The Forlorn(31)

By the time Keilin got back, Marou had dragged himself into the shade of a rocky ledge. The leg was already ballooning, and the old man's face was gray-shaded and beaded with a heavy sweat.

Marou reached for the bottle, unstoppered it with shaky hands. Drank. Shuddered. After a few moments the narcotic began to take effect. He spoke slightly easier, but his voice was high and quavery. "Keil, boy. You been like the son I never had. You know Broken-Chimney Rock?" Keilin nodded. "My stash . . . it's in th' cave with the head-sized piece o' quartz next to the entrance. There's a shelf near the back, high up, goes back a long way. 'Nuff good stuff there t' buy a fair-to-middlin' town. It's all yours, boy."

Keilin found his throat closing up, too tight to speak. He shook his head furiously.

"You see, Keil, I struck it rich maybe twenty-five year ago. Went to live in town. I lasted two whole weeks. Th' town was sick o' me and I was mighty sick of it. So . . . I come back out here. It's bin a good life, but I was gettin' a mite lonely. We had a good year an' a bit, boy. I ain't gonna live through this one. I'm too old. I just wanted to tell you, son, afore I finish the rest of the bottle an' go out peacefullike."

Fear and desperate grief clawed at Keilin. The rapid cooling of the pendant stone went unnoticed. "No! You can't!" It was a cry of utter desolation. With it he felt the jewel like an icy snake biting into his chest . . . and willed. For the first time in his life he used the stone with conscious direction. An entire apothecary's shop, including the apothecary and a furtive looking customer, was translocated abruptly from Port Tinarana into the high desert valley.

The drug had stilled Marou's pain to some extent. It hadn't clouded his sharp old mind. As Keilin ran into the shop, which the shocked owner and his customer were attempting to leave, the old man readied his spear. As Keilin was threatening to push his knife through the terrified-looking apothecary's liver if he didn't immediately provide a treatment for puff-adder bite, there came a sonic boom. The platecraft dropped in on the exact position Keilin had been standing a few seconds before. The deadly black spear was thrown even before the craft had come to a complete halt, toppling one of its two riders. The second fired a deadly purple energy blast at where the old man had been. He was injured and drugged, which is why the bolt actually hit Marou's side, instead of missing completely.

Keilin had spent the last eighteen months being taught to act decisively. He seized the first bottle that came to hand, and flung it through the diamond-shaped window panes at the hooded Morkth gunner.

The furtive customer had been a fence, and the apothecary had been in the very act of assaying some stolen property for him. Gold. With hydrochloric acid. It had been a near-full flask of this that Keilin had snatched up. The flask struck the wind cowl of the platecraft and shattered in a burning rain across the jewelled eyes of the Morkth.

The Morkth do not scream, but a terrible keening and a series of rapid high-pitched clicks accompanied the creature's wild firing. Both the fence and the apothecary attempted to run. It was a mistake. Some of the eye facets were undamaged, and while the Morkth was nearly insane with pain, it still reacted instinctively. The movement was seen, and drew fire. Keilin stood, looking for a weapon. His own black spear lay where he had dropped it, a few yards from Marou. It might as well have been on the moon.

But . . . he could read. And the apothecary's supplies were most punctiliously and clearly labelled. Moving slowly he took the large one labelled ALCOHOL, unstoppered it, and tossed it in a lazy arc through the broken window. It showered over the creature that had staggered away from the platecraft, and was advancing on the building in a mad dance. Keilin followed the alcohol with the still burning oil-light from the counter. He did not pause to watch the incandescent chittering thing that ran off into the desert. He sprinted to the old man's side. It was plain that he was too late.

Marou's eyes, wide and staring, looked into some distant place. Beyond speaking, he weakly squeezed Keilin's hand, and then . . . he was gone. For a long time the boy just sat there, until the silence was recaptured by the small sounds of the desert.

At last the boy stood up, gently taking the old hand and laying it back on the old man's bony chest. He looked across at the Morkth body still impaled on the long black spear. "That's what you are all going to be! I'm going to kill all of you. Do you hear me?" His voice rose to a scream. The transmitter line to Beta-Morkth HQ was still open. So, indeed, they did hear him. But they did not believe him. And it was not in the Morkth warrior's genetic design to know fear anyway.

It was evening, and Keilin leaned on his spear, and watched as the fire consumed the last of Marou Skyann. He had dressed the old man in his best fringed leather shirt, with his broad snakeskin turquoise-studded belt. Marou's black spear Keilin had wrenched from the Morkth corpse, and laid across the gnarled hands. Then he had placed the body out on a bier of dead mountain cedar, which had been carried here into the desert by the floods. It had been doused with the apothecary's entire store of flammable oils.