“Foremost are the NaTl-Seekers, uv which the sociels of Tleremot are but one small component. NaTl-Seekers believe in showing respect for the established order while simultaneously far-seeking. That is why we are happy being a part uv the Commonwealth. We keep ur traditions while adopting that which is nu and useful.”
Flinx nodded. “And the others?” A hand waved in the direction of the silent battlefield. “Those?”
“Adherents uv the GrTl-Keepers. They believe that by engaging fully in the Commonwealth we risk losing ur heritage, that we will become something that is no longer tru tu the Tlel self.”
“I see. Maybe that’s why they didn’t hesitate to attack me. As a human, I present the face of the Commonwealth they consider invasive.”
“Not at all.” Her correction was as swift as it was unexpected. “There are humans whu support the GrTl-Keepers. Some settlers are allied with them, others with the NaTl-Seekers.” Her gaze was fixed on him. “Yu were attacked not because yu are human, but because they assumed since yu were traveling with us that yu are a NaTl-Seeker.”
“I’m just a visitor,” he protested. “I don’t favor either argument. I’m not an ally of either side.”
She pointed to a body lying nearby, its fur stained red. “The GrTl-Keepers did not know that.” She started to turn away, then paused. “We du not hate the GrTl-Keepers. We just find them and their philosophy deathly passive. They’re misguided, not evil. But they would withdraw frum the Commonwealth if they could. Undu all the progress that has been made, renounce all the marvels that have been brought tu Silvoun, forsake all the scientific and technological advances membership in the Commonwealth has brought us. The GrTl-Keepers du not want tu go backward so much as they wish tu freeze time.”
“So you fight.” On his shoulder, Pip regarded the Tlel thoughtfully. “And employ whatever marvels and wonders and advances you can lay your hands on to murder one another. I have to say that when I first arrived here, Vlashraa, I was inclined to think better of your kind.”
She stared at him. Her expression, such as it was, meant nothing at all to him—but her emotions were roiling.
“I am sorry if we disappoint yu, Flinx. I have studied something uv other sentient species, including yur own. At least we fight over ideas, and not fur dirt, or meaningless property.”
He sighed tiredly. “It’s just that I was hoping, that I’m always hoping, to find something better.”
She indicated understanding. “Yu would make a gud NaTl-Seeker.”
A sudden thought made him ask, “What does the Commonwealth representative on Gestalt think of your internecine warfare?”
She had turned away from him. Now she looked back. “Though both greater sociels vie fur Commonwealth favor, the representative refuses tu take the side uv the NaTl-Seekers over the GrTl-Keepers. As a supporter uv the more progressive sociel, this is something I and my friends cannot understand.”
It’s called politics, Flinx thought as he turned and headed back in the direction of Zlezelrenn’s gaitgo. While his view of the Tlel had changed, and not for the better, his opinion of at least one unnamed and as yet unencountered Commonwealth functionary had risen considerably. The local bureaucrat sounded like someone who, if contacted, could undoubtedly help him in his ongoing search.
Unfortunately, as had all too often been the case throughout his life, those best positioned to aid him were the very people he had to take care to avoid.
CHAPTER 11
Halvorsen restrained himself. Another talent he had developed over the years. While suffering impatience waiting to receive payment from a client was perfectly understandable, he knew from experience that it would do no good to rush such people. He’d worked hard to build a reputation not only as an independent contractor who could be relied upon to perform a job in an efficient and unobtrusive manner, but also as one who would not tiresomely dun a patron for payment. Usually there was no need to do so. Those who failed to pay up invariably found that in the absence of the payment of timely and agreed-upon compensation, Halvorsen’s reputation would sooner or later be followed by Halvorsen himself, with predictably dire results for the tardy.
Of course, on those rare occasions when a client was situated offworld, implied threats carried correspondingly less weight. Only once had he been forced to travel to another system in order to collect on an overdue payment. The mayhem he had delivered on that occasion remained as a clear warning to any others who might entertain thoughts of trying to stiff the contractor from Gestalt.
Anticipating no problems with his most recent contract, he was therefore surprised to find waiting for him when he returned home that evening a terse coded communication from the individual representing the so-called Order of Null. Conveyed via space-minus to the core receiver at Tlossene and thence through the planetary Shell to his home subox, it arrived in lieu of the anticipated fiscal deposit. If not to boiling, the unexpected substitution at least raised his emotions to simmer.
Easy, he told himself. Sometimes critical information, such as a single key for unlocking and facilitating a monetary transfer, could arrive encrypted in such communiqués. But no matter how many times he ran the message through his personalized, advanced decoding system, no such propitious revelation proved forthcoming. If funds were being sent to him, the means for accessing them was not provided in the newly received message.
Fuming in his seat, his temper held preternaturally in check, he settled down to read the words that had been sent to him in lieu of money.
The half-meter-high, fully dimensionalized avatar that appeared above his scuffed, well-worn desk was that of an attractive middle-aged woman. Her attitude, however, was as cold as the domesticated photons of which she was spun. She wasn’t hostile, Halvorsen decided as he listened to her. Just distant. At least she did not equivocate.
“The information provided together with the imaging included in your last communication have been thoroughly examined and analyzed,” the lambent avatar declaimed, “and have been found wanting.” The fingers of Halvorsen’s gnarled right hand slowly clenched into a fist, tight enough so that the knuckles began to turn white. He stared at the hovering, orating image, listening intently.
“It is clear from the evidence that you have succeeded in seriously damaging a nondescript transport skimmer somewhere in the wilds of the world known as Gestalt. Beyond that, nothing conclusive is established. The nature of any passengers on board the assaulted craft in question cannot be ascertained even from an enhancement of the image-by-image breakdown of the recording you supplied. Your assertion that the individual of mutual interest was aboard this particular vehicle and perished with it cannot be proven. Your word, while it has been found to carry weight in certain circles, is insufficient to justify disbursement of the amount of credit under discussion.”
Halvorsen very badly wanted to place his hands around the neck of the woman who was dismissing him in such cool, dispassionate terms. His grasping fingers would only pass through the avatar, of course, and would have no effect on the actual speaker, who had stood for the recording on a world distant in truspace and time. That was the trouble with dealing with clients over interstellar distances: swindlers and their ilk were immune from something as straightforward as a kick to the kidneys. He could only sit and listen and take it—a posture he found worse than infuriating.
The avatar was not finished. “You will doubtless argue,” she continued, “that given the damage inflicted by you on the craft in question and the rugged, uncivilized terrain where it presumably went down, no one could have survived the inevitable crash. You further state that for reasons unknown to you but suspected by us, the individual of mutual interest who rented the transport caused its integrated tracker to be removed prior to his departure from the nearest town. This more than anything else, more than the rental documentation and visuals you have provided, leads us to believe that the individual of interest to us all was indeed on board the skimmer you attacked.”
Hearing this grudging assessment somewhat muted Halvorsen’s distress. At least they weren’t dismissing his claim utterly. Leaning forward in his seat, he waited for the avatar to conclude.
“While we are not willing to transfer the specified funds on the basis of the limited information you have thus far provided,” the female projection went on, “we have agreed to initiate the necessary preliminaries. On receiving satisfactory proof of the demise of the individual in question, monetary disbursement in full will transpire without delay.” Shifting her position, she momentarily must have stepped out of range of the recorder. As a result, the subsequent message was somewhat disconcertingly delivered by only half a woman.
“You must understand,” the semi-figure declared earnestly, “that we hold this individual to be capable of certain exceptional feats of the mind. The one opportunity we had to kill him ourselves, we failed. The experience that resulted from that encounter was most enlightening, however. It is this enlightenment, of which you are unaware, that leads us to exercise caution in light of your claim to have accomplished the requisite task. This person is not one to expire easily.”
What kind of proof will satisfy you? Halvorsen found himself muttering silently. The question was anticipated.
Shifting her stance again, the woman was once more visible in full figure. “No transfer of credit will be initiated by us without incontrovertible physical proof of the death of the subject under discussion. In addition to unmanipulated visual confirmation, a DNA analysis from an established autolab is required. Until such documentation is provided, I and my colleagues must reject your request for payment. This is a more serious matter than you can imagine, Mr. Halvorsen. Substantiation must be incontestable. We look forward with great interest to your next communication.”
The avatar vanished as the message ended, leaving Halvorsen’s desk once more empty and bare above the concealed projector. He sat staring at it in silence for several moments. Capable of certain exceptional feats of the mind, the woman had said. What did that mean? What did it imply? Thinking back to the confrontation, he remembered the still-baffling mental collapse he had suffered. It had been severe enough to cause his skimmer to automatically break off the clash and return home. How to explain what had happened? How to explain the inexplicable? By a feat of the mind? Or perhaps something equally subtle but far more reasonable had been involved. Maybe he had been hit with some kind of undetected gas projectile that had affected his skimmer’s internal environment.
He was in no mood to waste time trying to diagnose incomprehensible absurdities. Attempting to make any sense out of the female avatar’s outlandish warning was making his head hurt. Any effort at analytical thought found itself drowned by his escalating anger. Rising from the chair, he cursed, turned, picked up the piece of furniture, and heaved it against the far partition. It bounced once off the floor before slamming into the barrier. Molded of liquid composites, the chair did not break. It did, however, leave a sizable dent in the less robust wall.
How did they expect him to come up with that kind of information? he fumed as he donned outdoor gear and stalked down the stairs. Hadn’t he shown them the damage that had been done to the quarry’s skimmer? Were they blind? Didn’t they look at the recording that had accompanied his message? If the target hadn’t been killed outright, he surely would have died in the inevitable crash. And if he hadn’t perished immediately, the icy and inhospitable mountains of northern Gestalt would surely have finished him by now.
As a matter of course, the ever-cautious Halvorsen had monitored every transport report and transmission subsequent to his limping return to Tlossene. Plentiful cargo and numerous passengers had come in and gone out of the city since then, but neither a communication nor a manifest had contained mention of anyone matching his quarry’s description. It was unlikely a gypsy transporter would have misdescribed a young redheaded offworlder nearly two meters tall.
No, the intended victim was “intended” no more. He was dead, finished, properly deceased, somewhere up in the northland. How did his clients expect him to provide further proof of that? He did not know where the fatally wounded skimmer had gone down. It might have stuttered along for a considerable distance, in any direction, before finally coming down among the trees. Absent its intentionally removed tracker, there was no way to find it. Even if he somehow managed to do so, any bodies not carbonized in the consequent wreckage would by now have been dismembered and consumed by wandering, foraging fauna. The ever-hungry and grimly efficient scavengers of Gestalt would leave not even bones, ingesting them down to the last knuckle in order to obtain their marrow and calcium.
Safe on their far-distant, civilized world, these naïve Nullites wanted proof he could not supply. How was he supposed to obtain DNA from a nonexistent corpse—let alone images of a dead body sufficiently clear to provide indisputable visual evidence? Downstairs, he waited impatiently for the temperature to equalize in the building’s semi-lock exit. Storming out into a light snowfall, he headed straight for Tlick’s Tlounge. The occasional Tlel he encountered paid no attention to the stocky, purposeful human in their midst, but those humans who saw him coming and noticed his expression made it a point to cross the street, temporarily change direction, and avoid eye contact at all costs.
Tlick’s Tlounge had no class. Certainly far less than those establishments that catered to the city’s elite, its healthy middle class, or visiting travelers. It did, however, make available honest rations of often illegal stimulants without judgment or comment. It also welcomed nonhumans including Tlel, a fact that on more than one occasion had almost induced him to switch to another dive. Instead, he continued to direct his patronage to Tlick’s because its prices and portions were peerless. As was ever the case with Halvorsen, money invariably trumped principles.
Feats of mind indeed. They were stringing him, these cold, colorless Null folk. Using every trick and elusion they could think of to avoid paying him his rightful due. Satisfying their request had caused his skimmer to suffer serious, expensive damage. How was he going to pay for that now, when the credit transfer he had expected and had been counting on was being unjustly withheld? Carrying out the contract had nearly cost him his life. Didn’t that count for something? Did they really believe he was so stupid and incompetent that he would put his life on the line and nearly get himself killed hunting down the wrong man, or failing to do a proper job of it?
It was an unfair universe indeed, and Halvorsen hated it with a passion few could equal.
The interior of Tlick’s Tlounge was dark and warm, two qualities much prized by Tlossene’s human inhabitants. Though a great deal of what institutions such as Tlick’s provided was available for enjoying within one’s own dwelling, since the beginning of human civilization people had congregated in places where they could also indulge in the company of their own kind. This gregariousness was shared by many other sentients. While some sought out establishments that catered solely to their own kind, others were generalists who chose to patronize a specific business on the basis of ambience, price, and offerings rather than species exclusivity.
So it was that Halvorsen found himself having to compete with non-Gestaltians for a place in the crowded circular main room. Ingrained xenophobia combined with recent infuriating circumstances to raise his blood pressure. Most of those nonhumans present he merely disliked. Hatred was a stronger emotion he reserved for the native Tlel. There were no thranx among the crowd. Thranx he liked. Thranx and humans. Bugs and apes. All the rest, he thought, could head for the giant black hole at the center of the galaxy and take the fatal final protophysical plunge. He wouldn’t miss a one of them.
How could the eponymous Tlick allow natives inside? Bad enough one had to encounter them on the street, but at least outside one could avoid the bulk of their stench. In an enclosed, heated establishment such as Tlick’s their stink was inescapable.
The bar that was his intended destination might well have been recognizable to a human visitor f
rom several thousand years ago, but sight of the automatons working behind it would have sent them fleeing in fear. His order arrived in chilled glass that had been formed in the shape of a pyramid. As red-orange lights danced within its transparent substance, he sucked liquid through a pressure-activated siphon and stared moodily at the crowd.
He didn’t really hear the music that was being played or the soundscapes that accompanied it. Music, he felt, merely filled up synapses more profitably occupied dealing with problems. The noise added to his anger and did nothing to lighten his mood.
He drained the pyramid and had it refilled, drained it again. The potent blend of alcohol, locally manufactured deinhibitors, and imported stimulants soon had him feeling better. Much better. When the automaton that was filling his orders suggested he take a break and accompany it with a shot of moderator, he waved it off. So what if the crazies who had refused to pay up wanted more proof? He would find it or, failing that, he would find a way to fake it. If he, Norin Halvorsen, couldn’t get the money due him out of a bunch of fish-faced, stiff-spined, otherworldly cranks, then he might as well pack it all in and start a small specialty store. Norin Halvorsen, shopkeeper.
Not likely, he growled softly to himself. Dead first.
What bothered him was that someone else was already dead first, and he was not receiving credit for it. The gangly youth he had pursued was properly demised. Halvorsen was sure of it. It was only a matter of returning to the scene of the confrontation and collecting the necessary corroboration. A smidgen of DNA, that was all that was needed. Surely the scavengers had left that much. After paying for his pleasure, he started for the pulsating portal that marked the distant doorway.