Free Midworld by Alan Dean Foster Page B

trembling slightly and an eyelid flickered, but that was only normal.
    A crowd had gathered behind Nearchose. He turned, shooed them away. “Nothing to see. Everything’s okay. The Doc had a bigger bad-dream than he’s used to, that’s all.”
    “You sure, Nick?” someone asked hesitantly.
    “Sure, Maria. I’ll handle it.” The crowd dribbled away muttering among themselves as Nearchose closed the broken door.
    “What’s the trouble, Nick? Why the indelicate entrance?”
    The guard turned to him, studied the man whom he often did not understand, but whom he unfailingly respected. “That was you that screamed, Doc.” It wasn’t a question.
    Tsing-ahn nodded. “That was me, yes, Nick.” He looked away. “I’m flying on my morning dose and … I thought I saw something. I don’t have your mental resilience, Nick, and I’m afraid I let it get a hold of me for a second. Sorry if it disturbed everyone.”
    “Sure, yeah,” Nearchose finally replied. “Worried about you, that’s all. Everyone does, you know.”
    “Sure, yeah,” Tsing-ahn echoed bitterly.
    Nearchose fidgeted uneasily in the silence, looked past the scientist toward the far end of the lab. “How’s the work coming?”
    Tsing-ahn answered absently, his mind obviously elsewhere. “Well. Better than one might expect. Yes, quite well. I should have some definite announcements to make in a couple of days.”
    “That’s great, Doc.” Nearchose turned to go, paused. “Listen, Wu, if you need anything, anything you’d rather not go through channels for …”
    Tsing-ahn smiled faintly. “Of course, Nick. You’ll be the first one I turn to.”
    The security guard grinned reassuringly and closed the door quietly behind him. Tsing-ahn returned to his work. He proceeded calmly once more and with his accustomed efficiency.
    Nothing else disturbed the tranquility of the station until that evening, when a passerby thought he smelled something unusual in the corridor outside the lab. Following the odor led to visual confirmation—dark wisps of smoke issuing from the cracks around Wu’s laboratory door. The man yelled “ Fire! ” and hit the nearest all-purpose station alarm.
    This time others reached the lab well ahead of Nearchose. He had to work his way through the personnel who were putting out the last pockets of flame. Containment had been achieved before the blaze could spread beyond the confines of the lab but the lab itself, was a complete wreck. The fire had been brief, but intense. Not only was there plenty of flammable material within the lab, but Tsing-ahn had apparently utilized white phosphorous on stubborn materials and acids on anything that refused to ignite. The little biochemist had been as methodical in destruction as he had been in research.
    Everyone clustered around the few charred scraps of wood that were scattered around the back of the lab. They were all that remained of the burl which had been worth untold millions. Nearchose’s main concern lay elsewhere, so it was he who first found the body sprawled under a table across the room. At first he assumed the scientist had died of smoke inhalation, since there were no marks on his body. Then he rolled him over and the white cap slid off. Nearchose saw the needler still clutched convulsively in one hand, saw the tiny holes of equal diameter on both the front and back of the skull. He knew what a needler did, knew he could slip a pencil neatly through that hole.
    The man’s eyes were closed and his expression, for the first time that Nearchose could remember, was content.
    Nearchose stood up. The pitiable, weak genius below him had run across something that had impelled him to his own death. Nearchose had no idea what that thing might be and was not sure he would care to know. No man is perfect. An old sergeant had first repeated that cliche to him. For all his brilliance, Tsing-ahn had been less perfect than most. A scrap of note here, a page of book there were all that