Brian Daley - Requiem For a Ruler of Worlds

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REQUIEM FOR A RULER OF WORLDS
Brian Daley
To Lucia, with love, thanks, and, admiration.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My gratitude to Lil and Ron Drumheller for their kindness and interest.
I'm also much beholden for the contributions of Owen Lock, who's been endowed by Destiny with all
the things that define a truly great editor: a touch of the poet; perception; imagination; expense account
lunches; an understanding, good-humored wife named Arleen; and most importantly, a convertible couch.
" … and let him be cast forth, into the exterior darkness."
Matthew 22:13
PROLOGUE—IN THE TIME OF THE THIRD BREATH
Stormclouds for my winding sheet, Caspahr Weir thought with approval as his chair floated out
over the meadow.
A towering black front was rolling toward him, outlined in blue-green by Guileless Giles, the larger of
Epiphany's two moons. That he'd helped nature along, ordering his meteorological engineers to shape the
night's tempest, didn't detract from Weir's enjoyment. He was accustomed to arranging things to suit
himself. And, he'd decided, a person as close to death as he could be forgiven a little theatricality.
Certainly his life had been filled with high drama, triumphs, and defeats.
He wondered what they'd say about him when he was gone. Perhaps a paraphrasing of an ancient
Earth barb, one of his favorites: He was never more popular than when he died.
Fifty light-years inside what had, within living memory, been a special corner of hell, Director
Weir-sometimes known as Weir the Defender—touched a control on the arm of his chair. It descended
slowly toward the meadow's thick, tangled carpet of ribbon grass. By craning his head a bit—panting
with the effort, feeling dizziness assail him again—he could see his home, stronghold, and palace,
Frostpile.
It was a lofty dream-megastructure, veined like intaglio and lighting the night. Frostpile was composed
of domes, turrets, and spires; citadels like shark fins; outlying forms that often put visitors in mind of
moored dirigibles cut from crystal.
Begun almost thirty Standard years earlier, it wasn't quite completed yet. A pity …
Director Weir winced as the chair jostled the least bit, settling onto the oily ribbon grass. He
automatically reached for a control to make built-in medical apparatus mute his pain. But the control
wasn't there; he'd chosen to soar forth from Frostpile in his old chair, unencumbered by machinery that
was fighting a futile holding action.
At least this is a seat of power, he thought, and not a flying geriatrics clinic. Its arms, of beautiful
teak from Brimstone, worn by his hands and the years, comforted him. The chair had served him for a
decade before the damned sawbones and his sister had browbeaten him into using an airborne deathbed.
He smiled his chagrin at his own absentmindedness and took his hand away from where the missing
control ought to be, lowering it into his lap slowly, trembling with the effort. No pain interdiction tonight!
No message blockers or neuroinhibitors; no dulling drugs. He wanted to experience everything, even the
pain; it was time to die.
The deathwatch had already summoned together loved ones, friends, and allies, along with others for
whom he had little or no regard. If it made them feel better to gather there on Epiphany, the Director had
no objection so long as they left him in peace.
Doubtless enemies in many places were keeping their own shadow-vigil. The repercussions of his
death would be felt far beyond the relatively small volume of the nineteen systems he ruled.
His momentary twinge had been swallowed up in the deep, steady aching he'd endured for so long.
Now he watched the stormclouds roll in, right on schedule. He nodded without realizing that he did. His
engineers were expensive, but they were the best—and they asked no questions.
He knew he could trust them to keep their mouths shut, too. Good girls, even though Sonya's eyes
had been brimming over when he'd given the order. Everyone knew his fondness for good, bracing
weather. At least, he tweaked himself, you're fond of it now that you don't have to campaign in it
anymore.
The black avalanche of clouds engulfed the sky, spreading and advancing. As he watched, it blotted
out The Strewn, the gemwork open-star cluster that ornamented Epiphany's night as though a divine hand
had sown seeds plucked from the First Light. Lightning danced among the clouds, green-white, followed
by thunder; the air freshened with ozone.
On Old Earth-now shunned, mocked, having turned her back on her progeny—on Old Earth his age
would be reckoned at ninety-three. In that time he'd been slave, murderer, outlaw, rebel, and conqueror.
Hated and loved, he'd never quite believed that he deserved either.
Weir had brought along a small sound unit. Almost missing the control in his trembling, he put finger to
touchpad. Music surged, sinister but lush and high-flown.
It was the overture to an opera written long ago on Transvaal, a world that Weir had been about to
draw into his expanding sphere of influence. A thinly disguised metaphorical tale sponsored by that
planet's government, it had been composed by a young genius who'd unleashed his full powers. Weir was
portrayed as a kind of Mephistopheles who was defeated in the course of the story.
But Weir took a perverse pleasure in the grand and undisguised majesty of the music, the
unrestrainedness of it. The young composer had died in the final battle for his home planet. Weir's forces
took over, doing away with the slave trade that had thrived there and executing most of the plutocrats
who'd run the place.
He loved the music, though, and was amused by it. He was not as evil as he was often portrayed, he
was convinced; nor was he as virtuous.
He longed to stand and stretch, fill his lungs with the charged air, but his body had long since failed
him. Perhaps on one of the truly advanced worlds, one that had missed the dark age after the sundering
of the old interstellar unity and the end of the Second Breath of humankind, he could have had more
years of life. But the new techniques were unavailable within his jurisdiction, and he refused to leave it.
That had left him infirm, wed to the sustaining machines.
Until tonight.
Still, he'd extended his influence, played his part in the great conflicts and struggles that had given birth
to the Third Breath of the human race.
"The Third Breath!" It was a labor even to murmur the words, but a joy nonetheless. He loved their
sound, he who ruled nineteen star systems and wore an owner's code tattooed into his skin, and a
subdural implant that broadcast it.
The Third Breath, no longer being born but passionately alive. Change and growth and light; he
welcomed them. Strange attractors. A habitual musing came to him as his thoughts wandered. Strange
attractors …
When Weir realized he was no longer alone, he was half dreaming of a girl he'd known for a brief
moment in his youth. Her brown hair, ringlets of it, with its highlights of gold, had flown in the wind of a
landing field. Her eyes, black and deep, had reflected the glare of a binary stellar system and held
everything else to themselves—at first.
They'd come to love one another. For nearly eighty years, he wondered what had become of her, and
never, for all his efforts, had been able to find out.
Then, emerging from his reverie, he saw the figure. Many in Frostpile were waiting with him, waiting
for death. This was one such.
He said wearily, "Please go. I want to be—"
"You've altered your last will and testament. Why?"
Although no more than the residual image of his onetime self, muddled with age and pain, Weir was
instantly cautious. "It doesn't concern you. No one's business but my own."
The interloper's tone put danger in the air, like the lightning's ozone. "It might be everyone's business,
Caspahr. An Earthman. A Terran! What have you bequeathed him? Why are you bringing him here?"
Weir looked up craftily. "You mean 'her,' don't you?"
The figure moved closer. The wind was cold now, the lightning flashes more frequent, the thunder
louder. "The cunning hasn't left you, Caspahr." A right hand came up; a glittering pinbeam pistol was
pointed at the old man. A left hand exhibited a medical styrette.
Weir almost laughed at those, but hid it; a near-century of experience had made it a reflex to keep his
options and advantages hidden as long as possible. He'd been victorious so many times, and on such a
scale, that people tended to forget his defeats. Weir never did.
"No," the intruder went on, " 'he' is the correct pronoun. That much I know. What have you given
him?"
The pain was growing in Weir again, and he felt a little dizzy. He grunted, shifting in his chair, then
gasped with the passing torment of even so minor an effort. He'd been lucky to make it from his bed to
the chair.
"You'll be there for the Willreading. You'll find out then," he wheezed.
With a rasp of exasperation, the other stepped closer, the styrette before him. "You'll tell me in any
case."
"A memory release?" Weir allowed himself a hacking laugh, forcing it a bit. It devolved into a gargling
cough, and the old man tasted blood. It wouldn't be long now.
"Ahh, I see," the dark figure breathed. An injection would be futile, producing only coma or death.
The styrette disappeared, leaving the pinbeam. "But why Earth? Why?"
Weir shook his head, almost drunkenly. "Poor Old Terra. Why not!" He knew it was a feeble
deception. Still wed to his machines, he'd have managed something better, but the music and the
approaching thunder were too loud. He was nearly chattering with the cold, and racked with pain. It was
growing difficult even to assemble a coherent thought.
I'm only an old man who wants to be left alone! he thought. But few things in his life had come
easily, and he saw now that his death would not.
"I am engaged in locating his name now; I shall have it soon," his unwelcome visitor said. "What I
don't understand is your purpose. You've always claimed to despise Earth."
"I hate the Earthservice. I've nothing but pity for Terra itself." He gathered the warm, salty blood in his
mouth and spat; in the dark, his enemy didn't see the crimson. Merciful Fates preserve you,
Functionary Third Class Hobart Floyt! Weir thought. "I wish Terra well."
But it might not come out well for Floyt, particularly if he were unaware that he had a dangerous
enemy moving against him. Weir now regretted the lack of instrumentation in his old chair; no built-in
alarms or commo, and the old man had purposely left his own comband behind. He began fumbling with
the buttons of the player, shutting off the music, hoping to surreptitiously record something the other said.
But the intruder impatiently took the instrument out of his hands, put it aside, and began adjusting the
pistol. The storm was nearly upon them.
Of course. Weir couldn't simply be left; there was the off chance he would live long enough to tell
someone that there was an assassin in Frostpile. But the pistol, adjusted to very low power, maximum
dispersal, and held close to Weir's failing heart, would fool any but the most exacting coroner, even if
there were an autopsy.
Fighting from a corner, as he had so many times before, Weir coldly dismissed any chance of his own
survival. Instead he concentrated on the need to leave evidence, somehow, that he hadn't met a natural
end. His hand fell on the chair's lift control. The intruder yelled a curse, raised the gun.
The old chair hesitated a bit, rising. Weir waited for a bolt from the pinbeam, which hadn't yet been
completely adjusted. A wound from the weapon would serve his purpose; so would the intruder's
secreting of his body to conceal the evidence of a violent death. In either case, others would know that
an investigation was in order, and that precautions must be taken to safeguard the Inheritors. The old man
took the only course of action available to him.
The chair's hesitation gave Weir's foe a chance to leap forward, dropping the pinbeam, grappling. The
chair slewed around under their weight. Old, long unused, it sank to kick up tangles of ribbon grass. Then
the safeties cut in, and it stalled.
Weir's heart was fluttering in his chest like a dying bird. Blood ran from his nostrils and mouth. His
head lolled, then wobbled half erect. His assailant had gathered up the handgun again but held fire,
watching the old man.
Weir arched backward in sudden agony. A minute part of him was content that he'd provided as best
he could for the well-being of his little realm of nineteen stellar systems. But he also thought, Poor
Hobart Floyt!
He seemed to be watching a blinding white light, his torment retreating. Then he passed from life into
death.
The intruder felt for a pulse and found none. Weir was slumped in his chair. The storm struck; rain
falling in windblown sheets. Frostpile was a luminous white faerie city in the distance.
The assailant returned the player to Weir's lap, pondering. What could the inheritance left to an
obscure Earther possibly be? What machinations had Weir set in motion?
CHAPTER 1—THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
The yearning's too big for the learning. His father's words came back to him as Alacrity Fitzhugh
gazed down into the abyss. The cold, eternal solidity of the granite blocks around him and the Earth
beneath him brought back that observation about the Third Breath of humankind.
Sol's light had already brightened the peak of Huyana Picchu, high above and to the left. Now it
touched Machu Picchu itself, casting long, vapor-filtered rays among the broken walls of the ages-old
Inca fortress city. Looking down, he saw mist breaking as it rose off the dark serpentine of the
Urubamba River more than half a kilometer below him.
He inhaled it, a unique moment. Alacrity had overcome tremendous obstacles to make his way to
Earth and secure permission to walk its land, to see its seas and skies. A time of decision was drawing
near; he wanted to feel connected to something larger than himself, something kindred, while he
pondered. No surprise, then, that the words should come back to him.
"The yearning's too big for the learning," his father and captain had said. "Too big for measurement
and too big for poetry. The wishes and dreams are always there, in most of the sentient species. But
comes a time like this, when the dreams suddenly feel like they're within reach—then an upwelling comes,
too big for the normal boundaries of life."
That seemed like poetry to Alacrity, and measurement, too, the thing his late father had said.
A fine, tenuous moisture, an evaporating cloud, was all around Machu Picchu, but it would be a clear
day. Alacrity eagerly anticipated seeing the Andean snowcaps from this spot. The weather was being
cooperative; now if only the damned groundlings would follow suit.
The site, in what had been Peru before the Terran Unification, was one of those he'd wanted most to
visit, one of the oldest. There were few enough left, thanks to the Human-Srillan War.
Giza was radioactive glass; the Parthenon had been hit during the last, mutually catastrophic Srillan
attack—what the Earthers called the Big Smear. Jerusalem was gone, Shih Huang-ti's tomb, Mecca,
Bethlehem, and Dharmsala. The old religions were only historical oddities here.
Srillan military thinkers, like their human counterparts, tended to target population centers in that war.
Aside from the people who'd been annihilated, most of Rome and its treasures had been vaporized, and
New York with its newer but still precious history. Sian and Moscow, Brazilia and Sydney, the same.
The attack was so suicidal that surviving, lower-rank Srillan officers, upon their surrender, had been
unable to explain the actions of the High Command, all members of which were dead. The belated arrival
of the Spican fleet had turned a Srillan Pyrrhic victory into an utter disaster, but the curtain had been rung
down on the Second Breath of humankind.
Long ago. More than two hundred Terran years.
Now, the Hawking Effect was bringing sundered humanity together, along with the other sentient
races. The upwelling mentioned by Alacrity's father had been building for nearly eighty years. People
across human space were beginning to feel that they had a real opportunity to seize a place in history,
power, glory, riches-some great destiny or perfect fulfillment.
And some of them might even be right.
Alacrity drew Terran air into his lungs, tasting its strangeness, feeling the immense weight and
timelessness of the Inca-carved stone. Several of the sacred llamas meandered through the deserted site,
stepping delicately, dipping long necks to graze and coming erect again warily. The fog rose toward the
city's ruins to disappear in the light and growing warmth.
Alacrity was like any number of humans—though the Earthers would call him alien, he knew
resentfully—who knew little more about their origins than that the human race had begun there, on that
hard-luck, xenophobic little planet.
The thin air two and a half kilometers above sea level was chilly, making him want to cough. He was
more accustomed to the richer atmosphere of a starship than to any other. It had been so in his family for
generations.
In the eight days he'd spent crisscrossing the planet, Machu Picchu had brought him closest to
something he'd been hoping for—a kinship with his species at large, the groping beginnings of
understanding of his place in the scheme of things.
The Inca Trail lay behind him as well as before. Old when Terra's space age had begun in humanity's
First Breath, it was still passable. He'd descended to Machu Picchu through the Inca Gate, down
decayed and tilted stone steps. He planned to leave over Huyana Picchu.
Alacrity resettled the Earth-style shoulder bag that contained the few personal articles he'd brought
with him, none of them of off world origin. He wore clothes a Terran history buff would favor for the visit:
serape, jacket and trousers of imitation llama and vicuna, and rope-soled sandals.
Under the scrape, though, he wore a hooded shirt, the hood pulled up. A pair of polarized
wraparound glasses covered his eyes as well; he was trying his best to pass as an Earther for very good
reasons.
Now he set his foot on the first step toward the laborious, rather dangerous trail up Huyana Picchu.
Behind him, a harsh voice called out in badly pronounced Interworld Tradeslang.
"You! Alien!"
The spell had been broken. Earth was no longer the place of racial origins; it was only a hostile,
almost closed world. Alacrity pivoted slowly, so as to give no provocation. Earthers were quick—even
avid—to take offense, resentful of outsiders.
An Earthservice Peaceguardian stood there, and from the looks of him, the blood of the region ran
strong in him. In those rugged mountains, one of the last habitable wild places on the globe, a few people
had managed to avoid mass housing, forced emigration, and cultural assimilation. But the Earthservice
was still in control. The short, thickset, barrel-chested man wearing lieutenant's tabs on his shoulders
looked very much the trained Peaceguardian, humorless and severe, his holstered weapon and other
equipment gleaming from harness carriers. The brassard on his helmet shone.
The Peaceguardian stepped up to him, pointing a white-gloved finger. "You're the offworlder,
Spacer-Guildsman Alacrity Fitzhugh."
Little point in denying the statement. The lieutenant was glancing now from Alacrity to a hand-held
screen, undoubtedly comparing the offworlder's long, pale face to that of his visa registration ID. Alacrity
gazed down at him from his lanky 197 centimeters. He answered as cooly as he could, "That's correct,
officer," in clear Terranglish. "How may I be of service to you?"
The peacer glared up at him through his tinted helmet visor. Here in Machu Picchu no antioffworlder
slogans flashed from holoprojectors or blared from PA systems. But the fortress was itself a reminder of
a greatness gone by and of the fact that Earth was avoided by all but a few extraterrestrials and derided
by most.
Two more Peaceguardians appeared from behind massive stones. The lieutenant continued to
address Alacrity in barbarously accented Tradeslang, ignoring the fact that they had Terranglish in
common. "You're to leave here now. Your visa has been voided. You will return to the spaceport and
leave Earth."
Alacrity responded carefully. He was only twenty-two Standard-Terran-years old, but he'd been
through tight situations on dozens of worlds, and in between. He knew better than to show anger.
"Why? I've done nothing wrong. This has to be a mistake."
"Negative! Witnesses saw you at old sites. You climbed the stelae and broke off pieces. You poked
around sacred places with instruments. You desecrated; you vandalized."
Alacrity did his best to keep his temper; if he lost it now, the feces would really hit the flywheel. But
he couldn't stop himself from snapping, "That's not true!"
The cop only scowled harder. "The testimony has been sworn. You will leave." He pointed to the
Urubamba, far below, where there was a tiny village and a tubeway station. "The next cartridge leaves in
just over an hour," he growled. "Be on it."
Thinking, How would you like a face-ectomy, you little shit heap? Alacrity stared at the lieutenant.
But one of the other peacers had his palm on the butt of his pistol, and his partner was hopefully fingering
a pair of nunchaka; the offworlder didn't voice the proposal.
Alacrity was, of course, unarmed, and had no desire to have his skull cracked or a kneecap burned
off. The spacer spoke with the self-restraint he'd learned over a relatively short but singularly eventful life
as a breakabout—a star rover. High movers, those who followed his trade were sometimes called, or
go-bloods.
"There was no desecration. Earthservice visa briefings warned against it. I complied."
"The witnesses gave testimony."
Lines appeared around Alacrity's mouth. "What witnesses? I want to speak to them."
The lieutenant spat at Alacrity's feet, missing by millimeters. "You see no one. You go back to the
spaceport and leave Earth soonest." One of his subordinates sniggered.
"Do you have any idea what that visa cost me? In time and money and effort?"
Visas had to be available, at least theoretically, to keep up appearances. Even Terra had no desire to
be branded a closed world. But obtaining one had been an expensive, frustrating ordeal, and
time-consuming into the bargain. Still, drawn by tales of Old Earth and the urge to tour humanity's
Homeworld, the breakabout had persevered when other offworlders had scoffed and Earthservice
functionaries and bureaucrats had rebuffed him.
Perhaps that had had something to do with his upbringing, son of two starship officers, grandson of
another, born in transit, with no birthworld. But his patience with the delay and the bleak life of the
closely guarded spaceport enclave had been nearly exhausted when, almost miraculously, the visa had
been granted.
Roaming the planet, he'd been alternately exhilarated and disillusioned, proud and ashamed, puzzled
and thrilled by revelation. Only to come to this! Never to see the Forbidden City, the Serengeti, or
Angkor Wat! Or the remains of an evolutionary climb millions of years long.
He sighed. "At least let me send for an aircar. It'll be faster than the tubeway; I'll be gone that much
sooner."
The peacer's smirk was ugly. "You go by cartridge! Who d'you think you are, an Alpha Bureaucrat?
Bad enough you'll ride beneath our Earth; you won't foul her skies!"
Transportation up and down the mountain was usually provided by a bucket railcar. But with
malicious satisfaction, the attendant told Alacrity that line wasn't in operation, even though the breakabout
had seen it running only a half hour earlier.
Nothing for it but to plod down the unpaved switchback road on foot. He balanced his shoulder bag
from long practice, and panted along in the thin air. The Peaceguardians, used to the road, followed
without discomfort. The single vehicle that passed, a surface-effect truck, sped downhill in a swirl of dust.
Alacrity halfheartedly tried to flag it down; the driver and his assistant showed white, hating smiles as they
left him in their wake.
Alacrity coughed and spat out dust, then resumed trudging. The peacers spoke among themselves,
laughing coarsely at jokes shared in some language Alacrity didn't understand.
The young offworlder left off his silent cursing of Terrans and his own luck and began worrying about
his dilemma. He could see little to do except obey the peacers; there was no other authority to which he
could appeal at the moment. The truckers' reaction proved that word of the allegations against him had
already spread. He began to feel better about the cops' presence.
He glanced at the proteus on his wrist. He'd been moving as quickly as he could; now he began to
slow, not wanting to spend more time than necessary in the village.
He gradually descended toward the little bubble of the tubeway station, in the middle of the collection
of angular, pressformed buildings that were the quarters of the locals. The station faced a plaza layered
with windblown dust and debris. It was still murky down there.
A crowd had gathered, twenty people or so. Not many showed the strong racial characteristics the
lieutenant did. Centuries of interbreeding and acculturation, emigration and immigration had seen to that.
The majority of the men and women there might have been from any broad mixture of Terran genes.
Many of them were dressed in clothing like Alacrity's, modern reproductions of attire from the past, a
custom encouraged by Earthservice. Others wore coveralls, work-suits, or the uniforms of the guide
staff. Nudging one another and pointing up toward him, they watched the breakabout approach and
muttered among themselves. None displayed weapons as such, but many had tools or equipment that
would serve nicely: torque bars, energy probes, and heavy spanners. Alacrity approached them slowly.
Over the smooth white bubble of the tubeway station a luminous Earthservice Infoprop displayer
flashed: earth is our mother—terra for terrans. Another, smaller displayer registered two minutes until the
next cartridge.
The breakabout stopped and turned to the Peaceguardians. They were wandering away in different
directions; the crowd showed no such inclination. Alacrity called out to the lieutenant, but the man
entered the peacers' little HQ-barracks building and the door segments spiraled in, shuttering.
Alacrity took a step toward it, then stopped. He was unlikely to find any help there, and the displayer
now read less than one minute to cartridge arrival. Settling his bag, preparing himself, he strode toward
the station, unarmed but not defenseless.
The crowd gave way before him, and his hopes rose; he could see through the station's viewpanes
that the tiny waiting area was unoccupied, as was the platform beyond. He willed himself not to break
into a sprint.
But as he was about to step through the station's entrance, the displayer changed to read: next
cartridge due in 1 hour 00 minutes.
Alacrity whirled instantly, without bothering to wonder how they'd rigged the displayer. The crowd
was ringing him in. No cops were in sight.
An old woman came forward, her face gaunt and loose-skinned—smoothing collagen treatments
were not for the Terran masses—but her eyes vigorous with hatred. As the lieutenant had, she spat at
him, a pitifully weak attempt, the spittle barely clearing her lips. Somewhere behind her, a man yelled in
vehement Terranglish, "You're not getting away that easily, alien!"
There were snarls of agreement, an unintelligible shout or two. Alacrity put his shoulders up against
the wall of the station. On the peacers' HQ a displayer now read: temporarily unmanned—use
emergency com-box. He wasn't surprised to see that the security monitors were dimmed and motionless,
deactivated.
A snarley-ball sailed out of the crowd in his direction, as did a bottle. The bottle was no trouble to
dodge; he'd been star-trained. But the snarley-ball, used by naturalists and hunters on many worlds to
snare small game, exploded into a puff-sphere of wavering, sticky streamers.
Alacrity ducked as the blossoming, translucent strands drifted toward him, scooped up the fallen
bottle, and underhanded it into the snarley-ball. Attracted by microfields, the adhesive streamers gathered
around, enfolding it. The snarley-ball looked like a feeding anemone.
The cloud of strands was carried to the dust by the weight of the bottle, and Alacrity kept clear of it,
as did the crowd, but still it hemmed him in.
They taunted and jeered him in the same language the peacers had used. He evaluated his chances of
charging back up the road or plunging into the undergrowth, but decided that neither plan held much
promise. The locals were used to the terrain and altitude. And even if they didn't run him down, he had
nowhere to go.
So he stood erect, facing them. They froze, suspicious, hands curled into claws or balled fists, or
clutching makeshift weapons. He swung his gaze around the arc of angry faces.
"I've done nothing wrong. Why would I want to come light-years and light-years just to desecrate
your sacred places? And alone, and unarmed? Does that make sense to anybody here?"
They'd heard him out, but showed no belief or inclination to listen further. The tallest among them, a
burly man with thinning, sandy hair, hefting an excavator in two huge hands, took a step toward him.
Alacrity reconsidered running for it. He'd been in quite a number of hand-to-hand combats, had lost what
he considered to be far too many of them, and hated the possibility of having that happen again.
The Earther gave an upswing of his head, pointing at the breakabout with his chin, to address him.
"We have heard from … we've heard what you did. We know."
"Someone misled you. Who told you these lies?"
"You're the liar, alien!" the man grated.
"Alien? Alien?" Alacrity roared, as much for fury at the unbelievable stupidity of the word as in
reaction to the danger of the moment. "I'm as human as you are! I paid a small fortune for this jaunt; I
fought your hidebound Earthservice for weeks for my visa! Who would do that just to desecrate his own
ancestors' birthworld?"
They still showed him their resentment and malice, but held back from attacking. He took a step away
from the wall, then another. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane, and for a moment the breakabout
and many others there thought that violence had been averted. Then a stone was hurled by someone to
his left. Alacrity caught the forward sweep of the thrower's arm, just at the edge of his peripheral vision.
He threw himself sideways, and the missile glanced off the station. A wiry, crazed-looking Earther
darted toward him and clawed at the breakabout's wraparound glasses. They went flying as Alacrity
shoved the man away. His burning glare held the others at bay. "You blind, idiotic damned Earthers!"
A low sound of shock and amazement went through them; he realized that they could see his eyes.
The words were muttered: alien; offworlder. He gazed at them with wide, oblique eyes, their huge
irises an unearthly, radiant yellow streaked with red and black. "Mutant!" he heard. "Freak!"
Then they were closing in on him. The excavator raised, the tall man advanced. "Earth is for humans
!" he said harshly. The implement hissed through the air.
Alacrity bobbed, leaning away. The Terran's weight and the momentum of the swing carried him off
balance; Alacrity helped him along with a shove.
Terran hatred of non-Earthers had been nurtured by Earthservice psychprop and by the hardships
and deprivations of the two centuries following the Human-Srillan War. Earth, which had only remained
livable by accepting the charity of other worlds, was humiliated by their condescension. And so the
Homeworld had withdrawn into galled isolationism and brooding nostalgia for its vanished glories.
With an assortment of shrieks, gnashing of teeth, and various obscenities, the crowd closed in on
Alacrity, fanning out to forestall his escape. They inched toward the breakabout warily, having seen that
he was quick.
Alacrity straightened all at once and, ripping open a compartment in his bag, jammed his hand in,
groping. He plucked out a metallic object, a thing of tarnished metal with a tubular barrel and bell-like
mouth.
"All right, just get back," he ordered menacingly, "or I'll blow the whole sad lot of you into dog
fodder, or whatever the phrase is!"
They wavered, intimidated by his tone and manner, and the lethal, dull shine of the object he held. But
the wiry man yelled, "They told us he wouldn't be armed! It's a trick!" and whipped a jimbo-wrench at
the offworlder, who managed to evade it. Alacrity's hand squeezed convulsively on the object it held,
which filled the air with a soulful honk!
Alacrity smiled in a sickly fashion, lowering the antique automobile horn he'd managed to persuade an
old woman on Pitcaim Island to sell to him. He'd hoped to be able to take it offworld with him. The wiry
man charged Alacrity, as did his neighbors, bashing and belaboring the offworlder. Many of them got in
one another's way, and one even became entangled in the strands of the fallen snarley-ball.
The remainder, though, swung and kicked at him, reaching for handholds, dragging at him. He bucked
and spun, hammered and kicked, trying to plunge free. One of the villagers landed a blow squarely to his
back, a young woman of considerable beauty with heavy, blue-black hair and high cheekbones. She
wielded a forced-air excavating tube with some skill. He lurched, nearly falling.
Two more tried to pile on to bring him down. They only succeeded in pulling away his shoulder bag
and serape and ripping down Alacrity's hood.
Seeing his hair, some of them cried out in surprise and even greater wrath. It was long and thick,
growing in slate-gray waves, shot through with silver strands. It grew halfway down his spine, like a
mane. The mob took it as further proof of his nonhumaness, and redoubled its zeal.
The wiry man ran at him again. Alacrity somehow freed a hand to keep the fellow at bay with a fistful
of his own uniform. Fumbling, the Terran, brought up a force-probe, its tip crackling with a full charge.
The breakabout chopped at the wrist holding it, missed, and spun as he was borne to the ground by the
combined weight and efforts of the Earthers. The writhing mass turned as it went down; the force-probe
spat and sizzled as it struck the left side of a tall, sandy-haired man.
He screamed as the probe flared and blazed. Alacrity struck the plaza's surface with a thud, but heard
the sounds. Then a fist struck his cheek a glancing blow, and another skimmed by his right ear. Boots,
sandals, and bare feet thumped at him as he did his best to protect himself. People threw themselves
across his legs to immobilize him, and then he heard the faraway chirpers of the Peaceguardians jarring
the air.
The wiry man was still trying to reach Alacrity's chest with the force-probe, but the breakabout
yanked a hand free and slammed the heel of it up under his chin, then chopped at his throat. As the
Earther fell aside, the chop missed and the black-haired woman came into view again, raising her
forced-air tube high. The peacers' chirpers were nearer, sounding at ear-splitting intensity.
Alacrity somehow deflected the woman's blow, and she lost her footing, toppling toward him.
Through the gap in the melee, he saw for an instant part of the station's displayer: terra for terrans. These
less-than-animals were welcome to it, as far as Alacrity was concerned.
When the young woman clawed at his face, he gripped her to him in a clumsy headlock, causing her
neighbors to relent in their attack, fearful of hitting her. He took the opportunity to knee the wiry man in
the jaw.
Then, as if by divine intervention, the peacers were at the outskirts of the brawl, breaking it up, pulling
people away. But before they could work their way in to Alacrity, a youth, practically a boy, brought a
millennia-old mean stone pestle, a smooth stub of rock, down on the breakabout's head.
CHAPTER 2—THE CHOSEN
The message had been etched into a rock at the side of the pressbounded roadway by some
anonymous cyclist now generations dead: 2 km upgrade.
Sweating over the randonneur handlebars, Floyt didn't let it deceive him; he'd pedaled the route
before and knew that the warning was nearly a full kilometer shy of the mark. An error or a bit of
mischief by one of the ancients; that, or the lay of the land had been changed when the Srillans brought
havoc to Terra in their final raid, two hundred years before.
Lowering his head, Floyt settled into a practiced, determined cadence, the muscles of his legs
working easily even though he was tired from a long afternoon's tour. It was the first time he'd gotten to
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eVersion2.0-clickforscannotesREQUIEMFORARULEROFWORLDSBrianDaleyToLucia,withlove,thanks,and,admiration.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSMygratitudetoLilandRonDrumhellerfortheirkindnessandinterest.I'malsomuchbeholdenforthecontributionsofOwenLock,who'sbeenendowedbyDestinywithallthethingsthatdefineatrulygreateditor:atouc...

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