Trouble Magnet

by Alan Dean Foster

  Energized by fear, the thranx had given up trying to injure his assailant with repeated kicks and was now using all six legs in an attempt to halt its backward motion. Only the smaller truhands still jabbed and poked at Subar’s face and body. With six strong feet now clawing at the ground and providing desperate resistance, progress toward the lake slowed. They were very close to the water, Subar saw. Once the thranx felt his rear legs sliding in, his defiance might collapse. A little help, and Subar was sure the fight would come to a rapid and favorable end.

  “Zezula!” he shouted without turning his head, needing to keep an eye on his opponent. Despite her broken nose, if she could just lend her weight to the effort, together they would have the thranx half submerged in no time. “Give me a hand! Just—help push! Zezula?”

  He decided to risk a look behind him. His jaw dropped.

  Zezula was indeed moving fast—in the opposite direction. Blood still streaming from her face, she was hanging on to Chaloni’s right arm as the two of them stumbled toward the cover of the thick native brush from which they had originally emerged. The gang leader held tightly to his recovered weapon but made no attempt to use it. Sallow Behdul was loping along behind them, occasionally glancing backward. Only once did he happen to meet Subar’s gaze. As he fled, the only visible hurt on the bigger boy was to be found in his expression. Of Dirran and the foot-dragging Missi, there was no sign.

  They’d left him, every one of them.

  Everything that had so shockingly and unexpectedly gone wrong with Chaloni’s carefully planned boost now accelerated. Unable to force the thranx in whose embrace he now found himself into the nearby water, Subar also discovered that he was unable to free himself. Behind him, the female had not only recovered her poise, but had also recovered her strength and was limping determinedly in her companion’s direction. Deep inside Subar, fright began to replace fight. Frantic now, he fought to free himself from the grasp of the thranx whom moments ago he had been gripping as tightly as possible. Truhands would not have held Subar, but seeing his companion intact and coming up behind the young human, the male thranx lifted his foothands off the ground and used them to grab the boy around the waist.

  Reaching out with one hand, Subar tried to seize one of his opponent’s sensitive, feathery antennae. Reacting defensively, the thranx slapped them both flat against the top of his head. Subar’s swipe gathered only air. At the same time, a front leg slammed sideways into the boy’s right ankle. Had a human executed the blow, it would have been described as a skillful judo move.

  Feeling himself going down, Subar forgot everything he had learned about street fighting. Laboriously acquired techniques were useless against adversaries whose vulnerable parts lay elsewhere on and within their bodies, and whose exterior was composed of a natural armor. Then the female arrived. Together, the two thranx began pummeling and kicking him. Their irate whistling and clicking filled his ears.

  Swinging and kicking wildly, he landed a lucky blow when one of his closed fists made contact with the male’s right eye. That at least was both vulnerable and unarmored. Letting out a shrieking whistle, the thranx momentarily drew back. It was enough to allow Subar to regain his feet. But the female was on his back, clinging to him with all eight limbs, refusing to allow her remaining assailant his freedom. An assaulted human would have been relieved to have escaped. Something in thranx nature, or maybe in just these individuals, demanded greater satisfaction.

  Swinging and spinning, he was unable to land a solid blow. Though she massed less than he did, her weight was enough to keep him from breaking into a run. Meanwhile the male was recovering from the blow to his eye and was stumbling forward to rejoin the fight.

  “All right, all right!” Subar howled. “That’s enough! Let go of me and I’ll go, I’ll go!”

  The female alternately whistled, clicked her mandibles, and chattered in his ear. Some of it was nothing more than noise to him, some of it must have been Low Thranx, and despite his exhaustion and fear he thought he also caught some terranglo. Only one word was short and taut enough for him to make out for certain.

  “No!”

  The park offered a visual respite from the emotional cacophony in which he was drowning, a sore and weary Flinx reflected, but not a mental one. He had spent the entire previous night in a state of emotional overload, wandering the streets of the city—some mean, some accommodating, none particularly attractive—without any destination other than exhaustion in mind. Having reached that, he had stumbled onward, only to find himself on the outskirts of Ballora just prior to sunrise. The park being much closer than his hotel, and no public transportation being within immediate range of his sight or hearing, he had considered using his communicator to call for a vehicle, only to finally pass on the notion with a mental shrug. From the pedestrian walkway he had followed a designated turnoff into the cool, silent confines of the vast public recreational space. Perhaps within its damp depths, he had mused unenthusiastically, he might encounter an emotion or two that would prove uplifting instead of generally depressing.

  What he eventually stumbled upon, both physically and mentally, was a situation as unusual as it was unexpected.

  At first his wide-open mind had perceived only more of the same common, depressing emotions, albeit less of them. The same general feelings of despair, of despondency, of anger and envy and paranoia that afflicted the very few late-night and, later, early-morning visitors to the park. What little hope and inspiration was present came from the park’s nonhuman inhabitants. The emotions they projected were at once infinitely simpler and more straightforward than those of the wandering simians he was compelled to call his cousins. Some flying creature projected nothing but subtle feelings of great joy at finding a bit of food, while a ground dweller’s atavistic delight in finishing the digging of a small tunnel shone like a tiny star amid the cesspool of bitterness and jealousy that radiated from a trio of drunken humans.

  Perhaps it would have been better, he thought as he struggled to work through the morass of mental misery that threatened to overwhelm him, to have been born a genetically altered animal instead of a human.

  That was when a burst of emotion flooded through him that was more powerful than anything he had felt since leaving the hotel. It was stronger than anything he had encountered on the busy streets, more dynamic and forceful than the loud confrontation between a woman and her lover whom he had stumbled past sometime after midnight. Halting, he strained to locate the source.

  At first all was fury and bloodlust jumbled up with fear. Fear, he noted with a mixture of interest and anxiety, that bubbled up from a pair of nonhuman sources. As he altered his route to track them down, the latter changed slowly and methodically from fear to determination. A lull in the emotional brew gave way with stunning swiftness to a flash outpouring of conflicting feelings in which fear, terror, anger, desperation, determination, and a raft of other complex emotions surged upward, crashing into and through one another like storm waves on a rocky coast. By now he had positively identified two of the sources as thranx. As he increased his pace Pip took off, tired of bouncing on his shoulder.

  Improvising a shortcut through a hedgeline of carefully maintained decorative undergrowth, he emerged to find himself confronting by far the most singular scene he had set eyes upon since arriving on this miserable world. Directly in front of him a youth was struggling in the grasp of two thranx. Though none of them was armed, a simple blade lay on the ground nearby. One moment the youth appeared to be struggling to reach it, the next he was slumping in the multilimbed grasp of his opponents.

  Off to the left, a group of youngsters were disappearing into a wall of dense park vegetation. Signs of a larger struggle were evident in the disturbed surface of the ground cover, a single but deep blast-mark on the winding, paved walkway, and the presence of blood in several places. Only human blood, he noted. If the bodily integrity of one of the thranx had been compromised, a lot more blood would be present; once violated, th
eir open circulatory systems tended to gush profusely.

  Though no further confirmation of the confrontation that had taken place was necessary, it was present in the still hyper emotions of both those fleeing and the three still engaged in combat before him.

  This was none of his business, he knew, though the involvement of thranx both puzzled and intrigued him. He hesitated, and even retreated a step back into the bushes. What finally persuaded him to do otherwise were the emotions spilling out of the young man sandwiched between the two active thranx. There was fear, yes, and anger, but more significantly, more involvingly, there was a youthful desperation, a hopelessness tinged with a burning desire to succeed, that reminded him of someone else he had once been intimately familiar with. Someone he had known a long time ago.

  Himself, at the same age.

  Besides, he chided himself as he strode determinedly forward, had he not made a life out of sticking his nose into other people’s business? Why change, why act rationally now, just because he found himself on yet another world, confronted by yet another crisis that had nothing to do with him?

  If nothing else, he decided sardonically, saving this kid should prove easier than trying to save civilization. And in the end, wasn’t it all one and the same thing?

  “Hey!” As he approached, he held up both hands, palm outward, to show that he was not armed. Gliding overhead on the warming air of morning, Pip gave the lie to that apparent declaration, but it was unlikely that either the struggling youth or the two thranx noticed her. Even if they should, Flinx doubted they would be familiar with the nature of a visiting Alaspinian minidrag.

  His own sudden appearance was surprising enough. All three combatants ceased their struggling as he came toward them. But the thranx did not let go of the younger human. Three sets of eyes focused on the slender approaching figure.

  Even in his exhaustion and distress, Subar managed to frown uncertainly at the tall youth coming toward him. Definitely not a cop, he decided. Not even undercover. Older than himself, but still young. Not park maintenance, didn’t have the air of officialdom about him. So what the hell was he doing? Stumbling onto an ongoing conflict in their midst, any sensible citizen of Malandere would have given it a wide berth. This stranger was heading straight toward one, waving his arms and—smiling. He did not look drunk or drugged, either. It made no sense. Out of the corner of an eye, Subar noted the presence of an unfamiliar flying creature circling overhead. After taking initial notice, he paid no further attention. The new arrival was now close enough to speak without shouting.

  The thranx who had battled their way out of the ambush gone awry were no less wary of him. Wary, but not fearful. For one thing, this new human was noticeably older than those who had attacked them. For another, he was manifestly not armed. And lastly, his mouth-flaps were curved upward at the corners in a sign betokening friendship.

  Then he spoke to them, and they both relaxed. Though not to the point of letting go of their remaining assailant, who continued to struggle futilely in their many-limbed grasp.

  Drivel, Subar thought. The longsong was speaking drivel. Or so he thought, until first one of his adversaries and then the other responded with matching drivel of their own. His opinion of the newcomer changed drastically. When communicating with thranx, the great majority of humans spoke terranglo, which their chitinous allies could speak well. In contrast, it was an unusual human indeed who could converse with them in their own language. And in the case of this stranger, not merely converse, but do so fluently. Without looking, it was impossible to distinguish the newcomer’s drivel from that being clicked and whistled by the two bugs. Subar would have been even more astonished had he known enough to realize that the stranger was speaking High Thranx, utilizing his hands as well as his mouth to communicate.

  If Subar was astonished, the thranx were at least surprised.

  Having furnished a terse explanation of what had taken place, the female demanded harshly—but respectfully—of Flinx, “Why should we let this thief go? We would not do so with one of our own. He deserves to be turned over to the authorities to face appropriate punishment.”

  Flinx considered. “I sense mitigating circumstances within him.”

  The two thranx exchanged a look. The male gestured expansively with both truhands. “You sense?”

  Flinx hurriedly rephrased his comment. “Better to say that I recognize hope in his essence.”

  The female bent toward Subar. As he struggled against her, the white tips of her antennae brushed his forehead. “I recognize nothing in this human’s face except dirt.”

  “Grant that I may be more perceptive, rr!ilkt. This post-pupa is, after all, of my kind.”

  “This one’s ‘kind’ transcends species.” The antipathy in the male’s voice was as unmistakable as it was intentional.

  “Nevertheless, I would appreciate it if you could see it in your hearts to grant him the clemency of the Hive. I ask this as one who is an honorary member of the clan Zex.”

  The thranx exchanged another hard look, accompanied by additional gestures employing both tru- and foothands. Trapped between them, Subar could not tell if they were conferring, arguing, or discussing the weather. Unable to free himself, he watched the stranger watching them. Why did this lanky stranger care what happened to him? Why had he intervened? Most important, what did he want? It did not occur to the youth that the newcomer might not want anything. For Subar, altruism was a term as alien to his existence as anything in High Thranx.

  Something made the stranger suddenly turn sharply and look to his right, off to the north. Reflexively, Subar strained to see in the same direction. His verbal reaction was automatic.

  “What is it, what do you see?”

  “Park authorities coming.” Flinx spoke without looking back at him. “Local police.”

  The announcement was enough to cause Subar to resume struggling. Though he had yet to sample the dubious delights of his hometown’s juvenile restraining facilities, he had heard all too many tales of what life was like within its superficially sanitized walls. Sallow Behdul, for one, had spent time there. There were worse fates Subar could imagine than ending up like Behdul—but not many.

  “I don’t see any officials coming this way,” the male commented. Both thranx were also staring in the same direction.

  “Nor I,” added the female uncertainly.

  “I have a, uh, different vantage point,” Flinx explained. He could hardly tell them that he could sense the approach of determined police long before they came into view, and that his exceptional perception had nothing to do with his height or his eyesight.

  “Prandahs, let me go!” Subar cursed desperately. It was, ultimately, more of a cry than a demand.

  A minute later the first municipal police could be seen heading toward the location of the abortive ambush. Traveling on individual transports, the dark dots rapidly resolved themselves into bipedal shapes. Turning her attention from the oncoming officials to the tall human, the female thranx addressed him intently.

  “They are coming from well below that far rise. How did you see them approaching?”

  Before Flinx could respond with a fresh evasion, he sensed a brief flash of murderous intent. All too familiar, it invariably presaged a more vivid physical response. As he ducked down behind the squirming youth and his pair of insectoid captors, the long-range shot that the quick flicker of emotion had foreshadowed singed the air where he had been standing a moment before.

  Startled by the shot, which struck both thranx as auguring a conspicuous recklessness on the part of those humans ostensibly sent to rescue them, the pair momentarily released their grip on the remaining attacker. Not one to waste an opportunity, Subar threw all his remaining strength into a successful effort to break free. Under ordinary circumstances, he might have been expected to bolt immediately for the cover of the thick vegetation that fringed the park. Instead he hesitated, clearly torn between what he knew he should do and what he felt he ough
t to do. The latter, imperfect feeling was enhanced by a powerful curiosity as to the nature, origin, and motives of the newcomer who had interceded on his behalf.

  Concerned that the only remaining potentially dangerous aspect of their present situation involved overzealous human police firing indiscriminately in their direction, both thranx dropped to their tru-legs and began waving all sixteen manipulative digits in the direction of the oncoming officers. Able to vocalize as clearly but not as loudly as humans, their shouted insistence that they were unharmed and okay was not immediately heard by their would-be saviors. Seeing the thranx they had come to assist scampering toward them, however, did cause those officers in the front rank to slow their personal transports to check on the health of the two visitors.

  Without the proverbial moment to lose, Subar came to a decision. Reaching out, he grabbed Flinx’s left arm and pulled.

  “Come on, come on! We’ve got to sky out of here!”

  The bright green eyes that met Subar’s own were full of tolerance. That, and something else. Muffled amusement, perhaps.

  “You mean, you have to get out of here.” As Flinx spoke, he raised a hand. This caused a rapidly descending Alaspinian minidrag to break off the power dive she had begun the instant the younger human had laid hands on her master. She circled nearby, restless and a bit bemused.

  “No, no!” What was wrong with this person? Subar wondered frantically. Was it possible he didn’t know anything?

  “The alarm the bugs set off will show that they were attacked by a bunch of young humans. You’re a young human.”

  The amusement in Flinx’s eyes vanished. “The thranx will explain to them that I—”

  “After you’ve been put down and taken into custody for questioning,” Subar interrupted him, still pulling on the visitor’s arm. “If they don’t shoot you first.” He looked anxiously to his left, where the first police to arrive had halted and were now conversing with the two thranx. “The cops here have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions—”