Reunion

by Alan Dean Foster

  With a cry, and in spite of her unsteady condition, she launched herself at him.

  As it had so many times before, his eccentric, unpredictable talent had chosen not to function just when he needed it the most.

  Sensing the attack, Pip was up and out of concealment before Carolles could reach her master. At the sight of the flying snake, hovering like a gigantic, iridescent, deep-throated hummingbird before her, the security officer slewed to a halt.

  “That thing—is it poisonous?”

  “You could say that.” Flinx replied softly, gravely understating his winged companion’s lethal capabilities.

  Cautiously, Carolles edged around man and minidrag. Both turned to track her progress, Pip pivoting gracefully in midair. The pointed tongue flicked in and out repeatedly, sampling the emotion-filled atmosphere.

  He needed to stop her, Flinx knew. As more untailored emotions regained ascendancy over those he had imprinted on her, the readier she would be to report everything she could recall to her superiors. Fortunately, those worthies were presently occupied in dealing with an egregious breach of hub security. With luck, she might not gain a hearing for her fears and suspicions for several days. By then he would be gone—not only from Surire and Tacrica, but from the overcrowded, claustrophobic, superannuated world that had given birth to his species.

  Whirling, she turned and ran, racing back in the direction of the violated hub. So much for love at first sight, he thought complacently as he turned his attention to the vehicle against which she had been leaning. Time and circumstance never failed to mute his wonder at the use to which he was invariably able to put his youthful skills as a thief. Within the space of two minutes he was safely inside the private vehicle and speeding out of the garage.

  The compact air-suspension transport was preprogrammed to travel to an unknown destination. Anyone who attempted to tamper with the secured navigation system risked pinpointing the stolen vehicle for local authorities. Better to accept a trip to whatever destination it was now accelerating toward than run the risk of attracting additional, unwanted attention, he decided. With luck, it would soon commence the steep but safe descent from Surire, heading for the bustling resort community on the coast below. Or perhaps it would turn inland, toward Lapaz. He would be content with either destination.

  It chose neither. Instead, he found himself traveling almost due west, toward the edge of the Andes. Unfamiliar with any part of the region save that he had already traversed, he had no idea where he was headed. His concerns were only partly alleviated by the fact that his ride in ignorance was not interrupted, and was unexpectedly brief.

  “Welcome to Surire Park,” the vehicle announced as it began to slow.

  Peering cautiously out the polarizing dome, Flinx saw that they were pulling into another garage. Unlike the quiet repository at the Shell hub, this one was frantic with families and couples, mostly young. Free-floating holos proclaimed the virtues of products he had never heard of, while subdued but insistently cheerful music filled the air. Wherever he was, it seemed to be a happy place. That would last only as long as he succeeded in avoiding the attentions of the authorities.

  When the transport parked itself, deactivated, and refused to respond to his insistent requests to move on, he had no choice but to exit. It took him only a holo or two and an agitated stroll through several insistent and exceedingly raucous sound cones to discover where the vehicle had taken him. Surire Park was not the nature preserve of the woolly vicuñas and viscachas he had read about. That blissfully unspoiled wilderness lay farther north. This Surire Park was entirely artificial, as were its amusements.

  Given his state of mind, it was not a bad place to be. While uncrowded in the middle of the weekday, there were still enough people present—jostling and laughing, vacationers and locals alike—to lose himself among. Trying not to make contact with the eyes of any of the discreetly identified park security staff, he ambled freely amidst the animated throng, absently cataloging the attractions, ignoring the multitude of clever advertisements, and treating himself to specialty sweets whose sticky composition was beyond the capabilities of the autochef aboard the Teacher. Automatic readers accepted his carefully coded credcard without comment.

  One ride promised a swift but sizzling run through the heart of one of the active volcanoes that dotted this sweep of the Andes. Another shouted the exhilaration to be had from spiraling at high speed down the slopes of smoking Mount Isulga. There were electrostatic sleds that could be raced across the frozen snowfields, and opportunities to participate in bloodless but noisy holoed recreations of the ancient battles that had scarred this part of the planet. One could choose to wear either the weapons and armor of the conquistadors, or of the Incas. Families partaking in the elaborate historical recreations were invited to purchase recordings of themselves giving advice to or fighting alongside Pizarro or Atahuallpa.

  Recreated tombs gave children the chance to play amateur archeologist, while their parents could compete for reproductions of Inca, Moche, Lambayeque, and Chimu artifacts. An observation platform tethered at eight thousand meters provided spectacular views of the mountains, the Pacific, and the sprawling Amazon Reserva to the east. Flinx was almost enjoying himself and Pip was wholly occupied in consuming fragments of the pretzel protruding from one of her companion’s shirt pockets, when he spotted the uniforms working their way through the crowd. The attitudes of the wearers were intent, their demeanor grim, and he did not think they were looking for a pickpocket or a drug abuser.

  As always, his time of ease and relaxation was brief. He needed to leave, and fast. Burrowing deep within the densest portions of the crowd, he made his way back toward the entrance—only to find it conspicuous with uniforms. They were manually checking everyone coming into the park, and everyone going out.

  How much did they know? he found himself wondering anxiously. Had he been reported running from the building with the unconscious Carolles on his back? Or had she recovered sufficiently from her induced slumber and emotional manipulation to give a good description of the young man she had so fleetingly believed she might have loved? Either way, he could not chance donning an air of indifference and trying to slip past the uniforms. In the event of a confrontation, there were too many of them. If he was challenged, Pip would strike out instinctively, and he would not be able to prevent her from killing.

  How to avoid an encounter or being taken into custody? Backing unobtrusively into the crowd, avoiding children upset at being denied the chance to go on one more ride, he searched with increasing anxiety for another way out. There seemed to be only the one entrance/exit. As he explored the park’s farthest reaches, the percentage of persistent, relentlessly pursuing uniformed security personnel and police steadily increased.

  The ride entrance he eventually found himself standing alongside presented itself to the public as the “Highest, Fastest, Most Exhilarating, Adrenaline-Pumping Exercise in Tandem Racing This Side of the Himalayan Chute!!!” After all the imperious capitals, the tacked-on multiple exclamation struck him as brazen. A quick check of the ride’s entrance showed that it was devoid of guards or other armed hunters looking for a certain redhead. Approaching an information booth, he queried the fixed-position humaniform robot as to the nature of the ride. It was no less effusive in its sales pitch than any biological tout.

  Within the ride’s core, participants boarded individual maglev boards that adjusted to their height and weight. Each board was encased in a transparent, unbreakable capsule that was automatically pressurized to prevent injury in the unlikely event of a crash. Since each capsule was monitored by the ride’s automatic overlord, it was impossible to run over a capsule descending in front of you, or to be overtaken by one from behind.

  Beneath the launch ledge, riders plunged into one of two dozen intersecting channels. Powered by precisely spaced electromagnetic rings that encircled each open conduit, board riders could choose to descend by gravity alone, or to accelerate even faster
than nature provided. Each board could also use the maglev system for braking, to slow its one or two passengers to a more sedate velocity. Sitting on the board within the protective transparent capsule, feet extended, body riding less than a meter above the ground, the electronic tout promised Flinx that one could rocket down the western slope of the Andes at over 300 kilometers an hour. Because of the board’s proximity to the surface and its diminutive size, the sensation of sheer speed, the recorded spiel promised, was unparalleled. He would plunge from an altitude of five thousand meters to sea level in less than a hundred kilometers linear distance.

  It was just what he needed.

  A glance behind showed a trio of police making their way toward the ride, their eyes doggedly searching the crowd as they approached. Choosing a skill level and paying for passage, Flinx purchased admission for one.

  The controls on the board were simple enough for an eight-year-old to handle, which was the intent of the ride’s designers. Waiting his turn, he watched as shrieking children, grinning adults, and intimate couples were boosted forward until they dropped out of sight. The slow, the timid, or the simply fearful would automatically be shunted into specific channels reserved for their kind. Daredevils and speed demons shared other routes. Three to four trajectories were saved for the truly mad. Knowing where he had to go and how he needed to proceed, Flinx made certain Pip was secure within his shirt. He was not overly concerned. Her diminutive but powerful coils would allow the minidrag to hold onto him tighter than he could grip the board’s controls.

  A slight lurch sent his board forward. They were moving. He felt the air harness contract against him, but not uncomfortably, as it molded itself to his lanky form. Though he was now cinched in too securely to turn, he could hear shouts behind him. Had he waited too long? Could the ride still be locked, freezing him helplessly in place before he could fall free of the landing?

  Another jolt and he felt himself accelerating a little faster. Ahead of him a board occupied by a dark couple suddenly vanished as if it had dropped off the face of the Earth. Which, to a certain degree, it had. In its wake it left delighted screams. The board he was riding slowed. To left and right he could see other boards, other riders, disappearing. The shouts behind him had faded, but he could clearly sense rising as well as conflicting emotions somewhere nearby. Lips set, he waited for another boost.

  Then, without warning, he was careening downward, the angle of descent not yet acute but the board beginning to pick up speed nonetheless. The perfect transparency of the capsule created the illusion that there was nothing around him. Air pressure pressed against his sides and face like a big, comforting pillow. Outside the tube, undisturbed Andean countryside raced past on both sides, an unpolluted dark blue sky stark overhead. He shot through a large metal ring, the first of his chosen channel’s magnetic accelerators. Taking a deep breath, he pushed down hard on the board’s accelerator.

  The digits on the speedometer floating in front of his eyes climbed as he dropped. Next to it was a heads-up three-dimensional diagram that charted the various available intersecting channels while describing their individual attractions. Ignoring ruins, waterfalls, canyons filled with alpine and then subtropical wildlife, he opted straightforwardly for the shortest and fastest. As the board continued to accelerate, it began to vibrate slightly. The vibration never grew uncomfortable, but it served to remind him that he was now rocketing downslope at over 275 kilometers per hour.

  The scenery might well have been spectacular, but it went past too fast for him to notice. Even a police vehicle traveling a cleared commercial conduit would have been hard-pressed to match his speed. How had they traced him to the park from Carolles’s remembrances? Most likely, she had provided a description of the private transport he had temporarily appropriated. It would take them some time to decide that he was not anywhere within the park. From the start, the ride had been run wholly by automatics. Probably at least one component was equipped to record visuals of every rider, if only for insurance purposes. With luck, it would be a little while at least before the authorities got around to checking the park’s security files for the day. Once that had been done, however, a police chyp could match him out in a matter of seconds—assuming a security recorder had caught a clear glimpse of him.

  Used to functioning in situations in which he never knew how much time remained to him before something unpleasant happened, he remained calm, concentrating on running the ride. Beneath his shirt, Pip rested peacefully, the mellow minidrag contentedly digesting recently ingested carbos and salt. Capable as she was of remarkably rapid flight on her own, the speed at which they were presently traveling did not excite her.

  Other board riders in proximate channels were momentary blurs in his vision. The trajectory grew steeper still, the encircling magnets continuing to accelerate his board until the speedometer would read no higher. If a magnet failed, he could potentially lose the channel. In that event the board would fly off track, soar briefly into unrestricted air, and slam into the ground at sufficient speed to reduce both it and any passengers to scattered fragments of unconnected tissue. Having faced death in far less resolutely insured forms, Flinx was not worried. It was a good thing, however, that his stomach did not have a mind of its own.

  In a very short space of time indeed, the ride’s automatic safety features took control of his board. Air pressure and harness restraining him, he began to slow. The broad blue plain of the Pacific lay just ahead. As a final, unannounced fillip, the last half kilometer of the ride shot him into the water, through an underwater tube, past a school of startled jacks and a brace of pouting barracuda, and back around in a tight curve to end at the ride’s terminus. He did not linger there long enough to respond to the human monitor’s smiling query of “How was it?”

  Passing through the innocuous medical scanner that pronounced him and everyone else who finished the ride physically and mentally unscathed by the experience, he hurried as inconspicuously as possible out into the nearest street. Busy Tacrica bustled with tourists and townsfolk alike, a contented, milling throng not unlike that inhabiting any other resort anywhere else on Earth—or for that matter, off it. Two minutes after he vanished into the gaily outfitted crowd, a squad of four police accompanied by a pair of grim-faced hub security personnel disembarked from three commandeered maglev boards, pushed past the bemused employees assigned to monitor their respective arrival channels, and fanned out into the surging multitude. But the wiry, tall redhead they sought was nowhere to be seen.

  Frustrated as they were, they had not even been able to enjoy the ride.

  Chapter 4

  Wandering the slightly sloping, carefully preserved colonial quarter of the city that night, Flinx paused to watch the local news stream on a free-ranging public channel. Receding into the background without disappearing, the announcer systematically reported that a major industrial accident whose nature remained as yet undetermined by the relevant authorities had seriously damaged the Surire Shell hub, knocking out all but emergency information services from Arequipa to Iquique for an extended period of time. Some services, the announcer declared with a proper sense of outrage, were not expected to be restored for several weeks. The cause of the incident was under investigation.

  Turning away from the display and keeping his head down, Flinx tightened his lips. Somewhere, he knew dourly, the Terran Shell AI was generating a report.

  The lights were kept atmospherically dim in the preserved colonial quarter and at this time of night the main street was comparatively tranquil. Those tourists who were out and about were interested in atmosphere, not their fellow promenaders. Eiffel’s fountain sparkled in the balmy night air, a monument to the skills and vision of long-dead engineers who thought iron the ultimate building material. Using modern materials and techniques, skillful restorers had preserved much of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century architecture. Even up close, the reinforcing nanotube sheets were invisible to the curious eye.

  He h
ad to get to the port at Nazca and to his shuttle. There was no reason to suppose the authorities would connect its ownership to their wanted fugitive and put a watch on it. Even if they somehow managed to identify him, there was nothing to link him to a specific KK-drive craft. The Counselor Second for Science Druvenmaquez had seen it, the senior thranx’s own ship’s personnel and instrumentation had doubtless imaged it. But while very different internally from any other vessel, from the outside the Teacher looked like any other small commercial interstellar craft. And Flinx was careful to see to it that his vessel’s maintenance ware altered its identifying external patterns on a regular basis.

  Still, he would not be able to relax until he was back within its familiar confines. That meant safely boarding the shuttle at Nazca’s commercial port, obtaining clearance to lift, and making it through the atmosphere without being challenged.

  His talent was functioning again. Around him, the air was charged with fleeting, or persistent, or hysterical, or affectionate emotion. As always on a populated world, the sheer volume of sentiment threatened to overcome him. It was better in uninhabited space, where his mind could float free of unwanted, unsought empathetic intrusion. He was tired, unfamiliar with his surroundings, and unsure of how best to make his way to Nazca while avoiding the attentions of the authorities. Of one thing he was reasonably sure: No convenient amusement ride would take him there.

  A pair of local police wearing subdued uniforms were coming up the avenue toward him. Though they were conversing animatedly between themselves and not looking in his direction, Flinx turned quickly down a side street. There was no need to expose himself to unnecessary scrutiny. Having spent an entire childhood on Moth darting through damp air and dark surroundings, he felt almost at home in the alleyways of the coastal community.