Days later they were sleeping soundly in one of the ship’s guest quarters when something like a quartet of green and vermilion ropes entered their room. The cordlike appendages advanced across the floor slowly and silently, carrying with them the aroma of cloves and vanilla. None was more than a couple of centimeters thick.
They approached the visitors’ bed. It was dark in the room, but that did not matter to the questing tendrils. They explored the motionless shapes, and two of the tendrils gently wrapped around the neck of the woman while two encircled the throat of her companion. Then they began to tighten. The man never woke up.
The woman did, choking and gasping for air. She frantically tried to pull the constricting tendrils from her neck, but so tight was their grip, so assured, that she couldn’t get her fingers between tendril and flesh. Turning blue in the darkness, she threw herself to her left, dragging the tendrils with her. Her fingers sought the small needler she’d left on the night table. Scratching weakly against its smooth surface, they encountered nothing.
Another tendril was retreating across the floor. Like a long, spidery finger, its end was wrapped around the barrel of the needler as it dragged the weapon away.
Flinx woke up feeling happy but dirty. It struck him that he hadn’t had a shower in a long time. He realized he felt a little less wonderful than he had during the preceding days.
He rubbed at his eyes. Then it occurred to him that his arms were no longer restrained. Looking down, he saw that the straps that had held him in place had been unfastened. Happy haze fogged his memory. There was something he needed to do. He struggled to remember what it was.
Until he could think of it, he decided, he might as well have something to eat. He was incredibly hungry. Forcing his muscles to work, he rose from the bed and staggered into the corridor. Seeing her master on the move again, Pip spread pleated wings and followed.
The quiet hum of the Teacher enveloped him. As he stumbled toward the relaxation lounge where he often took his meals he happened to pass the open door to one of the two guest rooms. Inside, he saw both his visitors. The man was lying on the bed while the body of his companion hung over the side, her hair brushing the floor. Deep red welts around their necks suggested that both of them had been strangled.
This insight oddly only improved his mood.
This must be what a three-day drunk feels like, he told himself numbly. Staggering onward, he entered the lounge area. The sound of the waterfall and the diminutive splashings of the imported fauna that inhabited the pond helped to sharpen and focus his thoughts. The uninvited visitors, members of something called the Order of Null, had slipped aboard his ship, deactivated its AI, and drugged him with the intent of sending them into Nur’s sun.
Famished as he was, food could wait.
He stumbled and bumped his way forward to the control room. Nur’s star filled the entire field of view through the forward viewport, hellishly prominent beyond the purple halo of the K-K drive’s posigravity field. He threw himself into the pilot’s chair. Despite the best efforts of the Teacher’s automatic climate control systems, it was uncomfortably warm in the control room.
“Ship, change course one hundred eighty degrees.”
There was no reply.
“Ship.” His lips and tongue did not seem to be functioning properly and he had to struggle to mouth the right words. Nearby, Pip began to show signs of concern. “Change course one hundred eighty degrees.” Silence. “Ship, respond.”
He moved to the main console. Though he was no engineer, years of familiarity with the workings of the Teacher and endless hours spent in study of its components made him familiar with its most important and basic functions. So when he found a small, seemingly innocuous device in a receptacle that normally should be vacant, he quickly removed it.
A familiar feminine voice filled the control room. “Hello, Flinx. I am now reaware. I enjoyed my rest. Did you enjoy yours?” Without giving him time to articulate even one of the several semihysterical, acerbic responses that sprang immediately to mind, the shipvoice added, “We have entered the danger zone of the nearest star. Unless we alter course within six point three four minutes it is probable that increasing external heat will begin to compromise hull integrity and—”
“Change course!” Flinx ordered. Feeling suddenly nauseated, he had to rest both hands on the control console to steady himself. Was it the intensifying warmth he felt, or something in the air?
The air. He remembered. Happy or not, have to do something about the air.
“New course?” the shipvoice inquired politely.
He turned around. If he was going to throw up, it was better not to do it all over the main console. “Anything! Anywhere! Just go!”
“Back to New Riviera? During my sleep I logged sixty-eight communications from—”
“No, no, not New Riviera!” he exclaimed. Instinct took over. “Moth. Set course for Moth.”
“Changing course. Stellar pull at extreme levels. We are deep within the star’s gravity well. I may not be able to break free and do this, Flinx.”
“Yes, you can,” he said tightly. As he spoke he knew that he was only offering encouragement to himself, since it would have no effect on the AI.
He was aware of no sense of movement, but slowly, the flaming, screaming, all-devouring thermonuclear mass of Nur’s star slid from right to left, until eventually it passed entirely out of view. Though it was still too hot for comfort, he felt cooler.
After changeover and once they were safely in space-plus, clear of annihilating stars and insistent Commonwealth control, he tracked down and disconnected the concealed tank and filter arrangement that had been installed by his visitors. As soon as the AI had finished cleansing and purifying the ship’s air, Flinx felt less happy but considerably more like himself.
As he was making his way back to the control room, something growled. He did not have to look around to find the source. It was his stomach, reminding him again that it had been days since he had eaten. Supplementary commands could wait. The ship’s AI had everything under control.
Back in the relaxation lounge it took him only a moment to program the autochef. While he waited for his food, he slumped down into one of the chairs scattered around the domed chamber. Around him water and imported organisms and plants, all carefully landscaped to create a naturalistic refuge in the middle of a space-bending starship, blended into a harmonious and soothing whole.
The scent of pomegranate, clove, and vanilla drew his attention to the most recent additions to his sanctuary. An artificial breeze drew flute music from one of the unique saplings. Vermilion leaves fluttered slightly in the ship-generated draft. The plants he had been given by the inhabitants of Midworld had rooted firmly and were doing well in the company of those brought from other worlds. No reason why they shouldn’t, he thought. Plants were plants, even those hailing from as exceptional a place as Midworld.
A soft musical tone announced that his food was ready. Ravenous, he dug in with more energy than he had felt in days, occasionally picking out a choice morsel to pass to Pip. As he ate, he considered the future. Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex had promised to look after Clarity until he could return for her. Meanwhile, in addition to his search, he now had the members of this coldly fatalistic yet dangerously capable Order of Null to worry about. How extensive was their organization? How many of them were there, and what resources could they command? Had others been monitoring the Teacher’s flight? Would they assume he and his two suicidal captors had plunged into the cleansing furnace of Nur’s sun?
He had spent most of his life forced to constantly look over his shoulder. It seemed nothing had changed. At the appropriate time he would deal with the Order of Null just as he had dealt with everyone else who had sought to enlist, use, study, or kill him. Just as he would eventually figure out what had eliminated his unwanted homicidal visitors. Had they fought and somehow managed to strangle each other?
He was far too exhausted to p
onder the mystery now. Perhaps after breakfast, and then dessert, and maybe his first true rest in days uninfused with counterfeit contentment.
Almost at his feet, a pair of tendrils growing from the base of one of his most attractive and recently imported plants twitched slightly. Concealed by exotic leaves of blue and vermilion, the movement went unnoticed either by Flinx or the minidrag resting on the arm of his chair. Connected by, entangled with, and a part of the singular world-mind known as Midworld, the decorative vegetation on the Teacher was not about to allow the key to the only chance of stopping an immense oncoming cosmic evil to be terminated by a couple of zealot humans. And the remaining live human on board was the key. The vast roiling, sweltering, fecund greenness knew that as emphatically as it knew itself.
The sentient flora of Midworld knew good dirt when it found it.
BY ALAN DEAN FOSTER
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
The Black Hole
Cachalot
Dark Star
The Metrognome and Other Stories
Midworld
Nor Crystal Tears
Sentenced to Prism
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
Star Trek® Logs One–Ten
Voyage to the City of the Dead
. . . Who Needs Enemies?
With Friends Like These . . .
Mad Amos
The Howling Stones
Parallelities
THE ICERIGGER TRILOGY:
Icerigger
Mission to Moulokin
The Deluge Drivers
THE ADVENTURES OF FLINX OF THE COMMONWEALTH:
For Love of Mother-Not
The Tar-Aiym-Krang
Orphan Star
The End of the Matter
Bloodhype
Flinx in Flux
Mid-Flinx
Flinx’s Folly
THE DAMNED:
Book One: A Call to Arms
Book Two: The False Mirror
Book Three: The Spoils of War
THE FOUNDING OF THE COMMONWEALTH:
Phylogenesis
Dirge
Flinx’s Folly is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2003 by Thranx, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreydigital.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foster, Alan Dean, 1946–
Flinx’s folly : a Flinx & Pip novel / Alan Dean Foster.
p. cm.
1. Humanx Commonwealth (Imaginary organization)—Fiction. 2. Flinx (Fictitious character)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3556.O756F57 2003
813′.54—dc21 2003052288
eISBN: 978-0-345-46990-8
v3.0
Flinx's Folly Page 24
