The Hybrid by John Jakes

Author:John Jakes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Law crouched behind a pillar-stone, breathing hard. Beside him lay the intricately carved bone chest. He’d carried it on his shoulder for more than ten stebbii.

Overhead the old purple sun shot off gaseous whorls. The storms had intensified during the two days Law had been back in the village. The light drifting to the planet’s surface changed every few seconds, alternately darkening and lightening.

The dilapidated crawler which he had trailed for the best part of the morning had come to a halt in a slight depression. The crawler was an antique, with worn treading and a nearly exhausted powerplant. Its chugging and snorting had given him a trail of sound to follow across the unmarkable slate ground of this part of the plateau.

Serial numbers had been scraped off the crawler’s corroded housing. Once the vehicle had been official property. Its current owner was a lone man.

He rested in its shade, his back propped against a tread, having his noontime meal. He ate with gulps and wheezes.

The Sol System man scratched and belched. He pulled his wide-brimmed headguard lower over his eyes. He slapped an insect in his beard and flicked goo off his fingers. Then he unclipped his drinking bubble from his belt and consumed a few mouthfuls.

At last he stood up. He started to climb back to the housing. Law stepped out from behind the pillar-stone and made the peace-sign.

The man hauled his stunner out of a shabby waist-pouch. Law called, “Don’t fire. I come peacefully. To bargain.”

The man blinked twice. “Where’d you come from?”

“I was sleeping when you came to our village last night. I didn’t learn of your visit till I woke up this morning.”

Snowbird’s casual mention of the man had given Law new hope after two days of hopelessly facing what seemed an insoluble problem: how to contact the government authorities on Shaqu-am. Against Snowbird’s protests, he’d taken his carved bone chest and set out in pursuit of the crawler.

“You got no feathers,” the man said. “What are you? ’Breed?”

Law despised the cynical glitter in the man’s small blue eyes. These traders who roamed the Zimirii planets were unsavory. They brought in stolen merchandise normally unavailable on the outlying pastoral worlds. Slipping in and out among the Colonial Corps goddams, traveling mostly at night, they asked exorbitant prices in bartered goods for their illegal wares. Only the most foolish Omqu dealt with them on a regular basis.

“Does my blood really make any difference?” Law asked. “I want to bargain. Do you have one of the mechanical boxes for talking to the other planets?”

“A longband? So happens I have. A recent model, too. Isn’t much that can’t be provided by yours truly.” A mocking touch to the brim of the headguard. “Dustin O’Flang’s the name. Don’t believe I caught yours.”

“I didn’t give it.”

The small blue eyes iced. You’re asking for a mighty lot, halfbreed. A longhand comes dear.”

“Do you want to strike a bargain or don’t you?”

Dislike grew on the peddler’s face. “Appears you got precious little to bargain with.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.