by Ron Goulart
“Thank you so much.”
She sighed, blushing. “I swear I’m all tongue-tied today,” she said. “What I mean is, even though you’re little and green, I’m quite fond of you. You’ve been so nice and attentive, without trying to put your little green hands on the more intimate parts of my body. A girl likes that in a man. I also appreciate the way you took the time, when you picked me up at the office for lunch, to allow me to show you around the Confidential Records offices and even the Top Secret Room. Most men never ever take that much interest in me or my work.”
“To me, don’t you see, old girl, everything you do is of the utmost interest.” He reached over to take hold of her hand, the one that had been dragging in the stream.
“This is marvelous,” Esme said contentedly. “I’m glad fate brought us together.”
“It wasn’t fate,” murmured Saint as he kissed her pudgy fingers.
* * * *
Saint wasn’t interested in the window display. In fact, he found it quite difficult to understand why anyone would be at all desirous of feasting his or her eyes on the nearly lifesize automatons that were cavorting therein. Simulacra of a quartet of lizardwomen they were, decked out in neon-trimmed gowns and mouthing the lyrics of the tune that was blasting forth from the talkboxes overhead.
“Beat me, daddy, with a solid jive…”
Wincing, Saint took another careful glance back the way he’d come. Yes, the lean chap in the ill-fitting two-piece canal-blue cazsuit had halted three shop windows behind him.
“Let me see,” thought Saint, “is the bloke with the Trinidad Law Bureau, Syndek…or is he interested in one of my earlier escapades?”
Didn’t really matter much, the chap had to be shaken off.
After patting his bright orange hair, Saint resumed his stroll.
Up ahead, an escalator walkway led down to another level of the mall.
“Poor lad’s going to take rather a nasty spill.”
Saint was halfway down the escalator when the man who was tailing him stepped on it. Concentrating, he caused the shadow’s right foot to fly out from under him.
“Yow,” he heard the man cry out as he fell over onto the chubby birdwoman in front of him.
Before everyone was untangled, Saint was far away.
* * * *
Safe in his hotel room, certain no eavesdropping devices had been introduced while he was gone, Saint settled into a comfortable rubber armchair. Crossing his legs, steepling his fingers, shutting his eyes, he thought about the layout of the Top Secret Room at Triplan.
Within that room buttons were depressed, orders were given to various mechanisms and safety checks were overridden. The information Smith required was printed out without anyone’s being aware of it. And seconds later it teleported right to Saint’s lap.
Letting out his breath, the green man gathered up the dozen pages he’d teleported out of the data storage area of Triplan.
After scanning the first three pages, he said, “Ah, so that’s what the blighters are really so anxious about, is it?”
Two pages further along Saint came to the list of the ten former Horizon Kids who carried the secret.
“Jove!” He sat up straight. “This blooming list doesn’t quite match the one the lady provided us with. Not exactly, no.”
Jared Smith’s name was on this one.
CHAPTER 12
“More buzzards,” observed Cruz, gazing through the passenger side of the landvan windshield. “Two blue ones, three yellow. Death certainly comes in colorful shapes in the Trinidads.”
Smith, in the driveseat, said, “Could be they’re circling whatever it is that’s sending up that column of black smoke yonder.”
“The Oasis can’t be on fire?”
“We’re still about ten miles from there.”
Cruz leaned back in his seat. “Are we inquisitive enough to go over and take a gander?”
“Might as well.”
After they’d rolled through the hazy desert afternoon for another ten minutes they crested a dune and saw the source of the smoke.
A tourist landbus, sprawled on its side on the orangish sand, was just finishing burning up. Grouped a safe distance away were two dozen pilgrims and tourists.
“What’s that godawful wailing?” asked Crux. “There don’t seem to be any dead or wounded.”
“It’s the Sophisticates.” Smith guided their van down toward the cluster of people. “Those four lizardladies on the right there. They’re singing.”
“Some kind of shock reaction, is it?”
“Nope, I imagine they’re trying to boost folks’ morale after this accident.”
“I note laz holes in the roof of yonder vehicle, indicating this wasn’t exactly an accident.”
“Somebody strafed them.” Smith parked the landvan and stepped out.
“…so don’t sit under the utumbo tree with anyone else but me,” the green quartet was concluding, “till I come marching home.”
One of them smiled around at the dusty bedraggled passengers. “What would you like to hear next to cheer you up, dears?”
“Silence,” suggested a pudgy catman in a two-piece black clericsuit.
“Girls,” said Norman Vincent Bagdad, the lugubrious gentleman who had accosted Smith on the space-liner, “give everybody a break and pipe down for a while.”
“Honestly, Norm, you’re not at all supportive of—”
“Hey, look, here comes Smith.” Bagdad waved. “What a funny coincidence.”
“What happened?” Smith asked.
“We were attacked by a stray strafingdrone,” said the catman cleric. “A representative of the idiotic Mizayen Commandos. It’s almost a divine miracle we all escaped with our lives.”
“No, no,” put in a thin man in a candy-striped robe, “it was definitely the Qatzir Militiamen. I noticed the insignia on the belly of the robot ship. Two crossed scimitars on a field of silvery ammo.”
“But that isn’t the Militiamen insignia,” said a motherly greyhaired catwoman. “They use two crossed bayonets on a circle of—”
“You’re thinking of the Qatfia Guards, granny.” Cruz nudged Smith, mentioning quietly, “Note the darkhaired lad in the green cazsuit.”
“Looks sort of like Teanegg the alfie, in disguise.”
“Yeah, it is, or a reasonable facsimile.”
Smith asked the group, “Have you signaled for help?”
“All our communications,” replied the cleric, “were destroyed when the bus was hit. We’ve been trying to decide what to do next. Some favored hiking, others prayer or—”
“I’ll use our van radio to get you some help.”
Cruz meantime was strolling casually around the crowd. Eyes on the colorful circling buzzards, he suddenly lunged and caught Teanegg by the arm.
“Gosh, sir, what’s the meaning of—”
“We merely want to have a chat,” explained Cruz as he hustled the artificial man over to the landvan.
“I appreciate your attempts at friendliness, but I really don’t—”
“Hush,” advised Cruz.
Sitting in the cab, Smith was frowning. “Been trying to contact the Oasis,” he said, “but nobody’s answering.”
“Suppose we converse with friend Teanegg and then try again?” Cruz urged the young man up into the passenger seat and remained standing in the doorway with his metal hand on his shoulder.
“Golly, I’m sure glad my lovely wife, Wanita, isn’t along on this particular jaunt,” he said. “Because I’d hate to have her see me being manhandled.”
“You don’t have a wife,” Smith told him. “Alfies don’t marry.”
“Hey, that’s a nasty thing to say about a guy. I may be a bit effeminate looking, but that—”
“You’re working for Syndek.” Cruz touched his metal wrist and a tiny truthbug came snaking out of his metal thumb.
“Ouch,” complained Teanegg when the disc was affixed to the base of his skull.
&
nbsp; “Now, tell us why you’re—”
The artificial man had started to shiver. His perfect teeth were rattling, his eyes watering.
“The bug!” yelled Smith, grabbing at it.
Teanegg stiffened, slumped.
“Shit, too late,” said Smith. “He’s dead.”
Cruz retrieved the bug. “They had him structured to die if somebody tried to question him with any kind of gadget.”
“I’m rusty,” said Smith. “I should’ve anticipated that.”
* * * *
They were stopped a quarter-mile short of the Oasis. There was a barricade of spiked plazwire and neowood stretched across the road. Landvans, landcars and sky-hoppers were parked all around on the sands of the desert.
“Must be a media event taking place at the resort,” remarked Cruz, driving their landvan off the roadway.
“Sounds like some kind of skirmish.” Smith dropped out of the cab.
You could hear the whomp of explosions, the sizzle of kilcannons from the vicinity of their destination. Because of the rise of the desert the Oasis wasn’t visible from here.
A frogman in a one-piece tan armysuit came trotting over to them. “This is a restricted area,” he warned, waving his stunrod at them. “No rubbernecking.”
“Press,” said Cruz, extracting an ID card from a slot in his metal arm. “We’re with…He paused to check what was printed on this particular fake card. “With 9Plan News.”
“Here to distort our basic issues and—”
“Who’s fighting?” asked Smith.
“We want to make sure,” added Cruz, “we give our nine hundred million subscribers a fair account of—”
“Well, a platoon of the vicious Qatzir Militiamen are trapped at the Oasis,” said the frog corporal. “Being in the Mizayen Commandos myself, I, naturally, hate them from both a military and religious point of view. Therefore, I’m pleased as punch to be able to report that my comrades in arms are wiping them out. Now, let me fill you in on the basic religious issues behind this present conflict. Firstly, it is our belief, and the only one a right-thinking man can hold, that the Holy Prophet Plaut meant this desert to be—”
“But the Oasis,” cut in Smith, “it’s being shelled?”
“What’s left of it is, yes.”
“How much damage?”
“Before the Militiamen fanatics…” He spit at his boots. “Before they took up positions there, the Qatfia Guards made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Dag Wentim, the acting generalissimo of the Norkin Elite Horse Guards. He escaped, but most of the tennis pavilion and the—”
“To really cover this properly,” said Cruz, resting his real hand on the corporal’s shoulder, “we ought to get right up close to the fighting.”
The frogman shook his head. “Not possible,” he told them. “We’re only allowing the crew from Trinidad Wallview News to move any closer than this. That’s their armored newsvan getting ready to roll over there. Our commander feels that only TWN will give an unbiased—”
“Ah, but we’re affiliated with them,” said Cruz. “We’ll just pop over there and introduce ourselves.”
“I suppose,” said the guard, “since you seem intent on giving us a fair shake, there’s no harm in allowing—”
“None at all,” Smith assured him.
* * * *
The middle-aged catwoman in the one-piece khaki cazsuit was saying, “Norbert, don’t be a ninny.”
“But, Mom,” the chubby cat newsman said, digging the toe of his combat boot into the reddish sand beside the newsvan, “this really isn’t my strong suit.”
She caught hold of both his arms just above his fuzzy elbows. “This is the brink of the big time, sonny,” she said. “The making of Norbert Willow, the forging in the fire of combat of an ace newscaster, the—”
“Mom, listen, they sent me out here by mistake,” protested Willow. “The computer fouled up the orders and if you hadn’t insisted that we—”
“You have to grab opportunities when they—”
“Who the heck—I mean honestly, Mom—wants the opportunity to get his backside shot off?”
“There’s no need to talk dirty. Besides, you’re going to be inside this nice safe van with thick armor.” Reaching out, she thunked the side of the TWN vehicle with her calico fist. “Safe as houses, sonny.”
“What I usually do, Mom, for the Trinidad Wallview News outfit is help run the fundraising auctions for our educational channel,” protested the furry broadcaster. “‘Folks, here we have a lovely pair of Venusian antimacassars. Remember that your bids and pledges help bring you the great programming such as tonight’s marvelous old tri-op flick I Slept With A Watermelon, starring—’”
“Are you really content to do that for the rest of your life?”
Willow nodded vehemently. “I surely am, Mom, you bet,” he answered. “It’s a darn lot better than being maimed by some crackbrained religious zealots who…”
Cruz and Smith moved around the bickering mother and son team, heading for the open doorway of the big gunmetal landvan.
From inside came a sudden groan and curse.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Merloo. I thought that was your plaz foot I stepped on.”
“Right’s plaz, left’s still real, bimbo.”
“Sorry,” apologized a sweet feminine voice.
Cruz and Smith climbed up into the van.
A one-eyed lizardman in a two-piece paramilitary cazsuit was hopping on one foot in front of a robotcamera. A slim blonde young woman, carrying a small portable voxunit, was watching.
“What the futz do you want, greaseball?” the lizard-man asked Cruz.
Cruz smiled cordially. “It’s a pleasure meeting a famed war correspondent like you.”
“Obviously it is,” agreed Merloo, his visible eye narrowing. “But that doesn’t explain why you and that skinny gink have come barging into my van, does it now?”
“Balls Merloo,” said Smith, feigning awe, “my boyhood idol.”
The blonde was making anxious shooing motions at them. “Shoo, shoo,” she mouthed. “Flee.”
“We’re hitching a ride,” explained Cruz.
“In a grout’s valise,” said Balls Merloo, adjusting his plaid eyepatch with his plaz left hand.
“Dread,” murmured the blonde, hugging the voxunit tightly to her chest. “He’s going to erupt.”
“The situation is this,” said Smith, grinning. “We have to get to the Oasis and you’re just about the only available means of transport.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, you’re wrong there, buster,” Merloo informed him. “Because I’m going to summon two big vicious goons on my staff and have them kick your skinny ass all the way there.”
“Horrors,” said the shivering young woman.
“Tell you what,” the one-eyed newsman said to Cruz. “I have a sweet and kindly side to me. So I’m going to count all the way up to five before I knock you on your flabby keister. One—”
“Wait now.” Cruz held out his metal hand toward the correspondent. “You really ought to take a gander at this, since you have a fake arm yourself.”
“I’m in no flapping mood to admire some halfassed crip’s prosthetic—”
Zzzzzzzummmmmm!
The thin stunbeam had come humming out of Cruz’ middle finger to hit the lizardman smack in the chest.
Balls Merloo dropped right down to the van floor, his various artificial portions producing assorted clicks, clangs and thunks.
“Calamity,” said the blonde, still shaking.
Smith moved to the doorway, caught the handle of the open door. “Good news, Norbert,” he called out before tugging it shut. “You won’t have to go, after all.”
CHAPTER 13
“Would it be all right if I were to introduce myself?” asked the blonde timidly as the newsvan went barreling along across the desert. “Since we seem to be sharing all this adversity together.”
Cruz was driving the borrowed vehicle. �
��Forgive our rudeness, fair lady,” he said. “I’m Cruz.”
“Jared Smith.” He’d just finished dragging Merloo’s unconscious body behind a tape-editing unit.
“I’m Jazz Miller,” she said, finally setting the vox-unit aside. “Kind of a dippy name, isn’t it?”
“On the contrary,” said Cruz. “It has a nice lilt to it.”
Jazz shrugged. “It’s always struck me as an unfortunate handle.”
“Change it,” advised Smith as he took the passenger seat next to Cruz.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t ever do that. Daddy would hate that. That’d produce a real misfortune,” she said. “He’s miffed enough as it is because of my chosen profession.”
Smith asked, “Which is?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you, did I? I’m an associate newscaster. Thus far that’s involved mostly schlepping equipment and avoiding Mr. Merloo’s passes.”
“Would you like to cover the conflict at the Oasis?” said Smith.
She pressed her hands to her stomach. “I…I don’t know if I’m ready.”
“Sure you are,” said Cruz.
“Merloo’s unable to function,” Smith pointed out. “You have to step in.”
Cruz added, “It’s the brink of the big time.”
“Actually,” she said, slowly and thoughtfully, “I do know a heck of a lot more about the local political situation than Mr. Merloo does. I was saying to my old Poli Sci prof, Doctor Winiarsky, just last week—”
“Hey, would that be Bryson Winiarsky?” cut in Smith.
“Yes, do you know him or…oh, rack and ruin. I wasn’t supposed to blab about him.”
“He’s on our list,” realized Cruz.
“Yep, and supposedly vanished.”
“He’s only just hiding out,” said Jazz. “Because he got the notion certain people mean him no good. He and I are rather close, which is why I—”
“People do mean him harm,” said Smith. “But I think we can prevent his getting knocked off or even seriously hurt.”
