Flex ran hard, pounding up the wall to set things spinning again. His feet hurt like hell, worse than the frostbite at Brain Freeze, but he ran even harder, conjuring up the roulette, and the mechanical arms overhead.
He only heard the kzin shout, “-you shitflick-” as the cat leaped toward him, and froze in mid-air, amidst the repaired machinery.
When the icy-eyed monkey thing went into action, Flex needed no other warning. He made the most of that human flight reflex, taking the path of decreasing resistance.
As he reached the mouth of the tunnel, he realized he might be able to turn off the machinery, so he jogged the cylinder down to a halt. The roulette spun away into unseen dimensions and the lights went out. Cautiously making his way back to the center, Flex beamed his light around. There was no sign of the Slaver fleet, the monster monkey, nor of Jarko-S’larbo.
Unless you count the neatly packaged, kzin-sized stasis box that lay sealed on the floor.
“Well happy birthday to me,” said Flex.
Zel Kickovich folded his arms and looked Flex hard in the eyes. “What took you so damn long?” he said. “We nearly got fried by the Sizthz Chitz.”
“You try lugging a metal box the size of a groundcar through a tunnel, down eight stairs, across a pile of rubble, and into a cargo hold,” Flex retorted. “With a kzin in it. Then try evading the Lisp Kzinship-”
“Sizthz Chitz.”
“-however you pronounce it, in a lander with half the power of a wristcomp. Oh, and did I mention nearly getting stuck in a time trap? How long is it supposed to take to get out of one of those, by the book?”
Zel beamed and clapped Flex on the back. “I love it when you get mad.”
That drew a wan smile from Flex.
Now that Catscratch Fever had reached hyperdrive, Flex was able to contact the Puppeteer Hylo by hyperwave.
“Mission accomplished,” he said dryly. “I found a stasis box, but I’m keeping it.”
Both Hylo’s sock puppet heads bobbed up and down in silhouette, but did not make a sound.
“Don’t get your necks in a knot,” Flex said. “I’ve got something even better for you.”
“It would not go well with you to renege on our bargain,” said Hylo, composing herself. (At least Flex assumed Hylo was a female, based on the shimmering pitch of her alluring voice. If Hylo was male, Flex felt just a little bit dirty.)
“Trust me, when I tell you what I found, you’re not going to want the stasis box anymore.” Puppeteers were cowards, after all, and used humans to deal with dangerous species. For Finagle’s sake, Hylo would probably be afraid of its own silhouette.
He told Hylo about the stasis assembly line, and Zeno’s Roulette. “Not only can you make your own stasis boxes, there are ageless places to explore, if you can figure out how to get through. It’s impossible to place a value on that.”
After a pantomime of what looked like two weak-knuckled hand shadows consulting one another, Hylo could only agree. “What’s in the stasis box?” she asked.
“One very angry cat I call Schrödinger, because I haven’t made up my mind whether he lives or dies.”
Hylo appreciated that. “You know what I would do,” she said. “In any event, you may have the stasis box.”
“I’ll send you the data you need, and destroy all copies.”
“Then this is our last verbal communication. We have no more use for you.”
“Why not?” said Flex, not so much caring as curious.
“We no longer have enough stars to compensate you. Our budget is exceeded. Money aside, we find you to be motivated by sex and revenge. Both are now spent tools.”
Both unlikely, sex and revenge, Flex considered. But both me. Bothme. Jinxian puns were rancid enough without being one’s actual name. He harrumphed. Sex and revenge, love and money, whatever you called them, that was not him, not anymore. He had his revenge, but Annie was still gone. Maybe she could at least rest in peace now.
“Good-bye,” Flex said, thinking more like “good riddance.”
“I wish you well,” said Hylo. “What will you do, now that you have a tiger by the tail, and a pocketful of stars?”
Flex thought that over. A pocketful of stars. “Tabam,” he said.
BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND
Bobcat swaggered through the seedy Orange District of Canyon like a bloody victorious warrior. If his tail hadn’t been blown off in that Fanged God’s anus of a planet, Wunderland, it’d be swishing around proudly. This current intelligence-gathering campaign had yielded very little data of military value. Two domesticated kzintoshi had been appointed to the City Council as representatives of the burgeoning kzin population. Of slightly more interest, those two kzinti had suggested they open up the site of the stasis-enshrined Heroes buried beneath set magma, to tourism. Bobcat’s ears quivered and his stumpy tail darted around cheerfully as he imagined the Patriarchy attempting to free these savage warriors while on a guided tour of the lava fields, but he knew that was a bit farfetched.
More disturbingly, he had sensed another telepath, a human ARM Agent, poking around the fringes of his mind. They had chased each other through the white caves of thought, a monkey holding onto a tiger’s tail. The tiger was caught, but if the monkey let go, the tiger would snap it up. Little did the agent know that this particular tiger had no tail! Bobcat locked down and moved away. He hadn’t sensed her presence in quite a while.
Now he simply enjoyed the brisk walk. Despite the pointlessness of this specific mission, he loved Canyon. Something about this hostile planet, with its cratered and scarred auburn surface, spoke to him on a cellular level. Old, desolate Warhead had found a new life, as if the monumental disintegrator wound had become infected with glittering architectural encrustations, creating a strange human-kzin amalgam society. Sometimes in the still void between stars, he toyed with the dream of someday retiring to Canyon. That was not likely. He understood that he would be worked until his synapses sizzled and nothing remained but a drooling kshat. He only regretted that every time he visited this world he so admired, he betrayed it. Telepaths were by nature poetic; they relied too much on imagery and metaphor to process the intangible world of the mind, so the irony was not altogether lost on Bobcat.
He pushed the thought out of his head and continued to walk through the bright lights and salty smells of the old seaside district that predated the vertical urban sprawl. As Devourer of Monkeys’ Telepath, he was permitted a modicum of liberty, he had been Yearrl-Captain’s faithful servant since before the captain had a partial Name and his covert missions on other human-kzin worlds had made Yearrl rich and admired throughout the Patriarchy. There was a saying aboard the Devourer: when Yearrl bathes in blood, we all get splattered; and, in truth, as kzintoshi went, Yearrl-Captain was what humans would call a decent fellow. His Captain obliged him a few hours of leave after the operation, so Bobcat held his scruffy chin high, as if admiring the lavish balconies and clinging structures rising up the sheer cliff walls, and let the thoughts of the tall, spindly Canyonites wash over him in tune to the sound of the sea’s lazy surf. Where the true warriors on his ship saw an old, mangy half-kzintosh, humans saw a leaner, meaner version of their nightmares. His long-battered ego always appreciated these jaunts.
Bobcat stopped at an old kzin building made up in garish detail to look like an ancient human sanctuary. The flashing sign above the entrance read TEMPLE OF SEKHMET in Interworld. Inside, the walls were covered with vertical lines of primitive pictorial script and vulgar murals of stiff angular humans prostrating themselves before a kzinrett with the hairless body of a human female. Bobcat assumed the artist had never laid eyes on a true kzinrett as this representation had round, furry ears.