Impossible Places

  The heavy-duty paper sack was not hidden. There was no reason to hide it. He kept it near the back of the workshop, propped up between some salvaged one-by-six planks and splattered cans of paint. It was almost three-quarters full, containing between eight and nine pounds of Moon rock in the form of tiny, inconspicuous, patiently smuggled shards, taken one or two at a time from the preparation lab at the Cape. Pounds! To this hoard he would now add the two chips riding uncomfortably in his shoe.

  Like escorting fighters leaving a slow-moving carrier, the cats peeled off to inspect a possible mouse hole. Henry started to reach down to remove his right shoe, feeling the shards shift against the sole of his foot. His eyes flicked in the direction of the bag—whereupon he paused, still half bent over, and stared. Stared without moving.

  The bag was not there.

  He did not have to pinch himself. His wakefulness was an unequivocal, crushing, inescapable reality. The bag was gone.

  Frantically, he searched the immediate area, then started on the rest of the workshop, making no more noise than was necessary. Curious, newcomer Ari helped him look, without having a cat clue as to what her master was so desperately hunting. Her presence brought him no luck. The sack, the fruit of ten years’ careful brigandage, was missing. It was not leaning up against the cans of old paint; it had not risen up on unsuspected pseudopodia and walked to the other side of the workroom; it was not there.

  Stunned beyond measure, he sat down heavily in the capacious old easy chair Billie had bought for him six years ago at a garage sale in Daytona Beach. His heart was racing as he strove to calm himself. Think! Goddamn it. Who could have known about what he had been doing? Who might have observed him on his regular visits to the laboratory rest room?

  That was it! No fools worked in the lab. Someone had seen and taken note of his surreptitious activities, had figured out what he was doing, and had decided to bide their time, letting him do the dangerous work of thievery only to steal from him in their turn. His lips compressed tightly together, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. They wouldn’t get away with it. He had friends, he did. Knew people not involved in the space program, unsavory folk who had helped him with his grand design. One of his lab colleagues was going to be receiving a visit from the bearers of serious trouble. All he had to do was figure out who it was.

  If he didn’t recover the sack, that someone might be him, he knew. His “friends” were expecting a delivery of thousands of tiny fragments of Moon, had been preparing to receive it for some years now. If he did not produce it, they might very likely be inclined to express their disappointment in violently antisocial ways Henry chose not to try to envision.

  A bit bewildered by the uncharacteristic intensity he displayed at the dinner table, Billie avowed as how she could not remember anyone from the lab visiting since yesterday. Yes, she had been out shopping for a few hours this morning, but why should that be occasion for comment? What was the matter? His face was so red and—

  Wordlessly, he pushed back from the table and fled from her concern. A careful check of the driveway produced no clues. No skid marks left behind by tires in a hurry to leave, no telltale fragments of left-behind evidence. He went across the street, then up and down it, querying neighbors. Had they seen anyone parked at his house this morning? Had any trucks made deliveries to the neighborhood? Most critically, had they seen anyone walking in the vicinity of his home carrying a large, nondescript, reinforced paper sack?

  Eyeing him askance, his neighbors replied regularly and depressingly in the negative. Disconsolate but not yet broken, he returned home and somehow forced himself to engage in halfway normal inconsequential chatter with his wife while they ate dessert. That night, the usual evening of television and conversation was pure hell. Despite his exhaustion, he did not sleep at all.

  It had to be someone at work, someone at the lab. Realizing that he could expose them, his contacts would not have taken the cache. Why should they risk that anyway, when there was plenty of looming profit to be had by all? No neighbor would enter his workshop without him present, even if Billie would have been willing to let them in. Thieving kids would have taken glue or chemicals, while addicts looking to support their habit would have stolen tools. No, it was unarguable: No one would bother to steal a sack of splintered rock who was not cognizant of its true nature.

  The next day he confronted one colleague after another, meeting their eyes and searching their faces, trying to single out the individual who had appropriated his birthright. Whoever it was did not crack. Darapa he suspected immediately. The man was too clever by half, too smart for his own good, and a foreigner besides. Noticing his stares, the smaller man turned away uneasily. Yes, it could well be Darapa, Henry thought. Or possibly Glenna, hiding behind her spotlessly clean suit and thick glasses, striving to maintain an air of mousy insignificance. It did not matter who it was. He would find them out, and then he would contact his new friends, and someone would get hurt. He took perverse pleasure in the anticipation.

  Nearly a week passed, however, without him arriving at a conviction. He knew time was running out. He would have to do something quickly. Having been assured of and promised delivery of the merchandise by a certain date, his “friends” would be busy trying to deal with a long list of increasingly anxious and very important clients. They would be growing uneasy. So was Henry. They were not the sort of people he wanted to keep waiting.

  Just before dinner, it struck him. His own mind-set was the source of the trouble. Having engaged for so long in illegal activity, he had automatically assumed that his loss must be due to the same. All week he had been tearing himself apart and unnerving his fellow workers for no reason.

  It was Billie. It had to be. For reasons unknown she had moved the bag. She never bothered anything in his workshop, hardly ever went in there, in fact. But such a scenario was not unprecedented. Once, she had decided to reseal the back deck, and had helped herself to the big can of spar varnish he kept in the back. Another time, he recalled her borrowing a screwdriver when the one she kept in her kitchen work drawer proved too big and bulky for the task at hand.

  No reason to panic, he told himself. Even if she had used some of the fine “gravel” to line the bottom of a pot for a new houseplant or something, it would still be available for recovery. And if, for some horrid reason, it was not, surely she would not have used all of it for some such purpose without his permission.

  She was standing by the sink scrubbing a skillet when he came out of the workshop, smiling as warmly as badly jangled nerves would allow him.

  “Hon, there was a sack of small rocks, really small rocks, in the workroom. Back by where I keep the paint and some of the lumber. By any chance, have you seen it?”

  Glancing back at him without stopping work, she looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled. “Oh, that?” She nodded, and the terrible tension that had gripped his gut for days at last began to subside. “Sure, I found it.”

  He swallowed hard but kept smiling. “Where did you put it, hon?”

  Her expression fell. “Oh, did you need it? I’m sorry, Hank. I didn’t think it was anything important. What was it for—making cement or something?”

  “No,” he told her, more tightly than he intended. “It was not for making cement. What did you do with it?”

  “Threw it out. About a week ago.” She was openly apologetic. “I’m really sorry. Whatever it was for, I’ll buy you a new bag.”

  His legs started to go, and he just did make it to one of the kitchen chairs. “You . . . threw it out.” His tone was hollow, echoing inside his head. It sounded very much like the voice of a dead man. Which he would be when his business partners came looking for their promised merchandise. Unless—he raced to the Cape and confessed everything to Security, and had himself remanded to protective custody.

  No, wait! There was still a chance, a possibility. Maybe she had “thrown it out” outside the house, in the yard. Even if the birds had been at it, even after sh
e had watered down the grass and plants, he still might be able to recover the bulk of the priceless, irreplaceable lunar material.

  “Where . . . is it now?” He was amazed at how calm he was, how steady his voice and comprehensible his words. “What the he—what on Earth did you use it for?” On “Earth,” he thought. How droll. How very amusing. In his mind’s eye he saw his disappointed friends removing his appendages, one by one, without anesthetic. Not starting with his fingers. Or maybe just a quick, clean, free flight out over the Atlantic—only watch that first step. His blood chilled.

  “I’m really sorry, Hank.” Despite his strenuous attempts to hide his feelings, she could sense how upset he was. “I didn’t have any choice. I mean, we were all out, that was the day my car was being worked on, and the box was really stinking. I remembered seeing that bag the last time I was in the shop and I thought it would work. I’ll replace it, I promise. Please don’t be angry with me.” Her nose wrinkled up. “Believe me, if you had been stuck in the house with that smell, you would have done the same thing.”

  “Sure I would,” he mumbled, utterly distraught. Blinking, he looked up. “Smell? What smell?”

  “You know.” Her pleasant, matronly smile returned. “I was right about the stuff in the sack, anyway. It worked just fine.” Relieved, she returned to her dirty dishes.

  Ohmigod, he thought. Ohmigod, ohmigod. This past week, when he had been searching frantically, had been interrogating his neighbors, had been trying to stare down suspected coworkers, it had been in the house all the time. Right under his nose, so to speak. Hysteria built within him, and he fought to keep from being overwhelmed by it. A dozen times, a hundred, he had walked right past his precious stolen lunar hoard without suspecting, without thinking, perhaps even glancing in its direction. Never realizing. Smelling, but never realizing.

  Billie put the now gleaming, freshly scoured skillet in the dish drainer and started on the dirty forks and knives. “I can tell you that the cats were crazy for it. Acted like it was the best stuff they’d ever used. Naturally, when they were finished with it, I had to throw it out.” Once again, for the last time, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “What would anyone want with used kitty litter?”

  SIDESHOW

  A Flinx and Pip story

  Many years ago, Judy-Lynn del Rey edited a sequence of original novelettes in a series called Stellar. When she asked me for a Flinx & Pip story to include, I was at something of a loss as to what to do, never having utilized the characters in anything shorter than a novel. The result, “Snake Eyes,” was a lot of fun.

  Time passes, and Chris Schluep at Del Rey Books asks for another F&P short to include in this anthology. Once again I’m caught wondering what might be appropriate, and fun, when it occurs to me that even the heroes of long-running series need a vacation once in a while. Flinx not having been home in a long time (insofar as he has a home), I thought it was time he paid a visit to his old empathizing grounds.

  Of course, this being Flinx, even a vacation back home couldn’t possibly turn out to be as peaceful and relaxing as he would hope it to be.

  You never know what you’ll see on a side street in Drallar.

  From time to time, Flinx felt the pull of the only home he’d ever known. So, in the course of his wanderings, he would return now and again to the winged planet of Moth, and to the simple dwelling still occupied by the irascible old woman he, and everyone else, called Mother Mastiff.

  It was good to roam the backstreets and alleys of the hodgepodge of a city, taking in sights both new and familiar; inhaling the amalgamating aromas of a hundred worlds; observing the free-floating, arguing, laughing, chattering farrago of humans, thranx, and other citizens of the Commonwealth. Here he had no responsibilities. Here his only concern was relaxation. Here he could mix freely without constantly having to look over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. Here he could—

  Without warning, Pip, his Alaspinian minidrag, promptly uncoiled herself from his shoulder, launched herself into the fragrant, damp air, and took off down a minor side avenue crammed with vendors and street merchants. Fortunately, he reflected bemusedly as he took off after her, she flew high enough to avoid precipitating a panic. Among those strollers and vendors who did see her, few were knowledgeable enough to identify her and recognize her lethal capabilities.

  She landed on a diffusion grating the size of a dinner plate that projected from the crest of a three-story building. As soon as he slowed, staring up at her, she launched herself into the air and glided back down to settle once more on his shoulder, her petite but powerful coils securing herself to him.

  “Now, what was that all about?” he murmured soothingly to her. “What set you off? I’ll bet it was a smell, wasn’t it? Some kind of exotic food full of especially attractive trace minerals?” The only problem with this theory was that the nearest food stall lay two blocks distant. No vendors of unusual victuals were open nearby.

  What was close at hand was a performance by one of Drallar’s innumerable, alien, untaxed, and probably illegal street performers. The human was short, florid of face, glistening of scalp, and thick of arm, leg, and middle. His black sideburns fronted his ears and threatened to overwhelm his jawline. His trained subordinate was decidedly nonhuman, not quite as tall, considerably slimmer, and clad in an elegant coat of soft white fur marked with bright blue stripes and splotches. Its eyes were elongated and yellow, with dark blue vertical pupils. Dressed in short pants and matching vest of garish green and gold silk, with flower-studded beret and oversized necktie for emphasis, the alien was performing a simple yet lively dance routine to the accompaniment of music that poured from its master’s quinube player. Almost lost among the fur and silks was the control band, no thicker than a piece of string, that fit tightly around its neck.

  Watching the performance, Flinx let his peculiar talent expand to encompass the appreciative crowd, not all of whom were human. The expected emotions were all there: amusement, low-grade wonder, expectation, curiosity. With growing maturity, he had developed the ability to focus his abilities on selected individuals. Probing the musician-master, he sensed approval and contentment, but also an underlying, simmering anger.

  Well, the personal emotional problems of the player-owner were no more his concern or responsibility than were those of the hundreds of intelligent beings whose feelings he had sampled since awakening in Mother Mastiff’s home early this morning. After watching the performance for another couple of minutes, mildly admiring the owner’s skill with the quinube and his creature’s agile, three-toed feet, he turned to leave.

  Immediately, Pip rose from his shoulder and hovered. Spectators who had ignored the minidrag’s colorful presence on Flinx’s shoulder now found themselves drawn to the deep-throated whirring of the flying snake’s wings. More instinctively wary than educated about the minidrag’s potential, a few moved aside to give her more air space in which to hover.

  “Now what?” An irritated Flinx extended his left arm. When he moved toward her, the obstinate flying snake continued to refuse the proffered perch. “I don’t have time for this, Pip!” Actually, he had nothing but time. Not that his assertion mattered, since the minidrag comprehended only his emotions, not his words.

  He eventually raised the level of the former to the point where she finally settled, albeit with evident reluctance, onto his forearm. As soon as she had curled herself securely around it, he began stroking her. When she tried to rise again into the air, he held her firmly in place, his right hand keeping her membranous wings collapsed firmly against the sides of her body. Anyone else presuming to physically restrain the minidrag’s movements would have have found themselves with maybe a minute to live, a victim of Pip’s incredibly toxic and corrosive venom. Despite her obvious desire to spread her pleated wings again, she would no more harm Flinx than she would one of her own offspring. While she continued to twist and wriggle in an attempt to get free of his grasp, she did not bite, or worse.

  T
hey were nearly back to Mother Mastiff’s place before she finally relaxed enough to where he felt safe in removing his restraining fingers. Instead of attempting to fly off, she slithered up his arm to curl comfortably around his neck, as if nothing unusual had happened. Shaking his head as he tried to figure out what had gotten into her, he entered the humble dwelling.

  It was far less humble within. His travels and adventures had allowed Flinx, during a previous visit to Drallar, to cause the home to be furnished far more lavishly than it appeared from outside. Given a choice, he would have moved Mother Mastiff to another, better section of the city entirely. Upon listening to his proposal, the old woman’s reaction had been wholly in keeping with her peppery, independent self.

  “And what be a ‘better’ section of the city, boy? Fancier streets—with no character? Bigger houses—that ain’t homes? Folks with money—and no soul? No thankee. I’ll stay here, and happily so, where I’ve stayed all these many years.” Wizened eyes that could still see clearly had met his own without wavering. “Was once good enough for you, boy, when I bought you. But—” She hesitated. “—I could use a new cooker.”

  He’d bought that for her, and much else. Tucked in between two larger, newer structures, her home now boasted the latest in household conveniences, as well as a self-adjusting, transparent privacy ceiling through which she could admire the stars and the sweep of part of Moth’s famous broken rings.

  She wasn’t at home when he arrived. Though it was growing late, he didn’t worry about her. A small smile curved his lips. Old she might be, but he pitied anyone who accosted her on the streets. Expecting an easy mark, they would find themselves confronted with an explosive bundle of experience and harsh words—not to mention a lightweight but lethal assortment of concealed weaponry. Mother Mastiff had not survived the mean streets of Drallar for so long by wandering about unprepared to deal with whatever they might happen to throw her way.