Nexus by Mike Baron

Author:Mike Baron [Baron, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

“An Enticing Offer”

KJ roamed the highways and byways of Funkytown, an unstoppable force for justice. He delivered starving dogs to the Ministry of Dogs, soup to the Ministry of Soup, bounced the heads of miscreants off the pavement, and dressed as Tortle for a grade school production of The Old Tortle Tree.

He let his offer to the Unes simmer. Three days later, he waited in darkness, clinging to the cavern wall high above Beehive Block, the massive beehive-shaped apartment block which was the Humes’ headquarters. It was late evening. From his perch upside down hundreds of feet in the air KJ could see the twinkling multicolored lights of taverns receding into the distance, a riot of competing advertisements fighting for airspace. Vooper This. Vooper That. Dirigibles, fluttering, two-dimensional banners, huge images broadcast on the sides of buildings and on the walls of the cave itself, those few places where the skyline didn’t block the sides.

A jumble of sounds rose from the streets below. Voices, machines, animals, and a cacophony which KJ took to be music. He wondered if he’d ever get it. Maybe the Quatro mind wasn’t wired for music. Humans didn’t experience scent as he did. A Quatro’s sense of smell was a thousand times greater than a human’s. On Quatroworld, the nightclubs offered olfactory entertainment, theater enhanced by smells designed to invoke a certain response. There were very few smells Quatros found repulsive. They found most smells fascinating. A Quatro could trail a coyote across the Mohave Desert.

The fantastic range of smells rising from the street could keep him occupied for hours. But there was no sleep for a working Quatro.

KJ inched down the side of the cave, squeezing between the Beehive and the wall. Water, or something like it, had formed the great caves millennia ago. How else to account for the smooth walls and intricate passages? No human mind could have mapped the vast system of veins and capillaries. Legend had it that a giant lived in a great cave in the center of the planet, that it was the source of Nexus’ powers. KJ scoffed. Nexus was the source of Nexus’ powers. He had been born that way. Everything else was just wild speculation.

Holding his bowler in his hands, placing the flat top of his head against the Beehive wall, KJ listened. He heard children fighting, children playing, men playing cards, couples making love, spouses arguing, a sports broadcast from Ganymede, chaotic sounds which were probably music, that irritating, mannered style of speaking which humans called singing.

Garrison’s voice was one among thousands. KJ tracked the voice to a ventilation shaft that went all the way to the bottom. KJ put on his hat, entered the ventilation shaft and wall walked downward, bracing himself with legs behind, two arms in front, two arms to the side. He flowed spider-like down the shaft to the basement level adjacent to the Humes’ meeting room.

Dismantling an access plate with the delicacy of an eye surgeon, KJ entered a storeroom next to the meeting room and crouched among boxes.

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.