“I see.” To cover his own need for a thinking space, as well as the boy’s, Flandry raised his cup. “Confusion to moneylenders!”
“Damnation to Biocontrol,” said Djuanda, with a slight hiccough.
“What?” Flandry set down his own cup and stared.
“Nothing!” Fear rose in the dark liquid eyes. “Nothing, tuan! I said not a word!”
This might bear further investigation, Flandry thought with excitement. I was wondering what the hell to do about this lad-couldn’t have him tagging along with his big wet ears a-flap in the breeze-not when my scalp is still wanted. But this makes him, perhaps, a lucky find. The first I’ve heard who’s said anything against Biocontrol itself. He’s too young to have thought of it on his own. So… somewhere in his home town, at least one older person-probably more-has daydreamed about a revolution-
The soup arrived. Djuanda forgot his terrors in attacking it. Flandry poured more liquor and ate at a calmer pace. While they waited for the main course, he said conversationally, “I’ve never heard of Ranau. Tell me about it… ”
A rijstaffel, properly made, is a noble dish requiring a couple of hours to eat. Then there was sherbet, with more tea and arrack. And a pair of strolling dancers came up to earn a few coppers by entertaining the wealthy man. And another jug of arrack seemed indicated. And there was a never ending string of toasts to drink.
The white sun climbed to the zenith and toppled. Shadows rose under the mountain. When the sun went behind the crater, the sky was still blue, but it duskened rapidly and the evening star was kindled over eastern ridges. A low cold wind piped along ashen slopes, whipping the first streamers of cloud before it.
Flandry stood up, relieving cramped muscles in a giant yawn. “We’ll go back to my room,” he suggested. Djuanda, unhardened to drinking, gave him a blurry look. Flandry laughed and tossed the boy his cloak. “Here, better put this on. You look as if you can stand an overnight nap. We’ll talk further after sunrise.”
It seemed as good a way as any of putting Djuanda on the shelf while he assessed his own situation with respect to Luang. (And to Kemul. Never forget those enormous strangler’s hands.) Alcohol glowed along Flandry’s veins, but his new confidence could also be justified logically. If Luang had indeed decided to hate him-or even if she remained too stubborn about an escape attempt-Djuanda offered a ready-made entree to Ranau. What hints he had gotten suggested to Flandry that Ranau could prove useful. Very useful, perhaps.
Below the retaining wall, where shadows had already engulfed the slopes, lamps were twinkling to life. But fog rose up, to blur and finally smother those tiny strewn stars. Flandry guided a somewhat wobbly Djuanda, who sang songs, up the sharp trail toward the Inn of the Nine Serpents. “Having negotiated the last ladder and crossed the terrace, he went down the fumarole to his door. It had an ancient type of lock, he must grope for his key… no, wait, it wasn’t locked after all, so his companions must be in there expecting his return… With a split second’s hesitation, Flandry opened the door and stepped through.
Two green-kilted men snatched at his arms. Across the chamber, Flandry saw a dozen more. Kemul and Luang sat with ankles lashed together. Flandry got one look at the girl’s face turned toward his. “Get out!” he heard her scream. A Guard smacked his stick against her temple. She sagged into Kemul’s lap. The mugger roared.
Nias Warouw leaned against the farther wall, smoking an outplanet cigarette and smiling.
Flandry had barely glimpsed the men closing in on either side. His reaction was too fast for thought. Spinning your fingers into the throat, was one way to break your hand, unless you struck with a vector precisely normal to the skin. Flandry opened the throat and tore the windpipe across.
The other man was upon his back. Arms closed around the Terran’s neck. Flandry’s head was already down, chin protecting larynx. He dropped straight through the hug, hit the floor and rolled over.
The Guard backed into the doorway. His knife gleamed forth. The rest of Warouw’s troop stalked closer, their own blades drawn.
Flandry bounced to his feet, reached in his shirt, and yanked out the pistol he had captured.
He didn’t waste his breath crowing. Not when knives and clubs could be hurled from every side. He shot.
Four men went down in as many explosions. The others milled back. Flandry’s eyes searched through a reeking haze of cordite. Where was their chief now, Warouw looked out from behind one of the rough pillars upholding the ceiling. Still he smiled. Flandry fired and missed. Warouw’s right hand emerged, with a modern Betelgeusean blaster.
Flandry didn’t stop for heroics. He didn’t even stop to make a conscious decision. His chance of hitting Warouw with his own clumsy weapon was negligible. A single wide-beam low-energy blaster shot couldn’t possibly miss. It would roll him screaming on the floor. Later, if he wanted to take the trouble, Warouw could have his seared prisoner treated in some hospital.
The Guard at the door was down with a slug in his chest. The door stood open. Flandry went through it. As he burst out on the terrace again, Warouw was close behind. The rest of the Guards swarmed shouting in their wake. The dusk was cool and blue, almost palpable, surrounding all things and drowning them. Mist and smoke hung in it. Flandry bounded down the ladder to the trailstreet.
There went a rumbling through air and earth. Briefly, flame gushed in the sky. From an open doorway came the sound of crockery falling and smashing; a woman ran out with a scream. Flandry glimpsed several men halted in their tracks, looking up toward the crater. Their bodies were shadows in this vague twilight, but the gleam of a lamp touched white eyeballs. Further down the trail, the barely visible mass of the crowds had stopped seething. Their mutter lifted between black walls.
Gunung Utara was angry.
Warouw paused only an instant at the foot of the ladder. Then a flashbeam sprang from his left hand and speared Flandry. The Terran whirled, dashed from the light, over the pebbles to the retaining wall. He heard footfalls rattle behind him.
At this point, he remembered, the downslope beyond the wall was steep and rugged. He made out a boulder, and leaped from the wall to its top. Another shock went through the ground. The boulder stirred beneath him and he heard lesser stones grind valleyward. Warouw’s flash darted from the wall, here, there, hunting him. Where to go? He could see naught but darkness and thickening fogs. No, wait… was that another jut of rock, two meters away? No time to wonder. He sprang. Almost, he missed, and heard below him the shifting of debris which would cut his feet to rags if he landed in it. He grasped an invisible roughness, pulled himself up on top of the crag, spied another mass below him, and jumped to that.
Warouw’s light bobbed in pursuit.
Flandry realized he was cutting across town. He didn’t know how long he sprang from coign to coign. It was all mist and darkness. Somehow he crossed another safety wall, landed on a terrace, scrambled to the trail beneath, and sped among emptied caves.
Panther to his mountain goat, Warouw followed. Once in a while, for a fractional second, his light picked.but the Terran.
Then Flandry was beyond the city. The trail petered out. He ran across a bare slope, over black cinders and among crags like tall ghosts.
He could just see how sharply the ground rose on his left, almost a cliff, up to the crater rim. Gunung Utara thundered. Flandry felt the noise in his teeth and marrow. Cinders shifted, dust filled his nostrils. Somewhere a boulder went hurtling and bouncing down toward the valley. Smoke boiled from the crater, a solid column three kilometers high, lit from beneath with dull flickering red.