Star Quest

by Dean R. Koontz

  The wind was cool through the bars.

  He thought about Tarnilee. Quite often, the mind likes to torture itself by throwing up its mistakes, its wrong turns and blunders. He had misjudged the love of this woman. He tortured himself now. There had been tears when he first was thrown in the cell and realized what she had done to him, but all the tears had been wept now. He had come from a gentle world to a rough one. He had changed, and so had she. He had not, however, learned to expect that change.

  He thought about Mayna, sleek and soft…

  He thought about Hunk, twisted forever within his pitiful body…

  He thought about Mayna, warm and smooth…

  He wanted, somewhere deeply, to be nursed too, to crawl to her and be sheltered by her…

  He wished she didn't hate him, or just hated him a little less…

  He thought about Triggy Gop, the brain living after the body had perished. For what reason? So that he could, periodically, see how his child was growing. Twenty-odd years Triggy Gop had been floating through space looking for readers, people hungry for information, and found mostly warriors. He tried to remember what the librarian had said about seeing him again, a poem… Perhaps some… He tried to remember. Yes. Four lines the man had composed himself. He repeated the lines to the twinkling dragon eyes.

  “Perhaps in some lonely cabaret,

  some black night, some bright day

  with snow upon the ground or grass

  turned yellow with days gone past.”

  “Very poetic,” a voice said almost directly in front of him.

  He started, jumped up, stumbled over his chair.

  “For goodness sake,” Mayna said, looking through the bars. “Be quiet! You want to have every cop in the world up here?”

  “You again.”

  “Shh!”

  “But how—”

  “Cats can go anywhere, Hero Tohm. Even up the sides of sheer buildings, accomplishing the impossible. If there's a convenient rainspout, that is.”

  “Youll get caught,” he said, looking over his shoulder to the cell door.

  “We will if you insist upon being so damnably loud,” she hissed, hooking a metal prong onto each bar where it met the sill at the bottom, covering each hook with thick, green putty.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting you out. Lay down on the floor. This isn't noisy, but there's one helluva lot of heat.”

  He got down on his stomach next to the door and did not argue. Mayna backed away from the window, clinging to the wall by whatever impossible manner she had scaled it. There was a sudden pfft, then no noise at all. He could feel the heat on his back through the thin material of his shirt. Once he glanced up to see exactly what was happening. There didn't seem to be any light, unless… He looked closer. Yes, the flame was very dark blue, almost black. The room was stifling by then.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  He stood up, reached out.

  “No! Don't touch. It's hot yet.”

  She took a small can of white crystals from the rucksack on her back, sprinkled them over the sill. There was steam, a crackle-snap noise, and ice began forming across the bars and on the cement.

  “Okay,” she said again, putting the can away. “Now. Grasp the bars and bend them back, away from the sill. Only the bottoms are burned through.”

  “Uh,” he grunted, straining at them.

  “You can do it, Hero Tohm, if anyone can.”

  He never knew, later, whether he could have done it without that goad. At the time, it smacked him in the pit of the stomach, churned up adrenalin. He twisted the bars back and up until he could squeeze through onto the wide sill. He sat on the window ledge, clinging desperately to the bars. A small ledge, only an inch wide, a decorative trim actually, broke the smooth façade of the building. It was that that Mayna perched upon, standing lightly on her toes, perfectly balanced.

  “Do you have a flybelt?” he asked.

  “They aren't as easy to come by for everyone as they are for you.”

  “But I can't walk on that goddamn ledge!”

  “Shh! We made allowances for that. We knew you were a poor, incompetent normal.”

  He didn't say anything.

  She took a strong nylon cord-rope from her rucksack, tied one end through the bars, almost knocking him from his perilous perch. “Use your feet against the wall to keep from sliding down and burning your hands. And please do be quiet — if that isn't beyond your meager talents.”

  He grabbed the rope, swung away from the building, wriggling around to face it on the first outward arc, planting his feet against the wall when he swung back. As easily as possible, he moved down.

  Swinging…

  Jumping…

  Swinging, jumping, swinging…

  A human spider…

  Mayna waited, watching him go.

  Her eyes glinted green in the starlight…

  “Very good,” a voice said below.

  For a moment, he froze, imaging gestapos below. But then his mind cleared itself and he recognized the voice as Babe's. He dropped the last few feet, letting the rope slap against the wall. He looked up. Mayna still waited on the ledge, looking somewhat like a great vampire woman nestled there in the shadows. But now she was turning very adeptly and moving along the narrow ledge toward the rainspout.

  “Here,” Babe said, tugging urgently at his shirt. “The shrubs.”

  They ran, Tohm crouching to match Babe's height, and made the shelter of the bushes without incident. They turned and watched Mayna creep easily down the building, using the rainspout very little. She swung gracefully, down, down, down… Hitting the earth, she bounced on the balls of her feet, rocking back and forth for a short moment. Then, bent almost in two, hugging the ground and nearly blending with it, she ran across the courtyard to where they waited.

  “C'mon,” she said, moving behind the hedge that paralleled the street, taking the lead.

  Tohm followed her swinging hips, losing the dark form of her in the still darker night, recapturing sight of the vision when the lights of the street broke through gaps in the hedge and glimmered in her hair, trapped like fireflies in her silken cage. Babe brought up the rear, an unlighted cigar clamped between his teeth. They weaved along, skirting the rear of the House of Nubile Maidens, stopping suddenly at the edge of the main avenue.

  “What's the matter?” Tohm asked her as she peered into the street from their hiding place behind a number of garbage bins in the alleyway.

  “Listen.”

  Then he heard it too. The faint slip-slap of boot heels on pavement, snapping out a rhythm. They hunched themselves down in the shadows, peeping through the crevice between wall and garbage bin. In moments, a cadre of Royal Romaghin Guards moved past, their colorful, plumed uniforms somehow out of place in the dark night streets. There were twenty of them, moving to positions along the city wall and at the city gate to change duties with guards already there. The officer would march these men from position to position, losing some and gaining the tired sentries coming off duty, eventually to return to the garrison at a slightly slower pace and a slightly more slipshod rhythm. It seemed to Tohm that the Romaghins were paranoid in the fear of the Muties. And ironic in that they were trying to keep Muties out of the capital by guarding the gate while said Muties were actually living in it — rather, under it.

  “We'll wait a few minutes before crossing the street,” Mayna said.

  He put his mouth close to the delicate shell of her ear. “Listen, I want to thank you for saving my life. This was a lot of trouble and danger to go through.”

  She turned, smiling a smile that did not exactly indicate pleasure. The corners of her mouth were strained in their upturned mimicry of joy, her sharp teeth glittering brightly. “Hero Tohm, I would just as soon have left you rot there. But they would have tortured you before the hanging, trying to get information about us.”

  “Torture?”

  “And they are good at it.
We couldn't risk your spilling everything to them. We had to come and get you.”

  He eased away from her glumly, and sat silently waiting.

  “Okay,” she said at length. “One at a time across the street and into the alley over there. Run on tiptoes and don't make a lot of noise.”

  She moved first, like a piece of airy fluff hardly touching the ground at all, totally silent. She gained the darkness at the mouth of the opposite alley, waved an arm for the next.

  The street was a broad, open plain with lights that seemed almost, at this moment of exposure, to be brighter than the sun at noon. But he ran anyway, trying not to bring his feet down too heavily, meeting with less success than he had hoped. He made the shadows in relative quiet, although not so easily as she had. Babe followed. He waddled rather than walked.

  “Ho! Stop there!” a voice called from up the street.

  Babe doubled his efforts.

  Two Romaghin guards had turned the corner and were pursuing him.

  “Stop or be killed!”

  Mayna leaped into the open, crouching, a hand laser aimed down the avenue. Before the guards could even finish drawing their own, they were seething masses of bubbling flesh on the street. She, indeed, was a champion marksman.

  “Thanks,” Babe wheezed, pounding into the alley, his belly shaking, his double chin bathed in sweat.

  There was scattered shouting on the street and the clip-clip of boots on cement. Evidently, the soldiers had been off duty, reveling at some private orgy and had turned the corner just after Mayna had gunned down their two friends. Now they would be hunting. No one gunned down a Romaghin soldier on his own world — no one but a Mutie.

  “Hurry,” Mayna said, disappearing into the darkness.

  They followed, trying to be as quiet as she, not succeeding. The faint echo of their steps was sure to attract the guards. And did.

  The walls along the alley glistened wetly as hand torches of low-beam lasers lit up the entranceway they had left, searched slowly, closer, closer, much closer. Tohm felt, as well as saw, the light wash over him for an instant, then flick back and hold.

  “Halt!”

  There was a louder pounding of feet behind them. Tohm no longer tried to be quiet; he concentrated only on watching the catgirl's feet and matching her speed. She turned abruptly into a side alley. They were moving now into the slum areas of the city where not as many lights burned and the ways between buildings were twisted and crisscrossed into a maze they might be able to put to their advantage. The cobblestones beneath their feet were slimy with garbage tossed out through windows. The laser torch was no longer on them, but the voices were still close behind, several turns away. They turned again. Again.

  Mayna pulled to a stop and stood panting. Tohm was surprised and pleased to see that this seemingly indefatigable creature was registering exhaustion. Almost as much as he was.

  “Look,” she said, “these alleys to the right all connect with the Avenue of Beggars. The wall between the Avenue of Beggars and the next street isn't high. If we climb it, it is only a block to the alley and the entrance to the hutch.”

  “No,” Tohm said flatly.

  “What do you mean?” she almost snarled.

  “No. All of those alleys do not connect with the Avenue of Beggars. If you want to get there, we go straight ahead, not right. You've lost your sense of direction.”

  “You're insane. Follow me.”

  He grabbed her shoulder. “Okay, so you hate to be proven wrong — especially by me. But, remember, I have a memorized street map in my head.”

  Footsteps and voices were growing louder.

  Somewhere an owl moaned as the search disturbed his home…

  “Babe, who do you stick with?” she asked, facing the boy-man.

  He looked at Tohm, back to her. He was thinking of her fast action and good shot that had saved his life back there. “You, I guess.”

  “Hell,” Tohm moaned.

  “Either go with us or go on your own.”

  “Lead on, lady,” he said.

  She turned into a corridor between two buildings that had been roofed over for weather protection. It was pitch-black. They moved carefully but steadily, now and then aware of the soft bodies of rats bumping against their legs in an attempt to get out of their way. There was an odor of sewage and of rotting food scraps. Vapors of animal wastes and the unpleasant perfumes of garbage-suckling plants lay over all, smothering.

  When they left that and ran into the next street, they were directly in front of the garrison on Royal Guard Avenue.

  “I—” she started to say.

  A laser blast smashed into the bricks just above their heads, sent orange powder cascading over their shoulders.

  A second blast slightly lower…

  “Now will you follow me?” Tohm roared.

  That had been a hard way to prove a point, but he was gloating.

  Her face showed confusion, the first time he had seen it there, twisting those beautiful features into something approaching agony.

  Sssang! A third shot.

  Babe screamed.

  They turned, saw the black scar across the arm and the blood beginning to bubble out. Babe twisted his face in pain, clutched at the wound.

  “This way,” Tohm said, grabbing both of them and turning back into the covered lane. He ran first, Babe between, Mayna bringing up the end. They broke into the alley they had just left seconds before, confronting the guards who had first chased them.

  Tohm launched himself at the largest, a muscular man in the red plumes, gold cape, and gray pantaloons of an officer. They crashed into the stone street, the officer's head striking the wall of the building. Mayna turned a second guard's head to mush, whirled and burned the legs from a third, who didn't even have time to scream. Tohm smashed a fist into the officer's face, saw blood, was nauseated and excited at the same moment. His stomach flopped, and for an instant he hesitated as the conservative side of him momentarily dominated the sadistic. The other man took advantage of the lull, heaved, twisted loose, kicked out with a foot that caught Tohm in the chest, tossed him against the wall. Mayna had turned, fanning the beam into the covered alleyway, interfering with any approach from the garrison.

  “Oof,” Tohm moaned as the larger man leaped and landed on him. He grunted as the heavy arm of the Romaghin pressed against his throat, cutting the air off, crushing his vocal cords. Only his left arm was free. He brought the edge of that palm down hard against the officer's skull, lowered his aim to the back of the neck, slammed down again, again. His throat was trickling blood on the inside, and his head was looping the loop with wild abandon, his eyes swimming out of focus, in, out, in-out, inoutinoutinout. His karate hand was a separate object. It did not seem to be part of him any longer, but merely a thing. Distantly, he saw it hack at the flesh of his opponent. Smashing. Again. Suddenly there was a crunching noise of cartilage or bone giving way to pressure. For a moment, he was not sure whether it was his own throat or the other man's spine. But the inrush of fresh air and the dead weight upon him told him which. He wriggled loose of the Romaghin, managed to stand, swaying.

  “They've stopped trying to come this way,” Mayna said, motioning to the covered alley. “But they'll be hunting new routes.”

  “How's your arm?” Tohm asked Babe.

  The Mutie gritted his teeth. “Hurts like Hell, but it isn't bleeding much. The burn cauterized the wound, closed up the main gash.”

  “Good,” Tohm said, his throat sore, his lungs grasping at the air as if it were gold and they were the hands of Midas. “Now,” he said, turning to Mayna, “follow me.”

  They moved straight forward, listening uneasily to the voices of soldiers on both sides as the guards searched the maze of streets and semi-streets, alleys and walkways. Eventually they came to the end of the slum system that the Romaghins so cleverly hid in the heart of the city behind a facade of new buildings and looked out upon the Avenue of the Beggars. It was deserted at this late h
our, littered with the paper scraps and food bits that were the remnants of the day, when the poor had clustered there to meet the clergymen who daily distributed alms. Tohm pulled his head back into the gloom.

  “One trouble,” he said.

  “What?”

  “A guard. Halfway up the block. He can survey most of the street. He'll see us before we make the wall.”

  “I lost my laser running,” she said. “It's back there somewhere.”

  “We won't need it if you're game,” he answered, searching out the green glint of her eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is a ledge, much like the one at the prison— only wider — running a dozen feet above his head. If you can climb the wall in here, move around the corner and onto the ledge out there without being seen, you could get above him. Perhaps you could jump, knock him down, confuse him until I can get there without being beamed down. I'll run the moment you jump. I'll try to knock him out.”

  She looked around the corner, surveyed the guard and the ledge. It was as he had said. Without comment, she scaled the wall of the alley like a spider spewing her invisible net, her feet finding every crack a good toehold, moving unfailingly ahead. She inched around from the ceiling into the street and held her breath. The guard had not seen her, for his peripheral vision was occupied in the scanning of the street, not the walls. He stood fifty feet away, his rifle across his arms. She gained the ledge and moved silently down, balanced perfectly, her tiny feet like gyroscopes, trembling but always on an even keel.

  Tohm tensed himself to dash the second she leaped. He would have to move quickly.

  In a few minutes of nerve-shattering tension, she was standing above the guard; aphonic, she left the little outcropping of cement as if she were flying instead of falling. She collided with the Romaghin's back, her feet striking first, toppling both of them to the street.

  Tohm ran from his concealment. His legs pumped up and down like pistons. But when he got there, there was nothing to do. The guard was dead. Neat rows of claw marks slashed his neck. Blood gurgled out. His eyes were open, staring in bewilderment. There had not been time for a scream.