He swarmed down the ladder. “Back!” he called, as supple bodies slipped along the branches on either side of him. “Follow me at a distance. Kill him if he kills me, but hold your fire otherwise.”
He set his weapon to full-power needle beam, gaining extreme range at the cost of narrowing his radius of destruction to a centimeter or so. If Warouw wasn’t quite as handy with pencil shots, there, might be a chance to cripple him without suffering much harm from his own diffuse fire. Or there might not.
Down the holy Tree!
Flandry burst into view of the bough where Luang waited. Warouw confronted her and Kemul. Their hands were in the air; he had taken them by surprise. Warouw backed toward the next set of rungs. “Just keep your places and do not follow me,” he panted.
Flandry broke through the leaf cover overhead. Warouw saw him, whipped around and raised gun.
“Get him, Kemul!” shouted Luang.
The giant shoved her behind him and pounced. Warouw glimpsed the motion, turned back, saw the mugger’s gun not quite out of its holster, and fired. Red flame enveloped Kemul. He roared, once, and fell burning from the limb.
Having thus been given an extra few seconds, Flandry leaped off the bole rungs onto the bough. Warouw’s muzzle whirled back to meet him. Flandry’s blazed first. Warouw shrieked, lost his gun, and gaped at the hole drilled through his hand.
Flandry whistled. The riflemen of Ranau came and seized Nias Warouw.
XVI
Dusk once more. Flandry emerged from the house of Tembesi. Weariness lay heavy upon him.
Phosphor globes were kindling up and down the Tree Where the Ketjils Nest, and its sister Trees. Through the cool blue air, he could hear mothers call their children home. Men hailed each other, from branch to branch, until the voices of men and leaves and wind became one. The first stars quivered mistily in the east.
Flandry wanted silence for a while. He walked the length of the bough, and of lesser ones forking from it, until he stood on a narrow bifurcation. Leaves still closed his view on either hand, but he could look straight down to the ground, where night rose like a tide, and straight up to the stars.
He stood a time, not thinking of much. When a light footfall shivered the limb beneath him, it was something long expected.
“Hullo, Luang,” he said tonelessly.
She came to stand beside him, another slim shadow. “Well,” she said, “Kemul is buried now.”
“I wish I could have helped you,” said Flandry, “but—”
She sighed. “It was better this way. He always swore he would be content ‘to end in a Swamp Town canal. If he must lie under a blossoming bush, I do not think he would want anyone but me there to wish him good rest.”
“I wonder why he came to my help.”
“I told him to.”
“And why did you do that?”
“I don’t know. We all do things without thinking, now and then. The thinking comes afterward. I will not let it hurt me.” She took his arm. Her hands were tense and unsteady. “Never mind Kemul. Since you have stopped working on him, I take it you have succeeded with Warouw?”
“Yes,” said Flandry.
“How did you do it? Torture?” she asked casually.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I didn’t even withhold medical care for his injuries: which are minor, anyhow. I simply explained that we had a cage for him if he didn’t cooperate. It took a few hours’ argument to convince him we meant it. Then he yielded. After all, he’s an able man. He can leave this planet-he’d better!-and start again elsewhere, and do rather well, I should think.”
“Do you mean to let him go?” she protested.
Flandry shrugged. “I had to make the choice as clear-cut as possible-between dying of the sickness, and starting afresh with a substantial cash stake. Though I wonder if the adventurous aspect of it didn’t appeal to him most, once I’d dangled a few exotic worlds before his imagination.”
“What of that earful of men out in the forest?”
“Warouw’s just called them on the dispenser’s radiocom, to come and get me. They’re to land on the airstrip-change of plan, he said. Djuanda, Siak, and some others are waiting there, with blasters in their hands and revenge in their hearts. It won’t be any problem.”
“And then what is to happen?”
“Tomorrow Warouw will call Biocontrol. He’ll explain that he has me secure, and that some of my co-conspirators spilled enough of what I’d told them for him to understand the situation pretty well. He and some Guards will take me in my own flitter to Spica, accompanied by another ship. En route he’ll hypnoprobe me and get the full details. Tentatively, his idea will be to sabotage the flitter, transfer to the other craft, and let mine crash with me aboard. Somewhat later, he and the Guards will land. They’ll tell the Imperial officials a carefully doctored story of my visit, say they’re returning what they believe was a courtesy call, and be duly shocked to learn of my ‘accidental’ death. In the course of all this, they’ll drop enough false information to convince everyone that Unan Besar is a dreary place with no trade possibilities worth mentioning.”
“I see,” nodded the girl. “You only sketched the idea to me before. Of course, the ‘Guards’ will be Ranau men, in uniforms lifted from the car crew; and they will actually be watching Warouw every second, rather than you. But do you really think it can be done without rousing suspicion?”
“I know damn well it can,” said Flandry, “because Warouw has been promised the cage if Biocontrol does sabotage the Central prematurely. He’ll cooperate! Also, remember what slobs the Guard Corps are. A half-witted horse could cheat them at pinochle. Bandang and the other governors shouldn’t be hard to diddle either, with their own trusted Nias Warouw assuring them everything is lovely.”
“When will you come back?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Not for a good many days. We’ll take along enough scientific material for the antitoxin to be synthesized, of course… and enough other stuff to convince the Imperial entrepreneurs that Unan Besar is worth their attention. A large supply of pills will have to be made ready, ships and ships full. Because naturally Biocontrol Central will be destroyed when they arrive, by some idiot like Genseng. But the merchant fleet will know where all the dispensaries are, and be ready to supply each one instantly. It will all take a while to prepare, though.”
Flandry sought yellow Spica in the sky, which was now quickening with stars. Here they called Spica the Golden Lotus, doutbless very poetic and so on. But he felt his own depression and tiredness slide away as he thought of its colony planet, bright lights, smooth powerful machines, sky-high towers-his kind of world! And afterward there would be Home…
Luang sensed it in him. She gripped his arm and said almost in terror: “You will come back, will you not? You will not just leave everything to those merchants?”
“What?” He came startled out of his reverie. “Oh. I see. Well, honestly, darling, you’ve nothing to be afraid of. The transition may be a little violent here and there. But you’re welcome to remain at Ranau, where things will stay peaceful, until you feel like a triumphal return to Kompong Timur. Or like getting passage to the Imperial planets—”
“I don’t care about that!” she cried. “I want your oath you will return with the fleet.”
“Well-” He capitulated. “All right. I’ll come back for a while.”
“And afterward?”
“Lookhere,” he said, alarmed, “I’m as mossless a stone as you’ll find in a universe of rolling. I mean, well, if I tried to stay put anywhere, I’d be eating my fingernails in thirty days and eating the carpet in half a year. And, uh, my work isn’t such that any, well, any untrained person could—”