I’d seen bone like that before. In The Knife Worth A Afterlife. Hellflower work.
I wondered how Tiggy’d got the whistle on my kick and its new home and why he cared. Hellflower honor, probably-making sure I didn’t see the profit I’d dragged him out of his way to get. I wrapped up the wand in a piece of thermofax I found. Maybe I’d take it back to him up close and personal.
I’d just shut the door of the inner room behind me when the outer door opened. The hellflower wasn’t Tiggy, but he looked real pleased to see me anyway.
"Ea, higna,"
the hellflower said. Then he went for his heat.
I’d decided more than a week ago that hellflowers was bad news, which gave me almost enough edge on this one to get out of the way. I went down behind a bench so his first shot went high and then I sprayed the room with blaster fire, hoping to get lucky.
I didn’t. The bench stopped his first bolt, so I picked it up and threw it at him. He thought that was real amusing. He threw it back, but I wasn’t waiting around for the critical reviews and had already made it back through the inner door into Brother Rahone’s office.
I found the lock in the dark and used it. The light switch was next to it. With room lights the thing on the desk looked even worse. The smell was something awful and this time I noticed that the floor was covered in blood.
"Higna, yai,"
said this friendly conversational voice from the other side of the door. The hellflower wasn’t mad-far from it, the voice seemed to say. He liked my style. We could be best buddies.
I wondered if
higna
was better than
chaudatu.
He said some other things. I caught about one word in seven and understood not any. "Butterfly?" said Paladin.
"Shut up." Paladin couldn’t hear anything at all but me and even if he could there was nothing he could do.
What a lousy way to run a communications link.
If I was Brother Rahone, dealer in curiosa, I’d have a back way out. I shoved what was left of the late Rahone off his desk and started going through the contents to find it. My best buddy on the other side of the door lost patience. He said something in a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger voice, and then there was a real determined thump at the door. It’d take him about a second and a half to decide to blow it.
I found a control panel in the desk, hidden well enough that I was pretty sure it didn’t just control the outside door. I bashed the buttons all at once, just for luck, and heard the slow grinding of the hidden door. Too slow.
I heard the prefire whine of a blaster and ducked under the desk. I wedged myself in as high off the floor as I could get about the time the hellflower blew the door and stalked in.
Rahone’s remains didn’t even slow him down. I’d bet he’d seen them earlier, maybe while they was still lively. He was wearing blue leather boots with jeweled spurs and gilded scrolling stamped into the leather and it was a good bet he wasn’t out to roll me for petty cash. He said something real nasty in helltongue when he saw the open door and walked around the desk to get a better look at the way he thought I’d gone.
I swept the floor with blaster fire and took him off at the ankles. He went over backwards and I got him a couple more times going down.
That bought me enough time to come out from under the desk and catch a throwing-spike from him through my skill-wrist. The spike was barbed, and every twitch drove it in deeper. I dropped my heat and it slid in Rahone’s blood way the hell out of reach.
I scrabbled at my other blaster left-handed and got it up and ready to go before I realized there wasn’t much reason to. My playmate had signed the lease on his real estate and was leaving on the Long Orbit.
I got up from behind the desk and looked at him. He was pretty much gone below his waist and what was still there was medium-well done. He wasn’t breathing.
I went around the desk and picked up my other blaster, careful. Had to put away the one I was holding to do it. The wrist he’d spiked was already beginning to swell, but it wasn’t leaking much; he’d missed the veins.
Maybe I should of put a bolt into him to be sure, but I didn’t think anyone could take that kind of damage and live.
I was wrong.
I had to step over him to get to the door. He bucked when I got close to him and dragged me down. His fingers was wrapped around my throat and his rings dug into my jaw. I caught myself on the wrist he’d spiked and the whole room seemed to fill with bright haze for the couple of centuries it took me to bring my blaster up. Then I pumped plasma Miltowns into him until the world went away.
###
Paladin was yelling in my ear. I coughed myself awake and kicked a body off me and coughed some more. Then I sat up.
There was someone pouring ice water over my right hand. I looked down and saw bright cheery rivulets of blood chuckling merrily down, gaudy and inexhaustible and mine all mine.
My glove was soaked and stiff and the skin ballooned between it and the knife sheath on my wrist. The throwing-spike stuck out both sides. That last handstand had sawed the spike through a vein, looked like.
"Butterfly, I know you are not dead. The transponder would tell me if you were dead and it has not. Therefore you are not dead and are capable of responding to me. Butterfly!"
"Here," I croaked. "Shut up." And let me bleed to death in peace and quiet. .
The room was burning; the kind of low smoky fire you get discharging a few plasma-packets too many at a combustible surface. I smelled the winy rankness of burnt tile and the homey smell of cooked meat.
"Butterfly." Just to let me know Paladin’d appreciate a explanation at my earliest convenience.
"Hellflower dusted Moke Rahone. Hurt me, bai, not too bad." Liar.
Getting to my feet was a major event and started me choking again. I was still holding my blood-covered blaster in my left hand. There was a red light flashing on and off over the open back way out. I sat back on the edge of the desk and wondered if I really wanted to walk that far.
"Butterfly, you are not all right. What is the extent of your injuries, and what is the current status of the alMayne?"
"Dead, and he got me through the wrist with some kind of spike." Which was going to have to come out before I went anywhere or I’d be dead; there was no way I could get a pressure bandage on that wrist with the spike in it. And if the hellflower lifetaker had backup waiting downbelow, I’d be dead anyway.
"Did you kill him?"
Trust Pally to fix on the irrelevant. "Course not. He died of pure melancholy and displeasure, like they say in the talkingbooks." That brought on another spasm of coughing. Paladin waited until I finished.
"You will have to bandage your injury and get back to the Starcastle. Can you walk that far?"
"Piece of cake."
I stood up and the ground rock-rolled on invisible gimbals. I sat down again and pulled out my vibro.
"Is there something you are not telling me about the situation, Butterfly?" Someday, somehow, I’d be able to get my hands on Paladin. The thought made life worth going on with.
"Building’s on fire. Now shut up while I cut this damn spike loose."
###
It takes about half an hour to bleed to death from a severed hand, depending on your body mass. I was a little better off than that: only one or two veins was nicked. If I could stop bleeding now, I’d be fine. If I couldn’t, in a few hours tops I’d be unconscious and helpless and real, real noticeable.
I cut my wrist open some more using the vibro real gingerly and pushed the spike rest of the way through. It was all barbs and curves; brittle and vibro-sharp, and watching it squish through made me feel sick. When it was out I felt light and hollow. Shocky. Not good.
I took off my jacket and my shirt and sawed the shirt into strips and wrapped it around my wrist until the fingers went numb. I’d have to shoot left-handed if I ran into trouble, but it’s a tough galaxy out there and I’d manage.
"Are you finished?" That was Pally, all sweetness and starlight. "Yeah." I slid my jacket back on without too much trouble. By this time the room was full of smoke. I headed over to the back door and looked out. All there was was dark.
"Brother Rahone’s back way out is some kind of dropshaft, looks like. Going out that way. ‘Flower might have backup down on the street -it was a hellflower I think opened up Rahone and stuck some kind a alMayne gimcrack into him too. Gang-war?"
"Moke Rahone has no record of affiliation with Kroon’Vannet or any of his competition. Neither is he on record with the Azarine Guildhouse as hiring an alMayne or any other bodyguard, although the agreement need not have been registered there. Did the alMayne speak to you at all?"
"Oh, sure; we had lovely chat. A’course, since I don’t speak helltongue we didn’t exchange too many views before I blew his legs off."
Paladin shut up, and I used the quiet to work up my nerve. I could try to get out through the front, but if the hellflower had backup there was a slightly better chance of losing him if I went out through Rahone’s hidden escape route. I tossed a few things into the shaft and they floated enough to make me sure it was a powered drop. Then I stepped out.
I fell faster than I wanted and the jar when I landed made it so I couldn’t breathe for a minute. I shook the stars out of my eyes and looked around. The dropshaft had took me to street level in the back of the Danbourg Strail. There was no hellflowers in sight. I leaned against the wall and tried to look healthy. If I lost it here I wouldn’t need bellflowers to finish me; there’s brat-packs and priggers and all kinds of marginals in places like this.
And Paladin couldn’t even send a floater-cab for me unless I could get as far as the planned part of Borderline on my own. They don’t go outside it.
"What about Tiggy?" I said to kill time while trying not to faint. "Joyous reunion of missing heir with da, galaxy rejoices?"
"Nothing of that sort has been transmitted on any of the information bands I can access, public or restricted. I find this somewhat peculiar."
Terrific. "I find it lots peculiar. Bodywarp fetch-kitchens admit sweet babby che-bai unmourned long-lost?"
"I said no information, Butterfly-including admissions to medical facilities of any alMayne, clandestinely or otherwise. And you said you had no further interest in Valijon Starbringer."
"Have every interest in him making big public arrival splash and getting me off hook," I reminded him.
My makeshift bandage was already squishy with wet, but I could afford to bleed like that for awhiles if I had to. I started feeling better enough to think I wasn’t going to die tonight.
"We provisioned and ready to lift?"
"Firecat’s
supplies are at the docking ring. As soon as they are aboard, we are ready. Life-support systems are fully charged. Do you wish me to call for clearance now?"
"Ne, che-bai. Think Dommie’s watching too close. But order a real good medkit to add to our stuff, if you can find one. Will get myself right at the Starcastle and be back to
Firecat
by horizonfall. We’re golden."
"I hope so, Butterfly. Good luck."
It was still early evening. I hadn’t been inside with Rahone and Brother Hellflower half an hour, if that.
The modern day is a technology of clumsy inelegancies. Limping ,ind metal-poor, it scorns efficiency in deference to half-remembered wonders entombed in the Inappropriate Technology Act-a catalog of [hings the moderns cannot have and so declare undesirable.
If this were the Federation, none of this would have happened. Not only would Butterfly have been safe in a breedery, if she had not been I could simply have activated my remote maniples and physically assisted her. For that matter, if such creatures as hellflowers had existed during my first life, it would certainly have been impossible to misidentify any of them. Federation citizens wore subcutaneous implants with the necessary information micro-encoded in crystal.
But even if the Phoenix Empire were willing to use implants, the technology for the micro-encoding no longer exists, lost with so many other things in the pointless war against what its survivors call Libraries. But I digress.
It might have been a coincidence that an alMayne was involved in the murder of Butterfly’s client, and then again it might not. I dispatched a floater to wait for Butterfly at the point that she would cross over into Borderline Old City, and began tracing the Borderline computer network to see if it was possible to access a data-gathering port in her location. The vital signs transmitted to me by her Remote Transponder Sensor indicated that Butterfly was weak, but capable of reaching the floater under her own power. There was nothing further I could do for her at the moment. I devoted more of my resources to another problem.
Where was Valijon Starbringer?
The identification that I had forged for him had successfully passed him through the port gates a few minutes after he left
Firecat
. From his actions upon leaving Butterfly, he would seem to have had a destination in mind, but from the moment he left the port neither "Aurini Goldsong" nor Valijon Starbringer entered into any data transaction with the Kiffit/Borderline Central Data Net.
Perhaps he had discarded his false ID. And had I been hasty, even jealous, in attempting to discard him?
Butterfly must be returned to the human world from which I have taken her, and it must be done in such a way as to assure her of prosperity and safety. The protection of an alMayne GreatHouse, properly handled, could guarantee both.
Valijon could reasonably be expected to cooperate in my plans, but only if I could find him.
And only if he were not trying to kill Butterfly now.
###
They picked me up just inside the Grand Bazaar and didn’t care who knew it. I glanced back when I twigged and saw two hellflowers-a head taller than everybody else in sight and hair like hammered platinum. And confident. Real confident.
I somehow didn’t think sweet reason was going to have much effect on them. Told Paladin the glad news. He didn’t say much.