Fall of the White Ship Avatar (37 page)

She nodded tiredly. "Blix 'n Frix 'n Strix are good ol' boys, but I ask you: do
I
look like a gal who's gonna settle down and help run just one l'il ole planet?"

They shook their heads energetically.

"Aren't you sweet! Anyways, so here I am, high and dry again, with all the debts those stinkin' triplets ran up, and lawyers pouncin' down at me outta the trees, an' a yacht Ah cain't be spacin' in 'cause it holds so many sad mem'ries."

Alacrity and Floyt sighed for the tragedy of it. Circe thumbed at her suite. "So I sent 'em all packin'!

Then I decided to see whut was goin' on over here at your place, because if I'd sat there alone I'd've ended up blubbering for the first time in almost twenty years now."

She seemed about to cry anyway. "That's a funny thing," Floyt told her, "for, you see,
we
were just about to yank out
our
flagpole and drop it over
your
wall."

"Well, darlin'! Th' evening's young! Now, which of you is gonna offer me some refreshments?"

An expedition was organized to ransack for food and drink, the food being optional. Floyt, trailing along on rearguard, gave the western suite flagpole a little tug, then a considerable heave.

Nothing.

They ordered up two pitchers of dogfights—one for Alacrity and Floyt, one for Circe Minx—and file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (188 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:14

[Fitzhugh 3]-FALL OF THE WHITE SHIP AVATAR

returned to the garden, the men taking chairs and the woman settling into a wrought-composite couch with such limber nonchalance that it looked small rather than she, large.

They talked some more, during which time Floyt denied, "Just because we've got a lot of problems, don't mistake us for heroes," and Alacrity and Circe laughed. A little later, what with Floyt being an Earther, Circe made them harmonize with her on "Irene, Goodnight."

"Well, that's what I get for bonding with somebody again," Circe said at a certain point. "Should've learned better by now. Hwa-fioo!" she added, spitting over the wall practicedly, as a sort of editorial.

"My feelings exactly," Alacrity said a little wearily, wondering what in the world he was saying and how it might bear on his bursting love for the Nonpareil.

"Love," Floyt explained to Circe Minx.

"Oh, yes! You and that Heart, right, Alacrity? That Nonpareil? I saw about that on one of those gossip shows. Woof, she's such a
looker
! Wish I wuz a chill beauty like that!"

"Stop looking suicidal, Alacrity," Floyt said, and they all touched glasses.

"Listen: why don't one of you sell me some White Ship stock?" Circe proposed.

When she saw how guarded that made them, she added, "Now quit bristlin'! Forget ah said it! It's just that ah've played most of the other games there are, and one of these days the looks'll go and the bod'll give out—probably right at the same time, given my luck.

"Bein' an Interested Party'd be just the pastime for me when ah git to be this blousey old coot with a few compromised helmet gaskets." Circe Minx twirled her finger next to her temple. "Ah'd like to poke my nose into that mess.

"Ah got interested in it a while back, but it's been a year and a half now and ah still haven't found a single share for sale. Except for one old foop who wanted, well, you might say, more than it was worth.

Ge'mun, ah came close to
hurtin'
him!"

"More than it's worth is what they all cost," Alacrity intoned, crunching an ice cube.

"That's life for you, all right, sugar." Circe nodded. "Listen: I have something I want you boys to see … "

She rose unsteadily and headed for the improvised drawbridge. Alacrity and Floyt swapped frantic, resigned looks and dove for her ankles, rattling around like castanets but eventually bringing her down, mostly because she didn't resist. To their vast relief, she was laughing.

"All right, nevah mind!" They led her back across the lawn and somehow got her onto the couch while she was still helpless with laughter. She put a giant hand on each man's shoulder.

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"Look, we'll just leave it at this: I'm tired of performing. If there's some stock around, you jes' let me know."

Alacrity had his chin on his chest, abruptly more pensive and reluctant to banter than Floyt was used to seeing him. "I'll try my best."

Circe kissed him hard enough to tilt the two front legs of his chair off the turf, even though she did it with an artful restraint. She smelled wonderful and was a sufficiently marvelous kisser that Alacrity started fantasizing with no thought to possible sprains and torn cartilage. Or whatever it might take.

Circe beamed. "Now I'll do somethin' for you luvs. A party! That's it! Gawd! We'll invite all the—"

But Alacrity had stopped her. "No good; outsiders." Circe slouched but nodded.

"I'll tell you, though," Alacrity went on. "Ho's proteus got trampled by … that is, it just got stomped to smithereens a while back. And had a tree pushed over on it, quit looking at me like that, Circe! So we're putting a new one on the tab and quit yelling, because you can't buy it, but I thought you could suggest something, maybe help us pick one out."

He showed her Floyt's watch chain, a venerable herringbone pattern, which looked so striking against Floyt's white vest but had only a fob on it—the heavy keepsake coin celebrating Terra's first five hundred years in space, with Yuri Gargarin's features on it—and no watch or proteus.

"So I thought, some big pocket model," Alacrity said. "If you could tell us the best place to—"

But Circe Minx was making her way to a commo terminal. She drawled a few quick orders with winsome
noblesse oblige.
Within minutes, attractive, beautifully dressed, amazingly eager-to-please people were pouring into the place with gorgeous wooden, leather, and precious-metal display cases of pocket-watch-configuration proteuses, at prices that made even Circe lift her long brows.

Floyt felt like shielding his eyes against the blaze of gems, gold, silver, and the rest. Circe was in her element, friendly and familiar with the clerks but demanding, too. Alacrity suspected that was because, for a change, she was helping pick out something for somebody else and her money had nothing to do with it. She was being protective of Floyt.

All the argument, testing, and comparison went on for three quarters of an hour. At one point, Circe and Floyt were happily yelling at one another about the relative merits of beauty and function, which discussion they both took personally, while Alacrity refereed.

A decision came to pass; Floyt held up the winner as the other two gathered round to admire. The case was an exact duplicate of a gold seventeenth-century John Willats watch, but machined from a solid file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (190 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:14

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block of super-alloy and strong enough to carry out-suit on Jupiter. The case showed gamboling figures in deep repoussé, so that some of the limbs were actually free-standing. The instrument had a face, chapters, working hands, multiple dials, and crown just like the original, but under the back cover were displays and instrumentation and controls that would let Floyt do pretty near anything he cared to, short of raising the dead. When he tried it on his chain, tucking it into the watch pocket of his white waistcoat, Alacrity said, "You look like Old Money."

The price of the proteus more than quintupled their hotel bill; Floyt followed Alacrity's example, registering the purchase with a world-weariness. When the supervisor asked if Floyt would like an inscription on the outside of the case-back cover, Floyt thought for a moment then turned to Circe Minx.

"I hope this won't sound too forward, but, since you picked it out—would you mind?"

She blushed, and wrote out the inscription in a beautiful, fluid, and draftsmanlike longhand, gnawing at the end of the tintstik as she decided what to set down; the engraver beam-etched it into the metal in reduced scale: "TO HOBART, MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER HERO. WITH ESTEEM, CIRCE."

In light of the very tidy profit she'd just turned, the supervising clerk threw in, free of charge, a likeness of Circe Minx carved into a wafer of glittering ice-lense, a popular item whenever she was in residence, mounting it in the inside of the case front cover.

The clerks withdrew, high-spirited as if they'd just won a buzzball championship. Floyt, Alacrity, and Circe Minx adjourned to the garden to celebrate. Alacrity dug out an adapter and let his own proteus do a complete sweep of Floyt's new one, to make sure it was free of logic bombs, saboteur AI's, sleepers, and other booby traps.

"Oh,
ge'mun,
that was fun!" Circe's eyes were moist and she ran the back of her hand under her nose, but she was more sober than when she'd shown up. "Ah don't get to
do
things for people, y'know? Ah mean, ah don' even get to
meet
many people."

"Good flagpoles make for good neighbors," Floyt observed grandly. Circe sprayed out part of her glass of dogfight and Alacrity broke up.

"But really," Circe forged on. I'm not singing one of these 'poor little me' type numbers to you; after all, I'm lucky I'm not freakshowing somewhere or busting heads in an arena, or going catatonic in some flesh emporium. That's the kind of stuff people like me are slated for, in case you didn't know.

"What I run into's usually some
avant-gardeoisie
who sneers at what I do for a living until I hint around that I might hire him to write for me. Then all I have to do is yell 'frog!'
Hwa-thoo!"

Circe massaged her neck. "You know when the last time was that somebody asked me an intelligent file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (191 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:14

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question?
I
sure don't."

"Well then, where'd the Precursors go?" Floyt popped out owlishly.

She considered. "Well, it's funny most sentient races we've found are more or less on the same footing, now isn't it? Almost impossible, if you look at the odds. Maybe the Precursors cleared the decks,
retired,
if you catch what I'm saying. Maybe, in order to love Creation—I mean, to love it in spite of itself, in spite of the unpleasant parts, they had to withdraw from it and contemplate it from afar. From Outside.

Hey, this is great! Ask me another!"

Floyt hiccupped. "That was one of the most inneresting hypothesis I've ever heard. And it makes more sense than most."

Circe let go a long breath. "Nobody ever wants my opinion on stuff like that. I can visit twenty starsystems and never see a blessed thing,
ta-taaal"

She struck a pose. "But oh,
you
two guys! You really live!"

"Nothing to it," Alacrity said. "First thing you do is, you throw away all your money."

"And if you happen to get more, make sure someone steals it from you," Floyt chimed in. "Preferably while they shoot at you."

She looked at them sidelong. "Are you two sayin' you were happier before all this happened to you?"

They didn't answer right away. Then, at almost the same time, Floyt said, "Nope," while Alacrity muttered to his pathfinder boots, "You got us there, Circe."

Alacrity went on, "Yeah, but: it's still no fun being Life's Makiwara-board. And speaking of adversity, you're in a position to do us a favor, if you feel like. I'm figuring we're gonna run into trouble trying to get to the White Ship meeting; people will be watching our crate, the
Whelk,
maybe even impound her or something by the time the meeting's called. But you've got a lot of pull around Spica; we might need a ride."

She patted his knee, her hand covering it. "Don't give it another thought; I'll get you there. Who're we up against?"

"Everybody," Floyt said sourly. "Like always."

"Worry no more." She took another sip. "Did I tell you I shot a musical number in that White Ship for my last Special?"

They talked and drank a lot more, swearing eternal fealty with some kind of complicated triple handshake Floyt had never seen before. Circe left by a connecting door between the two suites that file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (192 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:14

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opened only to a two-part combination, one part supplied by her and one by Alacrity.

Floyt and Alacrity found their way to their rooms. Floyt, head spinning, expected to go to sleep at once, but found himself thinking, instead, of Paloma Sudan, and wondering where she was.

Then all at once, Alacrity was shaking him and Spica's first light was pouring through the window.

"Hey, wake up! The board meeting! Ho, they've called it!"

CHAPTER 17—OR WHAT'S A HEAVEN FOR?

Hair meticulous and fluffed from the auto-grooming suite, Floyt was fastening himself into his freshly laundered and starched tux when Alacrity came trotting past his door.

"Make sure you've got everything you want to take, Ho. There's gonna be a limo here for us any second, and chances are we won't be back this way."

"But Alacrity! I thought we were going to take up Circe on her offer of a ride. I thought you said the
Whelk
isn't going to be permitted to raise."

Alacrity, who'd disappeared, backed up into the open doorway. He had his warbag in his hands. "Could be; I gave Circe a call and she'll be here in a few minutes, so hurry!"

Floyt did, but there wasn't much more to do and not much he wanted among the junk luggage they'd bought on Rocket Row. He took loving pleasure in settling his fob, chain, and new proteus into his blindingly white vest.

The limo was rakish and new, much bigger than the one they'd arrived in. Alacrity had ordered it so, with Circe in mind, but it was just as well for the chauffeur, too, a real ogre, bigger than the Sceptered Isle's Moloch doorman. His uniform, cap, and low-caste mask were all resplendent. He opened all passenger doors briskly and came one precise step into the drawing room.