Fall of the White Ship Avatar (12 page)

Then they came around a big, flourishing clump of spit-burrs and saw what was going on at Ends Well.

"Now what, Alacrity?"

Alacrity smiled wolfishly. "It's like I've told you: there's hardly ever a down-market in accomplices."

Two long, luxurious touring motorcarriages and a shuttletruck had been pulled up by the tall main doors.

Soldier-ant lines of Lord Marcus's adored, interchangeable bacchantes were dumping armloads of stuff into them. Some cargo was wardrobe bags and personal luggage, but the truck was taking on expensive pieces of systemry and a few artworks. There were at least a dozen look-alike women in the looting relay, all in the burgundy glowtulle harem getups. Now, though, many wore rings, bracelets, or other plunder.

One, clutching Larrup the minibuffalo, was directing matters from the front steps. To her livery she'd added a magnificent bib of Satan's tears trimmed with diamond-droplet pendants.

"Hello, Tomasina." Floyt smiled amiably as the women paused in their work to watch the two men warily.

She patted Larrup, who bumped his tiny, blunted horns against her. "Very good guess, sir. Or was it?"

Floyt blushed. "I, ah, happened to notice your dimples earlier. Briefly." It seemed more decorous not to mention their location.

Tomasina smiled slowly. "Yes, We're not truly identical, are we?"

"Look, don't let us interrupt the clearance sale," Alacrity bade. Some of the women looked to one another, then resumed.

"Now, what happened out there?" another harem member—Callisto, Floyt thought she was—wanted to know. She'd gotten herself a scintillating garter of white wavestones and blood-red ardors from Lord Marcus's trove. "Telemetry says the old perv is dead, but not how."

"Him and Vinzix discovered their partnership was based on mutual ignorance," Alacrity explained vaguely.

"How much time do we have before the cops come calling?"

Tomasina shook her wimpled head. "Marcus left the Caliban program running. It's set for times when he file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (58 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

[Fitzhugh 3]-FALL OF THE WHITE SHIP AVATAR

didn't want interruptions or the law. So, no alarms, no security monitoring, no nothing. The APs and systemry will pretend to the outside world that nothing's wrong, no matter what, even using his own voice-image simulacrum. I'd say we have hours, possibly days, before anybody gets nosy."

Possibly-Callisto slipped an arm through Tomasina's. "But by then we'll just be a memory on Windfall.

There's a passenger packet heading out-system."

Alacrity indicated the swag. "Even this might not be enough to buy you all interstellar tickets."

"I told you," Tomasina answered, "Caliban's running, but Marcus wasn't around long enough to give follow-up orders. That's the first time that ever happened; now
we
have access to most of the system, otherwise Marcus's deadman programs would be running and we'd all be dead, too, by now."

Floyt, still unsettled by the violence of the rovers game, shuddered. Callisto—Floyt was about certain it was she—said, "But as it is, the reservations are confirmed and the tickets were billed to Marcus's account, on his personal coded order. And as far as customs is concerned, he's ordered us to precede him on a business trip. We've got ourselves some
very
hefty bank drafts and power of attorney over some of his secret accounts, too. Not a clean sweep, but not bad either."

I wonder how long they've been planning it, Marcus's precious odalisques?
Floyt wondered. Not that he could blame them. "Speaking of trips, Alacrity, it's time we were going."

"Waitaminute, waitaminute," Alacrity said with a calm-down gesture. "Tomasina, if you really have access to Marcus's data files, there's something I need to know from them."

"Not top-secret stuff, but most of it," she told him. "Help yourself, but move fast if you want a lift to the starport."

Over Floyt's protests, Alacrity dragged him inside to a systems terminal. "Remember Marcus talking about that woman, Hecate? We need a line on where to find her, and whatever else there is."

Floyt reluctantly began accessing and searching. Alacrity disappeared, promising to return quickly. Ends Well's equipment was unfamiliar to Floyt, but he'd had a lot of experience in learning new systems lately. He was soon transferring info from Marcus's files to his proteus, scanning it as he went, fascinated in spite of his agonizing fear that he would hear the convoy gunning away without him.

Alacrity returned with an appropriated shoulder bag. "I raided the clinic stores and the autodocs," he told Floyt. "We can get rid of that peripheral neuropathy while we're in jump. Uh, that is, presuming we have a destination?"

Floyt shut down the terminal and clapped his proteus back on his wrist. "That we have. The story gets curiouser and curiouser, Alacrity."

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[Fitzhugh 3]-FALL OF THE WHITE SHIP AVATAR

"When was it otherwise?"

Outside, several of the women now wore different attire, conservative traveling clothes, and were getting behind the controls of the three vehicles, warming them up. Their russet hair, freed from the wimples, was fashioned in close caps of tight ringlets.

"The rest of us can change on the drive," Tomasina was saying. Last cases and pouches were tossed aboard and the former harem piled in. The truck was fairly filled with plunder and luggage, and the second touring carriage with exconcubines beginning to disrobe, windows and windshield adjusting to a dark tint. Laughter and the clinking of champagne glasses came from inside. Alacrity sighed.

Callisto and Tomasina were at the open passenger door of the lead carriage as another woman settled in to drive.

"Hurry up or you'll miss the wake," Tomasina called.

But as they trudged that way tiredly, hands reached out of the door of the second carriage and seized Alacrity by the shoulder bag. There was a lot of giggling, whooping, and wolf-whistling from within as he was dragged aboard, not struggling very hard. A few garters and loin buntings were lofted out the door, and just before it closed and latched Floyt heard another champagne cork pop.

"We're not exactly fair maidens; we'll take any edge we can get," Callisto told Floyt as he reached the lead carriage. "But that doesn't mean we don't know how to treat the gallant rescuer."

"Especially after a steady diet of Lord Marcus," Tomasina added. "I'm sure if you knocked, they'd let you in."

Floyt felt his face getting warm. "No, um—too crowded."

Tomasina gestured to the open passenger door and Callisto slid her arm around Tomasina's waist. They smiled at him appraisingly.

"Smaller gatherings still allow for some interesting permutations," Tomasina suggested.

If this was some other stringer, or contract killer, or field op
—
if it was anybody but this monster,
Case Coordinator Deighton seethed,
I'd give 'em some hurts and run 'em out of the complex. Maybe even
terminate 'em.

But it simply wasn't anybody else; it was Gentry Standing Bear, one of a kind, smelling of Old Four Smokes Wallop, smoldering and bleary-eyed, too massive even for the outsize, reinforced chair across the desk from Deighton, making the chair groan and squeak beneath him.

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Deighton's office there in the midst of the regional Langstretch Agency headquarters was supposedly equipped to handle trouble, even from somebody like Standing Bear—except that there was nobody else like Standing Bear—but Deighton by no means wished to test that. There were astounding stories about the amount of punishment Standing Bear could absorb.

Besides, Langstretch needed Standing Bear more now than ever. Floyt and Fitzhugh's unnerving victory over Plantos and his team had made a lot of people in Langstretch and elsewhere very apprehensive; their astounding success against Lord Marcus Perlez and Vinzix had sent shock waves into many quarters and caused a goodly number of crisis-action briefings.

"What've you got for me?" Standing Bear asked, low and guttural.

Deighton found himself avoiding the devastated maniac mask of a face, then steeled himself to control that and met Standing Bear eye to eye. Deighton, a tall man carrying 130 kilos—twenty more than when he was a field op, but they hadn't slowed him down very much, he liked to think—had dozens of confirmed kills. He'd done more interrogations than he could count. He was used to being the intimidating one; that was not the case in this instance, though.

Deighton got a hold of himself. "We don't know where they went when they left Ends Well, but we're certain that sooner or later they'll show up for the meeting of the Board of Interested Parties."

Incredible, Deighton reflected, how Perlez and Vinzix bollixed the kill. And all because Perlez panicked and rushed the job.

From what Langstretch could reconstruct from the Ends Well systems and other sources, Perlez was very worried about a proteus Fitzhugh had stolen from Baron Mason. For some reason Perlez feared that the proteus might reveal that he was one of the Interested Parties who'd commissioned Langstretch to kill or capture Fitzhugh when Fitzhugh was still a kid.

Perlez was also afraid of what hideous things Fitzhugh would do to him if he found out that Perlez had been instrumental in breaking his parents and even in getting them hooked on undertow.

Perlez had been content to play Fitzhugh and Floyt along until he was sure they had Baron Mason's proteus. Then he'd plunged ahead with that half-ass rovers murder scheme, with the unstable Darwin's Star native as an accomplice, no less.

Perhaps Fitzhugh's survival success lay not so much in aptitude as in the matter of inept opponents.

Except now he and Floyt were top priority, and Gentry Standing Bear had a personal stake in the case.

"We have good coverage in the Spican system," Deighton went on, "but we're sending you there just in case—"

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Standing Bear was on his feet before Deighton saw him start to move, fist crashing down, splitting the hard Promethea strandwood of the desk. Deighton almost went for a defense foot-trigger, but held off, breathing Old Four Smokes Wallop fumes.

"Pull them back," Standing Bear said in a shockingly level, controlled voice. "They can clean up after me; I don't care. The kill's mine."

"We have to be certain this time—" Deighton started.

"Keep your people out of my way or lose them. Makes no difference to me," the horrible face said evenly.

Deighton was about to object but decided to listen. He'd broken scores, hundreds of men and women in one way or another, and yet when it came right down to it he was scared by this man. Standing Bear made him feel, for the first time, like a little, fat, slow old man. Standing Bear had once carried out a termination contract on a wealthy power broker out in the Bamboo Confederation, right in her own office, her very well defended office that wasn't so different from Deighton's.

"You get me to Spica in your fastest ship," Standing Bear decreed. "To Eden, for starters, then maybe Nirvana. I'll need money, too."

Standing Bear untensed a little, distracted by thoughts for his mission requirements. Deighton relaxed the slightest bit, trying to breathe slowly.

"When it's done, you'll give me a bonus," Standing Bear's huge hand retreated and Deighton gazed at the split strandwood. "Because I'm going to be
very
thorough."

Deighton swallowed hard and nerved himself for the fight of his life, should standing Bear lose control in the next few seconds. "I see no problem with a
good
bonus. But listen, you've gotta understand, this is beyond my control—there are certain requirements on this assignment now, new ones—Standing B—

no,
wait
!"

Standing Bear, enormous hands resting lightly on either of Deighton's shoulders, fingers close to a neck so fragile to that overwhelming strength, decided to grant a few seconds' reprieve. Deighton's life depended on whether or not the goliath cared for the new requirements.

CHAPTER 7—ANOTHER THINK COMING

"Not a bad planet, if one's taste runs to the dead-end and obscure," Floyt allowed, peering down at Lebensraum. In many ways it resembled Earth, though it was smaller with much less surface water and file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (62 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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more modest polar caps. It had less desert and more vegetation. "But the question is, why would a woman like Hecate want obscurity?"

He gestured to the cockpit data mosaic of screens and projections. "I mean, the woman spent decades courting celebrity and glory. Why would she elect to drop from sight? And then reappear after all this time
not
to reclaim her stock in the White Ship, but to establish a hokey little sideshow?"

Alacrity was staring at Lebensraum, too, chin on fist. "When we find her, you can ask."

They'd worried those questions all through the trip. Hecate—Loebelia Curry—was a renowned figure of the early Third Breath: explorer and adventurer, dauntless seeker of Precursor secrets, a prime motivator of the White Ship project.

Recordings showed her to be one of the great beauties of her day, a full-lipped siren with mounds of rich black hair framing her face and shoulders and direct, dark eyes that locked the viewer's. She'd hunted, tamed wild animals, fought in at least one war, and amassed a huge fortune through assorted businesses and investments. People rioted for tickets to her personal appearances. A life of passionate free-spiritedness didn't keep her from being recognized as a leading authority on Precursor matters.