Part 11

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John buttoned the last of his leather cloak as he stepped out of Larran's residence for the first time in ages. He stood staring out at the wide street of the quarter before him with a distinctly dark, hardened look in his lost gaze.

The mill of people and minor levitation crafts was a welcome jargon of noise and activity, kind of like a city street only missing neon lights and high above was a cieling for the next story. The texture of a gringy feel was very different from earth too, it was cleaner but the perception, at least for him, was tainted. After Larran, all he could see was how much darker and more seeded the back allies to this Nirthrian Prime was, lurking just behind the facade of cleanliness and order.

He flared his nostrils, carefully folding his sore hands before himself as Harvey stepped around him dressed up like a bad, Dirty Harry proto-type chewing on a toothpick.

"Want I should get the bat for ya's boss?" Harvey asked with a smug sniff as he swung one up to his shoulder. "When you gotta pay da man, you gotta pay da man. You know what I'm sayin? So how late is this jewlry dealer wit de moola, cause I'm takin' it outa his toes!" Harvey slapped the bat into his palm as he twisted the toothpick to the other side of his mouth and then motioned to John. "Foist, I'm taken da fifty outa his pinky toes, ain't that right boss? Ya gotta breaka da pinky foist ..."

"Harvey. You can't beat a brain cell." John eyed Harvey with suspicious amusement and started walking. Perhaps he could find his way, or perhaps he'd get lost. Either way he felt sure Larran had some way to track him. "Here's hoping Larran doesn't use neural clones" John thought out loud, unnoticing of the alarm he caused in a delicate Nebari lady passing him on the street. She hurried and looked back with an odd face, he noticed that when he looked back to unconsciously admire the lady.

The lady stepped up her pace again, awkwardly hurrying on the high heeled boots. Her short hair was pretty on her, and her trim gray clothes set off her tiny figure. A lingering frustrated arousal was a welcomed distration now as it had been with Chiana. But everything brought his thoughts around to Chiana.

John walked up to a post, dropped his forehead against it and squinted his eyes closed. "It's no use."

"Ah da daaame" Harvey sympathized from behind. Harvey made an overwrought clasp on John's shoulder. "You's dat ways, boss. Yeah. You's got that trouble witcha dames. Ehy" Harvey moved close to John's ear "Why don we goes back an sees to er, ehy?"

John looked over his shoulder at Harvey. "Hey" John started walking backward from Harvey. "You've been playing the prude in my head the last, what, I don't know, spin cycles, years! She's a slut, she's a distraction, you're wasting your brains John! What the hell got into you!" John pointed at him. "Why would you want me to be with her?"

Harvey tapped the end of the bat in his other hand while he walked up to John. John held his place. Harvey suddenly shrugged. "Yous da boss, eh?" Harvey strolled around John. He stopped over John's shoulder. "I know more than you've told me." Harvey paused for his dramatic effect before suddenly resuming. "But as you say. Far be it from me to want you to be around her" he nearly purred with contempt. "Unless you can make it interesting."

"Are you kidding, I practically go Chernobyl. What's it take for you to find it interesting? No- don't anwer that."

Harvey lingered behind his shoulder a moment before replying. "So far you haven't."

John started walking away, throwing his hand back at Harvey. "Go away Grasshopper." The urge to somehow go crazier with her forced a smile over John's haggared face. The arousal of it was incredible. But soon it was mixing with other uncontrolled thoughts. Tormented pulses from the madnesses Larran had helped John into tortured him. It wasn't the pains, suffering, hate, or humiliation that bothered him. Somewhere he knew he'd been to that place that wasn't sane but he was in the best company there. He was with Chiana and he hadn't cared as much what kind of madness it was. That mad place had little room for Larran no matter how Larran tried to be its master.

"They ain'ts payin' dere owes, boss" Harvey tapped the bat in the palm of his other hand.

"So we're takin' it outta thier toes, man" John waved his hands, leapt and clicked his heels together. "Woo-hoo."

"You's da man, you's da man!" Harvey pointed his hand and bat at John, surprised when he noticed John was suddenly staring dryly back.

John grabbed Harvey's bat. Harvey took off running, his arms flailing in the air while John ran after him with the bat swiping through the air.

---

Larran lifted the elaborate floor rug back to reveal the head of the squirming form stretched out underneath the rug. "What charming creatures infest rugs on this world."

Chiana bared her teeth slightly.

"Is something making the rug mites unhappy?"

"Yeah" her dry voice rasped in frustration. Her face dropped down onto the floor and she rubbed her face into it while her body squirmed. "m-mneed, some-something" she squirmed, her insides seemed to be pulling itself, and it pulled harder and harder. She hummed and rubbed into the floor digging to mix or twist the pains to pleasure.

"No need to appologise. It was only a bunch of old clothes from past guests you burnt. No doubt they weren't suitable for your standing" he smiled cruelly. "In fact, to show I hold no resentment, I have something more suitable for you." Larran stood, retuned to the floor and presented a shiny silver covered plate in front of her. She hummed desperately, staring at it, nodding urgently for him to open it. He lifted the cover.

Her tiny trembling hand took the exotic comb. She hummed even more desperately, ran the comb into her hair then clutched her hands in her hair. She writhed under the rug and made a high pitched whine.

"It came all the way from Brinik Museum just for you." Larran stood and walked over the thin body under the rug. "Ah this way, yes." She hissed and strained to bear his steps while he walked back over her hips and back. "Hm. She likes it" he announced his satisfaction and left.

The comb shattered where it struck the door he just closed in time. "Naaaaea!" she yelled, throwing the rug off and running to the door, slamming the plate into it. She pulled on the doorknob, but whether it was locked or not, it didn't open right away, and she fell back onto her rear on the floor.

Whipping her head, she felt the suffering wave breaking. Turning on her knees, she stood and made it a few steps before her weak legs sent her back onto her knees. She whipped her head again after a microt with a raw screechy exhale. Somehow things fell back into place around her mind. He was gone, there wouldn't be anything to help the hunger, it would just have to function anyway, no need to dwell on that. Time to do something, find something to do.

She didn't look at her legs, it would only make her doubt they could stand her up. She just put one foot in place and worked her way up. Crouched tenuously, she cracked a smile and then cracked a laugh. Her fingers splayed. She was getting good at this, she delighted. "Yeah!"

---

Perkunas ambled from his featureless shop into the colorless city in which the pedestrian walks were like rivulets of life in the depths a black charcoal canyon of lifeless artificial constructs. Perkunas sighed and reached into his pockets, pulling out a tiny pipe and a dropper of marnnat. Continuing the comforting habit, he placed a drop in the absorber in the top of the pipe. Finding his lighter, he tried activating it. Of course it didn't light.

A shiny black leather glove appeared at his pipe and lit it. Perkunas eyes widened for a moment. But as his eyes fell on the bony wrist exposed between the bottom of the glove and the sleeve of the black trenchcoat, he grinned. "Hm, you wouldn't be without a working marnnat light. Unless it were from overuse."

"Can't light it, as usual?" the lady's slightly dry voice insinuated while she lit one of her own.

"You know me, Tannac" Perkunas sighed. "Limp, I mean damp, fire fekkik, so damp I can put any other fire out too."

"You should try sometime." Tannac exhaled her first smoke. "Benefactor."

"Well I put all the rest else out" he cut a dry glance to her "I figure I'll leave one fire on."

"The analogy was dren, you know" she doubled her marnnat with another drop "you can feel free to stop this anytime."

"But once I get started...." he held up his lighter and tried lighting it again.

"All right then I will. What brings you from slaving at your slave shop?" she replaced her bottle of marnnat in a pocket on the shirt that hung on her.

"Off hand? I'd say the beauties of this beckoning environment" he glanced around.

"Dren" she called it.

"All right then. You?"

She exhaled bitterly but smiled slightly. "We both know I'd need to have a control collar on you to beckon you after me."

Perkunas shrugged slightly. "I'd come wouldn't I?"

"Maybe" she added with another deep smoke and a slight hum of a laugh. "What the frell do you want with me. I was happily wasting by the recycle plant in misery. Can't you leave well enough alone?"

"John Crichton's been seen around town." He looked to her and noticed she couldn't care less. "You have been out of the loop."

She exhaled a wry stillborn laugh. "I've been in a loop. Just not with anyone else in it."

"Oshana's claiming the Sister is at Larran's again."

Tannac looked deadpan at him.

"Problem being there is a poor girl suffering away in Larran's captivity there that looks like an ideal for Oshana's obsession."

"Yeah her Fena fantasy. Her and a quarter of the people on this machine made giant round Establishment excrement. Well it could be worse. I could be back in South Walden Prime. You got a point, or you working up for another lame excuse for a frell?"

"Not after all the help I got last time. Like I said, there's a young lady trapped with Larran and Oshana in his vermin maze."

Tannac exhaled in thought for a moment. "So you want me to get her out?"

"No" Perkunas nearly sighed. "I don't dare, not now. Were he to suspect...."

"Frell him up his ass" Tannac suggested, lighting another drag. "I got a rifle that's perfect for it." She slowly blew out a trail of smoke. "And a knife for the other side. I think it'd really improve that guy."

"Doubtless. Look there's a guy with him, claims to be John Crichton, one of the Sister's Chosen."

"Big hunk o dren, limpy. I claimed to be the Sister for a while."

His eyes snapped from watching the sparse traffic back to her.

"Yeah. When I was at South Walden Prime I thought I was. Of course I was just a little magrafharbot at the time."

"But you remembered who you were, you got over it?" his pipe was dangling on his lips in some surprise.

"No, I realized there couldn't be anyone like that, just us pathetic excuses for intelligent beings. So I couldn't be the Sister if she didn't exist. Eventually I realized who I was. Not that realizing who I am was any improvement."

Perkunas shrugged. "Anyway the problem is they check out. Both of them fit the bill."

"So they're in trouble. That collector of anything Fena must be frothing. Or will be if he hasn't made the connection yet. Does he know what they looked like?"

"No, I just checked the Brenl Transcription. Larran still hasn't got it. Never even seen it. I guess money can't buy everything after all. Anyway this guy who fits the John Crichton bill is being let out to do some dren for Larran I expect."

"He a hunk?" she asked, her posture flexing slightly as she savored another drag.

"How can you be interested, you finally eat and had a whole bowl of Wooth?"

"I don't know. Hunger makes me horny or something. What do you care? My shape didn't stop you from wanting some. What about this guy?"

"Our slightly insane local minister isn't one to let people out of his invitations unless he can use them. I want you to track him down, get in with him, do some jobs for him or whatever. Look into him and this....Chiana."

She inhaled sharply and stiffened a moment. He looked to her. "Fine" she tensely nodded once. "I have to go" she sharply turned and walked away.

Perkunas was relieved in a way. Her recent mission with the impetuous Bursamen might be discovered, and to be seen conversing with her in public wouldn't be the best of ideas. Especially so soon after Bursamen might have been seen in this vicinity.

Still. Tannac had a sense of events that was sometimes uncanny. Tannac had more quirks than anyone he had ever heard of. But then she was also more frelled up than anyone he'd ever heard of. Doubtless the dichotomy of her Establishment past and Resistance present held some clue. He didn't know her story well. It was enough that she was still one of the most versatile and capable agents to be had. Even if it was a wonder with the obvious toll her demons were taking on her. Her hunches were either insanity and remarkable coincidences or a strange perception. He put enough stock in her hunches to decide to move along.

---

"Credit?" a Nebari man asked, jarring John to where he was. John looked around and realized the man was a taxi driver, or the equivelent. John gave him the card Larran had given him. The driver passed it over a box and walked over and got in. John got in as well, surprised to see a lady already in the transport. The Nebari lady watched John like a hawk, John noticed.

He couldn't stop stray thoughts comparing the lady to Chiana. He couldn't stop his mind from going on to worry about Chiana. He wasn't concerned about her at the moment or around Larran. He figured she could handle Larran. This time it only took a few words and posturing to get the merchant to decide he needed to keep up with his dues. What would happen if he got into a tough situation and he didn't get back? What would happen if he failed? Would Larran then act against Chiana? And who the frell was this lady?

Setting aside the Spanish Inquisition wracking his mind, John tried to focus on the next task Larran sent him to do. Repeatedly, he kept looking back to the Nebari lady. She looked similar to the only other Nebari lady he could remember seeing before....being here. He couldn't remember why, but the lady he remembered scared him. This lady didn't seem so frightening. Only very skinny. And unlike the lady he remembered, this lady's hair was shorter than Chiana's.

Suddenly John realized he hadn't told the driver, or pilot in this case, where he was trying to get to. "Hey. Down around Floride."

"Flonide?" the driver asked.

"Yeah. Sounds like the treatment." John saw the pilot glance into a reflective monitor he used like a rear view mirror. The lady nodded to him. "And floss regularly" John added before the implications of their exchange sank in. "Where would you guys rather I went?"

The lady sat upright even more sharply and crossed her hands on her knee. "Nitter."

"Sounds better than where some people seem to want me to go. I can't talk you out of it, lady?"

The lady only smiled dryly to herself and worked a lighter. She set it to smoke something in a small pipe.

"You won't last long underwater, John" Harvey spoke up from the passenger seat. He turned slightly in his seat carefully so as not to overly crease his fine suit. "Especially if they pick a fast flowing river."

"That doesn't sound as bad to me as it does to you."

"That's what you think" Harvey looked over his shoulder to John again. "But I know differently."

"That's comforting."

"Mm yes" the lady replied.

Harvey looked to the lady with a smile before turning his amusement back to John. "You are taking this entirely too lightly, John. Perhaps very heavy shoes will give the situation" Harvey paused in thought a moment "the proper weight."

"You're fitting me with cement shoes already?"

"No I hadn't thought of that" the lady admitted with a peculiar stare at the back of John's head.

"Told ya" John reminded Harvey. Harvey let out a seething exhale.

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