Might as well see what had the two of them so churned up inside, he told himself resignedly. It wasn’t as if his already too-long sojourn on Visaria was otherwise inundating him with admirable examples of his own species. Dealing with whatever was firing the emotions of his unexpected visitors would no doubt only take up a few minutes of his time, and he had planned to leave Malandere and return to the Teacher in another day or two anyway.
He could not see the expression on Subar’s face when he acknowledged the youth’s arrival, nor hear him breathe “He’s still here!” to Ashile. But he could sense the relief in the boy’s feelings.
That the situation was serious and not simply a ploy intended to let Subar gain access to him again was made plain by the haste with which the youth and his lady friend practically dashed into the outer room of Flinx’s suite.
“Thank you.” Subar collapsed into the nearest chair, which was hard-pressed to orthopedically accommodate so swift a collapse. “Thank you, thank you, many tvarin times over.” A more self-controlled Ashile lowered herself decorously onto the arm of the single chair. She let her right arm slip around behind Subar but, Flinx noted, made no contact with him.
Someone else did, however. Spreading her vibrantly colored wings, Pip rose from her resting place on the other side of the room and hummed over to land on the girl’s lap. She started slightly, but held her seat. Timidly, she reached down with her left hand and began stroking the flying snake behind the scaly head. Sensing his pet’s complete ease with the girl, Flinx permitted himself to relax a little more.
Subar was not relaxed, however. His emotions were a roiling, conflicted storm. Anxiety, fear, expectation, hope, desperation, panic: all were present, tumbling and folding over and through one another like batter in a bowl.
His tone bordering on irritation, Flinx wasted no time on casual banter. “I told you I had work to do. This better be important.”
“I…” Now that he actually found himself in the older youth’s presence, it struck Subar with sudden force that he had made no preparations for this moment. He had been completely consumed with just finding Flinx again. Now that he had done so he was unsure how to begin. One thing he felt he needed to do if he was going to secure the offworlder’s aid was to minimize as much as possible his own responsibility for the current difficult circumstances.
Ashile, on the other hand, had no such qualms. While Subar was deciding what to say and how best to say it, she jumped right in.
“Subar’s gotten himself in a right tconic mess. He and his ‘friends’ scrimmed a storage facility run by local illegals. They got founded out. Two of them got deaded.” She eyed Subar. “With extreme invention, apparently.”
“Chaloni,” he mumbled, “and Dirran. You met them.”
Flinx remembered. “Go on,” he responded guardedly. There was no duplicity in Subar’s confession.
Ashile continued when Subar could not. “Three of his other friends were taken. Two girls and one other guy.” She looked down at the young man slumped in the chair. “Subar insists on trying to rescue them. Why, I don’t know. They’ve never done anything for him that I can see. But I can’t talk him out of it. Being his real friend, I agreed to accompany him this far. At least.” She looked up at Flinx. “He seems to think you might be able to do something. I don’t see why he should involve you—”
A shocked Subar looked up at her. “Ash!”
“—since you’re just a visitor here. But you helped him once before, and he believes you might help him again. All I can tell you is that if I were you, I wouldn’t get involved.” She looked down at the youth in the chair. “He told me in too much detail what these people did to Chaloni and Dirran. I don’t know what your profession is, Mr. Flinx, but I’m sure you’ve never been involved in anything like this.”
Flinx nearly choked on the acrid laugh he managed to suppress. “Uh, no, I’m sure you’re right, Ashile. Like I told Subar, I’m only a student, and this—this kind of conflict is all pretty new to me.”
She eyed him evenly, without embarrassment. “You’re one of those professional students who just keeps studying and never graduates as anything, right?” she said accusingly.
He had to look away lest she see his expression. “Something like that. Actually, I am working toward graduating in the near future. It’s a goal I hope I can achieve. Unlike some, failure is not an option for me.”
Her initial scorn turned to sympathy. “Can’t disappoint your parents, huh?” In her lap, Pip squirmed uncomfortably.
Flinx carefully pondered a response before finally replying, “Actually, the entire Commonwealth is depending on me, though its inhabitants don’t know it.”
She stared at him for a moment, then made a face. “I was just asking. You don’t have to get sarcastic about it.”
“Will you help?” Subar had had enough of this courteous byplay. They were wasting time. He thought of what her captors might be doing to Zezula. And to Missi and Sallow Behdul, too, of course. “I can’t take this to the authorities.”
“Because you and your friends invited this reprisal by committing an illicit act yourselves,” Flinx commented.
“It’s not only that,” Subar told him. “This is Malandere. This is Visaria. It’s not Earth, it’s not Hivehom. The line between those who enforce the law and those who break it isn’t so clear-cut here. I could turn myself in to the authorities for protection and wind up in the same sludge pit as if I’d been carried off by the people who’ve taken Zezula and Missi and Sallow Behdul.”
Flinx leaned back into the lounge that cradled him, sighed, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Aside from the question of whether I’d help you or not, what makes you think that I could do anything if I did?”
On firmer ground now, Subar sat up straight and leaned forward. “You rescued me from the two thranx and the police. I saw what you did to Chaloni and the others when we were up in our priv place. You can do—things. I don’t know how, but I know that you can. The more I’m around you, the more I get the feeling that you’re not just an ordinary visitor. You might be a ‘student’ like you say—but a student of what I’d sure like to know.” He repeated what he had said before, with as much emphasis as he could muster. “Will you help?”
Boredom. Boredom and curiosity. Separately they had sometimes gotten him in trouble. Together, they invariably did.
“All right,” he told the youth. “I’ll see if I can do anything. Though exactly what, I have no idea.”
“Thank you,” Subar replied simply. His voice was even, controlled. But the feelings he was holding in still threatened to overwhelm him.
What he did not know, and what the tall offworlder seated opposite refrained from telling him, was that Flinx had agreed to lend his assistance not to aid Subar, but because Ashile’s love for him was as transparent and pure and unqualified as it was unspoken, and was exactly the kind of empathetic humanity Flinx had despaired of finding in a place like Malandere.
One thing that escapes the attention of law-abiding citizens on any human-settled planet is that gossip infects the underworld as thoroughly as it does their own. The criminal substructure has its own Shell, through which rumor, innuendo, and news is filtered separate and apart from the tridee media that informs society at large. For those who wish to do so, accessing this flow of illicit information is no more difficult that wading into a river of sewage. The quandary is that the consequences are often the same.
Though Subar’s street contacts tended to be younger than the average professional lawbreaker, they were in many ways no less competent. It took him only a couple of days to find out who was holding his friends. This because the word had been disseminated that the unpleasant people in question were still looking for one more thief—him. Anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts was offered a Shell connection to contact, with a substantial reward promised for information leading to his eventual capture. Knowing who held his friends, however, did not automatically suggest a means of lib
erating them.
“We need guns,” Subar was muttering as he and Ashile strode down the busy street alongside Flinx. “And maybe explosives. Blow the entrance and sneak Zez and the others out the back.” He coughed. Combined with the thick, particulate-laden air of the city, tension was causing his breathing to come in short, anxious puffs.
“No,” Flinx told him quietly. “No guns. No explosives.” He did not explain that the one thing he personally had to avoid at all costs was the drawing of attention to himself and to his presence on Visaria. The liberation of Subar’s friends had to be done quietly, or not at all. He already knew what he intended to do. Otherwise, he would not now be walking in their company.
Ignorant of his new friend’s need to maintain complete anonymity, a baffled Subar piped up, “Then how are we going to get inside?” Ashile’s expression, as well as her feelings, showed that she shared his confusion.
Looking down at them, Flinx smiled reassuringly. “We’ll knock.” He proceeded to detail the approach he had worked out. As he did so, Ashile wondered yet again why she hadn’t possessed enough sense to stay out of this completely.
“That’s the most sethet thing I’ve ever heard.” She was staring at him. “Who do you think you are? What do you think you are? Besides insane, I mean.”
“He’s not.” Unlike his friend, Subar was grinning broadly. Flinx’s strategy made sense. All it demanded was boldness, daring, and a willingness to place his life completely in the taller youth’s hands. “Wait, and you’ll see.” The near worshipful expression on his face as he looked back up at the offworlder, she noted, was exactly the same as the one he used to bestow on the deceased Chaloni. To her, it was not a good sign.
Flinx went over the final details of the tactics he had concocted as they rode public transport to the address specified by Subar’s contact. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was located in the same industrial zone as the storage facility Subar and his friends had boosted, though in another building some distance away. While still confident in the capabilities of his offworld friend, it was Subar’s nature to have second thoughts.
“What if the information I got is outdated, and Zezula and the others are no longer being held in the same place where you’re supposed to sell me?”
Ashile glared at him. “Now’s a fine time to think of that!”
Having anticipated the possibility, Flinx was not put off by the question. “Then we’ll just have to leave, and try to find another way to locate them. But I think the odds are pretty good. They’ve already viewed your ‘captured’ image via their own link. Knowing nothing about me, they’ve no reason to suspect I intend anything other than delivering you, as per agreement.”
Ashile refused to let the concern go. “If they don’t know you, why should they trust you?”
Flinx smiled at her. “It’s been my experience that people of this type believe that money trumps every other concern. Once we’re there and they ‘have’ Subar, it’s a possibility that they might decide to renege on their part of the deal and not pay me, to save the cred if they think they can get away with it. That’s the only kind of fight they’ll be prepared for. It doesn’t matter, because I’m not looking for pay and we’re all going to leave together.” He turned to Subar. “With your friends, if they’re there. That much I’ll be able to tell as soon as we’re near the building, before we even have to announce ourselves, much less go in.”
Genuine puzzlement fueled her response. “How are you going to do that?”
“Just trust me. I’ll be able to tell.” Given how frightened Subar’s friends must be, if they were still inside he shouldn’t have any trouble picking up their fear from outside the structure, no matter what kind of security it had in place.
Ashile was looking at him strangely now. Flinx did not have to read her emotions to know what she was thinking. She was wondering just what his undeclared capabilities might be. He offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile, and said nothing.
After disembarking from the transport, it was half an hour’s walk to the address they had been given. From outside the featureless, windowless structure, Flinx quickly perceived that Subar’s friends were indeed being held within. He did not have to strain his abilities to verify their presence. The interior of the building reeked with adolescent fear. He then proceeded to remind his younger companions one last time that whatever ensued once they were inside, they needed to stick to the scenario he had laid out for them. Working carefully, he secured their wrists behind their backs. When that was done they made their way to the entrance. It was located off a wide serviceway fronting the rear of the structure, away from the main street.
Having agreed previously upon a delivery time, those inside and in charge were expecting him. Security at the building was tight and seemed to impress Subar and Ashile. To Flinx, who had at times successfully penetrated the security surrounding powerful companies as well as the Terran Shell itself, the measures in place were proficient but hardly awe inspiring. Insofar as he could tell, they were each and every one of them designed to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering the building. Nothing he saw suggested that any measures were in place to prevent someone inside from getting out.
He felt confident, ready to gamble that everything he had carefully worked out with Subar and Ashile would go exactly according to plan.
Detecting their approach, an inner door at the end of a dirty, undistinguished hallway opened to admit them. A very large blond man stood there. Coupled with the physical description of the individuals he had glimpsed inside the pod’s priv place that he had supplied earlier, Subar’s emotional response was all that was necessary for Flinx to identify the man. Broad and muscular, he was the one who had been in charge of the team responsible for the death of the youth’s friends and the abduction of the survivors.
For his part, the blond’s attention shifted speedily from Flinx to the downcast bound youngster standing in front of him. The big man did not smile. “Yeal, that’s him, the one we put out the word on. The last one. The slippery little feeker who gave us the slip on the rooftop.” His tone suggested that Subar was already dead. The man’s awareness then shifted curiously to the equally tightly bound Ashile standing dejectedly nearby. “Who’s the prebreed?”
“Friend of his.” Having spent time in the company of cold-blooded killers, merchants, emomen, and aliens, Flinx could mimic their posture and tone with little effort. “Was with the scrug when I picked him up. Got hysterical, so I thought I might as well twofold the package.” He looked away, eyeing a nude image crawling up a nearby wall, indicating that Ashile’s fate mattered not a whit to him one way or the other. “Won’t charge you for two. Could have done her there and been done with it, but thought maybe you could use her. You know, to help convince him to yammer.” He shrugged indifferently. “Or whatever. I like to leave a scene clean.”
“Good forethink.” Corsk grinned unpleasantly as he took a step back. “Hall scanners opt you clean. Not even a knife. Young, but smart.”
Flinx acknowledged the compliment with a slight nod and gave the arm-bound Subar a shove, sending him stumbling forward. Eyes on the floor, Ashile followed meekly. She did not have to feign the fear she was feeling. What if the offworld “friend” to whom Subar was trusting their lives had simply been playing a game with them and had all along intended to sell them to these terrible people? If so, it was far, far too late to do anything about it.
“I ain’t stupid,” Flinx growled. “Know you wouldn’t let me inside armed. Counting on you common-sensing that it’s better for your long-term rep to straight me the reward you verted via the Shell than it would be for you to cheap it out.”
“Still something of a gamble on your part,” Corsk relished pointing out, “coming here alone like this, with the goods in tow.” He clapped a friendly hand on Flinx’s back. Beneath the younger man’s shirt, something stirred in response to the impact. Corsk noticed it, of course, but since security had declared the tall visitor free of any
weaponry, he merely filed the observation for future query.
This deep into the building, the emotive stink of pain and fear was ubiquitous. Subar’s friends must be very near, Flinx knew. Perhaps as close as the back room into which the big man was now leading them.
Flinx jerked a thumb in Subar’s direction. “You said something about this piece of crola being ‘the last one.’ I heard about the breakin. So you got the others, then? Too bad if so. Means no more opportunity for me to garner some more cred.”
“Sorry.” Corsk grinned at him, senior pro to the younger. “Yeal, we’ve got them all. Now. A couple already demised, a few still alive. They’ll stay so, along with this new one, until the master is satisfied he has the answers to all his questions.” The big man’s gaze met Flinx’s hard. “Nothing you need to concern yourself about.”
“Neal,” Flinx replied understandingly. “All I want is the cred boost due me.”
Corsk nodded, glanced back over his shoulder, and raised his voice. “Arad, ladies—all’s stret. You can come in.”
Opposing sections of wall slid silently aside. One alcove released a pair of hulking yet well-dressed women. Each held a sonic rifle nearly as tall as Subar. The other—the other revealed an alien with whom Flinx was unfamiliar. Tall, long-armed, high-eared, it stepped out of its recess and in one easy, continuous, flowing motion lowered the pistol it had been brandishing. Flinx had detected them all even before he had entered the room, but the surprise on Subar’s and Ashile’s faces was palpable. He was pleased that he had been able to perceive the alien’s feelings, confusing and jumbled as they were. With a nonhuman, he could never be sure. Had the creature’s emotions been closed to him, it would have thrown the entire plan into disarray.
Moving to a cabinet, one of the giantesses unsealed a drawer and took out a credmitter whose guts had been selectively and illegally modified. Corsk nodded at Flinx.
“You’ve delivered. Now it’s our turn. Gail?”