Suicide, Inc

CHAPTER 2

Cruz was already out in the Trinidad System when the Whistler Agency approached him.

He was way up in the bell tower of a glaz and metal cathedral, concentrating on holding off an irate husband who was intent on doing him several kinds of bodily harm. Unfortunately, Cruz, a large, dark man of thirty-five, had left his right arm downstairs in the stark white bedchamber of the wife of the Most Reverend Charles Waldenbrook. So he was forced to defend himself one-handed and with only the dinky stungun he’d managed to grab from the lovely young Mrs. Waldenbrook’s purse as he went hurrying out the window.

This was in the heart of Metropolis Territory’s second largest city, on the planet Primero. It was midway through a hazy Sunday morning.

“You sure better get all this folderol taken care of by eleven,” warned the small roundshouldered birdman who sat hunched over the console of the tower musicizer. “My eleven o’clock bell concert is the real high-point of the day and I don’t want any distractions.”

Cruz was crouching behind a huge imitation bell that sat on the plaz flooring of the open air tower. Some fifteen yards away Reverend Waldenbrook could be seen peering around the half-open neowood door to the stairwell. He held a stungun in his left hand, a lazgun in his right and a kilgun between his teeth.

“It was pure chance brought me up here,” Cruz assured the green and scarlet birdman. “When I came popping out of the window of the fair Cleo Waldenbrook’s chamber, this seemed a closer refuge than the nearest pedramp six stories below. So I climbed upwards.”

“That woman’s insatiable.” The birdman’s beak clicked disapprovingly.

“On the contrary,” said Cruz, eyes on the stairwell. “I had the lady completely sated and was about to take my leave when the rev returned home a good hour ahead of time.”

“Well, sure, that’s because he’s on reruns all this month,” explained the musician. “Always runs holograph vidtapes of his tedious sermons this time of year. His dippy wife ought to’ve remembered that simple fact.”

“Apparently, in the heat of passion it slipped her peasized mind and so-”

“You may as well come out, you vile fornicator!” boomed Reverend Waldenbrook.

“Is he alluding to me, do you suppose?” Cruz narrowed his left eye and tried to get the outraged cleric lined up in his gunsight.

“Slimy lustridden wretch!”

“Yep,” said the birdman with a nod, “he’s sure enough addressing you.”

“Hell, I’m simply an incurable romantic,” explained the crouching Cruz, “and not the least bit slimy.”

“Would that you had heard my sermon this day, you foul fleshly homewrecker! For in it I vilified your very own loathsome type. I said, if I may quote myself, ‘Dearly beloved parishioners, although we dwell in a vast city reeking with technological evils and sicklied over with the taint of wickedness, yet we may still…’”

“Is this a pretty fair example of his rhetoric?” Cruz asked the bellringer.

His feathery head bobbed. “Sometimes it’s duller even.”

“Can’t figure why there’s any call for repeats.”

“…fight off the filthy lustful impulses which seek…’”

“Reverend, old chum,” called out Cruz, cupping his only hand, “might I suggest a truce?”

“Truce?” bellowed Waldenbrook, thrusting his plump pinkish face again into the open. “There can be no truce, my good man, only swift and sure retribution.”

Zzzzzummmmmmm!

Cruz’ stungun had hummed.

The beam caught the Most Reverend Waldenbrook smack in the plump forehead. He tottered, wobbled, came stumbling out into the open to drop down, flat out, on the tower floor. His trio of weapons went bouncing and scattering away.

Cruz started to stand. “Wellsir, that didn’t prove very difficult.”

“Not over yet,” warned the birdman.

“Lord a mercy! Look what the vicious rascal’s done to the reverend!”

“Aye, such a foul deed cries out for vengeance!” Several more loud and angry voices came rolling up out of the stairwell.

“Who might those approaching lads be?”

“His disciples,” replied the bird bellringer. “He’s got ten or so of them, each and every one large in size and mean and nasty in disposition.”

Cruz squatted down once more. “Looks like I’ll have to fight on for a spell.”

“Not at all necessary,” said a Whistler terminal as it materialized just to the left of him.

Terzero is the hottest, steamiest, most jungle-infested of the trio of planets that make up the Trinidad System.

Jack Saint was reflecting on that in his stateroom aboard the lumbering nukepowered riverboat that was carrying him slowly downstream toward one of Terzero’s largest port towns. They ought to be docking within the hour.

Despite the aircirc system and two floating fans, the small white cabin was muggy and hot. Saint’s bright green skin was dotted with perspiration; his orange hair had lost its springy curl. He was sitting in a lame wicker chair, facing the small table against his cabin’s starboard wall.

Perched atop the table was a tri-op portrait, framed in trugold, of the fattest, ugliest, most dimwitted old catwoman on this entire sweaty planet. It was inscribed, in a clumsy scrawl, “To dear, dearest Johan, from his furball, Princess Zorina.” Scattered around at the base of the frame of the portrait of the repulsive princess were several realpape business cards that identified Saint as one Johan St. Moritz, General Supervisor of the Trinidad Skymine Development Corp.

Saint ran his tongue over his dry green lips, then rubbed his palms together and strived to rid his mind of thoughts about how far down the ladder of success he’d fallen in the past few months.

“Been having a deuced bad run of luck of late,” he muttered. “A frightful waste of potential.”

Brow furrowing, bushy orange eyebrows tilting toward each other, Saint began concentrating.

The framed portrait of the catwoman princess quivered and then, with a very faint popping sound, vanished.

Seconds later there was a small thumping sound over on his unmade bunk.

Glancing over his shoulder, the short green man confirmed that the picture had materialized across the cabin.

“Slick as ever,” murmured Saint, smiling thinly to himself. “Now then, old man, let us concentrate on the jewel box of the princess.”

Just then the door of his stateroom unexpectedly burst open.

“Blackguard!”

“Rogue!”

Narrowing his left eye, Saint scanned the furry couple who’d come barging in on his privacy. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” he informed them. “So if you’ll kindly withdraw, I-”

“We came aboard at Seton’s Landing,” said the burly catman in the two-piece checkered travelsuit. He held a kilgun in each piebald paw.

“And poor dear put-upon Aunt Zorina has told us all about you, you fortune hunter,” added the husky cat-woman on the threshold. She had only one kilgun showing.

“Ah, yes, to be sure.” Saint, carefully, rose to his feet. “Then you must be kinsmen of the dear princess.”

“I’m Bud Barnstraw and this is my lovely wife Bess,” said the checksuited catman as he came stalking in out of the thick, steamy afternoon. “As if you didn’t know.”

“I assure you, dear fellow, I had not even an inkling of your existence until your surprise entry,” said Saint amiably. “Of course, I’m quite flattered at your eagerness to make my acquaintance. Since, however, we’ll be docking in but scant minutes, and I’d like very much to change into a fresh suit of-”

“We happen to be her only heirs,” Bess Barnstraw informed him, fur bristling.

“She’s seventy-nine years old,” added Bud.

Bess eased her bulk into the cabin and shut the louvered door. “And you’re a nasty fortune hunter.”

“We don’t intend to let any picklecolored gigolo woo our auntie and have her cut us off without diddly-”

“Sir, I shan’t listen to any slurs about my tint.” Saint drew himself up to his full five foot three. “I believe one ought to judge a man not by his color, nor by his fur, but by how he-”

“Judging by any standard,” interrupted the angry Bud, “you’re out to persuade Aunt Zorina to marry you.”

“I assure you, old man, that ours is merely a shipboard friendship.” Saint glanced casually at his suitcase next to the bunk, the one where his stungun was packed away.

“What we’re going to do,” explained Bess while digging a paw into her neostraw shoulder bag, “is fix you so you won’t romance any more dotty old ladies.” From the bag she produced a large folded plyosack.

Saint cleared his throat. “I think, dear people, I’d best make my true intentions clear to you. Crystal clear,” he said. “I am not the sort of fellow who weds repulsive old bimbos for their fortunes.”

Bud gestured impatiently with one of his guns. “Like heck you aren’t.”

“I am, trust me, simply a telekinetic cracksman.”

“Hm?” Bess blinked, pausing in the unfurling of the big sack.

“I mean, dear lady, that I am but a humble telek.” He bowed to her, then to her husband.

Bud’s twin kilguns suddenly vanished from his hairy grasp. Seconds later they materialized up near the white ceiling.

Grinning, Saint winked faintly at the perplexed Mrs. Barnstraw.

Her gun disappeared with a faint popping sound. It didn’t materialize again.

“Damn it all,” said Bud, disappointed. “How the heck are we going to sew you up in this sack, Mr. St. Moritz, and toss you in the river?”

“I rather doubt you are, old boy.” Saint opened his green fingers wide and his own stungun materialized in his right hand. Gripping it, he pointed the weapon at the unhappy Barnstraws. “Your interest in the welfare of your dear aunt is most heartwarming. I’ll cherish our little meeting.”

Zzzzzummmmmmm!

The stunbeam hit Bud first. He gasped, flapped his arms twice and fell to the cabin floor.

Bess said, “Why, you little emerald pipsqueak, where do you get off-”

Zzzzzummmmmmm!

She joined her unconscious husband.

Slipping the gun into his breast pocket, Saint smoothed his jacket. “Ah, how pathetic to see such a great talent as mine thrown away on the likes of these ninnies,” he said forlornly. “Bud and Bess…gad.”

Shrugging, Saint pressed one palm against his green forehead. He concentrated on the jewel case up in the princess’ cabin one deck above.

Seconds later it was in his hand.

“Damn, just goes to show what a rotten judge of character I am.”

Turning, Saint saw that the door of his cabin was once more open. Framed in the doorway was the captain of the ship, a portly lizardman in a two-piece gold-and-blue unisuit. “Was there something, Captain?” he inquired. “I fear I didn’t hear your knock.”

“I actually believed you were a man of honor and integrity,” said the captain, a sad look touching his scaly brownish face. “In fact, I came barging in here to discuss the buying of a block of Trinidad Skymine Development Corporation stock.” He struck his chest with his fist, causing his gold braid to jingle. “Now I find that you are not only a thief, Mr. St. Moritz, but a murderer as well.”

“Captain, I had you down as a chap who kept his head,” said Saint. “These two are far from being defunct, and I was about to report to you the fact that they’d wandered into my digs and fainted when you-”

“You’ll have a chance to refute all the charges I’m going to bring soon as we dock,” the captain informed him coldly. “Right now, however, I intend to summon several of my surliest crewmen to haul you to the brig, sir.”

“Old man, I’ve always found incarceration of any sort deuced uncomfortable.” Saint lunged at the captain.

He succeeded in tipping the larger man over and, as the captain dropped back onto the yellow deck planks, Saint left his cabin to go running along the deck.

“Help! Escaping killer!” roared the sprawled captain.

Saint hesitated only long enough to thrust the jewel case into the waist of his trousers before sprinting to the rail and, gracefully, vaulting over it.

He hit the tepid river with a whomping splash and went sinking down in the brown silty water.

Seconds later and several yards from the ship, he resurfaced, about a quarter-mile from the jungly shore.

“For a chap in my tip top condition this swim’ll be a piece of cake.”

The captain apparently had decided not to halt his craft and give chase, because, when the green man pulled himself up on the mossy stretch of overgrown shore, using the gnarled root of the nearest bluish tree to help him, the ship was already fading away in the hot afternoon haze.

“Excellent, first rate! Couldn’t have devised a better test ourselves.”

Resting on his heels, Saint brushed his sopping orange hair off his muddy forehead. He frowned over at the computer terminal that floated in the air near the trunk of a squat palm tree.

“One does hope, old thing, you’re not a minion of the law.”

“I’m Whistler,” explained the voxbox of the terminal. “Representing the Whistler Interplanetary Investigation Agency.”

Saint shook water off his dripping sleeves. “Come to arrest me, have you?”

“Nope, we want to hire you.”

“To do an honest job, do you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“Jove,” said Saint thoughtfully as he rose, dripping, to his feet, “I may have sunk low enough to take you up on that.”