Serenity City, even The Zone, was a huge place, with far too many people to be able to find one lone fugitive, and one as slippery as the Snark could blend in like a nudist at a Betazoid wedding if he wanted to. But Max Vasser had a plan. The Snark might be a lowdown thief and hired killer wanted on a dozen worlds for a score of gruesome crimes, but Max knew his weakness.
The Snark was well known to be gunning for another of the Briar Patch Sector's shady underworld characters, a mysterious figure known by a name as whimsical and incongruous as the Snark's -- 'Boojum'. The trouble was that no one actually knew who the Boojum was, since no one who had ever discovered the truth was still breathing. Still, the whereabouts of the man *suspected* of being the Boojum were no secret. All Max had to do was make like a retired racehorse and stick to the Boojum like glue, and the Snark was sure to show his ugly face sooner rather than later.
The rain was letting up a little, so Max turned up the collar of her jacket, stepped out from her sheltered doorway and made her way up the sidewalk. The streetlamps threw long, sinister shadows before her hurrying feet, and sinuous tendrils of vapors escaping from vents in the sides of buildings writhed along the ground seeking to entwine her legs in their chill, serpentine embrace.
Max suppressed a shiver and forced her feet to maintain a steady walking rhythm.
Finally she emerged from the shadows into a slightly more upscale part of The Zone where the grime and disrepair were deliberate and chic, designed to contribute to the faux atmosphere of danger and excitement that the late-night partygoers craved. Flickering streetlamps gave way to gaudy neon marquees, noxious vapors drifting from steam vents fled before the smells of cooking food and fine Ferengi cigars, and people became much more plentiful.
Max fell unobtrusively into step behind a loose grouping of spiky-haired, teenaged techno-punks, and it quickly became clear they were headed for the same place she was, as apparently were most of the other Zone denizens.
Some seemed just ordinary citizens of Serenity City -- the kind you wouldn't give a second glance to -- but they were considerably outnumbered by the exotic, the unusual, and the outright bizarre that The Zone typically attracted.
There were dapper, tuxedo-wearing gentlemen escorting striking ladies in bejeweled evening gowns walking alongside gangs of rough, leather-clad teenagers sporting odd hairdos in primary colors. There were young men in modern business suits carrying attaché cases walking alongside longhaired, denim-vested, old hippie dudes spacing out on ganja. There was a gaggle of teenage girls just come from shoe shopping at the mall giggling and following a pack of boys wearing toques, and there were strutting ladies of the evening leaning on lampposts waiting for their Johns. There were a few foppish, garishly attired Ferengi, a hulking Klingon warrior in ceremonial finery, and a close group of orange-robed Bajoran monks. There was even a pair of hoofed Megans wearing the styles of 17th-century Earth walking down the sidewalk followed by what looked to Max like a giant asparagus with eyes wearing a zoot suit.
But no matter the age, lifestyle, sex, race, or dimension of origin, all were headed for the *Bolian Blues Club*, that infamous Mecca of the galaxy's riff-raff, ne'er-do-wells, and hep cats that was the very heart and soul of The Zone. Part jazz club, part clandestine meeting place for anyone needing to make any sort of illicit deal, and part 'all-you-can-eat' buffet, the *Bolian Blues Club* was the hip place to be whether you wanted to listen to good music, hire a hit man, score a kilo of Red-eye, or just go hog-wild at the barbeque ribs counter.
Max wondered if the anonymity afforded by the converging crowds would give the Snark the courage to show himself or if the press of people would keep him away. She hoped it would be the former, otherwise she had a tribble's chance on Kronos of ever finding him on her own.
Finally, the garish, flashing neon on the marquee hanging above the door of the *Bolian Blues Club* materialized out of the night's mist. The big letters read
DANNO CHIMERON
*One Night Only!*
"Well, that explains the crowds," muttered Max.
She elbowed her way past the techno-punks, flashed the maroon-skinned gorilla at the door an indecipherable look while slipping him a 20-credit note, and at a barely-perceptible nod of the massive block that served as his head, shouldered her way through the narrow entrance into the dark interior of the club.
It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting -- darker than the neon-lit night outside -- but what she saw was exactly what she had expected. Dozens of small, round tables each with a tiny blue lamp in the center crowded the floor almost the entire way from the door to the small curtained stage at the far end of the joint. Hardcore Jazz and Blues aficionados and beatniks of every sort sat round the tables, their hushed murmurs mingling with the tinkling ice cubes in their drinks. Smoldering cigars, pipes, hookahs, and more exotic paraphernalia fed a permanent shroud of purple haze that all but obscured the slowly rotating ceiling fans near the ceiling. Through it all, unhindered by the bewildering array of tables, chairs, arms, legs, hoofs, antlers, tails, tentacles, and smog, slipped efficient, uniformed servers carrying a steady supply of drink-laden trays from the bar at the right wall.
Max secreted herself in a small booth way back at the rear where she had a clear view of the main entrance, the stage, and the majority of the club floor, while at the same time being herself safely obscured by smoky shadows.
A tall figure suddenly materialized out of the smoke and loomed over her table. Her hand moved instinctively to the bulge under her jacket, but then she realized it was only one of the uniformed servers. She forced herself to relax and ordered a gin on the rocks. Just as the server returned with her drink, the house lights went down, a spot lit the stage, and the curtains parted to reveal a mop-headed young boy who couldn't have been more than twelve years old. His eyes were downcast and his blonde hair hung over his face, hiding it from view, but Max knew it could only be one person.
Danno Chimeron, orphan, child prodigy, musical genius, undisputed master of dozens of instruments ranging from the blues harp to the gigantic Rigelian tubulum, consummate performer in styles ranging from old Earth Blues to the latest techno-tribal beats popular along the Tzenkethi border, immensely famous from the Serenity system all the way to the Klingon border -- and legal ward of the man suspected of being the Boojum.
And there was the man himself, the Boojum, waiting backstage, just visible from Max's vantage point, partly concealed behind the stage curtain. He sat unmoving, hands in his lap, a tattered fedora pulled down over his forehead and dark sunglasses hiding his eyes, but he was unmistakable, being that rarest of rarities in the 24th century -- a man in a wheelchair.
With his archrival so relatively out in the open, the Snark was sure to be here somewhere. Max scanned the faces in the crowd -- those she could see in the near-darkness -- but came up empty again, but then her attention was pulled back toward the stage by the Boojum's young protégé.
Danno Chimeron reached inside his coat and withdrew a slender object and placed it to his lips. It glinted faintly as the stage lights reflected from facets of its metal surface. You could have heard a nanite drop the audience had fallen so absolutely still. To her surprise, Max found herself holding her breath, waiting for what was to come.
Then Danno played. The tiny flute he held in his small hands trilled gently, quietly at first but with slow, building crescendos that incremented steadily towards a towering zenith before breaking and crashing over the helpless listeners like ocean waves, sweeping them out to sea as the melody receded again. Its clear voice whispered in Max's ear a mournful melody of such profound melancholy that she felt herself literally overcome by the emotions. The cascading notes gripped her soul and pulled her down into a black abyss of despair and sorrow from which there was no hope of escape, then just as quickly carried her spirit back aloft to indescribable ecstasy on clear, bright notes like golden wings of angels.
That a mere child could soar so high or plumb to such depths of emotion, could harbor such inner pain and tortured anguish in his little body was almost more than Max could bear, the callous façade she normally perpetrated and relied on be damned. The intricate and captivating melody flew to the tops of mountains and fell gently like rain, swelling through every fiber of her being, filling her heart with unutterable joy and sadness until nothing else in the universe existed -- the music *was* the universe. Completely forgotten were West, the Boojum, the Snark, the 10,000 credit bounty... even her own individuality was submerged and become one with the music.
How long the music held the audience swaying in its numinous thrall was impossible to tell, but the ice cubes in Max's gin were melted by the time the performance was over. The last note faded to silence and Danno Chimeron slowly lowered the flute from his lips. For long seconds that seemed to stretch into eternity, the silence continued, then a few brave souls dared to start clapping, breaking the spell, but were quickly joined by the entire rest of the audience. Max joined them with unrestrained enthusiasm.
Danno Chimeron bowed low, and as the curtains closed on him the spotlight faded and the house lights came back up.
Max realized with astonishment that she had tears on her cheeks. She hurriedly wiped them away before anyone saw, and was glad that West wasn't here to witness her soft side. In another way though, she was sorry he hadn't been here to share the amazing experience with her.
Any further regrets and self-recriminations were stifled however, when a lumpy-headed bruiser of a Ktarian slunk through her peripheral vision, and he was headed for the side stage entrance.
*Finally!*