Coerlis frowned. “You okay, Aimee? Any of the poison get under your shield?”
“N-No,” she muttered. “Jack-Jax, I—I’m not doing so good. Maybe you should have someone else do this.”
“If the poison didn’t penetrate the shield then there’s nothing wrong. Everyone else is busy. Get on with it.”
“R-R-Right. Feeling a little better now.”
She continued to work the sack forward along the wood until the flying snake was trapped against a fold of netting. A quick shove, a twist, and Pip was caught up in the bag. The minidrag thrashed about furiously, but the uncommon weave was immune to the effects of the normally corrosive venom. The confident engineer straightened and secured the sack with a flexible slip tie.
“Got it!”
Coerlis removed his helmet and face shield. In the heat and humidity the military headgear couldn’t be tolerated for long, but it had more than served its intended purpose. His companions did likewise, stowing the collapsible helmets in appropriate belt pouches.
As Coerlis was packing his away he noticed Flinx watching him. “Special lenses. After what happened on Samstead you didn’t think I’d come all this way without making suitable preparations, did you?” When Flinx didn’t respond he glanced over at his engineer. “Aimee, are we all secure?”
“In a minute.” She carefully slid the sack containing the minidrag into another, heavier bag. “All set.”
As if everything that had happened already wasn’t enough, a dull pounding had started at the back of Flinx’s head.
“You can’t take her. We’ve been together since I was a child!”
Coerlis was singularly unimpressed. “Then I’d say it was time to grow up. Besides, in a little while it won’t matter to you anyway.” Even though he feared only the flying snake, he kept the muzzle of his weapon pointed at Flinx’s chest.
“You can’t kill me. There’s something I have to do. It’s important to everyone. Me, you, the entire Commonwealth.”
“There’s nothing you can have to do that’s important to anyone,” the cocksure Coerlis corrected him. “Not anymore. All that matters now is what’s important to me.”
Flinx didn’t try to argue. How could he explain the substance of his dreaming to someone like Jack-Jax Coerlis? For that matter, how could he explain it to anyone?
“All right. Let’s get it over with.” He started down the branch.
“What’s your hurry?” A hint of a smile cracked Coerlis’s expression. “Did you think I’d forgotten that you’re not alone?”
Flinx’s stare was so intense the disconcerted Coerlis found himself looking away without knowing why. “You said you wouldn’t harm them. Why not just let the boy go and leave it at that?”
“When I’m ready.” The merchant moved to the edge of the branch and leaned out. Flinx tensed. “You down there! Come on up, now.”
Flinx could only look on helplessly as first Kiss and then Teal climbed up to join him. Their captor studied them dispassionately.
“You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?” Coerlis’s eyes started with Teal’s hair and worked their way downward. “Except that you’ve got feet like a chimp.” Flinx’s lips tightened, but Teal didn’t react. Knowing nothing of chimps or their physiological peculiarities, she wasn’t insulted. Come to think of it, Flinx decided, if she had known, she might have been flattered by the comparison.
“You’ve seen them. Now let them go. Please.” Flinx nodded toward Dwell.
Ignoring him as if he was already dead, Coerlis walked a slow circle around Teal and Kiss. “Very pretty. There shouldn’t be natives here. Aimee?”
The engineer could only shrug. “According to the charts, there shouldn’t be a planet here. So why not natives as well?” She blinked and shook her head sharply, as if something small, superfast, and loud had abruptly buzzed her ears.
“Quite a world, this is.” Standing on the edge of the branch, the merchant gazed at the spectacular vista presented by the sunken valley in the trees. “Rife with commercial prospects, if a little on the nasty side. Unlimited quantity of exotic wood products, boundless pharmaceutical potential, the pet trade, who knows what else? Take a fully equipped expedition just to begin basic cataloging.”
Teal leaned toward Flinx. “What is the unpleasant skyperson talking about?”
“He’s the type of individual who’s not happy just being in the world. He has to possess it.”
She frowned. “No one can possess the world. It belongs to everyone, just as everyone belongs to it.”
“Some skypersons think otherwise.”
“Try to possess the world and it will kill you,” she deposed knowingly.
Coerlis overheard. “It’s sure killed some of us.” The way he said it made him sound as if he was referring to a couple of pieces of especially valuable office equipment. “But I’m still here, along with a few of my friends, and we’ve learned the hard lessons. From now on it’s we who’ll do the possessing.” He put a finger under Teal’s chin. “Knowing, however, that the overconfident tend to die young, I’m going to rely on you to lead the way back. We’ll choose the route and you can show us what to avoid.”
“Then when we reach the landing site you’ll let them go?” It took a tremendous effort of will on Flinx’s part to keep from jumping Coerlis as the merchant continued to finger Teal. She remained motionless, ignoring the attention stoically.
Captor glanced back at his quarry. “Why not? I don’t kill for fun, you know. I have to have a good reason.” He nodded at Dwell. “I don’t want him. Or her,” he added, glancing down at where Kiss stood clinging wide-eyed to her mother’s leg.
“Why should I bother with them? As the discoverer, or rediscoverer, of this world, I’m entitled to first exploitation rights as soon as it’s been appropriately registered and classified.”
“Who’re you trying to fool?” Flinx retorted evenly. “You know as well as I that if anyone has rights here, it’s these people. Their claim supersedes yours by an order of magnitude.”
Having already reached his daily limit, Coerlis didn’t smile again. “There are always ways and means of dealing with such awkwardness. A word in the right hearing organ, a financial contribution with the decimal point in the right place, both can work wonders with the bureaucracy. With a whole new planet to develop, I’m not concerned. I don’t have to control it all.” His eyes glittered.
“That gives me an idea. I might just take the woman and kids back with me. It’s their lost birthright, and the anthropologists would be fascinated.”
“You can’t take them off this world. Their lives are too tightly entwined with their surroundings.”
“So now you’re an anthropologist, too.” Coerlis was enjoying himself. “So many talents in such an unprepossessing body!”
You have no idea, Flinx thought coldly, wishing one particular talent would reassert itself.
“I’m sure the children would find the interior of a starship fascinating. As for the mother,” he leered objectionably at Teal, “I’m sure we can find all manner of ways to keep her entertained. Dazzle her with the products of modern Commonwealth technology, for instance. As demonstrated by myself.”
“Your charm’s certain to overwhelm her,” Flinx concurred sardonically.
“To be sure. I’m really a very nice person, when I’m getting my way.”
Flinx felt the pressure continue to build at the back of his skull. If the situation didn’t improve, something was likely to happen. What that might be, he didn’t know himself. His singular talents had saved him before, first on Moth and later on Longtunnel. Each salvation had come at a cost. Part of that cost was lack of control. He’d much prefer to resolve the present situation without losing that control, but he didn’t have the vaguest notion how to begin.
Patience, he told himself. Coerlis had said nothing about killing him outright. If he persisted he might still convince the young merchant to let Teal and the children go. Then if he lost co
ntrol, he’d be responsible only for whatever happened to himself. It was a long ways back to the barren mountaintop and the shuttles.
Also, there was Pip’s fate to consider. It was the first time he’d ever seen the minidrag reduced to helplessness. Better to know exactly where he stood before he tried anything.
“What about me?”
Coerlis replied pretty much as expected. “Oh, you won’t be going back. I’m not sure whether to kill you right here or just leave you. I like the idea of abandoning you to the local life forms. Their killing methods are much more inventive than anything I could come up with. But if I do that, some other happy tribesfolk might find you and keep you alive. I don’t like the idea of you being around, even in pelt and loincloth, to welcome the first survey expedition. They would want to ask you questions.” He looked thoughtful.
“I’ve given some thought to cutting one or both of your Achilles tendons. Unable to walk or climb, I don’t think you’d last very long here.”
“We’re not going with you.”
Flinx threw Teal a warning look, but she was defiant.
“You’ll never make it back to your ‘shuttle.’ The forest will see to that.”
“Oh, I think we’ll manage. Admittedly we’ve suffered some casualties, but the rest of us have made it this far. With what we’ve learned and with you to take the lead, I think we’ll be all right.”
Teal shook her head slowly from side to side. “It makes no difference. You don’t know how to walk, where or how to place each foot. You don’t know how to look, or listen. You don’t know when to not breathe. You don’t know how to emfol. You’re ignorant, as ignorant as Flinx when first I met him several days ago. Worse than that, you’re arrogant. Arrogance will kill a person here quicker even than ignorance.”
“That’s why I’m going to rely on you to tell us when and how to do all the right things.” Coerlis waved his pistol. “I know that you’ll do your best to keep us alive.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied passively. “I can only give so many warnings, can only do so much. There are certain shortcomings I can try to compensate for. But I can do nothing about your attitude. For example, one of you is already dead.”
Nothing Flinx or Teal had said thus far had had any visible affect on Coerlis, but that jolted him. Flinx knew it was so even though their captor’s expression had remained unchanged, because his talent chose that moment to spring back to life. He’d sensed the wariness blossoming like a storm cloud in the merchant’s mind.
Quickly he shifted his perception, assessing the emotional state of each of Coerlis’s minions. Peeler standing bold, but nervous and fearful inside; the female engineer holding her ground but troubled by some unspecified physical distress; the powerful alien calm and analytical as Dwell wriggled in his grasp.
“What are you flattering on about, midget?” Coerlis saw uncertainty taking root in the expressions of Peeler and Aimee. “We’re not in any danger. The minidrag isn’t a factor, and without it neither is this skinny twit. Are you afraid of the woman and a couple of kids?” He stalked over to Teal. Kiss clung tightly to her mother, her eyes following the threatening skyperson’s every move.
“There’s only one of us here who’s ‘already dead,’ and that’s the geek over there.” He gestured in Flinx’s direction as he directed his words to Teal. “I still think you’re pretty, but I can be fickle. Don’t force me into any disagreeable reevaluations.” He nudged her cleavage with the muzzle of his pistol.
Teal met his gaze evenly. “The one who is already dead is over there.” A startled Flinx evaluated her emotional state and knew this to be true.
Then she pointed at Aimee.
The color drained from the engineer’s face. “What’s she talking about, Jack-Jax? Make her shut up. Make her take it back!”
Coerlis’s lip curled in disgust “Get ahold of yourself, Aimee. There’s nothing the matter with any of us.”
“I’m still not feeling well.”
“None of us are. Have you taken anything yet?”
She looked past him. “N-No. It comes and goes. I thought it would go away.”
“Then what do you expect?” He turned to the Mu’Atahl. “You don’t have to hold the kid anymore, Chaa. He’s not going anywhere. Break out the big medkit and pull her a max dose of general antibio.” His voice dropped to a mutter as he looked back at his engineer. “Should’ve done it yesterday.”
The Mu’Atahl acknowledged in his own fashion and released Dwell, who ran immediately to stand protectively next to his mother. Twisting his sauropodian neck, the big alien began to unfasten a portion of the rain shedder that covered the large pack strapped to his back.
“It will do you no good.” Teal was quietly adamant. “It’s the cristif.”
Aimee blinked at her. “The what?” A worried Flinx tracked the wavering arcs of the engineer’s pistol. She could panic at any time and start shooting.
Teal was adamant. “The cristif. In your hair.”
The other woman reached up to feel the bouquet of glittering, gemlike flowers. “Is that all you’re talking about? The flowers I’m wearing?” Her expression wavered between relief and uncertainty.
“You do not wear the cristif.” Teal’s tone was solemn. “The cristif wears you.”
“I don’t know what you’re bab—” The engineer staggered suddenly, her extremities going limp. The needler she’d been swinging carelessly about fell to the ground. Flinx winced when it struck the branch but the weapon didn’t go off.
Coerlis took a step toward her, stopped. “Aimee! What the hell?”
A blank look on her face, she turned to reply. As she did so, half a dozen wire-thin white filaments emerged from her mouth, wiggling like blind worms. Her gaze fell and the most complete look of horror Flinx had ever seen on another human being’s face froze into her expression. Trying to say something, she gagged on the filaments.
Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled.
While a shocked Coerlis and Peeler watched, unable to react, not knowing how to respond, the filaments pushed farther from the unconscious engineer’s mouth, creeping along the surface of the wood. Bulging in a dozen places, her chameleon suit burst forth with dozens, hundreds, of the writhing, twisting tendrils. They exploded from her thighs and shoulders, her neck and chest, belly and pelvis.
Flinx’s first thought was that she had been infected by some kind of communal parasitic nematode, but he soon saw that the infestation had a much simpler and more direct source. The exquisitely beautiful cristif bouquet was the blossoming portion of something that was part fungus, part flower, and part something new to Commonwealth botanical science. The woman had unknowingly entwined the seeds of her own destruction in her blond curls, where they had found root. And nourishment. Having spread undetected throughout her body, the developing mycelium of what was possibly an endomorphic mycorrhiza had finally fruited.
The active, motile spawn formed a pale white sheath around the twitching body, the pointed tips digging into the surface of the branch as they secured the fertilizing corpse firmly to the wood. Once the body of the unlucky woman had been pinioned in place by hundreds of throbbing white cords, several of the pale filaments began to swell.
Moments later the darkening, taut skin of the tendrils burst, and the engineer’s body lay abloom with the breathtaking radiance of newly blossoming cristif. Deftly turning toward the available light, the gold and crystal blooms enveloped the dead woman in a delicate casket of rainbows. Petals of crimson and gold, azure and purple, flared from her eye sockets. Eventually, Flinx suspected, the remains of the engineer would be thoroughly consumed, leaving behind only the dire wonder of the flowers.
“Beautiful to look at, dangerous to hold,” Teal quietly informed the shocked silence. “That is the sort of thing that will happen to all of you if you stay here.”
“No!” blurted Coerlis. Behind his defiance, Flinx could feel the fear in the other man’s mind. Though th
e Mu’Atahl remained calm and his emotional state was more difficult to read, even he was obviously upset by the malevolent miracle of reproduction they’d just witnessed.
Taking a step forward, the merchant grabbed Teal by the neck. Dwell started to react, but his mother waved him off.
“Nothing like that is going to happen to the rest of us because you’re going to show us what to avoid as well as what path to take. And if anything, anything at all, happens to one more of us, I’m going to hold you personally responsible. Not that I’ll do anything to you, oh no. We need you.” He scowled meaningfully at Dwell. “The children, on the other hand, are expendable. Do we understand one another?” He released her neck and stepped back.
Nodding slowly, she reached up to feel the imprints his fingers had left on her skin. Her eyes burned into his.
The corners of Coerlis’s mouth curled slightly upward. “That’s okay, I don’t mind you hating me. I’m used to it. Just pay attention to where we’re going and help us get safely back to our ship, and you can hate me all you like.” He stepped aside and gestured with his needler.
“You go first Peeler, stick close to her. And pick up that bag.” He indicated the double sack that contained the confined Pip.
The bodyguard eyed it unhappily. “Why me, Mr. Coerlis? I mean—”
The merchant lowered his voice dangerously. “Just—do it.” Reluctantly, Peeler slung the heavy mesh over his shoulder and fell into place alongside the much smaller woman.
Coerlis smiled humorlessly down at Dwell and Kiss. “You kids stay next to me. I know you want to keep close to your ma, and that’s exactly what I plan to do. Chaa, you bring up the rear, as always.” The Mu’Atahl responded with a curt gesture of acknowledgment.
“First sign of any tricks, first nub of an excuse,” Coerlis informed Teal as he lazily waved the muzzle of his pistol in the children’s direction, “and I’ll kill the girl first. You understand? I’ll fry her pretty little head.”