Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds (34 page)

As they went, Floyt said, "You know, there's still one thing that puzzles me."

"Only one? Rig, you must be a genius."

"No, seriously. If Inst didn't mean to kill me—to kill either of us—why were those men at the Sockwallet lashup going to use guns?"

"Probably thought they could get away with just waving 'em around; they sure as shrinkage didn't know how Foragers react to firearms inside a lashup. Or maybe Inst's orders got garbled somehow and they thought they were supposed to horizontalize us."

"But the woman on Earth only had the styrette. Why should—"

Exasperated, Alacrity threw his hands up from the controls for an instant. "If I knew, I'd tell you, Citizen Floyt. But right now, with your permission, I'm worried about Heart."

With the Willreading completed, many of the guests had already left or were in the process of leaving; the area of Frostpile in which the Hall of Remembrances was located was now very quiet, but they still had to pass two Invincible checkpoints for weapons scans, and a number of drones remained in the air.

The Hall was deserted and partially emptied of exhibits, the more valuable ones having been removed to safer keeping. The lighting had been turned down as a discreet message to any last-minute visitors that the funeral rites of Caspahr Weir were over and lingering wouldn't be appreciated.

They called Sintilla's name softly in the echoing Hall, but heard no response. Alacrity held Floyt back from searching among the darkened, silent maze of display cases and shelves; Frostpile might have been swept clean of unauthorized firearms, but there were limitless ways to improvise a weapon. Besides, the illuminated floor strips and floating holos had been extinguished, and it would be easy to get lost. They called her name again.

"Don't bother," advised a voice behind them.

Endwraithe! The Spican banker had changed from his robe to an inconspicuous shipsuit and was no longer wearing his Inheritor's belt. Leaning on Weir's floater chair near the Hall's entrance, he carried no weapon, at least as far as they could see. They knew that he had to have passed at least one checkpoint to enter the Hall.

"The little lady is off somewhere, running after a story," Endwraithe said casually. "But I thought the message would bring you. We can talk with little danger of being overheard here."

"About what?" Alacrity asked. Possibly it was the conditioning that had him easing in front of the Terran in a protective way; possibly it was a more fundamental reflex.

"I wanted to find out about Citizen Floyt's inheritance, of course," Endwraithe said. "Oh, there's no need to squint, Fitzhugh!"

"Why do you care?" Floyt wanted to know. "And why here?"

The man laughed. "You don't know much about Spican bankers, do you? We are a competitive breed, sir! An opportunistic breed. I wanted another chance to talk to you about venture capital, and about investments."

"So you send us a phony note?" Alacrity snapped, recalling now that Endwraithe had been aboard their tram earlier and heard Sintilla call out to them. "Or
do
you know something about Heart?"

"Only what everyone else knows," the banker admitted smoothly. "Dincrist sent her home—had to be quite forceful about packing her off, I understand. I'm obliged to deal with him in matters of business, but candidly, the man can be such a rustic at times."

Floyt was weighing what Endwraithe had said. He and Alacrity had to find a way to get to Blackguard; perhaps Endwraithe would stake them to the money in return for a portion of the proceeds from the
Astrea Imprimatur's
sale, or her earnings, or whatever.

But Alacrity, warning senses shrilling, told the banker, "Thanks anyway, but he's got nothing you'd be interested in."

Endwraithe gave them an urbane smile. "That's something for Hobart to decide, Alacrity."

The Earther had come to a certain respect for the breakabout's judgments. "I'm afraid he's right, Board Member Endwraithe. The inheritance is a confidential matter."

Endwraithe shrugged, chubby, beringed fingers toying with his meticulous white beard. "It is also a secondary one." He brought his hand out from behind Weir's floater chair with a snubby energy pistol in it, and fired.

Endwraithe had taken into account Alacrity's reflexes, but not the breakabout's already being in motion when the banker made his move. Alerted by the drift of the conversation, Alacrity had correctly read Endwraithe's controlled expression and body kinesics as something much more than a simple shift of posture.

The breakabout had thrown himself at Floyt, bearing him over backward. They went flailing into the darkness between rows of exhibits as a narrow green pinbeam cooked the air where they'd stood. It was, in a way, a vindication of Supervisor Bear and the theory behind Project Shepherd.

They knocked over a display case in a crash of delicate old glass blown 150 years earlier on Eclat; Alacrity was on his feet instantly, yanking the stunned Floyt deeper into the shadows. They heard Endwraithe pounding toward them.

The breakabout cursed the fact that Endwraithe had lured them to where the surveillance equipment had been shut down and Invincibles would no doubt patrol infrequently. And the odds against a drone drifting by up here, high in Frostpile, were long. But the Spican had overlooked one thing—Alacrity hoped.

"Very good! You're very quick!" the banker chuckled. "But not as fast as a beam, I daresay." He moved around a case, pistol ready, but saw no target.

"So how did you get your hands on a persuader?" Alacrity yelled up one aisle as he led Floyt into another.

Endwraithe wasn't fooled, but he elected to play the same game. "It's been here all the time. I concealed it in Weir's chair the night he died." He stopped to listen for their movements, then tiptoed up an aisle a meter or two. "I very nearly killed him with it, out there in the fields, in a thunderstorm he had whistled up."

He turned his head slowly, concentrating on his ears. He thought he detected the whisper of their slippers. "But that turned out to be unnecessary." He reversed field and leapt to the end of the next aisle, gun raised. It was empty.

The words made frightening sense to Alacrity. Weir's chair was an object that the Invincibles would expect to give off power readings, and it was nearly a holy relic, relatively immune to routine probing or dismantling for inspection.

Endwraithe didn't have everything covered, though, Alacrity reflected, as he and Floyt stopped by the case containing Weir's old Emancipator pistol. Using gestures, the breakabout instructed Floyt to be ready to overturn a shelf. The Terran got ready as Alacrity, making a fist, poised his elbow over the glass. At a nod from his companion, the Terran gave the shelf a shove with his shoulder, tipping it over.

It crashed, and at the same moment Alacrity shattered the case with one blow of his elbow. He hoped the sounds had merged sufficiently that it wouldn't occur to Endwraithe that his victims were breaking into a display. That would make the man more cautious.

Alacrity gingerly plucked the Emancipator from among the shards of glass, blowing and brushing away the bits that clung to it as best he could in his frantic haste. He checked it; there was a round in it, a metallic slug of some kind, but the power pack that supplied its propulsion unit was deader than a year-old economic forecast.

"Clumsy!" Endwraithe chided. "Or are you inviting me into a trap, gentlemen? Let's find out, shall we?" They heard his footsteps.

Some of the display cases were antiques, Alacrity knew. The lights in them were off, but at least some of them must have fed off leads rather than broadcast power or storage packs. He hoped.

He lowered himself as quietly as he could. Floyt crouched, listening with an animal intensity for the banker's approach. The breakabout located an outlet by feel, slicing his fingers on a stray piece of glass in the process. He mated the Emancipator's adaptor to it. Power flowed as Alacrity waited, dreading an explosion that would blow his hand off; the pistol had been inert for something like seventy-five years.

The Invincibles hadn't even felt the need to keep it locked away securely.

But it was a durable old relic; it accepted a charge. He got to his feet with an assist from Floyt, praying that it would still fire.
One shot, just one,
he reminded himself, as with a mantra.

He padded toward Endwraithe as silently as he could, with the Earther close behind. They had to ambush their would-be assassin before he came across the shattered case and discovered that they were armed, or they'd lose their main advantage.

The breakabout came to a section without even the dim illumination thrown by the ceiling panels. An oversize cabinet extended beyond the others in its row, offering concealment. Farther along was a lighted stretch of aisle. They hid themselves. Endwraithe's footfalls became louder.

Alacrity began a slow, controlled breathing, gripping the unfamiliar handgun. Floyt scarcely breathed at all. Both were perspiring freely. Alacrity peeked around the cabinet with one eye. He saw the figure of Endwraithe, silhouetted by some light source behind it, appear, pistol clearly outlined. The breakabout waited for the best possible shot that he could get while holding on to the edge that surprise would give him.

The banker paused to kick off his shoes. Then the man came on, keeping to one side of the aisle. The breakabout thought for a moment about making a flanking run and heading for the Hall's main door, but he was no longer sure of the direction. In addition, there was the possibility that their enemy had secured it somehow, which would make them exposed, easy targets.

Endwraithe eased into the lighted area, cautious but confident, pinbeam raised, eyes flickering in this direction and that. Alacrity already knew that the man's speed and accuracy merited respect; he steeled himself for as fast a move as he could make.

Floyt tapped his shoulder. The Earther was holding up a plaque silently lifted from a display case; he made gestures. Understanding, Alacrity nodded. The Terran skimmed the plaque off into the darkened aisles.

It landed somewhere with a clatter. Startled, Endwraithe looked off somewhere behind him for the source of the sound.

Alacrity didn't stop to wonder why; he brought his right hand up, gunbutt cupped in his left palm.

Endwraithe caught the movement and spun toward him, wide-eyed, bringing the pinbeam around. The breakabout, centering the Emancipator's crude, open sights on him, fired.

The pistol made little noise, its propellant unit hurling the slug with an acceleration field rather than a chemical explosion. The slug left the barrel with a
chuff.

Then the banker seemed to fragment, spiderwebbing, the projectile's impact point centering low on his torso. Nevertheless, he fired.

But his green pinbeam never reached Alacrity and Floyt. It splashed, deflected, and dispersed halfway to its mark. The banker appeared to come apart, his fragments dropping to the floor in a glittering shower.

"It was a mirror!" Floyt yelled. He was only partially wrong; the banker and the breakabout had seen one another in—and fired at—one facet of a display booth in the center of a rotunda, at the confluence of several aisles. Its sides had been highly reflective.

The difference between them now was that Alacrity's weapon was empty.

"C'mon!" Alacrity and Floyt dashed away in the opposite direction, expecting a pinbeam to find their backs at any moment. They cut abruptly into a side aisle, the soles of their tabi giving them fair purchase on the slick, reflective floor. A beam hissed though the air where they'd been.

They came to an aisle that stretched away in either direction, offering no concealment or cover. But the cross aisle continued, leading to an exit door. Hearing Endwraithe's running, heavy-footed pursuit, they plunged through the exit like two startled hares—

—And found themselves on a broad, pourmelt ramp that spiraled into the distance up and down the cylindrical well. But the way down was blocked by a locked security gate. They sprinted upward.

After traversing a half-dozen coils of the ramp, they came to a large access door only to find that it too was locked. No amount of pounding, yelling, or leaning on the door signal produced any result.

"If this keeps up, he'll corner us," Floyt puffed.

"He sure can't afford to forget about us," Alacrity replied, panting. He added, "I think there's still power in the gun; if only we had another round for it."

But they had nothing except their soft robes and slippers, and Floyt's Inheritor's belt, which, given the available tools, was practically indestructible. They even checked the folds of their clothing and the soles of their tabi, searching for a fragment of glass from the Hall, but found none. The ramp and walls were smooth and featureless.

Then Floyt exclaimed, "Alacrity! The light!"

The breakabout saw what he meant: high overhead was an illumiplate two meters long and half as wide. Alacrity hurled the Emancipator up at it.

But the builders of Frostpile had meant for their creation to last; the pistol bounced off the resilient plate without even scratching it. Alacrity barely caught the rebounding weapon, nearly losing it and himself over the ramp's railing, dragged back from the abyss by Floyt, who seized fistsful of his robe.

"No good," the breakabout judged.

"We've got to keep moving," Floyt whispered.

They raced on. In another minute they came to a halt on the roof of the tower. The air had become cold, the unfamiliar stars clear and bright since Weir's remains had been projected away across eternity.

The tower was set apart from the others. Their shouts and waving drew no response from distant windows and terraces. The roof was a circular area nearly a hundred meters across, perfectly flat, without railing, and featureless except for the rampwell opening. A quick, desperate reconnaissance showed them that the tower walls were smooth, offering no chance for a climb, dead drop, or hand traverse.

"We'll have to jump him when he shows up," Alacrity concluded grimly.

"But there's nowhere to hide, Alacrity." Floyt glanced around for a pebble or bit of appropriate debris to use as a bullet, but it was hopeless; domestic automata kept the roof as clean-swept as an operating room. He couldn't even think of a way to leave some message naming Endwraithe as their assassin.