Flinx Transcendent (30 page)

Then he was whirling, spinning, and ducking all in the same incredibly rapid motion as he drew a pistol from his pocket.

The first shot, fired by one of the two matrons, was overeager. Though she took careful aim, in her hurry to extract her weapon she had fumbled the draw. It was that motion that had alerted Tse-Mallory to the fact that the curious cluster of presumed patrons was intent on something other than casual shopping. The discharge from his pistol sizzled air as it cleaved her skull just above an elaborately shadowed right eye.

Chaos erupted inside the small shop. Harkening to Tse-Mallory's warning, the clerk had dropped to the floor. She had her hands over her ears and was undertaking, with some success, to scream. Sheltered behind the counter, constantly in motion, Tse-Mallory took out his assailants one by one. While it was apparent in the course of the firefight that all of them were experienced in the handling of arms, formal weapons training was not the same as actual battlefield experience.

Bits and pieces of counter and wall, but not of Tse-Mallory, went flying. One struck the poor prone employee hard enough to make her
gasp. Her nonstop screaming was only one component of the auditory madness that filled the shop. In back, the proprietor and his assistant did the usual stupid thing by sticking their heads out to see what was happening. For their trouble the assistant acquired a hole in his chest and his employer a severe concussion.

Both of the older women were down. So was the senior citizen, who had proven surprisingly agile but far from invulnerable. The street singer's severed head lay in one place and his body in another. The headband continued to pump out music. As for the young couple, they rose from the little available cover they had found to charge straight toward the counter. It was a suicide rush. Tse-Mallory's interest in their motivation did not prevent him from rolling to his right out of their line of fire and shooting them both down.

Rising slowly amid the carnage, he took stock of himself. A couple of close calls had resulted in wounds that looked bad but were in reality little more than bloody nicks. Good thing he had new clothing on order, he mused. That was assuming he could persuade the stunned proprietor to finish the job.

Stepping out from behind the counter, pistol gripped tightly at the ready, Tse-Mallory checked those bodies that still had their heads. If these people wanted him dead so badly, why had they not simply bombed the entire building? But a bombing on peaceful New Riviera would doubtless have attracted investigative attention from all across the planet. Therefore it was reasonable to assume they did not want to draw that kind of attention to themselves. Which left hanging the critical question—who were ‘themselves’?

A quick check of the pockets of the dead told him nothing. What information and identification he was able to access was consistent in its uniformity. Based on what he found, it seemed as if he had been marked for assassination by as mundane a bunch of citizens as could be found in the city.

That was when old memories gave birth to a terrible suspicion. Still holding the pistol, he lifted his left arm to his mouth and addressed the communit on his wrist. Sartorial replacement could wait. With luck, his fear would not be confirmed. As he spoke to the pickup he was heading for the door. Behind him, the stunned shop owner was trying to render
aid to his badly wounded assistant and shell-shocked salesgirl. Tse-Mallory would have to let him get on with it by himself.

His own concerns ran much deeper.

They closed in around Truzenzuzex while he was in the park. Lacking the need for any additional personal supplies for the forthcoming journey, he had chosen to wait in more amenable and relaxing surroundings for Tse-Mallory to finish his business in the nearby shopping arcade. The philosoph was taking his ease on one of the many longitudinal benches set out in the park to accommodate his kind when he noticed the trio coming toward him.

Their approach was restrained—and they had probably rehearsed it thoroughly—but that could not keep them from occasionally glancing furtively in his direction. One or two glances he could appreciate. Nur/New Riviera was a human colony world. Thranx, while they could be found in numbers in the equatorial regions, were not to be encountered everywhere. But his presence in Sphene was not so extraordinary as to draw nervous, fleeting looks one after another.

Then there was the couple approaching from the opposite direction. Though ostensibly wholly absorbed in each other, they too cast sporadic glances in the direction of the elderly thranx sprawled on the bench. Raising his head, he idly surveyed the remainder of his surroundings. His peripheral vision, far superior to that available to any human, quickly detected several individuals coming toward him from still another direction. Taken together, it was clear to him that the trio, the couple, and the advancing individuals had one thing and only one thing in common.

They happened to be converging on the spot where he was lying.

Easing off the bench, he gathered all six legs beneath him and started off in the one direction that was not occupied by humans coming toward him. While this corner of the park was not deserted, neither was it crowded. The three and two and more who were closing in on him might be doing so with the intent of meeting up with one another. Or it might be nothing more than a mathematical coincidence. Truzenzuzex did not like convergences that placed him at the center of strange coincidences. In any event, it would be easy enough to find out if he
was
the
focus of their attention. He would walk away from them, they would pass behind and ignore him, or …

The sonic burst that shattered the trunk of the small tree he stepped behind was more than enough to confirm that last suspicion.

He was virtually surrounded and there was nowhere to run. Seeing weapons being drawn, the few other visitors in the vicinity began running in all directions or ducked down behind decorative boulders and trees. Ignoring these panicky citizens, the humans who had been closing in on the elderly thranx charged toward their quarry. Several of the bystanders who had taken cover were already using their communits to report the violent encounter to the police and to the media. While their rapid responses were to be commended, they would do the target of the belligerent humans no good. The philosoph would be diced and sliced before the first police arrived.

Off to his right, the fleeing philosoph noticed a hole in the ground. He had no idea what it was or where it might lead, but to a thranx salvation instinctively lies below. Cutting in that direction, he dove into the opening as sonic and neuronic bursts ripped up the landscaping in his wake.

The tunnel was lined with smooth ceramic alloy. His feet would have clicked noisily against it if not for the several centimeters of dirty water that filled the curved surface underfoot. Patently unable to go back, he would go forward. As he ran he cursed his own self-confidence. Whereas his old friend Tse-Mallory never went anywhere without a weapon, the philosoph considered even a small gun an unnecessary encumbrance on a civilized world. Would that he were presently so encumbered!

Restive men and women gathered at the opening to the cavity. Heedless of his own safety, one man straightaway ducked inside. He was back in a couple of minutes, his clothes and hands stained with brown water and dripping muck.

“He's gone. I can't even hear him.”

The scholarly-looking older gentleman who was the nominal leader of the attack squad wore a grim expression as he surveyed the landscaped terrain to the north of the opening.

“We'll never catch him in the conduit. Its diameter restricts us to advancing hunched over, but it's plenty high enough for a thranx to run full out.”

“The philosoph is old,” another man pointed out. “He'll get tired and slow down.”

The leader turned to him. “You weren't at the fight at the shuttleport. I was. This is not your ordinary thranx elder.” Turning back to the park environment, he studied their immediate surroundings. “The police are liable to be here any minute. We can't be found together. Spread out. North and east, I think, are the most likely places for this conduit to emerge. Search the near shores of Town Lake and Claris Pond, find where drainage empties out, and wait there. Sooner or later, he'll show himself.”

The group promptly split up, some to search the shore of the nearby ornamental lake, others the park's decorative pond, two to wait by the opening where their quarry had taken refuge in case he decided to backtrack. The group leader was not worried about dividing his forces. A successful resolution to the ambush required only one weapon, one shot. As soon as the thranx stuck his antennaed head out of one of the conduit's openings, it would be blown off.

No one was more aware of that than their quarry himself. As soon as it became clear that he was not being followed, Truzenzuzex slowed his pace. The small beam that was part of the communit secured around his left truarm provided more than enough light for him to find his way. Waving back and forth above his head, his antennae kept him continuously apprised of the distance between his head and the conduit's ceiling. Unlike a human, he did not have to constantly look up to keep from bumping his skull.

While all of this was reassuring, it did not ensure his safety. If he was not being pursued down the drainage channel, he could simply halt and call for assistance from Tse-Mallory, Flinx, or the local authorities. On the other hand, if his attackers did come in after him, he would be trapped beyond help. And in the closed confines of the conduit their aim would not have to be very precise to take him out.

In such circumstances, waiting was rarely the best thing to do. Never concede the initiative to your enemy. He needed to get out. How to do that safely was a matter of some concern. He would be most vulnerable at the moment of emergence. The way forward might be devoid of assailants—or as soon as he stuck his head out he might find it locked in the crosshairs of their weapons. The trouble was that the only way to
determine if there was any danger was to expose himself to it. From a very young age he had learned that inviting hostile fire was not the best way to ascertain the enemy's strength and position.

Squatting in the cold, dirty water he contemplated his options. He had come a considerable distance. There was no telling how far it was to the drain's exit. He certainly could not see the end. Confronted with such a situation a human would see itself as having two choices: to go forward or to go back. Since his attackers were all human, it was likely they would ponder the same two scenarios. However, he was not human. Other options were open to him. The sooner he settled on one, the more time he would have to explore its possibilities before it also occurred to his assailants.

While he was weaponless, his thorax pouch did hold a handful of useful instruments and tools. The cutter would be useful as a weapon only at very close quarters. Meanwhile, it did serve to burn a nice oval hole in the tough but thin ceramic ceiling of the conduit. Removing a meter-wide section and setting it to one side, Truzenzuzex began to dig. It was a skill at which his ancient ancestors had been especially proficient. Though there was not much call for it in the modern world, it was an ability that was innate and could not be forgotten. Helpfully, the soil overhead was soft and largely devoid of rocks—just what one might expect to encounter in a park that had been heavily and repeatedly landscaped.

More than an hour later, having avoided the attentions of the police who had been summoned in response to the earlier shooting, his intent pursuers were still guarding the entrance to the conduit where their quarry had vanished as well as the location where it drained into Claris Pond. They were fidgety but patient. The philosoph had to show himself sooner or later, via one exit or the other. When he did emerge they would be waiting for him.

None of them was watching the distant pedestrian intersection where Truzenzuzex rejoined Tse-Mallory. Having calmly covered the distance from the bloodbath in the clothing shop, Tse-Mallory had contacted his companion via communit. A few passersby glanced in the direction of the philosoph, their curiosity drawn not by his species but by his current personal appearance.

Upon first catching sight of his companion, Tse-Mallory reacted similarly. “What happened to
you?
You're a mess.”

“And you,
tr!llk
, are bleeding.” The philosoph gestured with a truhand at the shallow but unsettling crimson gashes that decorated his friend's arms and shoulders. “Were the choice up to me, I think I would opt for a tidier tailor.”

Reaching up to his face, Tse-Mallory rubbed at one bloody patch of skin. “These scratches aren't a consequence of a bad fitting. A handful of Sphene's everyday upstanding citizens just tried to kill me.”

The thranx nodded, a gesture his kind had long ago adopted soon after Amalgamation. “How interesting. Exactly the same thing just happened to me. What a coincidence—except that is most unlikely to be the case.” Resplendent compound eyes peered up at Tse-Mallory's brilliant blue single lenses. “Average-looking citizens wielding an uncharacteristic array of weaponry attempt to murder both of us in broad daylight. Do such circumstances remind you of anything?”

Tse-Mallory nodded slowly. “A certain day and time more than a year ago. The fanatics of the Order of Null who wanted to kill Flinx to keep him from trying to stop or divert the Great Evil. The same kind of nondescript but obsessed people we had to contend with at the shuttleport.”

He looked around. None of the pedestrians meandering through the intersection appeared threatening or on the verge of suddenly resorting to an orgy of unexpected violence.

Truzenzuzex gestured accord. “My feeling at the time was that once Flinx was safely offworld and on his way, then these deluded and confrontational folk would retire to whatever fatalistic conclaves they favor and we would hear no more from them.”

Tse-Mallory nodded. “Plainly an incorrect supposition. The only reason they'd have for trying to kill us would be to prevent us from being of assistance to Flinx.”