Jinx on a Terran Inheritance (52 page)

He saw a streamlined, delicate craft scarcely bigger than the
Harpy
and wicked-looking vessels longer than the
Stray
but far leaner. Despite his prejudice, he had to admit that the
Stray,
only a converted privateer, was out of her element, simply outclassed and outshone.

There were none of the hawkers and vendors, pickpockets, crowd hustlers, panhandlers and gawkers, celebrity chasers, newspeople, or social climbers Floyt had expected. The Rialto constabulary and various private guards were firm about keeping out the rabble. Being caught on the site without proper documentation would earn the guilty party instant ejection along with a possible broken arm or fractured skull.

Guards and security systems had already verified the identities of the
Astraea Imprimatur's
complement several times over—once on approach, once upon landing, and twice since in spot checks. But all that had done was match I.D. data with the phony names Praxis had entered into the system.

Many captains and other important personages had provided entertainment. The four passed bagpipers, poets, boxers, philosophers discoursing in tag-teams, tightwire fiddlers, clowns, caricaturists, and such.

Alacrity recognized a few of the people they saw, and Heart quite a number, but Sintilla seemed to know almost everyone by sight. There were ambassadors, overlords, military heavyweights, megastars from all the arts, and titans of commerce and industry, intellectual cynosures, and academic and scientific luminaries.

"What if we run into somebody from the compounds?" Floyt suddenly thought to ask.

"You were masked most of the time and I doubt any of 'em would remember me," Alacrity answered. "I was just another subhuman in a collar. Anyway, I've got a hunch most of them went to ground until things cool off."

"What about you, Heart?" Sintilla said through her veil. "Will any of these people know who you are?"

"Not in this ensemble," Heart said, adjusting her own veil.

"They'll be too busy admiring all that luscious skin," Alacrity reasoned.

They came to the pavilion, with its smorgasbords and bar, human servants and staff, and where there file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (275 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:31

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

wasn't a serving robo in sight. People were assembled for the ritual gathering of the tokens. Most of the hangers-on would, after the start of the race, be shipping out for the finishing line, where the partying would continue.

"Well check my pulse," Sintilla breathed. "I've never seen so many high-voltage types in one place in my life, not even at the Spican Commencement. Nietzsche should only see this place; talk about your will to power!"

"Just another bunch of weekend breakabouts," Alacrity snarled.

"Maybe to you," Heart said. "But you see that rotund little fellow over there? That's Secretary-General Van Baader, Union of Non-Aligned Planets. The woman he's talking to is Gaultine Le Claire, finance minister of the Bamboo Confederation."

"Wait!" Floyt burst out in a stage whisper. "Alacrity! Why don't we take them aside and explain everything to them? We don't need to wait until we get to Earth."

"Because while Gaultine isn't mentioned as part of the Camarilla, her brother-in-law, Maximillian, is,"

Sintilla explained. "And the president of the Cooperative of Species, there—with the vestigial wings and the cute tail?—is supposed to be clean, but his chief-spouse-queen is in it up to her spinnerettes. See the problem, Hobart? There may be some who've got the integrity, but we can't tell who. And anyway, if you were them, who would you listen to, outlaws and nameless flotsam like us, or your family and friends?"

"You're right, of course," Floyt yielded.

"Let's go get this over with," Alacrity said.

"No wonder your father wanted in with this crowd so bad," Sintilla said to Heart. "Anybody who chums with them has one helluva leg up."

A full orchestra was playing. The place was decorated with stasis-locked water sculptures and fountains of rainbow plumage ten meters high. The four passed on the delicacies and treats; it was no time to sample a medicated fruit ice or drugged licorice pastille.

A general announcement was made by a gargantuan drum major, that the gathering of the tokens and the disclosure of the race course would be made shortly. Competitors and their comrades and guests would then be requested to drink a wassail to the race. After that, captains and crews would retire to their ships.

The course was to be revealed by a very prestigious member of the race committee, a two-time winner of the Regatta for the Purple.

Looking around, Floyt abruptly felt Sintilla's fingers dig deep into his arm. "
Are you seeing this
?" she file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (276 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:31

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whispered fiercely.

Two meters away a very attractive woman of middle age with magnificent decolletage, her blood-red hair done in an intimidating porcupine bouffant, was gushing to her companion, a dignified older gent with plaited sidelocks and a beard divided into five spikes.

"You absolutely
must
read it! It's so marvelously naughty in spots, and so-ooo delightfully common, but audacious!"

She was pressing upon him a copy of
Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh Challenge the Amazon Slave
Women of the Supernova.

Sintilla pretended to swoon. "Somebody catch me. I'm rich. I'm On the Horizon," She announced.

"Celebrate later, will you, Tilla?" Alacrity said. "Royalties won't do you any good if the Cam—if we have any trouble." He made a mental note to start thinking about a new alias.
Penny Dreadfuls
!

Ruffles and flourishes sounded. A healthy round of applause greeted the appearance of the spacegoing sportsman who was to announce the regatta's course.

"Oh,
hell's entropy
!" Alacrity breathed. It was Baron Mason.

The baron made the rounds of the rich and the mighty, exchanging forearm grips and grace kisses, clasping palms or touching his breast, lips, and forehead. "Easy, take it easy," Sintilla chanted quietly.

"He's just here to make the announcement; he'll never recognize us. Stay calm."

Alacrity looked into the Nonpareil's eyes. It was plain what she was thinking; she owed Mason and yearned to pay in full. "Some other time we'll open his gaskets for him," Alacrity assured her. She nodded.

Mason was ascending the platform at the far end of the pavilion joining other power-mongers there. A momentary doubt passed through Alacrity, at the thought of who it was he and the others were screwing with, but he steeled himself to think of the reverse side of the coin: who would dare intercept or search these people, even on a close Earth approach?

After some more gladhanding, Mason opened the sealed envelope of finest papyreen, which was marked with seals of office and computerized security codes. How Praxis had managed to get around those, Alacrity couldn't figure out, but lots of things were possible to someone who had as his lever the absolution of the church.

The banter and toasts had stopped. Mason silently read the paper, chuckled, and lifted his eyebrows.

"We have a first here, I see," he said expansively. "I think we may make a little history this time round, file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (277 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:31

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my friends; certainly our racers will
see
some history. The course leads to humanity's very roots, to the Solar system. A course that will pass within close visual range of … Earth!"

Many people gasped. After a moment Mason nodded to an underling, who passed the word. Out on Myrmydion, a rocky atoll several kilometers away, a dispatch ship rose, climbing faster than an interceptor missile. It would make the trip even faster than the racers could, to present Solar authorities with a request for clearance that carried the weighty names of the Regatta Club membership, so that the race could be run without impediment.

Conversations resumed. Opinions were mixed, Floyt could see, but the club members had a sense of elevation in the choice, of their individual and aggregate status. No other organization in existence could exercise this prerogative.

Somebody yelled
Sol
! and lifted her wineglass high so that it caught the light. In another second most of those under the huge awning were doing the same, and there were cheers and whistles. Captains were holding aloft their tokens.

They like the idea; they love it,
Alacrity saw.

"Course and maneuver requirement details are in the handout cubes," Mason was reminding the captains. "I must say, the lightsailing portion includes some of the more masterly maneuvers we've ever had in the regatta.

"And as some of you may have heard, we have a last-minute scratch who turned out to be a last-last-minute reentry." Mason gestured broadly out across the crowd.

"Oh,
flittering fate
!" Heart said.

Wearing a handsome working-breakabout captain's uniform of regatta purple, Dincrist stood in a group of applauding onlookers. He was waving, acknowledging the reception, exchanging dangerous smiles with Mason. Alacrity wondered exactly what kind of treaty they'd come to and who'd come out of it the better. Dincrist smiled, picture perfect, a noble, urbane exaggeration.

"We can't stay here," Sintilla said.

"Steady; we've got to hand in that token," Alacrity said in a level tone. He drew them into the lee of a lush violet feather-palm.

He looked around, assessing the tactical situation. A lovely young woman had appeared next to Mason.

She wore blue and black skinfilm and carried a cut glass bowl. Captains began dropping their tokens into it, taking their course data handout cubes. Pickups in the bowl noted which tokens had been deposited and displayed the qualifying ships' names on large imagers set around the pavilion. Mason left file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (278 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:31

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the platform to press flesh with more VIPs, ignoring the collection of the tokens.

"Ho, you make the drop; just be sure you don't look Mason's way and you'll be all right. Heart and I will meet you by the north entrance—that one,
away
from where Dincrist is."

The wassail was starting. Waiters and waitresses were offering cups of the spicy lift-off grog. Floyt and Sintilla made their way to the woman with the bowl as Alacrity wove through the crowd in another direction, leading the Nonpareil by the hand and trying to think up a surefire prayer. They swept past a waitress who held a tray of grog cups, then went out a side exit. Passing behind splendorous, townhouse-size lounges that had been airlifted in, they came to a service area cluttered with waiting piles of food, beverages, catering supplies, and tech-support equipment.

"We can circle around this way," Alacrity said.

They went between two stacks of mineral water barrels; Alacrity, in the fore, came face to face with Dincrist. "
Goddammittohell
! Not ag—" was as far as he got.

Heart's father brought up an actijot unit and let him have it pointblank. Alacrity dropped back against a guywire and hung there, stupefied. Heart rushed to help him to his feet. Her father swung the jot unit at her with a determined look. "I don't know what he's done to you to make you abet him, but I will use this on you if I must. You have only to try me if you disbelieve that."

She had Alacrity leaning on her. "You know about the jots … "

"Oh, yes. I thought my reckoning with Fitzhugh would have to wait, but I made it a point to have this with me always, just in case. What can you be thinking of, coming here with him? Are you trying to ruin me?"

Dincrist shifted to a relaxed pose, holding the jot unit casually, in two hands, then directed his captives to a satellite awning where tables and chairs had been set up. Three servitors converged on them at once.

Dincrist unhurriedly put his hand and the jot unit into his side jacket pocket. "Remember, I'll kill you if I must, Fitzhugh." He motioned Alacrity, who was still weak-kneed from the jotting, into an airchair.

Alacrity obeyed.

Heart interposed herself with the servitors so that there'd be no confrontation or incident. She lowered her veil and accepted three pewter cups of wassail grog, handing one to the shaky Alacrity. Dincrist accepted the other and sat down with the two, sipping satisfiedly.

Alacrity pulled himself together to say, "So the jinx worked after all; it's all going your way, huh?"

Dincrist frowned. "Jinx?"

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"The one you laid on Ho and me at Frostpile."

"Did it indeed? How gratifying, even though this probably has more to do with your own bumptiousness."

Alacrity took an unsteady pull from the cup. "Uh-huh, the jinx dogged us, all along. What now?" He was stalling. There was Mason to consider, and the hope that Floyt and Sintilla might come looking for him in time.

"The obvious. I'd like to do it with more finesse, but I'll simply have to leave your body right where it's sitting for the cleanup crew. As you can see, other things demand my attention."

He waved with casual pride to a ship. She wasn't like anything Alacrity had ever seen before; all folded sail booms and magnificent racing lines.

"So, you got
Celeste Aida
here in time after all," Heart said. "And you'll have your regatta too, at long last. But what about me? Or haven't you given that any thought?"

Dincrist looked at her with genuine regret. "It took me a long time to face the fact that you are with him.