THE SPORT OF
KINGS
The day of the drop
dawned bright and cold—at least it was bright and cold when I went
out on the balcony beside the carport to suit up for my
ride.
Somewhat to my
surprise, Miss Feng was already up and waiting for me with a hot
flask of coffee, a prophylactic sober-up, and a good-luck cigar.
“Is this competition entirely safe, sir?” she inquired as I chugged
my espresso.
“Oh, absolutely not,”
I reassured her: “but I’ll feel much better afterward! Nothing like
realizing you’re millimeters away from flaming meteoritic death to
get the old blood pumping, what?”
“One couldn’t say.”
Miss Feng looked doubtful as she accepted the empty flask. “One’s
normal response to incendiary situations that get the blood pumping
is a wound dressing and an ambulance. Or to keep the employer from
walking into the death trap in the first place. Ahem. I assume Sir
intends to survive the
experience?”
“That’s the idea!” I
grinned like an idiot, feeling the familiar pulse of excitement. It
takes a lot to drive off the black dog of depression, but dodging
the bullet tends to send it to the kennels for a while. “By the
way, if Laura calls, could you tell her I’m dying heroically to
defend her virtue or something? I’ll see her after—oh, that reminds
me! Abdul al-Matsumoto has invited us—all the survivors, I mean—to
a weekend party at his pad on Mars. So if you could see that the
gig is ready to leave after my drop as soon as I’ve dressed for
dinner, and I don’t suppose you could make sure there’s a supply of
food for the little monster, could you? If we leave him locked in
the garret dungeon he can’t get into trouble, not beyond eating the
curtains—”
Miss Feng cleared her
throat and looked at me reproachfully. “Sir did promise his sister to look after the beast in
person, didn’t he?”
I stared at her,
somewhat taken aback. “Dash it all, are you implying . . .
?”
Miss Feng handed me
my preemptive victory cigar. She continued, in a thoughtful tone of
voice: “Has Sir considered that it might be in his best
interests—should he value the good opinion of his sister—to bring
Jeremy along? After all, Lady Fiona’s on Mars, too, even if she’s
preoccupied with the après-ski circuit. If by some mischance she
were to visit the Emir’s palace and find Sir sans Jeremy, it might
be more than trivially embarrassing.”
“Dash it all, you’re
right. I suppose I’ll have to pack the bloody pachyderm, won’t I?
What a bore. Will he fit in the trunk?”
Miss Feng sighed,
very quietly. “I believe that may be a remote theoretical
possibility. I shall endeavor to find out while Sir is enjoying
himself not dying.”
“Try beer,” I called
as I picked up my surf board and climbed aboard the orbital
delivery jitney. “Jeremy loves beer!” Miss Feng bowed as the door
closed. I hope she doesn’t give him too
much, I thought. Then the gravity squirrelizer chittered to
itself angrily, decided it was on the wrong planet, and tried to
rectify the situation in its own inimitable way. I lay back and
waited for orbit. I wasn’t entirely certain of the wisdom of my
proposed course of action—there are few predicaments as grim as
facing a mammoth with a hangover across the breakfast table—but
Miss Feng seemed like a competent sort, and I supposed I’d just
have to trust her judgment. So I took a deep breath, waited another
sixty seconds (until the alarm chimed), then opened the door and
stepped off the running board over three hundred kilometers of
hostile vacuum.
The drop went
smoothly—as I suppose you guessed, otherwise I wouldn’t be here to
bend your ear with the story, what? The adrenaline rush of standing
astride a ten-centimeter-thick surfboard as it bumps and vibrates
furiously in the hypersonic airflow, trying to throw you off into
the blast-furnace tornado winds of reentry, is absolutely
indescribable. So is the sight of the circular horizon flattening
and growing, coming up to batter at your feet with angry fists of
plasma. Ah, what rhapsody! What delight! I haven’t got a poetic
bone in my body, but when you tap into Toadsworth outside of the
clubhouse’s suppressor field, that’s the kind of narcotic drivel
he’ll feed you. I think he’s a jolly good poet, for an
obsessive-compulsive clankie with a staircase phobia and knobbly
protrusions; but at any rate, a more accurate description of
competitive orbital-reentry diving I haven’t heard from anyone
recently.
A drop doesn’t take
long. The dangerous stage lasts less than twenty minutes from start
to finish, and only the last five minutes is hot. Then you slow to
subsonic velocity, let go of your smoldering surfboard, and pray to
your ancestors that your parachute is folded smartly, because it
would be mortifying to have to be rescued by the referee’s skiff.
Especially if they don’t get to you until after you complete your
informal inquiry into lithobraking, eh?
There was a high
overcast as I came hurtling in across Utah, and I think I might
have accidentally zigged instead of zagging a little too vigorously
as I tried to see past a wall of cloud ahead and below me, because
when my fireball finally dissipated, I found myself skidding across
the sky about fifty kilometers off course. This would be
embarrassing enough on its own, but then my helmet helpfully
highlighted three other competitors—Abdul among them!—who were much
closer to the target zone. I will confess I muttered an unsport
ingly rude word at that juncture, but the game’s the thing, and it
isn’t over ’til it’s over.
In the end I touched
down a mere thirty-three thousand meters off course, and a couple
of minutes later the referees ruled I was third on target. Perry
O’Peary—who had been leading me—managed to make himself the toast
of the match before he reached the tropo pause by way of a dodgy
ring seal on his left knee. Dashed bad play, that, but at least he
died with his boots on—glowing red-hot and welded to his
ankles.
I caught a lift the
rest of the way to the drop base from one of the referee skiffs. As
I tramped across the dusty desert floor in my smoldering armor,
feeling fully alive for the first time in weeks, I found the party
already in full swing. Abdul’s entourage, all wearing traditional
kimonos and burnooses, had brought along a modified camel that
widdled champagne in copious quantities. He held up a huge platinum
pitcher. “Drinks are on me!” he yodeled as Tolly Forsyth and some
rum cove of a Grand Vizier—Toshiro Ibn Cut-Throat, I think—hoisted
him atop their shoulders and danced a victory mazurka.
“Jolly good show, old
son!” I called, ditching my helmet and gloves gratefully and
pouring a beaker of bubbly over my steaming head. “Bottoms
up!”
“B’m’s up undeed!”
Abdul sprayed camel flux everywhere in salute. He was well into the
spirit of things, I could tell; indeed, the spirit of things was
well into him.
Ibn Cut-Throat’s kid
brother sidled up behind me. “If Ralphie sama would care to
accompany me to His Majesty’s Brother’s pleasure barge, we will be
departing for Mars as soon as the rest of the guests arrive,” he
intimated.
“Rest of the guests?
Capital, capital!” I glanced round in search of my clankie doxy,
but there was no sign of Laura. Which was dashed strange, for she’d
normally be all over me by this point in the proceedings: my nearly
being turned off in front of an audience usually turned her on like
a knife switch. “Who else is coming?”
“Lots of people.” Ibn
Cut-Throat Junior looked furtive. “It’s a very big party, as befits
the prince’s birthday. Did you know it was his birthday . . . ?
It’s a theme party, of course, in honor of the adoptive ancestors
of his ancient line, the house of Saud.”
Abdul al-Matsumoto is
as much an authentic prince of Araby as I am a scion of the
MacGregor, but that’s the price we all pay for being descended from
the nouveau riche who survived the
Great Downsizing hundreds of years ago. Our ancestors bought the
newly vacated titles of nobility, and consequently we descendants
are forced to learn the bally traditions that go with them. I spent
years enduring lessons in dwarf-tossing and caber-dancing, not to
mention damaging my hearing by learning to play the electric
bagpipes, but Abdul has it worse: he’s required by law to go around
everywhere with a tea towel on his head and to refrain from
drinking fermented grape juice unless it’s been cycled through the
kidneys of an overengi neered dromedary. This aristocracy lark has
its downside, you mark my words.
“A theme party,” I
mused, removing my face from my cup. “That sounds like fun. But I
was planning on taking my gig. Is that okey-dokey, as they say? Is
there room in the imperial marina?”
“Of course,” said the
vizier, leering slightly as a shapely femme wearing a belly
dancer’s costume sashayed past. I noticed with distaste his
hairless face and the pair of wizened testicles on a leather cord
around his neck: some people think testosterone makes a cove
stupid, but there’s such a thing as going too far, what? “Just
remember, it’s a fancy-dress party. The theme is the thousand
nights and one night, in honor of and for the selection of His
Excellency’s newest concuboid. His Excellency says you should feel
free to bring a guest or two if you like. If you need an
outfit—”
“I’m sure my
household wardrobe will be able to see to my needs,” I said,
perhaps a trifle sharply. “See you there!”
Ibn Cut-Throat bowed
and scraped furiously as he backed away from me. Something odd ’s going on here, I realized, but
before I could put my finger on it, there was a whoosh, and I saw
the familiar sight of my gig—well, actually it’s Uncle
Featherstonehaugh’s, but as he’s not due back for six years, I
don’t think that matters too much—descending to a perfect
three-point landing.
I walked over to it
slowly, lost in thought, only to meet Miss Feng marching down the
ramp. “I didn’t know you could fly,” I said.
“My usual employer
requires a full pilot’s qualification, sir. Military unrestricted
license with interstellar wings and combat certification.” She
cleared her throat. “Among other skills.” She took in my
appearance, from scorched ablative boots to champagne hairstyle.
“I’ve taken the liberty of laying out Sir’s smoking jacket in the
master stateroom. Can I suggest a quick shower might refresh the
parts that Sir’s friends’ high spirits have already
reached?”
“You may suggest
anything you like, Miss Feng, I have complete confidence in your
professional discretion. I should warn you I will have a guest
tagging along, but he won’t be any trouble. If you show him to the
lounge while I change, we shall be able to depart promptly. I don’t
suppose you’ve heard anything from Laura?”
She shook her head
minutely. “Not so much as a peep, sir.” She stepped aside. “So, I’m
to set course for Mars as soon as the guest is aboard? Very good,
sir. I shall be on the flight deck if you need me.”
It appeared that Miss
Feng was not only an accomplished butler, but a dashed fine pilot
as well. Would miracles never cease?