Watchers of the Dark (15 page)

He looked from one to the other, damning the dim light. All seemed to be laboriously unraveling his arguments and attempting to weave the threads into patterns more to their liking.

“What has this to do with us?” Gul Ceyh asked suddenly. “E-Wusk’s trade is no concern of ours.”

“My humble apologies. I thought you were a trader.”

Silence.

“Why should E-Wusk have all of the Dark’s trade for himself?” Darzek demanded.

Silence.

“All of you have some experience of the Dark. How would one go about trading with it?”

Silence.

“You know native merchants on those worlds. You know their needs. My idea is that we form a partnership and seek a just share of this trade. What would be the best way to proceed?”

“There is no way,” Gul Brokefa said flatly.

That was as much as he could get from any of them. There was no way. The thing was impossible. There must be some other explanation for E-Wusk’s listings.

The meeting broke up, and Darzek ceremoniously took his leave of them. He had gotten as much as he dared to hope for: no information or action, but at least he had them discussing the Dark.

Individually, they would think long about this supposed coup of E-Wusk.

They were traders.

Miss Schlupe had left a note for him at the Trans-Star office. “E-Wusk wants to see you.” Darzek did not want to see E-Wusk, but he went immediately to E-Wusk’s office and was greeted with the familiar roar of laughter.

“That fool Azfel was here,” E-Wusk said. “Told me he thought he could furnish half a shipload of
hsof
crystals. I said I wasn’t interested in such piddling quantities. Oh, ho ho!”

“I wouldn’t attach much significance to half a shipload of
hsof
crystals,” Darzek said.

“Of course not. I wouldn’t suspect Azfel anyway. He’s never impressed me as being an adventurous type.”

“No, but he’s a good trader. He might become adventurous, if there was enough profit in it.”

“Mmm—he might, at that.” E-Wusk chuckled softly. “Any of them might. I might myself.”

“By the way—I’ve just come from a meeting at Gul Rhinzl’s.”

E-Wusk leaned forward attentively.

“Some of the traders are indecently curious about those anticipated needs of yours. They’re wondering what you’re up to.”

“Oh, ho ho! They’re wondering how to get their fat digits onto some of the profits. I know them.”

“You certainly do. It was they who sent Gul Azfel to you.”

“They did? Oh, ho ho!” He squared his huge figure around and faced Darzek. “If anyone
is
trading with the Dark, he’s not disposed to trade with me. Except for Azfel’s crystals, I haven’t received a single bid.”

“He might be trading only for markets he has already developed,” Darzek said thoughtfully.

“I think that’s likely.”

“Perhaps we need a different approach. I’ll try to think of something.”

He gave E-Wusk a brief and wholly fictitious account of the traders’ meeting, left him laughing uproariously, and stepped through to his apartment. There he froze in consternation with one foot on the alarm rug, oblivious to the rasping buzzer.

Miss Schlupe’s rocking chair lay on the floor in the center of the reception room, smashed flat. Darzek stared at it in horror.

“Schluppy!” he called.

He dashed from room to room. The apartment was empty.

He returned to the chair and examined it carefully. It had been much too flimsy for Miss Schlupe’s usual violent rocking—the wood was soft and porous and Darzek’s workmanship erratic—but she had been able to rock gently, and she loved it. Something heavy had knocked the chair over and crashed down upon it. Other than that blunt evidence of violence, the mute pile of splintered sticks offered no clue.

Darzek needed none. While he had been contriving elaborate stratagems to uncover the Dark, the Dark had found him.

His first thought was to look for her at the Trans-Star offices and at Kxon’s headquarters. He took a step toward the transmitter, and then turned away helplessly. If she had smashed the chair herself she would have given the remains a decent burial, not left them strewn about the reception room. Her departure had not been voluntary.

His investigators could follow her trail no further than the transmitter. The planet’s proctors, if he informed them that his associate had disappeared leaving her chair wrecked, would suggest that he wait for her return and ask her what had happened. The traders, if he asked for their help, would be simply bewildered. Abduction was unheard of—inconceivable, even—on the peaceful world of Yorlq. People did not vanish on Yorlq.

Miss Schlupe had vanished.

Someone had devised a way to get through a personalized transmitter. He would have to look into that later. For the moment—

“Think, man!” he told himself sternly. “There’s no sign of blood, so they didn’t gun her down on sight. She had a chance to struggle and she did, hence the smashed chair. They wanted her alive. They wanted—”

He regarded the transmitter warily. “They wanted both of us, and they found Schluppy as much as they could handle. Otherwise, some of them would have been waiting for me. Which means that they’ll be back for me later, as soon as they patch themselves up and get their broken bones set.”

He went to his bedroom and stretched out there, face close to the wall. A gun slot looked out onto the transmitter. He drew his automatic and waited.

They came. Darzek blinked as the first bounded out of the transmitter, hurtling over the alarm rug. It was the same tall, stalklike type of nocturnal he’d encountered on Primores, and which he now knew (he’d taken the trouble to investigate) came from the lost world of Quarm.

He hadn’t known there was Quarmers on Yorlq.

A second bounded into the room, and then a third and a fourth, each taking a soaring leap to avoid the alarm rug. “I hope it scared the acorns off them the first time they came,” Darzek muttered. “Five, six—have they called out their army?”

He counted and recounted incredulously. There were ten of them, several wearing bandages. Not even Miss Schlupe could have put up a struggle against so many. More likely she had given the original abductors such a bad time that they brought in reinforcements to deal with Darzek.

“If I can frighten them enough,” Darzek mused, “scare the twigs off them so they’ll want to get back to where they came from but fast, and then as soon as one of them touches out the destination on the transmitter—”

He edged away and opened a secret wall panel where part of his arsenal was cached. Thoughtfully he studied it; thoughtfully he selected a tear gas grenade. He opened the bedroom door silently. They were huddled together in the reception room, talking inaudibly. He eased himself to the floor and slid the grenade toward their feet.

He darted back to the gun slot. “Lie down on the floor!” he ordered in a booming voice.

Echoing from the bedroom, the command must have sounded like a message from a remote dimension. The Quarmers whirled in one movement and looked about wildly. Then the grenade went off with a pop and a hiss, and instantly they were a choking, panicky mob.

One leaped to the transmitter, touched out a destination, and turned to escape. Darzek coolly placed a shot in his abdomen, and he collapsed.

“Stay away from the transmitter!” Darzek roared, and fired again. The second Quarmer fell on the alarm rug, and the buzzer added its clamor to the confusion. The others backed away slowly, their bodies shaken with convulsive coughing. One by one they folded into heaps of segments, shuddered violently, and subsided.

Darzek approached them cautiously. The ventilation system cleared out the gas almost at once, but enough traces remained to make his eyes smart uncomfortably. He bent over the nearest Quarmer. Dead. All of them were dead.

He paused only to reload his automatic and memorize the transmitter setting. Then he stepped over the bodies by the transmitter and leaped through.

A single Quarmer faced him. He was immobilized on a chair, limbs swathed in bandages, and he regarded Darzek with helpless horror. “I don’t want
you
to die of fright,” Darzek muttered. He skirted him widely, assured himself that the Quarmer was incapable of movement, and moved on into the next room.

There he found a figure wrapped mummylike from shoulders to feet. Miss Schlupe. She smiled at him.

“Just like a Class D movie,” she said brightly, “except that the heroine should be young and beautiful, and the hero probably wouldn’t be shedding tears of joy.”

“I’m not shedding tears,” Darzek growled, stripping away her bindings. “I mean, I am shedding tears, but it’s from tear gas.”

“Now you’ve hurt my feelings. Did you find one of those overgrown weeds dead on the floor? He grabbed me from
behind, and I flipped him, and he smashed my rocking chair. I hope it killed him.”

“Maybe he’s the one in the next room. He looked as if he’d fallen on something—or vice versa. Can you walk?”

“They cut
off
the circulation in my legs, drat them!”

She stretched and manipulated her legs, and when she could stand he helped her into the next room. The Quarmer had fainted, but was still breathing.

Darzek examined him anxiously. “They seem to die upon very slight provocation. Remember the one you frightened to death on Primores? I just frightened ten of them to death. Either that, or they’re allergic to tear gas.”

“Ten?
The apartment must look like a brush pile.”

“A very apt description. I’m sorry they died. I really am. I was looking forward to a long talk with them. Let’s handle this one carefully.”

“Maybe the tear gas is also a weed killer.”

“Maybe it is, at that.” He handed his automatic to her. “Now you’re starting to cry. My clothing is contaminated, so I’d better stay away from him. Hold the fort, and I’ll be back in about twenty seconds with help.”

Kxon and another of Darzek’s investigators carried the Quarmer through the transmitter to their secret headquarters, handling him like the priceless, fragile item that he was. Darzek rounded up his entire staff and sent investigators scurrying in all directions—four to search the Quarmers’ apartment and ambush anyone arriving there, one to find a trustworthy individual who spoke Quarmer, three to inquire into the presence of Quarmers on Yorlq, six to his own apartment, to clean up the place and figure out a way to dispose of ten bodies, three to inquire into the matter of uninvited strangers passing through a personalized transmitter.

“The first thing you and I are going to do is move out of that apartment,” Darzek told Miss Schlupe grimly. “We’re taking a dwelling large enough to house a garrison for around the clock duty. The next time anyone drops in on me unannounced, I want to know about it. What is it?”

“The Quarmer is dead, Sire,” Kxon said.

Darzek shrugged resignedly. “All right. That makes eleven to dispose of. See that it’s done, and then find out if there are any dwellings available on the
Hesr.”

He seated himself wearily. Miss Schlupe remained standing, tapping her foot with a thoughtful frown on her face. “This is a funny kind of business,” she announced.

Darzek nodded. “The approach is entirely different from what we encountered on Primores. No Eyes of Death. They wanted us alive. It’d be interesting to know why. Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know what happened. I walked through the transmitter, and one of them jumped me from behind. I flipped him, but there were at least five more. They wrapped me up and carted me away.”

“You impressed them,” Darzek said with a grin. “That’s why they sent ten after me.”

“I snapped a few branches and peeled off some bark, but those dratted things are
strong.
And
heavy.”

“Still, they wanted us alive. I’ve been wondering if maybe they aren’t certain, and they didn’t want to stir up a fuss over our disappearance until they’d found out.”

“Found out what?”

“That we’re us. We couldn’t have covered our tracks on Primores any better if we’d done it deliberately. SIX was running things in that neighborhood, and he died before he could get off a report. The Dark probably knew that an agent of Supreme was coming there. Suddenly its most important spy ring was wiped out, and it was getting nothing from Primores but a loud silence. The Dark would naturally credit this to Supreme’s agent, and it’s been nursing its ulcers all this time while wondering what the agent will do next, and where, and what manner of creature he might be. So we were wanted alive. The Dark wants to know if we’re it.”

“Why the sudden interest in us? Have we done something?”

“
I
have. It can’t be a coincidence that this happened right after I made noises about trading with the Dark.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I should have done it a long time ago. Only the nine traders know about this idea of mine. I suspected that one of them might be an agent of the Dark, and now I’m sure of it. All I have to do is figure out which one it is.”

“What if it’s all nine?” Miss Schlupe asked.