The Tar-aiym Krang

by Alan Dean Foster

  The barkeep’s eyebrows jumped again when Flinx elected to pay for the nourishments in coin. “Business has been so good, then?”

  “It has, it has. Believe it or not, old friend, I made a hundred credits today. Honestly, too!” The recent memory of three bodies in an alley came back to him. “Although now I am not so glad I did, maybe.”

  “That is a strange thing to say.” The giant poured himself a tiny yttrium cognac. “I am happy for you, but somewhat disappointed also, for it will mean that you will not need the job I’ve lined up for you.”

  “Oh? Don’t be in such a hurry, massive one. And don’t try to psych me, either. I am solvent at the moment, true, but money has a tendency to slip unnoticed from my fingers. I give too much away, also. And I have the old woman to think of, although by now she might own the city fountains, despite her protestations of poverty.”

  “Ah. Mother Mastiff, of course. Well, possibly you would be interested, then. I can at least promise you some intriguing company.” He gestured behind Flinx. “The third booth. Two most extraordinary personages.”

  Flinx turned to look at the small, cloth-covered booths which lined the back of the establishment. Business and pleasure, sometimes mixed, were often conducted in those shrouded enclaves. He peered harder in the fuzzy light. Most people could not have discerned anything at even that short distance, but Flinx did not look with his eyes alone. Yes, there were indeed two figures in the indicated booth. And yes, from what he could see of them they did form an odd pair.

  One was a very tall human. His face was not sallow, but composed mostly of acute angles, like knife blades protruding out from under the skin. His hair seemed to be graying at the temples and back, a natural turning of color, and one streak of pure white ran all the way from front to back. The eyes were sharply slanted, almost mongoloid, and as black as most of his hair. They were made to appear mildly incongruous by the bushy eyebrows which met over the bridge of the nose. The mouth was small and thin-lipped, and the body, while not skinny, had the slenderness of careful diet more than vigorous exercise. He was heavily tanned on the visible portions of his body, the tan that Flinx had come to recognize as belonging to men who had been long in space and exposed to greater amounts of naked ultraviolet than most.

  If the man was unusual, his companion was twice so. Although Flinx had not seen so very many thranx, for they did not congregate in Drallar, he had seen enough to know that the one lounging across from the man was by far the oldest he’d ever come across. Its chiton had faded from a normal healthy pale blue to a deep purple that was almost black. The antennae drooped to the sides and were scaly at the base. Even at this distance he could perceive how the shell below the wing cases (both sets were present: unmated, then) was exfoliating. Only the glowing, jewellike compound eyes glittered with a gold that signified youth and vigor. A pity that he could not perceive even deeper.

  The cloth effectively cut off their conversation at this distance, but now and then the insect would make a gesture with a truehand and the human would nod solemnly in response. Flinx found the liquor hampering him. Almost angrily, he turned back to his friend.

  “You were right, Symm. An odd coupling to find here.”

  “They’ve been in every night for four nights running now, and they drink steadily, although it seems to have about as much effect on them as water. But to the point. As is plain to a Mottl-bird, they are strangers here. Yesterday they first began inquiring after a guide, saying that they wish to see more of the city. I was at a loss to help them until I thought of you. But now, since you are grown as rich as the king. . . .”

  “No, no. Wait.” Flinx was feeling expansive. Perhaps it was the beer. “They should be good for a few stories, if nothing else. Yes, I’ll assume the conveyance.”

  Symm grinned and ruffled the boy’s hair roughly. “Good! I thought a glimpse of them might persuade you, as your interest in things off-world is notorious. Why it should be, though, the Tree knows! Wait here, I’ll go tell them.”

  He went out from behind the bar and over to the booth. Through the faintly puce haze induced by the beer he could see the giant part the curtain and murmur to the two beings within.

  “Well,” he muttered to himself. “One thing’s helping, anyways. At least they’re not common tourists. Perhaps I’ll be spared the agony of watching them chortle over buying shiploads of junk at three times the honest price.” He made a sound that was a long hiss ending in a popped bubble. A scaly, smug head popped up from the bowl of demolished pretzels, which had shrunken considerably in volume. The minidrag slid out onto the table and up the proffered arm, curling into its familiar position on Flinx’s shoulder. It burped once, sheepishly.

  Symm returned with the two off-worlders in tow. “This youth is called Flinx, sirs, and offers to be your guide. A finer or more knowledgeable one cannot be found in the city. Do not be misled by his comparative youth, for he has already acquired more information than is good for him.”

  Here at close range Flinx was able to study his two charges better. He did so, intently. The tall human was a fair sixth meter shorter than the huge Symm, but the thranx was truly a giant of its kind. With its upper body raised as it was now, its eyes were almost on a level with Flinx’s own. The entire insect was a full 2 meters long. One and a half was normal for a male of the species. That their eyes were busy in their own scrutiny of him he did not mind. As a performer he was more than used to that. But he found himself looking away from those great golden orbs. Meeting them was too much like staring into an ocean of shattered prisms. He wondered what it was like to view life that way, through a thousand tiny eyes instead of merely two large ones.

  When the man spoke, it was with a surprisingly melodious voice. “How do you do, youngster. Our good dispenser of spirits here informs us that you are practically indispensable to one who wishes to see something of your city.”

  He extended a hand and Flinx shook it, surprised at the calluses there. As the effects of the mildly hallucinogenic brew wore off, he became increasingly aware of the uniqueness of the two beings he was going to be associating with. Each exuded an aura of something he’d not encountered before, even in his wanderings among the denizens of the shuttleport.

  “My name is Tse-Mallory . . . Bran. And this, my companion, is the Eint Truzenzuzex.”

  The insect bowed from the “waist” at the introduction, a swooping, flowing motion not unlike that of a lake-skimmer diving for a surface swimming fish. Another surprise: it spoke Terranglo, instead of symbospeech. Here was a learned and very polite bug indeed! Few thranx had the ability to master more than a few elementary phrases of Terranglo. Its inherent logical inconsistencies tended to give them headaches. The insect’s pronunciation, however, was as good as his own. The rasping quality of it was made unavoidable by the different arrangement of vocal cords.

  “High metamorphosis to you, youth. We’ve been in need of a guide to this confusing city of yours for several days, actually. We’re very glad you’ve agreed to help us out of our difficulty.”

  “I’ll do what I can, gentlesirs.” This flattery was embarrassing.

  “We would prefer to start at dawn tomorrow,” said Tse-Mallory. ‘We’re here on business, you see, and a more intimate acquaintance with the city is a prerequisite which we have put off too long already. We were expecting a guide to meet us, actually, but since he has apparently changed his mind, you will have the commission.”

  “We are staying at a small inn a short distance down this same street,” added Truzenzuzex. “Its sign is three fishes and . . .”

  “. . . a starship. I know the place, sir. I’ll meet you at first-fog—seven hours—tomorrow, in the lobby.” The two shook hands with him once again and made as if to take their leave. Flinx coughed delicately but insistently. “Uh, a small detail, sirs.”

  Tse-Mallory paused. “Yes?”

  “There is the matter of payment.”

  The thranx made the series of rapid clicking sounds with it
s mandibles which passed for laughter among its kind. The insects had a highly developed, sometimes mischievous sense of humor.

  “So! Our guide is a plutocrat as well! No doubt as a larvae you were a hopeless sugar-hoarder. How about this, then? At the conclusion of our tour tomorrow—I daresay one day will be sufficient for our purposes—we will treat you to a meal at the finest comestabulary in the food crescent.”

  Well! Let’s see now, twelve courses at Portio’s would come to . . . well! His mouth was watering already.

  “That’ll be great . . . sufficient, I mean, sirs.” Indeed, it would!

  Chapter Two

  Flinx was of course not a guide by profession, but he knew ten times as much about the real Drallar as the bored government hirelings who conducted the official tours of the city’s high spots for bemused off-wonders. He’d performed this function for other guests of Small Symm more than once in the past.

  These, however, had proved themselves rather outré touristas. He showed them the great central marketplace, where goods from halfway across the Arm could be found. They did not buy. He took them to the great gate of Old Drallar, a monumental arch carved from water-pure silicon dioxide by native craftsmen, and so old it was not recorded in the palace chronicles. They did not comment. He took them also to the red towers where the fantastic flora of Moth grew lush in greenhouses under the tender ministrations of dedicated royal botanists. Then to the tiny, out-of-the-way places, where could be bought the unusual, the rare, and the outlawed. Jeweled dishware, artwork, weaponry, utensils, gems, rare earths and rare clothings, tickets to anywhere. Scientific instruments, scientists, females or other sexes of any species. Drugs: medicinal, hallucinogenic, deadly, preservative. Thoughts and palm-readings. Only rarely did either of them say this or that small thing about their surroundings. One might almost have thought them bored.

  Once it was at an antique cartographer’s, and then in a language incomprehensible to the multilinguistic Flinx.

  Yes, for two who had seemed so needful of a guide, they had thus far shown remarkably little interest in their surroundings. They seemed far more interested in Flinx and Pip than in the city he was showing them. As late afternoon rolled around he was startled to realize how much they had learned about him through the most innocent and indirect questioning. Once, when Truzenzuzex had leaned forward to observe the minidrag more closely, it had drawn back warily and curled its head out of sight behind Flinx’s neck. That itself was an oddity. The snake’s normal reaction was usually either passivity or belligerence. This was the first time Flinx could recall it’s displaying uncertainty. Apparently Truzenzuzex made little of the incident, but he never tried to approach the reptile closely again.

  “You are an outstanding guide and a cheerful companion,” the thranx said, “and I for one count myself fortunate to have you with us.” They had moved along until they were now quite a distance from the city’s center. Truzenzuzex gestured ahead to where the tower homes of the very wealthy stretched away in landscaped splendor. “Now we would wish to see the manicured grounds and hanging gardens of Drallar’s inurbs, of which we have both heard so much.”

  “I’m afraid I cannot manage that, sir. The grounds of Braav inurb are closed to such as I, and there are groundkeepers—with guns—who are posted by the walls to keep the common folk from infesting the greens.”

  “But you do know the ways within?” prodded Tse-Mallory.

  “Well,” Flinx began hesitantly. After all, what did he really know of these two? “At night I have sometimes found it necessary to . . . but it is not night now, and we would surely be seen going over the walls.”

  “Then we shall go through the gate. Take us,” he said firmly, shutting off Flinx’s incipient protests, “and we will worry about getting past the guards.”

  Flinx shrugged, irritated by the man’s stubbornness. Let them learn their own way, then. But he mentally added an expensive dessert to the evening’s meal. He led them to the first gateway and stood in the background while the large, overbearing man who lounged in the little building there came over toward them, grumbling noticeably.

  It was now that the most extraordinary event of the day took place. Before the obviously antagonistic fellow could so much as utter a word, Truzenzuzex put a truehand into a pouch and thrust under the man’s eyes a card taken from somewhere inside. The man’s eyes widened and he all but saluted, the belligerence melting from his attitude like wax. Flinx had never, never seen an inurb guard, a man widely noted for his cultivated rudeness and suspicious mannerisms, react so helplessly to anyone, not even the residents of the inurbs themselves. He grew even more curious as to the nature of his friends. But they remained basically unreadable. Damn that beer! It seemed to him that he had heard the name Tse-Mallory somewhere before, but he couldn’t be certain. And he would have given much for a glimpse of the card Truzenzuzex had so negligently flashed before the guard.

  The way was now quite unopposed. He would at least have the opportunity of seeing some familiar things for the first time in the light of day. At leisure, too, without having to glance continually over his shoulder.

  They strolled silently amid the emerald parklike grounds and tinkling waterfalls, occasionally passing some richly dressed inhabitant or sweating underling, sometimes startling a deer or phylope among the bushes.

  “I understand,” said Tse-Mallory, breaking the silence, “that each tower belongs to one family, and is named thusly.”

  “That’s true enough,” replied Flinx.

  “And are you familiar with them?”

  “Most, not all. Since you are curious, I’ll name the ones I do know as we pass them.”

  “Do that.”

  It seemed silly, but they were paying, so who was he to argue the practicality? A fine wine joined the dinner menu. . . .

  “. . . and this,” he said as they drew abreast of a tall black-glazed tower, “is the House of Malaika. A misnomer, sir. As I understand, it means ‘angel’ in a dead Terran language.”

  “No Terran language is ‘dead,’ ” said Tse-Mallory cryptically. Then, “He who is named Maxim?”

  “Why, yes. I know because I’ve performed here for parties, several times past. This next, the yellow. . . .”

  But they weren’t listening, he saw. Both had halted by the black tower and were staring upward to where the rose-tinted crystal proto-porches encircled the upper stories and overhung the lush greenery of the hanging vines and air-shrubs.

  “It is fortuitous,” he heard Truzenzuzex remark, “that you know each other. It might or might not facilitate certain matters. Come, we shall pay a call on your Mister Malaika.”

  Flinx was completely taken aback. Was this why they had hired him in the first place? To come this far to an impossibility? Next to the king and his ministers, the trader families of Drallar, nomads who had taken their talents off-planet, were the wealthiest and most powerful individuals on the planet. And some might possibly be wealthier, for the extent of the great fortunes was not a subject into which even the monarch could inquire with impunity.

  “It is a slight acquaintance only, sirs! What makes you believe he will do anything but kick us out? What makes you believe he’ll even see us?”

  “What makes you think we can enter an oh-so-restricted inurb?” replied Truzenzuzex confidently. “He will see us.”

  The two began to head up the paved walkway toward the great arch of the tower entrance and Flinx, exasperated and puzzled, had little choice but to follow.

  The double doorway of simple carved crystal led to a domed hallway that was lined with statuary and paintings and mindgrams which even Flinx’s untrained eye could recognize as being of great value. There, at the far end, was a single elevator.

  They halted before the platinum-inlaid wood. A woman’s voice greeted them mechanically from a grid set off to one side.

  “Good afternoon, gentlebeings, and welcome to the House of Malaika. Please to state your business.”

  Now they wou
ld finish this foolishness! The message was all very nicely put, the surroundings pleasant. Out of the corner of an eye he could see a screen, delicately painted, ruffling in the slight breeze of the chamber’s ventilators. Beyond which no doubt the muzzle of a laser-cannon or other inhospitable device was already trained on them. It was comfortably cool in the hall, but he felt himself nonetheless beginning to sweat.

  “Ex-chancellor second sociologist Bran Tse-Mallory and first philosoph the Eint Truzenzuzex present their compliments to Maxim of the House of Malaika and would have converse with him if he is at home and so disposed.”

  Flinx’s mind parted abruptly from thoughts of making a run for the entrance. No wonder they’d gotten past the gate guard so easily! A churchman and a pure scientist. High-ranked at that, although Tse-Mallory had said “ex”. Chancellor second—that was planetary level, at least. He was less sure of Truzenzuzex’s importance, but he knew that the thranx held their philosophs, or theoreticians, in an esteem matched only by that of the honorary Hive-Mothers and the Chancellor Firsts of the Church themselves. His mind was deluged with questions, all tinged by uncertainty as much as curiosity. What were two such eminences doing slumming in a place like Small Symm’s? Why had they picked him for a guide—a youth, a nothing—when they could have had a royal escort by a king’s minister? That answer he could read clearly. Incognito; the one word said much and implied more. At the moment, what dealings did two such sophisticated minds have with a solid, earthy merchant like Maxim Malaika?

  While he had been dazedly forming questions without answer, a mind somewhere had been coming to a decision. The grid spoke again.

  “Maxim of the House of Malaika extends greetings, albeit astonished, and will have converse immediately with the two honorsirs. He wishes the both of you . . .” there was a pause while a hidden eye somewhere scanned, “. . . the three of you to come up. He is now in the southwest porchroom and would greet you there soonest.”