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  Two sharp kicks enlarged the opening and he jumped through—to find himself confronting a single startled woman.

  She screamed.

  “Please,” he begged, making calming sounds and moving toward her. “Don’t do that. I don’t mean you any harm.”

  She screamed again.

  Flinx made violent shushing motions with his hands. “Be quiet . . . they’ll find me.”

  She continued to scream.

  Flinx halted and thought furiously what to do. Someone was bound to hear the noise any second.

  Pip solved the immediate problem. He lurched speculatively at the woman. She saw the long, sinuous, quick-moving reptilian form, mouth agape, rushing toward her on broad membranous wings.

  She fainted.

  That stopped the screaming, but Flinx was still trapped in a now alerted building with next to no prospect of slipping out unseen. His gaze traveled frantically around the room, searching for a large carton to hide in or a weapon or . . . anything useful. Eventually his attention returned to the woman. She had fallen awkwardly and he moved to shift her into a more natural resting position. As he propped her up, Flinx noticed a bathroom nearby. His gaze shot back to the girl. . . .

  A minute later several heavily armed guards burst into the unlocked room. It seemed to be deserted. They fanned out, made a quick inspection of every possible hiding place. One guard entered the bathroom, noticed feminine legs beneath the privacy shield, and hastily withdrew, apologizing. With his comrades he left and moved on to inspect the next office.

  Three offices later it occurred to him that the woman hadn’t responded to his apology—not with a thank-you, not with a frosty acknowledgment, not with a curse. Nothing, That struck him as being strange and he mentioned the fact to his superior.

  Together they dashed back to the office in question, entered the bathroom. The legs were still in the same position. Cautiously, the officer knocked on the shield, cleared his throat appraisingly. When there was no response, he directed the other two men to stand back and cover the shield exitway, which he then opened from the outside.

  The woman was just opening her eyes. She found herself sitting stark naked on the convenience, staring into the muzzles of two energy weapons held in the steady grip of a pair of resolute-looking, uniformed men.

  She fainted again.

  By the time the badly shaken woman had been revived once more, Flinx was well clear of the tower. No one had noticed the lithe, short-haired woman leaving the building. Flinx had made excellent use of the cosmetics found in the woman’s desk—in Drallar it was useful to have knowledge of abilities others might find absurd or even disreputable. Only one clerk had noticed anything unusual. But he wasn’t about to mention to his fellows that the double leather belt encircling the woman’s waist had moved independently of her walk.

  Finally away from both the tower and the Challis plant, Flinx discarded the woman’s clothing and let Pip slip free from around his belly. Disdaining normal transportation channels as too dangerous now, he made his way to the edge of the escarpment.

  The two-thousand-meter drop was breathtaking, but he couldn’t risk waiting around the Plateau for some of Challis’ armed servants to challenge him in the street. Nor did he want to risk awkward questions from the authorities. So he took a deep breath, selected what looked like the least sheer cliff, and began his descent.

  The basalt was nearly vertical, but crumbling and weathered, so he encountered an abundance of hand-holds. Even so, he doubted that Challis would imagine that anyone would consider descending the escarpment by hand and foot.

  Flinx came upon some bad places, but the overgrowth of dangling vines and creepers enabled him to bypass these successfully. His arms began to ache, and once, when a foot momentarily became numb, he was left clinging precariously by fingers and one set of toes to tiny cracks in the rock.

  At the thousand-meter mark, the cliff started to angle slightly away from him, making climbing much easier. He increased his pace. Finally, bruised, scratched, and utterly exhausted, Flinx reached the jungle at the bottom. Pausing a moment to orient himself, he headed immediately in what he hoped was the direction of the port. He had chosen his place of descent with care, so he didn’t have far to go through the dense vegetation.

  But he was totally unaware that he was struggling over a region as densely populated as any of Terra’s major cities. An entire thranx metropolis lay below him, hewn in traditional fashion, from the earth and rock beneath the sweltering surface. Flinx walked upon a green cloud that hovered over the city.

  Totally drained and beginning to wish Challis had shot him, he shoved himself through one more stubborn cluster of bushes . . . then stumbled onto the surface of a neatly paved roadway. Two more days, and he had made his way back to Chitteranx Port. Those he met cautiously avoided him. He was quite aware of the sight he must present after his scramble down the cliff wall and his hike through the jungle.

  A few thranx did take pity on the poor human, enough to provide him with sufficient food and water to continue on.

  The sight of the Port outskirts cheered him immensely. Pip took to the air at Flinx’s shout of joy before settling back on his master’s shoulder. Flinx glanced up at the minidrag, who looked relaxed and comfortable in the tropical heat so like that of his native world of Alaspin.

  “You can afford to look content, spade-face,” Flinx addressed his companion enviously. While he had fought his way down the cliff centimeter by centimeter, Pip had fluttered and soared freely nearby, always urging him on faster and faster, when a single misstep could have meant quick death.

  The clerk at the overbank counter in the Port terminal was human, but that didn’t prevent him from maintaining his composure at the sight of a dirty, ragged youth approaching. A wise man, he had learned early in life a basic dictum: odd appearance may indicate wealth or eccentricity, with the two not necessarily mutually exclusive.

  So he treated the ragamuffin as he would have any well-dressed, clearly affluent arrival. “May I be of service, sir?” he inquired politely, unobtrusively turning his head to one side.

  Flinx explained his needs. The information he provided was fed to a computer. A short while later the machine insisted that the person standing before the counter—name Flinx, given recorded name Philip Lynx, retina pattern so-and-so, pulse variables such-and-such, heart configuration thus-and-that—was indeed a registered depositor at the King’s Bank on Moth, in the city of Drallar, and that his present drawable balance as of this date was . . .

  The clerk stood a little straighter, fought to face Flinx. “Now then, sir, how did you happen to lose your registered cardmeter?”

  “I had an accident,” Flinx explained cryptically, “and it fell out of my pocket.”

  “Yes.” The clerk continued to smile. “No need to worry. As you know, only you can utilize a personal cardmeter. We will note the disappearance of your old cardmeter and within the hour you will have a new one waiting at this desk for you.”

  “I can wait. However,” he indicated his clothing with an eloquent sweep of his hands, “I’d like to buy some new clothes, and get cleaned up a little.”

  “Naturally,” the clerk agreed, reaching professionally into a drawer. “If you’ll just sign this slip and permit me to register your eyeprint on it, we can advance you whatever you require.”

  Flinx applied for a ridiculously modest amount, listened to the clerk’s directions as to where he could hire a bath and buy clothing, and left with a grateful handshake.

  The jumpsuit he eventually chose was more elaborate than the two Hivehom had already appropriated, but he felt he owed himself a little luxury after what he had been through.

  The bath occupied most of the rest of the hour, and when he returned to the overbank desk he once more resembled a human being instead of a denizen of Hivehom’s jungles. As promised, his new cardmeter was ready for him.

  “Anything else I can do for you, sir?”

  “Thanks, you
’ve done more than enough. I . . .” He paused, looked to his left. “Excuse me, but I see an old friend.”

  He left the clerk with an open mouth and a tip of ten percent of his total withdrawal.

  The central terminal floor was high-domed and filled with the noise of travelers arriving and departing. The smallish thranx Flinx strode up behind was engaged in activity of a different sort.

  “I think you’d better give that lady back her abdomen purse,” he whispered to the insectoid lightfinger. As he spoke, a lavishly inlaid and chiton-bejeweled thranx matron, her flaking exoskeleton elegantly streaked with silver, turned to stare curiously at him.

  At the same time the thranx Flinx had surprised started visibly and whirled to confront his accuser. “Sir, if you think that I have . . .” The voice turned to a clacking gargle. Flinx smiled engagingly as Pip stirred on his shoulder.

  “Hello, Bisondenbit.”

  The concept of compound eyes bugging outward was unreasonable from a physiologic standpoint, but that was the impression Flinx received. Bisondenbit’s antennae were quivering so violently Flinx thought they might shake free, and the thranx was staring in expectant terror at the lethal length of Pip.

  “The abdomen purse,” Flinx repeated softly, “and calm down before you crack your braincase.”

  “Y-ye-yes,” Bisondenbit stuttered. Interesting! Flinx had never heard a thranx stutter before. Turning to the old female, Bisondenbit reached into an overly capacious b-thorax pouch and withdrew a small, six-sided bag of woven gold-colored metal.

  “You just dropped this, Queen Mother,” he muttered reluctantly, using the formalized honorific. “The hooks have come all unbent . . . see?”

  The matron was checking her own abdomen with a foothand while reaching for the purse with a truhand.

  “I don’t understand. I was certain it was secured . . .” She broke off, ducked her head and executed a movement with skull and antennae indicative of profound thanks, adding verbally, “Your service is much appreciated, warsire.”

  Flinx flinched when she bestowed the undeserved compliment on Bisondenbit.

  That worthy’s courteous pose lasted until the matron had passed out of hearing range. Then he turned nervous eyes on Flinx. “I didn’t want you killed . . . I didn’t want anyone killed,” he stammered rapidly, “they said nothing to me about a killing. I only was to bring you to . . .”

  “Settle down,” Flinx advised him. “And stop yammering of death. There are already too many deaths in this.”

  “Oh, on that I concur,” the thranx confessed, the tension leaving him slowly. “None of my doing.” Abruptly his attitude changed from one of fear to one of intense curiosity.

  “How did you manage to escape the tower and leave the plateau? I am told many were watching for you but none saw you leave.”

  “I flew down,” Flinx said, “after I made myself invisible.”

  Bisondenbit eyed him uncertainly, started to laugh, stopped, then stared again. “You are a most peculiar fellow, even for a human. I do not know whether to believe you or not.” He suddenly looked around the busy terminal, his nervousness returning. “Powerful people around Challis want to know your whereabouts. There is talk of a large reward, to be paid without questions. The only clue anyone has as to your escape, however, resides in a woman who is confined to a hospital. She is hysterical still”

  “I’m sorry for that,” Flinx murmured honestly.

  “It is not good for me to be seen with you—you have become a desired commodity.”

  “It’s always nice to be wanted,” Flinx replied, blithely ignoring Bisondenbit’s fear for his own safety. “By the way, I didn’t know that the thranx counted pickpocketing among their talents.”

  “From a digital standpoint we’ve always been adroit Many humans have acquired equally, ah, useful abilities from us.”

  “I can imagine,” Flinx snorted. “I happen to live in a city overstocked with such abilities. But I haven’t time to debate the morality of dubious cultural exchanges. Just tell me where I can find Conda Challis.”

  Bisondenbit eyed the youth as if he had suddenly sprouted an extra pair of hands. “He almost killed you. It seems he wants another chance. I can’t believe you will continue to seek out such a powerful enemy. I consider myself a fair judge of human types. You do not appear revenge-motivated.”

  “I’m not,” Flinx confessed uneasily, aware that Small Symm had assumed he was following Challis for the same reason. People persisted in ascribing to him motives he didn’t possess.

  “If not revenge, then what is it you follow him for . . . not that it makes me sad to see a being of Challis’ reputation squirm a little, even if it be bad for business.”

  “Just tell me where he is.”

  “If you’ll tell me why you seek him.”

  Flinx nudged Pip and the flying snake stirred, yawned to show a sac-backed gullet “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Flinx said softly, meaningfully. A terrified Bisondenbit threw up truhands and foothands in feeble defense.

  “Never mind,” sighed Flinx, tired of threatening. “If I tell you it might even filter convincingly back to Challis. I just think he holds information on who my real parents are and what happened to them after they . . . abandoned me.”

  “Parents?” Bisondenbit looked quizzical. “I was told you had threatened Challis.”

  “Not true. He’s paranoid because of an incident in our mutual past. He wanted me to do something and I didn’t want to do it.”

  “For that you’ve killed several people?”

  “I haven’t killed anyone,” Flinx protested unhappily. “Pip has, and then only to defend me.”

  “Well, the dead are the dead,” Bisondenbit observed profoundly. He gazed in disbelief at Flinx. “I did not believe any being, even a human, could be so obsessed with perverse desire. Does it matter more than your life to know who your parents were?”

  “We don’t have the tradition of a general hive-mother that I could trace myself to and through,” Flinx explained. “Yes, it matters that much to me.”

  The insect shook his double-lobed head. “Then I wish you musical hunting in your mad quest. In another time, another place, I would maybe be your clanmate.” Leaning forward, he extended antennae. After a moment’s hesitation, Flinx touched his own forehead to the proffered protrusions. He straightened, gave the slight thranx a warning look.

  “Try,” he said to Bisondenbit, “to keep your truhands to your own thorax.”

  “I don’t know why my activities should concern you, as long as you are not affected,” the thranx protested. He was almost happy, now that it appeared Flinx wasn’t going to murder him. “Are you going to report me to the authorities?”

  “Only for procrastination,” Flinx said impatiently. “You still haven’t told me where Challis is.”

  “Send him a tape of your request,” the thranx advised.

  “Would you believe it?”

  Bisondenbit’s mandibles clicked. “I understand. You are a strange individual, man-boy.”

  “You’re no incubator yourself, Bisondenbit. Where?”

  Shoulder chiton moved to produce a ruffling sound, like cardboard being scraped across a carpet. Bisondenbit spoke with a modicum of pride.

  “I’m not one of Challis’ hired grubs—I’ll tell you. You drove him from Moth, it seems; and now you’ve chased him off Hivehom. The Challis Company’s home office is in Terra’s capital, and I presume that’s where he’s fled. No doubt he’ll be expecting you, if he hasn’t died of fright by now. May you find him before the many-who-pursue find you.” He started to leave, then paused curiously.

  “Good-bye, Bisondenbit,” Flinx said firmly. The thranx started to speak, but spotted the minidrag moving and thought better of it. He walked away, looking back over his shoulder occasionally and muttering to himself, unsatisfied. For his part Flinx felt no guilt in letting the pickpocket go free. It was not for one who had performed his fair share of borderline activities to j
udge another.

  Why wouldn’t Challis believe that his purpose in seeking him out was for nothing so useless and primitive as revenge? Challis could understand only his own kind of mind, Flinx decided.

  Somehow, he would have to find a way around it.

  From Hivehom to the Commonwealth’s second capital world of Terra was a considerable journey, even at maximum drive. But eventually Flinx found himself drinking in a view of it from another shuttlecraft port as the little transfer ship dropped free of the freightliner.

  This was the green legend, Terra magnificat, spawning place of mankind, second capital of the Commonwealth and home of the United Church. This was the world where once a primitive primate had suddenly risen to stand on hind feet to be nearer the sky, never dreaming he would one day step beyond it.

  And yet, save for the royal blue of the oceans, the globe itself was unremarkable, mostly swirling white clouds and brown splotches of land.

  He hadn’t known what to expect . . . golden spires piercing the cloudtops, perhaps, or formed crags of chromium backing against the seas—all that was at once absurd and sublime. Although he couldn’t see it, Terra possessed both in munificent quantities, albeit in forms far more muted than his grandiose visions.

  Surely, Flinx thought as the shuttle dropped into the outer atmosphere, the omnipresent emerald of Hivehom was more striking and, for that matter, the lambent yellow ring-wings of Moth were more sheerly spectacular.

  But somewhere down there his great to the second or third power grandfather had lived and died. . . .

  Chapter Four

  Descending on a west-to-east path, the shuttle passed over the big approach station at Perth before beginning its final powerglide over the endless agricult fields of central Australia. Flinx had passing views of isolated towns and food-processing plants and the shining solar power stations ringing the industrial metropolis of Alice Springs. He patted the shiny new case sitting by his feet, heard the relaxed hiss from within, and strapped himself down for landing.