Trouble Magnet (11 page)

He was also, though not one surviving person on the planet knew it, something else. Something more. Something that had flared briefly in the life of the Commonwealth’s scientific community only to be ruthlessly quashed and stamped out. All gone, all done with now. Except for a single survivor. One whose real name was not Shyvil Theodakris.

That was his name now, he reflected forcefully. His name, and the life he had made for himself. Until this moment. Until the utterly unexpected appearance of this Samaritan, this shadowed and haunted figure from the past. What a remarkable past it had been, too. He—it—should not have survived. It should have vanished, gone down, disappeared along with every other iota of evidence of the group’s work and existence. He should ignore it. He should pretend that it did not exist, and certainly that it did not exist on Visaria. That was the logical, the reasonable, the sensible thing to do.

Of course, if Shyvil Theodakris had been any of those things, he would not have been involved with the history of the Samaritan in the first place.

Recognizing as he did something of himself in the younger youth, it was not surprising that Flinx should also think Subar an orphan, as he himself had been. Not wanting to offend his young guide, he pondered how best to broach the subject as Subar led him away from the gang’s priv space and down into the teeming depths of Malandere.

While the ambience reminded him somewhat of his home city of Drallar, the mood was quite different. Darker and more frenetic, as befitted a larger, more modern city more closely attuned to the pulse of Commonwealth commerce. Even the alleyways and back avenues through which Subar led him seemed wider, the buildings that canyoned them in on both sides higher and more impersonal. Or maybe, he mused, despite recent visits he was still remembering Drallar as the playground of his adolescent self, when everything would have seemed bigger, darker, and more intimidating.

No matter. Malandere had its own perverse charms. Alewev District, however, seemed singularly devoid of them. It was an area of older, already run-down structures, many of them commercial in origin, that had been taken over and cannibalized for living quarters by the lowest rung of the city’s inhabitants. Those futurists who had speculated in the distant long-ago that machines would one day take over all the dirty work of humankind had been little more than entertaining dreamers. An automaton could clean floors and empty itself, but at the end of the disposal chain some poor human still had to decide what to do with the final refuse. Machines could wash dishes, but not sort them according to individual taste. And inevitably, invariably, there were always humans or aliens willing to do the work of machinery for less than the applicable machines cost to operate and maintain.

At least there were fewer floating flads in Alewev, he reflected as Subar urged him along. A lack of disposable income among the local populace corresponded to a parallel decline in neighborhood advertising. Damaged machines competed for space on the streets with damaged people. The emotional aether he could not shut out was ripe with treachery, envy, despair, frustration, hatred, desire, and ennui. The fate of all humankind, he wondered—or just of this particular slice of the species? His head throbbed.

He was glad Clarity was not with from him, that she was back on New Riviera and safe in the ministrating hands of Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex. Better she recuperate from her wounds there than have to suffer his increasingly despondent company in such disheartening surroundings.

Subar took no notice of his melancholy. Either that, or the youth was indifferent to it. Reaching out with his Talent, Flinx could not tell. It didn’t help that his guide was not yet emotionally mature.

Then they turned down a ridiculously small, substandard walkway, mounted a series of winding stairs that had been laboriously laid into an old drainage sluice, and, on the third level, paused outside a doorway that was so primitive it was utterly devoid of watchful electronics.

“Home.” Subar’s expression as he spoke said far more than did the word itself. A lifetime of experience was encapsulated in that one semi-expletive, Flinx suspected as he studied Subar’s face. A lifetime that had not, insofar as he could perceive from the youth’s emotions, been filled with delight. Subar used a key—an actual primitive polymorph key, Flinx saw in amazement—to open the portal. The interior was filled with the stink of the unwashed and the shouts of the uncouth.

They proceeded down a hallway that consisted of a single prefabbed molded tube. From the shape and wear evident on the curved interior, Flinx decided, it was a decommissioned commercial component salvaged from a scavenged industrial site. At the far end, another door yielded to Subar’s primitive input.

Flinx had visited zoological parks before, on other worlds such as Nur. Without exception, all had been both quieter and cleaner than the landscape spread out before him now.

A small girl was chasing a smaller boy from one chamber to another. Homicidally intent on one another, they ignored him and his guide completely. The girl’s hair had been neocharged and was standing straight out in every direction. The boy held tightly to a small device that rendered him immediately suspect. Beyond them and farther into a large room whose omnipresent stink could not be dispersed even by the cheap yet powerful area deodorant whose nose hair–curling scent irreversibly corrupted the local atmosphere, a pair of adolescent females lay slumped atop a torn and frayed sonomound. Their eyes were glassy and the skin of their tattooed skulls vibrated to the pulse that emanated from the mound to pass through their bodies via direct induction. Off to Flinx’s right, a woman was screeching.

“Not on my time you don’t. If you were half the man you claim to be…!”

Sounding vexed and vituperative in equal measure, a male voice cut her off.
“If you were half the woman I cojoined, it would take three houros to keep you quiet!”

Subar glanced up at Flinx. “Sire and dam. Take your pick. Me, I don’t get that choice.”

Fuming, a woman appeared in the doorway off to the right. Beneath the garish singlepiece that draped her prematurely aged form, she was skinny and straight. Her face, like her life, had been badly whittled. Her skin was flushed, and not from overexposure to the sun. It supplied the only color to an otherwise pallid expression. She started to shriek anew at the unseen male of the household, caught sight of Subar and Flinx, and stopped herself.

“Oh.” Her expression darkened, albeit ritualistically. “Where you been, boy?” Out of reflex more than emotion, she mustered a smile in Flinx’s direction. “Brought home a friend, I see?” The rage that had underlined and given force to her screaming was fading within her, Flinx perceived. But though the emotional pot no longer boiled over, it continued to simmer beneath the woman’s otherwise cordial façade.

“His name’s Flinx,” Subar muttered without meeting her gaze.

A man appeared, following behind the woman. At the sight of the tall stranger he frowned, eyed his mate, then his eldest male offspring, and finally stuck out a hand.

“Gorchen’s the name. Flinx?” He looked like he wanted to burst out laughing, but did not. He did not have to. Flinx could sense his derision without having to hear it vocalized. “Unusual tag.”

“It’s a nickname,” Flinx told him pleasantly. On his shoulder, Pip raised her head. The woman’s eyes widened slightly.

“A pet? Does it bite?”

“Only when provoked.”

“That’s better than somebody else I know.” Beset by his own wit, the man roared. “Come on in, I guess. Can’t offer you much. Work to do, too.” He glared down at the youth standing alongside the visitor. “Boy, offer your friend something to drink.”

But nothing too much,
Flinx inferred,
and the cheapest we’ve got
. The man’s emotions were as easy, and sordid, to read as a three-way projection. Somewhere off in the distance the boy and girl continued to scream. With a look of faux apology, the woman went in search of them. Within seconds she was promising her unrestrained charges traditional hellfire and damnation if they didn’t shut up. From the sound of it, her threats had no effect. One of the girls lying in semi-comatose state on the sonomound opened an eye, observed Flinx, and promptly shut it again. Meanwhile the man of the house, if such he could be called, had drawn forth the day’s recyclable outercoat and was departing.

“Leave you two boys to chat.” A grin that could only be described as positively ugly in inspiration split the haggard, pulpy face. “Don’t do nothing in private you wouldn’t do in public.” When the door sealed automatically behind him it was difficult to tell whether Flinx or Subar was the more relieved.

Subar was not an orphan, then. Another supposed similarity rescinded. Evaluating what he had seen of the youth’s family so far, Flinx found himself wondering which of them had suffered the more grueling upbringing. His young acquaintance, who was “blessed” with a family? Or himself, an orphan adopted by a rough-hewn but caring older woman.

Similar in construction to the hallway tube, yellow prefab ovoids of analogous industrial-strength material had been melded to its sides and top. One such large ovoid formed the main body of the apartment occupied by Subar’s family. Smaller ones served as side rooms. From the outside, such buildings resembled stacks of insect eggs laid on twigs. The analogy, Flinx reflected as he followed his young host deeper into the overheated familial complex, went beyond appearances.

Subar’s “room” was smaller than the transport that had brought Flinx from the port into the city. The curving walls were lined with flashing, blinking images of genetically modified females, weapons, and sports figures that were remarkable only in their deadening predictability. There were a few cabinets and drawers fastened to walls, a pile of the latter whose permaseals had proven to be anything but, and the ubiquitous communit. An ancient model from the look of it, not even capable of full-dimensional projection. The living area was as ragged and unkempt as its denizen. Remembering his childhood on Moth, Flinx had felt cleaner and more at home on the city streets of Drallar than he ever would have in a claustrophobic urban cocoon like this.

“A real hole, ain’t it?” Subar passed a hand across the far curved wall, rendering it transparent. The view outside consisted of another, similar egg-like wall a couple of meters distant. Variety was provided by a leaking water pipe. A second pass of his hand over the print-coded wall and it turned opaque again.

Flinx tried to show some interest. “When I was your age, I spent most of my time on the street.”

Subar let out a sardonic chuckle. “You think I do anything here besides sleep?” He nodded belligerently back in the direction they had come. “Sometimes I don’t know which is worse: getting yelled at by my dam, smacked around by my sire, or having to listen to the scrawn siblings I didn’t get to choose and can’t get rid of.”

This visit was doing nothing, Flinx realized, to improve his view of humanity. By coming, he had fulfilled his promise to Subar and seen all there was to see in the youth’s immediate environment. It was time to move on, if only in search of further disappointment elsewhere.

“I’m going.” He had to bend to exit the cubicle. “You wanted to show me your home, I’ve seen your home.” Burrowing beneath his shirt, Pip had hidden most of her body from view.

“Wait!” This was not working out the way he had hoped, Subar saw as he followed his guest back to the main chamber. “There’s one more person I’d like you to meet.”

Flinx was already at the door. Neither of Subar’s older sisters glanced up from the sonomound and their self-imposed music-and-image-fueled stupor. He sighed. “Another member of your confrontational social group?”

“No. She has nothing to do with the pod.” He smiled, and it was a different kind of smile. One that was inspired by genuine satisfaction instead of cynicism. “She won’t have anything to do with my other friends.”

A positive development? Flinx mused. If so, except for the visiting thranx it would be a first for his time on Visaria. He was more than ready to meet a halfway redeemable human being. And the sooner the better. The sounds of Subar’s mother pursuing his younger siblings threatened to come closer.

“Where?” he asked briskly.

Relieved, Subar gestured with one hand. “Couple of buildings over. Her family’s rich.” The sarcasm returned to his voice. “Their thrown-together partition is on
top
of a complex.”

CHAPTER

7

Subar was not old enough to know if he was in love with Zezula or simply in lust with her, but he did know that Ashile was his friend. Speaking to him through his communit and with visual off, she agreed to meet him on the roof of her building. Her tone was both eager and wary.

Her feelings on seeing Subar reflected this internal turbulence, as befitted both her circumstances and her age. Her reactions to Flinx, as she stood waiting on the rippling rooftop in the haze-laden sunshine, were equally confused but in different measure. He found her wiry but attractive; not truly beautiful but pleasing. A splash of generic multihued freckles enhanced her pale complexion with cheap cosmetic color. A late developer physically, Flinx decided, but not mentally or emotionally. Holding one hand above her eyes to shield them from the glare, she squinted suspiciously at her boyfriend’s companion.

“
Tcoum,
Subar. Who’s this?”

Subar stood a little straighter. “A friend. Helped me out of a spine spot this morning.”

“Spine spot.” Ignoring both Flinx and the curious reptilian head that was now peeping out from the collar of his shirt, she turned on the youth. “What happened? It’s that scrug-scrawn Chaloni again, isn’t it? What did he opt you into this time?”

Raising both hands defensively, Subar affected sophisticated cool. He did not wear it well. “
Tworaleen
—eval back! I’m here, aren’t I? It was no big deal.” He cast a quick sideways glance at his new acquaintance who, thankfully, said nothing. “We just came from my place. I introed Flinx to my family.” An appealing grin transformed his expression. “As counterbalance, I wanted him to meet you.”

This compliment somewhat mitigated her initial annoyance. She studied Flinx more closely. As she was doing so, bright wings appeared from beneath the taller youth’s shirt, spread wide to catch the haze-shrouded sun in a dual splash of bright blue and pink, and launched a diamond-backed, emerald-headed shape straight toward her.

A startled Subar started to reach for something concealed in a pocket. Flinx restrained him with a hand and a murmur. “It’s okay. If Pip wanted to hurt her, she’d already be down.”

To Ashile’s considerable credit, she leaned her head to one side but otherwise held her ground as the alien flying beast landed on her. Pip proceeded to collapse her wings and drape herself over the girl’s shoulder. Flinx looked on approvingly.

“She likes you,” he told the understandably uneasy adolescent.

“I think I’m glad.” Ashile guardedly eyed the serpentine shape lying athwart her left shoulder. It did not weigh much, and the iridescent green head and neck lay flat against the upper part of her chest. “Is she dangerous?”

“Only when she senses hostility.”

Ashile looked up at him. “Senses?”

“She’s an empath.”

“Tuorlu!”
Subar was as impressed as his girlfriend. Moving closer, he took the opportunity to examine Pip closely for the first time since he had encountered the tall offworlder. “I thought the bond between you two was awfully tight, but I had no idea. First empathic being I ever met.”

The second, Flinx thought, without elaborating. “We’ve been together a long time.” As much out of a sense of mischief as out of genuine curiosity he added, “How about you two?”

Subar immediately backed away from the girl. “Known each other for a couple of years, I guess.” He shrugged, feigning indifference. But his emotions gave him away. “When you live this close in the same neighborhood, sooner or later everybody gets to know everybody else.”

“Tnone,”
Ashile added. If anything, her emotions were transparent where Subar’s were somewhat confused. With his Talent operating at optimum, Flinx was able to read them both like an open book. He felt no shame at doing this and did not regard it as prying. Given a choice, he would have preferred to have been born without the ability. For him not to perceive the emotional states of others would have been the same as requesting the hearing-enabled not to listen or the sighted not to see.

One thing was immediately clear: while Subar’s feelings toward the leggy, awkward girl were decidedly mixed, no such ambiguity existed on Ashile’s part. Age notwithstanding, she was deeply, profoundly in love with Flinx’s boldly confident guide. It was an affection that bordered on adoration, though if confronted Flinx doubted she would confess to it. He sensed no guile in her. In her, the qualities that he so pessimistically sought among Malandere’s population could finally be found. She was caring, compassionate, and thoughtful. Perhaps even honest, though that was something he could not sense. Honesty was not an emotion, though there were those who could give hints to its presence. He was not surprised at his discovery. Had she been otherwise, Pip would not have taken to her so quickly.

She was no saint, however. The frenetic, driving, money-hungry culture that dominated life on Visaria did not accommodate saints, who would be better advised to seek hospitality elsewhere. What Flinx had seen of Malandere in particular suggested that the gullible and trusting would survive its voracious streets and nightlife about as long as a naked fat man on Midworld or Fluva.

He could sense that she was still suspicious of him. “So,” he ventured, striving to make conversation, “what do you do besides home-study?”

His query caused a sharp swing in her emotional state, suggesting that he had unwittingly struck a key in a personal sybfile better left unopened. The emotive shift affected Pip immediately. The flying snake rose from the girl’s shoulder and winged back to her master. The minidrag was not hostile, or panicked. Something had simply upset her.

Ashile replied, her explanation tinged with a bitterness that colored its clarity. “I’m a subvent.”

“I don’t—” he began.

She continued rapidly, as if wanting to get the confession over with as quickly as possible. Subar looked away, uncomfortable. “Every few nights I go to a certain place downtown. It’s kind of a club. I’m not the only one. There are other girls my age, and boys. There’s supposed to be an age limit, but…” She did not need to fill in the rest of the sentence. “Connections are made. Older—people—hook in. They pay to get inside your head. Your mind. They pay to share what it’s like to be young again. Sometimes they mess with your thoughts.” She swallowed and turned away, staring in the direction of the smothered sun. “Some of their thoughts aren’t very nice. They think about doing things they would never do themselves, to see how your thoughts react. It can get—ugly.”

She looked back at him and continued. “I’ve never had a serious problem. There are sensors and emergency disconnects. But once in a while one of the subvents gets hurt.” Reaching up, she tapped the side of her head. “Here. Then the staff take them away fast, so that the screaming and crying doesn’t upset the other customers. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.”

“Tinaw,”
Subar broke in, trying to lighten the mood. “You’re tough, Ash. That’s all.”

She didn’t want to be tough, though, Flinx sensed. She wanted to run. Away from her work, the description of which represented a new perversion Flinx had not previously encountered. She wanted to run away from her life. Given a preference, he surmised, she wanted to run away with Subar.

If the younger man was aware of those longings, he gave no indication of it, either physically, verbally, or emotionally. Flinx wanted to tell him, but doing so would have constituted an unforgivable invasion of the girl’s privacy. It also might not have the intended effect. Flinx could not stay out of people’s emotions, but he could stay out of their business. At least, he tried to.

It was one thing to intrude on the feelings of dozens of unnamed, unknown, faceless passersby on the streets of a city; it was something else entirely to find himself involved in the seething and probably hopeless passions of these two young residents. It was time for him to separate himself from them, to return to his own private isolation and deliberations. He said as much.

Aware he had just about run out of options for keeping his noteworthy new friend around, Subar resorted to naked pleading. “I wish you’d stay awhile longer, Flinx. There’s more people I know would like to meet you, and a lot more of Malandere that I’d like to show you.”

“Sorry. I have work of my own to do, and it’s not getting done. Other people are relying on me.” He scanned the rapidly warming rooftop. “I’ll find my way back to where I’m staying.”

“
Tloor,
no need for that.” Still reluctant to concede that he was going to have to let the offworlder go, Subar resolved to retain his company until the last possible instant in hopes of wringing, if not valuable personal property, at least every last bit of useful information from him. “I’ll help you find your way.”

“No need for that,” Flinx assured him. A slight smile creased his face. “I have some experience at finding my way around unfamiliar localities.”

“It’ll be easier and faster if I help you.” Having settled the matter and before Flinx could voice any further objection, Subar quickly turned to head back the way they had come. “Besides, it’ll give us the chance to talk a little longer.”

Ashile immediately started forward. “I’m coming with you.”

Flinx did not have to ask why. Her need was writ large all over her feelings.

Subar, however, did not possess his offworld acquaintance’s unique perceptiveness. “Why?” he asked her, puzzled. “Think I can’t find an address in the city without help?”

“No.” Standing close to Flinx, she squinted up at him. Her gaze was open, direct, and unapologetic. “Maybe I’d like to ask your friend a question or two myself.”

Subar was clearly unhappy with her decision, but not to the point of contesting it. As a consequence, while two had entered the jumble of a building, three left.

Ashile was like a shield, Flinx found. Well, more like a gauzy veil than a shield. Her intense emotional nature could not completely mask the flood of obnoxious public emotion that ebbed and flowed around him as she and Subar guided him through the maze of public transport, but her apparently indestructible good nature and honest affection for Subar helped to take the edge off the worst of the rage and envy.

It was at once amusing and sad that she felt it necessary to affect an impression of sardonic toughness. Every time she snapped angrily at Subar, what she felt inside gave her true feelings away. These were concealed from everyone except Flinx and Pip. The same awareness allowed him to pay no heed to her challenging stares and sometimes biting comments. She did not particularly like him, he sensed, but neither was she filled with unconcealed hate. As they rode public transport, her feelings toward Subar’s offworld friend vacillated between curiosity and caution: a sensible response.

As they crossed through three different districts, Subar spent the bulk of the traveling time ignoring Ashile while trying to convince Flinx to remain longer in Malandere—to no avail. Both youths were visibly uncomfortable on the street that led to Flinx’s hotel. Outside their home district they were out of their element and knew it, Subar’s bravado notwithstanding.

Since there was no reason for them to come inside, and as Flinx did not extend the offer, Subar was reduced to shaking the offworlder’s hand.

“
Tmorn
—thanks again.” Having tried everything he could think of, Subar realized clearly that this was the last he was going to see of a potentially powerful and intriguing new friend. While Flinx leaving later would have been better than sooner, he consoled himself with the knowledge that such a departure had been, realistically, only a matter of time.

“Stay out of trouble.” Flinx turned toward the entrance. Reading his eyes, the outer security doors parted to admit him. The inner ones would not open until the exterior pair had shut behind the guest. “And stick with her.” Smiling, he nodded in the direction of a startled Ashile. Then he disappeared inside.

Acutely aware of how far they were from their home district, socially as well as physically, Subar and Ashile turned and started back toward the transport station.