by Allen Wold
His head was still fuzzy, but he knew where he was now. He had to get out of this hole. Whatever dragons were, they weren't insane like whatever had overcome him down here. He'd rather have a quick, clean death than the slow moldering end this place offered him.
The smooth wall of the tunnel had been broken here by his fall through the roof. He climbed the sloping surface laboriously, scrabbling for handholds, kicking toe holds in the hard soil. As he climbed, just to keep his mind from drifting back into the darkness, he wondered who had built these tunnels. How far did they go, what made them shiny and dark?
The intoxicating effects of the tunnel disappeared all at once as his head came up to the surface. Now was not the time to try to answer the questions he had asked himself.
He could not hear the dragon. He hauled himself up and out of the hole. He could not see the dragon. He walked slowly back toward his car. It had been nudged slightly off the road but was not damaged. The dragon was nowhere in sight, but the ground around the car was strangely marked. He got in, and the car started up with no problems.
Darcy had said, when she'd taken him to the streets of the Atreef, that Kohltri had a secret. There were more secrets here than she knew.
There were too many mysteries here, and all of them fascinated him, but he tried to put them out of his mind. The one mystery he was concerned with at the moment was the whereabouts of his father. He drove back to the city.
5
He returned the car to the rental agency, collected the major portion of his deposit, and met Emeth Zakroyan in the courtyard as he was going out. She had her jolter drawn, its short knobbed antenna centimeters from his chest. He wouldn't be able to draw his gun before she zapped him.
"Took me a long time to find you," Zakroyan said. "That was a pretty neat trick, dropping out like that. You must have had some help."
"What do you want with me, Zakroyan?"
"Come, come, let's not play games."
"You're the one who's playing, not me. What are you, paranoid?"
"Not at all. You've been snooping around much too much, and you have to go."
"If you've been checking me out, you know exactly what I'm looking for. I've not been secret about it."
"Just cover, pure foam. I know and you know and Solvay knows what you're really after. There's no use denying it. We had you pegged from the start."
Her delusions were complete, her mind was made up, and she wouldn't care even if she were proved wrong. She was determined to kill him, but her paranoia made her play the game instead of just doing it outright. That, Rikard hoped, would give him a chance to get away.
"Let's move," Zakroyan said, gesturing him out the front gate.
"Where are we going?" Rikard wanted to stall her, distract her, anything to give him an opportunity to take advantage of her madness.
"Just move it. If I have to use this thing on you, I'll have to carry you, and if I do, I'll play with you before I kill you instead of doing it cleanly, and you won't like that."
He went. On the street she walked beside him, keeping the jolter right at his side.
"Just what do you think I'm trying to do here?" Rikard asked.
"Don't be funny."
"I'm not. I want to know."
"You know exactly what you're doing."
"I have my doubts sometimes, but what's your version?"
"You're bugging me."
"And you're bugging me." He had trouble keeping the impatience from his voice.
"So what?" Zakroyan snapped. "What are you, some punk cop, trying to take Kohltri apart? I can't let that happen, Rikard Braeth, or whatever your name really is."
"What's Kohltri to you? You don't profit off the mines, do you? You aren't hiding from the law. Why should you care?"
"You know, you're not as smart as you pretend to be. Kohltri is a good place, no matter what you think of it. And yes, I do get a cut of the take. And no, I'm not hiding from anybody. I like Kohltri, dummy, and I'm not going to let you mess it up."
"I really don't want to, you know."
"The hell you don't. The first thing you'd do, if you had the chance, would be to get Solvay kicked out of the directorship. And the new Director wouldn't be me, but some outsider. And he'd start an investigation, and right there all the mine profits would disappear. And half the population would get rousted out. No more refuge, no more money, no more good times."
"Do you come down here often?"
"Whenever I can. Turn here."
They went up a short street, through a courtyard, and into a warehouse. They climbed the stairs set against the side wall to the second-floor offices and walked in on Leonid Polski going through the files.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Zakroyan cried. Her frustration and anger stuck out all over.
"Looking for someone," Polski said calmly. "Put down the jolter, Zakroyan."
"You're spying on me."
"How distasteful. No, I'm looking for the Man Who Killed Banatree."
"Liar. Get out of here. You have no right to be here."
"You forget where we are. This is Kohltri. The only right I need is the ability to enforce my actions."
"Will you shut up a minute?" Rikard snapped. The other two started, as if they had forgotten him. "Now, if you'll excuse me—"
"Don't try it," Zakroyan said, holding the jolter very close.
Rikard looked down at it, then remembered something Polski had told him. "Everything but a megatron, a magnum machine pistol, and a blaster, right?" Rikard asked him.
"Right," Polski answered.
Rikard moved a trifle. The tip of the jolter touched his side; he felt a faint tingling but nothing else. Zakroyan's eyes widened in surprise. Rikard took the jolter away from her.
"I should have thought of that when she first stopped me," he said.
"I could have been wrong," Polski answered dryly.
"What the hell is going on?" Zakroyan demanded.
"None of your business," Rikard said. "You through here, Leonid?"
"Pretty much. Let's go."
Rikard tapped Zakroyan lightly with the business end of the jolter. She collapsed in a heap. He dropped the device beside her, then followed Polski out of the office.
"That's twice you've come on me now," Rikard said as they crossed the warehouse to the front door. "Are you protecting me, or are you following Zakroyan after all?"
"Pure coincidence. And bad judgment on Zakroyan's part."
"She's psychotic." They let themselves out of the court and onto the street.
"She never was very stable, as far as I know," Polski said.
"Which, of course, has only made her more dangerous. You want to press charges?"
"Against her?"
"Sure. Clear case of kidnapping. The whole scene was recorded. You were brought here against your will."
"But do those laws hold down here?"
"No, but you're still registered as a visitor, and as such, Federation laws protect you no matter where you are."
"Would the charges stick?"
"Possibly not, but they'd sure tie her up while it was all being investigated and tried."
"I'm surprised she doesn't fear you more than she does me. You can collect evidence anywhere. And Solvay needs to be investigated."
"I know, but there are regulations about what is admissible and all that. In your case, as an involuntary observer, everything I saw and heard is good. But if I went after Solvay, I'd have to have all the warrants and so forth or anything I got would be thrown out. Suspicion isn't enough. And I'm not after Solvay, though somebody probably should get on his tail."
"You're after the Man Who Killed Banatree?"
"That's right."
"But that happened seventeen years ago."
"It's taken us that long to trace his movements."
"And he's here?"
"We think so. Look, it's an interesting story, but too long to get started on now, and I've got things to do. I really was almost d
one up there."
"Sure enough. You know where I'm living?"
"No, but I know where Darcy stays. She'll tell me. When I get a chance, I'll come by and tell you the whole tale."
"Looking forward to it. Good luck."
"Same to you." Polski went off like a man with a lot of work to do.
6
Rikard stayed off the streets for the next three days. Partly he wanted to avoid Zakroyan. Partly he wanted to mink over what the hermit had told him and try to figure out what to do next. Darcy came by a couple of times to find out what he'd accomplished and to report on her own progress in raising some cash. And perhaps, he thought, because she wanted some company.
He had told Darcy about his meeting with the Belshpaer. She had been incredulous at first, but when he had described them in detail, she reluctantly believed him.
"I had heard rumors," she said, "that Belshpaer were occasionally seen far out of town near some of their ruins, but those reports were always made by loners and hermits whose word couldn't be trusted."
"They were probably telling the truth. But I thought the Belshpaer died out five or ten thousand years ago."
"As far as we can prove, they did, though there hasn't been as much archaeological study on Kohltri as the ruins deserve, of course. All we can prove is that the ruins that have been studied were occupied no more recently than five to ten thousand years ago, and that's really quite another thing."
"How come somebody doesn't come out here to study them?"
"Well, I did, and others have. But Kohltri is Kohltri. The academic types don't get along well here, in spite of the extensive ruins, and never come back for a second visit after they've had a taste of what it's like to live here. And there are lots of Belshpaer ruins elsewhere in the galaxy, and we know quite a lot about them from those."
"They had starflight then?"
"Oh, yes, and a technology at least as high as anything you can find these days, much higher than the Federation, in any event. They left ruins in all kinds of places. It's just that the most extensive ruins are here. They underlie almost everything."
"Seems like Kohltri would be an archaeological gold mine."
"It is, if the professors are prepared to deal with the citizens. Which, as you can imagine, they're not."
"How old are the Belshpaer?"
"I don't know when they started, but their peak as a galactic society came about the time humans made the first interstellar flight from Terra."
"That's old."
"It is indeed, at least in our terms. There are even older peoples, of course."
"Like the Aradka?"
"Exactly. And about them we know little more than that they existed."
"You really like this stuff, don't you?"
"I guess I do. I used to think I didn't, but it was the idea of academia I didn't like. The study of ancient races itself is fascinating."
She told him more about the Belshpaer but was unable to figure out how they had known his name or what they might have wanted him for. Neither could she explain what had happened to Rikard when he had fallen into the tunnel while escaping the dragon. Nor did she know anything about dragons, other than what was common knowledge.
She told him nothing about her own business except to say that things were maturing, and she would be showing a considerable profit in a couple of days, and without having to leave town as a consequence.
During those three days Rikard worked out a rough plan of his own, but he didn't want to rush into anything. He knew that he didn't yet know enough about life on Kohltri to be able to survive without a good bit of luck. And since luck, of course, could not be depended upon, he hoped to make up for any lack of it with caution and patience.
On the morning of the fourth day since his meeting with Sed Blakely, Rikard decided he'd waited long enough. He had reconciled himself to the idea that his father was dead, but he wanted to know for sure before leaving Kohltri. And besides, if there was more dialithite where Blakely's had come from, he wouldn't have to go back to the old hermit and try to take his share from him.
But one thing was clear. If he continued to ask for Arin Braeth, anybody who knew anything and was willing to talk would only be able to direct him back to Blakely. Everybody else would keep silent. It seemed, then, that the thing to do was to ask around about Sed Blakely, to see if that might lead him to his father instead.
He went back to Aben Arshaud's hardware store and found him in his office, going over invoices.
"Well, Rikard," the old pirate said, "how are you doing? Did you find him? You've been gone a long time. My God, boy, the day you left I kicked myself. I should have told you about the toll in Logarth, that village halfway there, but I guess you found out for yourself. What you should have done is gone off the road and circled around. A floater can do it easy. But I never go through there, so I clean forgot about it. What do you say, did you find your father?"
"Yes and no. I found the man who's been sending you letters all these years. Here's another one." He handed Arshaud the letter Blakely had given him. "But he's not my father."
"Sorry to hear that, boy. Must have hurt him real bad. I knew he'd changed, but not how much. You read this letter? Sure you did. So you know what it's been like. Pitiful, isn't it? What Blakely did to him must have been a real mind breaker."
"It was," Rikard said. He decided to be cautious and not correct the false impression he'd inadvertently given. "He told me all about it. Got left to the tathas, whatever they are."
"Tathas? Ugh, no wonder. That's a kind of fungus, Rikard. Grows down under the Belshpaer ruins. Didn't know I knew about that, did you? Well, I know lots of things. Those ruins are all that's left of a city that once covered the entire planet. You dig down deep enough anywhere and you'll find Belshpaer ruins. Can't live on this world for as long as I have and not learn that, not if you keep your eyes open and care to pay attention to what goes on around you.
"Anyway, under the ruins in lots of places there's this fungus. Don't know much about it except if you breathe the air around the stuff you start hallucinating, light hurts your eyes, you just want to sit down and wait for the end. And if you fight it, you go crazy. So if that's what happened to your father, no wonder he's not himself Nothing you can do, boy Except maybe go gunning for Sed Blakely, if he's the one responsible."
"Do you know where Blakely is?" Rikard asked when there was a pause in the flow.
"Want revenge?"
"Not exactly. It all happened too long ago. I'm like my father—not cold-blooded enough."
"What about your father? He want revenge?"
"The man who calls himself Arin Braeth only wants to be buried when he dies."
"Poor old sucker. Maybe I want revenge. But if you don't, what do you want to see old Sed Blakely for?"
"To get the other side of the story. And to get back what was my father's. He found something, and Blakely took it from him. That's why he left him with the tathas."
"What was it?"
"I don't know. The old man was babbling."
"Old man? Hell, he's a century younger than me."
"Old man nevertheless. Older than you now. Old enough to die soon. And incoherent. Maybe they never did find what he was looking for. But if Blakely's alive, I'd like to see him just once and try to find out what really happened."
"Oh, well, no harm in that. It's just, don't you know that Blakely was a friend of mine too once. Don't want to hand him over to his killer."
"I won't kill him, I promise you, if my word is good for anything."
"If you're Arin Braeth's kid, and anything like him, your word is all I need. Now I don't know where Blakely is. He never came back. As I see it, your father escaped from the trap Blakely had set up and did him in out there, wherever they'd gone looking for the treasure."
"My, uh, father didn't kill him," Rikard said.
"I don't know, can't trust a crazy man. Sorry about that. Well, you can go out there if you want to. Maybe he's dead
, maybe he isn't. I don't know where he is, but Pedar Gorshik does. He doesn't believe in any treasure, but he was the one who told your father where to go. Maybe he was in on the back-stabbing. No, I don't believe it. Gorshik's pretty dry, but he's not that way. You go ask Gorshik, he'll tell you where they went. After that I don't think I can help you. If Blakely is not there, nobody knows where he is. He didn't come back."
"Will Gorshik talk to me?"
"Sure he will. He doesn't care about Blakely. Never did like him much. Slip him a couple of bills and he'll tell you anything you want to know."
"Okay. Now where do I find Gorshik?"
"Not too sure about that. Haven't seen him in a couple of years. But go over to the spaceport and ask around there. They'll tell you."
7
Rikard was tense as he reentered the tourist section near the port. He didn't know what would happen if he were seen by somebody who had known him earlier. He didn't want to have to defend himself. He stayed clear of the places he'd visited. It hadn't been that long since he'd left.
The locals paid him no attention, but the tourists looked at him as if he were some kind of killer. Which he was, he reminded himself. Still, it felt strange to be on the other side of the fence. He didn't enjoy the looks of apprehension cast his way.
He stopped at a tavern he'd never visited before and asked the tender where he could find Pedar Gorshik. At first the tender just stared blankly, obviously waiting for a bribe. Rikard let his face go soft and smooth, pulled his gun out, and laid it on the bar. The tender blanched and gave him an address across the street from Rikard's old hostel. Rikard put his gun away, gave the man a small bill, and left.
He was going to have to run the gauntlet after all. There was no sense in putting it off any longer. He went to the hostel and found the day clerk on duty.
"Do something for you?" the woman asked.
"I'm looking for Pedar Gorshik." Rikard waited for the clerk to recognize him.
"Right across the street, shop number one, last I knew. Got something to sell?"
"No. I'm looking to buy."