For Love of Mother-Not

by Alan Dean Foster

  She nodded slightly. “I thought so. Standard mudder engines, no surprises. I don’t think they’re hiding anything from us.” She glanced at her companion. “Think you can drive this thing for a little while?”

  Flinx had spent the past half hour studying the controls as well as the image on the tracker. The instrumentation was no more complex than that of his mudder. On the other hand, he was used to driving over land. “I think so,” he said. This was not the time for excessive caution.

  “Good.” She slid out of the pilot’s chair and waited until he slipped in and took control over the wheel. “It’s very responsive,” she warned him, “and at the speed we’re traveling, even a slight turn of the wheel will send us shooting off in another direction. So watch it.”

  “I’ll be okay,” he assured her. He could feel the vibration of the engine through the wheel. The sensation was exhilarating.

  A flash of light suddenly marked the fleeing mudders, but it dissipated well shy of the jet boat’s bow. Flinx maintained the gap between the three craft. The flash was repeated; it did no more damage to the boat or its crew than would a flashlight beam.

  “No long-range weapons,” Lauren murmured. “If they had ’em, now’d be the time to use ’em.” Flinx saw she was hefting the dart rifle. It was nearly as tall as she was. She settled it onto a vacant bracket and bent over to peer through the complex telescopic sight. In that position, it resembled a small cannon more than a rifle.

  Two more flares of light shot from the mudders, futile stabs at the pursuing jet boat. “I can see them,” Lauren announced as she squinted through the sight. “They look confused. That’s sensible. I don’t see anything but hand weapons. Two of them seem to be arguing. I don’t think they expected this kind of pursuit.”

  “They didn’t expect to see me in the dining room, either,” Flinx said confidentially. “I’ll bet they’re confused.”

  She looked over from the sight. “You’re sure they weren’t looking for you to follow?”

  “I doubt it, or I’d never have come this close to them.”

  She grunted once and returned her eyes to the sight. “At this range, I can pick their teeth.” She moved the rifle slightly. “Hold her steady, please.” She pushed the button which took the place of a regular trigger. The gun went phut! and something tiny and explosive burst from the muzzle.

  “Warning shot,” she explained. “There—someone’s pulling the dart out. I put it in the back of the pilot’s chair. Now they’re gathering around and studying it, except the driver, of course. Now they’re looking back at us. One of them’s keeping two hands on a little old lady. Your mother?”

  “I’m sure,” Flinx said tightly.

  “She’s giving the one restraining her fits, trying to bite him, kicking at him even though it looks like her feet are bound at the ankles.”

  “That’s her, all right.” Flinx couldn’t repress a grin. “What are they doing now?”

  Lauren frowned. “Uh oh. Putting up some kind of transparent shield. Now the regular vehicle dome over that. The dome we can penetrate. I don’t know about the shield-thing. Well, that’s no problem. Go to port.”

  “Port?” Flinx repeated.

  “To your left,” she said. “We’ll cut around in front of them and block their course. Maybe when they see that we can not only catch them but run circles around them, they’ll be willing to listen to reason.”

  Flinx obediently turned the wheel to his left and felt the catamaran respond instantly.

  “Okay, now back to star—to your right, not too sharply.” The boat split the water as he turned the wheel.

  Suddenly, everything changed. A new sound, a deep humming, became audible.

  “Damn,” Lauren said in frustration, pointing upward.

  Flinx’s gaze went toward the clouds. The skimmer that had appeared from out of the northern horizon was of pretty good size. It was certainly more than big enough to hold its own crew in addition to the mudders’ occupants. If there was any doubt as to the skimmer’s intent, it was quickly eliminated as the versatile craft dipped low, circled once, and then settled toward the first mudder as it strove to match the smaller vehicle’s speed.

  “If they get aboard, we’ll lose them permanently,” said a worried Flinx. “Can you pick them off as they try to transfer?” Already the skimmer’s crew had matched velocity with the mudder and was dropping a chute ladder toward the water.

  Lauren bent over the rifle again. Her finger hesitated over the button; then she unexpectedly pulled back and whacked the butt of the gun angrily. “Lovely people. They’re holding your mother next to the base of the chute. I can’t get a clear shot.”

  “What are we going to do? We can’t just keep circling them like this!”

  “How the hell should I know?” She abandoned the rifle and rushed to a storage locker amidships. “Mudders, paralysis pistols, kidnapping, and now a skimmer sent out from the north. Who are these people, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Flinx snapped. “I told you before that I don’t understand any of this.” He hesitated, trying to watch her and keep the jet boat circling the still-racing mudders and the skimmer hovering above them. “What are you going to do now?”

  The device she had extracted from the storage locker was as long as the dart rifle but much narrower. “When I give the word,” she said tightly, “I want you to charge them and pull aside at the last moment. I don’t think they’ll be expecting a rush on our part. They’re much too busy transferring to the skimmer.”

  “What are you going to try and do?” he asked curiously. “Disable the skimmer?”

  “With a dart gun? Are you kidding?” she snorted. “Just do as I say.”

  “So long as what you say continues making sense,” he agreed, a bit put off by her tone.

  “You’re wasting time. Do it!”

  He threw the wheel hard over. The catamaran spun on the surface so sharply that the portside hull lifted clear of the water. A high rooster tail obscured them from sight for a moment.

  In seconds, they were on top of the mudder and the skimmer drifting steadily above it. Activity on both craft intensified as the jet boat bore down on the mudder. As Lauren suspected, the last thing their opponents were expecting was a broadside charge. A couple of shots passed behind the on-rushing boat, hastily dispatched and imperfectly aimed.

  “Hard to port!” Lauren shouted above the roar of the engine. Those still on board the mudder had hunched down in anticipation of a collision. Flinx leaned on the wheel. Engine screaming, the catamaran spun to its left, nearly drowning those starting up the chute ladder toward the skimmer.

  Lauren must have fired at least once, Flinx thought as the jet boat sped away. He turned the wheel, and they started back toward their quarry in a wide arc. To his surprise, the woman put the peculiar-looking weapon back in the storage locker and returned to the bracket-held dart rifle. “Now let’s go back and take our best shots.”

  “A one-shot gun?” he murmured. “I didn’t even hear it go off. What was the purpose of that crazy charge?” He wrestled with the wheel.

  “That charge was our insurance, Flinx.” She gestured back toward the storage locker where she had repositioned the narrow gun. “That gun was a Marker. We use it to help track injured fish that break their lines.” She nodded toward the skimmer. “I think I hit it twice. The gun fires a capsule which holds a specially sensitized gel. Epoxied bonder, sticks to anything on contact, and it’s not water soluble. As long as they don’t think to check the underside of their skimmer for damage, and there’s no reason for them to do so since it’s operating perfectly, they’ll never see the gel. It’s transparent, anyway. Now we can track them.”

  “Not with this boat, surely.”

  “No. But there’s a skimmer back at the lodge. Would’ve taken too long to ready it or we’d be on it now instead of on this boat. Wish we were. No reason to expect a skimmer to show up suddenly to help them, though.” She gestured toward the mudder.<
br />
  “As long as they don’t get too far ahead of us, we’ll be able to follow them—just like we did with this boat. But if we can hurt them now …” She looked back through the telescopic sight. “Ah, they’ve taken your mother up on a hoist. Strapped in. I’m sure she didn’t make it easy for them.”

  “She wouldn’t,” Flinx murmured affectionately.

  “Clear shooting now,” Lauren said delightedly. A loud beeping sounded from the tracking unit.

  “What’s that?” Flinx gave the device a puzzled glance.

  Lauren uttered a curse and pulled away from the rifle. A quick glance at the screen and Flinx found himself shoved none too gently out of the pilot’s chair. He landed on the deck hard.

  “Hey, what’s—!”

  Lauren wasn’t listening to him as she wrenched the wheel hard to starboard. Flinx frantically grabbed for some support as the boat heeled over. He could just see the port hull rising clear of the water as something immense and silvery-sided erupted from the lake’s surface.

  10

  Screams and shouts came from the vicinity of the mudders and the skimmer. A violent reactive wave nearly capsized the jet boat; only Lauren’s skillful and experienced maneuvering kept them afloat.

  Flinx saw a vast argent spine shot through with flecks of gold that shone in the diffused sunlight. It looked like a huge pipe emerging from beneath the waves, and it turned the sunlight to rainbows. Then it was gone, not endless as he first believed. Another wave shook the catamaran as the monster submerged once again. Flinx pulled himself up to where he could peer over the edge of the cabin compartment.

  The mudders had vanished completely, sucked down in a single gulp by whatever had materialized from the depths of the lake. The skimmer itself just missed being dragged down by that great gulf of a mouth. It hovered above the disturbed section of lake where its companion craft had been only a moment ago. Then someone on the skimmer apparently made a decision, for it rose another twenty meters toward the clouds and accelerated rapidly northward.

  “They’re leaving,” Flinx shouted. “We have to get back to the lodge, get the skimmer you mentioned, and hurry after them before—”

  “We have to get out of here alive first.” Lauren followed her announcement with another curse as her hands tore at the wheel. The silver mountain lifted from the lake just starboard of the jet boat. Flinx was gifted with a long, uncomfortable view down a throat wide enough to swallow several mudders intact. Or a jet boat. The jaws slammed shut, sending a heavy spray crashing over the gunwales. The monster was so close Flinx could smell its horrid breath. Then it was sinking back into the waters boiling behind the catamaran.

  Something moved on his shoulder, and he reached up to grasp at the muscular form that was uncoiling. “No, Pip! Easy … this one’s too big even for you.” The snake struggled for a moment before relaxing. It bobbed and ducked nervously, however, sensing a threat not only to its master but to itself. Yet it responded to the pressure of Flinx’s restraining fingers and held its position.

  For a third time, the penestral struck, snapping in frustration at the spot where the jet boat had been only seconds earlier. Thanks to the tracker, which had first warned Lauren of the nightmare’s approach, they were able to avoid its upward rush.

  “This won’t do,” she murmured. “It’ll keep working us until I make a mistake. Then it’ll take us the way it took the poor souls still stuck on those mudders.” She studied the tracker intently. “It’s circling now. Trying to cut us off from shallow water and the shore. We’ll let it think we’re headed that way. Then we’ll reverse back into deep water.”

  “Why?”

  She ignored the question. “You didn’t care for it when I had to shove you away from the wheel a few minutes ago, did you? Here, it’s all yours again.” She reached down and half pulled, half guided him back into the pilot’s chair. “That’s enough.” She threw the wheel over, and the boat seemed to spin on its axis. Flinx grabbed for the wheel.

  “It’ll follow us straight now instead of trying to ambush us from below and will try to hit us from astern. Keep us headed out into the lake and let me know when it’s tangent to our square.” She indicated the red dot on the tracking screen that was closing on them from behind.

  “But shouldn’t we—?”

  She wasn’t listening to him as she made her way back to the pair of gantrylike structures protruding from the rear of the boat. She took a seat behind one, stretched it out so the arm hung free over the water, then checked controls.

  “When I tell you,” she shouted back at him over the roar of the engine and the spray, “go hard a-port. That’s left.”

  “I remember,” he snapped back at her. His attention was locked to the tracker. “It’s getting awfully close.”

  “Good.” She positioned herself carefully in the seat, touched a switch. Flexible braces snapped shut across her waist, hips, shoulders and legs, pinning her to the seat in a striped cocoon.

  “Awfully close,” Flinx reiterated.

  “Not ready yet,” she murmured. “A fisherman has to be patient.” The water astern began to bubble, a disturbance more widespread than a mere boat engine could produce. “Now!” she shouted.

  Flinx wrenched the wheel to his left. Simultaneously, the surface of the lake exploded behind them. With both hands on the wheel, there was nothing Flinx could do except cry out as Pip left its perch and launched itself into the air. A muffled explosion sounded from the stern, and a moment later its echo reached him as the harpoon struck the penestral just beneath one of the winglike fins that shielded its gills.

  The soaring monster displaced the lake where the jet boat had been before Flinx had sent it screaming into a tight turn. A distant crump reached the surface as the harpoon’s delayed charge went off inside the guts of the penestral. Polyline spewed from a drum inside the ship’s hull, a gel coating eliminating dangerous heat buildup where line rubbed the deck.

  “Cut the engine,” came the command from astern.

  “But then we won’t have any—” he started to protest.

  “Do it,” she ordered.

  Flinx sighed. He was not a good swimmer. He flicked the accelerator until their speed dropped to nothing. The jet engine sank to an idle. Instantly, the catamaran began moving in reverse. The twin hulls were pointed aft as well as forward, and the boat moved neatly through the water as it was towed backward. The retreating polyline slowed from a blur to where Flinx could count space markings as it slid off the boat. Meanwhile, Lauren had reloaded the harpoon gun and was watching the surface carefully.

  She called back to him. “Where’s the penestral?”

  “Still moving ahead of us, but I think it’s slowing.”

  “That’s to be expected. Keep your hands on the accelerator and the wheel.”

  “It’s still slowing,” he told her. “Slowing, slowing—I can’t see it anymore. I think it’s under the boat!”

  “Go!” she yelled, but at that point he didn’t need to be told what to do; he had already jammed the accelerator control forward. The jet boat roared, shot out across the lake. An instant later a geyser erupted behind them as the penestral tried to swallow the sky. Flinx heard the harpoon gun discharge a second time.

  This time, the penestral was struck just behind one crystallike eye the size of a telescope mirror. It collapsed back into the water like a tridee scene running in reverse, sending up huge waves over which the retreating catamaran rode with ease. The waves were matched in frequency if not intensity by the palpitations of Flinx’s stomach.

  This time, the fish didn’t sink back into the depths. It stayed on the surface, thrashing convulsively.

  “Bring us back around,” Lauren directed Flinx. She was sweating profusely as she reloaded the harpoon cannon for the third time. Only the autoloading equipment made it possible for one person to manipulate the heavy metal shaft and its explosive charge.

  This harpoon was slightly smaller and thinner than the two that had prece
ded it. As the boat swung back toward the penestral, Flinx heard the gun go off again. Several minutes passed. The penestral stopped fighting and began to sink.

  Lauren touched another button. There was a hum as a compressor located inside the catamaran started up, pumping air through the plastic line that ran to the hollow shaft of the last harpoon. She unstrapped herself from the chair and began to oversee the reeling in of the colossal catch. “Air’ll keep it afloat for days,” she said idly, exchanging seats with Flinx once again. “Too big for darts, this one.”

  “Why bother with it?” Flinx stared as the silver-sided mountain expanded and drew alongside the catamaran.

  “You might be right—it’s not much of a fish. Bet it doesn’t run more than fifteen meters.” Flinx gaped at her. “But there are hungry people in Kaslin and the other towns south of the lake, and the penestral’s a good food fish—lean and not fatty. They’ll make good use of it. What they don’t eat they’ll process for resale further south. The credit will go to the lodge.

  “Besides, we have guests staying with us who come up to Patra regularly, twice a year for many years, and who in all that time have never seen anything bigger than a five-meter minnow. Your first time and you’ve participated in a catch. You should feel proud.”

  “I didn’t catch it,” he corrected her quickly. “You did.”

  “Sorry, modesty’s not permitted on this lake. Catching even a penestral’s a cooperative effort. Dodging is just as important as firing the gun. Otherwise, we end up on his trophy wall.” She jabbed a thumb in the direction of the inflated bulk now secured to the side of the catamaran.

  A weight settled gently onto Flinx’s left shoulder. “I’d hoped you hadn’t gone off to try and attack it,” he said to the minidrag as it slipped multiple coils around his arm. “It’s good to know you have some instinct for self-preservation.” The flying snake stared quizzically back at him, then closed its eyes and relaxed.