Flinx continued to study her as she took another sip of her steaming drink. She was almost beautiful, he couldn't help but notice-though any trace of softness was absent from her face.
Reaching to one side, she picked up an intricately carved cane. With this she was able to rise and limp over to examine them more closely. She favored her left leg.
"I am Teleen aux Rudenuaman. You are ...?"
"My name's Flinx," he responded readily, seeing no profit in angering this crippled bomb of a woman.
"Sylzenzuzex," his companion added.
The woman nodded, turned and walked back to resume her seat, instructing them both to sit also. Flinx took a chair, noticing out of the corner of an eye that the scarred woman called Linda was watching his - and Pip's - every move from her position by the door. Sylzenzuzex folded herself on the fur floor nearby.
"Next question," the woman Rudenuaman said. "How did you get past the Church peaceforcer?"
"We ..." he started to say, but stopped as he felt a delicate yet firm grip on his arm. Looking past the truhand, he saw Sylzenzuzex eying him imploringly.
"I'm sorry, Syl, but I've got an aversion to torture. We're not going anywhere and for the moment, at least. I'd like to ..." The truhand pulled away. He did not miss the look of utter contempt she threw him.
"Sensible as well as sassy," Rudenuaman commented approvingly. "I've been listening to you ever since you landed." The brief flicker of a grin vanished and she repeated impatiently, "The fortresses, how did you get past?"
Flinx indicated Sylzenzuzex. "My friend," he explained, ignoring the hollow mandibular laugh that flowed from her, "is a padre-elect currently working in Church security. She talked the peaceforcer into letting us pass."
Rudenuaman looked thoughtful. "The circumvention was accomplished verbally, then?" Flinx nodded.
"We'll have to see if we can do something about that."
"About a peaceforcer fortress?" Sylzeozuzex blurted. "How can you modify - in fact, how did you succeed in passing them? What are you doing here, with this illegal installation? This is an edicted world. No one but the Church or those in the highest echelons of the Commonwealth government have the codes necessary to pass a peaceforcer station; certainly no private concern has that ability."
The woman smiled. "This private concern does."
"Which concern is that?" Flinx asked. She turned her unfunny grin on him.
"For a condemned man you ask a lot of questions. However) I don't have the chance to brag very often. It's Nuaman Enterprises. Ever hear of it?"
"I have," Flinx told her, thinking that this search for his parentage was making him a lot of rotten business contacts. "It was founded by ..."
"By my aunt's relatives," she finished for him, "and then further developed by my Aunt Rashalleila, may a foulness become her soul." The smile widened. "But I am in charge now. I felt a change of personnel at the uppermost executive position was in order."
"Unfortunately, the first time I tried replacing her I chose for my cohort a man of muscle and no brains. No, that's not accurate. Muscle and no loyalty. It cost me," and she frowned in reminiscence, "s. bad time. But I managed to escape from the medical heH my aunt had me committ»d to. My second attempt was better planed and successful.
"It is now Rudenuaman Enterprises, you see. Me."
"No private concern has the wherewithal to circum- vent a Church peaceforcer," Sylzenzuzex insisted.
"Despite your security clearance, stiff one, you seem to cherish all kinds of foolish notions. Not only have we, with some help, I admit, circumvented them; but they remain in operation to warn off or destroy any visitors we do not clear.
"You can see why your sudden appearance caused me considerable initial worry. But I'm not worried anymore - not since you proved so cooperative in following our landing instructions. Of course, you had no reason to expect a greeting from anyone other than a bunch of surprised Churchmen."
"You have no right ..." Sylzenzuzex began.
"Oh, please," a disgusted Rudenuaman muttered. "Linda..."
Scarface left her place at the door. Flinx held on tightly to Pip; this was no time or place to force a final confrontation. Not yet.
The squat woman kicked suddenly and Flinx heard the crack of chiton. Sylzenzuzex let out a high, shrill whistle as one foothand collapsed at the main joint. Reddish-green blood began to leak steadily as she fell on her side, clutching with truhands and her other foothand at the injured member.
Linda turned and resumed her position at the door as if nothing had happened.
"You know she has an open circulatory system," Flinx muttered carefully. "She'll bleed to death."
"She would," Rudenuaman corrected him, "if Linda bad cracked the leg itself instead of just breaking the joint. A thranx joint will coagulate. Her leg will heal, which is more than you can say for what mine did after my aunt's medical experimenters finished with it." She tapped her own left leg with the cane. It rang hollowly. "Other parts of me also had to be replaced, but they left the most important thing," she indicated her head, "intact. That was my aunt's last mistake."
"I've only one more question for you." She leaned forward, and for the first time since the interrogation began seemed genuinely interested. "What on Tefra possessed you to come here, to a world Under Edict, in the first place? And only two of you, unarmed."
"It's funny," Flinx told her, "but ... I also have' a question that needs to be answered-"
Seeing that he was serious, she sat back in her chair. "You're a peculiar individual- Almost as peculiar as you are stupid. What question?"
He was suddenly overwhelmed by a multitude of conflicting possibilities. One fact was clear - whether or not she could tell him what he wished to know, he and Sylzenzuzex would die. As the silence lengthened, even Sylzenzuzex became curious enough to forget the pain in her foothand momentarily.
"I can't tell you that," he finally answered.
Rudenuaman looked at him askance. "Now that's strange. You've told me everything else. Why hesitate at this?"
"I could tell you, but you'd never believe me."
"I'm pretty credulous at times," she countered. "Try me, and if I find it intriguing, maybe I won't kill you after all." The thought seemed to amuse her. "Yes, tell me and I'll let you both live. We can always use unskilled labor here. And I am not surrounded by clever types. I may keep you around for novelty, for when I'm visiting here."
"All right," he decided, electing to accept her offer as the best they could hope for, "I came hoping to find the truth of my birthright."
Her amused expression vanished. "You're right ... I don't believe you. Unless you can do better than that..."
She was interrupted by a chime and looked irritably to the door. "Linda ..." There was a wait while the squat woman slid the door back and silently conversed with someone outside. Simultaneously something almost forgotten suddenly howled in Flinx's mind.
That was matched by a scream which everyone could hear.
"Challis," an angry Rudenuaman yelled, "can't you keep that brat quiet? Why you continue to drag her around with you is something I never ..." She broke off, looking from the merchant who was standing in the half-open doorway goggling at Flinx, to the red-haired youth, and then back at the merchant again.
"Gu ... wha ... you!" Conda Challis finally managed to blurt, like a man clearing his throat of a choking bone.
"You know this man?" Rudenuaman asked Challis. A terrible fury was building in her, as it slowly became clear how Flinx had found this world. She was only partially correct, but it was the part she could believe. "You know each other! Explain yourself, Challis!"
The merchant was completely out of control. "He knows about the jewels," he babbled. "I wanted him to help me play with a jewel and he ..."
Unwittingly, the merchant had revealed something Flinx half suspected. "So, the Janus jewels come from here. That's very interesting, and it explains a great deal." He looked down at Sylzenzuzex.
"Most obviously, Syl, it explains why anyone would go to the incredible expense and chance the enormous penalty involved in ignoring a Church edict."
A miniature, silvery voice exploded. "You colossal, obese idiot!" it half screamed, half bawled.
The already battered Challis looked down, shocked to see the ever-compliant Mahnahmi making horrible faces up at him. Flinx watched with interest. The merchant had finally done something dangerous enough to cause her to break her carefully maintained shell of innocence.
Rudenuaman looked on with equal curiosity, though her real attention and anger were still reserved for Challis. She was eying him almost pityingly.
"You are becoming a liability, Conda. I don't know why this man has come here, but I don't think it involves the jewels. Nor does it matter anymore that you've just given away the best-kept secret in the entire Commonwealth, because it will never leave this world-certainly not with either of these two." She indicated Flinx and Sylzenzuzex.
"But he's been following me, hauntiag me!" Challis protested frantically. "It has to have something to do with the jewels."
Rudenuaman turned to Flinx. "You've been following Challis? But why?"
The merchant yammered on, unaware he was providing confirmation of Flinx's earlier reply. "Oh, some blithering insanity about his ancestry!" Hs didn't add, much to Flinx's dismay, whether he possessed any further information on that particular obsession.
"Maybe I do believe you," Rudenuaman said cautiously to Flinx. "If it's an excuse, it's certainly a consistent one."
Better get her off the subject of himself, Flinx decided. "Where are the jewels mined? Up at that big complex on the mountainside?"
"You are amusing," she said noncommittally. "Yes, I may keep you alive for a while. It would be a change to have some mental stimulation." She turned sternly to face the merchant. "As for you, Conda, you have finally allowed your private perversions to interfere with business once too often. I had hoped ..." She shrugged. "The fewer who know about the jewels and where they originate, the better. But considering what is at stake here I think I have to risk finding another outside distributor."
"Teleen, no," Challis muttered, shaking his head violently. From an immensely wealthy, powerful merchant be had suddenly been reduced to a frightened, fat old man.
"And we'll have to do something about the whining brat-child, too," she added, turning a venomous stare on the silently watching Mahnahmi. "Linda … take them over to Riles. He can do what he wants with Challis, as long as it's reasonably quick. After all," she added magnanimously, "he was an associate of ours for a while. As for the little whiner, save her for after-dinner entertainment. We ought to be able to make her last a few days."
"No!"
Flinx felt himself lifted in the grip of a mental shriek of outrage. A tremendous force ripped through the room, tearing rugs and-furniture and people from their moorings and hurling them away from the doorway. Several of the thick pink polyplexalloy panels were blown out.
Flinx fought for control of his body, managed to come to a halt against a couch firmly anchored in the floor. Pip fluttered uneasily above his head, hissing angrily but unable to do more than hold his air in the face of the gale.
Hair flying, Flinx shielded his face with one hand and squinted into the hurricane.
Sylzenzuzex had been rolled skittering into a far corner. The guard, Linda, was lying unconscious nearby. She had been standing closest to the immense blast. Teleen auz Rudenuaman lay buried in a mass of thick fur rugs and broken fixtures, while the considerable bulk of Conda Challis bugged the fixed fur near the doorway and hung on for dear life as the wind pulled and tore at him.
"You fat imbecile!" the source of that pocket typhoon was screaming at him, stamping childishly at the floor. "You pig's ass, you jelloid moron ... you've gone and spoiled everything! Why couldn't you keep your dumb mouth shut? For years I've kept you from tripping over your own tongue, for years I've made the right decisions for you when you gleefully thought it was your doing! Now you've thrown it all away, all away!" She was- crying, girlish tears running down her cheeks.
"Child of my own," Challis gasped into the wind, "get us out of this and-"
"Child of my own."' she spat down at him. "I don't know the words yet to describe what you've thought of doing to me, or what you have done-not that it would matter to you. I can't save yon anymore, Daddy Challis." She glared around the room.
"You can all go to your respective hells! I'm not afraid of any of you. But I need time to grow into myself. I don't know what I am, yet."
She glared contemptuously back at Challis. "You've mined my chance to grow up rich and powerful. The Devil take you."
Turning, she disappeared, running down the corridor. "Someday," a mental shout stabbed fadingly at Flinx, "I'll even be strong enough to come back for you."
The wind died slowly, in increments. Flinx was able to roll over in the falling breeze and feel of his bruises. He saw that Sylzenzuzex had succeeded in protecting her broken foothand. Her hard exoskeleton had saved her from any additional injury, so that while the first wounded, she actually was the least battered of anyone in the room. Except for Pip, of course, who settled unhurt but disturbed on Flinx's shoulder. Only the force of the wind had prevented him from killing Mahnahmi.
Teleen auz Rudenuaman was more shaken than she cared to admit. "Linda ... Linda!" The guard was just regaining consciousness. "Alert the base, everyone. That child is to be killed instantly. She's an Adept."
"Yes ... Madam," the woman replied thickly. Her right cheek was bleeding and discolored, and she was wincing painfully as she touched her left elbow.
Rudenuaman tried to sound confident. "I don't care what kind of magic tricks she can pull. She's only a child and she can't go anywhere."
As if in reply, minutes later a dull rumble reached them through the broken window panels. Rudenuaman limped hurriedly to the transparent wall. Flinx was also there, in time to see something that he, alone of those in the room, wasn't surprised at.
Their shuttlecraft-and all remaining hope of escape-was shrinking rapidly into the sky at the end of the landing strip, a vanishing dot between the mountaintops.
"She ... she can pilot a shuttle," a dazed Challis was mumbling to himself.
"Quiet, Conda. Anyone can direct a craft attuned to accept verbal commands. Still, alone, at her age ..."
"She's been using me. Her, using me" Challis continued, oblivious to everything around him. His eyes were glazed. "All these years I thought she was such a charming, pretty little ... and she's been using me!" The laughter began to fall.
"Will you shut up!" Rudenuaman finally had to scream. But the merchant ignored her, continued to roll around on the floor roaring hysterically at the wonderful, marvelous joke that had been played on him. He was still chuckling, albeit more unevenly, when two guards arrived to escort him out.
Flinx envied him. Now he would never feel the beamer when they executed him. Shake a man's world badly enough and the man comes apart, not the world. First the sudden sight of Flinx, here, and then Mahnahmi. No, not even all the King's horses and all the King's men could put Conda Challis together again.
Rudenuaman watched until the door closed and then collapsed, exhausted, on a battered couch-one of the few left undestroyed by Mahnahmi's uncontrolled infantile violence. She debated with herself, then finally said, "It has to be done. Call Riles."
"Yes, Madam," Linda acknowledged.
Momentarily forgotten, Flinx and Sylzenzuzex rested and treated each other's wounds as best they could. Before long a tall, muscular man entered the room.
"I've been briefed," he said sharply. "How could this happen, Rudenuaman?"
Pip bridled and Flinx put a tight restraining grip on his pet. His own senses were quivering. Something he had sensed the moment they'd left the shuttle was intensified in this newcomer's presence.
"It could not be prevented," Rudenuaman told him, her tone surprisingly meek. "The child is apparently a psionic of unknown potentialities. She had fooled even her own father."
"Not a difficult task, from what I am told of how Challis behaved. He will be more useful to us dead," the tall figure said, swinging around to face Flinx and Sylzenzuzex. "These are the two captives who penetrated the defenses?"
"Yes."
"See that they do not also escape, if you can," the figure snapped. "Though if the child escapes to tell of what she knows of this place, it will not matter what is done with these two. This entire deception is beginning to weary me...." Then he reached up, grabbed his chin, and pulled his face off.
A gargled clicking came from Sylzenzuzex as the irritated not-man turned to leave the room. Flinx was shaken, too. He knew now what had been troubling him and his pet, since they had landed on this world. It wasn't just that the man turned out to be an AAnn- for that was a possibility he had suspected ever since he'd fished the image of Conda Challis and Ulru-Ujurr out of the reptilian infiltrator's mind back on Terra.
It was because he knew this particular AAnn.
But the Baron Riidi WW had never set eyes on Flinx, who had never strayed within range of the tridee pickup when the Baron had pursued him and the others on board Maxim Malaika's ship, so many months ago. Flinx, however, had seen all too much of that frigid, utterly self-possessed face, had heard too many threats pronounced by that smooth voice.
Riidi WW turned at the door, and for a moment Flinx feared the AAnn aristocrat had recognized him after all. But he'd paused only to speak to Rudenuaman again.
"You had best hope that the child does not escape, Teleen."
Though no longer conveying the impression of total omnipotence, the merchantwoman was far from being cowed. "Don't threaten me, Baron. I have resources of my own. I could make it difficult for you if I were suddenly missed."
"My dear Rudenuaman," he objected, "I was not threatening you. I would not ... you have been too- valuable to us- both you and your aunt before you. I would not have any other human holding the Commonwealth end of this relationship. But if the child gets away, then by the-sand-that-shelters-life this entire operation will have to be closed down. If a follow-up party from the Church were to discover this base and find that it is being partially funded and operated by the imperial race, that could serve as a pretext for war. While not afraid, the Empire would prefer not to engage in hostilities just now. We would be forced to destroy the mine and obliterate all trace of this installation."
"But it would take years to replace this," she pointed out.
"Several, at least," the Baron concurred. "And that is but an optimistic estimate. Suppose the Church should elect to patrol this system with crewed fortresses instead of gullible automatons? We could never come back."
"I was right," Sylzenzuzex declared with satisfaction. "No private concern does have sufficient resources to bypass a Church peaceforcer station. Only another spatial government like the Empire could manage it."
The Baron gave her an AAnn salute that suggested she had just won a Pyrrhic victory. "That is quite so, young lady. Neither would the Empire be concerned, as a private corporation might be, that your Church has placed this world Under Edict. What does concern us is that it lies within Commonwealth territory. Our danger in discovery lies in the diplomatic consequences, not in some imaginary devil someone in your hierarchy places here."
"You haven't found anything on this world to justify its quarantine?" Flinx asked, curiosity drowning his caution.
"Nothing, my young friend," the tall AAnn replied. "It is wet and cold, but otherwise most hospitable."
Flinx eyed the Baron closely, trying to penetrate that calculating mind, without success. His erratic talent refused to cooperate. "You're chancing an interstellar war just to make some credit?"
"What's wrong with money? The Empire thrives on it, as does your Commonwealth, Who knows," the Baron said, smiling, "it may be that my hand in this is concealed from my own government. What the arkazy does not see in the sand will not bite him, vya-nar?
"Now you must excuse me, for we have a runaway infant who requires scolding." He vanished through the doorway.
Flinx had dozens of questions he could have thrown at the AAnn aristocrat. However, while the Baron had not given any sign of recognition when replying to the single question, the danger remained that in an extended conversation Flinx might let some unthinking familiarity slip. If the AAnn ever suspected that Flinx had been among those who had cheated him and the Empire of the Krang, those several months ago, he would vivisect the youth with infinite slowness. Better not take a chance.
They stayed there waiting while Teleen recomposed herself from both the ordeal of Mahnahmi's escape and from the trauma of confronting the angry Baron. Flinx watched from a broken windoiv as a distant, concealed elevator lifted two big military shuttles from the ground beneath the landing strip. A single groundcar, no doubt containing Riidi WW, pulled up alongside one of the shuttles and several figures hurried from it to the waiting ships.
Once the groundcar had moved out of the way, the two shuttles thundered into the heavens, where they would likely rendezvous with at least one waiting AAnn naval vessel. Mahnahmi had had a good start, but Flinx knew his rented craft could never outrun even a small military ship. However, the girl's mind was like a runaway reactor: there was no telling what she was capable of under sufficient stress. The Baron, he decided, had better-watch out for himself.
Turning from the window, Flinx conversed in low tones with Sylzenzuzex. Both tried to come up with reasons for the AAnn's presence here. She no more believed the Baron's casual disclaimer that he was on this world for mere profit than he did. The AAnn had been the Commonwealth's prime enemies since its inception. They never ceased searching, guardedly yet relentlessly, for a new way to hasten its destruction and hurry what they relieved was their destiny to rule the cosmos and its "lesser" races.
There had to be a deeper reason involving those unique Janus jewels, though neither of them could think of a viable theory.
On Tharce IV lived a woman called Amasar, who was widely celebrated for her wisdom. Ai the moment, however, she adopted on air of drunken ecstasy as she reveled in the beauty of the object she held.
Adored by her constituents and respected by opponents, she had been the permanent representative from the Northern Hemisphere of Tharce IV to the Commonwealth Council for two decades. Her mind never rested in its search for solutions to problems or answers to questions, and she worked hours that embarrassed colleagues and assistants half her age. Currently she held the post of Counselor Second in charge of Diplomatic Theory on the Council itself. As such she was in a position to influence strongly the direction of Commonwealth foreign policy.
She should have been studying the transcript of the up-coming agenda, but her mind was occupied instead with the magnificence dwelling in the object in her hand. Besides, on the majority of questions that would come to a vote in the Council her mind was already made up. As a respected counselor, her advice would be a powerful influence.
Yes on this issue, nay on that one, leaning so and so on this proposal, not to withdraw on this matter, not to yield on that particulw point-it was a long list.
Her mind focused elsewhere, Amasar switched off the viewer, which had been running blankly for several moments. Leaning back in her chair, she continued to store raptly at the shining irregularity of the abject on her desk.
Tomorrow she would board ship for the annual Councle meeting. The gathering place varied between the dual Commonwealth capitals of Terra and Hivehom. This year the thranx capital world was to be the site. This promised to be an absorbing, stimulating session, one she was looking forward to. Several issues of vital importance were due to come to a vote, including measures involving those sly murderers, the AAnn. The Council had some who believed in moderation and appeasement of the reptiles, but not her!
But why worry about such things now? Moving as if in a dream, she opened the center drawer of her desk to perform a final check. Everything was there: diplomatic credentials, reservation confirmations, documentation and information topes. Yes, it should be an interesting session this year.
She was still aglow with pleasure as she reached into the lowermost drawer on her right, took out the small, lightweight needler, and fried that insidiously seductive thing before blowing out her brains!
The apparent suicide was recorded by the local coroner and confirmed by Commonwealth officials as another of those inexplicable occurrences that periodically afflict even the stablest of human beings. Anything could hove been the cause. Too little confidence, too little money, too little affection...
Or too much of an especially lethal kind of beauty.
"A remarkable infant," Teleen auz Rudenuaman finally said, interrupting their talk. She eyed them, and commented, "This appears to be a day for unusual infants." When her captives remained sullenly silent, she shrugged and looked out the panels again. "I knew there was a reason for hating that brat so strongly. I admit, though, that she had me completely fooled. I wonder how long she'd been manipulating Challis to suit her own ends?"
"According to what she said, all her conscious life." Flinx thought it a good idea to keep the merchantwoman's attention focused elsewhere. "Are you going to kill us now?" he asked with disarming matter-of-factness. "or have you decided to believe me?"
"My having you kilted has nothing to do with your story, Flinx," she explained, "though Challis seems to have confirmed it. I have plenty of time to get rid of you. I still find you a novelty." She gazed appraisingly at him. "You're a bundle of interesting contradictions, and hard to pin down. I'm not sure I like that. I tend to get frustrated with something I don't understand. That's dangerous, because I might end up killing you on a whim, and that would only frustrate me more, since you'd die with all the answers."
"No, I think I'll wait for the Baron to return before doing anything irreversible with you two." She showed white teeth. "The AAnn are very adept at clearing up contradictions."
Sylzenzuzex climbed to her trulegs and tested her injured limb. She would be forced to limp along on three supports until it healed. She glared at the merchant- woman-compound eyes being especially good for glaring.
"To work so with the sworn enemies of humanx- kind."
Rudenuaman was not impressed. "So much outrage over a little money." She looked reprovingly at the thranx. "The AAnn have given me exclusive rights to distribute the Janus jewel within the Commonwealth. In return I permit them to take a certain percentage of the production here. I supply much of the means for the mining, and they neutralized the peaceforcers.
"I've made Nuaman, now Rudenuaman, Enterprises stronger than it has ever been, stronger than it was under my aunt. We have discovered only the one pocket of jewels, which appear to be an isolated mineralogical mutation. In five to ten years we will have taken the last jewel out of that mountain. Then we will depart from here voluntarily, with the Church none the wiser and the Commonwealth hurt not at all. By that time Rudenuaman Enterprises will be in an invincible financial position. And my aunt, may she rot in limbo, would have approved. I think-"
"I think you're blinding yourself." Flinx put in, "voluntarily. There's a great deal more in this as far as the Empire is concerned than a little petty cash."
Rudenuaman eyed him curiously. "What gives you the right to say something like that?"
"I was at the Church administrative headquarters before we came here. During that time an AAnn in surgical disguise-similar to but rather more elaborate than what the Baron was wearing-tried to sneak into the command center there. After he killed himself I found crystalline dust scattered all over his middle. It could have come from a pulverized Janus jewel." "But the crystal syringe-darts he was carrying ..." Sylzenzuzex started to remind him.
"... could have been manufactured from flawed Janus Jewels themselves," he told her. "Did you stop to think of that? Wouldn't it make a marvelous cover?" He turned to look at her. "I don't think that infiltrator killed himself to keep from being questioned. You can't break an AAnn. I think the explosion was to destroy what he was carrying - a Janus jewel."
"But what for?" she wondered. "To bribe someone?"
"I don't think so ... but I'm not sure. Not yet."
"As if I cared what happens to the Church," Rudenuaman added in disgust.
Sylzenzuzex responded with great dignity, "The Church is all that stands between civilization and barbarism."
"Now would the Commonwealth representatives like that, my dear? They appear to consider themselves the guardians of humanx accomplishment.
The commonwealth stands only because it's backed by the incorruptible standards of the United Church."
"There is someone I'd like to meet," The merchant-woman quipped, shifting on her couch. " An incorruptible."
"Me too," admitted Flinx.
Sylzenzuzex spun on him. "Whose side are you on, anyway, Flinx?" The fine hairs rose on the back of her b-thorax.
"I don't know," he replied feelingly. "I haven't studied all the sides carefully enough yet."
"Would you like to see the mine?" Teleen asked suddenly.
"Very much," he admitted. Sylzenzuzex looked indifferent, but he could sense her interest.
"Very well," the merchantwoman decided, apparently on impulse. "Linda ..."
"Groundcar, Madam-and guards?"
"Just a driver and one other."
The squat bodyguard looked uncertain. "Madam, do you think that ...?"
Rudenuaman waved her objections aside. She was in the mood to wipe away the distressing events of the afternoon. Boasting and showing off would be excellent therapy. "You worry too much, Linda. Where can they go? Their shuttle has been stolen, the Baron has taken our craft, and this world grows progressively more inhospitable no matter which way one travels. They're not about to run away."
"Right," Flinx agreed. "Besides, my companion has an injured limb."
"Why should that matter to you?" Sylzenzuzex sneered.
He turned on her angrily. "Because despite every- thing that's happened, and I regret much of it, I do care what happens to you-whether you want to believe it or not!"
Sylzenzuzex stared at his back as he spun away from her, jamming his hands into his jumpsuit pockets. Security schematics, archeologic chronophysics- all appeared simple alongside this impenetrable young human. It would not have comforted her, perhaps, to know that her opinion of him was shared in varying degrees by the other two women in the room.
No doubt Flinx would have been easier to understand if he had understood himself….