IV
The water was dirty. As he broke its surface, he wondered for one idiotic moment what the chances were of salvaging his clothes. They had cost him a pretty sum. Then alien smells filled his nostrils, and he struck out in search of darkness.
Dreamlike in this hunted moment, a boat glided past. Its stem and stern curved upward, extravagantly shaped, and the sides were gay with tiny electric lamps. A boy and girl snuggled in the waist under a transparent canopy. Their kilts and Dutch boy bob seemed the universal style here for both sexes, but they had added bangles and had painted intricate designs on their skins. Music caterwauled from a radio. Rich kids, no doubt. Flandry sank back under water as the boat came near. He felt its propeller vibrations in ears and flesh.
When his head came up again, he heard a new sound. It was like a monstrous gong, crashing from some loudspeaker on the golden pagoda. An alarm! Warouw’s corps would be after him in minutes. Solu Bandang might be content to wait, expecting the Terran to die in two weeks—but Nias Warouw wanted to quiz him. Flandry kicked off his boots and began swimming faster.
Lights blazed overhead at the intersection of the next canal. Every one seemed focused on him. There was a thick traffic of boats, not only pleasure craft but water buses and freight carriers. Pedestrians crowded the narrow walks that ran along the housefronts, and the high bridges crossing the waterways. The air was full of city babble. Flandry eased up against the weed-grown brick of an embankment.
Four young men stood on the walk opposite. They were muscular, the look of illiterate commoners in their mannerisms and the coarse material of their kilts. But they talked with animation, gesturing, possibly a little drunk. Another man approached. He was a small fellow, distinguished only by robe and shaven pate. But the four big ones grew still the moment they saw him. They backed against the wall to let him go by and bent their heads over folded hands. He paid no attention. When he was gone, it took them a few minutes to regain their good humor.
So, thought Flandry.
The chance he had been waiting for came, a freight boat putt-putting close to the canal bank in the direction he wanted. Flandry pushed away from the bricks, seized a rope bumper hung from the rail, and snuggled close to the hull. Water streamed silkily around his body and trailing legs. He caught smells of tar and spice. Somewhere above, the steersman tapped a gamelan and crooned to himself.
Within two kilometers, the boat reached an invisible boundary common to most cities. On one side of a cross-canal, an upper-class apartment house lifted tiers of delicate red columns toward a gilt roof. On the other side there was no solid land, only endless pilings to hold structures above the water. There the lamps were few, with darknesses between, and the buildings crouched low. Flandry could just see that those warehouses and tenements and small factories were not plastifaced like the rich part of town. This was all sheet metal and rough timber, thatch roofs, dim light glowing through little dirty-paned windows. He saw two men pad by with knives in their hands.
The truckboat continued, deeper into slum. Now that the great gong was stilled and the heavy traffic left behind, it was very quiet around Flandry. He heard only a muted background growl of distant machines. But if the canals had been dirty before, they were now disgusting. Once something brushed him in the night; with skin and nose he recognized it as a corpse. Once, far off, a woman screamed. And once he glimpsed a little girl, skipping rope all alone under a canalside lamp. Its harsh blue glow was as solitary as a star. Darkness enclosed the child. She didn’t stop jumping as the boat passed, but her eyes followed it with a hag’s calculation. Then Flandry was beyond her and had lost her.
About time to get off, he thought.
Suddenly the stillness and desertion were broken. It began as a faint irregular hooting, which drew closer. Flandry didn’t know what warned him—perhaps the way the truck pilot stopped musicking and revved up the motor. But his nerves tingled and he knew: School’s out.
He let go the bumper. The boat chugged on in haste, rounded a corner and was gone. Flandry swam through warm slimy water till he grasped a ladder. It led up to a boardwalk, which fronted a line of sleazy houses with tin sides and peaked grass roofs and lightless windows. The night was thick and hot and stinking around him, full of shadows. No other human stirred. But the animal hooting came nearer.
After a moment, their hides agleam in the light of one lamp twenty meters away, the pack swam into sight. There were a dozen, about the size and build of Terrestrial sea lions. They had glabrous reptile skins, long necks and snaky heads. Tongues vibrated between rows of teeth. Tasting the water? Flandry didn’t know how they had traced him. He crouched on the ladder, the canal lapping about his ankles, and drew his gun.
The swimmers saw him, or smelled him, and veered. Their high blasts of sound became a shrill ululation. Give tongue, the fox is gone to earth!
As the nearest of them surged close, Flandry’s blaster fired. Blue lightning spat in the dark, and a headless body rolled over. He scrambled up onto the walk.
The beasts kept pace as he ran, reaching up to snap at his feet. The planks resounded. He fired again, and missed. Once he stumbled, hit a corrugated metal wall, and heard it boom.
Far down the canal, engines whined and the fierce sun of a searchlight waxed in his eyes. He didn’t need to be told it was a police boat, tracking him with the help of the swimmers. He stopped before a doorway. The animals churned the water below the pier. He felt its piles tremble from the impact of heavy bodies. Their splashing and whistling filled his skull. Where to go, what to do?—Yes. He turned the primitive doorknob. Locked of course. He thumbed his blaster to narrow beam and used it as a cutting torch, with his body between the flame and the approaching speedboat.
There! The door opened under his pressure. He slipped through, closed it, and stood in the dark. An after-image of the gunbeam still flickered across his blindness, and his pulse was loud.
Got to get out of here, he thought. The cops won’t know offhand precisely where I went, but they’ll check every door in this row and find the cut lock.
He could just make out a gray square of window across the room, and groped toward it. Canal water dripped off his clothes.
Feet pattered on bare boards. “Who goes?” An instant later, Flandry swore at himself for having spoken. But there was no answer. Whoever else was in this room—probably asleep till he came—was reacting to his intrusion with feline presence of mind. There was no more noise.
He barked his shins on a low bedstead. He heard a creak and saw an oblong of dull shimmering light appear. A trapdoor in the floor had been opened. “Stop!” he called. The trapdoor was darkened with a shadow. Then that was gone too. Flandry heard a splash below. He thought he heard the unknown start swimming quickly away. The trapdoor fell down again.
It had all taken a bare few seconds. He grew aware of the animals, hooting and plunging outside. The unknown had nerve, to dive into the same water as that hell-pack! And now engine-roar slowed to a whine, a sputter, the boat had arrived. A voice called something, harsh and authoritative.
Flandry’s eyes were adapting. He could see that this house—cabin, rather—comprised a single big room. It was sparsely furnished: a few stools and cushions, the bed, a brazier and some cooking utensils, a small chest of drawers. But he sensed good taste. There were a couple of exquisitely arabesqued wooden screens; and he thought he could identify fine drawing on a scroll which decorated one wall.
Not that it mattered! He stepped to the window on the side through which he had come. Several Guards crouched in the boat, flashing its searchlight around. A needle gun was mounted on its prow, but otherwise the men were armed only with their knives and nightsticks. There might be another boatload along soon, but for the moment—
Flandry set his blaster to full power, narrow beam, and opened the door a crack. I couldn’t get more than one or two men at this range, he calculated, and the others would radio HQ that they’d found me. But could be I can forestall that with some accurate shooting. Very accurate. Fortunately, I count marksmanship among my many superiorities.
The weapon blazed.
He chopped the beam down, first across cockpit and dashboard to knock out the radio, then into the hull itself. The Guards bellowed. Their searchlight swung blindingly toward him and he heard needles thunk into the door panels. Then the boat was pierced. It filled and sank like a diving whale.
The Guards had already sprung overboard. They could come up the ladder, dash at their quarry, and be shot down. Wherefore they would not come very fast. They’d most likely swim around waiting for reinforcements. Flandry closed the door with a polite “Auf Wiedersehen” and hurried across the room. There was no door on that side, but he opened a window, vaulted to the boardwalk beneath, and loped off fast and quietly. With any luck, he’d leave men and seal-hounds milling about under the place he’d just quitted until he was safely elsewhere.
At the end of the pier, a bridge arched across to another row of shacks. It wasn’t one of the beautiful metallic affairs in the center part of town. This bridge was of planks suspended from vine cables. But it had a grace of its own. It swayed under Flandry’s tread. He passed the big pillars anchoring the suspension at the far end—
One brawny arm closed around his neck. The other hand clamped numbingly on his gun wrist. A bass voice told him, very low, “Don’t move, outlander. Not till Kemul says you can.”
Flandry, who didn’t wish a fractured larynx, stood deathstill. The blaster was plucked from his hand. “Always wanted one of these,” the mugger chuckled. “Now, who in the name of fifty million devils are you, and what d’ you mean breaking into Luang’s crib that way?”
The pressure tightened around his throat. Flandry thought in bitterness, Sure, I get it. Luang escaped down the trap and fetched help. They figured I’d have to come in this direction, if I escaped at all. I seemed worth catching. This ape simply lurked behind the pillar waiting for me.
“Come now.” The arm cut off all breath. “Be good and tell Kemul.” Pressure eased a trifle.
“Guards—Biocontrol agents—back there,” rattled Flandry.
“Kemul knows. Kemul isn’t blind or deaf. A good citizen should hail them and turn you over to them. Perhaps Kemul will. But he is curious. No one like you has ever been seen on all Unan Besar. Kemul would like to hear your side of the tale before he decides what to do.”
Flandry relaxed against a bare chest solid as a wall. “This is hardly the place for long stories,” he whispered. “If we could go somewhere and talk—”
“Aye. If you will behave.” Having tucked the blaster in his kilt, Kemul patted Flandry in search of other goods. He removed watch and wallet, released the Terran, and stepped back, tigerishly fast, ready for counterattack.
Vague greasy light fell across him. Flandry saw a giant by the standards of any planet, an ogre among these folk: 220 centimeters high, with shoulders to match. Kemul’s face had from time to time been slashed with knives and beaten with blunt instruments; his hair was grizzled; but still he moved as if made of rubber. He wore body paint that wove a dozen clashing colors together. A kris was thrust in the garish batik of his kilt.
He grinned. It made his ruined countenance almost human. “Kemul knows a private spot,” he offered. “We can go there if you really want to talk. But so private is it, even the house god wears a blindfold. Kemul must blindfold you too.”
Flandry massaged his aching neck. “As you will.” He studied the other man a moment before adding, “I had hoped to find someone like you.”
Which was true enough. But he hadn’t expected to meet Kompong Timur’s underworld at such a severe disadvantage. If he couldn’t think of something to bribe them with—his blaster had been the best possibility, and it was gone now—they’d quite likely slit his weasand. Or turn him over to Warouw. Or just leave him to die screaming, a couple of weeks hence.