A hand touched her left shoulder and slid downward. She had sensed its proximity an instant before any actual contact was made but had chosen not to react as she normally would in such a situation. This was not a major city on a developed world, and the last thing she wanted was to draw any unwanted attention to herself. Her travel documentation identified her as a scout for one of the major trading houses, come to Largess to search out biologicals for possible development and exploitation, and she did not want to do anything that might call that identity into question.
Breaking the supply master’s neck was the sort of reaction that might provoke such questions.
So she turned, fully aware that he had her pinned between the wall and his incommodious bulk. The difference in their physiques was such that anyone entering through the single doorway would have seen only his back and not noticed her at all.
“Why so standoffish, Chela? I’m selling you everything you need at a discount. I’m not asking much in return. We don’t get many visitors here as pretty as you. In fact, we don’t get any visitors here as pretty as you. I’ve saved you a lot of money. I don’t think a little kiss and cuddle are too much to ask in return.”
“You haven’t saved me any money.” She spoke calmly, quietly. Without rancor, without raising her voice. “My company pays for everything.”
He hesitated. “Well then, how about I take you to dinner? Not the central commissary. There are a couple of independent eating places here that cater to station personnel as well as visitors. I could use a change.” He smiled broadly. She analyzed. He had nice teeth. They looked natural and not regenerated.
“I can provide a change,” she murmured.
The smile widened. “That’s more like it. Did you have anything, um, particular in mind? If not, I can suggest a few things.”
Raising her right hand, she slid what appeared to be a small multitool up between their faces. Its dull gray finish was broken only by a pair of minuscule glowing red lights.
“This is a point-specific delayed-reaction thermolistic projector,” she told him tranquilly. “With it I can start a fire at a distance, or so treat combustible materials that they will ignite at a predetermined time, or set a meal to cook for whenever I’m ready to eat. It programs the necessary molecular action in advance, and through a wide variety of intervening barriers. Food packaging, for example.”
He shook his head as he frowned at the small, slim device. “Never seen one before.”
She nodded once. “It’s a fairly recent technological development. You’ll note that during our preceding conversation, my hand was in my pocket. I was holding this. I assure you it’s quite capable of boiling your testicles without damaging your scrotum.”
As he stumbled backward, she moved away from the wall. The intrusive hand that had slid downward from her shoulder fell away as she gathered the gear she had purchased and made her way toward the entrance. A glance behind her just before she turned the first corner showed the supply master with his pants down around his ankles as he frantically examined himself. A very slight smile creased her pixieish face.
Who was it who said that the Qwarm had no sense of humor?
—
It wasn’t rain and it wasn’t fog. Heavy rain Flinx knew well from his sojourn on Midworld. This was different. Yes, there were periodic showers, but nothing like the tropical downpours of other worlds. When the sun did show itself, it was with a wan reluctance, as if it were putting in an appearance out of boredom, not to warm the world but to remind it that it did indeed still exist.
How Wiegl found his way northward through the alternating maze of dark forest, dense scrub, cold swamp, and turgid water Flinx did not know. Certainly having the high vantage point provided by the brund helped to find a route where at ground level none existed. As for the brund themselves, he was growing unexpectedly fond of his own mount. It having been delivered with no name, he had decided to call it Effsix. On a world where words were sung, a high note seemed appropriate for a high mount.
Secured to the inner portion of his saddle basket, his walking tube glistened with droplets that slid slowly down its silver side. Occasionally, a bright green head would pop out and take a quick survey of their surroundings before retreating back within. While the atmospheric moisture was to Pip’s liking, the temperature was cooler than she preferred.
That did not prevent her from taking wing at least once every afternoon, when the languid sun had warmed the moist air enough to encourage her emergence. While there were flying creatures on Largess, they tended to be gliders more than fliers, leaping and soaring from one tall growth to another. Fringed membranes took the place of feathers, while bodies were narrow and long, the better to shed moisture while in flight. None of them could keep up with the hummingbird-like aerial acrobatics of the minidrag as Pip dipped and darted with equal alacrity around fliers large and small. When a creature the size of a condor armed with a curving, spike-tipped mouth struck at her, she did not even bother to strike back, so easy was it for her to dodge the clumsy attack.
There were plainly many reasons why Wiegl had chosen to employ brund for their travel. To be sure, their height and ridiculously long legs allowed for long-range vision forward, and their great stride permitted them to cross streams and ponds without so much as wetting their unique four-toed feet. But their primary advantage revealed itself the first time an inlet of one of Largess’s many shallow seas blocked the way forward.
As the two brund stood awaiting a command, many of which Flinx had by now learned and could sing himself, he found himself staring out of the saddle wrappings into mist and fog that merged with slate-gray water. Save for almost-transparent five-centimeter-long perleiths that tiptoed on their dozen legs across the surface tension, searching for surface-swimming prey to impale with their downward-facing lancets, nothing disturbed the surface of the rocky cove. The water stretched as far to east and west as Flinx could see. It was much too wide for the brund to step across.
“Let us go, forward as usual, without wasting time, contemplating the scenery.” Wiegl turned away from Flinx and prepared to engage his mount.
“Wait a minute.” Flinx coughed, appropriately rephrased his query. “A moment pause, as the water is wide, the water is cold, and I do not see, a place in this water for even sturdy brund footing.”
His wariness was confounded by the guide’s melodious barking: Larian laughter. “The footing is there, though you do not see it, as sound as any, we have encountered already. Sounder even, than some we have traipsed through.” With that he sang a single traditional modulated phrase. At the command, his mount obediently started forward.
Should he follow? Flinx wondered. Was his guide being reckless? Precedent suggested that was unlikely. Wiegl might be many things, including some as yet undiscovered, but he was nothing if not prudent. Echoing his command in a voice that was deeper, alien, but perfectly comprehensible, Flinx braced himself against leather belts, straps, and coarse fur as his own brund followed in the wake of Wiegl’s. The tall quadruped immediately sank into the water.
But only halfway up its tall, jointed legs. As they continued to ford the passage, the inlet grew deeper. Deep enough for the increasingly pungent salt smell to bring a curious Pip out of her insulated tube to see what was happening, and almost deep enough for Flinx to feel the cold water against his backside through the leather netting that comprised his saddle. But even as he prepared to lift himself up, the water beneath him grew shallower and the chill engendered by its proximity to his butt fell away.
Emerging from the cove, both brund paused. Raising one leg at a time while balancing on the other three, they shook water from their five-meter-long limbs. Splayed four-toed feet rose to scratch at long legs, and then they were off again, pushing through or over the purplish scrub on the new bank. The deep wading, which the brund accomplished with ease, was a process that was to be repeated without incident several times over the next few days.
—
“Paid for in full, without too much haggling, did the pale offworlder, to my pleasure.”
Voh stood outside the corral listening to the owner sing of his success. Unless the lands outside Borusegahm Leeth had suddenly become infested with solitary humans, she was on the right track. The fact that she was days behind her quarry did not trouble her. She would shrink the distance between them at her leisure.
That she was not traveling in the company of a local meant she would have to spend some time learning how to master a brund. A quick learner with ample experience of native transport on other worlds, she was confident she could do so. It only meant postponing the inevitable reckoning, not abandoning it. Meanwhile, she would tolerate the smell of the marketplace as she laid in additional supplies. Though she did not expect the chase to be a long way, she had no intention of racing off into the local hinterlands unprepared. Those who did so had no future in her organization.
Those who did so usually had no future, period.
—
Something equally as predatory but far larger and more dangerous than water-skimming perleiths roused Wiegl from his sleep.
Weary from the day’s run and snug within his sleeping gear, Flinx would have slept on if not for the awakening flick of Pip’s tongue and the anxious fanning of her wings against his face. Blinking as he sat up, he saw that Wiegl had emerged from his own sleep sack. Standing and facing the surrounding forest, with its slender-boled trees and thick brush and thornbushes, the guide was nervously surveying the darkness beyond the fire he had built earlier. Secured to trees off to his right, both brund were swaying uneasily from side to side, their heads turning from one direction to the next. In the absence of a flexible neck, they had to twist their entire bodies in order to see in a different direction.
In addition to his other, more esoteric abilities, Flinx had always been able to wake up quickly. That was a talent he had developed at an early age, occasionally having to sleep in the streets of Drallar. As soon as her master was alert, Pip folded her wings and slithered up onto his shoulder. That she did not return to the walking tube was significant. It suggested that there was something out in the darkness that likely presented a threat.
Letting his talent roam, he found it—in multiples. The emotions he perceived were primitive, voracious, and emphatically unintelligent.
Wiegl confirmed what Flinx was sensing. “Certain I am not yet, but leery I am, of rustling sounds in the deep brush, of scents familiar that I wish were otherwise.” Taken together, sound and smell were enough to unsettle the guide.
“Chary I am of remaining here, in a place where noises and stinking grow worse, and their source fails to reveal itself. Late I know it is, and sleep is as necessary to my kind as to yours, for all we may differ in other ways.” Turning, he started to fold up his own sleeping gear. “That said, move from this spot I think we should, and in as much haste as we can manage, without falling over ourselves.”
Whereas on some other worlds Flinx would never have thought to leave an open fire burning, on Largess the small crackling blaze could cause no damage if it happened to reach for any of the surrounding moisture-drenched vegetation. Only a native tool, Wiegl’s hand-dryer, had allowed them to make a fire in the first place. Now man and Larian hastily prepared to abandon their smoldering handiwork and comfortable campsite.
They were almost finished and ready to go when a hellacious whining the likes of which Flinx had never heard before rose from the surrounding forest. It and the primordial passions he now sensed caused the fine hair on the back of his neck to stand. Hissing explosively, Pip shot like a shell off his shoulder and into the night sky.
Exhibiting rising signs of panic, both squatting brund were fighting against their bonds as they struggled to straighten and stand. Dispensing with time-consuming straps and tie-downs, a frantic Wiegl was throwing supplies into the right-side saddle basket of his own mount, which had been modified to hold gear instead of a passenger. A concerned Flinx did his best to mimic the actions of his guide, his height compensating for the Larian’s greater energy. Meanwhile Pip could be heard circling overhead, a hissing nebula of pink and blue blotting out small circles of stars.
Then the first grynach showed itself in the light of Largess’s larger moon, and Flinx understood Wiegl’s haste.
It wasn’t a true howl that issued from the creature’s long, narrow throat so much as a drawn-out, lingering moan. The reverberant, low-pitched whimper arose from somewhere deep within rapacious alien plumbing. Some four meters long, the flexible snakelike body advanced on a dozen clawed, webbed feet. These moved not in unison but in a singular flowing motion starting with the front pair of limbs, resulting in locomotion that resembled a centipede’s more than that of a vertebrate animal. The snout itself was half a meter long and packed with triangular teeth that flashed in the moonlight: a full kitchen complement of slicing and dicing. Instead of hinged, bony jaws, the mouth more closely resembled a tooth-lined tube. Studying the remarkable maw, Flinx couldn’t tell if the grynach bit into its prey or simply rasped it to death.
They had no visible eyes. Insofar as Flinx could tell, albeit with difficulty in the near darkness, they were as sightless as earthworms.
The grynach did not vacillate between moments of placidity and anger, indifference and carnivorous fury. When conscious, they existed in a state of permanent hunger. While their diurnal resting hours were uncomplicated by emotional discrepancies, as soon as they awoke beneath the twin moons they entered into a condition of unbridled aggression.
Pip, being as emotionally sensitive as her master but dwelling in a more primal state of being, had been able to sense and distinguish those finer aspects of grynachian feeling that Flinx had initially missed.
As he climbed hurriedly into the saddle basket of his own brund, he wondered how many more of the creatures had surrounded the campsite. The near-howling he was hearing did not arise from a single attenuated, constricted gullet. His answer soon revealed itself in the glow of the abandoned fire as the first predator’s companions began to show themselves. He’d worried there might be several.
There were dozens.
As he echo-sang the commands he had learned in the course of the previous days’ journeying, his mount straightened its long, long legs. It needed no urging to start forward on the literal heels of Wiegl’s animal. Fleshy pink buzzsaws, grynach mouths contracted from plate-size to smaller openings as they snapped at the fleeing brund and their riders. Like the oars of ancient wooden galleys, short claw-tipped legs thrashed madly at the moist air as the creatures whipped around to pursue.
Had they been ambushed during the day, the two riders and their mounts might easily have avoided and outrun the many-legged but slower pack. In the middle of the night, however, Wiegl had to guide them onward with greater caution lest they stumble into impenetrable vegetation, or worse, trip over fallen trees or unseen rocks. An erect, healthy brund was difficult for any Largessian predator to bring down. One taken to ground, however, would struggle to get up. The grynach pack knew this as well as the brund themselves and the Larian who was directing them.
Even while allowing for extra caution in choosing a path forward, Flinx and Wiegl still managed to outdistance the majority of the whining, moaning multitude. A few of the writhing killers, unwilling to be deprived of such towering prey, had managed to use both their clawed legs and flexible bodies to coil themselves around the hind legs of the long-striding brund. Their circular mouths gnawed harmlessly at the elongated, hard-shelled legs. Given enough time, though, they might eventually crack and disable one or more of the hind limbs they were assailing. A brund could still walk on only three legs, but not well. It definitely could not run.
Disdaining to simply cripple its prey, one attacker had swarmed up the left hind leg of Flinx’s mount, ascending the limb like a snake. As stars wheeled wildly over his head while the brund’s jerking, thrusting gallop threatened to send him flying out of his saddle, Flinx drew the Secun vibraknife fr
om its concealed scabbard inside his belt and switched it on. Classed as low technology, it resembled its local bladed analogs near enough to permit its use in an emergency. While he would have preferred even the simplest Commonwealth-grade pistol, he prepared to defend himself with what he had against the ascending predator. In the absence of visible eyes to strike at, he was having a hard time trying to pinpoint a vulnerable area.
A flash of pink-and-blue wings, a low thrumming, and Pip appeared between him and the advancing tooth-lined mouth. Likewise accustomed to striking at the eyes of prey or enemy, she hesitated. Only when the grynach had climbed high enough for Flinx to feel the crispy staleness of its breath on his own skin did she finally spit. At the same time, he slashed out and downward with the activated vibraknife. Its steady, powered hum offered reassurance in the dim moonlight. His awkward strike failed to make contact as the tooth-lined snout drew back. Pip, on the other hand, did not miss.
With no eyes to aim at, her venom struck the grynach on the dorsal portion of its head. For all Flinx knew, it was fighting in an upside-down position and its light-sensing organs, assuming it had any, were located on the opposite side from where the minidrag had struck. While no vital organs might have been hit, however, the potent venom still inflicted plenty of damage. Being corrosive as well as toxic, it immediately began to eat into the smooth, hairless flesh of the grynach’s head.
Pairs of gripping legs began to give away one after another, rippling down between the predator and the brund’s leg like an oversized zipper. Flailing at the air, the grynach fell away from Flinx, his mount, and the long hard-sided limb it had ascended. Falling to the ground, the carnivore rolled and contorted in pain as smoke continued to rise from the dissolving flesh of its head.
Clinging to the broad foot of the same brund, a second grynach started climbing upward, following the path of its mortally wounded predecessor. Gripping the vibraknife tightly, Flinx prepared to meet this second killer as a hissing Pip hovered above his right shoulder.