The Kenval Incident

by Philippe Mercurio

  Deciding to exert his rights as a customer, he closed the door behind him and got ready to make a scene. “I want to see the manager, immediately! I didn’t come all this way for a little brunette with brambles etched on her hands!”

  The woman shrugged. “If you insist. Hanosk?” she said. “Monsieur would like to speak to you.”

  Outraged, Lanca prepared a blistering comeback.

  At the back of the room, a panel slid aside to reveal the “artist’s” entrance. When the alien crossed the threshold, the words in the man’s throat died away. Seeking safety in flight, he took a step toward the exit.

  With a fluid movement, the tattooed girl pulled a strangely organic-looking revolver from her jacket. She aimed the weapon at her “client’s” chest and fired.

  Just after clearing the barrel, a half-inch-wide ball transformed into a large gelatinous sphere that hit Lanca violently. The projectile knocked him back into the wall. Stunned by the impact, he slumped to the floor.

  As quickly as it appeared, the material that made up the ball liquefied, then evaporated without leaving the slightest trace.

  Hanosk finally spoke. “Perfect. This way, I’ll be able to interrogate him easily.”

  The alien’s plan accomplished, Mallory allowed herself a comment. “Honestly, why didn’t you just have Torg knock him out in the street? Then we could have questioned him calmly, someplace quiet.”

  “We couldn’t waste time following him in the hope that he would enter a zone without video surveillance.”

  With this explanation, he abruptly stripped his torso and leaned over the mustachioed man.

  Curious, Mallory watched the scene, guessing that she was going to find out how the alien had extracted information directly from her mind and Laorcq’s. She was surprised to see the skin on Hanosk’s rostrum retract before attaching itself to the archivist’s head. A cry escaped his mouth when he regained consciousness because of his contact with the Vohrn. Shortly thereafter, the man’s sphincter muscles relaxed, and a nauseating smell filled the air.

  With no obligation to tolerate such a stench, Mallory left the room. She crossed the club’s main room under the waitress’s barely interested gaze and took the exit.

  Once in the street, Torg welcomed her with a hug. He had made sure that no other clients entered the bar.

  With her nose buried in her giant teddy bear’s fur, she recovered her smile, and then a doleful voice made her jump.

  “We can leave.”

  The Vohrn moved silently, which surprised her each time. “Oh? And where are we going now?”

  “To visit Wulgis.”

  “Wul… what? I don’t know who that is. Is he important?”

  “Yes. He’s the supervisor and the majority shareholder in Kaumann labs,” the alien announced.

  “The one who paid the pirates to attack us in route to Kenval!” she recalled.

  “Exactly. Lanca is the connection between them and Idernax.”

  As they talked, they reached the aeroglider parked nearby. When they got in, Torg almost ripped out the back of the driver’s seat while he was sidling into the back row.

  With the doors closed, Mallory abruptly maneuvered the ship into heavy traffic, provoking a concert of irritated horns.

  While the pilot steered the aeroglider at breakneck speed in the fast lane, Hanosk transmitted concise orders and received reports from his information services. He was communicating through a spherical navcom, lost among the dozen or so fingers at the end of his scaly hand. His translator box, apparently disconnected, remained silent. He had not considered it necessary to ensure that Mallory and the cybrid could understand the conversations.

  “Well,” she asked, “do we have an address?”

  Hanosk reconnected his bilingual gadget and replied, “We have to go to this planet’s moon. Wulgis lives there now, on private property.”

  “The Moon…” sighed Mallory. “Only megalomaniacs live there.”

  In order to get to the house of Kaumann Labs’ magnate, they had to take the evening shuttle, which traveled from Nogartha to the Sea of Tranquility in twenty minutes.

  “It’s out of the question to disembark on the Moon as we did on Earth,” Mallory explained. “Autonomous vehicles aren’t permitted there.”

  Container ships made the roundtrip several times a day. They consisted of a set of metallic boxes, dividing people based on their social class. Some were set up as luxurious lounges, others as offices. The least fortunate travelers had to make do with rows of narrow seats.

  The occupants of the economy cars were numerous: personnel responsible for the operation of the environmental systems, workers hired for construction projects, house staff… Mallory even spotted men and women whose loud makeup left little doubt about their professions.

  Sitting between Torg (who took up two seats by himself) and Hanosk, she said with surprise, “I was worried you would be noticed, but aside from a few sideways glances, we’re doing okay.”

  Used to the whims of the satellite’s eccentric residents, the other passengers had barely noticed the extraterrestrial and the cybrid.

  With his rostrum pointed toward her, the Vohrn asked, “It seems that the Moon has a unique status. Can you explain this to me?”

  “It goes back fifty or so years. It all started when some crank decided to live in one of the craters. He sealed the rocky circle with an immense glass canopy to create a sort of miniature world under glass. The press got hold of the story and from one day to the next, having a ‘private universe’ became a status symbol.”

  Mallory interrupted herself to sip a fluorescent pink drink she had bought in the departure lounge, then continued. “Promoters threw themselves on the land that remained. Today, the Moon is a luxurious suburb.”

  As direct as always, Hanosk declared, “Another illustration of your capacities as individuals and your lack of judgment on the collective level. Very strange.”

  The alien’s comment echoed in her head. “In a way, my father was a victim of these conflicting tendencies. He did his best and followed the rules, but he was sacrificed to the interests of shady politicians.”

  The discussion reminded her of another person’s problems. She asked, “And Laorcq! Do you have any idea what will happen to him?”

  “Your concern doesn’t surprise me.”

  A little annoyed, Mallory remembered that Hanosk had looked into her mind. On the pilot’s hands and arms, the tattooed flowers evolved briefly into thorns before reappearing as rosebuds.

  Her concern for the scarred man was real, she realized: Laorcq was even more stubborn than her Uncle Max had been, but she missed him. She sighed. If she managed to find similarities between him and her uncle, she might as well admit that she was attached to him.

  As if he had paused deliberately, Hanosk continued, “Our visit to Wulgis’ house will tell us what has happened to Laorcq. According to my information, he contacted the owner of Kaumann Labs, who immediately sent a lawyer to free him. It remains to be seen why…”

  XXI

  FULL MOON

  THE shock of the landing was followed by an unexpected jolt. Mallory reflexively grabbed onto her seat’s armrest. She relaxed immediately as she realized what was happening: some complex machinery was handling the containers, placing them on a conveyor belt. In a perfectly orchestrated ballet, the boxes traveled in front of an airlock one after the other for the time it took to discharge their human cargo.

  After extracting herself from the overflowing compartment with relief, she emerged into an astroport designed so that no one would linger there: a wide-open concrete space situated amid a sea of lunar sand. The lone terminal consisted of a circular building, equipped with two floors covered with windows. The architect had taken his inspiration from “flying saucers,” the kind of ships imagined in the past.

  Through the thick windows, Mallory saw vehicles coming and going, suspended two feet above the powdery ocean. The spaceport also served as a bus depot. />
  Flanked by Torg and Hanosk, she saw the other travelers maintaining a respectful distance from her. With two non-humans watching over her, they must think she was someone to be avoided. She reflected bitterly that they weren’t wrong, given the damage she had left in her wake.

  Carried along by the swell of passengers, the improbable trio crossed through the area and arrived at the taxi stand. Mallory quickly identified the method of propulsion for the engines, which looked like elongated pebbles. “Maglevs!” she exclaimed, her negative thoughts forgotten. “I thought they were all in museums…”

  Imbued with old-fashioned charm, these vehicles, which used magnetic levitation over rails, had become the favorite transport for the Moon’s proprietors.

  One of these cars stopped silently in front of Mallory and her companions. A door like a butterfly wing appeared. They were surprised to find a human inside. With an impatient tone, he said, “The Artificial Intelligences are programmed to optimize the number of passengers per trip. If you’re going to Copernicus, get in. If not, take the next one.”

  “We’re getting in,” Hanosk replied.

  It wasn’t at all where they were going, but Mallory didn’t bat an eye. She pretty much expected it: the AI might call Wulgis to alert him that visitors had arrived.

  With a blank expression, the man examined the brunette, the furred colossus, and the snake-skinned biped as they settled into the available seats.

  The maglev moved into the exit airlock and its doors locked automatically. A heavy panel slid closed behind them. With a metallic purr, pumps sucked the air out of the airlock.

  In front of the vehicle, the exterior panel lifted after a few seconds. The pilot AI accelerated slowly, and the astroport disappeared quickly behind them.

  The Vohrn pulled an object that looked like a pen from his purple toga. He touched the passenger’s neck with it. The effect was obvious: the man fainted as if his brain had an off switch.

  Hanosk put the end of his strange device against the maglev’s dashboard and triggered the AI’s sleep mode with the same ease. The levitating car slowed and finally stopped in the middle of the lunar desert.

  The Vohrn spoke to Torg. “While Mallory Sajean and I wear respirators, you will open the doors and place the male Earthling in the baggage compartment.”

  Outraged, she objected, “He’ll die! Being unconscious doesn’t protect humans from a vacuum!”

  She thought of herself after the fact and added, “A simple respirator won’t either.”

  Hanosk thought for a moment and then explained, “I had forgotten this weakness. In that case, you should switch places inside the compartment. Your fellow human is sitting in the seat with the manual controls.”

  Torg endeavored to reassure Mallory. “Relax! I would never let anyone expose you to the vacuum of space!” he assured her before tousling her hair.

  She grabbed hold of one of Torg’s thick fingers and said with fake annoyance, “Leave my head alone! Help me move this sleeping gentleman instead.”

  Torg rewarded her with a maternal squeeze as a sign of acceptance, plunging her face into his tiger-striped fur. Then, with one hand, he extracted the unfortunate man from his seat.

  “Don’t behave like children, we’re going to be late,” Hanosk declared.

  Chalking the alien’s dry tone up to worry, Mallory slid in front of the vehicle’s controls. While the cybrid finished up with the unlucky passenger, she used her navcom to plot an itinerary to Wulgis’ house. They left immediately, and the maglev flew over the tarnished silver sea at a brisk pace.

  Thanks to the panoramic windshield, Mallory discovered the most remarkable result of the very special way in which the Moon had been developed: it seemed as virgin as it had before humans arrived. Flying at ground level, the pilot and her companions saw only stones, gray sand, and the dotted trace of the mag line. The houses were cleverly hidden in the craters. Despite the presence of the Earth in the starry sky, she found the feeling of solitude quite striking. Imagining havens for private use behind these rocky walls required effort. She decided to take advantage of the calm: she might soon be missing the tranquility of the lunar plains…

  Mallory’s navcom alerted them that they had arrived at their destination. Complying with Hanosk’s directive, she avoided the main entrance. She expertly maneuvered the vehicle in front of an airlock reserved for home maintenance. Without a word, the extraterrestrial took another object out of his toga.

  She recognized the communicator that looked like a big marble that she had seen him use. The alien’s long fingers ran over the spherical surface. In front of them, the thick metallic door disappeared as if by magic. Mallory glanced at the Vohrn with a questioning look in her eye. “I suppose that your ‘informers’ didn’t content themselves with finding his address, right?”

  He replied to the question with an order. “Step inside, please.”

  She put the brakes on her curiosity and did what she was told. When the pressure had equalized, the airlock opened to reveal a sublime landscape.

  The hill that normally dominated the centers of craters had been dynamited to form a circular lake. A Japanese garden that was more than a mile in diameter covered the entire site and provided a backdrop. The crystal-clear water allowed them to see dozens of koi, a sort of red fish as long as a human arm. Above, almost invisible, a set of hexagonal panes of glass protected them from the vacuum.

  They left the vehicle and walked toward the superb house that sat next to the pool. As she approached, Mallory examined the building in awe: all rounded and decorated with molding in sensual forms, the abode seemed like something out of a fairy tale. She easily identified the architecture, inspired by the plant world. “An Art Nouveau villa!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t expect that…”

  Hanosk and Torg paused. Despite their foreign aesthetic ideas, the edifice’s beauty affected them, too.

  “This estate provides us with a way to pressure Wulgis,” the Vohrn said.

  “You’re not going to threaten to destroy it, are you?” cried Mallory, shocked by the idea.

  The alien’s arm undulated, a sign of exasperation among his species. “No! We’re not barbarians. I was told that Wulgis’ financial situation is quite bad. The reason is clear: he invested all of his money here. After dedicating so much effort to a single achievement…”

  “He’ll be willing to do anything, or almost anything, to avoid losing it,” Mallory finished. “You’re starting to understand humans well.”

  They moved quickly, taking care not to disturb anything: mistreating such carefully maintained plants would be sacrilegious. The area surrounding the house was deserted. On the top floor, a shadow stood out against a lit window, indicating the presence of at least one person.

  The trio silently approached a bay window that looked out on the lake. A steel bar ran along the sliding glass door from top to bottom. Serving as both decoration and handle, it had been forged in the form of a tulip.

  Torg gripped it firmly. The thick glass and the metallic frame that held it in place seemed indestructible. Nevertheless, under the pressure of the cybrid’s reinforced muscles, the mechanism began to groan. It finally gave way with a muffled cracking sound that shattered the complete silence. Mallory reacted to the noise as if it had been a gunshot. No alarms went off, but she would be surprised if their arrival had gone unnoticed. She concluded that subtlety was no longer on the program.

  Hanosk slipped inside first, followed closely by the human and her bodyguard.

  Once they had crossed through a living room furnished in the same style as the villa, they climbed a staircase that led them to the occupied room. The door was ajar.

  Mallory’s bracelet vibrated slightly. It projected a message sent from the navcom implanted in Torg’s cortex: “I go in first.”

  She agreed with a nod. The cybrid sent the panel flying back against the wall and rushed inside. With his steel-reinforced body acting as a shield against any gunfire, Mallory and Ha
nosk rushed in behind him.

  The theatrical entrance was ruined by the lack of reaction from the man calmly sitting at his desk.

  Mallory examined him. His brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail, emphasized his machete-shaped face. Neither his features nor his attitude betrayed the slightest hint of emotion. It was impossible to know if he had really been waiting for them or if he was hiding his surprise. He was wearing a simple white shirt whose collar showed that he had recently been wearing a tie. Although he was sitting comfortably in his chair, she got the sense that he was very tall. He scrutinized his “guests” in return, then declared, “You didn’t waste any time.”

  Mallory, Hanosk, and Torg stayed on their guard. Wulgis’ passivity was unexpected.

  He gestured toward seats arranged to face him. “Please sit. You didn’t make such a long trip to remain standing.”

  Mallory and her companions ignored his offer. He shrugged. “You’re not in the mood to relax,” he noted. “So, let’s get right to it, then.”

  He slowly placed his elbows on his desk and crossed his fingers under his chin before continuing. “Laorcq Adrinov let me know you would probably be coming. It wasn’t easy, but I got him released. He should be here soon.”

  At the idea of seeing the scarred man safe and sound, Mallory felt relief tinged with doubt fill her. She wondered what he was playing at: why warn Wulgis?

  Far from these concerns, Hanosk replied, “We were already aware of that fact. We have also interrogated Lanca.”

  “I see… You are rather efficient,” Wulgis said with an admiring tone. “I suppose that you want to put together the pieces of the puzzle. The story is quite simple, actually. The hardest thing will be to believe it.”

  Mallory struggled to contain her violent anger over the boarding of the Sirgan by Sodoye and his henchmen. “That’s just hot air! You paid a bunch of gangsters to rob and kill me, that’s what happened!”

  Wulgis brought his hands to his temples and massaged them while sighing. “It’s definitely a complete fiasco,” he said without addressing anyone in particular.