Trouble Magnet Read online

  “He is young, but manifestly competent.” Shaeb brooded for a moment. “He is known to another contact of mine, but that person has been reluctant to lend the full weight of his knowledge to the forthcoming undertaking. That is a conundrum that must also be resolved.” He looked up. “Following the successful resolution of this matter, the appropriate bonuses will be distributed, of course.”

  “Of course,” echoed Dir reflectively. “A chance to taste—”

  “A chance to resolve humiliation,” Joh interrupted his colleague. He exchanged looks with the ones called Lal and Dir. “We will abide.” Reaching up, he touched a hand to his cheek. “But to function at our most effective under such challenging circumstances, we will have to do something about these.”

  “And these,” added Lal, rubbing his left arm with his right hand.

  Shaeb nodded understandingly. “Retribution is often most competently carried out at night. That is when the business will be done. Therefore, feel free to be thee. There will be none to see you except myself and an additional number of those in my employ who are already aware of your unique situation.”

  Dir sounded surprised. “You are coming also?”

  Letting his chair glide back from the desk, Shaeb stood. “Three times offended, I said. The warehouse boost, the freeing of the scrims, and a failed recovery attempt on a city street. Three times fiasco tells me one thing for certain.”

  “What is that?” Joh asked curiously.

  Shaeb was already heading around the desk, leading the way toward the exit. “If you want someone killed right, you’ve got to do the killing yourself.”

  Strange how when one is sleeping it is sometimes possible to be awakened merely by a presence. Rarely spending more than half a day at the municipal center, Theodakris had come to look forward to his afternoon nap. It was a cheap pleasure he happily indulged in. As a younger man, he would never have thought of wasting an hour or two of daylight on something as inconsequential as additional rest.

  That’s what comes of getting old, he thought sleepily as he slowly returned to consciousness. He would have philosophized more if the first thing he had seen upon opening his eyes had not been the business end of a weapon. Half dressed and instantly wide awake, he sat up quickly on the bed.

  The only member of the intrusion he recognized was Piegal Shaeb. He did not know the three slightly hunched-forward figures who stood behind the Underhouse master. They were more flagrantly armed. Nor, despite his long years of work with the police section, was he familiar with the specific type of sidearm the Underhouse master was presently pointing at him.

  “Get dressed.” Shaeb was his usual talkative self.

  Dividing his attention between the intruders and their weapons, the senior analyst rose to comply. He moved slowly and deliberately, not wishing to startle any of the trespassers. Before ordering a drawer or closet to open, he was careful to announce beforehand exactly what it was he was going to remove from behind each handle or door. There were defensive devices scattered throughout his home, but their services could not be invoked swiftly enough to kill more than one or two of the invaders before he himself was shot. Disliking those odds, he wisely chose not to trigger any of them.

  Besides, this was Shaeb. A man he knew well. Malandere’s foremost syndicate master was nothing if not reasonable. Whatever had so obviously unsettled him could doubtless be resolved with logic and conversation. The important thing, he reminded himself as he continued to dress, was to ensure that everyone remained calm. He would find out what this was all about soon enough, and then he could deal with it.

  “You could have announced yourself.” His tone was mildly accusing. “There’s no need for this.” With a gesture, he indicated his visitor’s weapon. “What is that, some kind of sonic projector? I’ve never seen one like it.”

  “You be right if you guessed it is of alien manufacture,” declared Dir from his position near the bedroom doorway. “The materials of which it is made are not detectible by conventional security sensors.”

  Which was why no alarms had been tripped when his visitors had entered first the building and then his dwelling, Theodakris reflected. Something very bad must have happened to have so seriously upset his occasional business associate.

  He let his shirt seal itself around him as he confronted that individual. “I continue to fail to see the need for this. Are there any circumstances under which I have not made myself available to you, Piegal?”

  “There is always a first time, Shyvil.” Stepping aside, Shaeb gestured in the direction of the doorway. With a shrug, Theodakris walked. The Underhouse master followed. “I was convinced that if I simply announced my intent, you would balk at accompanying my subordinates and me.”

  “To what end?”

  “Some would say revenge,” Shaeb murmured as they entered the outer living area. “I find resolution to be a more decorous and civilized description of this evening’s proposed undertaking. It involves this disagreeable business of the pod of uncouth youths who stole from me, and whose end I have as yet been unable to bring to a proper resolution.”

  Theodakris halted abruptly. “The offworlder we discussed is still with them?”

  “I do not know that,” Shaeb replied honestly. “But until I know otherwise for certain, I have to assume it.” He smiled assuredly. “Following an abortive attempt at recapture, the failure of which has already resulted in the appropriate disciplining of the misbegotten charoni involved, they and the offworlder fled his lodgings in Center District, so the rogue may indeed still be with them. Proper and, if I may say, improper use of government resources makes it a simple matter to trace the friends, acquaintances, and relatives of those individuals one wishes to locate. Process of elimination is swift and efficient. Likely hiding places are quickly checked, those not in use rapidly removed from consideration.

  “I am pleased to say that the fugitives have been tracked to a location not far outside the conurb.” He indicated his singular trio of companions. “This time I am taking no chances. Every possible resource will be brought to bear so that there is no chance of another failure. With respect to which, this time no attempt will be made to take the offenders alive. This nonsense has gone on long enough.” His tone was flat and even as ever. “In the interests of expediency, I will forgo my usual preference for extending the sentences of the blameworthy. They will simply be executed on site.”

  Theodakris stared back at him. “You know what will happen if I’m seen in your company.”

  “No one will see you in my private transport. The cleansing itself will be carried out well after dark. None will be left alive to identify you or anyone else.” He gestured anew. “The door has not moved, and neither have you. If there is something you will need for more than a two-day, get it quickly.”

  The senior analyst did not stir. “I told you how I feel about this offworlder. If he’s still with your batch of fled scrawn, I’m not coming along.”

  “If I knew for certain he was not with them, I would not have any need of your presence,” Shaeb replied sharply. “My previous visit notwithstanding, I still know all too little of this offworlder. Self-confessedly, you know more than you have told me.”

  Despite the guns, Theodakris remained unyielding. “Not enough to be of any use to you in dealing with him.”

  “Any knowledge is more than no knowledge.” Shaeb raised the weapon slightly. “Who knows—so to speak. You might remember something useful at a critical moment. Or better yet, beforehand.” Letting out a sigh, he lowered himself to ask for the other man’s help while trying not to give the appearance of pleading.

  “I am not sure if your apparent mind-slippage is due to age, disease, or some other cause. What I do know is that right now I have no time to cultivate a working relationship with someone else in your department. Furthermore, no one else possesses your experience and breadth of knowledge. Tomorrow might be otherwise, but you know of my inclination to impatience. So I must insist that you c
ome with us, please.”

  No one saw the five of them as they exited the building. Remote sensors would record the departure of the transport from the subterranean parking area. With the vehicle’s protective dome opaqued, however, the identity of its passengers would remain anonymous.

  “I think you may be making a terrible mistake,” Theodakris warned his acquaintance as the vehicle entered a high-speed transport corridor and accelerated sharply.

  “I already have.” Relaxed and assertive, Shaeb glanced over at his friend, guest, and prisoner. “I had insufficient security measures in place at a building holding millions of cred worth of imported goods. I entrusted the care and interrogation of those who perpetrated an unforgivable crime against myself and my interests to incompetents. Tonight all of this will be appropriately resolved, and none of it will be repeated.” He shook his head disbelievingly. “Are you so frightened of one lone rogue operator from offworld?” When the senior analyst did not reply, Shaeb added, “Maybe when you actually confront him, and look on as he expires, your concern will be shown to be as unfounded as it self-evidently is.”

  Confront him, Theodakris ruminated. It was something he could not imagine. Yet ever since he had caught the first glimpse of the offworlder on the park surveillance scan and had positively identified him, the perverse fancy had never entirely left his mind. What would he say under such circumstances? What could he say? For that matter, if the young man named Philip Lynx knew that a certain senior analyst knew who he truly was, what would the youth himself do? How would the enigma called Flinx respond?

  As he contemplated a range of possibilities vaster and more profound than Shaeb could ever imagine, Shyvil Theodakris found himself mulling each and every one of them with an unsettling mix of unabashed terror and unrestrained expectation.

  Having nothing to pack except his concerns, and—unusually for him—having difficulty sleeping in a strange place, Flinx found himself wandering alone outside the agricultural facility’s main building. Overhead, Pip described lazy circles between himself and the light of Visaria’s two moons.

  He had managed to snatch a few hours’ rest, but had been awakened not long after midnight by the emotional flare-up of someone else’s nightmare. When in a city surrounded by thousands upon thousands of projecting inhabitants, the vast sea of emotional ups and downs tended to merge into an emotive blur, as if he were listening to an orchestra with tens of thousands of players. At such times he could only pick out discrete expressions of feeling by consciously focusing his Talent on a single isolated mind, or at most a small group. Without sharpening such focus, the feelings of large numbers of people tended to melt together, creating a kind of emotional white noise in his brain. Seclusion, however, isolated individual sentiments, making them at once easier to identify yet more difficult to disregard. His head hurt.

  He wanted to scream at sentience to leave him alone.

  The nightmarish emotions had been flecked with feminine overtones—something he had learned to distinguish long ago. Zezula’s bad dream, then, or possibly Missi’s. At least, he reflected as he moseyed along one of the several quick-poured, hard-surfaced paths that radiated outward from the main building, if it was Zezula’s nightmare he could take a walk without fear of being accosted by the girl. He found himself wondering: if she was the one having the bad dream, might he be involved? There was no way of knowing. He could only read the emotions of others. Not their thoughts, and certainly not their dreams.

  His present surroundings intrigued him. Despite the considerable extent of his wanderings, he had not spent much time around agricultural facilities. His travels tended to find him exploring vast empty places or large metropolitan complexes. There was a peacefulness to his current environs that appealed to him. It was a prospect he had not previously considered. Who knew? Perhaps one day he, too, would decide to work land somewhere, like Sallow Behdul’s helpful cousin Tracken Behdulvlad.

  Yes, he would become a farmer. Right after he enlisted a wandering gas-giant-sized Tar-Aiym weapons platform in an attempt to divert the immense, unknown, incomprehensible manifestation of physical evil that was even now rushing headlong and unopposed toward the Milky Way.

  Focus on carrotinites, he told himself resolutely. The bright yellow-orange spears that were derived from an ancient Terran edible filled the polymer-protected field before him with puffs of muted green. Kneeling, he used the light of Visaria’s nearly full moon and its quarter-bright companion to study the nearest growth. Was it mature and ready to harvest? Could he eat such a thing straight out of the ground?

  Light from the two moons showed through Pip’s membranous wings every time she passed between him and one of Visaria’s satellites. The minidrag was hunting nocturnal flying things. Though they were native to Visaria and not her homeworld of Alaspin, she didn’t care. Proteins were proteins, more or less. He knew from experience that if she consumed something organic that did not agree with her, her highly reactive digestive system would reject it before it could do any damage. He kept alternating his attention between the green-topped carrotinites and the flying snake, not wanting to be beneath her in the event that such a correction to consumption should occur.

  A soft hiss filled the air around him as the automatic hydro system sprang to life. Condensing out of the air, water appeared beneath his boots. Straightening, he turned to go back the way he had come. The farm’s single-story living quarters were a sprawl of interconnected buildings behind him. Tracken Behdulvlad had a fetish for constantly upgrading his facility. As Visaria grew and Malandere boomed, the market for his soil-ground produce expanded steadily.

  First thing in the morning, Flinx decided, he would make his way back to the city, to its main shuttleport, and to the compact craft that would carry him skyward back to the waiting Teacher. He had done all he could here. Good deeds for the benefit of some disadvantaged youths. A better outcome than he had managed on recently visited Arrawd, where he had found himself the cause of a local war, but less so than on Repler, which he had helped to save from an alien life-form the likes of which he hoped never to encounter again. Life balanced out. He was reasonably pleased with himself.

  Sadly, his visit to this mushrooming outpost world had only served to validate his developing opinion that his own future would be better served by seeking some sort of personal happiness while leaving civilization to its own devices. Nothing he had seen, heard, or experienced during his time in Malandere had convinced him that humankind was worth the sacrifice of the years ahead.

  The thranx, now—they were another matter. Whether their future was his responsibility constituted an ethical quandary from which he had yet to extricate himself. Exhaling resignedly, he turned and started back toward the darkened complex. He was tired. It was both too late and too early to leave. If he was lucky, and if the lurid dreams of another that had startled him out of an uneasy slumber had abated, he might be able to sneak another hour or two of sleep before it was time to leave.

  He was almost back to the buildings when a rush of entirely novel emotion flooded his perception. At this late hour, that in itself would have been enough to bring him up short. The nature and diversity of the feelings he was perceiving, however, caused him to tense and turn. That Pip also sensed them was confirmed by the speed with which she abandoned her nocturnal hunting and raced back to her perch on his shoulder.

  Scanning the silent, almost windless expanse of polymer-shielded fields, he saw nothing—with his eyes. His erratic but distinctive Talent, however, made known the presence of a number of approaching sentients by detecting and conveying what they were feeling directly to his empathetic mind.

  All but one of them were fraught with expectation, controlled ferocity, and homicidal intent. The emotive emanations of the sole exception among them were—confused. Furthermore, the emotional projections of the three most bloodthirsty intruders were more than passing strange. At once passing strange and—strangely familiar.

  At the moment none was d
angerously near, but all were coming steadily closer. With a last scan of the still deserted, bucolic fields, he whirled and sprinted for the entrance to the nearest edifice.

  Identifying him as an approved visitor, the portal opened to admit him. Struggling to remember the layout of the complex in the dark, he hesitated. Since Tracken was not dreaming and therefore not projecting, Flinx had to find him physically, by searching the rooms off first one, then a second accessway. When he finally did locate the agricultural engineer’s sleeping quarters, he burst in without waiting for the door to announce him.

  Like all those whose professions require that they be ready on short notice to tackle an emergency, Tracken was awake and alert in seconds. Flinx filled him in as quickly as he could.

  “Intruders? But how did they find…?”

  “It doesn’t matter how they found this place. Or who they are, though I can guess. They’re coming with killing in mind.” Clutching Flinx’s shoulder, Pip could hardly keep still. “First thing is to wake the others.”

  Tracken started to say something, then ended up just nodding. Slipping out of his bed, he was fully dressed in less than a minute.

  Though unmarried and unpartnered, he was accustomed to entertaining guests, both friends and travelers on agricultural business. The room that was designed to accommodate one or two visiting couples had been enhanced with the addition of several instant beds for the use of Sallow Behdul’s friends. While Tracken activated the walls, flooding the room with light, Flinx shook and prodded its five occupants to life.

  Irritated at the outset at being roughly awakened, their lingering drowsiness fled as Flinx told them what he had sensed coming toward them. Missi started crying, which did no one any good, while a grim-faced Ashile moved closer to Subar. He did not step away from her, but neither did he take her hand or offer any comforting words. Zezula looked resigned, while Sallow Behdul’s attention was concentrated on his older relative.