Then I suppose he's disappointed he couldn't get a younger donor?" The scent of jasmine had Floyt's head swimming.

"Younger?" Her laugh was musical. "Oh, Citizen Floyt—"

"Hobart."

"Oh, Hobart! Why would my Daimyo want the blood of a stripling!"

The deft fingers were at his shoulders now. He felt his muscles relax. Immersed in the sensuality of it, he wondered fleetingly how long such tension had been in him.

The lilting voice said, "My Daimyo hopes to feel the spirit of a man who has led a full life on Manhome, who has had time to experience the nuances and extremes of existence there."

Floyt thought back through his life. "I doubt I'm what he had in mind."

"You must not say that! You are the first Terran I have ever met, but I sense that it is true of you. I sense that most clearly, Hobart."

Her hands rested over his drumming heart now; he felt her small, firm breasts against his head as she half cradled it. Instead of leaving him weaker, the drawing of his blood left him preternaturally alive, as if a light charge were passing from cell to cell throughout his body. A voluptuous heat seemed to radiate from his face and neck, chest and loins. His body, ignorant of etiquette, responded eagerly.

Taking her wrists, he drew her hands hands to his mouth, ignoring the tube in his arm. Yumi's breath file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (14 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:28

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

caught, then became quicker and deeper. He kissed her palms softly, bit gently at the fleshy mound of her thumb, traced her heartline with the tip of his tongue, and tasted the skin between her fingers.

Yumi moaned and bent over him, drawing the midnight curtain of her sweet-smelling hair around them both, pressing her lips to his. He eased his fingers deep into her hair, inhaling great, long, dizzying breaths of her as they kissed. Her mouth opened to an aroused, unhurried dialogue that became their whole universe.

After an unmeasured time, she broke away, panting. "A moment, Hobart … No! Only a moment … "

Floyt was a little surprised to find himself back in the compartment inboard the
Blue Pearl.
Yumi detached the tube from his arm quickly but carefully, spraying his elbow with something that prevented bleeding. He felt no pain.

She placed the bloated sac containing Floyt's blood—the Daimyo had gotten his money's worth—into a small refrigerated canister. Then she crossed to the compartment's hatch, to make sure it was secure.

Floyt, up on one elbow, watched her movements hungrily, the sway and flex of the lissome body and the answering swing and ripple of the glossy mantle of hair.

Yumi lowered the lights to a glow. Walking back to Floyt, she discarded the bandeau in one direction, the hip-yoke in another. The golden skin over her heart bore a straight white scar that for some reason she'd chosen to leave there; her breasts were high and dark-nippled, her pubic triangle a slender delta.

Yumi bent over the table, breasts flattening against his chest, hair trailing across them both, as she loosened the thongs of her scandals with one hand and kicked them away, supporting his head, with his lips to hers, with the other. She gasped at the contact with the cold Inheritor's belt; he unbuckled it and dropped it to the deck.

Floyt lifted her onto the table alongside him, holding her in long, slow kisses and conforming his hand lingeringly to her shoulder, her breast, the small of her sinewy back, an upthrust hip, the moist warmth where those slim legs met that made his breathing suddenly require conscious effort. The blood pounded at his head, his neck and chest.

Yumi helped him slide out of the robe, and he wafted it away dramatically, making her giggle. They explored with hands and lips and tongues, breathed one another's breath, tasted jasmine and sweat, united their flushed heat.

Floyt embraced her to him, beneath him. Yumi drew her fingertips across his slick back, pressing into his buttocks, pulling him deeper into her. A sustained sound, by parts coo and outcry, came from them both.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (15 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:28

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

And, later, she was on top, tenting their faces again with the raven's-wing hair, hips pumping, rocking, orbiting. Her mouth clung to his throat as he threw his head back and cried her name …

"So what's your name?" the barmaid asked.

"Alacrity Fitzhugh."

"Sounds like a sneeze."

"Ho-ho. As a matter of fact, it's an ancient, foolproof tantric sex mantra."

She finished polishing a snifter and set it in the dispenser, making sure it was secure. People tended to forget, but the
Blue Pearl
was a spacecraft.

She was a mildly
zaftig
brunette with engaging green eyes, wearing her hair in the "drop-away" fashion, lower part of the strands stiffened, upper relaxed to the point of lethargy. She wore an outfit of cascading, almost microscopically fine gold chains, like waves of rippling metal down her body, plunging in deep parabolas between some of her more spectacular topological features. It provided for absolutely riveting, if brief, glimpses of various portions of her lily-white form.

"You were the one in the airbike race, right?" she said. "Are you the Terran? You don't look Terran."

"No. That's my pal Hobart."

"He's the expert on genealogies, right? Y'know, Acrimony—"

"Alacrity."

"Alacrity. Y'know, I'd really like to talk to him. I was doing a little family tree of my own."

I am cursed,
Alacrity decided sourly, though he gave her a suave smile. "He's really in demand, I'm afraid. But I'll do my poor best to divert you."

"Try that again?"

"Amuse. Entertain."

"Whoa, lucky me. Well, what're you having, mantra-man?"

He slid his goblet away. "No more of that wine. What've you got?"

She studied him for a moment, lower lip outthrust, then began putting crushed ice in a glass. As she worked she said, "So, your sidekick left you high and dry, hm?" She was pouring, squirting, shaking, dabbing. The light seemed to adore her, glimmering and rippling across her finery.

"Naw, that's just business."
He
can't
be down there layin' commo cable! Not Ho!

That's what Alacrity had been trying to tell himself for the better part of an hour. He wanted very much file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (16 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:28