"Sounds like you went through a lot of trouble to work up that sleep-inducing packaging. Pretty clever. We might hit you up for the formulation."
Ormann nodded agreeably. He was very pleased with the way the meeting had gone. It had all been very businesslike. "I'll be glad to provide you with the necessary information. That's what comes of working for a firm that does a lot of gengineering work. You have access to tools and methods usually denied to the general public. Not that I'm looking to establish some kind of long-term relationship with you two."
"Hey, you never know." It was raptor face's turn to grin suggestively. "Someday you might find someone else hanging on to the rung of the corporate ladder above you. Easy enough to remove the somebody while leaving the rung in place."
Having concluded both their business and their snacks, the two men rose to depart. They stood close to Ormann, who all but disappeared in the larger man's shadow. Suddenly, they did not look quite so businesslike, quite so serene and rational. Conscious of his isolation and the lateness of the hour, he was suddenly anxious to be detached from their company.
"Hope this woman is worth it." Man mountain belched softly and tapped his chest with a fist the size of a ripe melon. As discreetly as he could manage, Ormann turned away from the oral discharge.
"She is."
"When do you want it done?" Ormann noticed raptor face's upper incisors had been replaced with replicants of anodized titanium alloy. He hadn't noticed it before as the man was not prone to smiling.
"As soon as possible," Ormann told him tightly. "Tomorrow."
Man mountain shook his head slowly. "Huh-uh. Tomorrow's my day to visit my ex-wife and kids. How about the day after?"
"Fine." Ormann held his temper. "Like I said, as soon as possible. The package is already made up, and I'll provide you with the location. We'll coordinate the timing."
Raptor face shrugged. "At your convenience. You're paying enough."
Ormann nodded and walked away. Halfway around the fountain, he looked back and mouthed the words that had given him more pleasure than anything else he had uttered in a long time: "Remember-both knees!"
CHAPTER NINE
As with every day he was not going to spend with Clarity, Flinx had no idea what to do with himself. She did have to do some actual work once in a while, she had told him with a smile. But tonight they were, as had become an enjoyable habit, having dinner together. He had that much to look forward to.
Not that New Riviera lacked diversions to occupy his body as well as his mind. From the conveniently modest-sized seas to the spackling of clear blue lakes, from rolling hills to dramatic yet easily negotiable mountains and everything in between, there were plenty of natural attractions to keep the interested visitor occupied. Then there were the cultural temptations, from museums and creative displays to theme parks and other amusement venues as sophisticated and enticing as any in the Commonwealth.
None of them interested Flinx. Already in his young life, he had seen and experienced sights that even designers of extreme entertainments could not begin to imagine. He was interested only in Clarity-in her ability to listen to him, to draw him out, to empathize and understand.
That she was beautiful and had once been in love with him had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with it.
Dinner was hours away. He had a day to kill. Sphene's famous musiceaum, where, by means of direct cranial induction, composers turned musical inspiration into solid sculpture and painting, still beckoned. Not only did everyone insist it was an interesting place to visit, he was curious to try his hand at the technically sophisticated compositional technique himself. Certainly he had been exposed to a sufficiently wide range of music and natural sounds. What a cerebrally coupled transmogrifier might make of his insights and experiences might make for interesting viewing.
He had dressed and performed his few simple ablutions when the hotel door announced the receipt of a package for him. Knowing that hotel security would automatically have vetted any delivery before transferring it to a guest's room, he did not hesitate to acknowledge receipt. The small box was waiting for him outside his door.
He brought it inside and studied it curiously. Taking no chances, hotel security or no hotel security, he removed a small device from one belt pouch and passed it over the package. The readings were negative. Satisfied, he removed the outer plasticine wrapping to reveal a second casing of paper. To his surprise, it disintegrated on contact with his fingers. Shoddy material, an intentional surprise, or... ?
Flinx had survived as long as he had because, among other things, he was exceedingly wary of surprises. But this time he wasn't fast enough. The package's inner wrapping turned into a colorless, odorless gas. He managed a few steps before he collapsed.
Sensing her master's distress, Pip shot across the room. Hovering above Flinx's body, she remained airborne for a few seconds before fluttering down to a rough landing against his back. There she lay, unmoving and silent, eyes closed, tongue retracted.
Five minutes passed. At the sixth, the door clicked several times as its security seal was professionally breached. It swung open to admit two men. Closing the door behind him, raptor face studied the two unconscious forms with professional detachment.
"The salivating stoink was as good as his word." Pushing aside the hotel delivery cart they had brought with them, man mountain knelt to take the unconscious man's pulse. "Sleep mode." He indicated the motionless flying snake. "Looks to be in the same state." Taking an impermeable, acid-resistant sack from the pouch slung over his shoulder, he picked up the flying snake by its tail and dropped it into the bag. "Stoink said we could do whatever we want with the pet. Me, I say sell it. If it's as rare as he claimed, we ought to be able to get a decent few credits for it."
Raptor face wasn't convinced. "Stoink said they bond tightly with their owners."
His companion shrugged his vast shoulders. "Not our problem, is it? That problem belongs to anybody who buys it."
"That's true." Raptor face looked pleased. "Pick him up. The sooner we've finished, the sooner the second half of the payment is credited to our accounts."
Lifting Flinx onto the delivery cart proved no more than a minor inconvenience to the two professionals. Man mountain eased the protective cover back over somnolent man and minidrag.
"Thought about where to take him?"
Raptor face nodded. "Kerwick campground, I think. It's accessible but still enough off the beaten track so that we can let him scream all he wants without having to worry."
His companion nodded tersely. As far as he was concerned, the hard part of the job was already completed. The rest was mere repetition of work they had done before.
As they guided the cart down the hallway he raised one corner of the cover. "Looks like a nice enough guy."
"They all do." All business, raptor face locked down the delivery cart's cover. "Probably is a nice guy, too. Like you said, not our problem. We'll leave enough of the underlying maxillary structure so it can be reconstructed."
Man mountain adjusted his rented uniform as they directed the cart around a corner and down another hallway, heading for the nearest service lift. "Over a woman, the stoink said. It's always over a woman."
Raptor face sniggered, then added something obscene. "After seeing this guy, I can understand stoink's concern."
"Well, he won't have anything to be concerned about when we've finished." Man mountain took pride in his work.
It was another dream. Strange, Flinx mused, how one could be dreaming and still be aware of the fact. He told himself to wake up but the request was not honored by his nervous system. Pip was nearby, he sensed, so he was not afraid, even though something told him the minidrag was also unconscious.
No, not unconscious, he corrected himself. Asleep. There was a difference.
This time there was no blackness, no all-encompassing, cosmos-spanning evil. After all, when he dreamed, it was not always about that. With his thoughts focused on Clarity H
eld and not wholly on the serious, carefully thought-out replies she gave to his questions, he felt as if he were floating on a field of flowers. Each delicate petal combined to support a small portion of his weight. From a physical standpoint it was impossible, of course. This, however, was a dream.
Clarity, Clarity, he thought. How could he have left her all those years ago, even in search of himself? How could he not? Unstable as he was, dangerous even, if he cared deeply for anyone the least he could do was visit them only intermittently. Otherwise, there was no telling what frightful effect he might have on someone's life.
Trouble was, he wanted to have an effect on the life of Clarity Held, and for her to affect his. He just wasn't sure how to go about it without harming her. If he could no longer fully control his abilities, he did not have the right to ask anyone to commit herself to him. Who would want to live with a mutated biological time bomb like him? Why, even as he was remembering in this dream the time they had spent by the lake, the sunshine and forest of flower trees and small, inadvertent physical contacts, he might be projecting his feelings, just as he had in the shopping arcade in Reides. If that were so, at least he was not projecting cosmic evil. What he might be projecting instead he did not know and could not imagine, except to realize with slim certainty that it would not be harmful.
In any event, there was nothing he could do about it. That kind of control over his mind was not within his province. He was asleep, dreaming, and he could not wake himself up. He remained calm and quiet, dreaming of blossoms and soft ground cover and what he might feel about Clarity Held.
He awoke on a bench in Sphene's justly famed Crystal Park. Surrounded by reflected light and rainbows, laughing children, and contented parents, he sat up and struggled to recall what had happened to him. He'd been in his hotel room-he remembered that. There had been a delivery. A package. Had he opened it? Yes. Then what? Nothing.
No, that was not quite true. He didn't remember falling asleep, but he did remember dreaming. This one had been positively amorous. A nice change from the frequent and disturbing nightmares. He didn't even have a headache.
Pip lay dozing at one end of the bench, lying on an old sack. Frowning, he moved toward her and inspected her makeshift bed. Though the artificial fibers were unusually tough, a minidrag-sized hole was visible near the bottom. Had she been inside? If so, the experience did not seem to have unsettled her. She lay coiled and composed in the sun, her pleated wings folded flat against her flanks.
How had he ended up here? Was sleepwalking a condition now to be added to the involuntary projection of his thoughts? Even on tranquil New Riviera the authorities still maintained a system of surveillance devices to protect the public safety. Perhaps one of them had recorded some of what had happened to him.
Rising, he called to Pip. With a spread and flutter of blue-and-pink wings, she settled securely around his right shoulder. A couple of children exclaimed and pointed. He had no time to let them ooh and ahh and pet the minidrag. He had a citywide security system to break into.
* * *
Ormann sensed something was wrong when there was no message for him, encrypted or otherwise, when he returned home that night. Nor did one arrive the following day. He called Clarity to inquire with forced pleasantries what she might be doing that evening, only to be told that she and her friend were once again having dinner. Concealing his disbelief, he learned that she had talked to him during her lunch break.
So the redheaded bastard was still around and apparently in excellent health. For the rest of that afternoon Ormann brooded in his office, hardly attending to work, wondering what the hell had gone wrong. The two men he had engaged had been recommended to him as the best at their business. If they had failed, who could he try next?
More important, why had they failed? And what had happened to them? Clarity had hinted on more than one occasion that there was more to her friend than was apparent. The reference now took on ominous overtones. Had his employees neglected to use proper care in handling the minidrag?
Greater than his shock at learning that Philip Lynx was still functional and healthy was Ormann's response when he learned that raptor face and his companion were unharmed.
He managed to track them down and confront them at an infamous (for Nur) slothzone hangout where he had been told they could usually be found. There they were, in fine fettle and visibly unscathed, sitting in a back booth guzzling fancy concoctions paid for with his money. Perhaps he should have approached with more caution, or addressed them in a more conciliatory tone, but he was too angry.
"Took him apart, did you? Really beat him up? With what? Pillows?"
Raptor face swiveled his narrow, predatory visage around to confront Ormann. It appeared the hired killer was pleasantly intoxicated. "Hello, Bill." He gestured toward the seat opposite. "Won't you join us?"
"I'd rather take any explanations standing, thanks."
"You're too tense, Bill," man mountain murmured solicitously. "You should get out more, have some fun." Then he did something that shocked Ormann even more than the earlier news that his redheaded nemesis had survived unscathed. Man mountain giggled.
Reaching up with one lethal, steel-corded hand, raptor face patted his immense companion gently on the cheek. "Now, Emunde, don't tease the poor man. He's obviously a basket of frustration."
Ormann swallowed. Hard. "You didn't do what you were paid to do. It doesn't look like you laid a hand on the kid. What the hell happened? It was the flying snake, wasn't it? It drove you off. Or," he continued, throwing caution aside, "it frightened you off."
"We couldn't hurt that nice young man." Man mountain pushed out his plump lower lip. He almost looked as if he were going to cry. "I feel bad enough about dragging him halfway across town. We left him and his pet in a nice place, though. I'm sure he's all right."
"Oh, he's just fine." Ormann's tone was tight enough to crack. "Too fine." He looked from one jovial killer to the other. "What happened? What did he do to you?"
"Do?" For just an instant, a hint of his original murderous character passed over raptor face. "Why, he didn't do anything, Bill." His smile was beatific. "Emunde and I, we just suddenly realized that we were wasting our lives with what we were doing, that we didn't want to hurt people anymore, and that we were missing out on so many of the joys of life. And don't worry-we'll refund your fee." He raised his glass. "Sure you won't join us in a drink?"
Something had happened to these two men. Something strange and inexplicable. In ways unknown, it was the fault of Clarity's friend. It had to be. Creatures like these two did not simply go all spineless and silly overnight. He corrected himself. Something had not happened to them. Something had been done to them.
But what? It made no sense. It made even less sense than Clarity's incomprehensible attraction to a man younger than herself whom she hadn't seen in six years.
The evening of wonders was not quite over. Raptor face held up his glass. "Be of good cheer, Bill Ormann. We'll send you an invitation to the wedding." And with that, he put his arm around as much of man mountain's waist as he could encompass and squeezed affectionately.
Ormann stumbled blindly out of the slothzone, seeing nothing. Not the gyrating softiques, nor their human counterparts. Not the spinning silver-eyed ecdysiasts boasting their unnatural virtual accoutrements or the citizens who lapped up the sight of them.
Outside, the cool night air gradually drew him out of his stupor. Heading toward transport, he considered his next step. In Philip Lynx he was clearly confronting something far more subtle and dangerous than he had believed. Before he could devise a method for dealing with him, he had to know more precisely what he was up against. How to go about acquiring that knowledge?
He could try to pry it out of Clarity. Reticent as she was about the young man's background, he didn't think gentle questioning would lead to much information. He could try to force it out of her. While he had little doubt that could be accomplished, by others if not by himself, it mi
ght drive her even closer to Lynx. He could challenge Lynx directly, hopefully while not in the presence of his irritable minidrag.
Slow down, he told himself. You've been patient this long. There's still time. She's not running off with him tomorrow. Do some serious research. You set professionals on him too soon, without knowing enough about him. Now enlist the aid of professionals of a different kind.
Whether in business or society, it was always prudent to learn a competitor's weaknesses before attacking. Ormann's jealousy and irritation had caused him to act in haste. That wouldn't happen again, he vowed. The next time he took action, it would be with sufficient information to ensure success.
Meanwhile, he would continue to smile and act the chivalrous, mature protector to Clarity while extending the hand of politeness to her friend. Biding one's time was as vital to the success of any endeavor as moving to accomplish it. It might take more time and effort than he had hoped, but the end was worthwhile. Clarity was too good a catch to surrender to some mumble-voiced postadolescent from... from...
It occurred to him that he did not even remember from what world his competitor hailed. Just acquiring such personal details might in itself lead to a means for getting rid of him. Ormann began to see possibilities that looked even more promising than simply having his rival beaten to a pulp.
But how had Lynx escaped from the now-outlandishly transformed thugs? Did Clarity know how it had been done? If so, could he obtain at least that information from her? If the redhead was somehow responsible, it would be vital for Ormann to learn what had happened.
Some kind of drug, perhaps. What if Lynx had somehow managed to counteract the effects of the special package? But that didn't explain the sea change that had overwhelmed the two killers.
As he reached his private transport and activated the door, Ormann was convinced he knew the source of the fiasco, if not the actual cause. He would not be denied Clarity. Not after all the work he had put into acquiring her and certainly not by some creepy, attenuated upstart from offworld.