Trouble Magnet

  “No. She has nothing to do with the pod.” He smiled, and it was a different kind of smile. One that was inspired by genuine satisfaction instead of cynicism. “She won’t have anything to do with my other friends.”

  A positive development? Flinx mused. If so, except for the visiting thranx it would be a first for his time on Visaria. He was more than ready to meet a halfway redeemable human being. And the sooner the better. The sounds of Subar’s mother pursuing his younger siblings threatened to come closer.

  “Where?” he asked briskly.

  Relieved, Subar gestured with one hand. “Couple of buildings over. Her family’s rich.” The sarcasm returned to his voice. “Their thrown-together partition is on top of a complex.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  Subar was not old enough to know if he was in love with Zezula or simply in lust with her, but he did know that Ashile was his friend. Speaking to him through his communit and with visual off, she agreed to meet him on the roof of her building. Her tone was both eager and wary.

  Her feelings on seeing Subar reflected this internal turbulence, as befitted both her circumstances and her age. Her reactions to Flinx, as she stood waiting on the rippling rooftop in the haze-laden sunshine, were equally confused but in different measure. He found her wiry but attractive; not truly beautiful but pleasing. A splash of generic multihued freckles enhanced her pale complexion with cheap cosmetic color. A late developer physically, Flinx decided, but not mentally or emotionally. Holding one hand above her eyes to shield them from the glare, she squinted suspiciously at her boyfriend’s companion.

  “Tcoum, Subar. Who’s this?”

  Subar stood a little straighter. “A friend. Helped me out of a spine spot this morning.”

  “Spine spot.” Ignoring both Flinx and the curious reptilian head that was now peeping out from the collar of his shirt, she turned on the youth. “What happened? It’s that scrug-scrawn Chaloni again, isn’t it? What did he opt you into this time?”

  Raising both hands defensively, Subar affected sophisticated cool. He did not wear it well. “Tworaleen—eval back! I’m here, aren’t I? It was no big deal.” He cast a quick sideways glance at his new acquaintance who, thankfully, said nothing. “We just came from my place. I introed Flinx to my family.” An appealing grin transformed his expression. “As counterbalance, I wanted him to meet you.”

  This compliment somewhat mitigated her initial annoyance. She studied Flinx more closely. As she was doing so, bright wings appeared from beneath the taller youth’s shirt, spread wide to catch the haze-shrouded sun in a dual splash of bright blue and pink, and launched a diamond-backed, emerald-headed shape straight toward her.

  A startled Subar started to reach for something concealed in a pocket. Flinx restrained him with a hand and a murmur. “It’s okay. If Pip wanted to hurt her, she’d already be down.”

  To Ashile’s considerable credit, she leaned her head to one side but otherwise held her ground as the alien flying beast landed on her. Pip proceeded to collapse her wings and drape herself over the girl’s shoulder. Flinx looked on approvingly.

  “She likes you,” he told the understandably uneasy adolescent.

  “I think I’m glad.” Ashile guardedly eyed the serpentine shape lying athwart her left shoulder. It did not weigh much, and the iridescent green head and neck lay flat against the upper part of her chest. “Is she dangerous?”

  “Only when she senses hostility.”

  Ashile looked up at him. “Senses?”

  “She’s an empath.”

  “Tuorlu!” Subar was as impressed as his girlfriend. Moving closer, he took the opportunity to examine Pip closely for the first time since he had encountered the tall offworlder. “I thought the bond between you two was awfully tight, but I had no idea. First empathic being I ever met.”

  The second, Flinx thought, without elaborating. “We’ve been together a long time.” As much out of a sense of mischief as out of genuine curiosity he added, “How about you two?”

  Subar immediately backed away from the girl. “Known each other for a couple of years, I guess.” He shrugged, feigning indifference. But his emotions gave him away. “When you live this close in the same neighborhood, sooner or later everybody gets to know everybody else.”

  “Tnone,” Ashile added. If anything, her emotions were transparent where Subar’s were somewhat confused. With his Talent operating at optimum, Flinx was able to read them both like an open book. He felt no shame at doing this and did not regard it as prying. Given a choice, he would have preferred to have been born without the ability. For him not to perceive the emotional states of others would have been the same as requesting the hearing-enabled not to listen or the sighted not to see.

  One thing was immediately clear: while Subar’s feelings toward the leggy, awkward girl were decidedly mixed, no such ambiguity existed on Ashile’s part. Age notwithstanding, she was deeply, profoundly in love with Flinx’s boldly confident guide. It was an affection that bordered on adoration, though if confronted Flinx doubted she would confess to it. He sensed no guile in her. In her, the qualities that he so pessimistically sought among Malandere’s population could finally be found. She was caring, compassionate, and thoughtful. Perhaps even honest, though that was something he could not sense. Honesty was not an emotion, though there were those who could give hints to its presence. He was not surprised at his discovery. Had she been otherwise, Pip would not have taken to her so quickly.

  She was no saint, however. The frenetic, driving, money-hungry culture that dominated life on Visaria did not accommodate saints, who would be better advised to seek hospitality elsewhere. What Flinx had seen of Malandere in particular suggested that the gullible and trusting would survive its voracious streets and nightlife about as long as a naked fat man on Midworld or Fluva.

  He could sense that she was still suspicious of him. “So,” he ventured, striving to make conversation, “what do you do besides home-study?”

  His query caused a sharp swing in her emotional state, suggesting that he had unwittingly struck a key in a personal sybfile better left unopened. The emotive shift affected Pip immediately. The flying snake rose from the girl’s shoulder and winged back to her master. The minidrag was not hostile, or panicked. Something had simply upset her.

  Ashile replied, her explanation tinged with a bitterness that colored its clarity. “I’m a subvent.”

  “I don’t—” he began.

  She continued rapidly, as if wanting to get the confession over with as quickly as possible. Subar looked away, uncomfortable. “Every few nights I go to a certain place downtown. It’s kind of a club. I’m not the only one. There are other girls my age, and boys. There’s supposed to be an age limit, but…” She did not need to fill in the rest of the sentence. “Connections are made. Older—people—hook in. They pay to get inside your head. Your mind. They pay to share what it’s like to be young again. Sometimes they mess with your thoughts.” She swallowed and turned away, staring in the direction of the smothered sun. “Some of their thoughts aren’t very nice. They think about doing things they would never do themselves, to see how your thoughts react. It can get—ugly.”

  She looked back at him and continued. “I’ve never had a serious problem. There are sensors and emergency disconnects. But once in a while one of the subvents gets hurt.” Reaching up, she tapped the side of her head. “Here. Then the staff take them away fast, so that the screaming and crying doesn’t upset the other customers. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.”

  “Tinaw,” Subar broke in, trying to lighten the mood. “You’re tough, Ash. That’s all.”

  She didn’t want to be tough, though, Flinx sensed. She wanted to run. Away from her work, the description of which represented a new perversion Flinx had not previously encountered. She wanted to run away from her life. Given a preference, he surmised, she wanted to run away with Subar.

  If the younger man was aware of those longings, he gave no indication
of it, either physically, verbally, or emotionally. Flinx wanted to tell him, but doing so would have constituted an unforgivable invasion of the girl’s privacy. It also might not have the intended effect. Flinx could not stay out of people’s emotions, but he could stay out of their business. At least, he tried to.

  It was one thing to intrude on the feelings of dozens of unnamed, unknown, faceless passersby on the streets of a city; it was something else entirely to find himself involved in the seething and probably hopeless passions of these two young residents. It was time for him to separate himself from them, to return to his own private isolation and deliberations. He said as much.

  Aware he had just about run out of options for keeping his noteworthy new friend around, Subar resorted to naked pleading. “I wish you’d stay awhile longer, Flinx. There’s more people I know would like to meet you, and a lot more of Malandere that I’d like to show you.”

  “Sorry. I have work of my own to do, and it’s not getting done. Other people are relying on me.” He scanned the rapidly warming rooftop. “I’ll find my way back to where I’m staying.”

  “Tloor, no need for that.” Still reluctant to concede that he was going to have to let the offworlder go, Subar resolved to retain his company until the last possible instant in hopes of wringing, if not valuable personal property, at least every last bit of useful information from him. “I’ll help you find your way.”

  “No need for that,” Flinx assured him. A slight smile creased his face. “I have some experience at finding my way around unfamiliar localities.”

  “It’ll be easier and faster if I help you.” Having settled the matter and before Flinx could voice any further objection, Subar quickly turned to head back the way they had come. “Besides, it’ll give us the chance to talk a little longer.”

  Ashile immediately started forward. “I’m coming with you.”

  Flinx did not have to ask why. Her need was writ large all over her feelings.

  Subar, however, did not possess his offworld acquaintance’s unique perceptiveness. “Why?” he asked her, puzzled. “Think I can’t find an address in the city without help?”

  “No.” Standing close to Flinx, she squinted up at him. Her gaze was open, direct, and unapologetic. “Maybe I’d like to ask your friend a question or two myself.”

  Subar was clearly unhappy with her decision, but not to the point of contesting it. As a consequence, while two had entered the jumble of a building, three left.

  Ashile was like a shield, Flinx found. Well, more like a gauzy veil than a shield. Her intense emotional nature could not completely mask the flood of obnoxious public emotion that ebbed and flowed around him as she and Subar guided him through the maze of public transport, but her apparently indestructible good nature and honest affection for Subar helped to take the edge off the worst of the rage and envy.

  It was at once amusing and sad that she felt it necessary to affect an impression of sardonic toughness. Every time she snapped angrily at Subar, what she felt inside gave her true feelings away. These were concealed from everyone except Flinx and Pip. The same awareness allowed him to pay no heed to her challenging stares and sometimes biting comments. She did not particularly like him, he sensed, but neither was she filled with unconcealed hate. As they rode public transport, her feelings toward Subar’s offworld friend vacillated between curiosity and caution: a sensible response.

  As they crossed through three different districts, Subar spent the bulk of the traveling time ignoring Ashile while trying to convince Flinx to remain longer in Malandere—to no avail. Both youths were visibly uncomfortable on the street that led to Flinx’s hotel. Outside their home district they were out of their element and knew it, Subar’s bravado notwithstanding.

  Since there was no reason for them to come inside, and as Flinx did not extend the offer, Subar was reduced to shaking the offworlder’s hand.

  “Tmorn—thanks again.” Having tried everything he could think of, Subar realized clearly that this was the last he was going to see of a potentially powerful and intriguing new friend. While Flinx leaving later would have been better than sooner, he consoled himself with the knowledge that such a departure had been, realistically, only a matter of time.

  “Stay out of trouble.” Flinx turned toward the entrance. Reading his eyes, the outer security doors parted to admit him. The inner ones would not open until the exterior pair had shut behind the guest. “And stick with her.” Smiling, he nodded in the direction of a startled Ashile. Then he disappeared inside.

  Acutely aware of how far they were from their home district, socially as well as physically, Subar and Ashile turned and started back toward the transport station.

  “What a waste.” Subar was shaking his head regretfully. “You should have seen how he handled Chal and the others! If only I could have cogited a way to keep him around!”

  Ashile glanced back over her shoulder as a neatly dressed couple changed direction to avoid them. Though the woman smiled at Ashile, it was just as well that Flinx was not present to read her true feelings.

  “You’re better off without him, Subar. What did you expect? He’s an offworlder. Did you think you were going to start a new gang with him as your sidekick and bodyguard? You should be glad he took an interest in you at all.” They rounded a corner. “Me, I think you’re better off away from him.”

  Subar edged away from her, deliberately putting emotional as well as actual space between them. Ashile could be such a weight sometimes. “You weren’t there when he downed Chal and Dirran and Behdul. You don’t know anything.”

  She was not intimidated. “I know that he was strange. Nice maybe, but strange.”

  Subar sniffed derisively. “Because he was an offworlder.”

  “No.” Almost as if she expected to see something noncorporeal lingering behind her, she looked sharply back the way they had come. “Something else. You know how sometimes you get the feeling from some people that they’re looking right through you? With this Flinx, I got the impression he was looking right into me.”

  Subar deliberately lengthened his stride, forcing her to hurry to keep up. “And you think he was strange. Hurry up or we’ll have to wait for a pod.”

  They rode back to Alewev in silence, a disappointed Subar staring out the transparent wall of the transport, Ashile alternating between ignoring him and casting concerned sideways glances in his direction. Back at her building, his parting kiss was perfunctory, fleeting, and, worst of all—polite. He was not being deliberately spiteful: it was just that his thoughts were elsewhere.

  Tomorrow, she mused to herself as she watched him leave and head back toward his own building. By tomorrow he would have forgotten all about it. The offworlder would be out of their existence and life would return to normal. She contented herself with that thought as she entered her own complex of cobbled-together, utility-sharing residences.

  Things might have returned to normal had Subar managed to make it back to his chamber cubbyhole within his family’s makeshift habitation. He did not, because events conspired to stand in his way. Events, and euphemistically named “friends.”

  “Tcal, Subar.”

  It was Zezula. Emerging from the deepening shadows to confront him, her luminous eyes were full of amusement and challenge. The effect was somewhat offset by the smoldering stimstick that drooped from the left corner of her mouth. Enhancer smoke curled from the hot tip.

  “Zezu, I—”

  He did not get a chance to say anything more, as Chaloni stepped out from behind her. There was no amusement in his eyes. Subar took a step backward—to stumble right into the hulking, silent mass of Sallow Behdul. Dirran and Missi were there, too. The bandage beneath the slipshod on her injured foot was painfully apparent, though she walked without too much difficulty.

  “How’s your mind-twisting longsong of a friend?” The annoyance in the gang leader’s voice was not concealed.

  Subar didn’t have to look around. There was nowhere to run, and
anyway, they knew where he lived. Brazen it out, he told himself. In the absence of a real weapon, his boldness had always been his best defense.

  “He’s not my friend. Tried to make him think so, though.” When Chaloni didn’t reply, an encouraged Subar stood a little straighter. “Strange liv. Something definitely spine with him. But somehow, I don’t know how, he can make you ‘feel’ things.”

  “Truth there,” agreed Dirran readily, recalling the unsettling emotions that had raced through him back in their priv place.

  Subar jabbed a thumb at his chest. “I was trying to win him over, that’s all. Figured maybe he could be of some use to us.”

  “But you didn’t,” Zezula finished for him.

  The younger boy gestured unashamedly. “He’s offworld. Leaving soon. I tried.”

  Chaloni appeared to ponder the younger boy’s words. Subjected to that stare, Subar did his best to avoid the gang leader’s gaze while maintaining his pose of indifference. If it came to a fight, he knew he’d have no chance against Chal, even if Dirran and Behdul stayed out of it. He’d have to take his beating and live with it.

  It was Zezula who saved him, though unintentionally. “What did happen up there, Chal?”

  Her query immediately put Chaloni on the defensive. More concerned with defending his macho, he abruptly lost interest in teaching Subar a lesson. “It wasn’t nothing much,” he demurred. “The boys and me, we got hit with some kind of attack. This wire-weird longsong, he must have had some kind of wave-form projector in his pocket. It put us down, but we could have fought through it if we’d had to. He ran before we could get at him.” He glared fixedly at Subar. “That’s what happened, wasn’t it?”

  Aware he was being handed an out where none could have been foreseen, the younger boy nodded vigorously as he turned to Zezula. “Chal’s right. The longsong got away before he and Dir and Sal could get themselves together.”

  Zezula looked dubious but, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, found nothing to say. Chaloni’s expression as he regarded Subar anew was far from brotherly, but neither did the gang leader look anymore like he was going to beat the wheat out of his youthful acolyte, either. Subar kept his relief bottled tightly inside him.