For Love of Mother-Not

by Alan Dean Foster

  Moments later, the lights winked back on, shockingly bright. Flinx tensed beneath the table that sheltered him, but he needn’t have worried. The party of travelers had fled, along with the remaining paralysis-beam wielder and Mother Mastiff.

  Flinx climbed to his feet. The other guests remained cowering on the floor. There was no hint of what had brought the lights back to life, and he had no time to think about it.

  The door at the far end of the room was ajar. It led out onto a curving porch. He hurried to it but paused just inside to throw a chair out ahead of him. When no one fired on it, he took a deep breath and jumped out, rolling across the porch and springing out of the roll into a fighting crouch.

  There was no enemy waiting to confront him—the porch was deserted. The beach off to the left was not. Two mudders were parked on the shore. As Flinx watched helplessly, the travelers he had sought for so long piled into the two crafts. Heedless now of his own safety, he charged down the steps onto the slight slope leading toward the lake shore. The first mudder was already cruising across the wave tops. By the time he reached the water’s edge and sank exhausted to his knees, the useless knife held limply in his right hand, both craft were already well out on the lake surface itself.

  Fighting for breath, Flinx forced himself erect and started back up the slope. He would have to go after them quickly. If he lost sight of them on the vast lake, he would have no way of knowing on which far shore they would emerge. He staggered around the front of the lodge and grabbed at the entrance to his mudder. A supine and unsettled shape stared back at him. Pip looked distinctly unhappy. It flittered once, then collapsed back onto the seat.

  “Fine help you were,” Flinx snapped at his pet. The minidrag, if possible, managed to look even more miserable. Clearly, it had sensed danger to Flinx and had tried to go to his aid, but simply couldn’t manage to get airborne.

  Flinx started to climb into the cab when a voice and a hand on his shoulder restrained him. “Just a minute.” Flinx tensed, but a glance at Pip showed that the flying snake was not reacting defensively.

  “I can’t,” he started to say as he turned. When he saw who was confronting him, he found himself able only to stare.

  She seemed to tower over him, though in reality she was no more than a couple of centimeters taller. Black hair fell in tight ringlets to her shoulders. Her bush jacket was tucked into pants that were tucked into low boots. She was slim but not skinny. The mouth and nose were child-sized, the cheekbones high beneath huge, owl-like brown eyes. Her skin was nearly as dark as Flinx’s, but it was a product of the glare from the nearby lake and not heredity. She was the most strikingly beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  He tracked down his voice and mumbled, “I have to go after them.” The hand remained on his shoulder. He might have thrown it off, and might not.

  “My name’s Lauren Walder,” she said. “I’m the general manager at Granite Shallows.” Her voice was full of barely controlled fury as she used her head to gesture toward the lake. Ringlets flew. “What have you to do with those idiots?”

  “They’ve kidnapped my mother, the woman who adopted me,” he explained. “I don’t know why, and I don’t much care right now. I just want to get her back.”

  “You’re a little out-numbered, aren’t you?”

  “I’m used to that.” He pointed toward the dining-room windows and the still-open porch doorway. “It’s not me lying dead on your floor in there.”

  She frowned at him, drawing her brows together. “How do you know the man’s dead?”

  “Because I killed him.”

  “I see,” she said, studying him in a new light. “With what?”

  “My stiletto,” he said.

  “I don’t see any stiletto.” She looked him up and down.

  “You’re not supposed to. Look, I’ve got to go. If I get too far behind them—”

  “Take it easy,” she said, trying to soothe him. “I’ve got something I have to show you.”

  “You don’t seem to understand,” he said insistently. “I’ve no way to track them. I won’t know where they touch land and—”

  “Don’t worry about it. You won’t lose them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we’ll run them down in a little while. Let them relax and think they’ve escaped.” Her fingers tightened on his shoulder. “I promise you we’ll catch them.”

  “Well …” He spared another glance for Pip. Maybe in a little while the flying snake would be ready to take to the air. That could make a significant difference in any fight to come. “If you’re sure …”

  She nodded once, appearing as competent as she was beautiful. Lodge manager, he thought. She ought to know what she was talking about. He could trust her for a few minutes, anyway.

  “What’s so important to show me?” he asked.

  “Come with me.” Her tone was still soaked with anger.

  She led him back into the lodge, across the porch and back into the dining room. Several members of her staff were treating one of the women who had been dining when the lights had gone out and the guns had gone off. Her husband and companions were hovering anxiously over her; and she was panting heavily, holding one hand to her chest.

  “Heart condition,” Lauren explained tersely.

  Flinx looked around. Tables and chairs were still overturned, but there was no other indication that a desperate fight had been fought in the room. Paralysis beams did not damage inanimate objects. The man he had slain had been moved by lodge personnel. He was glad of that.

  Lauren led him toward the kitchen. Lying next to the doorway were the pair of furry shapes he had noticed when he had first entered the room. Up close, he could see their round faces, twisted in agony. The short stubby legs were curled tightly beneath the fuzzy bodies. Their fur was a rust red except for yellow circles around the eyes, which were shut tight. Permanently.

  “Sennar and Soba.” Lauren spoke while gazing at the dead animals with a mixture of fury and hurt. “They’re wervils—or were,” she added bitterly. “I raised them from kittens. Found them abandoned in the woods. They liked to sleep here by the kitchen. Everybody liked to feed them. They must have moved at the wrong time. In the dark, one of those”—she used a word Flinx didn’t recognize, which was unusual in itself—”must have mistaken them for you. They were firing at anything that moved, I’ve been told.” She paused a moment, then added, “You must have the luck of a pregnant Yax’m. They hit just about everything in the room except you.”

  “I was down on the floor,” Flinx explained. “I only stand up when I have to.”

  “Yes, as that one found out.” She jerked a thumb in the direction of the main hall. Flinx could see attendants wrapping a body in lodge sheets. He was a little startled to see how big his opponent had actually been. In the dark, though, it’s only the size of your knife that matters.

  “They didn’t have to do this,” the manager was murmuring, staring at the dead animals. “They didn’t have to be so damned indiscriminate. Four years I’ve coddled those two. Four years. They never showed anything but love to anyone who ever went near them.” Flinx waited quietly.

  After a while, she gestured for him to follow her. They walked out into the main hall, down a side corridor, and entered a storeroom. Lauren unlocked a transparent wall case and removed a large, complex-looking rifle and a couple of small, wheel-shaped plastic containers. She snapped one of them into the large slot set in the underside of the rifle. The weapon seemed too bulky for her, but she swung it easily across her back and set her right arm through the support strap. She added a pistol to her service belt, then led him back out into the corridor.

  “I’ve never seen a gun like that before.” Flinx indicated the rifle. “What do you hunt with it?”

  “It’s not for hunting,” she told him. “Fishing gear. Each of those clips”—and she gestured at the wheel-shapes she had handed over to Flinx—”holds about a thousand darts. Each dart carries a few mil
liliters of an extremely potent neurotoxin. Prick your finger on one end …” She shrugged meaningfully.

  “The darts are loaded into the clips at the factory in Drallar, and then the clips are sealed. You can’t get a dart out unless you fire it through this.” She patted the butt of the rifle, then turned a corner. They were back in the main hallway.

  “You use a gun to kill fish?”

  She smiled across at him. Not much of a smile but a first, he thought. “You’ve never been up to The-Blue-That-Blinded before, have you?”

  “I’ve lived my whole life in Drallar,” he said, which for all practical purposes was the truth.

  “We don’t use these to kill the fish,” she explained. “Only to slow them up if they get too close to the boat.”

  Flinx nodded, trying to picture the weapon in use. He knew that the lakes of The-Blue-That-Blinded were home to some big fish, but apparently he had never realized just how big. Of course, if the fish were proportional to the size of the lakes … “How big is this lake?”

  “Patra? Barely a couple of hundred kilometers across. A pond. The really big lakes are farther off to the northwest, like Turquoise and Hanamar. Geographers are always arguing over whether they should be called lakes or inland seas. Geographers are damn fools.”

  They exited from the lodge. At least it wasn’t raining, Flinx thought. That should make tracking the fleeing mudders a little easier.

  Flinx jumped slightly when something landed heavily on his shoulder. He stared down at it with a disapproving look. “About time.” The flying snake steadied himself on his master but did not meet his eyes.

  “Now that’s an interesting pet,” Lauren Walder commented, not flinching from the minidrag, as most strangers did. Another point in her favor, Flinx thought. “Where on Moth do you find a creature like that?”

  “In a garbage heap,” Flinx said, “which is what he’s turned himself into. He overate a few days ago and still hasn’t digested it all.”

  “I was going to say that he looks more agile than that landing implied.” She led him around the side of the main lodge building. There was a small inlet and a second pier stretching into the lake. Flinx had not been able to see it from where he had parked his mudder.

  “I said that we’d catch up to them.” She pointed toward the pier.

  The boat was a single concave arch, each end of the arch spreading out to form a supportive hull. The cabin was located atop the arch and was excavated into it. Vents lined the flanks of the peculiar catamaran. Flinx wondered at their purpose. Some heavy equipment resembling construction cranes hung from the rear corners of the aft decking. A similar, smaller boat bobbed in the water nearby.

  They mounted a curving ladder and Flinx found himself watching as Lauren shrugged off the rifle and settled herself into the pilot’s chair. She spoke as she checked readouts and threw switches. “We’ll catch them inside an hour,” she assured Flinx. “A mudder’s fast, but not nearly as fast over water as this.” A deep rumble from the boat’s stern; air whistled into the multiple intakes lining the side of the craft, and the rumbling intensified.

  Lauren touched several additional controls whereupon the magnetic couplers disengaged from the pier. She then moved the switch set into the side of the steering wheel. Thunder filled the air, making Pip twitch slightly. The water astern began to bubble like a geyser as a powerful stream of water spurted from the subsurface nozzles hidden in the twin hulls. The boat leaped forward, cleaving the waves.

  Flinx stood next to the pilot’s chair and shouted over the roar of the wind assailing the open cabin. “How will we know which way they’ve gone?”

  Lauren leaned to her right and flicked a couple of switches below a circular screen, which promptly came to life. Several bright yellow dots appeared on the transparency. “This shows the whole lake.” She touched other controls. All but two dots on the screen turned from yellow to green. “Fishing boats from the other lodges that ring Patra. They have compatible instrumentation.” She tapped the screen with a fingernail. “That pair that’s stayed yellow? Moving, nonorganic, incompatible transponder. Who do you suppose that might be?”

  Flinx said nothing, just stared at the tracking screen. Before long, he found himself staring over the bow that wasn’t actually a bow. The twin hulls of the jet catamaran knifed through the surface of the lake as Lauren steadily increased their speed.

  She glanced occasionally over at the tracker. “They’re moving pretty well—must be pushing their mudders to maximum. Headed due north, probably looking to deplane at Point Horakov. We have to catch them before they cross, of course. This is no mudder. Useless off the water.”

  “Will we?” Flinx asked anxiously. “Catch them, I mean.” His eyes searched the cloud-swept horizon, looking for the telltale glare of diffused sunlight on metal.

  “No problem,” she assured him. “Not unless they have some special engines in those mudders. I’d think if they did, they’d be using ’em right now.”

  “What happens when we catch them?”

  “I’ll try cutting in front of them,” she said thoughtfully. “If that doesn’t make them stop, well—” she indicated the rifle resting nearby. “We can pick them off one at a time. That rifle’s accurate to a kilometer. The darts are gas-propelled, you see, and the gun has a telescopic sight that’ll let me put a dart in somebody’s ear if I have to.”

  “What if they shoot back?”

  “Not a paralysis pistol made that can outrange that rifle, let alone cover any distance with accuracy. The effect is dispersed. It’s only at close range that paralysis is effective on people. Or lethal to small animals,” she added bitterly. “If they’ll surrender, we’ll take them in and turn them over to the game authorities. You can add your own charges at the same time. Wervils are an endangered species on Moth. Of course, I’d much prefer that the scum resist so that we can defend ourselves.”

  Such bloodthirstiness in so attractive a woman was no surprise to Flinx. He’d encountered it before in the marketplace. It was her motivation that was new to him. He wondered how old she was. Probably twice his own age, he thought, though it was difficult to tell for sure. Time spent in the wilderness had put rough edges on her that even harsh city life would be hard put to equal. It was a different kind of roughness; Flinx thought it very becoming.

  “What if they choose to give themselves up?” He knew that was hardly likely, but he was curious to know what her contingency for such a possibility might be.

  “Like I said, we take them back with us and turn them over to the game warden in Kalish.”

  He made a short, stabbing motion with one hand. “That could be awkward for me.”

  “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll see to it that you’re not involved. It’s not only the game laws they’ve violated. Remember that injured guest? Ms. Marteenson’s a sick woman. The effect of a paralysis beam on her could be permanent. So it’s not just the game authorities who’ll be interested in these people.

  “As to you and your mother, the two of you can disappear. Why has she been kidnapped? For ransom?”

  “She hasn’t any money,” Flinx replied. “Not enough to bother with, anyway.”

  “Well, then, why?” Lauren’s eyes stayed on the tracker, occasionally drifting to scan the sky for signs of rain. The jet boat had a portable cover that she hoped they wouldn’t have to use. It would make aiming more difficult.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Flinx told her. “Maybe we’ll find out when we catch up with them.”

  “We should,” she agreed, “though that won’t do Sennar and Soba any good. You’ve probably guessed by now that my opinion of human beings is pretty low. Present company excepted. I’m very fond of animals. Much rather associate with them. I never had a wervil betray me, or any other creature of the woods, for that matter. You know where you stand with an animal. That’s a major reason why I’ve chosen the kind of life I have.”

  “I know a few other people who feel the way
you do,” Flinx said. “You don’t have to apologize for it.”

  “I wasn’t apologizing,” she replied matter-of-factly.

  “Yet you manage a hunting lodge.”

  “Not a hunting lodge,” she corrected him. “Fishing lodge. Strictly fishing. We don’t accommodate hunters here, but I can’t stop other lodges from doing so.”

  “You have no sympathy for the fish, then? It’s a question of scales versus fur? The AAnn wouldn’t like that.”

  She smiled. “Who cares what the AAnn think? As for the rest of your argument, it’s hard to get cozy with a fish. I’ve seen the fish of this lake gobble up helpless young wervils and other innocents that make the mistake of straying too far out into the water. Though if it came down to it”—she adjusted a control on the instrument dash, and the jet boat leaped to starboard—”I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer the company of fish to that of people either.”

  “It’s simple, then,” Flinx said. “You’re a chronic antisocial.”

  She shrugged indifferently. “I’m me. Lauren Walder. I’m happy with what I am. Are you happy with what you are?”

  His smile faded. “I don’t know what I am yet.” He dropped his gaze and brooded at the tracker, his attention focused on the nearing yellow dot that indicated their quarry.

  Odd thing for a young man like that to say, she thought. Most people would’ve said they didn’t know who they were yet. Slip of the tongue. She let the remark pass.

  The gap between pursued and pursuer shrank rapidly on the tracker. It wasn’t long before Flinx was able to gesture excitedly over the bow and shout, “There they are!”

  Lauren squinted and saw only water and cloud, then glanced down at the tracker. “You’ve got mighty sharp eyes, Flinx.”

  “Prerequisite for survival in Drallar,” he explained.

  A moment later she saw the mudders also, skittering along just above the waves and still headed for the northern shore. Simultaneously, those in the mudders reacted to the appearance of the boat behind them. They accelerated and for a moment moved out of sight again. Lauren increased the power. This time they didn’t pull away from the jet boat.