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  The two men exchanged a glance. Top-heavy replied, “You have a problem with a visitor who’s spending too much time with your woman.”

  Ormann smiled thinly. “She’s not mine yet, but things aren’t progressing toward that end as smoothly as I’d like.”

  “Because of this visitor.”

  Ormann nodded. “I was told you and your friend work quickly and efficiently.”

  A smile cracked the raptor’s visage. “We’re not rated by the Nurian Consumer Network, but we know what to do. What you want sounds fairly straightforward.”

  “It would be.” He waited while a meandering couple moved past and out of earshot. “Except that the visitor, like my lady, has an Alaspinian flying snake. They’re empathetic telepaths. So if the visitor feels threatened, his pet senses it and reacts accordingly.”

  The mass of muscle frowned. “It’s dangerous then, this flying snake?”

  “Lethal,” Ormann replied somberly, “and lightning fast. You’re dead before can you draw a bead on it with even a lightweight weapon. Or so I’m told. I’ve never actually seen it in action.”

  Wiping crumbs from his mouth with the back of his thick forearm, the big man frowned at his partner. “Don’t like this. We were told there was one disrespectful young guy who needed enlightening. Nothing was said about lethal flying creatures.”

  “I’ve thought of a way to deal with it.”

  Raptor face was already thinking of solutions. “Set up and detonate a kill from a distance or by timer.”

  Ormann shook his head. “Too extreme. No way of being sure about the consequences. And there’s always the chance some fool bystander ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets hurt. Then the authorities come into it and things could get awkward. Besides, I don’t really want him dead—just scared off.” He smiled wolfishly. “He’s so relaxed and sure of himself it shouldn’t be a problem to bring off what I have in mind. He feels completely secure whenever that minidrag of his is riding his shoulder. Which is, as near as I’ve been able to determine, constantly.”

  “Then how do we get to him without getting bit?” raptor face wanted to know.

  “The minidrag doesn’t bite; it spits venom. But it won’t get the chance. I’ve arranged for the delivery of a special package. It will be addressed from the woman who’s involved, so I know the kid will accept it. The package will contain a powerful soporific. Even if he has an unusually strong constitution, it should put both him and his pet out for an hour. You two can move in at your leisure, pack him up, take him someplace quiet and isolated, and finish your job.”

  Man mountain looked thoughtful. “What if he don’t open the package? What if he scans it and sees that the contents are suspicious?”

  “The contents won’t be suspicious because there won’t be any of consequence.” Ormann felt more than a little pleased with himself. “There’ll be nothing inside but stuffing. The soporific will be infused into the packaging itself. I managed to obtain a DNA sample from one of his hairs. The packaging material is keyed to him alone. As soon as he touches the package, the wrapping will disintegrate, releasing the soporific. There’ll be enough of it and it will be strong enough so that, even if he’s faster thinking than I believe he is, he won’t have time to do anything. It will be sufficient to saturate the hotel room he’s staying in, which means that even if the minidrag isn’t on his shoulder but is somewhere else in the room, it will still be rendered unconscious. The agent will dissipate in five minutes, so you’ll be able to enter the room almost immediately after he handles the package.”

  “Better be.” The big man shifted on the bench, which groaned beneath his weight. “I’m not dealing with any poisonous offworld pet.”

  Ormann reassured him. “All you’ll have to do is walk in, bag him, and take him to wherever it is you take those who have been consigned to your care. Leave the flying snake behind, blow its malicious little scaly head off, tie its wings to its body and toss it out the nearest window—whatever you want. It’s the kid I’m interested in.”

  Raptor face nodded. “How interested?”

  “I told you.” After another glance around the park, Ormann leaned toward them. In the pale amber light from the park’s glowfloats his expression was as twisted as his words. “Scare him. Frighten him so that when he regains consciousness the first thing he’ll want to do is leave Nur and never come back. You don’t have to be explicit about the reason. Tell him he’s made enemies who don’t want him here. Tell him nothing. I leave the details up to you. Mess up his face and anything else you think appropriate for a guy who’s trying to steal another man’s woman.

  “Oh, and one more thing. He’s too tall. Break his knees. Both of them.” His expression contorted into a smile. “I’ll be the first one to convey my outrage and sympathy to him—while he’s recovering in the hospital.”

  Raptor face was neither impressed nor dismissive. This was, after all, part and parcel of the nature of doing his kind of business, and he and his partner had been through it all many times before. Even in paradise, there were parasites.

  “Sounds like you went through a lot of trouble to work up that sleep-inducing packaging. Pretty clever. We might hit you up for the formulation.”

  Ormann nodded agreeably. He was very pleased with the way the meeting had gone. It had all been very businesslike. “I’ll be glad to provide you with the necessary information. That’s what comes of working for a firm that does a lot of gengineering work. You have access to tools and methods usually denied to the general public. Not that I’m looking to establish some kind of long-term relationship with you two.”

  “Hey, you never know.” It was raptor face’s turn to grin suggestively. “Someday you might find someone else hanging on to the rung of the corporate ladder above you. Easy enough to remove the somebody while leaving the rung in place.”

  Having concluded both their business and their snacks, the two men rose to depart. They stood close to Ormann, who all but disappeared in the larger man’s shadow. Suddenly, they did not look quite so businesslike, quite so serene and rational. Conscious of his isolation and the lateness of the hour, he was suddenly anxious to be detached from their company.

  “Hope this woman is worth it.” Man mountain belched softly and tapped his chest with a fist the size of a ripe melon. As discreetly as he could manage, Ormann turned away from the oral discharge.

  “She is.”

  “When do you want it done?” Ormann noticed raptor face’s upper incisors had been replaced with replicants of anodized titanium alloy. He hadn’t noticed it before as the man was not prone to smiling.

  “As soon as possible,” Ormann told him tightly. “Tomorrow.”

  Man mountain shook his head slowly. “Huh-uh. Tomorrow’s my day to visit my ex-wife and kids. How about the day after?”

  “Fine.” Ormann held his temper. “Like I said, as soon as possible. The package is already made up, and I’ll provide you with the location. We’ll coordinate the timing.”

  Raptor face shrugged. “At your convenience. You’re paying enough.”

  Ormann nodded and walked away. Halfway around the fountain, he looked back and mouthed the words that had given him more pleasure than anything else he had uttered in a long time: “Remember—both knees!”

  CHAPTER

  9

  As with every day he was not going to spend with Clarity, Flinx had no idea what to do with himself. She did have to do some actual work once in a while, she had told him with a smile. But tonight they were, as had become an enjoyable habit, having dinner together. He had that much to look forward to.

  Not that New Riviera lacked diversions to occupy his body as well as his mind. From the conveniently modest-sized seas to the spackling of clear blue lakes, from rolling hills to dramatic yet easily negotiable mountains and everything in between, there were plenty of natural attractions to keep the interested visitor occupied. Then there were the cultural temptations, from museums and creative dis
plays to theme parks and other amusement venues as sophisticated and enticing as any in the Commonwealth.

  None of them interested Flinx. Already in his young life, he had seen and experienced sights that even designers of extreme entertainments could not begin to imagine. He was interested only in Clarity—in her ability to listen to him, to draw him out, to empathize and understand.

  That she was beautiful and had once been in love with him had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with it.

  Dinner was hours away. He had a day to kill. Sphene’s famous musiceaum, where, by means of direct cranial induction, composers turned musical inspiration into solid sculpture and painting, still beckoned. Not only did everyone insist it was an interesting place to visit, he was curious to try his hand at the technically sophisticated compositional technique himself. Certainly he had been exposed to a sufficiently wide range of music and natural sounds. What a cerebrally coupled transmogrifier might make of his insights and experiences might make for interesting viewing.

  He had dressed and performed his few simple ablutions when the hotel door announced the receipt of a package for him. Knowing that hotel security would automatically have vetted any delivery before transferring it to a guest’s room, he did not hesitate to acknowledge receipt. The small box was waiting for him outside his door.

  He brought it inside and studied it curiously. Taking no chances, hotel security or no hotel security, he removed a small device from one belt pouch and passed it over the package. The readings were negative. Satisfied, he removed the outer plasticine wrapping to reveal a second casing of paper. To his surprise, it disintegrated on contact with his fingers. Shoddy material, an intentional surprise, or . . . ?

  Flinx had survived as long as he had because, among other things, he was exceedingly wary of surprises. But this time he wasn’t fast enough. The package’s inner wrapping turned into a colorless, odorless gas. He managed a few steps before he collapsed.

  Sensing her master’s distress, Pip shot across the room. Hovering above Flinx’s body, she remained airborne for a few seconds before fluttering down to a rough landing against his back. There she lay, unmoving and silent, eyes closed, tongue retracted.

  Five minutes passed. At the sixth, the door clicked several times as its security seal was professionally breached. It swung open to admit two men. Closing the door behind him, raptor face studied the two unconscious forms with professional detachment.

  “The salivating stoink was as good as his word.” Pushing aside the hotel delivery cart they had brought with them, man mountain knelt to take the unconscious man’s pulse. “Sleep mode.” He indicated the motionless flying snake. “Looks to be in the same state.” Taking an impermeable, acid-resistant sack from the pouch slung over his shoulder, he picked up the flying snake by its tail and dropped it into the bag. “Stoink said we could do whatever we want with the pet. Me, I say sell it. If it’s as rare as he claimed, we ought to be able to get a decent few credits for it.”

  Raptor face wasn’t convinced. “Stoink said they bond tightly with their owners.”

  His companion shrugged his vast shoulders. “Not our problem, is it? That problem belongs to anybody who buys it.”

  “That’s true.” Raptor face looked pleased. “Pick him up. The sooner we’ve finished, the sooner the second half of the payment is credited to our accounts.”

  Lifting Flinx onto the delivery cart proved no more than a minor inconvenience to the two professionals. Man mountain eased the protective cover back over somnolent man and minidrag.

  “Thought about where to take him?”

  Raptor face nodded. “Kerwick campground, I think. It’s accessible but still enough off the beaten track so that we can let him scream all he wants without having to worry.”

  His companion nodded tersely. As far as he was concerned, the hard part of the job was already completed. The rest was mere repetition of work they had done before.

  As they guided the cart down the hallway he raised one corner of the cover. “Looks like a nice enough guy.”

  “They all do.” All business, raptor face locked down the delivery cart’s cover. “Probably is a nice guy, too. Like you said, not our problem. We’ll leave enough of the underlying maxillary structure so it can be reconstructed.”

  Man mountain adjusted his rented uniform as they directed the cart around a corner and down another hallway, heading for the nearest service lift. “Over a woman, the stoink said. It’s always over a woman.”

  Raptor face sniggered, then added something obscene. “After seeing this guy, I can understand stoink’s concern.”

  “Well, he won’t have anything to be concerned about when we’ve finished.” Man mountain took pride in his work.

  It was another dream. Strange, Flinx mused, how one could be dreaming and still be aware of the fact. He told himself to wake up but the request was not honored by his nervous system. Pip was nearby, he sensed, so he was not afraid, even though something told him the minidrag was also unconscious.

  No, not unconscious, he corrected himself. Asleep. There was a difference.

  This time there was no blackness, no all-encompassing, cosmos-spanning evil. After all, when he dreamed, it was not always about that. With his thoughts focused on Clarity Held and not wholly on the serious, carefully thought-out replies she gave to his questions, he felt as if he were floating on a field of flowers. Each delicate petal combined to support a small portion of his weight. From a physical standpoint it was impossible, of course. This, however, was a dream.

  Clarity, Clarity, he thought. How could he have left her all those years ago, even in search of himself? How could he not? Unstable as he was, dangerous even, if he cared deeply for anyone the least he could do was visit them only intermittently. Otherwise, there was no telling what frightful effect he might have on someone’s life.

  Trouble was, he wanted to have an effect on the life of Clarity Held, and for her to affect his. He just wasn’t sure how to go about it without harming her. If he could no longer fully control his abilities, he did not have the right to ask anyone to commit herself to him. Who would want to live with a mutated biological time bomb like him? Why, even as he was remembering in this dream the time they had spent by the lake, the sunshine and forest of flower trees and small, inadvertent physical contacts, he might be projecting his feelings, just as he had in the shopping arcade in Reides. If that were so, at least he was not projecting cosmic evil. What he might be projecting instead he did not know and could not imagine, except to realize with slim certainty that it would not be harmful.

  In any event, there was nothing he could do about it. That kind of control over his mind was not within his province. He was asleep, dreaming, and he could not wake himself up. He remained calm and quiet, dreaming of blossoms and soft ground cover and what he might feel about Clarity Held.

  He awoke on a bench in Sphene’s justly famed Crystal Park. Surrounded by reflected light and rainbows, laughing children, and contented parents, he sat up and struggled to recall what had happened to him. He’d been in his hotel room—he remembered that. There had been a delivery. A package. Had he opened it? Yes. Then what? Nothing.

  No, that was not quite true. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he did remember dreaming. This one had been positively amorous. A nice change from the frequent and disturbing nightmares. He didn’t even have a headache.

  Pip lay dozing at one end of the bench, lying on an old sack. Frowning, he moved toward her and inspected her makeshift bed. Though the artificial fibers were unusually tough, a minidrag-sized hole was visible near the bottom. Had she been inside? If so, the experience did not seem to have unsettled her. She lay coiled and composed in the sun, her pleated wings folded flat against her flanks.

  How had he ended up here? Was sleepwalking a condition now to be added to the involuntary projection of his thoughts? Even on tranquil New Riviera the authorities still maintained a system of surveillance devices to protect the public safety. Perhaps
one of them had recorded some of what had happened to him.

  Rising, he called to Pip. With a spread and flutter of blue-and-pink wings, she settled securely around his right shoulder. A couple of children exclaimed and pointed. He had no time to let them ooh and ahh and pet the minidrag. He had a citywide security system to break into.

  Ormann sensed something was wrong when there was no message for him, encrypted or otherwise, when he returned home that night. Nor did one arrive the following day. He called Clarity to inquire with forced pleasantries what she might be doing that evening, only to be told that she and her friend were once again having dinner. Concealing his disbelief, he learned that she had talked to him during her lunch break.

  So the redheaded bastard was still around and apparently in excellent health. For the rest of that afternoon Ormann brooded in his office, hardly attending to work, wondering what the hell had gone wrong. The two men he had engaged had been recommended to him as the best at their business. If they had failed, who could he try next?

  More important, why had they failed? And what had happened to them? Clarity had hinted on more than one occasion that there was more to her friend than was apparent. The reference now took on ominous overtones. Had his employees neglected to use proper care in handling the minidrag?

  Greater than his shock at learning that Philip Lynx was still functional and healthy was Ormann’s response when he learned that raptor face and his companion were unharmed.

  He managed to track them down and confront them at an infamous (for Nur) slothzone hangout where he had been told they could usually be found. There they were, in fine fettle and visibly unscathed, sitting in a back booth guzzling fancy concoctions paid for with his money. Perhaps he should have approached with more caution, or addressed them in a more conciliatory tone, but he was too angry.