Trouble Magnet (22 page)

A moan came from the far side of the room. The collateral force of Flinx’s unbidden defensive response had thrown Subar and Ashile across the floor and into the opposite wall. Thankfully, and unlike those who had absorbed the full force of his involuntary, reflexive, and still-inexplicable reaction, they were not embedded, only bruised. He hurried to them. They were both sore, but unbroken.

“What—what happened?” A dazed Ashile struggled to stand as Flinx worked to unseal her wrist bonds.

Before he could reply, a still-secured Subar shook his head, blinked up at his tight-lipped offworld friend, and muttered, “
He
happened. That was it, isn’t it?” Looking around the room, he needed a moment to spot the legs dangling from the ceiling like so many fleshy stalactites. “
Tnuw!
What did you do to them? I remember,” he squinched up his face, “I remember a flash, and being lifted up and thrown. Then pain, and then nothing.”

“I thought I heard a noise.” Rubbing her wrists, the suddenly concerned girl looked around anxiously. “Where’s your pet? They were going to shoot her!”

Having released Subar, Flinx straightened and called out. “Pip!”

The flying snake appeared immediately, hovering unharmed in the hole that had been punched in the wall opposite the main doorway. The hole had been made by the body of the tall alien and more or less conformed to his shape. Standing apart and opposite from Corsk and the two giantesses, who were now decorating the ceiling, the force of whatever had erupted from Flinx had blown him sideways through the wall instead of upward toward the roof.

Pip fluttered back through the new opening. Following her and stepping through the gap, Flinx and his younger companions discovered not only another room but also the abducted individuals they had come for. As they came into view, Subar’s lower jaw dropped. Considering herself at least as hardened by life as he was, Ashile promptly covered her mouth with one hand. Her eyes widened. As Pip landed gently on his left shoulder and coiled her back half around his neck, an expectant Flinx took in the full measure of what was displayed before them. In contrast with his younger companions he was disturbed but not shocked. He had seen and experienced far more than them not only of the galaxy, but also of the disturbing inventiveness that his own species was capable of.

Spread-eagled, piercing eyes now permanently shut, the willowy alien stood embedded upright in the far wall. No emotions flowed from it. Flinx did not need his Talent to tell him that the tormenting visitor from an unknown world would trouble him and his friends no longer. He shifted his attention back to those they had come to liberate. Zezula was there, and Missi, and Sallow Behdul. All three were alive.

But they were not well.

They hung in stasis, not between earth and sky but between ceiling and floor. Or—more properly—between the grids that generated a powerful magnetic field. The field was not strong enough to magnetize and levitate the iron in their bodies. It was, however, more than powerful enough to act forcefully on the hundreds of tiny metal squares that covered the three suspended bodies. Some of the metal squares were pierced with holes, allowing the compressed flesh beneath to bulge through them and form tiny pale bumps. Others were studded with pins, or pyramidal points.

From above, below, and on both sides, the magnetic field pushed or pulled on the hundreds of metal shards, driving them into the naked flesh of the three captives and holding them suspended in midair. If the strength of the field was reduced, the trio would crash to the floor in a shower of harmless metal fragments. The more it was strengthened—the more it was strengthened, the deeper the metal squares would dig into the bodies of the three prisoners. If sufficient power was applied to the field, Flinx determined as he searched for the controls, it could conceivably pull the pieces of metal not only into the flesh of anyone unfortunate enough to be so trapped, but in fact through them. Apply enough power, and every magnetized square of metal would eventually meet its opposite being driven from the opposing direction. The ultimate result would be—untidy.

It was a jail “cell” from which a prisoner could not escape, in which the bars had been broken up into hundreds of pieces that pinned captives between them. Reach down, pull one away from your body, and attempt to fling it, and it would only snap painfully back into place. Exhaustion would give way quickly to resignation. And to more pain.

Despite the metal squares pressing against her lower jaw, chin, and skull, a battered Missi raised her head enough to recognize those who had just entered the room. She was trying to say something, Flinx saw. Tears dripped from her eyes, too nonferrous to attract a metal square. Then she passed out.

Locating the instrument panel, he deactivated the brutal machine as quickly as he could. The jolt that the captives would experience as the field was disengaged and they were dropped to the floor would be nothing compared with what they had undergone. Having recovered from their initial shock at the sight of Subar’s friends, he and Ashile hurried to assist them.

Though most of the metal squares simply clattered to the floor as soon as the magnetic field was turned off, some had to be pulled from the bodies of the former captives, so deeply had they embedded themselves in exposed flesh. While the two youngsters worked on the newly liberated trio, Flinx scoured the cabinets and storage bins in the room until he found their clothes. A refreshment silo mounted in one corner supplied water that the prisoners had doubtless been denied. One by one, care and fluids brought them around. First Sallow Behdul, who could only mumble a few pained words of gratefulness. Then Missi, sobbing. And lastly Zezula, screaming until a comforting Subar held her and rocked some of the terror out of her. Ministering to Missi, Ashile occasionally glanced in their direction. Since she said nothing, only Flinx knew that one other individual in the room besides the former captives was suffering pain.

Which meant that his Talent, now that it was not especially needed, had returned as abruptly and inexplicably as it had previously taken its leave.

With Subar and Ashile’s help, the three hurting but grateful sufferers managed to get dressed. From time to time Flinx approached the crumbling edges of the gap in the wall to look across the outer room in the direction of the main doorway. It remained shut, and he could perceive no immediate threat outside the walls of the building they were in—only staff and employees in other, adjacent structures. These ordinary folk went on about their daily business utterly unaware of the horrors that had been perpetrated in the innocuous structure nearby.

As he turned back to the inner prison, he found Subar confronting him.

“We have to take everybody back to your hotel.” The younger man spoke with a new, self-assured authority that belied his age.

“Now, wait a minute.” Raising his gaze, Flinx indicated the surviving youths he had just risked his own life to rescue. “I said I would help free your friends. Nothing was said about providing accommodation for them.”

Some of Subar’s determination threatened to slip away. His voice turned pleading. “
Tlack,
Flinx. For that, I thank you from the base of my cer’bell. But right now they have nowhere else to go.
I
have nowhere else to go.” Turning, he gestured with one hand. “Ash can probably go home safely, but once they find out everybody’s been sprung, whoever picked up Zez and Missi and Behdul and put a price on me will want us back.” He tried not to smile. “Not to mention that they’ll be looking for whoever did this. You didn’t only scrim somebody’s revenge, Flinx. You cost them some cred.”

Flinx tried to shrug it off. “Wouldn’t be the first time.” Bending forward, he put his face close to that of the younger man and lowered his voice. “This may surprise you, Subar, but I already have one or two organizations of some small consequence looking for me. So I’m not worried if some minor Visarian crime syndicate, or whatever, decides to join the pack.” He straightened. “I’m leaving. Leaving Malandere, leaving this world. And based on what I’ve seen and experienced, I don’t see any reason why I should be back.”

Unable to refute the offworlder’s assertions, Subar opted for the simple expedient of ignoring them. “It’d only be for a little while,” he insisted. “Just until we can make arrangements to get ourselves out of the city. I’ve got an older cousin on my mother’s side. He has a good business outside Caralinda. Legitimate agriculture. Caralinda’s a smaller city a respectable distance from Malandere. He could help us make a new start. We could all get new identities, head for Bondescu on the other side of the planet.”

Lifting his gaze, Flinx studied the still-quivering former captives. “What about your parents?”

Subar articulated an unpleasantry. “Zezula doesn’t have any parents. Missi’s are useless. Sallow Behdul’s been on his own for years. And you met mine. I have to contact my cousin, arrangements need to be made, and we have to plan how to slip out of Malandere without being seen. Among other technicalities. But first we need some recoup time, in a safe place.”

From across the room a communit built into a tech panel barked unexpectedly to life. Flinx had no idea who might be on the other end. Only that he had no intention of replying.

“Let’s go.” He raised his voice. “Everybody out of here, now!” Battered and bruised figures began to shamble toward the gap in the wall as long-paralyzed muscles were forced to move again.

“Your hotel?” Subar was gazing up at him, unblinking.

Flinx muttered something under his breath. Curving her neck around so that she could look into his eyes, Pip regarded him questioningly.

“Yes, my hotel.” He hardened his tone deliberately. “But only for a day or two. Only until you can make the necessary arrangements with your cousin. Then I’m away from here, off this miserable world. I’ve got work to do.
Important
work. As soon as you’ve all recovered enough to slip out of the city on your own I’m done with you, Subar, and also with your intemperate, foolish friends.”

As they exited carefully out onto the serviceway and then headed for the nearest transport terminal, it occurred to Flinx that in making what he intended to be his final statement on the matter he was only repeating something he himself had heard once before, a long time ago. It was not until they were safely in a transport pod and accelerating out of the industrial district that he recalled the circumstances under which he had heard it.

Mother Mastiff had said it to him, in Drallar on Moth, when he and two childhood acquaintances had been caught in the main market stealing from a merchant infamous for his predatory pricing. “I’m done with you!” she had sputtered. “And with your careless, hotheaded friends as well!” Though her tone had been harsh, he had known at the time that she hadn’t really meant what she was saying.

Well, he assured himself,
he
had meant what he had just told Subar.

What a pity, he thought as the pod zipped smoothly through the teeming, congested cityscape, that the only emotions he could not accurately read were his own.

CHAPTER

13

Aboneh saw that Piegal Shaeb was not happy. Two meters tall, a hundred and a half kilos wide, and hat in hand, he approached the small, narrow desk behind which his master was working. The arc of dun-colored fabric nearly vanished beneath the massive, nervously twisting fingers.

“Mr. Shaeb, sir. I, uh, I have a report.”

The master and controller of the Underhouse of Shaeb looked up. Though his vision was preternaturally enhanced, the result of several sophisticated and highly expensive surgeries, his eyes remained small and unimpressive. Just like the rest of him. It was what he represented that was intimidating, not the man himself.

Stretching on tiptoes, Piegal Shaeb would barely have come up to Aboneh’s sternum. He could have had his legs artificially lengthened, but the process was painful and anyway, he preferred the anonymity conferred by standing slightly below average height. He was slender but not skinny, and the average dog import on the street was more muscular. His brown hair was of medium length, flyaway, and thinning. Taken together, face and body were a combination no one would look at twice. This lack of physical attractiveness and distinction troubled Shaeb only occasionally, and was more than compensated for by access to cred, power, and the knowledge that he could have almost anyone on Visaria killed for a price.

Looks aren’t everything.

The true nature of the master of the Underhouse was reflected in the subservient tone and posture of the much larger Aboneh, who could have snapped the other man like a twig had he been so inclined and irretrievably stupid. Aboneh was neither. Along with fear, there was mutual respect between master and servant. That did not relieve Aboneh from the burden of being the bearer of bad news.

Half a dozen constantly changing vits hovered above the desk, shaping a small, glowing, ghostly crescent between Shaeb and his visitor. Aboneh would have had difficulty controlling one. His master was simultaneously manipulating the content of six. Aboneh was in awe.

Shaeb was not. He spoke without looking up from any of the projections. “You said you have a report. Report, then.”

Aboneh realized he could not put it off any longer. “The surviving scrawn from the South Zone warehouse incursion? The three scrim youths?”

Still Shaeb did not look up. “What about them?” The tiniest hint of a humorless smile caused the corners of the thin, almost lipless mouth to tic upward. “I trust they are still in possession of their magnetic personalities?”

Aboneh swallowed. “They’re gone, Mr. Shaeb, sir.”

The Underhouse master continued studying his half a dozen readouts for another minute or so. Then he drew a hand across his desk, palm facing down, traveling from far left to far right, as if slicing through an imaginary torso. As his fingers passed through the vit projections they vanished, one after another. When the last had disappeared, he carefully placed both palms on the desk—first the left, then the right—and finally looked up to meet the uneasy gaze of his hulking visitor. His voice was very subdued and utterly controlled.

“What do you mean, precisely, when you say they are ‘gone’? I am going to assume, and to hope, that in utilizing that verb you are referring in a semi-colloquial fashion to the fact that they have passed on?”

“Uh, no, Mr. Shaeb, sir. I came here in person soon as the word was passed up. They’re gone. I mean, they’ve gone away. Somebody came and broke them out.”

“I see. Not a semi-colloquialism, then.” Rising slowly and methodically, the left hand ascended, moved to its right, and lowered slowly to come to rest atop the back of the right hand. “Somebody came and broke them out. What does Wu Corsk have to say about this noteworthy but displeasing development?”

Aboneh’s words came a little faster. “Wu’s dead. So are the Vetris sisters. So is Aradamu-seh, that mercenary from Fluva. You know—the one who liked to stand out in the rain all the time?”

Piegal Shaeb’s tone hardened ever so slightly. “I am familiar with the idiosyncratic proclivities of the Sakuntala. All dead, you say? Three good people, and one costly import?”

Aboneh was nodding understandingly. “Holding facility was pretty bad bunged up, too. Fissure in one wall. Holes in—the ceiling.”

As if in deliberate slow motion, Shaeb’s hands exchanged places; the right one slid to one side and rose, only to descend onto the left with all the grace and technique of an expensive mechanism. “Four employees dead, facility damaged, detainees at liberty. Do we have any information on what assaulting force perpetrated this specific outrage?”

Aboneh nodded again, less enthusiastically this time. “Corsk let them in. Some concealed recording sensors were damaged during the breakout, but there’s enough visual information to piece together what happened. This young guy—doesn’t look much older than the detained scrims themselves, just taller—arrives with the last uncaught kid in tow, and a girl looks to be about the same age. Tall young guy and Corsk discuss turning the scrug over for the reward. Everything seems to be skying fine. Then there’s kind of a pause—hard to figure out from the recordings exactly what’s going wrong—then a detonation. Everything goes white for a second, then nothing. Sensors are all flashed, except one. Just functional enough to show the tall guy leaving, along with everybody else. No sign of Corsk, the mercenary, or the sisters. They were found later, when one of our people couldn’t get feedback from the place and went over to check on it in person.”

He exhaled heavily at the memory, then went on. “The Sakuntala was implanted in a wall in the holding room. Wu and the sisters were—they’d been shoved through the ceiling, headfirst. Took a crew with tools to chop them out. Besides crushing their skulls, the impact compacted every vertebra in their spines. All the nucleus pulposus had been squeezed out from between the bones, like cheap food paste.”

Shaeb digested this information. “That’s certainly interesting, and bespeaks a line of attack worthy of follow-up, but it remains incidental to the larger picture. The integrity of the Underhouse has been violated. Our reputation has been sullied. This affront to our dignity and standing must be mended. I have a reputation to maintain. If word of this is allowed to propagate and appropriate retribution is not promptly delivered, business will suffer.”

Now on top, the right hand rose and tangoed through the air over the desk. A single rectangular vit image appeared. Shaeb’s fingers tickled the projection. “We will post a significant bounty. The one for this interfering outsider, evidently a friend or acquaintance of the liberated scrims, will be of such a magnitude that every heavy levy between the poles will drop whatever he or she is doing to focus on finding him. The other scrawn, including the remaining youth to have so far escaped our attention, must also be detained and appropriately dealt with. I did not come into control of the Underhouse by leaving business unfinished.”

“No sir, Mr. Shaeb, sir.”

“Our own people will of course involve themselves. It would be a positive if we could manage this recovery in-house.” This time his smile was wider, and more genuine. “A bounty earned is a bounty saved.”

“I’ll see to the details myself, Mr. Shaeb, sir.” The hulking underling turned to leave.

“One more thing, Aboneh. It is not necessary to use my name every time you address me. A simple ‘sir’ will suffice.”

“Yes, Mr. Shaeb, sir.” Aboneh exited the unpretentious office, trying his best not to move too quickly or to show his relief.

Behind him, Piegal Shaeb pondered as he dropped his right hand back onto the desk. Leisurely, he covered it with his left.

One is attended by idiots, he reflected. That thought mulled, he raised both hands in unison and restored the desk’s six projections. There was a great deal of business to attend to, disturbing interruptions notwithstanding. The escape of the odious scrawn was annoying, the deaths of four valued subordinates painful. The latter could be absorbed while the former would be dealt with. It was only a matter of time before an inelegant state of affairs was suitably resolved.

One as yet unidentified meddling young man in particular was going to pay rather harshly for his involvement.

Slipping the two battered and abused girls together with the equally beaten-up and mutely grateful Sallow Behdul into his hotel suite had not been difficult. Caring for them, even for a short while, required additional concern and more stealth. Everything from sprayskin to quick-healing medications could have been ordered and sent up, but that would have alerted even an automated supplier to the curious request. The same was true for food, even if it was applied for in-house. Knowing from recent experience on Repler as well as previous encounters just how the types who had mistreated Subar’s friends operated, Flinx understood that the less attention they attracted to his room, the better.

The first afternoon’s expedition, to procure the minimum necessary medicants, went without difficulty. Though his perception was flashing in and out like a tridee’s on–off sensor, he caught no intimation of enmity aimed in his direction. The same was true when he and Subar hazarded an evening jaunt to buy food for everyone.

Even though it was late morning when the two of them went out to purchase a few necessary items they had not been able to find the previous day, the former captives were all still sound asleep. As she had on the previous day, Ashile agreed to remain behind in the room to keep an eye on Subar’s slowly recovering friends. Her sentiments as she contemplated the sleeping, beat-up form of Zezula left Flinx wondering if leaving the slender adolescent in charge would find them minus one survivor the next time he and Subar returned. He doubted Ashile would push her hidden feelings to that extreme, though. Despite her rough-hewn exterior, there remained an integrity there he had not encountered elsewhere on Visaria.

He would not be surprised, however, if at some point they returned to find Zezula unexpectedly a bit more banged up than her companions, and healing less swiftly than would otherwise be expected.

Rain had been predicted for the morning hours. That was fine with Flinx. Residents would be utilizing covered transport, with fewer out walking. The life support store he and Subar had shopped the previous day and night was only a few blocks from the hotel. The shop front was typically compact, erected over the much larger supply facility located belowground. As he made his purchases from a tridimensional display in the shop above, fresh food, medicines, clothing, and other selected items would be ordered, inventoried, individually packaged, and shipped upward to arrive in their appropriate take-out containers.

Their charged clothing kept them dry as he and Subar strolled up the main street through the downpour in the direction of the shop. They were halfway there when Flinx perceived a distinctive intensification of inimical intentions. Riding on his shoulder beneath his shirt to stay dry, Pip sensed it, too. Poking her head out, she began searching in several directions for the source of the rising hostility. A jaunty Subar strode along beside them, unaware that their immediate environs had undergone a subtle change perceptible only to Flinx and his pet.

The large private transport that cut them off approached so quickly, not even Flinx had time to change direction. A second vehicle pulled in behind them, cutting off any possible retreat. The few other pedestrians out walking in the rain gaped and hurried to back up or cross over to the other side of the avenue. Because of the shower and the time of day, there weren’t many of them. The majority of Malandere’s commuters were already at work.

That included the quartet of armed figures who bolted from the first transport to quickly surround the two young men.

“Get in,” one snarled threateningly. “There’s more cred to be quilted if we bring you in alive—but if you push back, we’ll have to eval for the second option.”

Standing next to Flinx, an alarmed Subar was whispering urgently, “Do something, Flinx! Do whatever it is that you do. Do it
now
!”

Coming toward them, a woman with an irreparable scar running down her neck jammed a small but lethal pistol in his solar plexus. “Shut up. No talking.” As the younger man gasped for breath, she stepped back and gestured toward the lead transport. “Keep your hands where I can see them. Move.”