Free Fires of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers Page B

back, letting her hair swirl, laughing.
    “The child is right! Look at the four bullies now! Dead! May Horato the Potent thus destroy all scum like that!”
    “What were they after, my lady?”
    “After?” She drew herself together and took a look at me as though seeing me for the first time.
    I had to be patient. Faint sounds of yells drifted in, so that meant the Chulik was releasing the twins.
    “They were after Pompino,” I said. “I came here to see him, also. But what could they want with him?”
    “Lem,” she said. By the way she spoke I saw she was not an adherent. “The Silver Obscenity.”
    The ways of the folk along the southern shore of Pandahem varied enormously. The jungle people lived quite unaffectedly cheek by jowl with constant danger and death, the jungle their home also their mausoleum. Death was merely another stage to them. Ashti, already, held a contempt for other death that just might, I considered, just might extend to her own.
    The people who lived in the towns and cities had, it seemed, settled there. They were not indigenous. The jungle folk tolerated them up to a point. A clash of cultures had not happened, which was not to say that, this being Kregen, it would not do so.
    So I could harbor a vile suspicion of my comrade Pompino. Maybe he had become an adherent of Lem the Silver Leem?
    It was possible. He was a kregoinye, like me, a man picked out by the Star Lords to go about the world for them and pick their hot chestnuts out of the fire. Unlike me, he believed the Everoinye to be some kind of god, and he was bursting with pride that he had been chosen. All Khibils share that feeling of conscious superiority, of course. But for Pompino, pride upheld a shrewd understanding of his own worth. He might have been dazzled by promises. Maybe the adherents of Lem had caught Pompino at a bad time. If he did not get away about business for the Star Lords from time to time he brooded and fretted. He had told me this himself. If he felt slighted, and the Leem Lovers happened by... Oh, yes, it was eminently possible.
    Then the two sets of twins burst in, all a-yelling and a-screaming. They threw themselves on their mother. If they noticed the blood and the dead bodies, they were not as important as making sure their mother was unharmed.
    I grabbed Ashti and went off, out of the room.
    There remained a considerable quantity of clearing up to be done, and I had no desire to become involved in that. Ashti kicked — once — and then said: “I’m thirsty.”
    “Good,” I said. “We will find some sazz for you.”
    Chenunga the Chulik came out and started up the corridor. He was going to retrieve the little spear and begin the disposal of the dead. He saw Ashti and me.
    “Master?”
    “We’re off to Swod’s Revenge for a wet.”
    “But — the lady Pompina will require you to dine here.”
    “Undoubtedly. But I dislike the smell of blood with meals.”
    His Chulik face grew more yellow. “Everything will be cleaned.”
    “Then we will return later. Tell me, Chulik, where is your master?”
    He spoke up openly.
    “From time to time he is called away on business. He is on a trip now. I do not know when he will be back.”
    “And why did these Leem Loving scum wish to see him?”
    “I know that—”
    “Then, Chenunga the Ob-eyed, tell me.”
    His pigtail wiggled as he spoke. His one piglike eye regarded me with what appeared to be a baleful stare.
    “They wished the master to join them. He refused. On the last occasion he slew three of them. This was their way of revenging themselves at the same time as they forced their wishes on him.”
    “It seems to me they do not know Pompino very well.”
    “No, master.”
    “Well, you did your duty as you saw it. And you caught that Stroxal in the end, thank Pandrite. So we will be off. Remberee.”
    We went out, and I was conscious of the construction that could be put upon my actions by those with limited vision. And to say I wanted Ashti out