The End of the Matter Page 10

  Flinx hesitated, and finally said, “Personal reasons.”

  “You want to kiss him or kill him?” Habib pressed disarmingly, not put off by Flinx’s disclaimer. But then, Flinx knew, this was a frontier world, where such civilized subtleties as obfuscation were unknown.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure, Habib,” he admitted, considering for the first time what he would do if he actually found the person he sought. “It depends on whether he’s the end of a trail or simply another signpost on it.” Sighing, he repeated his description of the man in question, for the hundredth-odd time on Alaspin:

  “A very big man, age uncertain but not young. Over two meters up, two hundred kilos in between, maybe less. Wears a gold ring in his right ear, or used to. He may or may not have a minidrag with him. Don’t tell me about the cargo handler at the port. I’ve already met him, and he’s not the one I’m seeking.”

  “Sounds like it could be . . .” Habib was murmuring thoughtfully, but his companion was already waving his hands with excitement.

  “Sure, we know him.”

  Flinx started, and slid off his ice block to land in a shallow pool of thick petroleum. They were in a swamp again, a dark morass dominated by carboniferous plants from which swung chittering oil-black creatures with flaming red eyes. A red sun blasted the noon sky overhead, stabbing through black-white clouds.

  Flinx saw only Pocomchi.

  “Don’t look so startled, lad,” the Indian urged. “It’s not a common man you’ve described. The one we’re both thinking of fits, even to the gold earring.” He shook his head, smiling at some secret thought. “A character, even for Alaspin, he is.”

  “Could you—where is he?” Flinx finally managed to stutter as he fought to untangle himself from his siphon tube.

  Habib made an expansive gesture eastward. “Out there, doing the same things we do. Got a claim of sorts that he works with a partner.” He leaned forward slightly. “Personally, the grubbers I’ve talked with say he’s working an empty slot.”

  “When was the last time you saw him there, or knew for sure that he was at this place?”

  “Three, maybe four months ago,” Pocomchi considered, scratching the bridge of his impressive nose.

  Flinx sagged inwardly. By now the man could be anywhere, even offplanet. But it was something! A reason to remain.

  Habib rose and sauntered toward Flinx, waving his tube. “If I were to tell you some of the stories about your man, dragon lord, you wouldn’t . . .” His mouth opened wide, and he gaped querulously at Flinx. Then his hands went out in front of him reflexively as he fell forward, metacarpal bones buckling as they hit the now-firm gravel floor of the desert under them. Three suns burned hellishly above; a fourth was sinking over the distant horizon.

  Flinx had a glimpse of a hair-thin wire attached to a needle the size of a nail paring protruding from Habib’s back, near the spine. A slight phut, and the needle and wire were withdrawn. The faint smell of ozone lingered in the air as he threw himself flat.

  While Flinx crawled over the sand and gravel toward Ab, Pocomchi was moving toward his friend, calling to him wildly.

  The instant Habib hit the ground, a tawny leathery shape had left his shoulder. Now it was joined by Balthazaar, and then Flinx felt a familiar weight leave his own arm. Like leaves in a dustdevil, the three winged demons circled one another in the air. Then they were streaking as one toward a gleaming boulder of solid citrine off to Flinx’s right. Several violent hisses sounded behind them, a reptilian equivalent of a sonic boom.

  Flinx continued toward Ab, shouting for the alien to lie down. Two blue orbs moved, eyeing him quizzically. The slight puff of displaced air sounded above Flinx. Artificial desert sunlight reflected from a long, silvery thread. The thread ended in a sharp, tiny shape which struck the quadrupedal alien just under one of its four arms. A faint crackling sounded, as if a hand had been dragged across a coarse wool blanket.

  Ab stopped in mid-verse and appeared to quiver slightly. Then he resumed rhyming as if nothing had happened. Flinx reached him, got his arms around three legs, and yanked. Ab tumbled to the sand. He stared at his master with a blank but almost hurt expression.

  Glancing behind them and to the right, Flinx saw that Pocomchi was kneeling next to the motionless form of Habib. Slowly, as if fearing what he would learn, he extended a palm. It touched his companion’s back, rested there a moment, then was brought away.

  “Get down, Pocomchi!” Flinx yelled frantically. The Indian didn’t look over at him, and made no move to comply. He appeared dazed. Maybe it was unconcern, Flinx thought, when muffled curses and screams began to reach him from behind the tall spire of yellow quartz.

  As he waited and watched, the boulder changed into a giant diamond-bark tree, whose brown exterior flashed with blue sparks. Three shapes fluttered out from behind the tree.

  Pleated wings braked as Pip came in for a landing, tail extended like a hand. It curled around Flinx’s shoulder, the body then folding itself around the youth’s extended arm, pleated wings collapsing flat against the cylindrical body. Flinx could feel the tenseness in the minidrag; he noted that his pet was panting nervously. Slitted eyes continued to dart watchfully from side to side.

  A second minidrag, the constrictor-sized Balthazaar, draped itself around the back and arms of the grieving Pocomchi. The long, pointed tongue darted in and out worriedly, touching cheek, touching eyes, touching.

  Flinx watched Habib’s minidrag settle to a curled landing on its master’s back. It lay there briefly, then slid forward to examine the head. After several minutes, great pleated wings unfurled. The flying snake fluttered forward until it was hovering in front of Habib’s face. Leathery wings beat at the air violently, sending wind into the motionless man’s mouth and nostrils.

  More minutes, until the minidrag finally settled to earth by the still head of Habib. It coiled itself, and they remained like that, face to face, unmoving.

  Flinx finally realized he was still holding on to Ab’s legs. As soon as he released him, the alien righted himself. Indifferent to all that had taken place, Ab proceeded to inspect a tree root.

  Keeping his eyes on the citrine boulder, Flinx crawled over to sit next to Pocomchi. He was still cautious, but felt less and less that any danger still hid behind the massive yellow rock.

  There was no need to state the obvious. He had seen death in Habib’s eyes before the man hit the sand.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he whispered tensely. “We’d better try to get out of here.”

  “Why?” Pocomchi turned anguished eyes on Flinx. When he spoke again, Flinx realized his question had nothing to do with a reason for leaving the simiespin.

  “We never stole a claim, we made no serious enemies,” the little man went on. His eyes returned to the slim prone form below them. The sand and gravel beneath it abruptly, uncaringly, changed and became blue grass.

  “Three years. Three years we’ve been grubbing and carving and stinking on this end-of-civilization world. Three years! Other people hit it big all around us. But not us, never us.” His voice rose. “Why not us? Why not us?”

  Flinx made calming motions. Other patrons were beginning to look in their direction. The one thing he didn’t want now was to be asked unanswerable questions. Reaching out, he tried to grab Pocomchi by the shoulders, to turn him toward him.

  The moment he was touched, Pocomchi shook the hands violently from him. “Don’t touch me!” He trembled; his voice was full of homicidal fury.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Flinx sat back on his haunches. While waiting, he occasionally eyed the yellow massif, which had now become a cluster of sutro branchings. Pocomchi seemed to calm himself a little. Flinx decided to wait, despite possible danger to himself, until the tormented Indian regained a measure of self-control.

  So he turned his attention to the corpse at his feet. There was no blood, no visible wound. Leaning close, he saw where the needle-tipped wire had touched. A small hole had been made in
the back of Habib’s shirt. It was blackened around the edges. The peculiar smell still hung above the spot: ozone.

  At least, he reflected gratefully, the philosophical miner had not suffered. Death had been instantaneous, brought on at the moment of contact with the needle.

  A hand touched his shoulder. He glanced up anxiously, then relaxed. Pocomchi was standing above him, looking down at the body of his friend. His firm, assured grip was comfort enough for Flinx.

  “I’m okay now, Flinx. It’s just that—that—” He fought for the words. He wanted them to be right. “Habib was about the only man on this world that could stand me, and he was one of the few that I could stomach. Three years.” Abruptly, he rose and turned to face what was now a clump of trees long extinct on Earth but still flourishing in mind tapes.

  “Come on,” he instructed Flinx as he started toward the small cluster of elms, “I want to see the dirt.”

  After a last backward glance at the body, Flinx hurried to catch up with the Indian. “What about your friend?”

  Pocomchi didn’t look back at him. “He’ll lie there until the place closes. First the management will run their drunk crew through to help out those able to walk. Then they’ll come through again and sweep up the incapacitated.

  “Habib would like that, when they find out he’s more than drunk. First they’ll panic—probably think it’s something toxic that’s snuck into their siphon mixture. Then they’ll locate the real source of death, electrocution, and go crazy trying to find the malfunction in their simie machinery.

  “When that doesn’t turn up anything,” he concluded bitterly, “a few credits will change hands and they’ll give him a proper, if circumspect, burial. The Church will make sure of that.”

  They were almost around the grove of elms when the trees became a pair of enormous mushrooms. Flinx found himself slowing, putting out a restraining hand. “Don’t you think maybe . . . ?”

  Pocomchi shook his head curtly. “Balthazaar would never have come back if any kind of threat remained. Nor would your drag, I suspect.”

  Flinx murmured agreement. It was not the time to argue—and he settled for letting the Indian round the corner first. When nothing sent him reeling back in his death throes, Flinx moved to join him.

  There were two bodies on the ground. One was clad in a yellow-green dress suit, the other in a casual coolall. Flinx had a bad moment, but it gave way to what he expected to feel when Pocomchi put a foot under one corpse and flipped it over. The dress suit fell aside, revealing a familiar skin-tight blackness beneath.

  Barely restrained anger gave way to puzzlement as Pocomchi checked the heads. A floppy green hat fell aside to show a black-and-crimson skullcap beneath. “Qwarm,” he muttered with a frown. “We’ve had no dealing with them. Habib and I hadn’t discovered anything worth killing over, nor have we offended anyone that badly. Qwarm are expensive. Why would anyone want to have us killed?”

  Something clicked, and he jerked his head up to see Flinx staring patiently back at him. “You. Why do the Qwarm want you dead?”

  “Not me,” the youth explained, pointing behind him. “It’s Ab they want. Though they want me too because I got too curious about why they wanted Ab.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following you, Flinx.”

  By way of an answer, Flinx pointed at the two awkwardly sprawled, venom-scarred bodies. “If two of their members,” he explained, “hadn’t reacted without thinking, I might not be involved with them at all. Habib might still be alive.” He gestured loosely at the corpses. “So might they.”

  Pocomchi’s reply was laced with contempt. “What do you care about a pair of soulless murderers like these?”

  “They’re humanx,” Flinx responded quietly.

  Pocomchi grunted eloquently. Then he raised one foot over the body he had overturned and brought it down with a hard, twisting motion. There was a cracking sound, as of shattering plastic. Kneeling, the Indian tore open the back of the black shirt. Several square plastic cases were linked together around the assassin’s waist. A thin but heavily insulated cord ran from one case to a tiny, childish-looking plastic gun lying on the floor.

  “Supercooled dense battery pack,” Pocomchi explained, examining the arrangement. He touched a small switch on the cord before picking up the toy gun by its insulated handgrip. “Delivery terminal,” he declared. “Fires a small needle attached to a wire.”

  Flinx had heard of this weapon but had never seen one before. But then, there were many ways of killing, and the Qwarm undoubtedly knew most of them.

  “The wire rolls onto a spool inside the handgrip,” Pocomchi was telling him evenly. “It serves two functions: to deliver the lethal charge and to guide the needle to its target. A good man with one of these”— he hefted the little weapon easily—“isn’t stopped by any kind of shielding. If you’re good with the guide system, I understand, you can shoot around several corners. An opponent wouldn’t get a shot at you, or even a clear look. Or a chance . . . to fight back.”

  Flinx knew Habib had been electrocuted instantly. Then why . . .?

  He found himself walking out from behind the mushrooms, to look across a newly born brook. On the far side, Ab had an artificial yellow-and-pink flower in one hand. A big blue eye was bent close, studying the petals.

  “I don’t understand,” Flinx muttered, half to himself.

  “I don’t understand either,” snapped Pocomchi. Then he became aware that Flinx was staring, and not referring to the killing that had just taken place.

  “It’s Ab . . . my alien,” Flinx told him eventually. “That needle hit him. I saw it hit him. I heard it. The charge went into him, and he doesn’t show any sign of it. I’ve heard of natural organic grounders before, nervous systems which can shuttle enormous voltages harmlessly through their own bodies—but never in an animal, always in plants.”

  Pocomchi shrugged. “Maybe your Ab is a plant imitating an animal. Who knows? All that should matter to you is that he was immune to this particular kind of murder.”

  Flinx was looking around nervously now. “This means they know I’m on Alaspin. I’ve got to move.” He started off to his right. “Are you coming, Pocomchi? I could use your help.”

  The Indian laughed sardonically. “You’re a fine one to be asking for my help, young dragon lord. You’re marked for dying. Why should I go anywhere with you? I can think of a dozen simpler ways to commit suicide.”

  Flinx stopped. He stared hard but unthreateningly back at Pocomchi. “I need to find the man you told me of, even though he’s probably just another false lead. You’re the only one on Alaspin I know who could find him for me. I don’t expect you to come with me out of friendship. I’ll settle for hiring you. Why should you go anywhere with me? Why not?” he finished, rather heartlessly. “You have other immediate prospects?”

  “No,” Pocomchi whispered blankly, “no other immediate prospects.”

  “But money isn’t sufficient reason for you to come with me,” Flinx went on relentlessly. “So I’ll give you a better reason. I’d be very surprised if they don’t try to kill Ab and me again.”

  Pocomchi rose and brushed at his pants to wipe off imaginary sand. “That’s no reason.”

  “Think, Pocomchi,” Flinx urged him. “It means that you and Balthazaar will have a chance to meet some more Qwarm.”

  The Indian glanced up at him, uncomprehending for a moment. Then his expression tensed with the realization of what Flinx was telling him. “Yes. Yes, maybe we will have a chance to meet some of that kind again, I’d like that.” He nodded slowly, forcefully. “I’ll go with you and guide you, Flinx.” Turning, he spat on the two limp bodies and started to murmur in a guttural, alien tongue.

  Flinx reached out, took Pocomchi’s unresisting arm, and tugged him toward the exit. The man allowed himself to be led, but never ceased his muttering, which was directed at the two corpses they were leaving behind.

  They crossed the small brook. In midstream it turned into
a river of molten lava. Flinx felt gentle heat swirling around his legs, when they should have been burned to cinders. But he took only the barest notice of the effect. His mind was full of thoughts unconnected with the sensory gluttony provided by the simiespin machinery.

  “Come on, Ab!” he shouted behind him. Blue eyes focused on him. With a good-natured singsong having something to do with vultures and fudge, the alien followed the two men across the glowing pahoehoe. By the time they reached the simiespin exit, Pocomchi had recovered enough to pay for his stay with his own credcard, though from time to time he would resume his muttering.

  Finally they were on the street outside. Flinx started back toward his hotel, Pocomchi walking alongside.

  The last remaining light of the Alaspinian evening was fading to an amber luminescence. Expecting a new kind of destruction to stab at them from behind every crate and barrel, from every rooftop and floater, Flinx found his gaze shifting constantly at imagined as well as real movements.

  A hissing cry sounded suddenly—a reptilian wail. Both men paused. Behind them, a leathery winged shape rose into the sky. It passed over their heads, soaring on brilliantly hued wings as it lifted into the sunset. For a minute it paused there, above and slightly ahead of them, circling as it climbed. A dream-dragon out of a childhood fairy tale, its colorful diamond pattern caught the fading sun.

  Abruptly it gave another short cry; it had reached a decision. Wings pushing air, it shot off in the direction of the setting sun. Light and distance combined to obscure Flinx’s view of it in a very short while.

  Both men resumed walking. “I wondered what Habib’s minidrag would do,” Flinx murmured thoughtfully. “I always wondered what a tame minidrag would do if its master died.”

  “Now you know—they turn wild again,” Pocomchi elaborated. “Hazarez was a good snake.” He eyed the sun, which had swallowed the last sight of the shrinking dark dot. “Balthazaar will miss Hazarez, too.”

  “We’re liable to miss a lot more,” Flinx assured his companion, “if we don’t get off these streets before dark. The Qwarm prefer two sets of clothing: black cloth and night. I’ve got a few little things in my room I want to collect. Then we can rent a floater and get out of the city.” He increased his pace, calling back over his shoulder, “Get a move on, Ab—I’m in a hurry!”