by Brian Daley
Around the compartment were holographic projections, not of nebulae and the stars, but planetary scenes. That made a sort of sense; how often would such a man leave the only safety he trusted and walk the surface of a world? It looked like a pretty good bet that he didn't even trust his own doctors and clinicians.
Merrywell gave no hint of noticing the grandeur of Costa's personal domain. The captain of the Magus shuffled over tiredly to slump in a priceless Newlantean Empire chair. Alacrity took another next to it.
"We'll make this brief; I can't spare you two more than a moment," Costa told Merrywell curtly. To Alacrity he added, "What's your name, by the way? And don't waste my time with an alias."
"Cap'n Costa," Merrywell interrupted, before Alacrity could decide whether or not to challenge the question. Costa had offered nothing so far and demanded more than was polite at a Grapple.
"This man and his friend and Cap'n Amarok are here in the Pihoquiaq, grappled to the Magus. And so you'll be understanding my interest in this matter. They'd be very grateful for your aid and advice, but that doesn't entitle you to know what you just asked."
Costa's eyes burned on Merrywell, who didn't appear in the least discomfited and in fact gave a wide yawn.
"Who are you to tell me what I may and may not ask in Caveat Emptor, you bundle of frowns?"
Merrywell wore the expression of a particularly depressed blue-tick hound. He worked his words around in his mouth like a wad of chewing gum before he said them, pointing his long cigarette holder at the other.
"You 'n' me have managed not to cross courses so far, Costa. And you were the one who invited me to just say the word if there was ever anything you could do. D'you recall that? Listen: if you put one more warning bolt across my vector, I'll make you live up to it, and we'll see which vessel has the real goods, the Magus or this whorehouse of yours."
Costa wavered for a moment between anger and retreat, while Alacrity thought how bad his and Merrywell's tactical situation was. Merrywell didn't look concerned.
After a time that, for Alacrity, stretched out like two weeks in a fleabag hotel, Costa chuckled. "How can I help the boy if I don't know what it's all about? Let be, let be—we'll start again. Tell me your problem, son."
"My friend and I want to get to Blackguard."
"To—hrmm." Costa drummed his fingers on the desk. "It can be arranged—I believe it can be arranged. Question is, how can it profit me?"
That he had a right to ask. Merrywell was somehow faster than Alacrity to field that one, in the most casual voice. "It would be in the form of a consultation fee, Cap'n, not a share of the enterprise."
"If you say so, Captain." Costa focused on the distance for a moment, concentrating. "It can be done. I know a vessel that will be stopping at Blackguard direct from here: the Mountebank."
"Never heard of her," Merrywell answered.
"An old scow, but new in these parts. I'll arrange for your friends to travel in her. Part of the fare will bounce back to me, a finder's fee. I'll make sure it's reasonable."
Alacrity was about to say thanks, knowing it was a small transaction, hardly worth Costa's notice. But Costa leaned toward him first, eyes alight.
"And in return there's something I want, if you can do it. I want to know about Blackguard; nobody seems to know what really goes on there, either at the preserve or the population center. You two get word to me, and I'll make it worth your while."
Alacrity didn't take long to think that one over. "Agreed, aye—if we can."
Costa pursed his lips, gauging Alacrity and the weight of his word.
"Done," he said at length. Then, decisively, slapping the desk: "Done!"
Amarok's wrist seemed to be coming around again; somehow, by some precise and instant control, the stave's effect on him had been much different from that of Floyt.
The pneuma-warrior twirled and whirled the weapon in a brilliant demonstration, too fast for the eye to follow, leaving afterimages of green glass and silver banding. Amarok settled into a ready position, showing no emotion. Floyt wanted to cry out, help Amarok, or flee, but could only lie there watching.
The little man in black suddenly rendered Amarok a salute with the stave, then lofted it up after the pistols. He assumed an odd, disjointed pose.
Amarok, radiating strength, dropped into a more rigid one. They closed slowly, circling, watching. Amarok's moves were all lithe power; his opponents' were eerie, marionnettelike, but flowing and very fast.
There was some feinting. Amarok threw a combination of snapping punches and kicks and was extremely quick to recover, offering no openings. The pneuma-warrior avoided them all by a good distance, so wary that he even dodged the feints, appearing to flinch. His prancing, sliding technique incorporated wide, rotary moves, elaborate posturings, a balletic aloofness. Where Amarok was a whirlwind, the silent man was a shadow skimming over rushing water.
The pneuma's eyes showed only the cold, cobra stare. Amarok's face was tense and grim, jaw muscles clenched and blood vessels pulsing like hoses in his neck, his fighting snarl in place.
Amarok pressed an attack. The pneuma seemed not so much to dodge or retreat as simply to be elsewhere. The slashing edges of Amarok's hands, the great stony knobs of his knuckles, sword-plane of his foot—all the fearsome striking surfaces of him—failed to make any contact.
Floyt dizzily recalled what Merrywell had said about pneuma-warriors being kinesics readers. Amarok's skintight suit and bared midsection were betraying him. For all his fine-honed ferocity, he was no more able to connect with the little man in black than sledgehammer a specter.
Then the pneuma began to hit back. Pirouetting aside from a fierce kick, he struck Amarok's knee a numbing blow with his elbow. When he might have followed up, he let the bigger man retreat, then minced and stalked after.
Amarok was bathed in sweat, and his leg was giving him trouble. With the cruel detachment of a cat with a mouse, the pneuma began disabling him bit by bit, striking almost at will at the brachial, solar plexus, carotid sinus, and larynx. Amarok made desperate counterattacks and defensive moves, only to be hurt again and again. His left eye was nearly swollen shut and he could barely breath through his damaged throat; he was weaving and staggering, a crippled giant.
At last he summoned from some depths the kime for a flying kick. The pneuma barely moved, drawing his head to one side and striking as Amarok went past. The Pihoquiaq's master flopped to the deck and didn't rise.
The little man stood straddling him; Amarok was wide open for any death blow the pneuma might select.
Floyt had been trying desperately to cry out or move, either to help Amarok or escape. Using his proteus would be impossible; the Grapple was a communications sink hole, with too many hulls, bulkheads, fields, and other obstructions and interference sources between himself and Alacrity.
But he did manage, for the first time, to get out a strangled, unintelligible sound, then draw a deeper breath. With that he felt some power of movement returning in a slow trickle.
The pneuma's hand had been making slow debate over the fallen Amarok, going through permutations of Claw, Hammer, Needle, and Sword. Hearing Floyt, he left off his contemplations. He stepped over his opponent and went to the packing crate. Floyt watched, terrified and puzzled.
The pneuma went through some preparatory motions, then began climbing straight up one corner of the smooth plastic crating. In another moment he was back down with his stave, to hover over the reviving Floyt. He showed no sign of emotion, or exertion. Floyt could only cringe and wait, moving feebly, unable to look away from the dark, unblinking eyes; he couldn't imagine resisting or escaping this incredible man.
The pneuma-warrior made a quick adjustment to his stave, touching it to Floyt once more. Again there was the freezing electricity, and the Earther went limp.
The pneuma gathered him up easily in a fireman's carry; he stepped back to Amarok, making a last adjustment on the stave. Its ferrule went toward the nape of Amarok's nec
k; Floyt could only watch with lolling head.
The ferrule touched the collar over Amarok's neck; his body arched once, then subsided.
The pneuma looked aside abruptly, listening for something Floyt couldn't hear. Then he was out in the passageway again, Floyt still over his shoulder, dogging the hatch behind, Floyt's weight and mass hardly impeding him at all. As he retraced the route Floyt and Amarok had followed, he pulled down the directional signs and tossed them aside. He'd evidently scavenged them and used them to lure his prey into the hold.
When they emerged into one of Rantipole's main passageways, the pneuma simply sashayed along as if nothing unusual were going on. Anyone who happened to notice would of course assume Floyt was just another casualty of the wall-locker-head-knocker game or one of the ship's other risky diversions.
Floyt's captor emerged into the smoky din of Caveat Emptor, and paused to be sure neither Merrywell's followers nor anyone else likely to interfere was on the scene. Floyt was feeling the first stirrings of neuromotor control again, but was at a loss as to what to do with it. If he moved or even tried to cry out he'd only get another shock treatment.
Then he spied, almost upside-down, the cafe called the Oasis, a modest little collection of nearly miniature chairs and tables clustered around a service counter, with an awning against the occasional condensation drips. There sat Professor K'ek, swinging his legs and gloating over his hardbound books and other purchases piled on the table.
K'ek chanced to look up just then, picking out Floyt; the eyes went wide in his tamarin face. The pneuma, having already dismissed the professor as insignificant, was looking elsewhere.
Floyt tried to gather his own kime. In one effort that was more than he'd have believed himself capable of, he dipped into the bellows pocket on his right thigh, seizing what he was after in one grab.
The pneuma felt the motion, of course, even though he couldn't see it. He brought his stave up in an all but disinterested tap; Floyt's survival tool dropped from his hand, hitting the deck with metallic racket. The sounds covered the fall of the other object Floyt had grabbed at the same time, the one he'd meant to leave behind.
The pneuma turned and started off once more, casually using the infernal stave as a walking staff.
Professor K'ek slid down off his seat, watching the pneuma wend off through the crowd with Floyt over his shoulder. He scampered over to where the survival tool lay, his tail rippling in the air. Floyt had dropped something else.
It was a book microfiche, one of the ones he'd purchased when he'd met the professor. K'ek read the title, and his eyes went even wider.
The pneuma-warrior strode down the deserted passageway leading to the boat lock where the Lamia had moored to Caveat Emptor. But he stopped dead and Floyt, managing to lift his head, saw that the lock was sealed and its indicators registered it as vacant. Lamia had departed.
Before Floyt's captor could absorb that, pulsed bolts of blue-white light began hosing back and forth across the passageway from behind, licking over bulkheads, deck, and overhead, all in a moment, catching the pneuma and his burden.
The little man in black reacted instantly, letting go of Floyt, leaping to one side, and dropping flat. But it was impossible to avoid the rays in that confined space.
Floyt had been numbed when the light first touched him; he hardly felt himself hit the deckplates. His vision went dark for an instant, then cleared momentarily.
The pneuma had been hit too, and landed awkwardly, dropping his stave. But then he was dodging and weaving, rolling dextrously and leaping to bounce off the bulkhead, trying to stay out of the pulses as he rushed toward the source of the beam, still without uttering a sound.
But the gunner could saturate the entire field of fire in split seconds with movements of his wrist, while the pneuma was obliged to dodge through meters of space; it was a losing proposition. The beam brushed the pneuma just as he dove to one side. His leg buckled under him. He landed in a tuck, went into a handspring. A random swing of the lightray scored on his forearm.
The handspring couldn't carry him clear of the danger; the narrow passageway was better than a shooting gallery for someone splashing an energy weapon around. The pneuma rolled again, digging into a sleeve pocket. He wriggled around and hurled something that spun and threw off sparks, humming, but the blue-white bolts caught him fleetingly as he did. His aim was ruined and whatever he'd thrown glanced off the side of the passageway with a radiant burst and a shower of fire-flecks.
In the meantime, the beam pinned him squarely. It held him for an instant, then he flopped down, under and away from it. Impossibly, he was still moving, dragging himself in Floyt's direction. For the first time his eyes betrayed something: the effort it took to make his body respond when it should by all rights have failed him.
He groped stubbornly, clumsily, in a leg pouch, eyes fixed on the Earther. Floyt knew the little man meant to kill him.
The beam caught him again, though, and held to him. No nervous system, however conditioned and trained, could withstand that. The pneuma blacked out, his head striking the deck. From his limp fingers rolled an autostyrette, to fetch up against Floyt's leg.
An indeterminate time went by, then Floyt heard a familiar voice say, "As the Perfesser puts it, 'We don't know the meaning of guts'!"
Floyt found that his voice was coming back. "Alacrity—" It came out "Arl-kee."
Alacrity held one of Merrywell's matched stunguns. He tucked it through his belt and assisted Floyt in sitting up. "Isn't that right, K'ek?"
Professor K'ek poked his head around Alacrity, to goggle at Floyt. His eyes were as big and bright as desert moons.
"Kreegah! Stand by to scuttle the schoolmarm! Take no prisoners!"
"He got your little message and came to get me just as Merrywell and me were coming to find you at the Oasis, Ho. K'ek tracked you and the masked marvel, here, by scent, at a dead run. You should've seen him."
Alacrity held up the book fiche Floyt had dropped for K'ek to find. It was The Prisoner of Zenda.
"This isn't supposed to be some kind of horrible pun, is it, Ho?" Alacrity glared accusingly. "And by the way, where's Rok?"
"Back in the Rantipole," Floyt said, trying to rise. "Let's get out of here. Away from"—indicating the pneuma—"him."
"Ho, it'd take a kiss from Prince Charming and a three-day head start to wake that boy up. He's Cinderella for the time being."
"Cin—Oh!" Floyt struggled to his feet. "You mean Sleeping Beauty."
"Well, one of those cartoons." Alacrity shifted to kneel by the little man, picking up the fallen styrette. "Anyway, I just want to see if he's carrying anything that'll tell us what—"
"No! Now!" Floyt said, grabbing his arm.
"What's the matter with you, Ho? We've got to find out what's going on and whether Sile is in with somebody or—"
"Alacrity, you don't understand! This man isn't human! I saw!" Alacrity was trying to tug his arm free, but Floyt had it and wouldn't let go.
Alacrity jumped to his feet and yanked his arm loose. Professor K'ek skipped back out of the way, tail lashing and quivering.
"Now, dammit, Ho, I'm gonna get mad in a second here!"
"You blind idiot! You didn't see what I saw!"
They were both breathing hard, as close to a real falling out as they'd come in a long time. Alacrity saw fear and awe on Floyt's face, his pallor and fright. He got his temper under control and queried sweetly, "If the little scut's superhuman, how come he's off doing kata in dreamland?"
Floyt simply looked down at the pneuma. Just then there were hurried footfalls in the passageway, Merrywell and his party bringing up the rear, guns ready, having gotten sidetracked trying to keep up with Alacrity and K'ek.
"He's okay." Alacrity waved. Then: "Ho, look, you can't let it get to you. All he is, is another would-be-mystic chop-and-drop man from some zilchtech planet."
As he spoke, Alacrity lowered himself to one knee again to search the pneuma. Merrywell a
nd others gathered about.
"They're not bad at sneaking around bopping people from behind," Alacrity grouched, "or doing the kung-fu hula. But you see who's up and who's down, don't you, Ho?"
"Where's Amarok?" Merrywell demanded. Floyt told him, and the gloomy captain led his party to find the big trader.
"We'll meet you in the Magus," Alacrity said, returning the stungun.
When they'd gone, Alacrity ripped open the black blouse. The pneuma wore padding and an arsenal of weapons and devices strapped to his surprisingly slight body and hidden in pockets and pouches: climbing spikes and adhesive pads that had let him scale the packing crate; throwing stars; rappelling equipment; styrettes; explosives; garrote and more.
"For which reason is it that he does not bear a firearm?" K'ek wanted to know.
Alacrity shrugged. "Out to prove something; they usually are. It's probably part of the bylaws."
He was looking the styrette over. "But I'll tell you what: he's nothing but another goon. Probably had to pull stakes and run when the peasants found out what a little gunfire or coherent light does to pneuma magic."
He bent and took the pneuma's arms. "No point leaving him here for Sile. You feel well enough to help me get him on my shoulder, Ho?"
Floyt did, barely. As they went along, Professor K'ek keeping pace, Alacrity said, "We've got a lot to do in a hurry. Wouldn't want to miss our ship."
"No, of course we—what? Wait, ship?"
The Magus's sickbay was better than many of the clinics at the Grapple. Amarok, arriving there, had his injuries pronounced serious but the prognosis excellent. The insert of synthetic he'd slipped into his collar had spared him the pneuma stave's full effect. Merrywell explained all that, while returning the retrieved Webley to Floyt, at the Pihoquiaq's lock.
"The kid'll be on his feet before the Grapple's over," Merrywell went on, the flattening of his frown signifying wild jubilation. "If he needs a hand with Pihoquiaq, I can spare somebody for a while; got too damn many people underfoot anyhow. Alacrity, tell Hobart about the Mountebank."
Alacrity did. Costa had made arrangements for them to travel with a dealer in new identities and fugitive placement by the name of Urtho Skate, who owned a rather worse-for-wear converted mail packet even older than Pihoquiaq, the Mountebank. Skate had several fugitives already waiting inboard his ship and was planning one brief stop at Blackguard for an "insertion." He was certain he could get Alacrity and Floyt down safely and set them up with a situation, but beyond that, they'd be left to their own resources.
