Starhammer

by Christopher Rowley

  "I mean it, I know where there's a mote!" Jon could feel the chords standing out in his neck.

  The youth gurgled in mirth. "Now I know you're lying. The motes were all found centuries ago, all were sold offworld. Be quiet, be thankful you're to keep your stones!"

  "One has returned."

  "Oh, really!"

  "Yes. Really."

  Perhaps the certainty in his voice did it, but the attendant finally gave him a long, hard look. "If I tell her that you said this and it turns out you lie, it will go badly with me. She's extremely vindictive."

  "Who is?"

  "Doctor Dawl, of course, who is due to blind you in a few minutes."

  "Tell her to put me under with Hypnogen. If I lie she can go ahead and take my eyes. If not she'll see that I don't lie."

  The youth flapped his hands. "She will also see where this treasure of yours is located, so she will simply blind you for Bompipi and go and collect it herself. Believe me, she has little sympathy for her fellow human beings. She will make sure to collect what she can on you."

  "She will never get close to the treasure without me. Go, tell her, but make sure Bompipi is gone first."

  Another long look followed.

  "You are from offworld, aren't you? And you sound like you arrived pretty recently." He sighed. "Well, maybe you do know something."

  The attendant left the room. He returned shortly in the wake of a woman with dark hair pulled back under a medical cap. She had a thin, bloodless face, large protruding eyes, and plump, well-fed lips. Jon could easily imagine her sucking the blood from her victims.

  She examined Jon carefully. "Why are you lying?"

  "I'm not, use the Hypnogen. Find out for yourself."

  "Hypnogen, eh? I suppose even that might seem preferable to blindness and the loss of one's tongue. You are going into a new world, my friend." She chuckled. "Bompipi told me of your amusing future. Perhaps you should be thankful both for the loss of your eyes and your tongue. Eh?" She gurgled maliciously.

  "No one can lie under the effects of Hypnogen, you know that."

  "It might kill you, though, and then what would I be? Several thousand credits out with Bompipi, who gives me so much work. No, why should I take that risk on some harebrained dream?"

  "Should you succeed in possessing the mote, Rhapsodical Stardimple, you would become one of the wealthiest persons in the Galaxy. You could have a whole world in exchange."

  Doctor Dawl's eyes were like telescopes zeroing in on that extravagant possibility.

  "Just a moment," she said, and turned to consult a computer console on a cabinet by the door. A moment later: "That is not a known mote, but the computer says it is a predicted mote. One of a group thought to inhabit the Equatorial Machine Belt. You might have easily invented this."

  She studied him briefly, made a quick decision. "Most men in your position come up with absurd offers, quite understandable, of course. Well, you look healthy enough; you can probably stand a dose of Hypnogen. And if you speak the truth, there will be wealth indeed. And if not then nobody will miss the extra hour."

  She turned to the attendant and snapped, "Prepare me a syringe of Hypnogen!"

  They brought him round about an hour later. He was still suffering the side effects of the Hypnogen. Everything blanked occasionally to gray. Sound became mud, he could barely understand human speech. Walking was not going to be easy either. Waves of nausea passed through him without warning, mucus streamed from his mouth and nose.

  But he could see! His eyes were still whole. Gratefully he felt them and had another shock. His hands and feet were free! He had barely reacted to that thought when he discovered something strapped to his ankle. He reached down and discovered a stout leather strap with something round embedded in the leather opposite a locked clasp.

  Doctor Dawl spoke from behind him. "A charge of explosive is attached to your foot. On a strap on my wrist, I carry the transmitter to the detonator. Should you attempt to escape you will lose your foot. I do not believe your new owner will be overly concerned about whether you still have both feet."

  The attendant called from the door. "Bompipi is on the line. He wants to know what the holdup is."

  "Tell him I had another case, a priority—emergency surgery, anything—and that he will get his slave back soon enough."

  She turned to Iehard and injected a stimulant to override the effects of the Hypnogen.

  "Dress in these clothes." She handed him some robes. When he had complied she said, "Come, lead me to the hotel. I want to see this mote at closer hand."

  He watched her put an automatic handgun and a refrigerated specimen jar into a small bag that she slung over her shoulder. They rode in a rickshaw down the Grand Levee and climbed out on the forecourt of the Hotel Travel Aires.

  The hotel was as before. Guards marched about noisily, guests moved timidly between them. At the desk Jon asked for the keycard to his room. Doctor Dawl was to wait there while he tried to decoy the mote into her trap. She carried a special stunner, charged to paralyze motes, and the refrigerated specimen jar would serve to keep the captive mote dormant at low temperature.

  But to his consternation Jon learned that the expedition had checked out and that the Superior Buro had visited the hotel within the hour. Everyone was still abuzz from the spectacle of laowon operatives abroad in the dangerous human quarters of the city.

  Doctor Dawl cursed disgustedly behind him. "Enough," she snapped. "We will return to surgery. Come." She gestured imperiously to the door. Jon looked around wildly, then punched the doctor in the face with every ounce he could put into it. She fell head over heels into a big potted cactus and he ran on into the hotel down some stairs and into a maintenance corridor as guard boots pounded in pursuit.

  He blundered into a kitchen filled with young people in white smocks and hats. They gazed at him in wonder for a moment. He ran through and on down another corridor. He tried another door, found another corridor. Guard whistles spread the alarm somewhere behind him.

  He needed a knife, a file, something sharp. There had to be a workshop or tool room beneath the hotel.

  There were sudden loud voices coming from ahead. He opened a door at random and ducked into a dark storeroom.

  The voices went past and dwindled. He was about to open the door again when a tiny voice went off about a foot from his ear and he jumped and whirled around.

  "Yes! We must hide, Emergency! Hide together!" It was the mote, Rhapsodical Stardimple.

  "Hello, Rhapsodical Stardimple. What's happened?"

  "Greetings, Mr. Iehard. Finn M'Nee said you were a traitor."

  "Finn M'Nee arranged for my disappearance. It's no wonder he called me traitor. But come, what are you doing here? Where is the Bey?"

  "I do not know! Emergency, an acute lack of energy. I had to recharge on a heat duct and when I returned to the rooms they were empty. I waited but then others came. Laowon. Superior Buro, I think. Yes! I hide. You hide. We hide."

  Jon couldn't suppress a smile at this motish interlingua. "That's right, Rhap, we hide.

  "But I've got to find something with which to cut this strap off my ankle." Iehard opened the door a crack. "It carries an explosive charge which will be detonated by the slavers."

  He tried other doors, finally found a butchery. Knives, some of them exceedingly sharp, hung in racks. He selected a boning blade, thin and extremely sharp, that he could force under the strap and turn.

  The little knife was horribly sharp, the blood began to run almost immediately. He continued sawing. The strap was damnably tough, and he was sweating in streams. In his mind's eye the guards were using a stimulant aerosol to bring Doctor Dawl around. Her first action would be to reach for the stud on her wrist.

  Blood was flowing copiously by the time he finally sawed through the thing and hurled it away the length of the room.

  Then he sat down and tried to staunch the bleeding.

  Rhap Dimple appeared. "If require medical supplie
s, look in other room where I hide. I floated beside containers of supplies. You are spilling necessary functional fluids."

  Jon followed the mote into the corridor, looking cautiously up and down for guards. Just as he closed the butchery door there was a sharp detonation and objects struck the inside of the door with considerable force. He imagined Doctor Dawl's vindictive features as she triumphantly stabbed the button.

  Jon was still trembling a little as he applied the bandage and sprayed antiseptic on the cuts.

  When he finished he turned to the mote. "I think we must go on the offensive at once. Certainly we don't want to stay here any longer. Presumably the slavers will continue to hunt me. Even worse, the Superior Buro is awake and that is very dangerous."

  "What do you suggest?"

  "First I would like to repossess my gun and, perhaps, to settle a score. Once I can find some different clothes."

  "Yes! I am ready!" The mote sounded ready indeed. But Jon knew that he couldn't let Rhap Dimple fly in the open in Quism without garnering extremely unwanted attentions.

  The mote hovering at his shoulder, he searched the basement rooms, until he found one packed with hotel uniforms including ceremonial capes in plastic sacks hanging on long rails. He found pairs of black boots on a rack. After trying several pairs he finally found some that went over the bandage and still fit reasonably well. He clothed himself in trousers of twill and matching shirt and ceremonial cape. Then he grabbed the mote in one hand—the mote was warm to the touch, smooth and hard in his palm—slipped it under the cape, and quietly walked up a back passage to the ground floor. People were yelling in loud voices somewhere at the front of the hotel. All the windows were barred and the doors were locked. He continued on down the hotel's corridors until he found a group of elevators.

  Jon waited, anxiously looking up and down the corridor. If the guards saw him from a distance they might take him for one of their own. But if they came close they must penetrate his slim disguise.

  An elevator opened. A leathery-skinned, mutant Japanese pushed out a pair of laundry hampers. Jon slipped aboard and descended to a subbasement marked DELIVERY. He came out into a wide space filled with drays and delivery carts. Gang bosses and laborers were busy moving goods onto freight elevators. The guards in a booth farther down the wall noted his uniform and looked past him. He headed up the exit ramp and out onto an alley that fed into the Grand Levee.

  He stopped a couple of native Quiz to ask directions and soon found the slavers' alley, near the junction of Razevkoy Prospect and the Grand Levee.

  Bompipi's establishment lay behind a front of marble bas reliefs depicting lurid sexual acts. The door was of imitation wood and brass. The narrow windows were of thick purplish glass. As he pushed it open and entered the shopfront, a bell rang in the backroom. Jon released the mote, which flew up close to the ceiling and hovered.

  Then with a jaunty smile he greeted Bompipi. At the sight of him Bompipi's eyes almost popped out of his head.

  "What! Well, well, well, how wonderful. Your foot was undamaged after all. I knew that woman was lying; she'll get no more business from Bompipi, that's for sure. So, you're back, excellent. Madam Proopune will be so relieved. I'll just call Og Uk to carry you in."

  "I wouldn't trouble yourself," Jon said.

  "It's no trouble, no trouble at all. Be calm, compose yourself, Og Uk will be with us in a moment." Bompipi pressed the alarm bell.

  Heavy feet stamped up stairs and the huge form of Og Uk thrust through the doorway.

  "Seize him!" Bompipi said.

  Jon backed away. Og Uk came on, a silly grin on his huge, bland face.

  "You're making a mistake," Jon said.

  Bompipi chuckled indulgently. "Am I? Making a mistake? What do you know about mistakes? She gave you Hypnogen, she said. It seems to have addled your brains. I'll give her Hypnogen! Hah ha, that will be some fun. She's played Bompipi for the fool once too often."

  And then the mote hurtled down on Og Uk's head, striking such a heavy blow that the giant sank, stunned, to its knees. Jon coolly kicked Og Uk in the throat with as much force as he could muster and then advanced on Bompipi.

  The slaver's eyes were stretched wide as he stared at the glossy green mote hovering in the room. "Great Sandgods of the Mighty, it is a—" Iehard leveled him.

  A quick search of Bompipi's premises revealed the longbarreled Taw Taw and a lot else besides. Bompipi had mounds of human clothes and possessions stacked in his storerooms. Jon found his space jacket and he also pocketed a beautiful hunting knife with a monofilament edge so sharp it cut easily through wooden doors, even pieces of metal. The blade retracted within the handle at the press of a button.

  With the knife he cut into a strongbox that disgorged wads of Laowon Mercantile notes. Jon pocketed them and, after tying up Bompipi and Og Uk with their own cuffs, he set off for the caravan garages that surrounded the Meridian Gate. It was time to get out of Quism.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  After stopping at an expeditioneer's outfitting yard, Jon moved on down the Grand Levee toward the Meridian Gate. He now wore stout desert boots and a suit of wind-resistant polyfiber. His headgear was a tight-fitting windcap with sun- and wind-goggles and blast flaps.

  In addition to the Taw Taw longbarrel that he'd recovered at Bompipi's, he wore a Bahnkouv .330 assault rifle on his shoulder. For it he carried four clips of explosive shells and eight of antipersonnel soft jackets. On the back of his belt he had two satchel charges, two antipersonnel grenades, and his binoculars. On his wrist he wore a sophisticated computer radar/radio that strapped on next to the chrononavigator.

  With the mote hidden inside his desert-rate topcoat and the monofil knife in his boot, Jon felt like a walking armory as he moved through the crowds and dust.

  Hydrogen-powered IC engines roared steadily from the garages clustered along the last stretch of the levee. As he got closer, the smell of the night air outside the city, cold and laced with oil fumes, filled his nostrils. A hive of activity surrounded the gate portal.

  Expeditions were gathered on the forecourts of commercial garages. Groups of vehicles were loaded, then moved down the levee on their rubber skirts, engines whistling, and out through the relatively narrow portal about four hundred meters away. Above the portal the roof rock of Quism was blackened back to the lightbars. Metal inspection walks climbed the walls.

  On the first walk, three meters above the roadbed, Jon noticed a tall figure in a laowon-cut military uniform. Instinctively he ducked aside into the shadows cast by advertising panels surrounding the forecourt of the Desert Beater garage. A pair of squat four-seater mantids were being loaded on the concrete apron. A dozen figures in buff-color desert wear were gathered about another, much larger craft with heavily ablated front windows and nose cone.

  Iehard checked the portal through his binoculars. A tall blue figure in Superior Buro uniform was filming the departing caravans. Jon made out a pair of human-sized figures standing behind, guarding him in the shadows.

  Clearly Superior Buro were in action, but with only their local forces. Jon however could easily imagine the frantic activity in the sector fleet if the local Buro had indeed picked up a trace of Eblis Bey. He had to move fast before reinforcements appeared.

  However, the laowon's equipment would most certainly be primed with his likeness. He doubted he could pass by the camera without its alerting the Superior Buro.

  Jon replaced the binoculars and considered the antipersonnel grenades.

  A few minutes later a figure in desert khaki slid along the rock wall beneath the catwalk on which stood the laowon. Suddenly something small and dark was lobbed onto the walk. The man in desert garb ran back into the shadows.

  A deafening crack resounded in the portal space, and where the laowon and his camera had been, there bloomed a white-and-pink fog of vapor and hot smoke. Pieces of the three figures rained down inside the portal for several seconds.

  Jon secreted himself in the shadows of
a side alley between two garages. A few moments of near silence pervaded the levee. The explosion had been shockingly loud and unexpected. All had noticed the laowon officer and discussed his presence and unusual activities. Now they stared.

  After a full half minute a few crept cautiously forward to examine the remains. They poked about, but in truth there was little to be found in the mess. They returned to the garages. A babble of conversation followed that lasted less than a minute before engines roared and expeditions headed out the gate, in their haste to get away before the inquiries began they passed directly over the bloody fragments.

  Reassured that the ancient manners of Quism had prevailed once more, Jon entered the forecourt of the Chequered Mutant garage and quickly arranged to hire a stout four-seat mantid and driver, a grim, taciturn fellow named Braunt. After a brief bout of haggling, Jon paid with Bompipi's cash, torn between his desire to conserve the cash and the powerful urge to get out of Quism before the Buro arrived in force.

  A few minutes later Braunt eased the mantid off the forecourt and, with lights blazing, they whistled out through the portal, heading south directly for Fort Pinshon, which sat astride the junction of the two major treasure trails, the North Coastal and the old Oolite. There Jon hoped to catch up with Eblis Bey. If he missed the Bey there, Jon knew only to do what Rhap Dimple knew, which was to head south into the equatorial dust belts. Of course Braunt would not go farther than Fort Pinshon, but Jon could hire another driver there, one of the deeper desert specialists. However, when he asked Braunt if such drivers would be willing to go as far as the equator, the gaunt man gave him a startled look.

  "Nobody goes that far, there's nothing down there but the worst mutants and dust."

  "Where does the Oolite trail go then?"

  "All the way down to the Tropical Boneyards, at the southern tip of Bolgol's Continent. But that's all north of the worst dust. Only idiots and archeologists go down off the continental shelf. You look it up on the computer, it'll show you. The chances of dying out there go up dramatically once you move off the trails either inland or down onto the seabeds."