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 throat. Or turn him over to Warouw. Or just leave him to die screaming, a couple of weeks hence.
V
Boats clustered around a long two-story building which stood by itself in the Canal of the Fiery Snake. Everywhere else lay darkness, the tenements of the poor, a few sweatshop factories, old warehouses abandoned to rats and robbers. But there was life enough on the first floor of the Tavern Called Swampman’s Ease. Its air was thick with smoke, through which grinned jack-o’-lantern lights, and with the smells of cheap arrack and cheaper narcotics. Freightboat crewmen, fishers,” dock wallopers, machine tenders, hunters and loggers from the jungle, bandits, cutpurses, gamblers, and less identifiable persons lounged about on the floor mats: drinking, smoking, quarreling, plotting, rattling dice, watching a dancer swing her hips to clang of gamelan and squeal of flute and thump-thump of a small drum. Occasionally, behind a beaded curtain, one of the joy girls giggled. High on her throne, Madame Udjung watched with jet eyes nearly buried in fat. Sometimes she spoke to the noseless daggerman who crouched at her feet in case of trouble, but mostly she drank gin and talked to the ketjil bird on her wrist. It was not large, but its tail swept down like a rain of golden fire and it could sing in a woman’s voice.
Flandry could hear enough of the racket to know he was in some such place. But there were probably a hundred like it, and his eyes had only been unbandaged when he reached this second-floor room. Which was not the sort of layout he would have expected. It was clean, and much like the one he’d blundered onto earlier: simple furnishings, a decorative scroll, a couple of screens, a shallow bowl holding one stone and two white flowers. A glowlamp in the hand of a small, blindfolded wooden idol on a shelf showed that every article was of exquisite, simplicity. One window stood open to warm breezes, but incense drowned the garbage smell of the canal.
Kemul tossed Flandry a kilt, which the Terran was glad enough to belt around his middle. “Well,” said the giant, “what are his things worth after they’ve been cleaned, Luang?”
The girl studied the clothes Flandry had been forced to take off. “All synthetic fiber… but never have color and fineness like this been seen on Unan Besar.” Her voice was husky. “I should say they are worth death in the cage, Kemul.”
“What?”
Luang threw the garments to the floor and laughed. She sat on top of the dresser, swinging bare feet against its drawers. Her kilt was dazzling white, her only ornament the ivory inlay on her dagger hilt. Not that she needed more. She wasn’t tall, and her face had never been sculpted into the monotonous beauty of all rich Terran women. But it was a vivid face, high cheekbones, full mouth, delicately shaped nose, eyes long and dark under arched brows. Her bobbed hair was crow’s-wing color, her complexion dull gold, and her figure reminded Flandry acutely that he had been celibate for months.
“Reason it out, mugger,” she said with a note of affectionate teasing. She took a cigarette case from her pocket and offered it to the Terran. Flandry accepted a yellow cylinder and inhaled. Nothing happened. Luang laughed again and snapped a lighter for him and herself. She trickled smoke from her nostrils, as if veiling her expression. Flandry tried it and choked. If this was tobacco, then tobacco on Unan Besar had mutated and crossed itself with deadly nightshade.