Running from the Deity

by Alan Dean Foster

  He would know shortly.

  Though it was quite early, a sizable crowd had already gathered and was waiting impatiently for the gatekeeper’s arrival. Bent and twisted elders wrestled for position with anxious young families. Solitary hopefuls whose skin flaps barely had the energy to rise and fall clung to the flanks of the line. Wealthy supplicants fidgeted in their wagons or on their individual mounts, annoyed at having to wait their turn like commoners. Ebbanai had dealt with them all equally. Today would be no different.

  Except that it would be for the last time.

  The restless buzz and bubbling faded as his appearance was noted and his approach remarked upon. He halted just behind the wooden gate, knowing that any protection it afforded him from the crowd was purely symbolic. There was no point in delaying. When the crowd had quieted enough for those in back to hear, he thrust his Sensitives straight up to indicate he needed their attention.

  He’d given considerable thought to just what to say and exactly how to say it. Storra had helped. In the end, both decided it was not the sort of thing one could drag out in hopes of muting the impact. Like butchering a dead and dried-out baryeln, it was a thing best done quick.

  “The Visitant cannot see you.” The response he and Storra had expected to this pronouncement was loud objecting, and he had prepared for that. Instead, an eerie silence settled over the throng of would-be supplicants. It was not a good sign. Not knowing what else to do, not having anything else to do, he continued as planned.

  “He is leaving,” the net-caster declared, raising his voice slightly despite the hush. Raising both right forearms, he pointed all four flanges skyward. “To return to his home among the stars. He feels that his work here is done.” Improvising, he concluded, “He hopes one day to perhaps return to us to continue the work he has begun.” With that, he turned to leave.

  It didn’t work.

  The protests began almost immediately, rising rapidly in frequency and volume.

  “How can the Visitant leave now, when my family and I have been waiting here for a two-day?”

  “What of my infirm son? Who will help him now...?”

  “I paid good money to gain this place in line...and for what?”

  “See here, net-caster,” exclaimed a tall, thick merchant as he stuck his head out from the depths of his ornate travel wagon, “who are you to tell us what the Visitant will and will not do? I demand to speak to him myself.”

  “Yes, yes!” insisted a female poorer in worldly goods but not in determination as she pushed herself to the forefront. “I have come all the way from Derethell Province to seek a cure for my blind nephew, and I will not be denied by such as you!”

  “The Visitant, the Visitant!” As the crowd took up the refrain Ebbanai, even in the absence of physical contact with any of their twisting, coiling Sensitives, could see emotions beginning to boil among them as ferociously as one of Storra’s spiced stews.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” he yelled. “He’s going home!” he added, raising his voice as much as he could while continuing to back up. “Don’t you think even the Visitant has a right to do that?”

  “What does a god need with a home?” someone shouted from the center of the crowd. At any moment, it threatened to turn into an aimless mob. “His home is wherever he happens to be.”

  “Also,” an increasingly desperate Ebbanai informed them, “he is out of many of the medicines he dispenses, and needs to replenish them and do maintenance on his instruments.”

  “Instruments!” The young female was so angry her Sensitives were quivering as if a current were being passed through them. “What does a sanctified one need with instruments?”

  From within the flamboyant coach, a well-dressed oldster with wrinkling skin flaps appeared. “All this talk of science is a cover, a mask, for the miracles the Visitant performs! We all know that such things are a fantasy, to mollify the rabble, and that the holy one’s cures are the result of spells and magic.”

  Rising from his driving squat, the coach’s tethet wrangler turned angrily on his employer. “Either way, my money is as good as yours, and the Visitant as likely to heal my bad leg as your inconstant bowels!” Louder argument between master and mastered ensued, which culminated in several in the crowd taking up the driver’s side. They started to rock the coach with an eye toward putting it over on its side. On the other side of the vehicle, adults and Nursets with offspring scrambled to get out of the way. Rising shouts of anger were joined by the first screams of panic.

  “The Visitant should see to the common folk first!” someone was yelling indignantly.

  “I hear he takes those with the most money before any others, no matter how serious their afflictions!” exclaimed another angrily.

  Tightly curled flanges formed smooth, fingerless fists. Blows began to fall among disputants, their resentment fueled by the fear that in spite of all their hopes and demands, the net-caster’s words might hold true. None in the throng was ready to accept that they might have come all this way, with hopes so high, for nothing. A loud crash came from the center of the developing mob, where the fancy travel wagon had finally been tipped over. Still yoked to the vehicle, the three in-line tethets that drew it began to kick out with their short but powerful legs. Fresh injuries were added to those the supplicants had brought with them.

  Momentarily forgotten, Ebbanai wisely took the moment to turn and run.

  Would any of them follow? Given the crowd’s overwhelming need to entreat Flinx, it seemed almost inevitable. For at least some, their desperate need to seek his aid far exceeded their fear of how an angry Visitant might react to their uninvited attention.

  Had he handled it badly? Ebbanai thought wildly as he raced back down the dirt track. What else might he have done, what else could he have said? He and Storra had worked out what he would say to the crowd beforehand, and his words had not proven up to the task. A glance backward showed the first supplicants surging around the simple gate. The weight of the mob pushed others forward. Splintering sounds reached him as the gate crumbled beneath their combined weight. As he increased his stride, he could hear individual voices clearly: an unholy mix of prayer, hope, and anger. He had no idea how to cope with such fury.

  He wondered if the Visitant would.

  Flinx sensed the mob long before he could hear it. He had finished attending to the injured individual who was not only the last patient of the day, but the final Dwarra set to receive medical attention at his hands. Simple folk, the last of them filed out of the baryeln barn chatting contentedly among themselves. As usual, one of his hosts was waiting to escort him back to the house for something to eat. This afternoon, it was Storra.

  He had done well here, he convinced himself. Had done good things for deserving people, and damn the Commonwealth’s aged, obscure first-contact policies. With the Teacher’s repairs completed, there were only final checks to be run on newly refurbished components. Then he could depart this interesting world and resume his seemingly impossible but committed search for the wandering Tar-Aiym artifact.

  Storra was talking to him, murmuring something about having prepared a special meal for his last night among them, when he halted on the open ground halfway between the domed house and the barn. In his mind, all had been peaceful, calm, and at ease—until now. For the first time since he had stepped out onto the surface of Arrawd, the emotional aether accessed by his Talent was genuinely disturbed. For the first time, the general tranquillity he had come to savor every morning when he awoke was unsettled. His Talent sensed anger, resentment, fear, and fury. The serene emotions that usually surrounded him, emanating from Storra and his recent patients and the others who worked at the homestead, were suddenly inundated by a thundercloud of hatred and dread, panic and anxiety.

  Most disconcerting of all, he perceived that he was at the center of it all.

  Storra’s Sensitives dipped toward him. Her expression reflected concern as she looked from his face into the east and back again.
“What is it, Flinx—what’s wrong?”

  He did not reply; just kept staring into the distance. Before long, a single figure appeared, running hard in their direction. It plunged down the slope so fast Flinx feared for the runner’s safety. Gasping, Ebbanai pulled up alongside his mate. The glances he cast in Flinx’s direction were revealing, though Flinx did not have to meet them. He already knew what was coming.

  Yelling, screaming, praying, fighting among themselves, the mob that had shattered the gate and the protocol it represented crested the low rise and came marching down the hillside in an angry wave of the needy. Heading for the house, they swerved to their right the instant several of their number caught sight of the Visitant standing there. Her confidence shorn in the face of the advancing multitude, Storra joined her mate in taking refuge well behind Flinx.

  From his shoulders, Pip launched skyward as the seething crowd slowed. Having gained their destination, none of them knew how to achieve their goal. Desperate for and desiring of his help, they realized they did not know how to force him to provide it. They surged back and forth, from side to side, pushing and shoving as they muttered uncertainly among themselves.

  Flinx faced them squarely. His head did not hurt, but his stomach was churning. He was the cause of all this. In doing good, he had raised unreasonable expectations. The more Dwarra he had helped, the more had come seeking his help. They would not be denied. Nor would dozens, perhaps hundreds, of others who were presently making the long trek to the lonely peninsula and its fabled homestead.

  He saw clearly now. For every native he had helped, for every injured individual he had healed, there would be a dozen or more he would have no choice but to leave behind untouched. Over time, their disappointment would turn to bitterness. He would depart revered by some, but hated by far more. In his desire to lend a hand, he had miscalculated.

  Fool, he reproached himself as he confronted the crowd. Experienced but still youthful. He should have seen it coming. Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex would never have made such a mistake. This is what comes of trying to help those who don’t have the background and maturity to understand the nature and limitations of that help, he thought cynically.

  Well, what was done, was done. Come whatever, he was leaving. Leaving to help find a solution to an infinitely greater, more threatening problem. He had done what he could for as many of the locals as he could, only to have misjudged the eventual results.

  “Help us,” a crippled female in the forefront of the crowd implored him. Her words were fraught with desperation, but her emotions were seething with anger. He had better not leave without helping her. A similar mix of need and rage fueled the feelings of the rest of the crowd.

  Alien or not, he reflected, it seemed that every individual of every sentient species had a public face and a private one. It was his ability and curse to be able to see both simultaneously.

  “I can’t help any more of you,” he told them, and they quieted so as to be able to hear his words. “I’ve helped as many as I could. Now it’s time for me to go. I have work of my own to do.”

  A pair of young males stumbled forward and, awkwardly, prostrated themselves. “What hurries a god, who can make and take his own time?” declared the elder who had accompanied them. “Only an evil, uncaring god would refuse aid to the most needy!”

  The rush of inimical emotion that flashed through the mob threatened to make Flinx physically ill.

  “I am not a god!” he yelled at them, communicating the denial with all the force of the fluency he had acquired during the preceding weeks. “I am only a mortal being like yourselves. A traveler with work to do who stopped here for a short time. While here, I ended up helping a few of you—and then more, and still more.” Turning slightly, he glared back at Storra, who under that furious alien gaze tried to shrink out of sight behind her mate.

  He looked back at the seething, desperate crowd. “I’ve helped as many as I could, as many as was feasible. Now I have to go. You have to let me go.”

  Their fury and frustration was an emotional storm in his head. The wonderful, matchless peace he had known since landing on Arrawd was gone. Shattered, blasted away by the desperation of the sick and injured, and by their selfishness and individual need. He had found paradise, and in trying to improve a small portion of it, had forever ruined it for himself.

  And to think, he told himself as he kept a careful watch on the crowd, that I once actually thought of settling down here. He had underestimated reality and overestimated his environs. Like a quantum state, his presence had disturbed his surroundings to such a degree that they would never be the same.

  “Heal us!” a gravid female yelled from the front of the crowd.

  “Please put right my offspring!” howled another as she pushed Nurset and damaged progeny forward.

  It was as if they hadn’t heard, or comprehended, a word he had said. Those in front began to surge forward, urged on by the press of disheartened bodies behind. Terrified, no longer resolute, Storra clung for protection to her equally alarmed mate.

  There were too many, Flinx saw immediately. Too many, too close, to try to influence with his Talent. Fortunately, albeit reluctantly, he had access to resources other than his unpredictable ability.

  He pulled his gun.

  The beamer had been set to kill. Now he adjusted it and pointed it at the crowd. Those in front hesitated, pushing against those shoving from behind. All eyes focused on the device held in the alien’s strange hand. It did not look like something for making magic. It looked solid and functional, like a piece of well-maintained tethet tack.

  Muttering to himself, perhaps not even fully aware of what he was doing, the elder who had placed the mantle of evil on the Visitant’s head took a couple of steps forward. Swinging the muzzle of the beamer around, Flinx triggered the weapon. The tip glowed softly, briefly.

  Suddenly the oldster was jumping and swatting at his simple raiment. As flames began to start from the fabric, he frantically tore at the fasteners and flung the burning pieces onto the ground. A few blisters began to appear on his sensitive, exposed skin where the epidermal flaps had not closed. As the crowd gawked at this exhibition, Flinx adjusted the strength of his handgun’s output a second time.

  “This weapon heated that person’s clothing and skin. I have now set it to kill. I’ve spent these past many eight-days attending to the sick and carrying out healing among your people. Please don’t force me to do the opposite to any of you.”

  The silence that ensued fell over the homestead like a heavy cloak. Then, in twos and threes, in family groups and as individuals, the mob began to break up, bits and pieces of it flaking off and shuffling back the way they had come, with the majority following in a downcast, disconsolate body. The emotions they generated threatened to eradicate the memory of all the good and grateful feelings that had been projected by those Flinx had helped.

  As an agitated Pip settled herself back down on her master’s shoulders, Ebbanai and Storra moved up to rejoin the visitor. Though outwardly concerned for her guest, Storra’s feelings as she eyed the weapon reflected an unmitigated greed she could not suppress.

  I have definitely stayed here too long, Flinx thought wearily. He had not stopped here seeking a refuge and, despite his initial impressions of Arrawd and its people, it was now clear he had not found one. There was no such place for him, anywhere. There was only the need to do what he could to try to save others: the few he could count as his friends, and the billions he could not.

  He had nearly forgotten all about his driving youthful desire to try to ascertain the identity and truth of his parentage. Nearly, but not entirely.

  “They are ungrateful.”

  Turning, he saw Ebbanai staring back at him. No hint of falsehood or deception colored the humble net-caster’s observation. He was genuinely apologetic for the behavior of his kind.

  “You know that I can’t stay here, forever healing the sick among you.” Flinx’s anger faded as he
spoke to his host. “Even if I wished to do so, I have a limited supply of certain items that my ship can’t continue to perpetually synthesize.”

  “You have done more than enough for the Dwarra,” Storra put in. “They should be grateful for the time you have spent, and the efforts you have made on our behalf. Many have benefited.”

  Not the least of whom have been you and your partner, Flinx added silently. But if Storra was more overtly acquisitive than her modest mate, she was no less honest in her thanks. He mumbled something about having tried to do his best and turned away, heading for the house.

  Ebbanai’s confusion was reflected in his words as well as his feelings. “But—you said that you are leaving, friend Flinx?”

  “First thing in the morning.” It was late, and he didn’t feel like walking in the dark all the way back to where the Teacher was waiting for him.

  He could have called out the skimmer, but that vision, at least, of Commonwealth technology he had managed to keep from the sight of the locals. Also, he was tired from his final day’s work of healing and from the unpleasant confrontation with the irate crowd. Nor did he relish leaving Arrawd under cover of night, speeding away inside the skimmer’s protective bubble. It smacked of demoralized flight.

  No, he would leave as he had arrived: under his own power, crossing the peninsula on his own two feet. Could he at least hope for a last good night’s sleep?

  Ebbanai gestured with two forearms in the direction of the path that led eastward toward the junction with the main road. “I don’t think any of them will be back to bother you, friend Flinx. The demonstration of your powers was instructive, and the threat sufficient to discourage even the most persistent supplicants.”

  Arrive with questions, stay to help, depart on the murmur of a threat. As he entered the pleasant house, made fragrant with expensive local perfumes paid for with money extorted from hopeful travelers by his ever-helpful hosts, he determined to leave future first contacts to those Commonwealth teams specially trained for the purpose. He did not feel he had done too badly, but he certainly could have done better.