Trouble Magnet

  None of them needed to see a sign marking the moment when they crossed into Shangside. One could tell just by looking around. The landscaping blossomed lush, the buildings became fancier, the public facilities were better kept. Ballora Park, where they exited the transport pod, was a shining example of everything Alewev District was not: clean, modern, accommodating, safe.

  At least, it was safe until Subar and his friends arrived.

  Having memorized the instructions and directions Chaloni had given them, they split up into pairs, the better to avoid attention. Not that there was anything illegal about half a dozen young youths from Alewev choosing to take in the delights of the park at sunrise, but any large nonfamily group ran the risk of attracting interest. To Subar’s expected chagrin, Chaloni went off with Zezula while Dirran and Missi made a second couple. That left Subar with a far less attractive partner in the shape of Sallow Behdul. At least, he muttered to himself as the two of them headed south along a public pathway, it would be peaceful until the moment chosen for the assault. Behdul would not talk unless spoken to.

  Even this early, the park was occupied. Runners with slickshoes glided smoothly along paved paths and designated grassy lanes. All were human save for one ambitious Tolian, who compensated for his short legs and stride with boundless energy. Occasionally Subar and Sallow Behdul would break into a jog of their own. It was pure ploy, of course. He and his friends had neither the time nor the interest in running for fun. The whole idea struck Subar as a ludicrous waste of energy. One ran after something or away from someone. There was no other valid reason for the expenditure of energy. As it had been with the first primitive humans, so it was with him and his companions.

  Because of the fog, the morning was humid as well as warm. Another, cooler time of year and no thranx would be outside unprotected, much less engaging in exercise. Summer was about the only season they could tolerate on Visaria. For them the humidity this time of year, Subar supposed as he wiped perspiration from his brow, more than made up for the dry air of fall and winter.

  He took a moment to marvel at the beauties of the park. There was nothing like Ballora in the older, lower-working-class district of Alewev. Here, native vegetation was pruned and manicured. They passed a stand of slehwesht, the narrow bright red trunks glowing even in the fog, each woody stalk proudly sporting a maroon-and-green crown like a bouffant hairdo. Wire bushes had been planted in place of railings, and served the same purpose. Spurts of vapor rose from ponds occupied by air-breathing Visarian water-dwellers, while the occasional call of a multiarmed nalamode echoed from the orange trees.

  Not all the plants were native. It was strange to see Terran macaques cavorting with native nalamodes, but despite their differences in origin and biology, simple simian and slightly more complex ’lamode had developed mutual respect, rarely coming into conflict. The macaques were experts at cropping leaves and fruit from the highest branches while the nalamodes, with their busy multiple limbs, kept the ground cover stirred up, exposing good things to eat on the park floor.

  Not everything that moved through Ballora’s woods was real. Every visitor knew that the occasional tiger or gorilla, Hivehomian sesemp or flutine from Mantis, was nothing more than a clever sim. They were generated to give the park some juice, as well as for purposes of education. While visitors from an earlier age would have fled in panic at the sight of any one of the highly realistic sims, they posed no issues for contemporary visitors. Any child above the age of four could automatically tell a sim from a liv.

  He was forced to wait impatiently while Sallow Behdul ducked into what appeared to be an ancient Visarian colony mound, but was actually an artfully camouflaged hygienic facility. The bigger youth took his time, leaving his companion to svitz nervously outside.

  “Sorry,” an apologetic Behdul mumbled as he emerged.

  “Sky it.” Subar picked up the pace. “Just so long as we’re not late.”

  He was relieved when they found only Chaloni and Zezula waiting at the specified rendezvous point. Chaloni was gazing at the dark shine of the park’s biggest lake, watching the zinc-colored hantrans scampering after one another on the large island that occupied its heavily vegetated center. Having removed her day slippers, Zezula was dangling her feet in the water, letting uoas pick at her toes with their darting, acquisitive tongues. Subar and Sal’s arrival meant that they were still waiting on Dirran and Missi.

  Keeping his distance as he alternated his attention between the water and the sealed walking path behind them, Subar addressed Chaloni without looking in the other youth’s direction.

  “You don’t think Dirran and Miz Mis got spined and vented on us, do you?”

  Chaloni’s expression was rigid. “Look to your right, fool. Under the big bell tree.”

  Subar complied, and was mortified to see that Dirran and Missi were already present. They lay entwined in each other’s arms underneath the solid, transparent dome of the native growth, pretending to be zoffing. Or maybe they weren’t pretending. Regardless, it meant that he and Behdul were, after all, the delays.

  “Sal had to void,” he mumbled. It was a poor pretext for showing up late, and he knew it. Whether it was enough to excuse them Subar never knew, because Chaloni suddenly tensed. Zezula pulled her feet out of the water without having to be told to do so. The six friends were no longer alone by the little cove.

  Emerging from the fog, two idiosyncratic shapes were coming up the pathway toward them. Hundreds of years ago, their size and shape would have spread terror and alarm among any humans who happened to see them. Nowadays their appearance was as familiar to Subar and his companions as that of their own kind.

  Though beginning to shade into the lavender, the senior female’s chitin was still a bright, if clouded, aquamarine. Both sets of vestigial wings had been removed, indicating that she had mated at some time in the past. Her companion was slightly smaller, an intense male blue, and still flaunted both sets of useless if decorative wings. Traveling at either a fast walk or a slow trot, they advanced on all sixes, utilizing their second set of forward limbs as legs. Both truhands were held out in front and bent sharply at the elbow. Even at a distance and through the mist one could see their four sets of breathing spicules pulsing methodically on their flexible b-thoraxes. Red-banded gold-colored compound eyes gazed forward while occasional flicks of feathery antennae sent accumulated moisture flying. They did not, of course, sweat. Not only did they not possess pores; they did not have skin.

  Chaloni was delighted to see that for this morning’s jaunt both wore not only thorax pouches but small backpacks as well. The promise of that much more property to boost was to the gang leader’s senses like spoiled meat to a homeless dog. Giving Zezula a hand up, he nodded at Subar and Sallow Behdul to take up their assigned stations. Having unlocked themselves, Dirran and Missi were already moving out from beneath the bell tree.

  As the young humans split up, the two thranx continued toward them, unaware they were the object of incipient threatening attention. Affecting flippancy, Subar and Behdul wandered into position to the left of the pathway. Hand in hand, Chaloni and Zezula remained by the shore of the lake. As the thranx passed them, Dirran and Missi lengthened their stride as they closed off the route from behind.

  Everything was going perfectly, Subar felt as he and Behdul abruptly changed direction. The two of them closed the gap between themselves and Chaloni and Zezula as Dirran and Missi closed in behind the unaware nonhumans. There was no one else in sight. It was quiet, the fog just starting to lift around them.

  Confronted by the four young humans, the two thranx halted. While the senior female waited, the male advanced. Lifting his foothands off the ground, he held all four forward limbs close in front of him as he raised his upper body. His glistening head now topped out at just over a meter and a half, with the antennae thrusting higher. Fingering the collapsed blade resting in his pant pocket, Subar felt more confident than ever. Even he was taller and heavier than this nascent vi
ctim. His nostrils were suffused with the creature’s natural perfume. Their body odors stimulated by exercise, both thranx smelled like ambulatory bouquets of expensive flowers.

  The male executed a couple of complex hand gestures that meant nothing to the Alewev-wise but galactically unsophisticated youths. It then addressed them in somewhat rough but perfectly comprehensible terranglo.

  “You are blocking the path. Should we around go, or is there some difficulty?”

  Taking a step forward, Chaloni unlimbered his gun. Short, stubby, and fashioned of molded, hardened fibers that were a dull ivory in hue, it looked no less lethal for the shortness of its barrel.

  “You know what this is, bug?”

  The male eyed the gun. At least, Subar thought he eyed it. Given their huge compound eyes, it was difficult to tell sometimes just what a thranx was looking at. “A weapon.”

  “Fires shells that penetrate and then explode.” As his companions drew closer and flashed their own weapons, the gang leader made hand-over motions with his free hand. “Give us your pouches and packs and nobody loses any lenses. Now!”

  The male turned to look at the senior female, who had not spoken. She gestured, he gestured back, she gestured again. Glancing around, Chaloni was not yet nervous—but he was growing impatient.

  “Quick-step! And no more hand-talk!” He gestured with the muzzle of the ominous little pistol. “Dirran—maybe if you gave the lady’s right antenna a quick trim?”

  Nodding, the grim-faced youth stepped forward, brandishing his own blade. It was bigger than Subar’s, an unfolded arc of sharpened, fine-edged fiber.

  “We will give you our possessions,” the male declared hastily. “No violence!”

  “That’s better. Hurry it up!” Chaloni nodded tersely at Zezula, who flicked off the stunbar she was holding, pocketed it, and stepped forward. His movements visibly jumpy, the male was unfastening the fabricine pack from the female’s back. Turning, he dropped it, inclined forward to pick it up, dropped it again. Chaloni grinned at his unease while behind the thranx Dirran nudged Missi and shared a whispered joke. Both enjoyed a laugh at the jittery insectoid’s expense. Finally finding a grip on the female’s pack with a truhand, the male transferred it to a stronger foothand and gave it to the impatiently waiting Zezula.

  Right in the face.

  CHAPTER

  4

  The unknown contents of the female thranx’s backpack must have included some sturdy gear, because the impact smashed the startled girl’s nose. Blood sprayed. At the same time, the female sprang straight at the startled Chaloni. He got off one shot before his weapon was knocked from his hand. Missing badly, the tiny shell struck the ground right in front of Missi. She let out a scream of pain as shards of shattered pathway pavement were driven through her left shoe and into her foot. Forgetting their purpose, Dirran instinctively went to her aid. A dark stain, not large but unmissable, was spreading along the top and left side of the girl’s footgear. As a result of their combined action, the two thranx had instantly taken half of their attackers out of the fight.

  With one hand feeling of her broken nose and blood trickling down her face, Zezula spat redness from her mouth as she fumbled to aim her stunner. Meanwhile the male thranx had fingered a device attached to his thorax pouch. To Subar’s horror, he saw a tiny but bright yellow light spring to life on the instrument. He would have bet every thousand-bar of the cred he didn’t have that the visitor had activated some kind of alarm or communicator. A signal had gone out and it was too late to do anything about it. He and his friends had just been deprived of the luxury of time.

  Also of initiative, as the male threw himself at Zezula. She massed more than he did, but the size disparity was a good deal less than that which existed between Chaloni and the female who was clawing at him with all four of her four-fingered hands. As the girl struggled to thumb the stunner she was holding and ward off the thranx with the other, the visitor lashed out in frantic defense. A striking truhand would never have caused Zezula to lose her grip. She might even have been able to hold on to the weapon if hit by a foothand. But four hard-shelled limbs all connecting concurrently with her right forearm stunned nerve and muscle. The backstreet weapon went flying.

  Recovering from the surprise of the counterattack, a curse-spewing Chaloni had grabbed the female thranx around the neck with both hands, lifted her off the ground, and was squeezing hard. It didn’t matter that the rigid chitin did not collapse beneath his strong grip, because the air that passed through her throat was utilized for speaking purposes only. An experienced fighter would have yanked off his shirt and tried to wrap it around her thorax, covering her breathing spicules and smothering her. Never having fought a thranx before, the gang leader instinctively fell back on techniques that had been successful in battling other humans. In contrast with his ferocious but improvised efforts, the female was mature—and experienced.

  While Chaloni held her suspended, she kicked out with all four feet, striking the gang leader square in the solar plexus. His eyes bugged—an apt simile under the circumstances—the air whooshed out of him, and he let go of her, clutching at his middle. Gathering herself, she jumped again, landing hard on top of him, this time with six feet. Though he was heavier and stronger, having to contend with eight thrashing, stabbing, kicking limbs while lying on his back and trying to catch his breath found Chaloni in more trouble than he would have believed possible.

  All this occurred in barely a minute. By that time, Sallow Behdul and Subar had recovered enough from the initial shock to throw themselves into the fight. Rushing to Chaloni’s aid, Behdul wrapped both long arms around the female thranx’s abdomen and strained to pull her off. Holding on to the prone, scratched, and battered gang leader with truhands, foothands, and her front pair of feet, the female kicked backward with the rear pair. She wasn’t strong enough to dislodge Behdul’s grip, but her wild kicks to his middle and more vulnerable lower regions prevented him from concentrating fully on freeing his mentor.

  Meanwhile Subar had gone to Zezula’s aid. Seeing that Behdul was having little luck pulling Chaloni’s attacker off him, the younger boy chose to stand off to one side and throw kicks at Zezula’s assailant. He also struck out with his blade. Several slashes that would have opened the ribs of any human, however, only scratched the thranx’s chitin before sliding off.

  His repeated kicks had more effect. Slamming one foothand into Zezula’s already injured face, the male stepped off away from her and turned his full attention onto Subar. Possessing nothing in the way of flexible flesh, the meter-and-a-half high insectoid’s face was inherently expressionless. Light flashed from the lenses of his golden, red-banded compound eyes. His four opposing mandibles were spewing forth a steady stream of modulated angry clicks. Unintelligible alien words mixed with whistles of varying pitch and intensity. Doubtless, Subar thought as he crouched and sought an opening for his knife, the visitor was cursing him out in his own language. He would have countered with some colorful phrases of his own, but he was too busy and needed to conserve his wind.

  The thranx, on the other hand, seemed to have air to spare. His thorax expanded and contracted as steadily and evenly as a gleaming metallic-blue bellows. Two truhands and two foothands wove patterns in the air in front of him, their combined sixteen digits alternately extending and flexing. Whether these represented words, phrases, or obscene gestures Subar did not know. Four trufeet kept the creature stable and well-balanced. As they confronted each other, it struck Subar that despite being smaller and less muscular, a thranx represented a formidable opponent.

  There was something that might help, if only he could recall what it was. As his adversary took a wary step backward, Subar remembered. Charging, he jabbed forward with his knife, aiming for the joint between thorax and b-thorax. All four forward limbs came up to block the deadly thrust.

  It was a feint, designed to let Subar slip in beneath the visitor’s defenses. But he didn’t try to stab a second time. Inste
ad, wrapping both arms tightly around the thranx’s lower thorax where it joined to the abdomen, he dug in with his feet and pushed. His knife fell from his fingers as his opponent kicked at it with a hind leg. Subar let it go, having realized that he was not going to penetrate his adversary’s gleaming chitin with anything less than a vibrablade anyway.

  Locked together, they stumbled off the path and onto the neatly trimmed russet-hued ground cover. Helped by the slope of the land, Subar continued to use his weight to lean into his opponent and force him backward. All four of the thranx’s hands were striking at him now, the more delicate truhands jabbing at his eyes (he turned his head), the stronger foothands stabbing stiff, hard-shelled fingers into his midsection (he tightened his stomach muscles).

  The repeated blows were having an effect, and it was likely that the thranx would soon have dropped him with more of the same. Except something that lay in the direction they were staggering and stumbling caused the thranx to panic.

  The lake.

  Having their air intakes located on a part of their body instead of on their faces as humans did made all but the most daring thranx extremely uncomfortable around water. The fact that their respiratory systems did not include disproportionately oversized internal air bladders akin to human lungs caused them tend to sink instead of float. Together, these two physical traits inculcated in nearly every thranx a very rational fear of drowning. If he could just force his adversary into the lake, Subar knew, the thranx would abandon any pretext at self-defense in his frantic need to get free. He had no intention of drowning the visitor. The objective had been to rob the visiting pair, not kill them. Preoccupied and even outright corrupt authorities who might be inclined to ignore a simple, straightforward boost tended to become very involved when a crime escalated to murder. Especially if representatives of another, visiting species were involved.