Fall of the White Ship Avatar (6 page)

"Still, a starship," he said. "We must be pretty high up on their shopping list, Alacrity."

A starship, but a small one resembling, from the outside, her namesake, a contoured, torch-shaped snailshell hulk some thirty meters high when sitting on her tapered tail with berthing stabilizers deployed. She was old, much overhauled and patched,
dangerous
when it came right down to it. But Alacrity fell for her wholly and without reservation, swelled in ecstasy by winners-keepers ownership.

"Umm," Floyt mulled. "With no cargo, she's only slightly worse than
Pihoquiaq
was." He saw from the look on Alacrity's face what he was about to say, and chimed in, so that they said it at the same time,

"But still, a
starship
!"

Floyt eased down into the standby's jumpseat. "Nobody from Luna was interested in us, Alacrity?

Nobody following?"

Alacrity was punching up various scope images, checking all the detectors. "Nope. What're you worried about, the Golem?"

That was Alacrity's name for Plantos's absent partner or hireling or whoever it was. The name seemed to fill the bill; the Golem's makeshift bunk was outsize, long enough for someone a meter or so taller than Alacrity and with three or four times his cross section. It was braced and reinforced to support enormous weight.

"Maybe Plantos was just keeping a couple of old reactor containment vessels in there, or something."

Alacrity smirked. "Anyway, whoever it is, we left 'im behind. In another little while we can forget about him for good, because we'll be in Hawking. Good old sinful Luna. Buddha smile on everybody who can be bought and
stays
bought."

"Good to
us,
anyway." Floyt shifted the cuptray he was carrying, setting it on a flat area of the console.

"What's that you got there?"

"Breakers, have you forgotten so soon?"

"
Managgia
! It's been so long since we were on a regular Hawking jump, I didn't even think of blastoff cocktails."

Floyt nodded, handing out the drinks, two big, chilled hurricane glasses filled with some frozen concoction. Alacrity was right; except for their original departure from Luna inboard the freighter
Bruja,
their headlong comings and goings were usually in escape or as captives or bilge-class deadheaders. It file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (27 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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was nice to have time for the amenities again.

Floyt turned the rimed glass in his hand and got to something that had concerned him. "Alacrity, see here. I know this Perlez fellow, your father's mentor, is supposed to help you, and I'm not trying to play Miraculo the Mindreader, but something about this situation is just eating you up."

Alacrity sampled the drink. "Not bad. Frozen, uh, banana daquiri? Except it doesn't really taste like bananas."

Floyt leaned his head against a power panel. "They're something called fidberries, from some planet named Anybody's Guess. The potables report is pretty bleak; a few hundred milliliters of perfumey-smelling vodka left and a half case of that defanged beer with neothanol in it. Plus an inhaler of updust, and of course that swill the whole ship reeks of."

Floyt held up a bottle whose label read "Old Four Smokes Wallop." "Some kind of drugged liquor, or nostrum, or whatever."

Unstoppered, it was the source of the stomach-turning odor that permeated the
Whelk;
the Golem's bunk in particular smelled of it.

Alacrity took a whiff of the Old Four Smokes Wallop and made an awful face. "Ug, I'd rather be sober!

Pour it out, will you?"

Floyt restoppered the bottle. "No argument."

"So like that oldtime Earther said, we have to survive on food and water?"

"And not an awful lot of food," Floyt said. "We're going to be eating protein paste on crackers after a while, I should think."

The computers began running the transitional sequence. Alacrity sipped again. Floyt looked to the forward viewpane; this would be the first time he'd ever actually watched while a starship went superluminal.

"I'm not really that worried," Alacrity blurted. "At least, no more than usual. It's just—everything's riding on this. I'm sure I can trust Lord Marcus—except, aside from you, I don't trust anybody, really."

The Breakers cut in and the
Lightning Whelk's
Hawking Effect generator seemed to vibrate the vessel like a banjo string. Floyt drew a quick, deep breath as he felt again that peculiar impression of velocity without movement. Then there was the profound over-the-top sensation. The Hawking generator put the
Whelk
beyond normal limitations and the outboard screens went blank.

Alacrity raised his glass and clinked with Floyt. "Breakers!"

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There was nothing to see out the forward viewpane, but Floyt's brain insisted on imposing images. Or, if you listened to certain scientific popularizers, as-yet-undiscovered forces and influences were transferring information directly to his mind in some enigmatic way.

"No music," he realized suddenly. "I meant to find 'The Planets' and put on 'Venus, Bringer of Joy.' "

"Trite as hell, but it's a favorite of mine, too," Alacrity confessed. "That and 'Brainwire.' Oh, well, too late now. Tell you what I
did
find while I was poking around the data banks and memory files: whoever Plantos was, he liked current events. He left us with the latest news packets, bought on Luna about four hours ago."

"Where? Let's screen them!"

The fastest that news could travel between the stars was the speed of a starship, so news traveled slowly, filtering through the Third Breath over a period of weeks or months. No one really had any coherent idea of all that the human race was doing, especially out where the frontiers were ballooning. So people were always hungry to hear news and tales of strange new doings and places. Literature, drama, history, and the rest had taken a decided backseat; the traveler's journal and explorer's diary commanded
Homo
sapiens'
attention as never before. People who could observe, survive, and come back to convey what they'd seen were icons of the Third Breath of Humanity, which was the species' current great leap outward after the end of the dark age that followed the collapse of the Second Breath. The illusion of

"true" adventure was the appeal of Sintilla's shameless fabrications.

Once Floyt, who'd grown up on preterist Earth, hadn't given the matter much thought. Now he was as greedy for information as anyone else abroad in the Third Breath.

Alacrity activated two infoscreens and a holographic projector, adjusting for quick scan. The news flashed in a dazzling mosaic, headline blurbs with in-depth stories available on access request. They glanced from display to display, barely keeping up with the highlight-dollops.

Researchers on New Saigon claimed an astounding breakthrough that confirmed the existence of psi powers and made them subject to rational study and control. The new discipline was called Psience, its attendant mechanisms, psenses.

"How many times have I heard
that
chestnut in one shape or another?" Alacrity snorted. "The sucker quotient never goes down … "

The new official religion of the Trilateral Dominion was a kind of massage therapy.

Due to genetic drift and loss of gene diversity in many human colonies isolated since the end of the Second Breath, plasm-trading looked to become one of the great growth industries and most competitive file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (29 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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businesses of the Third Breath. Piracy and strongarm commercial violence were becoming more and more common.

A war had broken out between the New Hanseatic League and the Bamboo Confederation over contractual obligations and alleged treaty violations. It revolved around disagreements arising from incompatible time-computation systems; delegations of temporal arbitrators were trying to hammer out a compromise by getting a mutually agreeable reckoning system in place. The announcer reminded the audience of the tragic Calendar Wars, which had started in much the same way.

Rumors from Amalgamated Science Networks, Inc., had it that a true "psychocopier," allowing detailed and orderly mental writing, was in prototype phase.

"Only about thirteen hundred years too late for poor old Boswell, who always wanted one," Floyt remarked dryly.

Truth-in-advertising laws in the Spican Union now required that all clergy, professional councilors, clairvoyants, and lonely hearts agencies refer to those who engaged their services as "customers."

And so it went. There were stories about the Camarilla, of course, and the uproar Alacrity and Floyt and their allies started, but not much new. Floyt was shocked to realize that he was already rather blasé about the whole thing. He and Alacrity scanned avidly, though, to see if the
Astraea Imprimatur
had been found, if the outlaw Janusz and Victoria Roper, the former Langstretch op, both of whom had led the fight against the Camarilla, had been captured. Most of all, Alacrity hunted the displays for word on Heart, the Nonpareil, the woman he loved, who'd stayed with
Astraea Imprimatur
on her escape, to aid Victoria and the injured Janusz in finding sanctuary. Heart's parting with Alacrity was bitter.

There was no reference to any of that though; the companions tried to convince each other it was a good sign. Then one split-second image as Alacrity was fast-forwarding made them both gasp.

"Alacrity, go back!"

"I saw it, I saw it! Sports news; why didn't I think of it?"

Then it was before them again on the holoimager:
Celeste Aida,
the gorgeous racing staryacht of Captain Softcoygne Dincrist, the Nonpareil's father.

The last time Alacrity and Floyt had seen the ship,
Celeste Aida
swept past them rather than blowing
Astraea Imprimatur
to component forces, not because Dincrist couldn't do it, or didn't want to because his daughter was inboard, but because he was, though behind, a strong contender in the very prestigious Regatta for the Purple.

The newsspew showed Dincrist standing proudly before his ship, accepting the first-place trophy, a file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (30 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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racing starship carved from a single, enormous fire-drop.

"
Zhopa's ruchkoi
, that bastard," Alacrity breathed. "We should've killed him when we had the chance."

There were scenes from the race as a commentating talking head went on about Dincrist's brilliant performance, particularly during the solar sailing leg of the dangerous race.

"I hate to give him this," Alacrity grudged, "but either he's an awfully good racing skipper or he had one inboard with him, ghosting."

The shot switched back to Dincrist, surrounded by wealthy, powerful Regatta Club members whose friendship he'd been courting for so long. He was taller than Alacrity, deeply tanned, white-haired, and fit. His gleaming smile was frozen in place.

Floyt recalled the contempt in which club members held newspeople. The fact that a press opportunity was being tolerated showed that Dincrist, as winner, had impressive new influence among the august and mighty members.

Alacrity wondered if the irony was eating at Dincrist's liver—being compelled to give up the vengeance he wanted so badly in order to win the trophy, the only thing he wanted more.

"When will
Celeste Aida
take to the stars again, Captain?" a fawning interviewer asked.

Dincrist chuckled regretfully. "My first love is sailing the stars, of course, but unfortunately I have weighty responsibilities to my family and to my business and financial affairs."

Another newsghoul, one who didn't sound so friendly, elbowed the first aside. She was young, barely postadolescent, and wore a fetching strawberry-color coat of dermal frosting over bare skin.

"Salome Price, for the Uncensored Network! Captain Dincrist, aren't you referring to the meeting of the Board of Interested Parties of the White Ship? Haven't there been persistent rumors that you'll face opposition at the upcoming meeting and perhaps a drive to unseat you from the board? Isn't it even said that much of that opposition will come from members of your own family and from your daughter, the so-called Nonpareil, in particular?"

Dincrist glared at Salome Price furiously, then his eyes flicked around the crowd and into the pickups.

For a moment Alacrity felt like he was eye to eye with Dincrist again and about to throw some hands and feet.

Floyt was certain Dincrist was wondering if he could get away with swatting the female newsghoul in front of all those people and recording devices, and concluding only with great reluctance that he couldn't.

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The smile froze back into place. "Those are vicious and unfounded lies, as I suspect you know, foisted off by malicious people on the gullible and foolish, my dear. As proof of that, my business associates and family—and most particularly my daughter—will be backing me all the way at the meeting."

His mouth smiled wider; his eyes were chilling. "Backing me
all
the way."

Alacrity came halfway out of the big pilot's seat to bark at the projection, "Liar! Dincrist, you
limbic
case
!" He turned to Floyt. "You don't think he found her somehow, do you?" Alacrity replayed the interview, but there was nothing more to learn from it.