Fortune's Light - Michael Jan Friedman [18]
Somehow he managed to elude it again. His tunic was torn away where the beast had gotten its jaws into it, but the body beneath seemed to be intact.
Riker hadn’t expected to survive one charge, much less two. By the time the isak collected itself a third time, he knew he’d run out of luck.
Panting, trembling with his exertions, he couldn’t scramble to his feet fast enough. He saw the beast spring—a slavering, roiling mass of coal-black fury—and braced himself as best he could.
The animal was heavier than it looked—the impact of its charge knocked the breath out of him. He fell back against the pit wall, wrestling with the isak, trying to keep its nightmare of a muzzle away from the soft flesh of his throat.
Strangely it wasn’t all that difficult. In fact, it was laughably easy. The isak wasn’t struggling at all.
The damned thing was unconscious! Something had stunned it as it went for him.
Thrusting the beast off him, Riker looked up. And saw confusion among the revelers—the turning of heads to determine who had ruined their fun.
But Riker knew who it had been. The same slender Impriman who now leaned out from the brink of the pit and offered him her hand.
In her other hand, he saw, was a crude-looking pistol, which she was just now restoring to its place of concealment. The weapon was primitive enough, no doubt, to get around the Besidian prohibition against high technology at carnival time. If he searched the pit, he’d probably find the projectile that had knocked out the isak.
“Nice shot,” he told her as he accepted the offer of help. “Though it might have come a few seconds sooner.”
“Stop talking,” she said, “and start climbing. If we hurry, we can turn this fiasco into something productive.”
Lyneea proved stronger than she looked. Bracing herself, she gave him all the leverage he needed to scramble up the wall and out of the pit.
“Productive?” he asked, brushing himself off, feeling the pain in his ankle now where the beast had clawed him. He returned a couple of the stares he was getting from disgruntled patrons as they complained about the unfair use of a gun against a poor defenseless isak.
“Yes,” she said, grabbing his wrist and dragging him after her through the crowd. “Productive. Nobody here is going to talk to us, not after you failed their sincerity test.” She shoved aside a fellow Impriman who’d made the mistake of getting in her way. “But just as you fell into the pit, I saw someone bolt out of here. And if I’m not mistaken, it was the muzza who dropped you.”
Riker caught her drift. Anyone might have let him slip—all it meant was that they didn’t like the smell of him. But to drop him and then run—that suggested something more. That suggested a measure of guilt—if they were lucky—in the matter of Teller Conlon and Fortune’s Light.
Suddenly he and Lyneea were out of the tavern and into the frigid white vault of Besidia. She let go of his wrist, scanned the snow-covered ground for a moment, and pointed.
There were lots of footprints there, but most of them had been filled in with drift. Only one set stood out clear and distinct, fresh as baby’s breath and twice as sweet.
Without another word, Lyneea took off along the path described by the tracks. They led across a small plaza into a benighted alleyway, but that didn’t seem to daunt her one bit.
Riker couldn’t stand there while his reluctant companion was giving chase. Tugging his tunic closed where the isak had ripped it open, he plunged after her into the shadows.
Chapter Four
BASEBALL WAS one of the topics for which Data had no references in his positronic memory. But in the short time since he’d left the locker room, he had managed to learn a great deal about it. First, during batting practice, he had observed and familiarized himself with its component acts—pitching, hitting, running, throwing, and catching, all of which had been in progress on one part