Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds Read Online Free PDF Page A

facilities to the Earthservice Rec Bureau on a part-time basis; Mote was involved in many of the dramatic reenactments and roundtables, and Floyt supposed that that gave the man a certain romantic patina in the workplace. Balensa herself had been raised in an extended-family/academic-group concentrating on the Italian Renaissance; occasionally she alluded to the great passion in her soul.
    Floyt had already concluded that some of it had been vented in Mote's direction but, in his easygoing way, made no issue of it. Overreaction in such a situation was frowned upon by Terran society in general and Earthservice psych-counselors and Peaceguardians in particular. Floyt was surprised at the intensity of the resentment he'd had to suppress, though.
    But at length even the good manners and restraint required by the close quarters in which most Terrans lived had worn thin. Objecting to Mote's pawing of Balensa, Floyt reflected that it was too bad he couldn't mail the ersatz Hemingway a gun, so that the man could consummate his impersonation by blowing his brains out.
    Coming up the long hill toward the crest, legs trembling, Floyt felt satisfaction in the fatigue he'd worked up, but the memory of the fight still made him wince.
    Mote had further goaded him with barely veiled insults to his avocation, the tracing of genealogies.
    More, the man had provoked him with what was ostensibly a manly embrace, but in reality a humiliating mauling, and everyone there understood it.
    Mote's revivicism had led him into antisocial behavior; it also sparked, in some fashion, a like response from the usually mild-mannered Floyt. It was as if some Terran ancient out of his genealogies were reacting, rather than Floyt himself.
    He'd shoved Mote away hard, his first violent act since the age of twelve, nearly thirty years before.
    The fight had then become inevitable.
    Arlo Mote had brought his cherished boxing gloves with him, of course; he was wont to tote them about slung casually over his shoulder, since displaying an elephant gun was something the Peaceguardians wouldn't permit. He and his little circle of hangers-on occasionally put on bouts at the role-playing commune, though the word was that none of them was a particularly good boxer.
    Mote liked to joke that he was always hoping to run into a Max Eastman revivicist, for a decisive match; Floyt had always hoped that Mote would run afoul of a Jack Dempsey buff who'd play a leathersynth lullaby all over his face and skull.
    The gloves being there, though, the crowd immediately began to clamor for a match. The idea alone was titillating because a fight unsanctioned and unsupervised by proper officials carried the heady intoxication of sin.
    Floyt quickly found himself being laced into the clumsy, peculiar-feeling gloves as Arlo Mote stripped off his safari jacket, with its ammunition loops and dummy rifle rounds. Floyt stared at the avid faces and overbright eyes as the crowd formed a ring around them.
    Only Balensa tried to stop the fight; she was obviously worried about both men. That stung Floyt, making him determined to go on with it.
    Arlo Mote had naturally dabbled in boxing. Most people present had only a vague idea of the rules, gleaned from centuries-old motion pictures and stories. Floyt began to tremble, but not simply from fear of being injured. He hadn't grown up in a role-playing commune or historical preserve, or in an upper-bureaucrats' enclave. He'd been raised in a mass-dwelling complex, back in the days before creche indoctrination and improved surveillance techniques had made Terran society quite so tranquil.
    He'd run the great corridors in a roaming troupe, as had so many children, riding the transways and playing forbidden, sometimes lethal games in the chuteshafts. As the gloves were being laced on, he remembered the last time he'd been involved in violence.
    A boy from another troupe had insulted a girl in the one with which Floyt roamed as a peripheral.
    Floyt's troupe