The End of the Matter

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Well?” Pocomchi asked.

  Flinx thought, scratching the scaly snake head, which was curled now in the hollow of his neck. “It’s hard to tell with Ab, but I think he did see something back there. There’s nothing wrong with his sensory input.”

  Even as he slowed the skimmer and brought it to a hover, Pocomchi considered. He cocked a querulous eye at Flinx. “You willing to waste some time to check out an idiot’s information?”

  “Why not,” the youth responded, “since we’re probably on an idiot’s errand?”

  “You’re paying,” Pocomchi replied noncommittally. The skimmer whined slightly as its driver turned it around. Slowly they retraced their path.

  “Whatever it is has to be on the starboard side now,” Flinx declared, carefully studying the landscape “That’s the side Ab was looking out.”

  Pocomchi turned his attention to the ground on his right. In order to see clearly past him, Flinx had to stand. His head almost bumped the top of the transparent canopy. Jungle-encrusted ruins passed by on monolithic parade.

  Several meters on, both men saw it simultaneously.

  “Over there,” Flinx said, “under the blue overhang.”

  Pocomchi angled closer to the walls, then cut the power. With the soft sigh of circuits going to sleep, the little vessel settled birdlike to the ground. A few shards of rock and shattered masonry crunched beneath the skimmer’s weight.

  A touch on another control caused the canopy to fold itself up and slide neatly into the skimmer’s roof behind them. In place of the steady hum of the engine, Flinx now heard jungle and forest voices emerging into the silence. They were cautious at first, uncertain. But soon various unseen creatures were whistling, howling, cooing, bellowing, hissing, and snuffling with increasing confidence beneath the blue sky.

  The noises fascinated Ab (didn’t everything?). “There is a large depression in the sermoid,” he began. Both men tuned out the alien versifying.

  Their attention instead was focused on the massive azure overhang to their left. It resembled blue ferrocrete, although that was impossible—ferrocrete was a modern building material. It stuck outward, a thrusting blue blade shading a space fifteen meters square. In the sheltered region beneath the overhang was a familiar, self-explanatory outline.

  Pocomchi turned his gaze to the depression in the earth. Flinx, his own thoughts still on the blue monolith, followed the Indian out of the skimmer.

  “I haven’t seen that color before,” he told Pocomchi.

  “Hmmm?” murmured the Indian, intent on the outline pressed into the ground. “Oh, that. The ancient Alaspinians colored a lot of their formed stone. That overhang isn’t granite, it’s a cementlike material they also used. Probably a lot of copper sulfate in this one, to turn it that dark a hue.” He traced the outline in the ground with his feet, walking around it.

  “A pretty good-sized skimmer made this mark,” he announced. “Light cargo on board.” Turning, he struggled to see through stone and jungle, walls and trees. “Somebody’s been here recently, all right.” Eyes intently focused on the ground, he walked away from the outline until he was standing beneath the blue overhang.

  “A good place for a first camp. Here’s where they unloaded their supplies,” he noted, examining the dirt. He walked out from under the sheltering stone and looked up across dense brush which formed a green wave against the side of the structure. It sounded like corduroy against his jumpsuit.

  “They’ve gone off through here, Flinx.” Turning, he eyed his anxious young companion. “Yes, it might be your massive mystery man with the gold earring. Whoever it was, they’ve spent some money.” He pointed to where the brush had been smashed down repeatedly to form a fair pathway that was only now beginning to recover from the tread of many feet. “They made a lot of trips to transfer their stuff deeper into the city. I thought everyone had given up on this location years ago.”

  He started back toward the skimmer. Flinx was gazing with interest at the azure overhang, wondering at its original purpose. A temple at least a hundred meters high towered behind it. The massive blue form had fallen outward, leaving a gaping hole in the temple wall. Beyond he could barely make out a darkened interior lined with shattered masonry, dangling strips of punched metal, shade-loving plants, and the emptiness of abandonment.

  “What do we do now?”

  Pocomchi grinned at him and shook his head. “You’ve hardly heard a word I’ve said, have you? There’s the remnants of a service trail back here, clear enough for us to follow. Since they felt the need to walk it from this point, I think it’s safe to assume we can’t get the skimmer through. Hopefully your quarry will be at the other end of the trail. Anyway, I’d like to meet anyone foolish enough to think there’s anything worth taking out of Mimmisompo. I hope they’ve got easy trigger fingers and an inviting nature.”

  “Let’s get going, then,” ventured Flinx.

  “Easy, dragon lord.” He indicated the sun. “Why not wait till we’ve a full day to hike with? No one’s running anyplace, least of all the people we’re hunting. I think they’re pretty deep into the brush.” A hand waved in the direction of jumbled stone and bushes where the trail lay. “There are creatures crawling around in there that I’d rather meet in daytime, if I have to meet them at all. I’ll set up a perimeter, and we’ll sleep by the skimmer tonight.”

  A radiant fence was quickly erected in a half circle, with the skimmer inside. Another compartment of the compact craft produced inflatable mattresses and sleeping material. It would have been safer to sleep in the skimmer, but the small cockpit was cramped enough with two men. Two men trying to sleep inside, together with Ab and a pair of minidrags, would have been impossible.

  Their temporary habitat was topped by an inflatable dome, which would serve as weather shield in the event of wind or storm. The semipermeable membrane of the dome would permit fresh air to enter and allow waste gases to pass out, but would shunt aside anything as thick as a raindrop.

  Outside, the radiant fence would keep curious nightstalkers at bay, while Balthazaar and Pip could be counted on to serve as backup alarms in the event that anything really dangerous showed up. As for arboreal predators, the great majority of them were daylight hunters, according to Pocomchi.

  Flinx leaned back on the soft mattress and stared out the dome toward the trail site. He was anxious to be after whoever had made it, impatient to have this search resolved once and for all. But this was Pocomchi’s planet. It would be wise to take his advice.

  Besides, he thought with an expansive yawn, he was tired. His head went back. Through the warm tropical night and the thin material of the dome he could count the stars in strange constellations. Off to the east hung a pair of round, gibbous moons, so unlike the craggy outline of Moth’s own rarely glimpsed satellite, Flame.

  The single moon of distant Ulru-Ujurr was larger than these two combined, he thought. Memories of his pupils, the innocent ursinoid race which lived on that world, pulled strongly at him. He felt guilty. His place was back there, advising them, instead of gallivanting around the Commonwealth in search of impossible-to-learn origins.

  A fetid breeze drifted through the single window, set above and to the side of his bed. Soft crackling noises, like foil crumpling, drifted in to him. In a little while, the alien lullaby had helped him fall sound asleep.

  First sunlight woke Flinx. Rolling over, he stretched once and was instantly awake. Pocomchi lay on the mattress next to him, snoring stentorianly for so small a man. He stretched out a hand to wake the Indian, and frowned as he did so. Something was missing, something so familiar that for a long moment he couldn’t figure out what was gone.

  He woke Pocomchi, sat up, and thought. The motion of rising brought the absence home to him. All at once, Flinx was moving rapidly, searching behind the mattress, by the skimmer body, on the opposite side of Pocomchi’s bed. Nothing.

  Zipping open the doorway, he plunged frantically outside, and almost ran toward the ju
ngle before remembering the radiant fence. Standing by the inside edge of the softly glowing barrier, he put cupped hands to his lips and shouted, “Pip! Where are you, Pip!”

  His eyes swept the trees and temple tops, but the searching revealed only silent stone and mocking greenery. Though both must have seen what had become of his pet, all remained frozen with the silence of the inanimate.

  Turning, he ran back into the dome and climbed into the skimmer. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he deflated the mattresses, Pocomchi eyed him but said nothing. Better to let the lad find out these things for himself.

  Flinx crawled behind the two seats, back into the storage area where Ab had ridden. “Come on out, Pip. The game’s not funny any more. Come out, Pip!”

  When he finally gave up and rose, vacant-eyed, from the cockpit, he saw Pocomchi packing away the inflatable dome and taking down the fence. The Indian said nothing, but watched as Flinx moved to the edge of the brush and resumed calling. By the time the youth had shouted himself hoarse, Pocomchi had stowed all their supplies.

  One thing remained for Flinx to try. Standing by the shadow of the azure overhang, he closed his eyes and thought furiously. From the skies, he imagined to himself, from the skies, a terrible danger! I need you, Pip, it’s threatening me. Where are you, companion of childhood? Your friend is in danger! Can’t you sense it? It’s coming closer, and there’s nothing I can do about it!

  He kept up his performance for long minutes, until sweat began to bead on his forehead and his clenched fingers turned pale. Something touched him on the shoulder, and he jumped. Pocomchi’s sympathetic eyes were staring into his.

  “You’re wearing yourself out for no reason, Flinx,” his guide told him. “Calling won’t help.” A hand gestured toward the sweep of dense vegetation. “When something calls the minidrag, it goes. This is their world, you know. Or hadn’t you noticed that Balthazaar is gone too?”

  Flinx had been so thoroughly absorbed by Pip’s disappearance that he hadn’t. Sure enough, the old minidrag always curled about Pocomchi’s neck and shoulder was nowhere to be seen.

  “Since I found him at the age of five,” he tried to explain to the little man, “Pip and I have never spent a single day completely apart from each other.” His gaze roved over the concealing jungle. “I just can’t believe he’d simply fly off and abandon me. I can’t believe it, Pocomchi!”

  The Indian shrugged and spoke softly. “No minidrag is ever completely tamed. You’ve never been on Pip’s home world before, either. Don’t look so brokenhearted. I’ve had Balthazaar fly off and leave me for several days at a time. He always comes back.

  “In case you’ve forgotten, we have other things to do here. There’s that trail to follow, and your ring-wearer to find. We won’t be skimming out of Mimmisompo for a while yet. When they want to, both Pip and Balthazaar will find our thoughts.”

  Flinx relaxed a little.

  “They’re wild things, Flinx,” Pocomchi reminded him, “and this is a wild place. You can’t expect the two not to be attracted by that. Now let’s make up a couple of packs and start the hard part of this trip.”

  Moving mechanically, Flinx helped his guide prepare a set of light but well-stocked backpacks. When Pocomchi was helping him on with his own, showing him how the strappings worked, a sudden thought occurred to him.

  “What,” he asked worriedly, “if we find what we’ve come for, and then when it’s time for us to leave for Alaspinport Pip hasn’t come back?”

  Pocomchi stared straight at him, his eyebrows arching slightly. “There’s no use in speculating on that, Flinx. Balthazaar means as much or more to me as your Pip does to you. We’ve been through a lot together. But a minidrag’s not a dog. It won’t slaver and whimper at your feet. You ought to know that. Mini-drags are independent and free-willed. They remain with you and me because they want to, not because they’re in need of us. The decision to return is up to them.” He smiled slightly. “All we can do if we come back and they’re not here is wait a while for them. Then if they don’t show . . .” He hesitated. “Well, it’s their world.” He turned and started off toward the trail.

  Flinx took a last look at the sky above. No familiar winged shape came diving out of it toward his shoulder. Setting his jaw and mind, he hefted the backpack to a more comfortable position and strode off after Pocomchi. Soon the skimmer was lost to sight, consumed by stone and intervening vegetation.

  Every so often he would turn to make certain that Ab was still trailing behind them. Then he would turn forward again. His view consisted of tightly intertwined bushes and vines and trees, parted regularly by the bobbing back of Pocomchi’s head. The Indian’s black hair swayed as he traced the path through the jungle-encrusted city. Sometimes the growth had recovered and grown back over the path, but under Pocomchi’s skilled guidance they always reemerged onto a clear trail.

  Although he knew better, he could think only of his missing pet. Emotions he thought he had long since outgrown swelled inside him. They were ready to overwhelm him when a cold hand touched the right side of his face with surpassing gentleness.

  Angrily he glanced back, intending to take out his feelings on the owner of that chill palm. But how could anyone get mad at that face, with its mournful, innocent eyes and its proboscidean mouth where its hair ought to be, tottering after him with the stride of a quadrupedal duck?

  “Worry, worry, sorry hurry,” ventured Ab hopefully, “key to quark, key to curry. Black pepper ground find in me mind”—this delivered with such solemnity that Flinx half felt it might actually mean something. While he was pondering the cryptic verse, he tripped over a root and went sprawling. Pocomchi heard him fall and turned. The Indian shook his head, grinned, and resumed walking.

  Flinx climbed to his feet and hitched the pack higher on his shoulders. “You’re right, Ab, there’s no point in tearing myself up over it. There’s nothing I can do about it.” His gaze turned heavenward, and he searched the powdery rims of scattered cumulus clouds. “If Pip comes back, he comes back. If not”—his voice dropped to a resigned murmur—“life goes on. A little lonelier, maybe, but it goes on. I’ll still have things to do and people to go back to.”

  “Call the key, call the key,” Ab agreed in singsong behind him. “To see it takes two to tango with an animated mango.” He stared expectantly at Flinx.

  “Farcical catharsis.” The youth chuckled, smiling now at his ward’s comical twaddle. What a pity, he mused, that the poetically inclined alien didn’t have enough sense to make real use of his talent. But he had become used to tuning out Ab’s ramblings, so he concentrated on the path ahead and ignored the alien’s continued verbalizing.

  “Key the key that’s me,” Ab sang lucidly, “I’ll be whatever you want to see. Harkatrix, matrix, how do you run? Slew of currents and a spiced hadron.”

  They walked all that day and afternoon. When Pocomchi found a place suitable for night camp, the path still wound off into the jungle ahead. With the experience of an old trailwalker, and maybe a little magic, the Indian somehow managed to concoct a meal from concentrates which was both flavorful and filling.

  The fullness in his belly should have put Flinx rapidly to sleep. Instead, he found himself lying awake, listening to Pocomchi’s snores and staring at the sky. The trouble was that the weight in his stomach wasn’t matched by a more familiar weight curled next to his shoulder. Eventually he had to take a dose of cerebroneural depressant in order to fall into an uncomfortable sleep.

  Morning came with anxious hope that quickly faded. The minidrags had not returned. Silently they broke camp and marched on.

  Pocomchi tried to cheer his companion by pointing out interesting aspects of the flora and fauna they passed. Ordinarily Flinx would have listened raptly. Now he simply nodded or grunted an occasional comment. Even Pocomchi’s description of temple engineering failed to rouse him from his mental lethargy.

  They paused for lunch in the center of a series of concentric stone circles. Sha
de was provided by a five-meter-high metal pilliar in the center of the circles. It was supported by the familiar metal buttresses on four sides. The pillar itself, fluted and encrusted with petrified growths and slime, had corroded badly in places.

  “It’s a fountain,” Pocomchi decided while eating lunch. He gestured at the silent tower, then at the gradually descending stone circles surrounding them. “I expect we’re sitting in the middle of a series of sacred pools that were once used for religious and other ceremonies by the populace of this city. If subterranean Mimmisompo stays true to the Alaspinian pattern, then the water for this was piped underground to here, probably through metal pipes by gravity.” One finger traced the spray of ghost water. “It shot out of the fountain top and then fell down these fluted sides before spreading out and overflowing from one pool to the next.” Leaning forward, he took a bite out of a concentrate bar.

  “Judging from the slight incline of the pools, I’d guess the drain is right about there.” He pointed. “See the formal, carved bench? That’s where a priest could sit and bless the waters flowing out of the cistern. On the right of the bench there should be a—” Abruptly, he quieted and strained forward.

  Flinx felt a mental crackle from his companion and stared in the same direction. “I don’t see anything. What’s the matter?”

  Pocomchi rose and gestured. “There, what’s that?” Still Flinx could see nothing.

  The Indian walked cautiously toward the cistern outflow, hopping down from one level to the next. When he reached the region of the stone bench, he leaned over the last restraining wall and called back to Flinx. There was a peculiar tightness in his voice.

  “Over here,” he said disbelievingly, “is a dead man.”

  Chapter Eight

  The remains of his concentrate bar dangled forgotten from Flinx’s hand as he peered over the cistern wall. Sprawled next to one another on the right side of the sacred bench were three bodies. Their skullcaps were missing, and their black suits were torn and ragged in places. Two men and a woman, all very dead.