Patrimony (9 page)

Business was always best, he hummed to himself serenely as he made his way back to his waiting vehicle, when it was possible to conduct it calmly and with a minimum of fuss.

A few dark clouds had shouldered their way to prominence among the less threatening white cumuli that gathered every morning around the jagged peaks of the high northern mountains, but otherwise the following day dawned clear, crisp, and chilled. Perfect for a quick direct flight to Sluuvaneh, the making of a few surreptitious inquiries, and a swift execution. Halvorsen was at ease as his skimmer lifted from the rooftop landing pad of his building. Set on autopilot, it accelerated rapidly northwest in the direction of its programmed destination while its owner relaxed and studied the pornographic images the craft’s central projector inveigled for him out of the climate-controlled interior. In between glancing up at the perverted inventions, none of which was new and only some of which he any longer found stimulating, he passed the time checking and cleaning and checking again the gleaming, highly specialized black handgun that reposed in the carrying case spread open across his lap.

It was a menacing little appliance. Unlike many contemporary hand weapons, it had no Stun setting, no life-preserving paralysis parameters. It was designed to do one thing and one thing only, and that was to terminate the life-force of motile organics. The nature of the disruptive charge that it unleashed was such that it was not necessary to strike a vital area or organ in order to accomplish its task. Hit on a hand, a foot, the tip of a finger, that individual would expire just as speedily and absolutely as if struck in the heart. Though Halvorsen was a sure hand and excellent shot with a wide variety of weapons, the gleaming, beautiful black slayer was a personal favorite. The lazy man’s means of assassination, he mused to himself. Not only did it kill instantly, but because it was nonexplosive there was never any untidiness to clean up afterward.

Though the public landing pad at Sluuvaneh held a dozen skimmers of varying size and origin, thanks to the information supplied by the rental company Halvorsen had no trouble homing in on the location of the one belonging to his quarry. At this rate, he reflected as he slipped the black slayer into its concealed vest holster, he would be finished with the job and back home in Tlossene in time for dinner. Disembarking from his vehicle, he sauntered casually across the heated tarmac in the direction of one of two nearby service hangars. The information available on his handheld communit was identical to that simultaneously being displayed on his craft’s command console.

Perhaps his quarry’s skimmer needed repairs, or a recharge, or simply a systems update. He smiled to himself. He was about to save the offworlder the cost and inconvenience of any repairs.

There was one skimmer parked in the front of the hangar where the signal was coming from. Halvorsen hesitated when he saw the craft, frowning slightly. It was a commercial rental, all right, but bigger than the model whose identification he had appropriated and belonging to a different company. How had his information become so scrambled? Tensing as he approached the battered, well-used vehicle, he observed that the signal was not coming directly from it, but from a point slightly behind it. He accelerated his pace.

An increasingly anxious stroll around the far side of the parked vehicle revealed not the expected second skimmer but an extensive service and repair area. Replacement parts, containers, vacuum-sealed shipping crates, tools, analyzers, and adjusters in a bewilderment of sizes, shapes, and standards filled work consoles and were piled on the floor space between them. As near as he could see only a single human was present, working patiently alongside several equally engrossed Tlel. With his sense of smell recoiling from the combined stink of native and lubricant and holding the communit unobtrusively at his side, he approached the woman.

“Morning, ma’am.”

Despite the Tlel-tolerant ambient temperature inside the service hangar, she was sweating profusely. Wiping perspiration from her forehead, she turned to look at him. A glance down at his communit’s readout showed that the signal from the skimmer the offworlder had rented was stronger than ever. So strong, in fact, that he should have been standing inside that very craft right then and there, instead of out on an open hangar floor preparing to question a dowdy middle-aged technician.

“Good morning, sir. May I help you?”

Halvorsen’s frustration was increasing exponentially. Leaning slightly to his right, he peered past her. Looking up from his work, one of the Tlel technicians stared in their direction. To avoid meeting that glistening alien eyeband, Halvorsen turned away. His rudeness was deliberate.

“I was supposed to meet a friend of mine here today.” He recalled applicable aliases. “Skua Mastiff ’s his name.” Pivoting slowly, he studied the interior of the hangar. There was no place to hide anything larger than a car. Manifestly, it held only one skimmer. “I was supposed to meet him here, but this isn’t his transport I see parked.”

While replying, the woman fiddled with a piece of apparatus he didn’t recognize. Probably all she ever got to fiddle with, he thought snidely. “Oh certain,
clodat
. He was here.”

Was
. Interesting, Halvorsen suddenly found himself reflecting, coldly, how a simple change of tense could turn an ordinary three-letter word into a pernicious four-letter one.

The woman continued. “Left early this morning.” As she spoke, she continued to adjust the circuitry sprayer she was holding. Turning slightly to her left, she gestured toward a small, glassy, rectangular shape sitting atop a worktable surrounded by a dozen or so other sealed modules in varying states of disarticulation. “That’s the tracker off his rental. Said he wasn’t sure it was working properly. I told him it was against the law to go out into backcountry without one, and he said he knew that, but that he had an important appointment he couldn’t miss and that he didn’t need to go more than a few kilometers from town.” She shrugged, apparently not noticing the angry flush that was rapidly adding color to her visitor’s cheeks.

“It was his call, friend. I’m not the one who’ll have to pay the fine if he gets caught skimming around without a locator. That’s between him, the law, and the company that rented him the transport in the first place.” She nodded once more in the direction of the recently extracted device. “Told him I’d have it checked out and ready for reinstallation when he gets back tonight.”

If
he gets back tonight, a fuming Halvorsen seethed silently. The visitor might have told this pasty-faced woman the truth—or he might choose not to return for a few days, or a couple of weeks. When he finally deigned to do so, it might be via a circuitous route that would make him difficult to intercept before he bade final farewell to this happy, smelly world.

Halvorsen briefly considered returning to Tlossene and doing nothing more proactive than waiting for his quarry to finish his gallivanting around and show up at the shuttleport. Such a course of action presented complications of its own. His diligence might draw the attention of curious authorities, or he might simply miss his transiting quarry while in the process of doing something as simple as eating, sleeping, or attending to demanding necessary bodily functions.

One possibility the exasperated hunter discarded from the outset was any thought of trying to sneak aboard the visitor’s private shuttle, there to lie in wait for its wandering owner to return. Such craft were invariably equipped with defenses designed to deal harshly with snoopers and interlopers. Furthermore, the shuttleport itself was often busy. Even if he did manage the timing so that he could confront his quarry, there was always the risk of encountering potential witnesses.

No, to ensure the safety and success of the modest enterprise on which he was presently embarked, he needed to find his target and deal with it as far away from Tlossene, as distant from the innocent eyes of curious bystanders, as possible.

Unsurprisingly, when questioned the phlegmatic technician had no idea as to her recently departed customer’s destination. The tall young offworlder had not volunteered the information, and she had not regarded it as any of her business to inquire. Which lack of information left the irate Halvorsen no choice but to commence the arduous and disagreeable task of asking questions around town. Much as it repulsed him, this meant not only interacting with the local Tlel but being polite to them, as well. Having no other choice, he held his nose both literally and figuratively as he strode from place to place in search of information that might give him a clue which way his absent, perambulating “friend” might have gone.

He spent a furious, wasted day in search of clues before finally finding one the next morning in the person of a native functionary working at the central administration center.
Clue
was the operative description, since “he said he going north” was as specific as this even more than usually malodorous individual could be. Though damningly ambiguous, it was the only information on his quarry’s plans that Halvorsen was able to unearth. The administrative functionary, of course, had no reason to suspect that a fellow human’s motivation in inquiring as to the route taken by one of his own kind was anything other than benign.

A delay. That was all it was, Halvorsen fumed as he made his way back to his own craft. This taking off without a tracking locator was very inconsiderate of his quarry. Fortunately, Halvorsen’s skimmer was equipped with sophisticated tracking equipment that did not rely for success on following the clear signal of another vehicle’s safety instrumentation. Catching up to his target would require a couple of days longer than he had anticipated, a bit more expenditure, a little more wear and tear on both himself and his equipment, before he finally ran the man down. Though the provisional aggravation quotient continued to rise, he knew it was only a matter of time until he would be able to claim the stipulated reward. It was often so. One sometimes had to spend more time and money than originally envisioned in order to make more of the latter. The only thing he could not amortize was his own irritation.

So upset was he at the unexpected turn of events and in such a rush to resume the pursuit that before he left town he neglected to check with the repair technician to see if there was actually anything wrong with the locator his quarry had left behind to be “checked out.” Had he lingered long enough to learn that it was in fact in perfect working order, the surprising revelation just might have proven sufficiently unexpected to give even Norin Halvorsen pause.

CHAPTER 5

One way that escort and employer passed the time as the skimmer cruised steadily northwestward was to work on improving their knowledge of each other’s language. In this the willing and voluble Bleshmaa had the clear advantage, since she already spoke very good terranglo while Flinx’s knowledge of Tlelian barely qualified as minimal. Ten meters below the skimmer, the crests of the highest alien treetops unfolded like cauliflower florets in a recurring eruption of green and shocking blue.

“Nono,” she told him, employing the characteristic Tlelian doubling of a word to indicate emphasis.
“Clelet cleleen jlatat.
Notnot
jliteet.”

Flinx tried again. As befitted a moderately expensive rental, the skimmer’s seats were warm and comfortable. Plush but not pushy. Outside, the lush but chilly surface of Gestalt sped past at a constant speed maintained by the skimmer’s automatics. Pip dozed nearby, only occasionally glancing up whenever her master or his new friend grew more than usually excited.

Bleshmaa, it developed, was not presently conjoined. Both she and her deceased mate, who had been killed in a backcountry encounter with something large, hairy, and tooth-laden called a sleang, had supplemented their income by escorting not only human visitors and settlers but also other Tlel into some of the more primitive, less visited expanses of Gestalt’s wild northland.

“Clelet cleleen jlatat.”
Flinx repeated the phrase clearly despite the fear that by doing so correctly he risked swallowing his own tongue. The feeding cilia beneath Bleshmaa’s flattened, horizontal chin rippled in a brief wave of approval.

“Muchmuch better. If yu continue tu progress, tomorrow we will try some more advanced action words.”

The farther north they traveled, the more variable and unpredictable the climate became. The good weather continued to hold, however. Nothing beyond the occasional light hailstorm or brief shower interrupted the spectacular view outside. Flinx was most impressed with the ferocious rivers. Descending from the high mountains that marched down from the northern pole, these roared southward in what seemed to be a multiplicity of never-ending cascades of churning, frothing water anxious to reach the equator. The glint and flash of white water was particularly striking where it cut through tall stands of fibrous growths that were azure or cobalt in hue. Against dense alien forest, the rushing rivers resembled shifting cracks in a vast pane of blue glass.

When not initiating her employer into the mysteries of Tlelian enunciation, Bleshmaa busied herself with typical native amusements. Some were simple enough to improvise without external input. Others required downloads accessible via her own basic but perfectly adequate communit. Due to Gestalt’s long association with the Commonwealth, advanced technology had made more than casual inroads into Tlel society, transforming it in ways her ancestors could not have dreamed. Like most of her kind she was as comfortable with the progressive advances and with the skimmer’s full complement of sophisticated instrumentation as was her current human employer.

The fourth day of steady flight found him three-quarters of the way to his goal: the coordinates that had been supplied by the helpful Rosso Eustabe. Accessing information from the skimmer’s instrumentation via his own communit, he continued to hunt for additional information on the enigmatic Mr. Anayabi. As with his original probe conducted from Tlossene’s administrative center, search after surreptitious search turned up nothing new. In lieu of hope of actually learning anything, he had given to substituting persistence, a quality that had served him well in the past.

His attention was drawn sharply away from his research by the voice of the skimmer’s AI. For a change, the message did not involve the weather. The announcement was as terse as it was utterly unanticipated.

“I must please ask you to secure yourselves in your seats, as we are currently under attack.”

Taken aback, a startled Flinx asked the AI to repeat the alert. It promptly did so, in the same even tone of voice. As alarms went, Flinx thought the rental craft’s excessively polite.

Throwing himself into the forward passenger chair, he instinctively pushed back into the crash padding and allowed the safety harness to activate around him. While it did so and as an agitated Pip settled onto his shoulder, he looked around wildly, searching for the source of the declared threat. A quick scan of the deep blue sky through the craft’s transparent plexalloy dome revealed no imminent danger; no diving aircraft, no incoming kinetics, no paralleling vehicles of any kind. Bemused, he started to press the AI to project whatever it had detected into the air above one of the forward consoles.

Then he felt it.

The hlusumakai came diving out of the brilliant white sun, heading straight for the skimmer. A bare moment after Flinx’s cantankerous special Talent sensed the creature’s murderous intent, he saw it. Swift, septuple-winged, golden-hued, and furry, the aerial predator had eyes as big as the skimmer’s aft port, a trailing cranial crest of feathery crimson tassels, and a mouth large enough to swallow Flinx whole. One outstanding feature dominated the remarkable beast’s appearance. Like a great golden sail, a translucent membranous arc formed an enormous spine-supported, fan-shaped semi-circle from one side of the creature’s head to the other.

As the hlusumakai swept past, pulling up at the last minute to avoid a head-on collision with the skimmer, Bleshmaa flinched in her seat. Letting out an untranslatable cry and moaning in obvious pain, her long arms doubled up to allow their cilia to grasp her flattened head, she remained upright on a floor pad only due to the support of her automated safety harness. At the same time, several readouts on the skimmer’s instrument console went temporarily crazy. In contrast, all Flinx felt was a slight tingling.

“I will now proceed to take evasive and defensive action.”

The voice of the AI was as calm as if it were delineating standard arrival procedures at Tlossene shuttleport. Sharply descending several meters, it dropped dangerously close to the cerulean crowns of several of the highest forest growths before resuming flight on a more or less level path. Leaving her perch on Flinx’s shoulder, an angry Pip fluttered and beat at the transparent canopy like a frustrated, oversized butterfly, seeking the open air beyond and a chance to strike back. Meanwhile a concerned Flinx, disregarding the skimmer’s request to remain in his seat, had thumbed the manual release on his harness to go to the aid of the obviously beleaguered, suffering Bleshmaa.

“My head!” Her alien whimpers reminded him of a distressed kitten. The Tlel did not cry, not in the human sense. But the emotions were undeniably akin. “Hlusumakai attacks with very strongstrong
flii
.” She managed to recover her equilibrium enough to gesture outside with one long arm. “If I not protected by partial diffusion mechanism integrated as safety measure into all Tlel transportation, I might be dead now.”

“Dead?” Flinx had seen no poison spewed, witnessed no strike of fang or claw, observed no emission of a natural explosive or disabling gas. Come to think of it, other than a possible attempt to intimidate through sheer size he had not seen the hlusumakai initiate any kind of hostile action whatsoever. Then he remembered the short-lived but unmistakable reaction of several of the skimmer’s instruments. They had gone momentarily crazy when the creature had been at its closest to the skimmer.

The Tlel had the ability to sense the electrical fields emitted by other living beings. The carnivorous kasollt that had tried to vacuum him up subsequent to his arrival at the shuttleport had possessed the same natural faculty. What if a native predator had evolved the ability not only to sense such fields, but also to overpower them with some kind of projection? In the same way that a human would be blinded by contact with Pip’s caustic venom, could a Tlel’s highly evolved electrosensory facility literally be short-circuited by a high-powered blast from another denizen of Gestalt?

In Flinx’s widespread travels he had encountered creatures that could blind by focusing and concentrating light, and others that could stun by emitting deafening blasts of sound. Why not a disrupter of natural electrical fields as well? Much in the fashion of a solar flare or lightning discharge, a sufficiently powerful natural emitter might for a split second even generate a strong enough pulse to momentarily interfere with the electrical systems of a modern vehicle. Just as the skimmer’s instruments had been momentarily affected.

He recalled his fleeting view of the diving hlusumakai’s flaring cranial membrane. A sexual attractant—or some kind of organic transmitter? The burst emitted by the beast had only given him a slight tingle—because unlike Bleshmaa, he possessed no highly developed capacity for detecting electrical current in others, no wide-open sensory apparatus for the attacker to disrupt. Similarly, a sound-generating creature would have little effect on someone who was totally deaf. Just as the olfactory-deprived Tlel would be immune to the odiferous persuasions of skunks.

A glance upward through the transparent canopy showed the imposing dark mass of the hlusumakai pacing the skimmer overhead. Perhaps it was puzzled, Flinx reasoned, as to why its peculiar intended victim continued onward above the treetops instead of plunging to the ground like proper prey, stunned into immobility. As he stared, the predator’s shape changed. Folding its multiple wings, it plunged like an arrow and began to grow larger. Pip continued to bang against the skimmer’s unyielding canopy, desperate to gain open sky in which to fight.

“Here it comes again!” he shouted more forcefully than he intended. Whimpering and rocking slightly against her safety harness, Bleshmaa folded both arms across the front of her head, completely blocking her arc of vision.

Gazing deliberately at the fast-diving hlusumakai, Flinx readied himself to try to project onto it. He would conjure a sense of danger and attempt to frighten it off. As it happened, his questionable effort was not needed.

No Gestaltian enterprise worth its liability insurance would allow a rental skimmer out into the wilds of the northlands without suitable protection and appropriate defenses against the manifold dangers that lurked there. Its partial diffusion screen had served to keep Bleshmaa from being numbed into insensibility. Now it responded to the hlusumakai’s second attack with a more proactive apparatus. This took the reassuring form of an integrated pumper built to unleash explosive shells. Having identified the target from its initial pass, the skimmer’s targeting apparatus locked on. Deploying from a port in the craft’s ventral side, the protruding weapon swiveled, locked on, and fired once.

Not wishing to have to pause in his journey in order to clean the skimmer’s canopy, Flinx was relieved when the hlusumakai blew up well off to the craft’s starboard side instead of directly overhead. Or worse, forward. Blood, shattered bone, and torn flesh rained down on the forest below, unexpected manna of Gestaltian biblical proportions for the hungry scavengers undoubtedly roaming among the cobalt growths.

“Evasive and defensive action concluded.” The skimmer’s AI voice was identical to the one it had used when it had first declared the emergency. Unlike the
Teacher,
it was not sophisticated enough to have a command of emotional modulation.

Careful not to exert too much pressure on her strong but slender arms, Flinx helped a trembling Bleshmaa out of her safety harness. Though her wide, flattened feet provided a stable base for her tapering body, she still swayed slightly for a moment or two after he released his grasp on her and stepped back.

“Very painfulpainful,” she declared when she finally spoke again. Tilting back her disc-like head, she focused her cryptic eyeband on him. “Yu humans are so very different from us. Sometimes it is a lucky thing tu be blind. But yu are ignorant uv the beauty uv the
fliiandra.
Yu will never—
see
it. Nono,” she corrected herself. “That is not the right wording fur what I am trying tu say. I think in yur language there
is
no right wording.”