"Be careful—" he started to shout at Harper. But Harper must have spotted something in Allen's stance or perhaps his eyes, because he was already reaching for the pulser on his hip.
Allen shouted something incoherent and struck Harper with his fist. The blow indicated the immigrant had had some martial arts training, but was certainly no expert at hand-to-hand combat. Harper rolled with the punch, catching it on his arm instead of his rib cage.
Still, the blow knocked him down. Allen was a big man, and very strong.
A lot stronger than Van Hale, certainly. But between his own pulser and Genghis' formidable abilities as a fighter, Judson wasn't really worried.
Allen apparently reached the same conclusion. He turned and darted around the extractor, heading for the nearby forest.
He was fast as well as strong. Judson probably couldn't have caught up with him, and he was reluctant to just shoot the man down when they still didn't really know anything.
But Genghis solved that problem. The 'cat was off Judson's shoulder and onto the ground and racing in pursuit within two seconds.
It was no contest. Genghis caught up with Allen before the man had gotten even halfway to the tree line. He went straight for the big man's legs and brought him down in two strides.
Allen hit the ground hard, screeching. He tried to knock Genghis away but the 'cat's razor-sharp claws were more than a match for his fist. A human being in good condition and with really good martial art skills had at least a fair chance against a treecat in a fight, simply because of the size disparity. But it wouldn't be easy and the human would certainly come out of it badly injured.
Allen didn't even try. He wriggled around onto his stomach. Then, oddly, he just stared at the trees for a few seconds.
By then, Judson had reached him. "Hold still, Allen!" he commanded. "Genghis won't hurt you any further as long you don't—"
He saw Allen's jaws tighten. Then the man's eyes rolled up, he inhaled once, gasped, gasped again . . . and he was unconscious and dying. Judson didn't have any doubt of it. From his little screech, neither did Genghis.
"What in the name of . . ." He shook his head, not sure what to do. Normally, he'd have begun CPR treatment, even though he was pretty sure there was no way to save Allen's life at this point. But there was a nasty-looking greenish slime beginning to ooze out of Allen's mouth, which he was almost certain was the residue or side effect—or both—of some sort of powerful poison. Whatever the stuff was, Van Hale wasn't about to get close to it.
Harper came up, cradling his arm. "What happened?"
"He committed suicide." Judson felt a bit stunned. Everything had happened so fast. From the time Harper tapped Allen on the shoulder to the man's suicide, not more than thirty seconds could have passed. Probably less. Maybe a lot less.
Harper knelt down next to Allen's body, and rolled him onto his back. The former Ballroom killer was careful not to let his hands get anywhere near Allen's mouth.
"Fast-acting poison in a hollow tooth. What in the name of creation is an ex-slave immigrant doing with that kind of equipment?" He looked around, spotted a sturdy-looking stick within reach, and picked it up. Then, used the stick to pry open Allen's mouth so he could look at the man's tongue.
"And . . . that's a Manpower breeding mark, for sure and certain. No chance at all it's cosmetic."
He straightened up from the corpse and rocked back on his heels, now squatting instead of kneeling. "What the hell is going on, Judson?"
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was a good ice cream parlor, in fact. Not as good as Muckerjee's Treats in Grendel, the largest city of Beowulf.
The planetary—and system—capital was the city of Columbia, of course, but Columbia, alas, was only Beowulf's second largest city. In fact, it had been the system's second largest city for right on five hundred T-years, now. There were moments when its population had surged, threaening to overtake Grendel at last, yet it never had. Whenever Columbia seemed on the brink of finally overtaking its rival, something always happened to give Grendel a sudden surge of its own. Indeed, the more consipracy minded Columbians had muttered for generations that it was all a plot by some secret conspiracy to maintain the status quo. There'd never been any actual proof of that, mind you, but by now it was enshrined in Beowulfan legend that Grendel would always be bigger, more commercial—flashier in general. And, while Hugh would never want to appear overly credulous where such paranoid accusations were concerned, he'd once been curious enough to do a little reasearch of his own . . . in the course of which he had discovered that Grendel's zoning laws had, in fact, been modified to encourage accelerated growth on several . . . demographically significant occasions. And on very little notice—and with very little public debate—too.
There were those (although Hugh didn't think he counted himself among them) who went still further and asserted that the same nefarious population plotters had deliberately enticed the original owner of Muckerjee's Treats into locating her emporium in Grendel. The parlor was certainly regarded as one of the city's hallmark and legendary attractions, at any rate, and rumor had it that the city government had extended the current owners several very attractive tax breaks to keep it right where it was. And with good reason, too. No ice cream anywhere in the inhabited galaxy was as good as that to be found in Muckerjee's Treats. Such, at least, was the firm opinion of Hugh Arai and every single member of Beowulf's Biological Survey Corps except the notoriously contrarian W.G. Zefat—and it was perhaps no coincidence that Captain Zefat had been sent off on what was expected to be the longest survey mission in the history of the Corps.
For that matter, the ice cream made in the parlor favored by the queen of Torch—J. Quesenberry's Ice Cream and Pastries, it was called—wasn't really as good as the ice cream made in a number of parlors in Manticore or any one of the inhabited planets in Sol system. Still, it was awfully good, and it had the great advantage over all other ice cream parlors in the galaxy of being the only one currently inhabited by Berry Zilwicki.
After about one hour of conversation in the parlor, an idle remark made by Berry reminded Hugh that when he'd first met the queen he hadn't taken much notice of her appearance. Healthy-looking, not otherwise striking, had pretty much summed it up.
That seemed like the memories of early childhood, now. Vague, half-forgotten—most of all, amusingly childish. In the way these things happen, Hugh's fascination with the young woman had completely transformed her appearance. His view of it, at least, and what else did he care about?
This is still a really bad idea. He repeated that mantra for perhaps the twentieth time. With no more effect than the first nineteen self-reminders.
"Jeremy more-or-less raised you, then?"
Hugh shook his head. "No such luck, I'm afraid. And given his lifestyle at the time—wanted by just about every police force in the galaxy—there was no way he could have even if he'd wanted to. No, I spent the first few years after my rescue in a relocation camp on Aldib's second planet, Berstuk."
"I never heard of Berstuk. Or Aldib, for that matter."
"Aldib's a G9 star, whose official monicker is Delta Draconis. Despite being in the same constellation as Beowulf's star, it's not really that close. It's about seventy-five light years from Sol. As for Berstuk . . ."
Hugh's expression grew bleak. "It's named after the Wendish god of the forest. Who was a pretty evil character, apparently. Which I can well believe."