The End of the Matter (17 page)

“Young feller-me-lad, Flinx, believe me when I say I wish I knew.”

Stunned, Flinx could only gape back at him. A yes he could have coped with. That was an answer he had been prepared to deal with a hundred thousand times in his imagination. A no would have been harder to handle, but he would have been ready for that, too. But “I wish I knew”?

So unexpected was the indeterminate answer that the youth who had organized the Ulru-Ujurrians, who had outwitted the Church and baffled Conda Challis, could only say lamely: “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“Don’t you think I wish I did?” September half pleaded. “I am uncertain. I am indecisive, I can’t say for sure because I don’t know for sure. Positiveness of either possibility escapes me. I can’t shade it yes or darken it no. There’s no room for maybes, feller-me-lad. It’s what I said plain, which means . . . I could be.”

“Let’s not play,” Flinx said slowly, coldly. “Did you ever sleep with my mother, who was a Lynx of Allahabad, India Province, Terra?”

September shook his head, looking at Flinx as if for the first time. “What an unusual young man you are. You’ve got brains and guts, Flinx-lad. You’re not by chance extremely wealthy, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Good,” September commented with satisfaction, “because if you were, and I said I was your father, you’d have the natural suspicion of the wealthy and not believe me.”

“How do you know I’d have any intention of sharing any wealth with you?” countered Flinx. “Maybe I’m looking for my father out of feelings of anger. Maybe I’d want just to blow your brains out.”

“I wouldn’t blame you,” replied September. “But I never slept with your mother, of that I
am
certain. Nor have I ever been to India Province, let alone the city you mentioned. I’ve no idea who your mother was, and I doubt if I’d recognize her face or name if you confronted me with her this instant.”

“No chance of that,” Flinx assured him. “I told you, she’s been dead since before I was sold.”

“I’m sorry for that,” September said, expressing genuine-sounding sorrow for someone he had just claimed never to have known.

Flinx’s thoughts were full of speculation and garbage. “I don’t understand this, I don’t understand.”

“Who does?” mused the giant philosophically.

“If you never even met my natural mother, let alone slept with her, then how could you possibly be my father?”

“Like most circles, it all ties together, feller-me-lad.” September put both hands behind his shaggy head and leaned back. “Why do you think I was there on Moth that day, trying to buy you, and why do you think I didn’t?”

“You didn’t have the money to bid against Mother Mastiff,” suggested Flinx. “The old woman who finally bought me.” Then something else the slaver had mentioned came back to him. “You left the auction in a hurry, and there were a large number of police in the crowd.”

“Very good, your sources have good memories,” commented September. “I had the money to buy you, and the others. But I was a wanted man. Somehow the police knew I was on Moth. Since the reward for me was considerable, they came a-hunting. I had to leave fast. Purchasing you was one assignment I was never able to carry out. One of the few I’ve never been able to carry out. By the by, how much is it worth to you to find out if I really am your natural father?”

Flinx had never considered having to pay for the final word. “I don’t know. I have to think on that one myself.”

“Okay,” agreed the giant, “so do I.” He rolled over, pebbles scraping the floor beneath him. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Right now I’m feeling done in. Saving your life was an exhausting business.”

Father or not, Flinx would cheerfully have strangled the big man over the delay. But there was nothing to do, and he did not want to risk antagonizing September. He was not a man to be pushed. Besides, he told himself, he had waited this long, another evening would not make any difference. And he was completely worn out himself. Anyhow, he doubted that his hands would fit around September’s enormous neck.

As it turned out, morning prevented any resumption of their conversation. Automatic scanners performed their function. So did the alarms they were connected to. The three sane occupants of the ancient temple chamber came awake to a clamorous howling.

“Otoids,” said Hasboga curtly, grabbing up her pulsepopper and slipping off the safety. She ran for the gallery window as Flinx was still blinking sleep from his eyes. By the time he was fully awake, September had joined her atop the stone stairway. The two moved back and forth along the wide slit in the temple front, firing frequently at targets below. Dimly one could hear the incessant chatter of the Otoid.

Flinx joined them atop the stairs. Soon arrows began pinging through the narrow gap with disconcerting frequency. September cursed as fast as he fired. Standing alongside and watching the Mark Twenty cut down trees and leave craters in the earth, Flinx felt comparatively helpless as he snapped off an occasional burst with his own small handbeamer.

A bolt plunged onto the stone facing, falling almost vertically by September’s right hand. He glanced upward. “They’re atop the temple now,” he muttered, “probably a mob of them. We can’t hold this gallery much longer.”

“The tunnel,” Isili suggested, “fast!”

Flinx stayed between them as they ran down the stairway. They raced across the chamber floor. Around a slight bend in the inner chamber wall were five steps which Flinx hadn’t seen before leading downward, Ab joined them and studied the entrance curiously.

“They’ll open the door we built soon enough,” September grunted. “This chamber has several back entrances, which we blocked up, but you can be sure they’re just waiting for us to stick our heads out one of them.” He indicated the low passageway at the bottom of the steps. Portable lights showed a dry stone floor.

September was gathering up food packets and shoving them into various pockets in the shirt he had donned on awakening. He pressed an armful on Flinx. “This tunnel is where we’ve done most of our digging. This is the only entrance—and exit, of course.”

Several arrows pinged off the stone walls. September whirled, raising the muzzle of the Mark Twenty. Blue fire cleared the gallery window and left smoking stone and bodies behind.

“They might tire of this,” he continued, speaking as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “If they don’t”—he ducked as a fresh bolt shot by overhead—“we’ll have a choice of charging them or starving. But I don’t think they can overpower us down in there.”

Then Flinx was fighting his load of containers as he followed Hasboga down the steps and through the narrow, winding tunnel. September trailed, covering their retreat.

In the dim illumination he saw that the tunnel was roughly pyramidal in form, with a narrow strip of flat ceiling overhead. Delicate bas-reliefs ran in a single strip along each wall; a third decorated the small roof. Underfoot were smooth, alternating slabs of blue, green, and pure white stone, the white shining like glazed tile, while the blue and green remained convincingly stonelike. Ab loped along easily behind Flinx, singing querulously.

Finally they stopped. Panting, Flinx dumped his load of food containers. Hasboga settled her pulsepopper on a mound of recently excavated rubble while September found a resting place for his massive weapon slightly below and to her left.

Silence soon gave way to a deafening chatter as a horde of Otoid warriors came surging and hopping down the tunnel.

“Ready,” September whispered expectantly.

Though the aborigine battle cries were thunderous, they were nothing compared to the roar of the two powerful guns as they fired away at the screaming, attacking natives. Flinx felt like a fly trapped in the landing bay of a cargo shuttle at the moment of touchdown.

The tunnel became a long, fiery gullet which digested stone and Otoid with equal indifference. With so much firepower concentrated in such a small space, Flinx’s handbeamer would have been superfluous. He conserved it’s modest charge and let Hasboga and September do the incinerating.

Eventually it dawned on the Otoid that they had reached a point beyond which nothing living could pass. With much howling and cursing, they retreated around the first bend and out of range. A deep swath of charred, smoking corpses constituted a disquieting reminder of their presence. Since the slight breeze blew always inward, the four inhabitants of the tunnel’s end received the full brunt of that noxious barbecue.

“Now what?” Flinx wondered, glancing from Hasboga to the giant. Despite the apparent solidity of the stone walls, he was nervous. “Could they cave in the tunnel and trap us here? Or smoke us out?”

“As for the last,” Hasboga told him, “that’s no problem, though we might have to share tanks.” She pointed to a pile of mining equipment in a corner. It included a pair of atmosphere masks for poor-air digging.

“The original Alaspinians built these temples well,” she went on, indicating the walls around them. “With their primitive tools, I don’t think the Otoid could break through the ancient cement sealing these stones. Even if they could, I doubt that they’d try it.”

“Why not?”

“If they did that,” September explained, “they’d never get our eyes.”

“Eyes again,” Flinx murmured. “What do they do with dead men’s eyes?”

“Never mind, young feller-me-lad,” was the grim reply. “It doesn’t make pleasant conversation.” Flinx decided not to insist on an explanation. If the subject troubled September, he wasn’t sure he needed to know.

“Try to starve us out,” the big man announced professionally, eyeing the far bend in the tunnel. “In any case, I don’t think they’ll try another mass rush like that last one for a while. They’ll sit down and talk it over first.” Leaving his rifle resting in place, he turned and slumped down against the wall of protective rubble.

Flinx took the opportunity to examine the section of tunnel they had retreated to. It wasn’t so much a room or chamber here as it was a slight enlargement of the tunnel proper. Possibly the engravings set into the walls and ceiling were a touch more elaborate, a bit more plentiful. Three meters on, the tunnel assumed its normal dimensions, and a couple of meters beyond that the smooth walls ended in a dam of collapsed stone and rock. Despite Hasboga’s assurances, it was clear that the Alaspinian temple was not invulnerable.

She noticed the direction of his gaze and said with a certain amount of enthusiasm, “We’ve been drilling and clearing this section, as you can see. We’re trying to find out where this tunnel goes. I’ve studied thousands of temple schematics, and this tunnel has no counterpart in any of them that I’ve been able to discover. Also, those Alaspinian temples that do have passageways or tunnels have them laid out with sharp angles, regular and precise, all heading toward definite destinations. Usually they lead to other structures. This one makes no sense. It just sort of winds off uncertainly to no place. Compared to your usual Alaspinian road or passage, this one’s constructed like somebody’s small intestine.”

“What do you expect to find at the end of it?” Flinx asked her.

She shrugged and smiled hopefully. “Storeroom, if we’re lucky. Iridium temple masks, city treasury, anything else valuable the Mimmisompo priests wanted to hide and protect. Maybe even a religious scepter. They usually used crysorillium, and sapphire to decorate those scepters. Might even have some opalized diamonds.”

“No doubt all of great scientific value,” mused Flinx.

She threw him a warning look. “Don’t criticize, Flinx, until you’ve had to spend ten years on useless projects presided over by pompous asses with well-connected parents. Remember, I’d rather be doing some worthwhile research on my home planet. For me, this is a means to an end.”

“Sorry,” Flinx admitted. “I was—”

September broke in. “Apologies later, lad,” he declared, rolling over to take up the trigger of the Mark Twenty. Angry hoots were drifting up the tunnel toward them. “Here they come again.”

But the big man’s concern was premature. The hooting came no nearer, though it continued not far from them.

September peered over the top of the shielding wall. “Probably having a final, violent disagreement over tactics,” he theorized pleasantly. The hooting grew louder, and Flinx thought he heard sounds of fighting.

“Sounds like they’re plenty angry at one another. Good! A couple of the warrior-primes are squabbling. They might end up fighting each other. Otoids have short tempers. It’s been known to happen.”

Hasboga nodded confirmation. “A few reports of natives attacking miners and outposts and ending up by massacring each other have been substantiated.” She looked almost excited. “The only thing the Otoids hate worse than themselves are human or thranx interlopers. We might have a chance!”

“Lopers, mopers, lazy daze,” came a high-pitched verse from behind them. “Moping, moping, eating maize . . . oh say can you see the canticle me.”

September glanced briefly back at Ab. The alien was amusing himself at the far end of the excavation by juggling rocks with his four hands. Something struck the giant, and he eyed Flinx appraisingly.

“How about sending out your property as a decoy? It would tell us if they’re too busy with each other to bother us.” He hurried on before Flinx could reply. “There’s a chance the Otoid will be so fascinated by him that they’ll take him for a prize—he’s got four eyes, to our two apiece—and they’ll leave without risking any more dead.”

“No,” an angry Flinx replied. He said it firmly, so that there would be no mistake about it.

That did not keep September from arguing. “Why not, lad? You’ve admitted he’s a burden on you. He’s obviously madder than a bloodhyper and no good to anyone, and he might even slip through, depending on how many shafts he can take.”

“Ab,” Flinx responded very slowly, “is an intelligent creature.”

September snorted. “It might save our lives.”

“He’s completely helpless,” Flinx continued tightly, “totally dependent on our judgment. Furthermore, Ab trusts me. I wouldn’t send him out there”—he gestured down the tunnel—“any more than I would a crippled cat.”

“I was afraid of that.” September sighed, looking over at Hasboga. “Our young lad is an idealist.”