Guardsmen of Tomorrow (20 page)

“Let me see what’s in the back room,” Al said.

Hand kept the vnorpt occupied for the next several min-utes; at last Al reemerged with a box. The vnorpt didn’t notice.

“Want another beer?” Al asked.

“Yes!” the vnorpt said.

A moment later it gulped down another pitcher. Then it hesitated, and said, “Urn.”

“Is something wrong?” Hand asked.

“Didn’t taste right that time.”

“Maybe you’ve had enough, then,” Hand suggested. “You wouldn’t want to get really drunk, would you?”

“Wouldn’t,” the vnorpt agreed. It pulled in its eyestalks and folded its feeding claws, while dropping the pitcher to the bar. “Feel bad all of a sudden.”

“You’ve just had too much to drink,” Hand said. “It hits all of a sudden like that, sometimes. Get some fresh air, walk it off, and in an hour you’ll be fine.”

“Beer does this?”

“If you drink too much, yeah.”

It started to say something, then belched instead. “Um,” it said. “Oops.”

“Fresh air helps a lot,” Hand said cheerfully.

It dropped its four hands to the floor, then lifted itself up. “Fresh air,” it rumbled. It picked its credit chit off the bar, then turned and staggered toward the big service door.

Hand watched it go, then turned and hissed at Al, “What did you give it?”

“The first mickey was chloral hydrate,” he said. “A
lot
of chloral hydrate.”

“Yeah, but it just shook that right off,” Hand said. “What did you give it the
second
time?”

“Rat poison,” Al said, holding up the empty box. “A full kilogram.”

“A
kilo
of arsenic?”

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?”

“Al, that much might even kill a vnorpt!”

“Wouldn’t bother me if it did,” Al replied defensively. “It ate Barnstable, and chased away my entire clientele and most of my staff! It stank up the place-I’ll have to put the recirculators on emergency overload to get the smell out. It was self-defense!”

Just then they heard a sound unlike anything either of them had ever heard before, coming from just outside the service door-a deep tearing gurgle, followed by splashing.

It seemed to go on forever, but Hand knew it wasn’t really more than a minute or two.

After it ceased, there were several seconds of silence. Then the vnorpt called in,

“Feel much better now. Go home, sleep it off.”

Neither Al nor Hand replied; they were both overcome by the incredible new reek that had managed to penetrate even their overwhelmed noses. They stood, gagging, as the vnorpt staggered away down the street.

At last Hand managed to gasp, “Better get those recirculators pumping.”

Al nodded, still unable to speak. A moment later the hum of the vent-fans climbed into audibility, and the air stirred.

Unfortunately, it stirred in the wrong direction, sucking air in through the service door, which meant it carried that unbelievable new stench.

“I didn’t know anything
could
smell worse than vnorpt,” Hand muttered. “But it figures that if anything could, it would be vnorpt vomit.”

“I’m ruined,” Al gasped. “The bar’ll stink for weeks! They’ll probably ticket me for a public health hazard.”

“Drastic measures are called for,” Hand said, pulling out her blaster.

“What are you…”

She ignored Al as she marched across the barroom floor and looked out the service door.

Sure enough, an immense puddle filled several square meters of the street there; only the raised threshold had kept the dozens of liters of yellowish fluid from spilling into the Busted Fin.

“I hope this works,” Hand said, as she fired her blaster into the center of the pool.

And with that, Hand discovered an even worse smell, one that made her senses swim and the world fade away as she tottered on the verge of fainting-the scent of
burning
vnorpt vomit.

Hand didn’t falter; she kept firing, waving the blaster back and forth.

And at last the smell faded, and she found herself firing an almost-discharged blaster at empty, entirely-harmless plastic pavement.

Slowly, as the fresh evening air began to clear her mind, she slipped the blaster back into its holster and looked around thoughtfully.

The quantity just a single vnorpt had consumed was truly astonishing. An entire planet of vnorpt would be a huge market.

“You know,” she said to no one in particular, “I see an opportunity here for an enterprising trader. Like me.”

Then she turned and went back inside, headed for a barstool.

Selling a few shiploads of beer to the vnorpt might make her rich, but it could wait.

Right now, she wanted a drink. Whiskey, maybe, or gin.

But not beer.

THE END

by Josepha Shennan

Josephs Sherman is a fantasy writer and folklorist whose latest novels are
Highlander. The Captive Soul
and Son
of Darkness
. Her most recent folklore volume is
Merlin’s Kin: World Tales of the Hero Magicians. Her
short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, including
Battle Magic, Dinosaur Fantastic,
Black Cats and Broken Mirrors
, and
The Shimmering Door
. She lives in Riverdale, New York.

A I brought
The Dart
out of hyperspace and into the Stataka system, I called up a visual on my ship’s screen. I already knew details of the planet’s gravity (a touch less than Human standard) and atmosphere (quite breathable). Now I could see what the computer had already told me: Stataka really did look absolutely… well…

mundane, the standard classification of water-and-land planet supporting oxygen-breathing life. In this case, that life was a slender, gray-skinned biped race, vaguely like my own species, Human, in having two eyes, ears, and so on. So, locals plus whatever space travelers might have put into Stataka’s one public port.

Ordinary? Maybe, but I didn’t have any complaints about a lack of drama. The latest overhaul of
The Dart’s
hyer-drive engines hadn’t been cheap, and incoming cash was going to be very welcome.

As
The Dart
sliced down through Stataka’s atmosphere, I could see the gray buildings and bright lights of Kartaka, the city that sprawled around the spaceport.

Kartaka had quite a reputation as a wide-open trading city. And yes, there was a quite a bit of illicit business taking place down there, if Alliance reports were accurate.

But from everything I’d been able to learn, Sei Sisar, the art dealer with whom I was dealing, had a reputation for honesty. The three-way contract to which I’d agreed, along with Sei Sisar and the Kuurae, was basic enough: Sharra Kinsarin-me-owner, captain, and one-woman crew of
The Dart
, to receive one religious artifact from art dealer Sei Sisar, and transport it back to its rightful homeworld of Kuuraet. Sei Sisar was footing half the bill to get the artifact home again, and the Kuurae were footing the other half.

Nothing unusual there: Reputable art dealers, once they realize they are holding stolen artifacts, do tend to return the things to their owners, since they want to keep their names clean. They return artifacts often enough for me to make a nice profit out of it.

Who am I? Nothing special to look at: Human, youngish, female, olive skin, and short dark hair. What I am is an art courier licensed in all one hundred and forty-three of the Alliance worlds and a few others-including provisional member worlds like Kuuraet-specializing in any objects too small and valuable to risk losing on one of the big ships. I’ll add that I have another edge over the big guys: my little swept-winged
Dart
is swifter than most of them. I also, not incidentally in my line of work, have an implant that lets my brain adapt quickly to new languages.

Why me, though, and not a Kuurae emissary? Simple answer: The Kuurae are one of those races who don’t like space travel. I mean, they really,
really
don’t. The vastness terrifies them.

I brought my ship down through the layers of atmo-sphere, and a maze of other ships taking off or landing, to a waiting berth.

Sure enough, the ground crew insisted on bribes, but in such a good-natured way that I couldn’t get angry. Besides, if things went according to contract, Sei Sisar would be covering this expense, too.

We settled on a price that included keeping
The Dart
ready for takeoff, and I set off to find my current employer. Daylight on this side of the planet, conveniently, which meant that I could get the artifact from Sei Sisar without any other delays. It would have made my life easier if someone had been waiting at the port with the object to be transported: signature, payment, refueling, and away. But Sei Sisar had insisted he was too busy for anything like that. Since I legally had to accept the artifact from him and only him, I was to meet him at his office, which he swore wasn’t that far from the spaceport.

So be it. I fought my way through the crowds of embarking or disembarking travelers, fought my way into an empty groundcar, and gave it the proper coordinates, trying not to wince at the amount of credits it wanted for that relatively short ride. Should have walked-no, on second thought, this warehouse region wasn’t exactly the place for a solitary stroll, even if I had included, as I always did when planning to carry art, my sidearm. Too bad Sei Sisar hadn’t told me to meet him in his shop downtown; more people meant less of a chance of some would-be robber following me.

As the car made its efficient robotic way through row after row of dull gray warehouses and the occasional flurry of pallet-unloading activity, I glanced one more time at the little image I’d downloaded. The Kurrae artifact’s name translated to the

“Silver Flame,” though there wasn’t anything flamelike about the tranquil, cross-legged, beautifully carved statue. It was a female Kurrae, thin and delicate as all her kind, vaguely humanoid, assuming that Humans had knife-sharp cheekbones, huge eyes, and faint scaling, and worked from what looked like pure white stone. A saint figure? No one knew too much about Kuurae religious beliefs.

“We are .456 kilometers from the given coordinates,” the flat AI voice told me suddenly. “I can proceed no closer.”

I looked up in surprise-surprise that quickly turned to alarm. “Oh… damn.”

What had been Sei Sisar’s office was now a blackened ruin, still smoking faintly.

Leaving the groundcar, I got as close as harried officials would let me. A fire, they told me unnecessarily. No survivors. No cause yet, though there were hints that it had been too hot to be natural, and maybe that there were some suspicious residues as well.

Well, as I’ve said, a lot of illicit business takes place in this city. Presumably someone had gotten annoyed at Sei Sisar for being too honest once too often.

No Sei Sisar. That meant no artifact. And no payment. Swearing under my breath and reminding myself that the late Sei Sisar had just had a rougher time of it, I turned back to the waiting groundcar-Which was no longer waiting. Of course not, curse it! In my shock over the fire, I’d neglected to tell the thing to stay put. And I doubted I’d find another car so easily in this area.

All right. Start walking. You can find the spaceport again easily enough. Pretend
you belong here, even though you don’t look like a local.

Hell with trying to fit in. I’d just radiate my best “mess with me and die” expression and keep one hand on my sidearm. That worked on a good many worlds.

But as I strode defiantly along, a sudden whisper made me start.

“Captain Kinsarin! Please!”

I whirled, sidearm drawn. Who could possibly know my name-The frantic hiss had come from a narrow space, not even a true alley, between two buildings. A slight figure huddled against one wall as though making a decision, then came toward me in a rush. I tightened my hand on the sidearm’s haft, ready to fire-but he-she?-it?-stopped short just out of reach, almost completely shrouded in a cloak two or three sizes too big and charred at the edges. Looked as though there’d been a survivor of that fire, after all.

“Please, please, I am not harming you. Captain Kinsarin, you must be taking me off this world!”

I wasn’t about to get involved in some gang’s activities. Bad enough that this being, who or whatever, knew my name. “Sorry. I don’t carry passengers.”

“I am not that! You must know this: I am what you seek--I am the Silver Flame!”

“Ah… of course you are.”
And how do you know what brought me to Stataka?
…

“No, wait!” A thin hand, six-fingered, not quite steady, and dead white, pushed back the shrouding hood just enough to let me see a dead-white face with enormous deep blue eyes and narrow, knife-sharp cheekbones.

She hadn’t looked so weary in the image. Or so terrified.

The smallest pang of sympathy shot through me-along with a sense of downright

“I’ve been had.”

“Oh, hell,” I said lamely.

The average Kuurae had tannish skin. This one wasn’t an albino, not with those eyes. A mutation, then, and held sacred as a result. When you came right down to it.

the contract had never actually specified a holy
statue
rather than a holy
living being

. And no one had ever actually agreed or denied that the artifact might be much more than merely stone.

But why the pretense of an artifact at all? To keep the matter private? Or… to make it more convenient…

A cold suspicion settled at the back of my mind. It could well be.

Yes, but now that I had the “artifact.” I also had a chance of getting paid by the Kuurae if not by Sei Sisar. Risky, if my suspicions were correct, but-if I wanted a safe, secure life, I would have joined one of the big corporations a long time ago.

My ship could hold two as easily as one, so I added, “All right, let’s get going.”

“Yes, but-”

“You
do
want to get back to Kuuraet?”

“Yes! But
they
do not want it!”

They. I whirled to see four… beings. Definitely not from this world. Strongly muscled, tall as the average Human male, they stood on two legs, had a great deal of russet fur, gaudy jewelry, and sharp teeth-and they carried vicious-looking sidearms.