“I’ll walk you two outdoors,” Conny said as he helped Lank fumble with his flute sack, while Kati encased her guitar.
Kati nodded to him gratefully. They had to walk by the table with the three men, to get to the door. It would probably have been all right, even without Conny—Lank was no fool—but having him along made things easier. She hoped that the murderer had the good sense to keep himself to himself; surely he was not enough of an ass to provoke a scene in a bar where most of the clientele were in sympathy with Lank! But moneyed folk could be asses, Kati thought, hadn’t they just spent time on Vultaire, a planet that had been full of such asses until they had been served their comeuppance?
She and Conny flanked Lank protectively as they threaded their way along the narrow aisle among the tables. Kati made a point of being between the youth and the table where the three men sat, and she had grabbed his hand again, as soon as they had begun to walk. Conny was holding on to Lank’s other elbow, looking protective, even though he was shorter than the tall youth.
Kati directed her gaze at the man that Lank had fingered, as she walked by him—and nearly reeled from shock. He was an older version of Lank!
“You’re right!” snarled the Granda inside her head. “He must have sired the boy, then pretended that he didn’t exist! He had to have known that Lank was his child; the Tarangayans have herbs for birth control and even a dream-dust using whore would have known how to take care of herself! There had to be a reason why she didn’t, and he had to know about it! And then he killed her, the bastard! What a sick piece of work!”
Well, this was something! The Monk in a fit of righteous indignation! Did wonders never cease?
She stared into the man’s eyes, the eyes that were the same colour and shape as Lank’s; he was staring at the youth, not back at Kati. And there was something in those eyes that made Kati’s anger dissipate—there was loss, pain, and regret there. Had the man realized what he had tossed aside when he had rejected the child the whore had borne him? And perhaps come to understand that by murdering the mother he had closed off any possibility of ever making amends, of ever being able to take pride in the magnificent boy he and the prostitute had somehow produced?
Outside, Lank rushed into one of the outdoor privies that apparently were provided for the clientele of the bars by the side of the street.
“Did I see what I think I saw?” Kati asked Conny while the two of them waited.
“You did.” Conny was quiet for a few moments.
“He belongs to one of the ruling families of Oreborne,” he then went on. “One of the most corrupt ones. Married into another such family, more to please the clan than himself, the story goes. There have been many paid sex-providers in his life; Tiffy was the prettiest, I’d say, but also the most damaged already when he started buying her. I think that she was a fool enough to love him; I don’t believe he was worth even a whore’s love. He has one legitimate son, older than Lank, and a worse dream-dust addict than Tiffy ever was. If Tiffy did steal dream-dust, it would have been some that the father would have confiscated from that son. That son is as useless as Lank is not, and the way I look at things is that his father’s punishment is to know that this is so. And to never be able to take pride in Lank’s achievements.”
“And Lank already has many of those. And he will have more, many more, in the future.” Kati had no doubts about that.
“You’ll look after him some, then?” Conny asked, a little wistfully.
Kati took his hand into hers.
“I can promise that,” she said. “And if Mikal, our boss, friend, my lover, and the Star Federation Agent, were here, he would second the motion. Lank is much too valuable—to a lot of people—to be allowed to fall by the wayside.”
“Thanks. It’s a load off my mind. And don’t mention to Lank that the guy is his biological father. He doesn’t need the torture of that knowledge.”
*****
When Kati and Lank reached the flit there was a message awaiting them.
“Oh yeah, the remote pinged,” Lank said, making a face, before accessing it. “I decided that it could wait.”
“Kati, Lank,” said Mikal’s voice. “Xoraya and I are being chased by the four brutes in Xanthus’s space ship, across the bare rocks at the tail of the Maldos Chain. We’ll probably have to put down on some rock and allow ourselves to be taken; it’s that, or get shot down, or make friends with the waves and the fishes. Llon escaped; find him.”
CHAPTER SIX
While Kati and Lank had been visiting Tiffy’s grave, and then enjoying themselves among Lank’s old friends and acquaintances at the Quayside Bar, Mikal, Xoraya, and Llon were busy working and plotting in Maldosa. They put together a picture of what seemed to have happened on the Maldos Chain during Xanthus Hsiss’ stay in the Principality. They also got some idea of what the men who had come to do Gorsh’s bidding had been like. Mikal wondered about the fact that the criminal visitors were all men, except for Milla Gorsh; according to Kati’s records about her time on the slave ship, some of the ship’s crew had been women. And one of the crew members that Gorsh had sent to chase Mikal and Kati on the Drowned Planet had been a woman; she had ended up, along with her male companion, in a local jail, and had been collected by the Star Federation forces once Mikal had succeeded in calling them to the world. So, if Gorsh had a preference for male employees, he was not a total misogynist, even if the Tarangayan operation made him look like one. Maybe he saved his female employees for slave ship duty, since he liked to snatch children who might respond better to women than to men.
He had sent no felines, either, to Tarangay. On Gorsh’s slaving forays the cat-men had done the actual snatching of the targets. That might have been for the shock value, especially in places where the felines were an unfamiliar species; Kati certainly had been taken aback by the creatures who had tried to abduct her son, even though she had rallied to ruin their plans, only to be caught herself.
“My conclusion,” Mikal said to his companions, “is that Gorsh never had any intention of slaving on this planet, outside of grabbing Xanthus, that is. He likely judged Tarangay to be too close to Federation space to be a good source of warm human bodies. However, the Scientist must have made contact with him, or someone close to him, and the idea of getting a possibly very useful drug, and an Xeonsaur navigator, must have been too tempting for him to not act on it. The combination of the two must have seemed like a fantastic stroke of good fortune—guaranteed to make him the profit of his life.”
“So you don’t think that there was any really evil genius involved in this?” Xoraya asked, smiling, wide-eyed.
“No need to posit evil genius,” Mikal replied, grinning back at her. “Greed is enough of a motive to explain it.
“I’m not big on imagining evil geniuses, or disgusting devils behind every example of nasty behaviour, anyway. I think that those of men, and women, wiser than me, who say that evil is generally a surprisingly petty emotion at its base, are right. The trouble is that it can become compounded, and gain in force when people are frightened by it, and afraid to take the necessary steps to oppose it. That’s when it can be a steamroller, and flatten all that is good before it, leaving devastation in its wake.”
“Ultimately evil depends, like everything else that is alive, on the goodness of the energies that underlie all things,” said Llon. “Evil alone cannot support anything; it can only destroy. And destruction leads to emptiness, to a total void. Obviously, that is not what is out there, and here, and everywhere. So evil must be a circumscribed thing, capable of manifesting in patches only. Think on that whenever you despair; that thought is bound to make your spirits rise, and that rise in spirit, alone, can work as a force for good, and against evil. Life is the stronger force, and it underlies all. Goodness is to be found everywhere, if you just look for it.”
Mikal turned his grin on Llon’s earnest face.
“That was a lovely sermon of hope, preacher,” he said. “But we’re faced
with this nastiness of Gorsh’s which we need to eliminate, no matter that it’s a contained evil. I presume that you and the powers that you are a part of, agree with that necessity. Otherwise you would not have joined forces with us, right?”
“Of course. This thing has spread too broadly, and is seeping through borders that exist for a reason. And your group, Mikal and Xoraya, seems like the likeliest one to dissolve it, causing the least damage as you do so. So I and mine have thrown our weight behind you—which does not mean that your success is guaranteed. It is not. You will have to use utmost skill, talent and wisdom to defeat Gorsh, his minions, allies, and family, and to bring them to justice, while also achieving Kati’s desire to free the slaves he has gathered and sold. However, we have judged that you have what it takes to do it, so, barring any grievous errors, we expect that you will do it.”
“And if we don’t? What then?” Xoraya asked.
“Then another attempt will be made at a later date. But that attempt might involve more destruction to sentient beings and living organisms than the plan you people have in mind. That necessarily makes it the second choice—plus by the time it can be activated, Gorsh, and those around him, will have had time to do more damage.”
“Well, I’m afraid that, at the moment, much of our plan is still in the depths of my subconscious,” Mikal said. “Or in the subconscious depth of one of the others of us. All I know, at present, is that Xoraya and I have to get caught by this crew of Gorsh’s brutes who are on planet with Xanthus’ stolen ship. If we’re lucky, they’ll ferry us to where Xanthus is. Hey, if we’re very, very lucky, maybe Xanthus will be aboard the ship—though I’m not counting on that! You, Llon, and Kati, and Lank ought to be able to follow the ship even if you fail to touch us psychically, thanks to that little vibrating crystal that Xoraya salvaged from the lab.”
“Are you foreseeing difficulties with ESP transmissions?” Xoraya asked.
“There are those pockets of resistance on Wayward, which our Guide, here, mentioned earlier,” Mikal replied. “Who knows, such pockets may have even infected the ship! Plus, if our bad guys can force you to navigate for them, through time, we’ll be effectively out of reach.”
“We’ll be out of the reach of the resonating crystal, too, if they manage that,” Xoraya argued. “However, what these baddies don’t know is that I’m not a proficient navigator; my natural talents in that direction don’t come close to those of Xanthus. If I can manage a time shift of minutes for a ship that size, I’ll have done extremely well.”
“Ah, so we’re foisting substandard goods on the kidnappers, no?” Mikal laughed. “What a pity.”
They left the cafe, to be approached by Ciela, on the street.
“Councillor Gorine wants to see you,” she said anxiously. “She said that she received some word from the Customs at the Greyrock Space Port. Something that you need to know.”
“Don’t tell me that the bad guys are leaving without further ado!” Xoraya cried as they all turned their feet toward the Maldos Chain Council Offices.
“I don’t believe that for a moment,” Mikal said. “They may be leaving the Port but they’re not leaving us! How much do you bet that they’ll show up at the Laboratory Island next? With the ship, no less; they know that there’s lots of room to park it there; it having been its home turf for quite some time. Perhaps we can arrange a little tete-a-tete with them, there!”
They found Gorine in her office, looking tense.
“Jaritz told me that they refused to give a flight plan, even to the extent of saying that they were leaving the planet,” she said. “He figured that the logical place for them to go search for the investigators was at what was left of Xanthus Hsiss’ laboratory. You, the investigators, are bound to go there sooner or later, and, even if they miss you, probably whoever was on the island could offer some information. Jaritz was quite worried, especially when I told him that the bright kids had got the laboratory operational again. I eased his mind some by telling him that I had hired a few big guys to act as guards there.”
“We certainly don’t want those brutes to trash the place again,” Mikal said, with the air of one who is thinking hard. “Maybe, if Xoraya, Llon and I meet with them on the rock outside, we can come to some sort of terms, and they’ll agree to leave Tarangayan property alone. I’m pretty sure that they’re not interested in you people any more than they were in the past; they know that interfering too much with you will, sooner or later, draw the attention of the Star Federation Agents—folks like me.”
“However, there are only three of you,” Gorine said uneasily. “Only one Agent, what with the other two operatives off in Crescent City. And one Xeonsaur woman, and a middle-aged man. Do you have some mysterious weapons to throw into the pot that I know nothing about?”
Mikal grinned at her.
“My mysterious weapons are your guards, Councillor Gorine,” he replied. “I never underestimate the locals, but I know that the criminals of the Space Lanes routinely do.”
“My men are not violent,” Gorine protested. “Not the way the criminals can be. They’re only armed with stunners, since there’s a half-dozen of them; the Council allows only single guards to carry laser pistols on the job, and they are not encouraged to use them except under dire circumstances. The pistols are supposed to be a threat, rather than used for killing.”
“Therefore your men are the best kind of guards from an SFPO operative’s point of view,” said Mikal, grinning. “You are aware, are you not, that we’re to perform our duties without the loss of any sentient lives?”
“Yes. Our rules about weapons have as their basis the Star Federation practices. Like you people, we try to keep the ante down as much as possible.”
Mikal pulled out the nodal recorder from his pocket and laid it on Gorine’s desk.
“Just in case things don’t go as planned, Councillor Gorine, can you keep this safe, and pass it on to Kati of Terra, the next time you see her,” he said. “It contains all the information that we managed to scrounge here, and I want her to have it. Tell her that I leave it to her to decide whether or not to send the data to our boss at the earliest opportunity, and as to what other action to take. She’s good at her job, and can be trusted to do the right thing.”
“Of course. I’ll put it in my safe,” Gorine said, proceeding to do so. “If you three are going to the Laboratory Island, I think that Ciela and I will follow you in my official flit.”
She chuckled at the words “official flit” and Mikal wondered with some amusement as to the vintage of the vehicle. That hardly mattered, he knew; well-maintained, even the granddaddies of those machines performed well.
“I’ll pilot it for you if you’d like,” Ciela said enthusiastically. “Want me to go and get it, Councillor?”
“Please. Bring it to the parking lot. I’ll walk with our guests there, since that’s where their vehicle is.”
*****
When the two flits arrived at the Laboratory Island, the rock expanse was still empty, except for the two flyers which were used to ferry the guards and the young workers onto the island.
“It’s been perfectly peaceful here,” the head guard, a burly, middle-aged fellow by the name of Stan, reported to Councillor Gorine, when she alighted from “the official flit” with Ciela.
“That’s about to change,” Gorine told him. “Gorsh’s brutes have left the Greyrock Space Port in Scientist Hsiss’ old ship without a flight plan, and Agent Mikal, here, figures that they are headed for this island. They’ll assume that the investigative team will spend at least some time here, looking for evidence into Scientist Hsiss’s disappearance.”
“And we thought that we’d intercept them, and, try to prevent any possible violence,” Mikal added. “With help of you fellows, of course.”
“Of course,” reiterated Stan. “You need better odds than a woman and two men, even if one of the men is a trained Agent, against four well-armed, big guys.”
Xoraya laughe
d, suddenly.
“And we don’t have Kati here to do her vamping magic, like she did on Vultaire. It certainly works to distract male attackers,” she said.
Mikal gave her a hard stare.
“Don’t even think about that,” he said severely. “It’s much better that she’s not here, distracting me.
“But Llon, did you grab the binoculars from the flit? I think I’m hearing a tell-tale sound—I’ve got my hearing on enhancement.”
Llon handed him the binoculars, and Stan grabbed his to follow the example. Sure enough, a fair-sized vehicle was rapidly approaching from the direction of the Greyrock Island; at first only a speck in the sky, but quickly taking on the saucer-shape of the space vehicles, and growing. The group on the ground waited in silence for it to approach. Mikal mentally measured the distance between him and Xoraya, and their flit. Xoraya saw him do so and nodded. They would diffuse the situation on Laboratory Island by running for the flit once the space ship was on the ground, hopefully forcing the brutes to use their ship to chase them and leave the islanders in peace. Llon would be left behind also, almost as if by accident.
*****
“Hell yes!”
There was someone at the hatch of the space ship, shouting back into the machine.
“The little Lizard woman and the annoying Agent are here for sure! I don’t see the Agent’s lover-girl, though, the one that the boss is sweet on! But these two ought to be good enough—let’s get them, and haul them home to Wayward! The rest of the people are just Tarangayans and useless! Look lively boys, and weapons out!”
“Xoraya, they’re after you and me!” Mikal shouted. “Get to the flit! Let’s lead these idiots on a merry chase over the ocean!”
Stan had taken offense at being called useless and took a shot at the guy at the hatch with his stunner. It wasn’t a good shot, but it did do damage, slowing the progress of the brutes into the outside world.
Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers Page 14
