Flinx in Flux

  Tough little lady, he mused. All the more reason to try to find out how she had come to be beaten up and dumped in the middle of the Ingre.

  This was only his second visit to Mimmisompo, and he did not know the town that well, but he had learned long ago that information was often available in such places in inverse proportion to the actual population. Furthermore, it was not necessary to scour the entire community to find the answers he needed. There were always logical places to make inquiries. The official information booths were at the bottom of any such list.

  Because of her wholly inadequate attire, Flinx went on the assumption that she was a recent arrival to the Ingre region. No half-experienced prospector or scientist would have been caught dead in the kind of clothing she had been wearing when he had found her, not even if traveling in a vehicle as secure as the crawler. You never knew when you might have to go outside. At the minimum she should have been wearing boots, a long-sleeved shirt, long-legged pants, repellers, and cooling threads.

  Her assailants had known their business. You could not walk out of the Ingre. By the time a body could be located, the local fauna would have made identification difficult, determination of cause of death impossible.

  What kept nagging at him was the apparent professionalism with which the beating had been administered. Her bruises had been evenly dispersed across her body, suggesting that whoever had handed them out had taken care to prolong her consciousness for as long as possible. It smacked of sadism, questioning, or both. He worried about it all the way to Quayside.

  The entertainment center was not crowded. It was too early. There were drivers and cargo lifters, alluvial miners, and one independent rarewood logger whom Flinx recognized by the specialized trimming equipment dangling from his belt. Half a dozen men, nearly as many women.

  There were also two thranx, looking a lot more at ease than their human compatriots. Each was chatting with a human instead of with each other. It was rumored that the thranx preferred the company of human beings to their own kind. Flinx knew that was talked up by thranx psychologists. Even now, hundreds of years after the Amalgamation, there were still humans whose insectophobia required attention and treatment.

  He did not look at them twice. Man and thranx had been so close for so long that they were no longer thought of as aliens. More like short people in shiny suits.

  The people in the entertainment center showed little interest in the games and other diversions Quayside offered. Two men were idly toying with a quick-draw shooting game near the back. No one else paid any attention to the horrific and extraordinarily lifelike monsters that leapt from behind rocks or jumped from vines or erupted from the ground to attack the two competitors. The illusions had to be shot in the right spot the correct number of times for a score to register. Their simulated death throes were exuberantly noisy and dramatic. It was the nature of the game.

  The fact that each holoed creature actually existed, either on Alaspin or on another world, added to the game’s attraction, though Flinx was not sure a teacher would have thought of it as educational. He never indulged in the electronic entertainments. Once he had played one out of deference to a companion. It had left him cold. Though he was astonishingly proficient, there was no challenge to it. He credited his skill to good reflexes and never thought there was any more to it than that.

  At the conclusion of the game some joker had repositioned the halo projector so that a large, carnivorous reptile had dropped down on Flinx from the direction of the ceiling. The result was just what the practical joker had been hoping for. Flinx had been startled and frightened.

  Unfortunately, that had caused Pip to react, defensively. Her highly caustic venom had burned right through the holo projector’s lens, at considerable cost to the establishment’s owner. With Pip hovering nearby, the chastened pranksters had paid the full cost of the damage.

  He angled toward the only crowded table. The man seated facing him boasted a handlebar mustache that tapered to waxed, glistening points. They quivered like the needles on a praxiloscope when he laughed. His name was Jebcoat, and he hailed from Hivehom, a human born and raised on the thranx capital world. He was no stranger to heat and humidity. As near as Flinx had been able to tell from their initial brief contact weeks ago, when he had first arrived in Mimmisompo, Jebcoat had done a little of everything. If you asked him a question there was a fifty-fifty chance you, would get an answer. The odds on truth were lower.

  Flinx did not recognize his female friends. Jebcoat saw him approaching and broke off his conversation with the ladies to give the young man a broad smile. One of the women turned curiously to inspect the newcomer. She was a shade under two meters tall and wore implants that gave her pupils a silvery cast.

  “This kid a friend of yours?” she asked Jebcoat without taking her eyes off Flinx.

  He stiffened momentarily until he realized she was trying to provoke him. That was one way of taking the measure of a stranger on a world like Alaspin.

  “He’s no kid.” Jebcoat chuckled softly. “I ain’t sayin’ he’s a man, either. Frankly I don’t know what he is, but you’d best watch your word footing around ’im. He wears death for a play-pretty.”

  As if on cue, Pip stuck her head out from beneath Flinx’s collar and Scrap stirred on his wrist. The woman’s eyes flicked from mature minidrag to adolescent. Flinx sensed no fear in her, which might mean either that she was as bold and confident as she appeared, or simply that his damnable talents weren’t functioning at that moment.

  The other woman was tall, but no giantess like her companion. “Go easy on him, Lundameilla. He’s kinda cute, though a bit on the skinny side.” She laughed, a short jittery sound that would make anyone in the vicinity grin. “You and him going together sideways wouldn’t fill up a decent doorway. Care to join us?”

  Flinx shook his head. “Just a question or two. I’ve been out in the Ingre, and I need to find out about somebody I ran into out there.” The giantess’s eyebrows rose.

  “Find anything while you were out there?” Jebcoat eyed him speculatively.

  “What I was looking for.” Flinx saw that his approval rating had risen another notch. It was not considered impolite to ask questions of a stranger on Alaspin, but it was considered foolish to reply straightforwardly. Sometimes it was worse than foolish.

  “Found something I wasn’t looking for, too. About a hundred centimeters, slim, female, twenty-two to -five, pale blond with a weird haircut, and blue eyes, though they might’ve been dyed recently. Very nice.”

  “How nice?” the other man at the table asked, speaking for the first time. He was broad and burly and had not depilated in days.

  “Extremely. She was wearing shorts and a thin shirt, one only.”

  “In the Ingre?” The giantess made a face.

  “Millimite and drill bug bites everywhere.” Flinx eyed the other man. “Also somebody had worked her over real careful and professional-like.”

  The heavyweight’s smile disappeared, and he sat back in his chair. “Deity, what a world!” He turned to Jebcoat. “Spark any circuits?”

  Jebcoat considered, the mustache temporarily stilled. Finally he shook his head. “I don’t know a soul who’d be caught dead outside in the shorts, much less the shirt. How’s her condition?”

  “Improving. I emptied my crawler’s first-aid kit into her. It was full when I started.”

  “Damn well better have been, or you could sue the renter.” He glanced at the giantess. “Call up any memories for you, Lundy?” The tall woman shook her head.

  “I don’t know anybody that pretty or that stupid.”

  “What about ID?” he asked Flinx.

  “Nothing. I looked.” He eyed the other man, but that worthy was properly subdued. The situation was not amusing anymore.

  “We’ll ask around. Won’t we, Blade?” The giantess’s companion nodded agreeably.

  “So will I,” said Jebcoat, “but I haven’t heard tell of anyone missin’ local, and
you know how fast that kind of news travels hereabouts.”

  “Nope, nobody missing,” the other man muttered. “Nobody. Would’ve heard. When’d you find her?”

  “Few days ago,” Flinx told him.

  “Then everybody’d know by now if she was known around here. Must be a newcomer,” Jebcoat suggested.

  “That’s the way I see it.”

  “I know the agent at Alaspinport. If you like, I’ll give ’im a call, take a copy of the last couple of shuttle passenger manifests, tridee the ID. We can run ’em through my processor.”

  “That might give us something,” Flinx said gratefully.

  “Not if she was brought in by private shuttle,” Blade pointed out.

  “Unlikely,” Jebcoat said.

  “Unlikely, yeah, but not impossible. If that’s the case—” She eyed Flinx evenly. “—there’ll be no record of her arrival.”

  “Maybe,” Flinx said softly, “that’s what the people who beat her up had in mind.”

  The woman stared back at him, then turned to Jebcoat. “You’re right; he’s no kid. You been around, boy,” she told Flinx.

  “That I have—girl.” He braced himself, but all she did was smile approvingly.

  “Come on, Lundy.” The two women rose to depart. Lundameilla towered over every man in the room. Both drew appreciative stares. “We’ll ask around for you, like I said. Meantime we got to get back and check on our dredge. Lundy and me, we got a claim up in the Samberlin district.” As she came around the table, she bent quickly to whisper in Flinx’s ear.

  “You ever get up that way, stop by and say hello. Maybe we’ll show you how we operate together, Lundy and I. You might say we could show you the long and the short of it.”

  “Leave the guy alone, Blade.” Jebcoat was grinning hugely beneath the mustache. “Can’t you see he’s blushing?”

  “I am not blushing,” Flinx insisted. “Redheads’ skin is naturally flush.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  As Lundy strolled past, Flinx felt a distinct sharp pinch on his left buttock. The giantess left him with that and a wink as she followed her companion out. He made a face at Pip.

  “I’m attacked and you do nothing.”

  The flying snake stared back blankly. Not for the first time Flinx found himself wondering exactly what the minidrag’s intelligence level was.

  Jebcoat put both hands flat on the table. “Let me make one quick call.”

  He did not have to leave the table to do so. Flinx watched him work the communicator that was built into the table. Thousands of fine hardwoods filled the jungle surrounding them, and someone had gone to the expense of importing a plastic table made to look like wood. No wonder the thranx found their human friends a constant source of amusement.

  Jebcoat chattered away at the pickup. Finally he shrugged and let the headphone snap back in place. “I tried the obvious: local cops, immigration records, a couple of friends. No one matching your description has arrived on Alaspin in the past two months, much less been reported missing. We still have to check Alaspinport records, of course, but I ain’t optimistic.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Lemme get ahold of my buddy at the port. Lundy and Blade will spread it around the backcountry. But right now, as far as the authorities are concerned, your battered acquaintance don’t exist. Since she’s in your room, she’s your responsibility.”

  “All yours,” the other man said cheerfully.

  “But I’m just on my way out.”

  “Offworld again?” Jebcoat was still trying to figure his young friend. “For somebody your age with no visible means of support, you manage to get around pretty easy.”

  “I have an inheritance,” Flinx explained. Though not the kind of inheritance you’re thinking of, he added silently. “I can’t take her with me, and I don’t want to just abandon her in the room. She’s got no credcard, either.”

  “So?” Jebcoat asked. “The hotel owner would be delighted to put a claim on her.”

  “Hell,” the other man said, “if she’s as pretty as you say she is, I’ll take her off your hands myself.”

  “Ain’t you forgettin’ something, Howie?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re married.”

  A cloud shadowed Howie’s face. “Oh, yeah. I’d kinda forgot.”

  Jebcoat eyed him mercilessly. “With kids.”

  “Kids. Yeah,” Howie muttered disconsolately.

  Jebcoat smiled back at Flinx. “Howie here’s been out in the Ingre too long. No, she’s yours, my friend. You can do what you want with her. Wait till she gets well, take her with you, or just scram. But it’s your decision. I don’t want anything to do with it.” He indicated the resting minidrags. “I don’t have a couple of lethal empaths to keep an eye on me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve other business to attend to. I’ll get back to you if I find out anything about your mystery lady. Howie and I are discussing the price of a theoretical load of Sangretibark extract.”

  Flinx said nothing. It was illegal to export Sangretibark. For some it worked as a powerful aphrodisiac. In others it had unwanted side effects—such as cardiac arrest. But then, it was none of his business. Jebcoat was a friend so long as you treated him with respect. He would make a bad enemy.

  He tried a couple of other contacts, with equal lack of success. No one knew anything about the woman he described. Once his query was met with an openly hostile response, but only verbally. Pip’s presence prevented anyone from dealing Flinx anything stronger than a harsh word.

  That afternoon he wandered back to the hotel, discouraged and puzzled. The woman lay where he had left her. At the moment she was lying on her back. As he eyed her, it occurred to him that while he had done wonders for her wounds, her appearance remained unchanged. She still wore plenty of dirt and grime.

  He spent an hour cleaning her face, shoulders, arms, and legs with a washcloth. Thin red streaks had replaced the weals on her legs where the millimite bugs had dug, and the drill bug holes were already closing. The worst of her bruises were almost gone.

  He lay down for a short nap, exhausted from the journey out of the Ingre and his efforts on her behalf. He might have slept through the night if the screaming had not awakened him.

  Chapter Four

  Instantly he was up and searching. Looking every bit as beautiful awake as she had while asleep, his guest stood across the room. In her right hand she clutched a small but wicked little knife. Her eyes were wild.

  Pip hovered before her, little more than a couple of meters from her face and well within attack range. Scrap flew nervous circles around his mother. The young minidrag’s constant movement was unsettling the woman more than Pip’s hovering.

  Flinx took it all in in a second and wondered what the hell was going on. The knife did not make any sense. Neither did Pip’s threatening posture, unless you assumed the knife had been aimed at her master. But why would she want to threaten him while he slept?

  That was when she noticed him sitting up on the bed. Her eyes barely flicked away from the flying snake. “Call them off, damn you, call them off!”

  Flinx did so with a casual thought. Pip darted back to the bed.

  The woman’s breathing slowed, and the arm holding the knife dropped. “How did you do that?”

  “All Alaspinian minidrags are emotional telepaths. Sometimes they’ll bond with a person. Pip is mine—she’s the adult. The adolescent’s name is Scrap.”

  “Cute,” she said tensely, “real cute.” Then she shuddered and lowered her head. “I don’t know how you found me. What now? Are you going to beat me up again? Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with? I’ve answered all your questions.”

  Flinx’s gaze narrowed. “I didn’t beat you up, and I have no intention of killing you. If I held any malign intentions toward you, d’you think I’d have fixed you up?”

  Her head came up quickly. She studied him for a long moment. “You aren’t one of t
hem?” she asked hesitantly.

  “No I’m not, whoever ‘them’ are.”

  “Deity.” She let out a long sigh, at which point her legs turned to rubber and she had to lean against the wall for support. The knife clattered silently on the hardwood floor.

  Flinx slid off the bed and started toward her, halting when she stiffened. She still did not trust him, and after what she had been through, he could hardly blame her.

  “I’m not here to hurt you.” He spoke slowly, soothingly. “I’ll help if I can.”

  Her eyes shifted from him to the flying snake. Slowly she bent to recover the knife, placed it on the antique dresser nearby, and laughed nervously.

  “That doesn’t make any sense, but neither does anything else that’s happened to me in the past few weeks. Besides, if half of what I’ve heard is true, a knife’s pretty useless against a minidrag.”

  “Not half,” Flinx corrected her. “It’s all true.” He kept his distance. “Would you like to sit down? You’ve been unconscious for several days.”

  She put a hand to her forehead. “I thought I was dead. Out there.” She indicated the window that looked over the town. “I was never so certain of anything in my life. Now I’m not sure of anything anymore.” She blinked and tried to smile at him. “Thank you. I will sit down.”

  There was a lounge chair made of epoxied lianas. Under the epoxy, the wood flashed a rainbow of colors. It was the only brightly colored piece of furniture in the room. Flinx sat down on the edge of the bed while Pip curled herself around one of the short bedposts, looking like a carved decoration. Scrap settled in his lap. He stroked the back of the small flying snake’s head absently.

  “How old are you, anyway?” the woman asked him as she slumped into the chair.

  Why do they always ask that? he wondered. Not “Thank you for saving me” or “Where do you come from?” or “What’s your business?” His reply was the same one he had been using for years.

  “Old enough. Old enough not to be the one who was lying out in the Ingre making a meal for the millimite bugs and dying of exposure. How’d you end up like that?”