“I escaped.” She inhaled deeply, as if the cool air in the room was an unexpectedly rich dessert. “Got away.”
“I didn’t think you ended up there by choice. You weren’t dressed right. Alaspin’s not a forgiving place.”
“Neither were the people I was with. What did you say your name was?”
“Didn’t, but it’s Flinx.”
“Just Flinx?” When he did not respond, she smiled slightly. It was beautiful to see. “All right. I know there are limits to questions in a place like this.” She was trying to act tough. At any moment she might start cursing him—or burst out crying. He sat quietly, stroking the lethal creature snuggled in his lap.
“You said you escaped. I thought maybe your vehicle had broken down. Who’d you escape from? I’d assume whoever beat you up.”
Her hand moved instinctively to the half-healed bruises beneath her left shoulder. “Yes. It doesn’t hurt as bad now.”
“I’ve been giving you first aid,” he explained. “I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to take care of others as well as myself. My resources were as limited as my knowledge, I’m afraid. You were lucky. No broken bones, no internal injuries.”
“That’s funny, because it feels like everything inside me is busted.”
“Whoever worked you over didn’t want to kill you. What did they want?”
“Information. Answers to questions. I told them as little as I could, but I had to tell them something . . . So they’d stop for a while.” Her voice had grown small. “I didn’t tell them everything they wanted to know. So they kept at me. I feigned unconsciousness—it wasn’t hard, I’d had plenty of practice. Then I got away from them.
“They had me in a place out in that jungle somewhere. It was at night, and I made it to the river. I found a broken log and just started drifting downstream. I had no idea it was so far from anyplace.”
“I found you high up on a beach. You’d dragged yourself out of the water.”
She nodded. “I think I remember letting go of the log. I was losing my strength, and I knew I had to get to dry land or I’d drown.”
“You’d be surprised how far you crawled.”
She was looking down at her hands. “You said I’ve been out for several days.” He nodded as she turned her palms up, inspecting the scoured skin. “I guess you’ve done a good job on me. Thanks. I can’t say that I feel good, but I feel better.”
“Several days’ rest is good medicine for any injury.”
“I woke up and saw you lying on the other bed, and I thought they’d found me. I thought you were one of them.” This time she did not smile. “I had the little knife. It fits inside the middle of my boot. That’s how I got loose. Not much use against a bunch of people, but against one sleeping man . . . I was going to cut your throat.”
“Pip would never have allowed it.”
“So I found out.” She eyed the flying snake wrapped around the bedpost. “When it came at me, I tried to get out the door. It’s sealed both ways. That’s when I started screaming, but nobody came to see what was happening.”
“I sealed the door because I don’t like interruptions when I’m sleeping.” Reaching behind the headboard, he brought out a thin bracelet and touched a stud set flush with the polished surface. The door clicked softly. “I bring my own lock. Don’t trust the ones they rent you. As for your screaming, this is a pretty wide-open town. Not a place where people interfere in their neighbors’ business. Hard to tell sometimes why somebody’s screaming.” He slipped the bracelet on his wrist. “Ever seen a picture of a body ravaged by millimite bugs?”
She looked down at her legs, then ran her fingers along the almost vanished welts. “These?”
He nodded. “They feed subcutaneously. They’re not very big, but they’re voracious and persistent. The first thing they do is eat their way to where the muscles are attached to the bone. They cut through the legs first. Then, when their prey can’t move anymore, they settle in for a leisurely month or so of eating.”
She shuddered anew. “Here I am throwing questions at you right and left, and I haven’t really thanked you.”
“Yes you did. A moment ago.”
“I did?” She blinked. “Sorry. My name. I haven’t told you my name.” She brushed at her short blond hair. He wondered what she would look like with a professional patina of cosmetics on that exquisitely sculpted face. “I’m Clarity. Clarity Held.”
“Pleasure to meet you.”
She laughed, a little less uneasily this time. “Is it? You really don’t know a thing about me. Maybe if you did, you wouldn’t think it such a pleasure.”
“I found an injured human being lying exposed to the jungle. I’d have picked up anyone under those circumstances.”
“I’ll bet you would have. Come on,” she chided him, “how old are you, really?”
He sighed. “Nineteen, but I’ve been around a lot. Listen, what’s this all about? Who beat you up and why were they holding you against your will?”
Suddenly she was looking around the room, ignoring his questions. “Is there a bathroom in this place?”
Flinx put a damper on his curiosity and nodded at the holo of an icy fountain off to the left. “Behind there.”
“Is there a bathtub?” There was an edge in her voice. He nodded, and she smiled gratefully. “About time things started evening out. From hell to heaven in one waking breath.” She rose and started toward the holo.
“Wait a minute. You haven’t answered any of my questions.”
“I will. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. After all, I owe you my life.” She glanced back at the doorway. “You sure no one can get in here?”
“I’m sure. Even if they did . . .” He nodded in Pip’s direction.
“All right. I should be working on getting out of here, on getting off this world. Because I’m sure they’re looking for me right now. But I feel, like something that just crawled out of a sludge pit. If I don’t clean myself up, I won’t be able to stand me long enough to answer your questions. Bath first.” She smiled to herself. “There’s always time for a bath.”
He leaned back against his pillow. “If you say so. Nobody’s after me.”
“That’s right,” she murmured thoughtfully. “Nobody is after you. Do you think you can help me get away from here? Away from this town? What’s the name of this place, anyway?”
“Mimmisompo. You didn’t come through here?”
“No. I was on a big skimmer, for a long time.” She frowned. “Alaspinport, I think. They brought me down drugged, and we got right in the skimmer. I was pretty much out of it except when they brought me around to answer questions. I’ll explain everything I can, tell you all I can remember, but later. Right now a hot bath would be just about the most wonderful thing imaginable.”
“Then go ahead and indulge. I’ll keep an eye on the door.”
She took a step toward him, then hesitated. “Nice to have a friend here.” A quick turn and she was through the holo that closed off the bathroom from the rest of the apartment.
Her passage automatically turned off the image, and she did not bother to reset it, her mind on nothing but the bath. Moments later the sound of running water reached him. Hands behind his head, he lay back on the bed and contemplated the ceiling. Strange. One would have thought she had had enough of water in the river. The peculiar regard women held for hot water was something he did not understand.
By rolling over and stretching ever so slightly he could see her sitting on the edge of the diamond-shaped tub. She was lightly sponging herself. It was hard to estimate another’s inhibitions without first knowing her world of origin, social status, and religious inclinations. She looked up suddenly and saw him watching her, and she smiled. Not invitingly but not mockingly, either. Simply a pleasant, relaxed smile.
Knowing that did not keep him from turning away in embarrassment. Then he was angry at himself for doing so. Pip looked up curiously while Scrap explored the pile
of blankets where Clarity had slept. The flying snake reacted to his every emotion, not only those that were threatening.
Clarity Held rose from the bath and begin drying herself. This time it was not necessary for him to stretch to enjoy the view. This time he deliberately did not turn away.
“That was heavenly!” Apparently the society in which she had been raised did not recognize the nudity taboo, a historical development on an as yet unknown world for which he was very grateful. She sang to herself in a voice that was only slightly off key, then put the towel aside without a suggestion of shyness and began to remove her clothes from the room’s autolaundry.
I have talked to the wise men of Commonwealth, Flinx mused. I have spoken with captains of industry and of alien warships. I have made contact when no one else was able with an artificial intelligence thousands of years old and kept my composure in the face of evils both human and otherwise. So why the hell can’t I have a sensible conversation with a single member of the opposite sex of my own race without bumbling and stumbling over every word?
He had heard about verbal seduction but had not the slightest idea where to begin. He wanted more than anything else to ingratiate himself so powerfully that she would forget about his age and start thinking of him as a man. He wanted to persuade her, to reassure her, to dazzle her with his resourcefulness and brilliance, to defuse her fears and activate her senses.
What he said was, “Bath make you feel better?”
“Immensely, thanks.” She was drying her hair now, fluffing out the blond brush, the single flanking pigtail bobbing like a cat’s toy behind her ear. He wondered who had performed the spectrum shift that had given her turquoise eyes. Surely that color could not be natural.
“If you plan on doing any more traveling around here, we’ll have to find you some more appropriate clothing.”
“Don’t worry. The only environments I want to experience between here and the shuttleport are humanxmade. I’m straightlining from here to orbit, if you’ll help me.” She nodded in the direction of the window. “They’re out there right now, wondering how I got away. Hopefully back along the river.” Her hands paused, and her cheerful expression abruptly darkened. A little terror crept back into her voice.
“You , said I left a long trail from the river onto the beach where I crawled out. They could find that. They’d know I was still alive.”
“I didn’t know you’d been kidnapped, so I saw no reason to take the time to obliterate it. But don’t worry. Even if they find it and interpret it correctly, the next thing they’ll do is start searching the immediate vicinity with a heat sensor and image processor.”
“They’ll see your crawler’s tracks, too. They’ll consider that I might’ve been picked up.”
“They have to find the place first. You clean and relaxed?”
“More or less.”
“Then how about some answers to my questions? Let’s start with who you are and why these people find you so intriguing.”
She started toward the window. Halfway there she thought better of exposing herself to the outside, privacy shield notwithstanding, and pivoted to head toward the dresser as she spoke.
“My name you know. I’m a division chief for an expanding enterprise. These fanatics picked me because I’m uniquely talented.”
For an instant Flinx went cold, then realized she had to be speaking of some other kind of unique talent.
“It’s a fantastic deal for somebody my age, just starting out. I supervise a dozen specialists, most of them older than me, and I own a piece of the profits. I mean, I knew I was better than anybody in my field when I was doing my dissertation, and I’ve proved it subsequently, but it was still an impressive offer. So naturally I jumped at it.”
“You have a high opinion of yourself.” He tried not to make it sound like a criticism.
It bothered her not at all. “Justified in the lab.” She was talking easily now that they were on a subject she was comfortable with. “It’s exciting stuff. I wanted to be out front. I could be making even more money elsewhere. Doing cosmetic work on New Riviera or Earth. You know, I had a chance to go to Amropolous and work with the thranx. They’re still better at micromanipulation than any human. Some of their work’s more art than science. But I don’t like heat and humidity.
“This bunch that grabbed me, they’re extremists of the worst sort. I’d heard about them before—everybody reads the fax—but I didn’t think they were any different from half a hundred groups with similar aims. Shows how little anybody knows. There was this young guy—” She looked away from Flinx. “—he was plated. I mean iridescent, like a tridee star.”
“Good-looking.” Flinx spoke emotionlessly. “Go on.”
“We went out a few times together. Said he was with port authority, which is why I hadn’t seen him around. Couldn’t get through company security, so we met outside. I thought I was falling in love with him. He had that ability, you know, to make you fall in love with him. He asked me to take a stroll topside with him one night. It was pretty calm upstairs, so I said sure.” She paused.
“You’ve got to understand that it was real exciting intellectually where I was working, but socially it was plasmodium. Just about everyone was a lot older than I, and frankly, none of them were much to look at. Physicality still plays an important role in interpersonal relationships, you know.”
Tell me about it, he thought. He was not happy with the turn the conversation had taken, but he had nothing to add.
She gave a little shrug. “Anyway, I think he drugged me. He was one of them, you see. The next time I saw him, he didn’t look so handsome anymore. Physically yes, but his expression was different. It matched his companions’.”
“Species?” He was thinking of the AAnn’s relentless assaults on advanced human technology.
“All human as near as I could tell. If they were alien, they had terrific disguises. They hauled me offworld. When I woke up, it was hot and sticky and somewhere out there, I guess.” She waved absently in the direction of the Ingre. “That’s when the questions started. About my work, how advanced it was, what the company’s plans were for future expansion and development, and a lot of basics like our lab layout and security setup and so on.
“I told them I couldn’t answer because everything they were asking me was covered by the Interworld Commerce Secrets Act. They didn’t say anything. They just turned me over to this one tall woman who started beating the crap out of me. I’m not a real brave person. So I started telling them what they wanted to know, as little as possible about each subject.
“I knew I’d keep telling them until I’d told them everything, and I had a pretty good idea what would happen to me when I’d finally answered their last question. So I made it clear one night and ran like hell. It was pitch-black, and things kept biting me and stabbing at me, so I went into the river and found my log and started downstream. I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. I just wanted to get away.”
“You’re lucky you made it as far as the river,” Flinx said somberly. “Alaspin has its share of nocturnal carnivores. The insects you know about.”
She scratched reflexively at one leg. “I woke up here, jumped to conclusions, and thought about killing you. Now I’ve had a bath, I feel two thousand percent better than I did the last time I was conscious, and you’re going to help me get off this world and back to my people. I’m sure they’re searching for me, too, but not around here. In addition to being well liked personally, I’m irreplaceable. I’m sure there’ll be a reward for my return. I imagine there always is in a situation like this.”
“I’m not interested in any reward.”
“No? You’re that prosperous, at your age?” He chose to ignore her slip.
“I have an inheritance. Enough for my needs. What about you? What makes you so popular?”
She grinned ruefully. “I’m a gengineer. In fact, I’m the best gengineer.”
His expression didn’t change. It di
dn’t have to for Pip to react to his emotional surge. The flying snake leapt from its position on the bedpost, flew once around the startled Clarity, and then settled abruptly back on the bed.
He turned away, unsure how well he had concealed his reaction. Not perfectly, it seemed.
“What’s wrong with your pet? What’s the matter? Did I say something to upset you?”
“No, nothing.” Even as he spoke he sensed the transparency of the lie. “It’s just that someone very near to me had trouble with some gengineers a long time ago.” Hastily he donned the innocent-child smile that had served him so well in his childhood days of thieving. “It’s nothing now. Just old history.”
She was either more perceptive or more mature than he thought, because there was genuine concern on her face as she came toward him.
“You’re sure it’s okay? I can’t change what I am.”
“It had nothing to do with you. What occurred all took place before you were born.” Now he smiled again, a crooked smile, confident she would not know the reason behind it. “Before I was born, in fact.”
No, neither of us was born when the Society began their experiments. You were already several years old when the experiment coded “Philip Lynx” came into the world with his DNA tossed like salad in a bowl. I can’t tell you that, of course. I can’t tell anyone. But I do wonder what you’d make of me if you knew what I was. Would you have any idea if I’m a good result or a bad one?
It would have helped had he grown up a scientist. Instead he had spent his childhood as a thief. It was difficult to tell which would have revealed his origin to him sooner.
Her fingers touched his shoulder. He stiffened, then relaxed, and she dug in gently, massaging. The hurt is deeper than you can reach, he thought, eyeing her.
“Flinx, you aren’t afraid of me, are you?”
“Afraid of you? That’s funny. I’m the one who dragged you out of the jungle half-dead, remember?”
“Yes, and I’m as grateful as anyone who owes her life to someone else can be for what you did for me. You will help me leave Alaspin before they find me again, won’t you? They’re mad but resourceful. Crazy smart. I’m not so sure they’re smarter than you. There’s something about you—I’m usually pretty good at slotting people, but you’re a total blank to me. You look like a gangly, overgrown kid, but you seem to know your way around.”
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