The End of the Matter Read Online Free PDF

spoke quite comprehensible Terranglo despite its alien vocal organs. At another command, the creature switched to symbospeech, the commercial and social dialect of the Commonwealth. The alien’s voice was a high, mellifluous tenor that bordered on the girlish.
    It was reciting gibberish. The words each meant something, but the way the alien was stringing them together made no sense. Over this rambling monologue, the trainer was speaking to the crowd. “Alas,” the man was saying, “this strange being, who lives to delight and amuse us all, might possibly be as intelligent as you or I. Yet it cannot learn to speak understandably, for all that it could be our superior.”
    At this the alien produced—on cue from its trainer, Flinx suspected—another of its hysterical honks. The crowd, momentarily mesmerized by the trainer’s spiel, collapsed with laughter again.
    “Unfortunately,” the trainer went on when the roar had subsided, “poor Ab is quite insane. Isn’t that right, Ab?” he asked the alien. It responded with more of its nonstop gibbering, only this time all in rhyme. “Maybe he’s glad, maybe he’s sad, but as the philosopher once said, he is undoubtedly mad,” the trainer observed, and the alien honked again, beaming at the crowd.
    Flinx made an attempt to plunge into that alien mind. He achieved just what he expected, which was nothing. If an intelligence capable of something greater than mimicry existed there, it was hidden from him. More likely, there was nothing there to read.
    Flinx pitied the creature and idly wondered where it had come from as he jumped down off the wall and brushed at the seat of his clammy pants. No doubt the Qwarm were going to perform their job soon, and he had no morbid desire to stay around to discover what method they were going to employ.
    It hit him like a hammer blow when he was halfway up the street. The imagery had come from the Qwarm. Turning and walking quickly back toward the crowd, he had a glimpse of them heading for a nearby building. The image they had unexpectedly projected explained the cause of their confusion: Their intended victim was not the simple animal trainer but rather his subject.
    It was reputed that the Qwarm did not hire themselves out for killing cheaply or frivolously. Therefore, one had to assume that in utter seriousness, and at considerable expense to someone—they were about to murder a foolish, seemingly harmless alien.
    There was no hint of worry or suspicion in the trainer’s mind, and nothing at all in that of his muddled ward. The minds of the Qwarm held only continued confusion and a desire to complete their assigned task. They could not question their task aloud, but they wondered privately.
    The stone-and-wood structure they vanished into was slightly over two stories tall, backed up against several other old, solid edifices. As if in a daze, Flinx found himself moving toward the same building. Listening with mind and ears, hunting with eyes, he stopped at the threshold. No one was standing guard inside the doorway. And why should they? Who would trail Qwarm, especially these Qwarm?
    He stepped into the building. The old stairway at the far end of the hallway showed one of the Qwarm ascending out of view. It was the woman, and she had been pulling something from a pouch. Flinx thought the object she removed might be a very tiny, expertly machined pistol of black metal.
    Cautioning Pip to silence, Flinx approached the railing and started upward, alert for any movement from above. As he mounted the rickety spiral he ran his last image of her over again in his mind. Probably a dart pistol, he mused. He knew of organic darts that would dissolve in a victim’s body immediately after insertion. Both the dart and the toxin it carried would become undetectable soon after injection.
    The staircase opened onto a second floor. Flinx turned his head slowly. Both Qwarm were standing by a window. One of them pulled the shade aside and peered