The End of the Matter

by Alan Dean Foster

  Each body was feathered with twenty-centimeter-long shafts of some highly polished yellow-brown wood. Five tiny fins tipped the back end of each shaft. Flinx guessed that each body sprouted at least sixty or seventy of the small arrows. Or they might have been large darts, depending on the size of their users.

  “So, they followed us here,” he muttered.

  Pocomchi was searching the surrounding jungle with practiced eyes. “They did more than follow, Flinx—they preceded us. They must have watched us set down, then circled somehow to get ahead of us on the trail.” His gaze dropped to the corpse immediately next to him. Like the other two, it was missing both eyes.

  “They knew we’d come through here, so they set up a nice, efficient little ambush.” Water trickled from the lowest cistern into the outflow drain, an anemic remnant of the once-substantial volume which had tumbled through this place ages ago. Pocomchi kicked at it and watched it darken his boot.

  “This isn’t the first time this has happened,” Flinx told him. His eyes weren’t as experienced as Pocomchi’s, but he could search the witnessing jungle with his mind. “The Qwarm were ready to ambush Ab and myself back on Moth. Something killed them there, too.”

  Pocomchi threw him a surprised look. “Really? I don’t know who was responsible for saving you, then, unless there are Otoids on Moth I haven’t heard about.” Bending over, he wrapped a hand around one of the several hundred shafts, pulled it free, and held it out to Flinx.

  The point was fashioned of crudely reworked metal, with five spikes sticking out of it. “This is an Otoid arrow,” Pocomchi explained, turning it over in his hand. “They shoot them out of a sikambi, a sort of blowgun affair. Only they use an elastic made from native tree sap instead of their own weak breath to propel these. They’re not too accurate, but”—he gestured meaningfully at the bodies—“what they lack in marksmanship they make up for with firepower.”

  “You’re right,” Flinx informed him, “there aren’t any Otoids on Moth. What are they?”

  “You’d think I’d have a simple answer for that one, wouldn’t you?” Pocomchi replied, scanning the jungle wall once again. “Well, I don’t. Nobody does, for sure. They’re vaguely humanoid, run to about half your size. Furry all over except for their tails, which are bare. They’re not very bright, but in the absence of the temple builders they’ve become the dominant native race. Manual dexterity helps them. Each of two hands has ten fingers, with three joints to each finger. They can climb pretty well, but the tail’s not prehensile, so they do most of their traveling on the ground.”

  “An interaction, disreaction, can’t you see it’s time to be, to activate the ancient key,” Ab murmured. “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pheromones.”

  The alien was waddling down the pool levels at high speed. Both men would have laughed at Ab’s absurd locomotion if it weren’t for the three dead humans lying in front of them.

  “Ab,” Flinx began, intending to bawl the alien out for disturbing them. Then he heard the rising hoots, the sort of war cry a human baby with an unusually deep voice might make.

  Ab was pointing and curiously feeling several objects sticking out of his back. The points had barely penetrated the outer epidermal layer. Plucking one out, he handed it to Flinx and smiled broadly. “Poor boy toy toy,” he commented. “Tickle fickle tickle.”

  “Come this way, Ab,” Pocomchi ordered urgently. “No boy toy. You too, Flinx,” he snapped, wrenching at the youth’s pack. Flinx did not move. He was staring at Ab, who appeared to have suffered no ill effects from the dozen or so arrows sticking out of him.

  All hint of casualness was missing from Pocomchi’s demeanor now. “Let’s move it. If they get between us and the skimmer, we’re finished. Come on, or I’ll leave you and your idiot to greet them on your own.”

  Flinx found himself running back down the trail they had laboriously traced this far. Ab kept pace easily. Cries sounded ahead of them, and Pocomchi came to a gasping halt.

  “No good. They’ve got us cut off.” He looked around wildly. “We’ve got to get around them somehow.” Something made a thunking sound as it landed in the dirt barely a quarter meter from Flinx’s feet. An Otoid arrow.

  Flinx noted that Ab had acquired another dozen of the feathered shafts. If they bothered the alien, he gave no sign of it. Flinx decided that either the secondary skin was incredibly dense or else some internal mechanism was sealing off each wound as it occurred. Or perhaps both.

  Time later to study the alien’s remarkable physiology. Time if they managed to escape.

  Pocomchi was on his knees, using his beamer on the nearby trees. He shouted angrily at Flinx, “What are you waiting for, Flinx, an engraved invitation? Or do you want your eyes to end up in an Otoid stewpot?”

  Flinx joined Pocomchi in retreating back to a cluster of broken tree trunks and tumbled masonry. Dimly perceived shapes moved from time to time in the trees around them. Whenever he detected such movement, he fired.

  Pip did not magically appear to save him.

  Arrows glanced with metallic pings off the stone around him, made dull thumping sounds as they stuck in the thick logs. Every so often Flinx risked taking an arrow to reach out and pull Ab down next to him. While the murmuring alien did not seem to be suffering at all from the missiles, Flinx had no idea when his body might suddenly lose its immunity to them. Ab rolled over, pulling the shafts curiously from his skin and rhyming nonstop, utterly indifferent to the battle surrounding him.

  “How many do you think there are?” Flinx asked, ducking as a brass-tipped bolt sparked off the rock near his head.

  Pocomchi replied in between rising and firing, and ducking back under cover. “No idea. Nobody knows how numerous the Otoid are. Xenoanthropologists aren’t even sure how they breed. And, as you might suspect, they aren’t kindly toward visitors.”

  Abruptly he snapped off a lethal burst from his beamer. Flinx peered between rock and log, had a glimpse of a wildly gesticulating form falling through filtered sunlight and branches. He heard a distant crash as the native hit the ground.

  While continuing to rain an impressive number of missiles on the three interlopers, the Otoids kept up a steady chatter among themselves. Flinx couldn’t tell whether their conversation consisted of various forms of encouragement or of insults for their enemy.

  Not that it mattered. It seemed that hundreds of green eyes, gleaming like peridots among the trees, confronted them. Like most men, he wasn’t going to be able to chose his place and manner of dying.

  He wondered what exactly the aborigines did first with dead men’s eyes. As he was wondering, there was a hissing sound in the air. A blue energy beam considerably thicker than the ones put out by their small hand beamers passed over Flinx’s head. It struck with devastating force among the densest concentration of natives. A great yelping and screeching reached them as a monster tree, a cross between an evergreen and a coconut palm, came smashing down among the concealed Otoid. Flinx saw where the blue bolt had sliced cleanly through the trunk.

  A second burst of cerulean destruction flashed above them, tearing through leaves, vegetation, and not a few furious natives. To give them credit, the awesome display of modern weaponry didn’t frighten the Otoid away, although the hail of yellow-brown arrows slackened noticeably.

  Flinx turned on his side and shouted in the direction from which the shots had originated, “Who is it, who’s there?”

  Both he and Pocomchi stared anxiously down the fragment of trail that remained in view. A figure stepped out of the bushes, cradling an energy rifle nearly as tall as Flinx. It was a heavy military model, Flinx noted, and was probably meant to be mounted on a tripod. Somehow its wielder managed not only to lift the weapon, but to operate it. Makeshift slings put most of the weight on the man’s shoulders.

  And the man was big as two men. He had a voice to match. “This way!” the figure bellowed at them, in a voice that sounded more amused than worried. Around came the muzzle of the mas
sive rifle, and another thick bolt carbonized trees and natives alike. “Hurry it up, there, you two! They regroup fast.”

  Pocomchi was up and running then. Flinx was right behind, darting around rocks and bushes, jumping over fallen logs. Occasionally each man would turn to snap off a shot at the arrow-fingers in the trees. Ab kept pace easily, though Flinx had to make sure some flower or bug didn’t distract the simple-minded creature.

  While they ran, the bulky figure ahead of them stood in place atop the slight rise, firing down into the clusters of howling, frustrated Otoid. They had almost reached him. Flinx found himself scrambling up a crumbling masonry wall the last couple of meters. Pocomchi was just ahead and to Flinx’s right. The wall seemed a million miles high.

  At its top stood their rescuer. Up close he was even more massive than he had looked from a distance. His white hair curled and fluttered in the warm breeze, and his face was half court jester, half mad prophet. Obsidian eyes, brows like antipersonnel wire, a sharply pointed chin—all were dwarfed by a nose any predatory bird would have been proud of. It rose like a spire from the sea of swirling features which eddied around it.

  His trousers, bright mold-green, ran into boots that sealed themselves to the pants legs. Above the waist he wore only the rifle straps and a massive power pack for the weapon, which crossed a chest full of white hair like steel wool and resembled an ancient bandoleer. His arms were covered with a similar grizzled fur. Though those limbs were bigger around than Flinx’s thighs, the man moved with startling agility, like a graceful gorilla.

  There was a curse, and Flinx turned to his guide. A small, feathered shaft protruded from the back of Pocomchi’s thigh. The Indian slid downward a little. His fingers dug at the rough rock; he trailed blood on the white stone as he fell.

  Reaching out and across, Flinx caught the back of Pocomchi’s shirt just in time to halt his fall.

  “Hurry up, dammit!” the rifle-wielder shouted down at them. “They’re gettin’ over being scared. Now they’re mad, and there’s more of them coming every minute.”

  “My friend’s hurt!” Flinx called up to him.

  “I can make it,” Pocomchi said through clenched teeth. He and Flinx exchanged glances; then both were again moving up the uneven stone facing.

  Somehow cradling the huge rifle in one arm, the giant above them reached down one treelike forearm and got a hand on Pocomchi’s shirt top. The material held as Pocomchi all but flew the last meter to the top of the wall. Flinx scrambled up alongside them.

  Pocomchi took one step forward, his face tightening in pain, before he stopped to yank the shaft from his leg.

  “We’ve got to get back to the temple,” the big man rumbled, letting loose another recoilless blast from the rifle. He looked squarely at Flinx. “I can’t cover us with this and carry him too.”

  For an answer, Flinx slipped his right arm between Pocomchi’s legs and hooked it around the man’s right thigh. Then he took the Indian’s right arm in his left hand, bent, heaved, and swung the swarthy miner onto his shoulders.

  “I can manage him,” Flinx assured the bigger man. Both of them ignored Pocomchi’s protests. “Just show me the way.”

  Teeth formed a line of enameled foam beneath that incredible nose. “It’s a right good fight you two made of it till I got to you, young feller-me-lad. Maybe we’ll all make it back unskewered.”

  With the man’s powerful rifle keeping the pursuing Otoid at a respectful distance, they started down into seemingly impenetrable jungle. Flinx hardly felt the weight on his back.

  Just when it appeared that they would run up against an impassible rampart of bushes and vines, the big man would gesture left or right and Flinx would find himself running down a gap only an experienced jungle hand would have noticed. Ab skipped along behind them, apparently enjoying all the excitement.

  The sounds of Otoid crashing and racing through the trees alongside them grew louder, more perceptible. While the terrible fire from the heavy military gun cut down any aborigines who ventured too near, it still seemed to Flinx that they were tightening a ring around the fugitives.

  Flinx’s concern wasn’t alleviated by the expression on the big man’s face. Sweat was pouring down him now, and he was breathing in long, strained gasps, despite his strength. The tripod blaster was beginning to sap his reserves. It was not meant to be used like a handgun, much less to be carried and fired while on the run.

  “I don’t know, young feller-me-lad,” he said blinking the sweat from his eyes and talking as they ran. “They may cut us off yet.”

  They ran on, until Flinx’s heart felt like a hammer on his chest and his lungs shrieked in protest. The formerly light Pocomchi now seemed to be made of solid lead.

  Then, just when he thought he couldn’t move another step, he heard a shout from his huge companion. Wiping aside perspiration and a few soaked strands of hair, Flinx thought he could see a dark rectangle looming ahead of them. The ancient portal rose a good four meters high and two across. It formed an opening into a creeper-wrapped temple built of sparkling green stone. The temple appeared isolated from any other structures. Its color enabled it to blend inconspicuously into the surrounding forest.

  The building was low, compared to many of the imposing edifices Flinx had passed in Mimmisompo proper—not more than two stories aboveground, flat and broken on top from the action of persistent, prying roots.

  Apprehensively he studied their apparent destination. “In there? But it’s small, and there’s nowhere to retreat to. Can’t the Otoid . . . ?”

  “You can always try to make it back to your skimmer, lad,” his rescuer suggested pleasantly.

  Arrows continued to fall around them as they staggered, exhausted, toward the catacomblike entrance. One bolt whizzed past so close that it slit Flinx’s shirt under his left arm. Glancing down and over, he saw that the point had nicked the skin and he was bleeding slightly.

  Just ahead, several figures ducked down into tall grass. Emerald eyes glinted malevolently at them.

  “It’s no good,” Flinx wheezed, defeated. “They’re ahead of us now.”

  “How many?” the big man asked, crouching alongside Flinx and swinging the rifle around.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Flinx panted, wondering if he would be able to stand again with Pocomchi’s weight on his back. Next to him, Ab imitated his posture and offered a hopeful verse. Flinx was not comforted.

  “Little devils know how to fight, how to hide themselves. If they ever get organized, they’ll run the prospectors and the scientists off Alaspin.” Flinx, in spite of his near-total exhaustion, found time to be curious. But the big man apparently felt he had said nothing remarkable.

  “Got to chance it, lad,” the man decided.

  “Chance it, fance it, dance and prance it,” agreed Ab excitedly.

  “We can’t stay here and we can’t go back.” He started to rise. “I’ll go first. That’ll give you a little time . . . and some shieldin’, if you can stay back of me. If we can just—”

  Popping sounds came from ahead of them. Several fist-sized globes of red fire emerged from above the dark doorway in the temple.

  Glancing higher, Flinx thought he could see a figure moving about in a long, narrow gap in the green stone. From that position it fired a weapon which produced the energy globes.

  Where each ball struck there was a small explosion. Flames leaped briefly skyward, only to disappear and leave a man-sized pillar of light-brown smoke in their wake. Those Otoid blocking the approach to the temple broke and fled—those who were still able to. Red spheres pursued them.

  “That’d be Isili,” Flinx’s blocky savior declared. “I thought for sure she’d be down in the diggin’s. Lucky for us she heard the commotion.” He rose to his full height. “She’ll cover us. Come on.” He started for the towering entrance, running with lumbering, pounding strides that reminded Flinx of the herd of toppers he had flown over only a couple of days ago.

  Every mus
cle in his body strained, but he still found himself falling farther and farther behind. Any second now, he expected the sharp, exquisite pain of a metal point to penetrate his legs or lower back. But every time an Otoid raised itself for a clear shot at the fugitives, or moved to pursue, a cottony-crimson globe of energy would touch it, and both would vanish in an impatient gout of flame.

  Then, as he was tottering down carved stone steps, he realized that he was descending into the temple. The steps gave way to a level rock floor. Something thundered behind him. He experienced a moment of panic, but it was only a makeshift wooden door slamming shut across the temple entrance.

  His eyes rapidly became accustomed to the slightly dimmer illumination in the modest chamber. Small, independently powered lamps were hung from the ceiling, mounted on rock outcroppings.

  They reached the end of the entrance tunnel and emerged into a brightly lit cleared room. Here the surrounding walls were embellished with row upon row of magnificent carvings, mosaics of metal and stone alternating with deeply etched friezes depicting scenes from ancient Alaspinian social and religious life.

  Flinx had little time to appreciate the sculpture as he sank, exhausted, to the floor, barely managing to set Pocomchi down gently. Ab strolled over to a pile of excavated stone and commenced examining some of the pieces.

  Taking the stone steps three at a time, the man who had led him to at least temporary safety mounted to a gallery which ran around the top level of the chamber. The ornamental banister which bordered the gallery was also made of carved stone. It was a good three stories above the chamber floor.

  Flinx saw him approach another figure, indistinct in the distance, and talk briefly. Then he turned and shouted down to Flinx. A slight echo shadowed his words.

  “Relax, feller-me-lad! They’ve given up for now. They’ll count their losses, remove the eyes from their dead, and ceremony for a while. Then they’ll decide what to do.”

  “Surely,” Flinx called up to him, “they won’t attack a position as well defended as this temple?” The thick stone walls were making him confident. “Not with the kind of weapons you have,” he finished, with a gesture toward the rifle the man had leaned against the nearby wall.