Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers

by Helena Puumala

  He sat up on the gurney, with Murra grinning at him in delight, still aware of Xoraya, Xanthus and the jini as they crowded around him in their disembodied forms, when the door to the room burst open and Mosse the Mage stormed in.

  “What’s going on here?” he shouted, then his eyes fell on Mikal sitting up.

  “You!” he yelled. “What are you doing awake? Are you the source of all the trouble I’ve been having with the Demon?”

  “Hardly,” Mikal replied, delighted with the normal sound of his voice. Murra and the jini had done good work! “I think that your problems with it are all of your own making!”

  “But how come you’re not comatose? The Demon came into my rooms snarling something I couldn’t understand, and insisting that I come here—it practically pushed me in this direction! And what do I find, but you sitting up awake, when you’re supposed to be deep under that mind-tangler drug!”

  He turned his eyes on Murra who was standing beside the gurney, the jini still entwined with him, but much less bright and shimmery than it had been.

  “You, boy,” he said, clearly unable to see, or sense the jini. “You must have been shorting him on the drug!”

  “Nonsense,” Mikal said, before Murra could protest his innocence. “The way these life-support systems are arranged, and how the drug is administered, there is no way he could have done it. The machine administers the drug. The drug just stopped working in my case, that’s all; if you’re going to go whining to Gorsh, tell him that!”

  “Whining to Gorsh!” Mosse was a fool enough to take the bait that Mikal had tossed at him. “You think that I’m a whiner, do you, now? You better watch your words, Federation man, or I’ll kick some butt!”

  “You, and whose army?”

  Mikal got off the bed, to stand on the floor in his full height, which actually was not all that considerable. He was a fine specimen of the human race, but not what, in the Federation, would have been termed a big man. But he was well-muscled, remarkably well so, considering that he had just spent a considerable time flat on his back, is the thought that was crossing Mosse’s mind. Plus, with his hair an unkempt mess, and clothes dirty, he looked wild, and dangerous. Mosse had the sneaking suspicion that he needed a weapon in his hands to deal with the Agent; it was smarter to swallow the insult—for the moment—and bide his time.

  He turned on his heels and left the room.

  “You cowed him,” Murra said out loud, grinning.

  “For the moment,” Mikal agreed. “It won’t last.”

  He ran the fingers of one hand through his filthy hair, including the Borhquan wedge at the nape.

  “There are washing facilities in the back room to the back room, I know,” he said. “Are there any clean clothes around, that might fit me, Murra? I’d love to get a bit cleaner, though I know that you and the girls, and Tere, did your best with what you had to work with on the beds. And Kati would laugh at me, and tell me to look at who’s whining about a clean body now!”

  “No offence taken,” Murra said smiling, and went to one of the back cupboards from which he fetched a clean shirt and pants, underwear, and a towel.

  The Citadel had laundry service, apparently, no doubt run by the chattels. Mikal grit his teeth as he took the items, and thanked Murra.

  “In the meantime, people and jini, try to think of how we can make the best use of this development,” he said on his way to the shower room.

  *****

  “You saw what happened,” Jaqui sobbed to Judd Gorsh. “You must have been following us through the tracers!”

  “I didn’t see what happened, girl,” Gorsh objected, trying not to grind his teeth. “I only saw what was on the map on the screen.”

  Thank goodness, thought Jaqui, and went right on crying, more pitifully, if that was possible.

  “I saw your two markers leave the dorm, and go to the empty lot to the south of us,” Gorsh said, trying to be patient. “You hung out there for a short while, talking, I suppose. Then you started walking again, towards the lakeshore this time. And then you stopped again for another short time, while Cilla fidgeted and moved about like a nervous child. And after that she suddenly took off running towards the water, and you, you idiot, you just stood there, for at least a minute, like you’d lost it! Only then did you start running after her! No wonder you never caught her in time—you weren’t prepared for what she did! She surprised you!”

  “Oh, I know! I know, I know, I know!” Jaqui was almost howling, so it was a good thing that they were inside Gorsh’s apartment, and not disturbing the peace elsewhere on his property. “I didn’t think that she’d do something like that! She must have been way more upset than even I realized. I tried to comfort her, to tell her that we’d fix things somehow, someday, but she must not have been listening!”

  She collapsed into a blubbering mess on the couch, and Gorsh wondered how he managed to get himself into these emotional scenarios with women. Milla had always been turning into a teary mess when she didn’t get what she wanted from him, even though normally she was a pillar of strength. Were tears the way women manipulated men to give them what they wanted? Mind you, he couldn’t blame Jaqui’s present state on any kind of a sly trick, not this time, since she had just seen her best friend drown herself rather than allow herself to be given to a dirty old man.

  “There, there,” he said ineffectually, patting her on her back, and handing her a handful of wipes with which to dry her tears.

  Her wild sobbing had sent the wetness down into her cleavage, and as Gorsh watched her dry it, he found himself thinking of her ripe young breasts, and feeling his body respond to the thought.

  “What if I console you in the bedroom?” he asked her, his voice gone husky.

  She looked at him from under her wet lashes, and surprised him by reaching for him.

  “Getting close might be just the thing,” she answered coyly, and let him undo the fastenings of her blouse.

  *****

  Lank dropped Shyla off at Seleni’s cottage early the next morning.

  Shyla had spent an uneasy night in Chrysalia’s room, on the edge of the bed, while the older woman slept beside her, having nightmares about the woman’s lace crystal claws. Those claws had saved her from a fate which terrified her, yet she did not feel very comfortable around them. They had sunk into her flesh to search for the tracer so easily; she had felt almost nothing, certainly no pain. Then they had sunk into the rodent’s body, lodging the tracer in it before the jini had sent the animal running to its death in the lake.

  Fortunately Lank had saved her by knocking on the door inside the bathroom which was between his room and Chrysalia’s, before sunrise, telling Shyla, when she answered it, that he would take her to the Wise Woman before the Bed and Breakfast awoke. Chrysalia had snuck her in through the back door and a back staircase (which she and Lank had scouted earlier) the night before, without anyone seeing her, and Lank wanted the girl to remain nonexistent, as far as the Inn personnel and guests were concerned. Not that Mikki or Yormo would have betrayed Shyla to Gorsh, but what people did not know they could not be expected to tell. And gossip always flowed around a place like Mikki’s; it was best to give as little reason for it as possible.

  “If someone sees me with her, like the security guy at the garage,” he muttered to himself while waiting for the girl to dress and use the bathroom, “I can always pretend that she’s my girlfriend. Though I think I’d prefer Jaqui for that. Or Ciela, of course. They have more spunk.”

  Seleni was up and about when they reached her cottage. She took one look at Shyla’s drawn face, and mixed a restorative drink which she insisted that the girl consume. Then she sent her to sleep some more on a pallet on the floor of her own sleeping room.

  “What am I going to do with her?” she asked Lank, with a shake of her head, when she closed the door on the sleeping girl. “She’s a nice enough lass, but she just has not got the gumption that living on Wayward calls for. This is not an easy world, a
nd won’t be, even if we manage to cleanse it of the taint. Now Jaqui, I could apprentice her, and teach her the ways of the Spirits, but, Shyla, I think not. She must have grown up in an easier environment than this one is.”

  “We can take her to Lamania, if we succeed in nabbing Gorsh, without blowing everything sky high,” Lank said. “She’ll be looked after, there. The Lamanian Social Services were created, I swear, to protect fragile flowers like she is. She’ll get implanted with a node, and will be able to go to school to learn to be useful to the Lamanian society, and the Social Services will pat themselves on the back for a job well done.”

  “Now, young man,” Seleni responded, wagging a finger at him. “A little less sarcasm, there, please. What you’re saying sounds really good, you must realize that.”

  Lank grinned unrepentantly.

  “Oh, I know. The Lamanian Social Services do a lot of good work. But they separated my friends Kati and Mikal, just in case Mikal was taking advantage of Kati! I’d like to see the man who could take advantage of Kati!”

  “That reminds me. There were quite the goings-on in the Citadel cellars last night, around the same time that you and Chrysalia were unmarking Shyla! The jini tells me that its actions to let the Federation Agent, this Mikal, take a look at the armoury which the Cellar Creature is hiding for Gorsh, forced them to pull the man out of his coma. So he’s now awake, and quite efficiently psychic, according to what the jini tells me, and knows about the armoury, and where it is.”

  “Whoa!” Lank exclaimed. “Mikal’s awake and had a look at Gorsh’s weapons store! Does Gorsh know about this? We need a plan if he does!”

  “So far, no. The jini number two was keeping an eye on Jaqui—I suppose that you noticed its absence from around your neck—and she kept Gorsh busy, or else sleeping, through the night. He must still be asleep since I haven’t heard otherwise from the jini.”

  “If I know Mikal, he’s already thinking of ways to put this development into good use. It might be tough, though; I wonder if the Creature that’s been imprisoning his mind and that of the Xeonsaurs can let Gorsh know, somehow, that he’s now physically loose. And what’s to stop Mikal from just walking out of there, now that he’s back in his body?”

  *****

  Mosse the Mage was the person who should have been keeping Mikal physically locked up in the back room, behind the laboratory. The problem with that was that Mosse was not a happy Mage at the moment, if he had ever been anything remotely resembling such. He had decided not to inform Gorsh of the commotion that had been going on in the cellars, and of its result, the fact that the Federation Agent had somehow come out from under the influence of Gorsh’s favourite potion. The Boss man had been so rude to him the time he had complained about Shyla and Jaqui. Plus, the difficulties he had been having with the girl in his living quarters, had not gone away since he had got the other females out of the cellars; thus, he was not feeling all that kindly towards anyone, including the man in charge. Let Gorsh find out about the Agent from the chattels who looked after the comatose patients and their underage companion; why should he run up to tattle about it, when the Boss never took his words seriously, anyway? Besides, the door between the laboratory and the back room was locked from the outside; what could the Federation man possibly do except stew in his own juice?

  “This lock is to laugh at,” Mikal said after he had examined it. “What with being able to see it with my ESP-sense from the inside, I could trip it with a rusty nail. Or any long, thin, metal object. This must date from the time when this building really was a citadel, if not from before that.

  “I hope that they’ve installed better locks on the armoury door, or is Gorsh counting on the murk-spewing creature to keep the curious and the weapons-greedy from penetrating his nasty stash? Heavens, this place makes my insides twist; it amounts to an idiotic mess of foolishness, and potential destruction!”

  “Llon would say that it’s what evil always amounts to,” Xoraya subvocalized. “That it can’t amount to anything more than that, since it’s a destructive force, always, in spite of itself dependent on the forces of life and growth.”

  “Thanks for that lovely bit of philosophy,” Mikal said, smiling in the direction where he knew Xoraya’s astral form to be. “Unfortunately it doesn’t help us in the least, right now. We still have to make some hard decisions about what to do. And unless I’m willing to lie back on that gurney and pretend to be comatose, there are going to be dire consequences, no matter the course we decide on. And, you know what? I really don’t think that I could pretend to be unconscious, right now, even if my life should depend on it. Murra, you and the jini just did too good a job putting me back together. I feel alive, incredibly alive, and I’m itching to act!”

  “Then you must act,” subvocalized Xanthus. “We must make use of the tools that get tossed our way, and your present health is such a tool. You must leave, and take the jini with you to clear off the murk around you as much as is possible. The three of us will survive, even as we have survived until now; Gorsh still believes that he has a future use for both Xoraya and me, and I insist on having Murra with me, or us, at all times. You’re disappearance shouldn’t make a difference to us—at least not a dangerous one. It’s Mosse who has to worry, I would think; he, along with the Cellar Creature, is supposed to be doing the jailing.”

  “I would vote for you getting the heck out of these cellars with the jini’s help,” said Xoraya, (if it can be called saying). “Then sneak away to find Lank and his companion, this Chrysalia. And the Wise Woman, Seleni, as well. She’s our ally, too.”

  “As is Jaqui,” Mikal added. “I suspect that we owe a greater debt to that young woman than we realize, and assuming that we get out of this, I intend to take her to Lamania to get a proper education, and a life for herself.”

  “You into rescuing feisty young women, Mikal?” Xanthus asked, with a facsimile of a crooked, if only mental, smile.

  “Oh I don’t mind gathering girls to the bosom of Mother Lamania,” Mikal replied airily. “And this time I don’t even have any ulterior motives, so the Social Services can relax, and leave her be.”

  “But Maryse will have ulterior motives,” Xoraya threw in. “She’ll be wanting to have her join her stable of efficient operatives, mark my words.”

  “No doubt you are right about that,” Mikal agreed. “But Murra, do we have anything around that I could use to pick this lock? If I’m to sneak away to join the others, leaving you here alone and defenceless, I guess I better get at it. I’ll try to send the jini back, once I’m at ground level. Up there I’m in my own element, and, especially considering my newly developed ESP powers, I should be able to stay out of harm’s way without the jini. And you people may well need it.”

  Murra produced a long, but not rusty, nail, and Mikal, thanking him, set to work. At the same time he sent a psychic call to the jini which had disappeared—to torment Mosse, and encourage the girl in his power, Mikal rather suspected. What ESP Mosse had, and he did have some, Mikal had concluded after coming into his own, was not of the sort that allowed him to be aware of the jini, unless the jini wanted to show itself to him. And the jini had declined to do that; it was having too much fun being the invisible rabble-rouser inside the Mage’s environment. As was thoroughly demonstrated by the armoury incident, the jini also enjoyed baiting the Cellar Creature, especially if his antics caused the Creature to take its anger out on Mosse. Perhaps that had been its aim in the armoury scenario, too, although the consequences had, rather, got out of hand. But as Xanthus had said, when you’re handed a tool you use it—Mikal grinned at the nail Murra had given him, as the lock sprang open.

  A quick good-bye to the Xeonsaurs, and a hurried hug for Murra; then he was outside in the lab, the jini beside him, letting him know that Mosse was in his quarters, fruitlessly arguing with the girl who had decided that she loathed him.

  “Watch it,” he told the jini, “don’t push things too far. You don’t want him to kill t
he girl; she has a right to a life just like anyone else.”

  But Mikal had little time to worry about that particular human being at the moment. With any luck, if he and his friends and associates succeeded in this operation, the girl would get a chance to live peacefully into old age. If they didn’t succeed, well, then all bets were off.

  He sprinted across the deserted laboratory, agilely avoiding all the obstacles, even as the jini kept a clear air bubble about him. He wondered how long it would be before the Cellar Creature assailed him directly; that was bound to happen before he made it up into the world above. He also wondered what time it was out there. The time of day would make a big difference to how he would conduct his escape from Gorsh’s holdings. It had been night-time, if he was not mistaken, when the jini had gathered the extra energy for the assault on the armoury door from the Nature Spirit, but that had been some time ago. If it was still night, it had to be getting into the hours before sunrise.

  The Cellar Creature attacked them on the stairs. It was the most sensible place to do so, Mikal had to admit, now that he was physical again. If the Creature could push him down those stairs, especially all the way into the bowels of the Citadel, he would end up seriously hurt, at the very least, and its victory would be assured. Thus the sudden, reeking gale of a wind which assaulted him from above, did not come as a complete surprise. The stench immediately reminded him of the Cellar Child on Vultaire which had almost entangled Kati permanently, and he braced himself to endure the discomfort of breathing horrible, stinking air. As he struggled, the jini compacted itself into a small form bathed in clean air, and settled on his nose, giving him some welcome relief.