Flinx in Flux (8 page)

Pip spread her wings and zoomed ahead. The big man, who looked like he did not fear anything in this or any other world, caught sight of the oncoming minidrag and let out a shocked oath. He ducked back into his room, and Flinx heard the emergency latch click shut electronically.

“Everyone here knows what a minidrag can do.” Flinx started down the fire stairs. “As long as Pip stays in front of us, no one else will.”

She was going to need a huge meal, he knew. Hovering and flying so much burned a tremendous amount of energy. It seemed impossible they could maintain flight for so long, but as little was known about the flying snakes’ internal makeup as was known about the rest of their nature.

They descended carefully, Flinx grateful that the hotel was only three stories high. No one challenged them in the stairwell, where the night-lights were even dimmer than those lining the hallways.

There were two doors at the bottom, one to either side of the lower landing. One probably led back into the hotel, to the kitchen or warehousing area. The other led . . .

Into a service alley that ran between commercial structures, which they entered after Flinx had disarmed the fire alarm on the door. A narrow, charged rail ran down the center of the alley, providing power and lift for robotic delivery vehicles. Flinx cautioned Clarity to avoid the rail as they hurried down the damp corridor. It would not kill, but it could badly shock a full-grown man.

“Where are we going? To get a vehicle, right? We’re going to get transportation and head for Alaspinport. Will there be a rental agency open this late?”

“In a town like Mimmisompo you can get anything you want at any hour, if you have enough money. But we aren’t going to rent. Rentals can be noted, and traced.”

He anxiously scanned the route ahead. Not for the first time in his life he wondered if he should be carrying a weapon. The only problem with a gun was that it was a provocation as much as a defense. Besides, Pip would deal much more effectively with any serious threat. Her reactions were a hundred times faster than his. As a child he had found himself in situations where possession of a weapon would have been more of a hindrance than a help, so he had learned to get along without them. That did not keep him from occasionally wishing for the comforting weight of one at his belt or in a shoulder holster.

Scrap rode high on Clarity’s shoulder, a good indication that the danger, while not ended, was not immediate. He could not count on her pursuers delaying for very long, he knew. They might be in the bedroom already, might have discovered their quarry missing. The next thing they would do would be to thoroughly search the hotel and its immediate environs, checking other rooms to see if Flinx and Clarity had sought refuge with another guest. Certainly the front entrance would be covered from the start.

It would take them a while to figure out that the alarm on the back stairs had been disconnected long enough to let someone out into the service alley. Despite his caution, he knew they were leaving all kinds of trails behind them. Body scent heightened by fear, pheromones, heat signatures—all could be isolated and followed if one had the right kind of equipment. It could not be helped. Whether their pursuers were equipped with such sophisticated tracking devices depended on whether they had anticipated possible failure. It did not seem likely, but he could not count on convenient oversights to shield them.

“This way.” He all but wrenched her arm loose pulling her around a sharp corner. Now that Alaspin’s second moon had joined its companion in the night sky, the light was better for trying to find a new route through the city.

Already they were passing residences, the service alley far behind as they kept to back streets. Lights made owls’ eyes of oval and round windows while the echo of tridee and music drifted out to the otherwise empty streets. There were no bugs to worry about. Industrial electronic repellers kept even the persistent millimite bugs a hundred meters from the nearest structure. Unfortunately, Mimmisompo was not wealthy enough to afford climate control, so it was still hot and humid. Sweat trickled from both refugees as they ran.

“Where are we going?” Clarity gasped. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.” She was breathing with difficulty in the midnight heat.

“You’ll keep it up as long as necessary, because I’m not going to carry you.”

They had left the private homes behind and found themselves surrounded by air pressure domes and fabric warehousing. “I’m looking for the right transportation.”

She frowned as she searched the vicinity. “Here? I don’t see any cars.”

“I’m not looking for an aircar or slinkem,” he told her tersely. “That’s the first type of vehicle they’d watch for. I want something difficult to trace.” He paused. “This’ll do.”

It didn’t look like much of a fence, only a succession of posts set in the ground five meters apart. Each was six meters high and pulsed with faint yellow light.

“That’s a photic barrier,” she said. “You can’t climb it because there’s nothing to climb, you can’t walk through it, and you can’t tip over any of the posts. Do anything to disrupt the alignment and you’ll probably set off a dozen distinct alarms.”

Once again he ignored her as he studied the half dozen machines parked beneath a rain shield on the far side of the service yard. All were battered and heavily used and unlikely to draw attention to themselves. It was exactly what he wanted for himself and his companion. He settled on a large lumbering skimmer whose back end consisted of compartmentalized cubes for storing prepackaged cargo. It could have been anything from a hazardous-waste dumper to a dairy delivery vehicle. Clarity paid no attention to him. She was scanning the dark buildings they had skirted, looking for silent shapes afoot in the night. She didn’t turn around until she heard the barely audible soft clicking.

From a back pocket Flinx had extracted something the size and shape of a pack of plastic cards. Taking a couple of steps away from the wall, he drew back his arm and flipped the object in a sweeping underhand motion. Instead of sailing in all directions across the damp street, the plastic strips snapped together to form a straight line five meters in length. Using his hands, he bent it in two places to create a rigid U shape taller and considerably wider than his body.

Clarity eyed it dubiously. “What’s that for? It’s not tall or strong enough to use as a ladder.”

“It’s not a ladder. It’s a portable gate.” Pressing one hand against each side of the U’s interior, he lifted the entire frame. Holding it around him like a levitating headdress, he walked right through the photic wall. The glowing sensors didn’t flicker as he intercepted their beams. No alarms flared to life. Pip rode through on his shoulder.

Now he turned on the other side and repositioned the gate for her. “Come on. Unless you’d rather stand out in the street.”

Unable to concoct a reason for hesitating, she did as he instructed, bending to slip under his arm as he held the gate for her.

Safely inside the barrier, he gave the gate a magician’s twist and she gaped as it collapsed back into his hand. He slipped the packet back into his pocket.

“Doppler deck,” he explained. “Bends light around you. It can’t make you invisible, but under the right conditions you can fake it pretty well. Bent the sensors around both of us. We didn’t interrupt them. Just made them avoid us.”

“Fascinating.” She followed him as he strode rapidly across the lightly paved yard. “Expensive?”

He nodded. “It’s not the sort of toy you’d find at a special sale. It’s a precision instrument designed to look like junk, which is costly. When I was younger, I used something like it that was a lot cruder. Sometimes it did what it was supposed to. A lot of the time it didn’t. That was inconvenient at best, embarrassing at worst. I determined that if I could ever afford it, I’d have the best analog equipment made. So I had this built for me.”

“Is that because you have to frequently override private security procedures?”

“Not really. I just like to have good tools handy.”

“You said you used something like it when you were younger. What did you do as a child that required the use of something like that?”

“I was a thief,” he told her simply. “It was the only way I could survive.”

“Are you still a thief?”

“No. Now I pay for everything I need, sooner or later.”

“More sooner or later?”

“Depends on my mood.”

They hurried past the line of vehicles until he halted before the bulky cargo skimmer. Another pocket yielded a folded leatherine wallet that when opened revealed a host of tiny tools. Each was as perfect and beautiful as a jewel. In point of fact, the thranx who had fashioned the wallet and its contents for him was renowned as a jeweler. Such projects as Flinx’s wallet were a hobby for him, a hobby that Flinx knew was more lucrative than the thranx’s admitted profession.

Choosing one particular instrument, he commenced working on the trisealed secure lock that held the skimmer’s door closed. Though still fearful of immediate attack, Clarity was so absorbed in watching him work that she no longer stared past the photic barrier at the street beyond.

“You must’ve been a good thief.”

“I was always considered advanced for my age. I don’t think I’ve improved since, but I have better tools to work with now.”

The door did not even click when he popped it open. He climbed up and slid in behind the drive controls.

The ignition was unlocked. It was easier to secure the doors than the engine and power plant. Under his skilled touch the readouts came to life. He glanced approvingly out at Clarity and nodded. Scrap released her hair to flutter into the cab, taking up a resting position on the back of the passenger’s seat.

Elsewhere skimmers had open cabs, but not on Alaspin. Here all were enclosed, air-conditioned, and bug-resistant. Which would be especially nice as they were going to be traveling at night, he knew.

Clarity grabbed a handle and pulled herself up beside him. She closed her door and turned to regard him in amazement. “You know, I’m beginning to believe you actually have a chance of getting us offworld. You sure you’re only—” She caught herself. “Sorry. I promised not to mention that again, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

The skimmer made more of a racket on low lift than he had hoped it would, but since the service yard he had penetrated was presumed secure, there was no need for a human guard to be kept on duty. The security monitor would report anything unusual to a central facility as well as to the district police.

Since there was no dome or solid roof, he assumed the presence of a short-range security blanket, close cousin to the photic wall he had already sidestepped. That would be necessary to prevent any would-be thieves or vandals from simply flying in over the wall. He also expected vehicles inside the wall to be appropriately equipped with the means for negating it. A couple of minutes’ work with the skimmer’s onboard ‘pute produced the requisite broadcast code. He punched it in and waited patiently for it to notify the company’s central security facility.

Hopefully no one would read the evening’s report until morning. By then the absence of the big skimmer would probably have been noted visually. It would take time to determine that no night deliveries or pickups had been scheduled, more time to make certain the skimmer had not been borrowed by an authorized driver or executive. By the time Alaspinport authorities could be informed of its presumed theft and provided with a description, its nocturnal riders would have abandoned it none the worse for wear except for run-down batteries. For the use of which, he unnecessarily mentioned to Clarity, he intended to pay.

They had one bad moment as the skimmer lifted eighty meters above the yard and turned left out of the city. Out in the commercial district, away from the bars and simulated strip joints and stimclubs, few lights showed below—until a smaller, much faster skimmer shot by hard aport. Clarity yelped and tried to duck between the seats while Scrap rose and darted in all directions at once, getting in Flinx’s way and causing minor havoc with his steering.

Flinx had a brief, appalling glimpse of the other vehicle as it veered sharply to the left without banking. Laughing, probably drunk young faces given ghostly life by the skimmer’s internal lights leered at him for an instant and were gone.

“Kids.” He looked down and to his right. “Get up. Your friends haven’t found us. It was just kids out joyriding. Not much else to do in a place like Mimmisompo. Even scientists and prospectors have kids.”

They were out over raw jungle now, heading for the immense savanna that bordered both sides of the Aranoupa River. Following the river southwest would take them to the granite outcropping occupied by Alaspinport, a crooked finger of land extending out into the sea.

She rose slowly, fright fading from her face like a temporary tan. She looked small, vulnerable, and afraid.

“I’m sorry. It was just so unexpected. Everything was going so well. You were handling everything so smoothly.”

“I’m still handling things smoothly.” His attention wandered from the night sky to the readout that showed their position relative to Mimmisompo and Alaspinport. Their transportation might be a well-used antique, but the internal electronics were reassuringly up-to-date.

Sitting back in her seat, she rubbed at her eyes with the backs of both hands, then looked over at him. “You’re sure it was just a bunch of kids?”

He nodded. “Seventeen, eighteen. Mimmisompo’s not a bad place for someone without education or training to try for a fortune.”

“Like you, maybe? Except you aren’t a kid.”

Feeling it appropriate under the circumstances, he tried to smile and discovered that he could not. “I was born old. I was never a kid. No, that’s not quite it; I was born tired.”

“I don’t believe you. I think you just like to pretend that you’re slow and tired to keep others from trying to find out more about you.”

“Can’t you just accept the fact that I’m a quiet loner who likes his peace and quiet and privacy?”

“No, I can’t.”