Trouble Magnet (20 page)

It was at that moment, making a last check of the priv place, that the interrogator happened to glance up as well as back. His eyes met Subar’s. Both sets of opposing oculars widened simultaneously.

The big man shouted as Subar bolted. Absolute terror lent extra energy to his legs and feet. Behind him he could hear more shouts and the sounds of heavy feet pounding on rooftop. A glance backward showed the Amazonian twins in hot pursuit. One was aiming a device in his direction.

As he made the leap across to the next building, something seared his right arm as if it had come in contact with a heated metal bar. Looking down, he saw wisps of smoke rising from his skin. The smell of his own burning flesh would have made him gag, if he’d had the time to squander on such things. The voices behind him commanded him to stop. Remembering the sight of Chaloni and what had been done to Dirran, he knew that his chances for survival would be better if he simply threw himself off the nearest roof.

He was small but quick. In the teeming, festering warren that was Alewev, those were advantages. Down a chute he went, barely bothering to thrust out hands and feet to slow his descent. Then up a serviceway, across a bridge of parallel power conduits, down yet another gap between two buildings, and out onto a side street. No one there even bothered to look in his direction. Like poverty and powerlessness, flight and pursuit were part and partial of everyday life in the district.

The rooftop meeting room wasn’t the only covert location known to the members of the rapidly disintegrating pod. In addition to their collective hidey-holes, each of them had his or her own special, private places. Out of breath, strength, and adrenaline, Subar finally threw himself into one of several service bins that were bolted to the back of a large refuse recycler. Inside the bin, the nonstop hum and rattle of the city service unit onto which it backed was deafening. But no one could hear him here, or pick up his heat signature, or smell him out. Huddled back against the bin’s interior wall, face pressed between his knees and arms around both, he waited for a massive hand, be it human or alien, to wrench the door aside and fish him out.

Time passed. An hour, then another. He dared to think that he might have shaken his pursuers. He couldn’t go home, he knew. Chaloni might have spilled that information along with everything else. With his home and family possibly under surveillance and the priv place violated, he had nowhere to go.

Alone in the gloom, safe for now and having nothing else to do, he finally allowed himself to cry.

He awoke with a start in the dark, the hidden hulk of the recycling machinery rumbling smoothly behind him. Wanting to scream, he knew enough not to. Once he’d rubbed his already sore eyes as clear as he could manage, he slowly opened the bin door a crack and peered out.

The serviceway was empty, the ground damp. It had rained while he had been asleep. There was no sign of the grim-faced twin giantesses, the muscular interrogator, or the frighteningly silent alien. Pushing open the bin door, he climbed out. It was still dim in the artificial canyon formed by the surrounding structures, but an irregular smear of orange-brown sky showed overhead. A glance at his unduly expensive and absurdly fashionable new communit indicated that it was a few minutes before eight in the morning. Exhausted and terrified, he had slept through the remainder of the previous day and on through the night.

He stood there, alone, rubbing his eyes. He could not go home. Depending on how much Chaloni had told his captors before he died—and he had probably told them a great deal, Subar surmised—they might be waiting for him in its vicinity. Secreted in a hallway, perhaps, waiting to snatch him as he wandered in, disappearing him before anyone noticed. Knowing his parents as he did, Subar doubted they would spending much time grieving over his disappearance. Nor could he try to obtain supplies from the priv place: that was certain to be under surveillance.

They would be after him, he knew. People like that didn’t let insults pass. They would be relentless in their pursuit, not stopping until they had accounted for every one of those who had boosted the warehouse. He had nowhere to go and no one on whom he could unload his misery. Except, maybe one…

The last time he could remember being as relieved when Ashile responded to a communication of his was when that peculiar tall offworlder had saved him from the thranx and the police. He met her in the usual place on the roof of her building, though not before watching her from hiding as she stood alone and searched for him. There was no reason to suppose that Chaloni or any of the other pod members knew about the place, or even the casual friendship, but he was taking no chances because he knew he wouldn’t get any.

When he finally stepped out of hiding, she caught sight of him with a mixture of bewilderment and irritation.

“There you are! What kind of game are you playing today, Subar? I don’t think I like…hey, take it easy!”

He half guided, half dragged her back into the cluster of service conduits where he had concealed himself. Her attitude changed the moment she got a good look at his face.

“You said it was an emergency, Subar, but I didn’t realize—”

He cut her off, everything that had happened to him the previous week spilling out in a torrent of words. She listened closely to all of it, not even nodding, just letting him gush until he concluded with a description of the dreadful events of the preceding day. When he finally finished, she reached out and tentatively put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“What are you going to do?” she asked as compassionately as she could.

“I don’t know.” His eyes were haunted with the memory of the horrors he had witnessed yesterday morning. “I can’t go home; they’re liable to be watching the whole building. The bin-hide I used last night is safe, I think, but there’s nothing there. It’s just an empty box. I have nowhere else to go.”

She hesitated. She had never seen him like this. Typically cocky and fearless, respectful of that awful
shatet
Chaloni but not afraid of him, suddenly Subar looked…he looked…

He looked his age.

She heard herself replying before her thoughts were fully formed, and she was almost as shocked at them as he was.

“You could stay with me.”

He gaped at her. “I mean,” she continued hastily, “I could hide you in my building. There are storage places, rarely visited and not at all full, that are climate-controlled. I could bring you food, and you have your communit for information and ’tainment.” Growing enthusiasm replaced her initial uncertainty. “You could hide here for as long as necessary.”

The look he gave her was one she had not seen before; its most prominent component was confusion. “That might work,” he finally commented, not bothering to thank her. “For a while, anyway.” He nodded, as much to himself as to her. “At least it would give me a base of operations.”

Now it was her turn to show uncertainty. “Operations? Operations for what? Staying alive?”

Gradually he was starting to look and sound a little more like his old self. “I can’t just crawl into a hole and aestivate like some dumb squinad,” he told her, referring to a local species of vermin that plagued every housing structure in the district. “They took Zezula and Missi and Behdul away alive. For sure to ask them more questions, if only for corroboration of what Chaloni told them. Maybe”—he swallowed hard—“for other things as well. I can’t just forget about them.”

“Yes you can,” she snapped. But his thoughts were already streaking ahead.

“Sallow Behdul’s big, but he’s useless in a situation like this. I wouldn’t be surprised if the
sahongs
kill him out of hand. The girls—they’ll at least talk to the girls. For a while.”

“They’re not your problem, Subar.” She did not like the turn their conversation had taken.

He met her gaze. “They’re my
friends,
Ash. I have to do something. I have to at least try. With Chal and Dirran dead, I’m the only hope they’ve got.” His voice dropped. “I don’t know what the people who have them are going to do to them, but one thing I know for sure: they’re not going to let them go. I’ve got to try.”

She stepped back in exasperation. “‘Try’? Try what? This isn’t an entertainment vit, Subar, and the people you’ve described to me aren’t acting. They killed Chaloni and Dirran, they’ll kill you, too. What are you going to do? Tell the police?”

He shook his head violently. “Worst thing I could do. People like this, if they get word the authorities are looking into it, they’ll just sky Zez and Missi and Behdul out to the Torogon Straits and dump them into the outgoing current.”

“Then what are you going to do?” She softened her tone. “You’re a great guy, Subar. I—I like you. But you’re just a kid. A seriously tough kid,” she added quickly, seeing the expression on his face, “but there’s just one of you. I’ll help you as much as I can, but that doesn’t include walking into the house of some semi-legal trading family, or whoever’s behind this, with guns flaring. I know my limits, and you should, too.” Moving forward, she once again rested her hand on his shoulder. “The more you talk like this, the more I keep seeing you dead, and I—I’d rather not.”

He looked up at her, then nodded slowly. “You’re right. If I’m going to do anything for Zez and the others I need help. Serious help.”

“You don’t know any serious help,” she told him. “You never went illegal enough to make friends with those kinds of people. You don’t know anyone anymore. Except me.”

“No.” He stood up so suddenly that it took her aback. “I do know somebody. I don’t know if he’ll help, but all he can do is refuse. That is, if he’s even still on Visaria.”

She frowned doubtfully. “Subar, who are you talking about? You don’t know any…” She broke off, remembering. “Are you talking about that strange offworlder you introduced me to? The one we escorted back to his hotel?”

He nodded, a glint of excitement in his eyes. “Flinx, his name was. Yes.”

Ashile eyed her friend as if he had lost not only his companions, but his mind, too. “He’s just one offworlder. Not all that much older than you and me, either. He didn’t strike me as the soldier type, and he doesn’t dress like a Qwarm.”

“You don’t know him,” Subar insisted, conveniently avoiding the fact that he didn’t know Flinx, either. “I saw him do—certain things. To Chal, and Dirran, and Behdul. I don’t know exactly what he did or how he did it.” He struggled to remember. “He said something about letting them taste dark water, whatever that means. If he can do something like that to the people who are holding Zez and the others, they might have a chance. If we can just break them free, they can go into hiding, too. And,” he finished, “the offworlder said that his pet was poisonous, remember?”

“
Tchai,
I remember.” She was more than a little exasperated. “You’re going to go up against the people who slaughtered Chaloni and Dirran and are still after you with the aid of one skinny longsong? And his ‘pet’?”

Subar was adamant now. “If he’s still on Visaria, yes. And if he agrees to help. Which,” he was compelled to add disconsolately, “he very well might refuse to do.”

“That’ll determine if he has any sense,” she shot back, “or if, like you, he’s lost it all.”

Looking as helpless as he felt, Subar spread his hands imploringly. “I have to at least make an attempt, Ash. These scrawn, they’ve taken my
friends
.” He eyed her intently. “Will you come with me? This Flinx, I got the feeling he liked you.”

“Tnai,”
she muttered sulkily, “I’ll come with you. I don’t know why, but I will. Maybe because I’ve always had a soft spot for dumb, abandoned animals.”

Coming toward her, he gripped her upper arms. His grasp was firm and confident, his expression grateful, his tone gentle. “I knew I could count on you, Ash. You’re a good friend.” Leaning forward, he kissed her—on the forehead. It was a thankful, respectful, chaste kiss. She wanted to hit him.

While he waited below, concealed near the main entrance to her building, she mumbled an excuse to her parents about leaving to visit friends for a couple of days. Her mother barely looked up from her in-home work to acknowledge her daughter’s declaration. Stuffing a few essentials into a backpack, she made her way downstairs. As the lift descended past other overcrowded floors, she found herself pondering.

What in the world was she doing? She could get herself killed. Or Subar could. She told herself that she was doing it for a good friend. A seriously good friend. Who was planning to risk himself for
his
friends.

A series of foul words she would never have used in public slalomed through her mind, tainting her thoughts. “His friends.” She knew on whose behalf he was risking himself. That apathetic slut Zezula. He was always talking about her, always going on about how she looked, how she moved, how she talked, how she dressed, how she…

What a very great pity, Ashile thought as she exited the building and rejoined Subar, that the brutal unknown assailants had chosen to take out their anger on Chaloni instead of his worthless girlfriend.

CHAPTER

12

Even among the emotive roar and howl of the city, even while lying and relaxing on the bed in his room, Flinx’s casually roaming Talent was able to pick out the pair of desperately focused feelings coming toward him. He was able to do so for precisely that reason: because they were coming toward
him
. Years of running, of living in a state of constant wariness, had sensitized him to feelings that were aimed in his direction. Furthermore, he recognized both of them. They belonged, unless he was very wrong, to the two youths he had once conversed with on the roof of a run-down apartment complex in another part of the city.

He was not pleased. He had told the youth—what was his name?—Subar—that work beckoned, and had made his good-byes. Now the boy, and his more estimable female friend, were entering the lobby of the hotel where Flinx had taken a small suite. Their emotional states were—unsettled.

He could simply ignore them, he knew. Refuse to respond to their request for access to his floor, pretend he was not in the room. Check out and move to another residence, another city even, to avoid them. Only one thing stopped him. As it so often did, his damnable curiosity got in the way, just as it had on that morning days ago when he had intervened to rescue the youth from the attention of the authorities.

Might as well see what had the two of them so churned up inside, he told himself resignedly. It wasn’t as if his already too-long sojourn on Visaria was otherwise inundating him with admirable examples of his own species. Dealing with whatever was firing the emotions of his unexpected visitors would no doubt only take up a few minutes of his time, and he had planned to leave Malandere and return to the
Teacher
in another day or two anyway.

He could not see the expression on Subar’s face when he acknowledged the youth’s arrival, nor hear him breathe “He’s still here!” to Ashile. But he could sense the relief in the boy’s feelings.

That the situation was serious and not simply a ploy intended to let Subar gain access to him again was made plain by the haste with which the youth and his lady friend practically dashed into the outer room of Flinx’s suite.

“Thank you.” Subar collapsed into the nearest chair, which was hard-pressed to orthopedically accommodate so swift a collapse. “Thank you, thank you, many
tvarin
times over.” A more self-controlled Ashile lowered herself decorously onto the arm of the single chair. She let her right arm slip around behind Subar but, Flinx noted, made no contact with him.

Someone else did, however. Spreading her vibrantly colored wings, Pip rose from her resting place on the other side of the room and hummed over to land on the girl’s lap. She started slightly, but held her seat. Timidly, she reached down with her left hand and began stroking the flying snake behind the scaly head. Sensing his pet’s complete ease with the girl, Flinx permitted himself to relax a little more.

Subar was not relaxed, however. His emotions were a roiling, conflicted storm. Anxiety, fear, expectation, hope, desperation, panic: all were present, tumbling and folding over and through one another like batter in a bowl.

His tone bordering on irritation, Flinx wasted no time on casual banter. “I told you I had work to do. This better be important.”

“I…” Now that he actually found himself in the older youth’s presence, it struck Subar with sudden force that he had made no preparations for this moment. He had been completely consumed with just finding Flinx again. Now that he had done so he was unsure how to begin. One thing he felt he needed to do if he was going to secure the offworlder’s aid was to minimize as much as possible his own responsibility for the current difficult circumstances.

Ashile, on the other hand, had no such qualms. While Subar was deciding what to say and how best to say it, she jumped right in.

“Subar’s gotten himself in a right
tconic
mess. He and his ‘friends’ scrimmed a storage facility run by local illegals. They got founded out. Two of them got deaded.” She eyed Subar. “With extreme invention, apparently.”

“Chaloni,” he mumbled, “and Dirran. You met them.”

Flinx remembered. “Go on,” he responded guardedly. There was no duplicity in Subar’s confession.

Ashile continued when Subar could not. “Three of his other friends were taken. Two
girls
and one other guy.” She looked down at the young man slumped in the chair. “Subar insists on trying to rescue them. Why, I don’t know. They’ve never done anything for him that I can see. But I can’t talk him out of it. Being his real friend, I agreed to accompany him this far. At least.” She looked up at Flinx. “He seems to think you might be able to do something. I don’t see why he should involve you—”

A shocked Subar looked up at her. “Ash!”

“—since you’re just a visitor here. But you helped him once before, and he believes you might help him again. All I can tell you is that if I were you, I wouldn’t get involved.” She looked down at the youth in the chair. “He told me in too much detail what these people did to Chaloni and Dirran. I don’t know what your profession is, Mr. Flinx, but I’m sure you’ve never been involved in anything like this.”

Flinx nearly choked on the acrid laugh he managed to suppress. “Uh, no, I’m sure you’re right, Ashile. Like I told Subar, I’m only a student, and this—this kind of conflict is all pretty new to me.”

She eyed him evenly, without embarrassment. “You’re one of those professional students who just keeps studying and never graduates as anything, right?” she said accusingly.

He had to look away lest she see his expression. “Something like that. Actually, I am working toward graduating in the near future. It’s a goal I hope I can achieve. Unlike some, failure is not an option for me.”

Her initial scorn turned to sympathy. “Can’t disappoint your parents, huh?” In her lap, Pip squirmed uncomfortably.

Flinx carefully pondered a response before finally replying, “Actually, the entire Commonwealth is depending on me, though its inhabitants don’t know it.”

She stared at him for a moment, then made a face. “I was just asking. You don’t have to get sarcastic about it.”

“Will you help?” Subar had had enough of this courteous byplay. They were wasting time. He thought of what her captors might be doing to Zezula. And to Missi and Sallow Behdul, too, of course. “I can’t take this to the authorities.”

“Because you and your friends invited this reprisal by committing an illicit act yourselves,” Flinx commented.

“It’s not only that,” Subar told him. “This is Malandere. This is Visaria. It’s not Earth, it’s not Hivehom. The line between those who enforce the law and those who break it isn’t so clear-cut here. I could turn myself in to the authorities for protection and wind up in the same sludge pit as if I’d been carried off by the people who’ve taken Zezula and Missi and Sallow Behdul.”

Flinx leaned back into the lounge that cradled him, sighed, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Aside from the question of whether I’d help you or not, what makes you think that I could do anything if I did?”

On firmer ground now, Subar sat up straight and leaned forward. “You rescued me from the two thranx and the police. I saw what you did to Chaloni and the others when we were up in our priv place. You can do—things. I don’t know how, but I know that you can. The more I’m around you, the more I get the feeling that you’re not just an ordinary visitor. You might be a ‘student’ like you say—but a student of what I’d sure like to know.” He repeated what he had said before, with as much emphasis as he could muster. “
Will
you help?”

Boredom. Boredom and curiosity. Separately they had sometimes gotten him in trouble. Together, they invariably did.

“All right,” he told the youth. “I’ll see if I can do anything. Though exactly what, I have no idea.”

“Thank you,” Subar replied simply. His voice was even, controlled. But the feelings he was holding in still threatened to overwhelm him.

What he did not know, and what the tall offworlder seated opposite refrained from telling him, was that Flinx had agreed to lend his assistance not to aid Subar, but because Ashile’s love for him was as transparent and pure and unqualified as it was unspoken, and was exactly the kind of empathetic humanity Flinx had despaired of finding in a place like Malandere.

One thing that escapes the attention of law-abiding citizens on any human-settled planet is that gossip infects the underworld as thoroughly as it does their own. The criminal substructure has its own Shell, through which rumor, innuendo, and news is filtered separate and apart from the tridee media that informs society at large. For those who wish to do so, accessing this flow of illicit information is no more difficult that wading into a river of sewage. The quandary is that the consequences are often the same.

Though Subar’s street contacts tended to be younger than the average professional lawbreaker, they were in many ways no less competent. It took him only a couple of days to find out who was holding his friends. This because the word had been disseminated that the unpleasant people in question were still looking for one more thief—him. Anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts was offered a Shell connection to contact, with a substantial reward promised for information leading to his eventual capture. Knowing who held his friends, however, did not automatically suggest a means of liberating them.

“We need guns,” Subar was muttering as he and Ashile strode down the busy street alongside Flinx. “And maybe explosives. Blow the entrance and sneak Zez and the others out the back.” He coughed. Combined with the thick, particulate-laden air of the city, tension was causing his breathing to come in short, anxious puffs.

“No,” Flinx told him quietly. “No guns. No explosives.” He did not explain that the one thing he personally had to avoid at all costs was the drawing of attention to himself and to his presence on Visaria. The liberation of Subar’s friends had to be done quietly, or not at all. He already knew what he intended to do. Otherwise, he would not now be walking in their company.

Ignorant of his new friend’s need to maintain complete anonymity, a baffled Subar piped up, “Then how are we going to get inside?” Ashile’s expression, as well as her feelings, showed that she shared his confusion.

Looking down at them, Flinx smiled reassuringly. “We’ll knock.” He proceeded to detail the approach he had worked out. As he did so, Ashile wondered yet again why she hadn’t possessed enough sense to stay out of this completely.

“That’s the most
sethet
thing I’ve ever heard.” She was staring at him. “Who do you think you are?
What
do you think you are? Besides insane, I mean.”

“He’s not.” Unlike his friend, Subar was grinning broadly. Flinx’s strategy made sense. All it demanded was boldness, daring, and a willingness to place his life completely in the taller youth’s hands. “Wait, and you’ll see.” The near worshipful expression on his face as he looked back up at the offworlder, she noted, was exactly the same as the one he used to bestow on the deceased Chaloni. To her, it was not a good sign.

Flinx went over the final details of the tactics he had concocted as they rode public transport to the address specified by Subar’s contact. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was located in the same industrial zone as the storage facility Subar and his friends had boosted, though in another building some distance away. While still confident in the capabilities of his offworld friend, it was Subar’s nature to have second thoughts.

“What if the information I got is outdated, and Zezula and the others are no longer being held in the same place where you’re supposed to sell me?”

Ashile glared at him. “Now’s a fine time to think of that!”

Having anticipated the possibility, Flinx was not put off by the question. “Then we’ll just have to leave, and try to find another way to locate them. But I think the odds are pretty good. They’ve already viewed your ‘captured’ image via their own link. Knowing nothing about me, they’ve no reason to suspect I intend anything other than delivering you, as per agreement.”