Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [102]
In such circumstances, waiting was rarely the best thing to do. Never concede the initiative to your enemy. He needed to get out. How to do that safely was a matter of some concern. He would be most vulnerable at the moment of emergence. The way forward might be devoid of assailants—or as soon as he stuck his head out he might find it locked in the crosshairs of their weapons. The trouble was that the only way to determine if there was any danger was to expose himself to it. From a very young age he had learned that inviting hostile fire was not the best way to ascertain the enemy's strength and position.
Squatting in the cold, dirty water he contemplated his options. He had come a considerable distance. There was no telling how far it was to the drain's exit. He certainly could not see the end. Confronted with such a situation a human would see itself as having two choices: to go forward or to go back. Since his attackers were all human, it was likely they would ponder the same two scenarios. However, he was not human. Other options were open to him. The sooner he settled on one, the more time he would have to explore its possibilities before it also occurred to his assailants.
While he was weaponless, his thorax pouch did hold a handful of useful instruments and tools. The cutter would be useful as a weapon only at very close quarters. Meanwhile, it did serve to burn a nice oval hole in the tough but thin ceramic ceiling of the conduit. Removing a meter-wide section and setting it to one side, Truzenzuzex began to dig. It was a skill at which his ancient ancestors had been especially proficient. Though there was not much call for it in the modern world, it was an ability that was innate and could not be forgotten. Helpfully, the soil overhead was soft and largely devoid of rocks—just what one might expect to encounter in a park that had been heavily and repeatedly landscaped.
More than an hour later, having avoided the attentions of the police who had been summoned in response to the earlier shooting, his intent pursuers were still guarding the entrance to the conduit where their quarry had vanished as well as the location where it drained into Claris Pond. They were fidgety but patient. The philosoph had to show himself sooner or later, via one exit or the other. When he did emerge they would be waiting for him.
None of them was watching the distant pedestrian intersection where Truzenzuzex rejoined Tse-Mallory. Having calmly covered the distance from the bloodbath in the clothing shop, Tse-Mallory had contacted his companion via communit. A few passersby glanced in the direction of the philosoph, their curiosity drawn not by his species but by his current personal appearance.
Upon first catching sight of his companion, Tse-Mallory reacted similarly. “What happened to you? You're a mess.”
“And you, tr!llk, are bleeding.” The philosoph gestured with a truhand at the shallow but unsettling crimson gashes that decorated his friend's arms and shoulders. “Were the choice up to me, I think I would opt for a tidier tailor.”
Reaching up to his face, Tse-Mallory rubbed at one bloody patch of skin. “These scratches aren't a consequence of a bad fitting. A handful of Sphene's everyday upstanding citizens just tried to kill me.”
The thranx nodded, a gesture his kind had long ago adopted soon after Amalgamation. “How interesting. Exactly the same thing just happened to me. What a coincidence—except that is most unlikely to be the case.” Resplendent compound eyes peered up at Tse-Mallory's brilliant blue single lenses. “Average-looking citizens wielding an uncharacteristic array of weaponry attempt to murder both of us in broad daylight. Do such circumstances