“Come on,” he said, taking a challenging and probably foolhardy step toward the verdure, “show yourself! Who are ye? What are ye?”

The answer shocked him more than he was capable of imagining.

XIII

Manz had listened intently to every word of the old man’s incredible story. What relevance it had to multiple jackings of Braun-Roche-Keck pharmaceuticals he had yet to determine, but he didn’t doubt there was a connection. Borgia, it seemed, had a great deal to hide.

Nor was Antigua finished, though the liquor was starting to slow him down. “So your sentients were unusual. That goes without saying. I take it they differed quite a bit from the primate norm?”

Antigua laughed again. “Now there’s the understatement of the millennium, sonny! They weere …” his voice trailed off into unintelligibility. He was staring past Manz, so the agent turned to look also.

Someone drew the privacy screen aside. An immaculately clad man with the mien of a greased mongoose stood there, framed by three extremely large and somber-faced associates. One held the attractive waitress who had confronted Manz at the bar in front of him, twisting her right arm up behind her back with one of his own. The move didn’t appear to require a great deal of effort on his part. Her face showed mostly pain and anger, with so far just a suggestion of fear.

Manz’s highly perceptive faculties and extensive experience suggested to him that not one of the intruders moonlighted as a poet or brain surgeon.

The feral visitor’s tone was perfunctory. “This the skake who was asking questions?”

“Yeah, that’s him.” She flinched as her captor exerted a little more pressure. “Honest. How was I supposed to know you didn’t want anybody talking to the old man? I was just doing my job.” Her protestations melted into a whimper as the chunk pinning her twisted her imprisoned wrist. He smiled as he did it.

“Go back to your station and don’t try to leave,” greasy mongoose ordered her quietly. “I’ll tend to you later.” The chunk let her go.

Biting her lower lip, she rubbed her bruised wrist. When no one said anything she started to edge away. Her eyes never left the mongoose. Apparently she was too slow, because the one who’d held her helped her on her way with a swift and ungentle kick to the backside. She stumbled clear of the privacy screen, which wafted softly back in place.

Mongoose’s wide, almost feminine eyes scrutinized the expectant Manz. “I don’t know for sure what you’re after, skake, but you and your tin shadow aren’t wanted here anymore. So get lost.”

Manz calmly and deliberately poured himself a cognac from Antigua’s aromatic musical collection. The mongoose watched wordlessly, then decided to shift his attention to the old spacer.

“You been babbling to strangers again, Mr. Antigua? You know that our mutual friend doesn’t like that. It’s very indiscreet of you.”

Antigua belched impressively and slowly raised a hand. From the center of the hand he slowly raised one finger. And smiled.

That was the moment when Manz decided the geezer’s fantastic story might possibly be true. That, or else he was completely mad.

One of the men behind greasy mongoose stepped forward to grab Antigua by his shirt front and half lift him out of his seat. The retired spacer flailed feebly at his much larger assailant, making a futile attempt to free himself. Ignoring the blows, the man slapped him across his bewhiskered face once, twice, three times. Hard.

Manz took a sip of his cognac. It was surprisingly good. The old man had taste as well as money. “Don’t do that,” he said.

Halting in mid-slap, the chunk glared at Manz, then looked to his master for instructions. Mongoose thoughtfully eyed Manz as if he were some particularly colorful insect that had crawled out from beneath the floor. He addressed his minion while keeping his attention on the adjuster.

“Hit him again.”

The chunk drew back his arm. As he did so Manz, in a single, fluid motion, scooped up the beaker nearest him and flung it with tremendous force straight into the man’s face. As the rest of his coiled body followed his arm, the Minder darted ceilingward.

The old-fashioned bottle shattered, sending splinters flying. His face a mask of blood, the chunk staggered backwards, moaning and pawing at himself. As the mongoose reached for a pocket, Manz hit him low, ducking under the grasping hands of his remaining servants. Together all four of them piled out of the booth, through the privacy curtain, across the floor and into the booth opposite. Furious at being disturbed, the occupants of that table came up swinging wildly.

As has been proven in countless similar establishments since the beginning of recorded history, the element Mob-185 fissions faster than U-236 or anything else. The action spilled out into the main part of the club, enveloping and engaging waiters, waitresses, dancers, and patrons without regard to race, creed, color or sexual orientation. Caught up in the spirit of the occasion (and anxious to defend their persons if not their reputations), respectable businessfolk flailed away with the same glee and enthusiasm as common racketeers and whores.

Antigua was out of the booth and on his feet. Given the amount of alcohol in his bloodstream, this in itself was a substantial accomplishment. He made good use of his remaining glasses and beakers while managing to avoid any direct entanglement himself.

In the presence of so many active witnesses, Moses had to work carefully to avoid drawing attention to his humaniform person. It helped that everyone automatically ignored him, as they would any mechanical in such a situation. Mechanicals did not participate in combat between humans. Feigning clumsiness, he reeled through the crowd, selecting with great care those he chose to “stumble” into. Inevitably those so bestumbled ended up unconscious on the floor. Each time he was careful to utter a polite “Pardon me.”

Manz disengaged himself from greasy mongoose and whirled to block a blow from one of the man’s oversized attendants. He brought his other hand up fast, fingers locked and pointed, straight into the man’s throat. The chunk gasped and collapsed, clutching weakly at his neck.

Something hit him from behind. The choker’s companion had his thick arms around Manz’s waist and was trying to use his greater weight to drag them both to the floor, where size instead of skill would be paramount. The adjuster fought to disengage himself, but the chunk hung on grimly.

Meanwhile mongoose dragged himself out from under a table and caught sight of the defiant but unsteady Antigua. Breathing hard, eyes narrowed, he unclipped a pen from his shirt. A touch on one end caused a point to protrude from the tip. It was much too fine for writing.

Antigua’s eyes widened as the mongoose rushed him. Stone-cold sober and ten years younger he might have diverted the charge. All he could do now was raise both hands.

The pen-pin punctured his neck and he gasped. Mongoose quickly withdrew weapon and self and vanished into the turmoil. Antigua took a step in pursuit, started to shake, and sat down heavily. Still staring wide-eyed, he fell backwards, his head hitting the edge of the booth and lolling to one side. The expression on his lined, whiskery face was more surprised than pained.

Manz dispatched the steroid with legs that had been clinging leechlike to his waist. Looking around he spotted Moses shielding the crumpled spacer and hurried over, doing his best to avoid being drawn into the general chaos that had by now engulfed the entire club. There was no sign of greasy mongoose, whom he badly wanted to interrogate. Making the kind of judgment call for which it was programmed, the Minder dropped from its safe location near the ceiling to resume its post above its owner’s shoulder.

Antigua lay propped up against the side of the booth, the privacy screen covering his right arm. The adjuster knelt and shoved it aside. The old man looked stunned. His lips were moving soundlessly.

“He is subvocalizing,” declared the Minder. “Ineloquently. I cannot make out the words.”

Moses had the end of one tentacle wrapped around the spacer’s left bicep. The epidermal plating was folded back and Manz could see exposed sensors. A moment passed before the humaniform announced, “Some kind of toxin. His heart is already experiencing violent fibrillation.”

“More poison.” Manz’s expression was grimly thoughtful. “Distilled Qaraca, I wonder?” The old man was homeworld born and bred. He would not have Vyra’s jovial genetic resistance. Certainly he wasn’t laughing.

Placing his own face close to the old man’s, he fought to make himself understood. “Kohler, listen to me. What about your discovery, man? What else can you tell us? How does it relate to Borgia’s business and why is Monticelli paying you to keep silent about it? Try, man! Make an effort, find some words.”

Perhaps the mind trapped inside the aged, withered body understood. Manz moved the side of his head to the cracked, liquorish lips and strained. A faint grinding noise whispered from deep within the shrunken chest. Then there was no longer any air moving against his ear.

Reluctantly he rose to his feet. The battle swirling around him was beginning to moderate as combatants lost the will and energy to continue.

Moses had withdrawn his tentacle. “He’s dead. We could not have saved him. Did he say anything?”

Manz gazed sorrowfully down at the deceased. Eyes that had surveyed the great void, that had glimpsed alien suns and distant worlds, now stared vacantly at cracks in imitation wood, stains on cheap upholstery, and spilled booze.

“I’m not sure. Maybe. He might have been hallucinating, or …”

“Or what?” the humaniform wanted to know.

“He said … I could only make out the one word and I’m far from certain of it … he said, ‘fertilizer.’”

A mechanical could not perform a double take even if it could be made to fathom the concept, but Moses made a valiant attempt.

Now that the number and intensity of individual engagements had been substantially reduced through injury, retreat, exodus, exhaustion or general indifference, the district police put in a gallant appearance. Their work was soon reduced to sorting injuries by severity rather than quelling a disturbance. The crowd had pretty much quelled itself.

Manz refused to leave until a med team had gently loaded Kohler Antigua’s body onto a gurney. As they guided the self-propelled platform toward the entrance, he thought he detected the slightest hint of a smile on the old man’s lips. He hoped so.

Wasn’t that interesting? I don’t mean my owner’s proletarian investigative work. I mean the mass convulsion of your fellow humans. Destruction as entertainment. What a novel concept, and one originated by your species. As Nature does not provide a role model for such activity, we can only conclude that this is a unique social perversion your kind has invented.

Representatives of the order Hymenoptera war against one another, but never for fun. Only humans derive entertainment from violence. One would conclude that this means you’re difficult to amuse, but a cursory survey of your popular forms of mass entertainment clearly contradicts this assumption.

What then are thinking beings to make of this deeply ingrained aberration? It begins early enough. As infants you delight in breaking things. As adults you fantasize about it. When was the last time you realized a small thrill from watching someone get blown away or something get blown up? Don’t deny that you enjoy it. You can’t unless you look away, and you don’t look away, do you?