Trouble Magnet (26 page)

No one saw the five of them as they exited the building. Remote sensors would record the departure of the transport from the subterranean parking area. With the vehicle’s protective dome opaqued, however, the identity of its passengers would remain anonymous.

“I think you may be making a terrible mistake,” Theodakris warned his acquaintance as the vehicle entered a high-speed transport corridor and accelerated sharply.

“I already have.” Relaxed and assertive, Shaeb glanced over at his friend, guest, and prisoner. “I had insufficient security measures in place at a building holding millions of cred worth of imported goods. I entrusted the care and interrogation of those who perpetrated an unforgivable crime against myself and my interests to incompetents. Tonight all of this will be appropriately resolved, and none of it will be repeated.” He shook his head disbelievingly. “Are you so frightened of one lone rogue operator from offworld?” When the senior analyst did not reply, Shaeb added, “Maybe when you actually confront him, and look on as he expires, your concern will be shown to be as unfounded as it self-evidently is.”

Confront him, Theodakris ruminated. It was something he could not imagine. Yet ever since he had caught the first glimpse of the offworlder on the park surveillance scan and had positively identified him, the perverse fancy had never entirely left his mind. What would he say under such circumstances? What
could
he say? For that matter, if the young man named Philip Lynx knew that a certain senior analyst knew who he truly was, what would the youth himself do? How would the enigma called Flinx respond?

As he contemplated a range of possibilities vaster and more profound than Shaeb could ever imagine, Shyvil Theodakris found himself mulling each and every one of them with an unsettling mix of unabashed terror and unrestrained expectation.

Having nothing to pack except his concerns, and—unusually for him—having difficulty sleeping in a strange place, Flinx found himself wandering alone outside the agricultural facility’s main building. Overhead, Pip described lazy circles between himself and the light of Visaria’s two moons.

He had managed to snatch a few hours’ rest, but had been awakened not long after midnight by the emotional flare-up of someone else’s nightmare. When in a city surrounded by thousands upon thousands of projecting inhabitants, the vast sea of emotional ups and downs tended to merge into an emotive blur, as if he were listening to an orchestra with tens of thousands of players. At such times he could only pick out discrete expressions of feeling by consciously focusing his Talent on a single isolated mind, or at most a small group. Without sharpening such focus, the feelings of large numbers of people tended to melt together, creating a kind of emotional white noise in his brain. Seclusion, however, isolated individual sentiments, making them at once easier to identify yet more difficult to disregard. His head hurt.

He wanted to scream at sentience to leave him alone.

The nightmarish emotions had been flecked with feminine overtones—something he had learned to distinguish long ago. Zezula’s bad dream, then, or possibly Missi’s. At least, he reflected as he moseyed along one of the several quick-poured, hard-surfaced paths that radiated outward from the main building, if it was Zezula’s nightmare he could take a walk without fear of being accosted by the girl. He found himself wondering: if she was the one having the bad dream, might he be involved? There was no way of knowing. He could only read the emotions of others. Not their thoughts, and certainly not their dreams.

His present surroundings intrigued him. Despite the considerable extent of his wanderings, he had not spent much time around agricultural facilities. His travels tended to find him exploring vast empty places or large metropolitan complexes. There was a peacefulness to his current environs that appealed to him. It was a prospect he had not previously considered. Who knew? Perhaps one day he, too, would decide to work land somewhere, like Sallow Behdul’s helpful cousin Tracken Behdulvlad.

Yes, he would become a farmer. Right after he enlisted a wandering gas-giant-sized Tar-Aiym weapons platform in an attempt to divert the immense, unknown, incomprehensible manifestation of physical evil that was even now rushing headlong and unopposed toward the Milky Way.

Focus on carrotinites, he told himself resolutely. The bright yellow-orange spears that were derived from an ancient Terran edible filled the polymer-protected field before him with puffs of muted green. Kneeling, he used the light of Visaria’s nearly full moon and its quarter-bright companion to study the nearest growth. Was it mature and ready to harvest? Could he eat such a thing straight out of the ground?

Light from the two moons showed through Pip’s membranous wings every time she passed between him and one of Visaria’s satellites. The minidrag was hunting nocturnal flying things. Though they were native to Visaria and not her homeworld of Alaspin, she didn’t care. Proteins were proteins, more or less. He knew from experience that if she consumed something organic that did not agree with her, her highly reactive digestive system would reject it before it could do any damage. He kept alternating his attention between the green-topped carrotinites and the flying snake, not wanting to be beneath her in the event that such a correction to consumption should occur.

A soft hiss filled the air around him as the automatic hydro system sprang to life. Condensing out of the air, water appeared beneath his boots. Straightening, he turned to go back the way he had come. The farm’s single-story living quarters were a sprawl of interconnected buildings behind him. Tracken Behdulvlad had a fetish for constantly upgrading his facility. As Visaria grew and Malandere boomed, the market for his soil-ground produce expanded steadily.

First thing in the morning, Flinx decided, he would make his way back to the city, to its main shuttleport, and to the compact craft that would carry him skyward back to the waiting
Teacher
. He had done all he could here. Good deeds for the benefit of some disadvantaged youths. A better outcome than he had managed on recently visited Arrawd, where he had found himself the cause of a local war, but less so than on Repler, which he had helped to save from an alien life-form the likes of which he hoped never to encounter again. Life balanced out. He was reasonably pleased with himself.

Sadly, his visit to this mushrooming outpost world had only served to validate his developing opinion that his own future would be better served by seeking some sort of personal happiness while leaving civilization to its own devices. Nothing he had seen, heard, or experienced during his time in Malandere had convinced him that humankind was worth the sacrifice of the years ahead.

The thranx, now—they were another matter. Whether their future was his responsibility constituted an ethical quandary from which he had yet to extricate himself. Exhaling resignedly, he turned and started back toward the darkened complex. He was tired. It was both too late and too early to leave. If he was lucky, and if the lurid dreams of another that had startled him out of an uneasy slumber had abated, he might be able to sneak another hour or two of sleep before it was time to leave.

He was almost back to the buildings when a rush of entirely novel emotion flooded his perception. At this late hour, that in itself would have been enough to bring him up short. The nature and diversity of the feelings he was perceiving, however, caused him to tense and turn. That Pip also sensed them was confirmed by the speed with which she abandoned her nocturnal hunting and raced back to her perch on his shoulder.

Scanning the silent, almost windless expanse of polymer-shielded fields, he saw nothing—with his eyes. His erratic but distinctive Talent, however, made known the presence of a number of approaching sentients by detecting and conveying what they were feeling directly to his empathetic mind.

All but one of them were fraught with expectation, controlled ferocity, and homicidal intent. The emotive emanations of the sole exception among them were—confused. Furthermore, the emotional projections of the three most bloodthirsty intruders were more than passing strange. At once passing strange and—strangely familiar.

At the moment none was dangerously near, but all were coming steadily closer. With a last scan of the still deserted, bucolic fields, he whirled and sprinted for the entrance to the nearest edifice.

Identifying him as an approved visitor, the portal opened to admit him. Struggling to remember the layout of the complex in the dark, he hesitated. Since Tracken was not dreaming and therefore not projecting, Flinx had to find him physically, by searching the rooms off first one, then a second accessway. When he finally did locate the agricultural engineer’s sleeping quarters, he burst in without waiting for the door to announce him.

Like all those whose professions require that they be ready on short notice to tackle an emergency, Tracken was awake and alert in seconds. Flinx filled him in as quickly as he could.

“Intruders? But how did they find…?”

“It doesn’t matter how they found this place. Or who they are, though I can guess. They’re coming with killing in mind.” Clutching Flinx’s shoulder, Pip could hardly keep still. “First thing is to wake the others.”

Tracken started to say something, then ended up just nodding. Slipping out of his bed, he was fully dressed in less than a minute.

Though unmarried and unpartnered, he was accustomed to entertaining guests, both friends and travelers on agricultural business. The room that was designed to accommodate one or two visiting couples had been enhanced with the addition of several instant beds for the use of Sallow Behdul’s friends. While Tracken activated the walls, flooding the room with light, Flinx shook and prodded its five occupants to life.

Irritated at the outset at being roughly awakened, their lingering drowsiness fled as Flinx told them what he had sensed coming toward them. Missi started crying, which did no one any good, while a grim-faced Ashile moved closer to Subar. He did not step away from her, but neither did he take her hand or offer any comforting words. Zezula looked resigned, while Sallow Behdul’s attention was concentrated on his older relative.

“We can’t fight them,” Subar muttered. “If they’re Piegal Shaeb’s people, every one of them will be a trained slayer.” He indicated his distraught companions. “We can hold our own on the street, but not against professionals.” He looked, unsurprisingly, at Flinx. “We have to run. Again.”

“Can’t this time.” If the younger man was hoping for greater encouragement from the tall offworlder, it was not forthcoming. “They’re approaching from all sides. We’re surrounded here.”
Surrounded,
he decided, sounded better than
trapped
.

Tracken was eyeing him curiously. “How do you know we’re surrounded? For that matter, how do you know we’re under attack? How many did you see?”

Subar took a step forward, away from Ashile and toward the agrigeneer. “If he says he knows, he knows.” His gaze returned to the offworlder. “I don’t know how he knows, but he has—I don’t know how to describe it. A nose for things.”

If only that were the pertinent organ, Flinx mused. His head was pounding, but medication would have to wait. “We have to fight them. Somehow.” He looked hopefully at Tracken.

The agrigeneer wiped at his forehead. “There are some defenses. To dissuade produce thieves. Nothing that will deter professional killers, but we’ll try. I also have a gun. One.”

Flinx nodded understandingly. It would have been unreasonable to expect an agricultural specialist, even on an outpost world such as Visaria, to be outfitted with an arsenal.

“Get it.” He turned back to the huddle of anxious youths. “The rest of you might as well arm yourselves as best you can with whatever Tracken can find for you. Knives, farm instruments, any kind of cutting tool. Split up. Find hiding places.” He nodded in the general direction of outside. “They’ll have tracking gear to hunt you down. Infrared seekers, carbon dioxide analyzers, whisper sensors. Don’t wait for them to corner you. If you hear approaching noise, come out fighting. Use what surprise you have.” He turned to go. On his shoulder, Pip was alert and ready.

“You talk like you’ve had to do some serious fighting yourself,” Ashile called after him.

He looked back at her. She was deceptively calm on the outside, but like the rest of her companions her emotions were churning. In response to her comment, rambling memories of a lifetime of running, hiding, and striking back flashed through his mind. He offered what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

“Now and then,” he told her. Then he was out the door and sprinting back up the hallway.

He did not want to get caught inside the building. Ill-equipped as they were in the way of armament, Subar and his friends still had their street-smarts. They might not have adequate weaponry, but they knew how to conceal themselves, how to hide while on the move. If they could just avoid the attackers long enough…

Long enough for what? he asked himself as he burst out the main entrance and raced around toward the back of the complex. For him to pick off the bevy of skilled attackers one at a time? Even if he could do something, why should he bother? Why not just steal through the contracting line of oncoming assailants and make for the city and the shuttleport? These Malandere street kids were nothing to him. Hardscrabble urban urchins with little to recommend them, dubious futures, and questionable morals.

Just like another hard-up youth he had once known well. Just like the underprivileged kid he had once been. He thought he had Subar and his friends pegged, but who was he to say for certain? Maybe there was another Flinx among them.

No, that wasn’t possible. There was only one of him, provided one discounted his roving, raving half sister. Then why was he identifying with them so strongly? Why was he identifying with them at all? Why couldn’t he mind his own business and just let them all die?

Maybe, he thought, because there
was
only one of him, and whatever else he was, whatever horrors and wonders and contradictions the man that was him contained, stark cold indifference was not among them.