Quofum Read online

  “Banks don’t hire assassins to extract revenge. Not because they’re any more compassionate than the people who are paying you, but because they know that a dead creditor is a complete write-off.” The captain found himself with a clear line into the hallway.

  “You should have dealt with a bank,” Araza’s voice informed him coldly. “I have been advised that my client is prepared, albeit with due reluctance, to consider Nicholai Boylan fully amortized.”

  Accompanied by a barely perceptible hum, a neat hole half a centimeter in diameter appeared in the wall slightly above and to the left of Boylan’s head. The edges of the puncture were perfectly smooth. No smoke rose from the perforation, no heat radiated from its edges. It had been made by one of the Qwarm’s preferred weapons: a sonic stiletto. Shaped sound had blown a hole in the tough nanofiber material. Boylan knew it would have no difficulty punching an equally perfect hole in his head.

  Pulling the communit from his duty belt, he made sure its locator was turned off. Then he whirled and raced down the corridor. As he ran he did not look back. Doing so would only slow him, however marginally, and might result in his not seeing something on the floor and tripping over it. Looking back under such circumstances was a waste of time. He would not see a sonic burst coming. As for Araza, if he was near enough to observe the captain’s desperate flight, then Boylan knew he was already as good as dead. As long as he could not see the Qwarm, could not hear him, and nothing spanged through his skull or his torso, the captain thought he had a chance.

  A slim chance, to be sure, but he had survived near-death encounters on other worlds. As long as his brain functioned, there was hope. If he could just reach the shuttle he could safely lock himself inside. Then he would be the one in a position to make demands. Of course, Araza would recognize that as well. The shuttle was the one place where his quarry could find safety. That knowledge would persuade the Qwarm to go there first, to prevent the captain from engineering exactly that kind of escape. Realizing this and knowing that he could not best or get past the professional assassin in an open fight, Boylan had opted for an alternative strategy.

  If he could get outside before his pursuer brought him down, the captain planned on switching off the security perimeter. The Quofumian forest would be his equalizer. Salvador Araza might be comfortably at home within civilized surroundings and a master of humanx culture, but he arguably knew even less about this world than did Boylan. Out in the teeming, volatile, unpredictable alien jungle the Qwarm would find himself only one more predator among hundreds. True, one of the latter might as easily decide to make a casual meal of the fleeing captain. In that event Boylan felt he would be no worse off than if he tried to stand his ground inside the camp. But there was also the possibility that Araza might become a meal for some wandering carnivore first.

  Of course, the Qwarm could simply choose to remain inside the camp, comfortable within its confines and at ease with its amenities. Boylan did not think Araza would resort to such idleness. Such inaction would be very un-Qwarm-like. Having held his true identity in check for so long, the captain doubted a professional like the technician would be content to sit back and wait for circumstances to favor him. Naturally proactive, he was unlikely to sit on his butt and wait for his target to wander in and surrender.

  He might also realize, as Boylan had, that if the captain could get to the river first he might through truth or trickery be able to inveigle the members of the science team on his behalf. While the researchers were untrained in matters of interhuman conflict, they knew how to conceal themselves in the forest (in order to better observe animals) and how to defend themselves with the sidearms they carried as part of their standard field issue. A Qwarm was still a Qwarm; impressive, well trained, and thorough. But on Quofum, Araza was operating on unfamiliar ground, and five guns against one would be an improvement in the odds sufficient to give even a professional killer pause.

  Once outside the last module Boylan could instruct his communit to disarm the perimeter fence. That way he would not be confined to exiting via the gate. He could vanish into the woods in any direction. Within the forest he would have to deal with the fantastic array of local life-forms. It was night outside, too. Were the spikers active after sundown? Boylan hoped so. He was ready to take his chances with hostile natives of any species so long as the cocksure Araza was forced to do the same. They would see which man was better prepared, both mentally and otherwise, to survive under such conditions.

  He hesitated at the module’s emergency doorway, but only for an instant. Knowing how fast a Qwarm could move, he understood that the one currency he could not afford to squander was time. Easing the barrier open, he held his sidearm out in front of him as he emerged. In the absence of moon, phosphorescent flora and fauna, stars, and the subdued perimeter lights provided just enough illumination for him to make out his surroundings. His eyes struggled to adjust. There was movement visible, but only on the far side of the barrier, within the deep woods.

  Putting his lips close to his communit he hastily whispered the command for cutting power to the security perimeter. Given that there were defense issues involved, it took more than a moment to set up the correct sequence. He was halfway across the flat open space that had been cleared between the camp buildings and the fence line before he had the command string in place. After that, it was only a matter of murmuring a code word to set everything in motion.

  He waited until the last possible moment. Once the security barrier went down Araza would immediately connect it with Boylan’s absence. Unless the technician was a complete fool he would just as quickly divine the fleeing captain’s intentions—and the Qwarm did not train fools. But in the absence of a locator signal from the captain’s communit the tech would have the entire perimeter to check, by which time Boylan expected to be deep within the forest. Once inside he would follow an erratic, unpredictable, zigzag course toward the river. He did not for a moment doubt that Araza, like all of his clan, was an excellent tracker. But this was not a Commonwealth world. There would be arbitrary distractions. If Boylan was lucky one of them might even prove fatal to his pursuer, or at least slow him down.

  He approached the nearest perimeter relay post. Crouching low, he muttered the word that would initiate the disabling sequence. Seconds later the activation telltales on the inside of the post changed from red to green. It meant that the power to the perimeter was down. It could mean nothing else. Still…

  Ah well, he told himself. If something was amiss and the barrier was still active, he would not live long enough to wonder at the cause of his mistake. Straightening, he started forward. He was across the line in a second.

  And still breathing.

  The wall of low alien scrub that occupied the space between the perimeter and the forest proper was less than a meter wide. Once among the towering, twisted, frequently hallucinogenic growths, he had to force himself to slow down, to move forward purposefully and steadily but under control. Having successfully made it this far, the last thing he wanted was to make so much noise that it ended up drawing Araza’s attention.

  As soon as he had gone a hundred meters or so he promptly did something unthinkable. He put his communit down on the ground, and left it.

  After his sidearm it was the most useful piece of gear he had with him. But he could not take the chance that a professional as skilled and experienced as Araza might not have a way of tracking such an instrument, even with its locator signal turned off. If so, let him find it here, and then contemplate the possibilities. The captain grinned mirthlessly at the image of a bemused Araza standing over the abandoned communit, scanning the dense forest while trying to decide which way his quarry had gone. Under such circumstances would the technician still come after him? Or might he have second thoughts? It would all depend on his dedication to his job. Without actually seeing and recording a corpse, he could not provide incontestable proof that he had fulfilled his assignment.

  Made necessary by the need to
leave as little in the way of a trail as possible, the erratic stumble through the jungle took hours. How many, Boylan could not have said. His communit lay somewhere behind him and his thoughts were focused elsewhere. He only knew that eventually he reached the river, “eventually” being a unit of time that was firmly nonspecific.

  There was no sign yet of the boat and the scientific team. It was still pitch-dark out and too early. The captain could tell that much even without his communit or a wrist chronometer. He would find a good spot; one where he could settle down in comparative comfort while still having a good view of the river. Already he was putting together the speech he would deliver to the members of the team. It would be simultaneously controlled and impassioned. He would not beg for their aid. He would describe the situation in such a way that they would conclude they had no choice but to help him. Then they would caucus. Boylan was good at strategizing. Araza was a Qwarm. But there would be five of them.

  He was almost relaxed when something like a giant bee buzzed his left ear and tore it off.

  Pain screaming through the side of his head, he still had enough presence of mind to roll and raise his weapon as he fell. In the forest of the night, something shrieked. His shot had struck home.

  Unfortunately, it had struck home in the heart of something plump, furry, and multilimbed. In aiming at movement, he had neglected to pause long enough to evaluate shape. A second, more subdued buzz blew a hole completely through his gun arm, at the elbow. Whimpering, he dropped the weapon, clutched at his injured arm, and started scrabbling desperately among the thick waterfront ground cover for the fallen sidearm.

  A shape stepped out of the darkness. Clad as it was all in black, it was difficult to make out more than a silhouette. A glimmer of starlight penetrated the forest canopy just enough to reflect slightly off the enigmatic and intimidating designs embossed on the black skullcap.

  “I have been waiting for you, Nicholai Boylan. I knew you would come here, in search of allies.”

  Grimacing in pain, the captain stammered a reply while surreptitiously using only his eyes to search for his dropped weapon. “What—what if I had made for the shuttle?”

  “I secured its airlock with a personal security code before I came this way. It was not difficult to find the place where you had left the boundaries of the camp and entered the woods. You are not a narrow man, Boylan. You break a wide trail, and you make many tracks.”

  Something metallic lying on the moist earth picked up a glint of phosphorescent fungal light: his weapon. Could he get to it? And if he managed to snatch it up in his good hand would he have time to aim and fire? Or at least to fire? You’re wasting time, he admonished himself.

  “I am compelled to extract recompense.” Araza gestured in the direction of the captain’s injured arm. “Consider that a down payment.” The hand gripping the phonic stiletto rose slowly. “This is principal.”

  Boylan made a wild dive for his sidearm. His fingers wrapped around it. Unfortunately, it was at that same moment that neural connectivity between arm, hand, fingers, and brain was terminated.

  8

  It would have been a sincere understatement to say that the returning science team was in good spirits. Unbridled exuberance would have been nearer the mark. Every collection tank and container on the boat was full. They would need the transporters to move some of the heavier specimens, including the dead hardshell, back to camp. Individual recording units contained hours and hours of cross-referenceable tridee footage of native flora and fauna—not to mention the rough-and-rowdy battle for the village of the fuzzies. They had encountered and recorded contact with a fifth intelligent indigenous species. All this in the space of a few days.

  Was ever a first contact team blessed with such a wealth of discovery? Tellenberg mused as the boat began to turn in toward shore. If they departed Quofum tomorrow, they would take back with them samples and data enough to keep an entire block of a Commonwealth science center busy for years simply dissecting, analyzing, and classifying. They had come to this world in hopes of settling a few basic astronomical, geological, and biological questions. Among the scientific staff it was hoped that a few worthy papers might result from the low-key expedition. Now it appeared that reputations might be made.

  His personal professional prospects had been equally enhanced by the discoveries of the previous days. He could hardly wait to get back to the camp and start working on the material they had amassed. If they never again went out into the field before the scheduled date for departure, none of them would be lacking for work.

  In his mind’s eye he envisioned what they could reasonably look forward to: awards, promotions, publishing opportunities, the approbation of their peers, perhaps even a modicum of social notoriety. He didn’t know about his colleagues, but as for himself he was more than ready to cash in on a personal appearance or two. It would make up for all the repetitive lectures he’d had to record or deliver in person over the years during which time the greatest reward he had received had been occasional polite applause or the rare intelligent question from someone standing out in a youthful audience.

  As the sturdy vessel neared the bank there was no need for anyone to go into the bow, no ropes to be cast ashore to tie to trees. Accelerating, Haviti drove the boat forward until the glutinous shoreline mud gripped it firmly. A touch of another control sent a pair of gripper units shooting outward at opposite angles. As soon as these gained a purchase on sufficiently rooted riverine growths, a beep sounded on the control console to indicate that the little vessel was secured to the shore.

  Another control unfolded the ramp that was built into the bow. Extending forward and out over the mud, it set down and locked into position on the same patch of relatively dry ground they had used for disembarking days before. Tellenberg recognized the spot from the presence of several empty food containers they had left behind that were only halfway through the initial stages of accelerated biodegradation.

  They took only the lightest and most unique bits of their collection in their backpacks. They would return later with Araza and a pair of transporters to recover the remainder. Hermetically sealed in tough containers on board the boat, the rest of the specimens would be safe from any marauding scavengers. Nevertheless, Tellenberg knew he and his companions would worry about the well-being of what they had accumulated until it was safely back inside the camp’s laboratory module. While scavengers could not see or smell the carefully packed examples of local life-forms, should they happen to come across the moored craft, curious indigenes such as the stick-jellies or others might try to pry open the containers.

  The team had shouldered their packs and were preparing to head inland when Valnadireb unexpectedly blocked the way. “My apologies, all of you, but I detect a very distinctive smell that I fear demands further investigation.”

  “‘Demands’?” A bemused expression came over N’kosi’s face. “That’s a pretty strong way of putting it, Val.”

  “It is a pretty strong odor. One that I wish I did not detect. I may be mistaken as to its nature. I hope that I am.”

  Even in the absence of the usual punctuating hand gestures there was a grimness to the thranx’s tone that none of them could miss. As the xenologist from Willowane followed his antennae into the undergrowth, his colleagues trailed behind him. Away from the boat landing the rich, pungent panoply of exotic forest smells grew thick; all moist loam and alien dung and ripely decomposing things. So too did the specific odor that had attracted Valnadireb’s attention.

  They did not have to go far. The body lay sprawled very close to the landing. It was lying facedown in a mass of meter-wide growths that featured pale red leaves alternating with nubby yellow tendrils. Coiling tightly back upon themselves, the latter drew in protectively as the vibrations generated by advancing footsteps hinted at the approach of large, possibly herbivorous visitors.

  Catching sight of the corpse N’kosi uttered an inarticulate sound from the back of his throat. Valnadireb’s
mandibles clicked twice to express his dismay. Haviti bent to push aside the broad, flat leaves that partially concealed the captain. In the course of doing so she uncovered, among other things, Boylan’s left hand. As soon as they were exposed to the light the small horde of translucent, disk-sized arthropods that were swarming the revealed flesh scattered into the undergrowth. They had eaten all the flesh up the wrist.

  Disdaining the use of advanced monitoring equipment Tellenberg knelt next to the motionless form and checked it for a pulse. There was none. He checked for a heartbeat and was not rewarded. By this time N’kosi had his communit out and set on Medical. Holding it a few centimeters above the captain’s torso he passed it slowly back and forth. A couple of minutes of this was sufficient to give him the answer he didn’t want.

  “He’s dead. Been dead for a while, too.”

  “Couldn’t have been dead too long.” Haviti stared at the body that the Quofumian forest had already started to claim. “We haven’t been gone that long.” She indicated the hand that had been picked clean by the swarm of tiny scavengers. The bones gleamed whitely in the diffuse light of the understory. “That’s horrible, but it’s not a fatal wound.”

  To Tellenberg the skeletal appendage sticking out of the dead man’s wrist looked unreal, like a gag toy that had been temporarily attached to the captain’s real body. Despite the results of his perfunctory examination and N’kosi’s scan, he half expected the indefatigable captain to sit up, detach the exposed bones, and screw his real hand back into his wrist. A fine joke that would be on all of them.

  Except no one was laughing. Boylan was not going to get up, and there was no other real hand lying in wait in the bushes.

  “We must try to determine the cause of fatality.” Valnadireb was using both truhands to probe and prod at the corpse’s lower torso.