"Me, a peaceforcer?" the thranx replied in perfect, remarkably unaccented terranglo. An amused fusion of clicks and whistles issued from behind the mandibles that formed the hard edges of its insectoid mouth. "What an amusing notion." He set rifle and pistol aside. "I dislike guns. I would rather win a disagreement through debate."
She nodded in the direction of three of her tormentors. "You certainly won your disagreement with them." He wasn't listening, she noticed. Instead, he had moved to stand over Flinx, and then he reached down to place a delicate truhand against the side of the unconscious human's neck.
"Respiration and heart rate have slowed. Two hearts would have allowed him to recover faster, but he will be fine." The lustrous, valentine-shaped head turned toward her. "What happened to him? I fear I was almost too late."
"How did you know he was here?" She, apparently, was something of an afterthought to the thranx.
"All will be explained, when Flinx has awakened and can also hear and understand. Causation?"
"Oh." She looked away, embarrassed. "My ex-boyfriend gengineered some kind of soporific that he applied to my skin but it's activated only when I perspire. When Flinx touched me, he absorbed it through his pores."
"Clever. It won't affect me, of course." The thranx took a small cutter from his thorax pouch and went to work on her bonds. "Our exoskeletons seal us against such dangerous invasions, we don't perspire, and I'm sure the relevant chemical formulation is specific to human physiology anyway. There," he declared a moment later.
Freed from her bonds, she rose shakily. Though of average height, she loomed over the thranx. "You still haven't told me who you are. If not a peaceforcer, then what?"
"I am by avocation a Philosoph. My title is not peaceforcer or soldier but Eint. I am an old friend of this most interesting human. My name is Truzenzuzex. You may call me Tru."
"True enough?" She smiled. He looked up at her but could not smile back, as his physiognomy was not designed for it. But she had the feeling he recognized the expression.
"I assure you I've heard all the wordplay on my name that you could possibly imagine. But if it amuses you to do so, please indulge yourself."
"That's all right." This was a thranx Philosoph, she reminded herself, and one holding the exalted rank of Eint. Until she knew him better, it might be wise to confine herself to sensible speech and forgo any further jejune attempts at witticism.
She sat down beside Flinx on the couch and began to run her fingers through his hair. Wings humming, Scrap came to wrap himself around her neck. Pip settled down on her master's hip and curled up, but remained watchful.
"How long have you known Flinx, Truzez-Tru?" Flinx's hair, she noted not for the first time, was thick but remarkably soft, his skin still smooth and deepy tanned.
Looking around the room, the thranx stepped indifferently over the body of one of Serale's fallen associates.
"Ever since he was an interesting boy. He's not a boy anymore. That's one reason we've spent some time trying to find him."
"We?" Clarity frowned, glancing at the doorway behind the tranquil thranx. "You're not alone?"
"Well, crrskk," Truzenzuzex replied thoughtfully, "yes and no."
Still staring in bewildered disbelief at the communicator in his hand, Ormann set it down on the desk. Up in the distant mountains, in that cabin, something had gone very, very wrong. But how? This time he had thought of everything.
At that moment, something else he had not thought of walked into his office. His visitor was taller than average, though not quite so tall as Flinx. Slim and dignified, he advanced into the room with the grace of a dancer. Very black eyes shining with intelligence peered out from beneath bushy brows in a face that was all sharp angles. Like a jumble of knives that had been overlaid with deeply tanned skin that was then pulled tight over the blades. The lips were thin, the mouth small. It was a visage that bespoke an Oriental, probably Mongolian ancestry. His hair was graying, with one streak of white running from front to back. Ormann guessed him, correctly, to be in his early eighties.
"How did you get in here?" Smiling pleasantly, Ormann's right hand drifted toward the drawer that held a small pistol.
"Walked."
A comedian, Ormann found himself thinking. An old comedian. "You know what I mean." He furtively slid open the drawer. The gun lay flat in its charger. It was not a big gun. But then, given the charge it carried, it didn't have to be.
"Your office manager let me in."
"That will cost her. She knows not to let anyone in without first contacting me."
"Don't be too hard on her. She was very nice, and I can be very persuasive."
"Can you, now?" Ormann tried not to look in the direction of the pistol. "Then maybe you can convince me why I shouldn't have you thrown out."
"First, because you couldn't." This was stated with such assurance and finality that Ormann was half tempted to believe it. "Second, because I've come a long way to deliver a short message."
"Is that all?" Some of the tension in Ormann's gut eased. "Well then, say your piece and leave. I'm very busy."
"I know you are. My name is Bran Tse-Mallory. I am an old friend of Philip Lynx, the man you are trying very hard to get rid of. Stop." He smiled thinly. "I told you it was a short message."
Ormann's brows drew together as he stared at the man who, though lean, appeared to be in excellent physical condition. He kept his hands in full view and his distance from the desk. A valet of some sort? Ormann wondered. Lynx had money, so why not a human servitor or two? However, something in the man suggested otherwise.
"I'm a sociologist." The voice was dry, professorial. "I'm interested in all aspects of sentient behavior. Right now I'm concentrating on yours." His voice fell. "Don't disappoint me. Hatred hovers in the air of this room like rotting meat."
"Not hatred," Ormann corrected him, "determination. You say that you're an old friend of Lynx. If that's the case, then maybe you also know that he's wanted by the authorities." His fingers crept closer to the concealed pistol. "Maybe you're even responsible for helping him in his illegal activities."
"It's been nearly seven years since my friend and I last saw Flinx. We came here to have a talk with him about an issue of considerable importance. A matter whose import far exceeds any personal concerns: his, mine, or yours. Leave him alone."
"The argument between the young redhead and me is personal. It has nothing to do with you." Fingers slowly closed around the pistol's grip.
"It has everything to do with me. And with you, too, believe it or not."
"I choose not to believe it." The visitor's empty hands were still in plain view. "I choose to believe that your friend Philip Lynx has somehow drugged or hypnotized my fiancée and that he plans on spiriting her away with him."
For the first time, the visitor looked surprised. "The woman Clarity Held is your fiancée? I didn't know that. There's no record of an official engagement."
"It hasn't exactly been formalized. That is, I haven't proposed a... No record of-you've been prying into my private life! Who are you, really? And who is this Philip Lynx, who the Commonwealth authorities want to talk to and who has strange friends who go around prying into things that are none of their business?"
Tse-Mallory was so still he hardly seemed to be breathing. "He was a very interesting boy who has grown into a very interesting man. He's also very hard to track down. I'm not so sure he intends to run off with your fiancée. If you'd just let things settle down, they might take a course to your liking."
"I've been letting things take their course." Ormann's tone was tense, threatening. "The result is that Clarity continues to see more and more of this Flinx and less and less of me. It's reached the point where I feel I have no choice. I've decided that nothing is going to be allowed to come between us. Not Philip Lynx, not anything or anyone. Especially not uninvited visitors." In a swift move he drew the gun from the drawer and pointed it at Tse-Mallory.
"Get out of my office.
You can leave the way you came in or horizontally. The choice is up to you."
"It frequently is," Tse-Mallory murmured. "So many times I wish that it weren't." Tse-Mallory dodged with astounding speed as he reached into a breast pocket and threw something that struck Ormann before he could pull the trigger. The small device contained a large electric charge that noiselessly discharged in a single burst.
Ormann convulsed and fell onto his desk, his eyes open, his gun still clenched in his hand, electrocuted. Calmly, Bran Tse-Mallory walked over to the collapsed form. Slipping on gloves, he gently removed the pistol from Ormann's paralyzed fingers, placed the weapon back in its charger, and quietly closed the drawer. After a moment's thought, he folded the executive's hands on the desk in front of him, lifted the limp head, and rested it on the hands. To anyone entering the room, it would appear as if Ormann had fallen asleep at his desk. To anyone examining the body, it would seem that he had suffered a massive heart attack.
Tse-Mallory pocketed his now-harmless voltchuk and left the office. The office manager asked him how the important meeting had gone.
"We came to an understanding," he informed her kindly. She replied that she was glad it had gone well.
It did not go well, Tse-Mallory thought as he headed for the nearest exit from the Ulricam complex. But we did come to an understanding.
He disliked having to kill. Discussion and debate were always better. His killing days were well behind him, back when he and Tru had formed the two halves of a stingship fighting team. But sometimes, sadly, logic and reason were not enough. Besides, Tse-Mallory had reason to believe that Ormann might have shot him in the back if he'd simply turned to leave.
Aim arguments at a man and he reacts one way, Tse-Mallory ruminated. Aim a gun at him and he is forced to react in another. He wondered how Truzenzuzex was getting along. No doubt his old friend and companion had enjoyed an easy time of it, sauntering in to greet a surprised Flinx and his female friend. Thranx had all the luck.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"High metamorphosis to you, Flinx."
Awakening from a surprisingly invigorating sleep, Flinx found himself staring up at a trio of faces-a quintet if one counted Pip and Scrap. Two of the other faces were human. The one from which the greeting had emerged was anything but. Flinx sat up too sharply in the bed, and the resultant wooziness momentarily blurred his vision, but not so seriously as to prevent his throwing both arms around the thranx's upper body.
"Truzenzuzex!"
"You always were competent at incontestable identification," the thranx replied dryly. "Yes, it's me. Now please remove your upper limbs from my b-thorax so that I can breathe." A grinning Flinx complied. "That's better. You know, I'm currently reading your writer Kafka's The Metamorphosis. It's about a human who thinks he's an insect. Fascinating. The details are all wrong, of course."
"I'll remember." Flinx turned his attention to the tall man standing near the bed. "And you too, Bran. Here, on New Riviera." Flinx shook his head in disbelief.
Standing near the head of the bed, Clarity Held reached down to give him a gentle punch on the shoulder. "Hey, I'm here too, you know."
"Oh, right. Sorry, Clarity. It's just that I haven't seen either of these two disreputable nomads in-six years, isn't it, Tru?"
"Nearly seven," the Philosoph corrected him. "You've grown, Flinx. And changed, I think, in other ways as well."
"Well, you two haven't. You look exactly as I remember you. This is my friend, Clarity Held. Clarity and I know each other from-we know each pretty well, that's all." His old friends, Flinx knew, would not pry. "Clarity, this is the Eint Truzenzuzex."
"We've already met." Reaching out, she playfully teased the tip of one of the aged thranx's feathery antennae. It twitched away from the touch. "Tru is responsible for rescuing us both." Her expression fell. "Once Bill finds out he's failed again to get rid of you, Flinx, he's liable to try something even more drastic the next time."
"I don't think so," Tse-Mallory commented quietly.
"Oh, and this is Bran Tse-Mallory," Flinx informed her. "In their youth, Bran and Tru were a stingship team." He grinned. "Now they just sit around and pontificate."
"Pontificate," Tse-Mallory admitted, "and other things. Like looking up old acquaintances."
"How can you be so certain Bill Ormann won't try to hurt Flinx anymore?"
Wise, dark eyes peered at her from beneath those explosive eyebrows. "Because he's not going to hurt anyone anymore, Clarity Held."
She hesitated. The silence persisted for a long moment before she murmured, "Oh," and said nothing more on the matter of William Ormann because she suspected, quite correctly, that there was nothing else that needed to be said.
With Clarity's help, Flinx eased himself off the bed and moved slowly toward his hotel room's refreshment unit. Pip and Scrap ignored everyone in the room, from whom only benign emotions emanated.
Flinx's head throbbed but this time not, thankfully, from one of his headaches. The last thing he remembered was trying to free Clarity from her bonds. The important thing was that Clarity was all right. So were he and Pip. And now, to top it all off, to see Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex again! What a wonderful coincidence.
Except that he knew it wasn't. It couldn't be. The Commonwealth was too big. Something specific had drawn the wise man and the sage thranx to New Riviera. Flinx had the feeling it was not the climate.
Still, he remained cheerful as he drew not one but two cold tumblers of fruit drink to slake his thirst. Clarity helped herself and offered refreshment for their visitors. Both man and thranx declined.
"It's wonderful to see you both again. What are you doing here? Do you still serve 'only your own philosophies'?" Ascetics, she wondered, or just not thirsty? Fully keeping with the persona she had come to know better than ever, Flinx certainly had interesting friends.
Truzenzuzex clicked his mandibles at the remembered comment. Flinx had a fine memory. That was far from the only aspect of his mind that was exceptional, the Philosoph knew.
"Since leaving the United Church, we have pursued our own interests. As you know, Flinx, among them is our study of extinct sentient races such as the Tar-Aiym."
"The who?" Clarity looked from thranx to Flinx. "I never heard of them."
"As their history is somewhat obscure, they are not as well known as they should be," Truzenzuzex continued. "This is a characteristic they share with a number of other intelligences who have also passed from the galactic scene, among whom historic interconnections are still being established.
"Though Bran and I have preferred to carry out our work independent of any institution, governmental or scholarly, we still retain a considerable number of useful contacts within both the United Church and the Commonwealth government. Occasionally, though not often, one of these contacts has a query for us. I recently received one such myself." The head turned so that compound eyes could focus on Flinx.
"It came from Counselor Second of Science Druvenmaquez."
Flinx said nothing. There was no point in volunteering information that Truzenzuzex already had. But he was intensely curious to see how much his old mentor knew, as well as how he had come by it.
The thranx did not disappoint him. "It seems that the good counselor touched antennae with you in a proscribed place, a world that is only now beginning to appear on highly restricted Commonwealth charts as the straightforwardly named Midworld. He went there in search of you in the course of following up on a tale you had told a certain Padre Bateleur on Samstead."
"Yes, I remember," Flinx murmured. Bran Tse-Mallory was watching him closely, he noted.
"While thrown together on this formerly lost, accidental colony world, you inquired of the counselor if he knew me. He told you that he did not. However, when you took your leave and Druvenmaquez returned to his work, he remembered your query and managed to make contact with me. We engaged via space-minus in a most interesting exchange, part of which involved the counselor graciousl
y allowing us to view the transcript of your conversation with Padre Bateleur, the same conversation that moved the counselor to go looking for you himself. A number of things you said to that padre intrigued Bran and myself as thoroughly as they had Druvenmaquez, especially in light of our past mutual encounters with Tar-Aiym and Hur'rikku artifacts. Furthermore, they coincided with work we were already doing. Strange, is it not, how the three of us continue our fascination with ancient races and the artifacts they have left behind?"
"So we decided to come looking for you, Flinx." Tse-Mallory smiled reassuringly. "We would have wanted to see you again even if we three did not share a common interest in a certain distant region of the cosmos."
Up until now, Clarity had felt that the conversation was leaving her further and further behind. But Tse-Mallory's mention of a shared interest in a distant region of space immediately caught her attention.
"Flinx, are they talking about the place you visit in your nightmares?"
Truzenzuzex's head shifted from one human to another. "So, Flinx, you continue to experience the visions of which you spoke to Padre Bateleur? You feel that you have mentally somehow visited this distant region of space and encountered something there?"
"Something very unpleasant," Tse-Mallory chimed in. Arms crossed over his chest, he was leaning against the wall beside the bedroom door. He might have been guarding it or simply relaxing.
Flinx sighed. He had never intended the substance of his dreams-or mental projections or whatever they were-to become common knowledge. Or even uncommon knowledge. But in a needy moment while on the run he had confided in and briefly discussed what he had seen and felt with a representative of the United Church.
He was glad to see his old friends again. He only wished their motivation for seeking him out had been otherwise.
"I've experienced it, too," Clarity piped up before he could think to warn her to keep quiet.
Tse-Mallory was instantly alert. "You? But how?"
Noticing Flinx's expression, she wondered if she might have said something wrong. But weren't these old friends of Flinx? Wise fellow travelers? Hadn't they saved them both from Bill Ormann's maniacal scheming? "Apparently, if someone is close enough to Flinx when he's having one of these experiences-close enough emotionally as well as physically-she can sometimes share them."