Orphan Star

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Mahnahmi, I see you’ve been entertaining our guest,” Challis said to the girl “Now go somewhere and play like a good child.”

  “No. I want to stay and watch.”

  “Watch?” Flinx tensed. “Watch what?”

  “He’s going to use the jewel. I know he is!” She turned to Challis. “Please let me stay and watch, Daddy! I won’t say a word, I promise.”

  “Sorry, child. Not this time.”

  “Not this time, not this time,” she repeated. “You never let me watch. Never, never, never!” As quick as a sun shower turns bright, her face broke into a wide smile. “Oh, all right, but at least let me say good-bye.”

  When Challis impatiently nodded his approval she all but jumped into Flinx’s arms. Much to his distress, she wrapped herself around him, gave him a wet smack on one cheek, and whispered into his right ear in a lilting, immature soprano, “Better do what he tells you to, Flinx, or he’ll rip out your guts.”

  Somehow he managed to keep a neutral expression on his face as she pulled away with a disarmingly innocent smile.

  “Bye-bye. Maybe Daddy will let us play later.” Turning, she skipped from the room, exiting through a doorway in the far wall.

  “An . . . interesting little girl,” Flinx commented, swallowing.

  “Isn’t she charming,” Challis agreed. “Her mother was exceptionally beautiful.”

  “You’re married, then? You don’t strike me as the type.”

  The merchant appeared truly shocked. “Me, life-mated? My dear boy! Her mother was purchased right here in Drallar, a number of years ago. Her pedigree claimed she possessed exceptional talents. They turned out to be of a very minor nature, suitable for parlor tricks but little else.

  “However, she could perform certain other functions, so I didn’t feel the money wholly wasted. The only drawback was the birth of that infant, resulting from my failure to report on time for a standard debiojection. I didn’t think the delay would be significant.” He shrugged. “But I was wrong. The mother pleased me, so I permitted her to have the child. . . . I tend to be hard on my property, however. The mother did not live long thereafter. At times I feel the child has inherited her mother’s minuscule talents, but every attempt to prove so has met with failure.”

  “Yet despite this, you keep her,” Flinx noted curiously. For a second Challis appeared almost confused, a sensation which passed rapidly.

  “It is not so puzzling, really. Considering the manner of the mother’s death, of which the child is unaware, I feel some small sense of responsibility for her. While I have no particular love for infants, she obeys with an alacrity her older counterparts could emulate.” He grinned broadly and Flinx had the impression of a naked white skull filled with broken icicles.

  “She’s old enough to know that if she doesn’t, I’ll simply sell her.” Challis leaned forward, wheezing with the effort of folding his chest over his protruding belly. “However, you were not brought here to discuss the details of my domestic life.”

  “Then why was I brought here? I heard something about a jewel. I know a little about good stones, but I’m certainly no expert.”

  “A jewel, yes.” Challis declined further oral explanation; instead, he manipulated several switches concealed by the far overhang of the table between them. The lights dimmed and Challis’ pair of ominous attendants disappeared, though Flinx could sense their alert presence nearby. They were between him and the only clearly defined door.

  Flinx’s attention was quickly diverted by a soft humming. As the top of the table slid to one side, he could see the construction involved. The table was a thick safe. Something rose from the central hollow, a sculpture of glowing components encircled by a spiderweb of thin wiring. At the sculpture’s center was a transparent globe of glassalloy. It contained something that looked like a clear natural crystal about the size of a man’s head. It glowed with a strange inner light. At first glance it resembled quartz, but longer inspection showed that here was a most unique silicate.

  The center of the crystal was hollow and irregular in outline. It was filled with maroon and green particles which drifted with dreamy slowness in a clear viscous fluid. The particles were fine as dust motes. In places they nearly reached to the edges of the crystal walls, though they tended to remain compacted near its middle. Occasionally the velvety motes would jerk and dart about sharply, as if prodded by some unseen force. Flinx stared into its shifting depths as if mesmerized. . . .

  On Earth lived a wealthy man named Endrickson, who recently seemed to be walking about in a daze. His family was fond of him and he was well liked by his friends. He also held the grudging admiration of his competitors. Endrickson, though he looked anything but sharp at the moment, was one of those peculiar geniuses who possesses no creative ability of his own, but who instead exhibits the rare power to marshal and direct the talents of those more gifted than himself.

  At 5:30 on the evening of the 25th of Fifth Month, Endrickson moved more slowly than usual through the heavily guarded corridors of The Plant. The Plant had no name—a precaution insisted on by nervous men whose occupation it was to worry about such things—and was built into the western slope of the Andes.

  As he passed the men and women and insectoid thranx who labored in The Plant, Endrickson nodded his greetings and was always gratified with respectful replies. They were all moving in the opposite direction, since the work day had ended for them. They were on their way—these many, many-talented beings—to their homes in Santiago and Lima and New Delhi and New York, as well as to the Terran thranx colonies in the Amazon basin.

  One who was not yet off duty came stiffly to attention as Endrickson turned a corner in a last, shielded passageway. On seeing that the visitor was not his immediate superior—a gentleman who wore irritation, like his underwear, outside his trousers—the well-armed guard relaxed. Endrickson, he knew, was everyone’s friend.

  “Hello . . . Davis,” the boss said slowly.

  The man saluted, then studied him intently, disturbed at his appearance.

  “Good evening, sir. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, thank you, Davis,” Endrickson replied. “I had a last-minute thought . . . won’t be long.” He seemed to be staring at something irregular and shiny that he held cupped in one palm. “Do you want to see my identity card?”

  The guard smiled, processed the necessary slip of treated plastic, and admitted Endrickson to the chamber beyond which contained the shop, a vast cavern made even vaster by precision engineering and necessity. This was the heart of The Plant.

  Moving with assurance, Endrickson walked down ‘the ramp to the sealed floor of the enlarged cavern, passing enormous machines, long benches, and great constructs of metal and other materials. The workshop was deserted now. It would remain so until ‘the early-morning shift came on five hours later.

  One-third of the way across the floor he halted before an imposing door of dun-colored metal, the only break in a solid wall of the same material that closed off a spacious section of the cavern. Using his free hand while still staring at the thing in his other hand, he pulled out a small ring that held several metal cylinders. He selected a cylinder, pressed his thumb into the recessed area at one end of it, then inserted the other into a small hole in the door and shoved forward. A complex series of radiations was produced and absorbed by the doorway mechanism. These passed judgment on both the cylinder and the person holding it.

  Satisfied that the cylinder was coded properly and that its owner was of a stable frame of mind, the door sang soft acquiescence and shrank into the floor. Endrickson passed through and the door noted his passage, then rose to close the gap behind him.

  A not quite finished device loomed ahead, nearly filling this part of the cavern. It was surrounded by an attending army of instruments: monitoring devices, tools in repose, checkout panels and endless crates of assorted components.

  Endrickson ignored this familiar collage as he headed purposefully for
a single black panel. He thoughtfully eyed the switches and controls thereon, then used another of his ring cylinders to bring the board to life. Lights came on obediently and gauges registered for his inspection.

  The vast bulk of the unfinished KK-drive starship engine loomed above him. Final completion would and could take place only in free space, since the activated posigravity field of the drive interacting with a planet’s gravitational field would produce a series of quakes and tectonic adjustments of cataclysmic proportions.

  But that fact didn’t concern Endrickson just now. A far more, intriguing thought had overwhelmed him. Was the drive unit complete enough to function? he wondered. Why not observe the interesting possibilities firsthand?

  He glanced at the beauty in his palm, then used a second cylinder to unlock a tightly sealed box at one end of the black board. Beneath the box were several switches, all enameled a bright crimson. Endrickson heard a klaxon yell shrilly somewhere, but he ignored the alarm as he pressed switches in proper order. His anticipation was enormous. With the fluid-state switches activated, instructions began flowing through the glass-plastic-metal monolith. Far off on the other side of the locked door, Endrickson could hear people shouting, running. Meanwhile the drive’s thermonuclear spark was activated and Endrickson saw full engagement register on the appropriate monitors.

  He nodded with satisfaction. Final relays interlocked, communicated with the computermind built into the engine. For a brief second the Kurita-Kita field was brought into existence. Momentarily the thought flashed through Endrickson’s mind that this was something that should never be done except in the deep reaches of free space.

  But his last thoughts were reserved for the exquisite loveliness and strange words locked within the object he held in his hand. . . .

  Had the unit been finished there might have been a major disaster. But it was not complete, and so the field collapsed quickly, unable to sustain itself and to expand to its full, propulsive diameter.

  So, although windows were shattered and a few older buildings toppled and the Church of Santa Avila de Seville’s ancient steeple cracked six hundred kilometers away in downtown Valparaiso, only a few things in the immediate vicinity showed any significant alteration.

  However, Endrickson, The Plant, and the nearby technologic community of Santa Rosa de Cristóbal (pop. 3,200) vanished. The 13,352-meter-high mountain at whose base the town had risen and in whose bowels The Plant had been carved was replaced by a 1,200-meter-deep crater lined with molten glass.

  But since logic insisted the event could have been nothing other than an accident, it was so ruled by the experts called upon to produce an explanation—experts who did not have access to the same beauty which had so totally bedazzled the now-vaporized Endrickson. . . .

  Flinx blinked, awakening from the Janus jewel’s tantalizing loveliness. It continued to pulse with its steady, natural yellow luminescence.

  “Did you ever see one before?” Challis inquired.

  “No. I’ve heard of them, though. I know enough to recognize one.”

  Challis must have touched another concealed switch because a low-intensity light sprang to life at the table’s edge. Fumbling with a drawer built into the table, the merchant then produced a small boxy affair which resembled an abstract carving of a bird in flight, its wings on the downbeat. It was designed to fit on a human head. A few exposed wires and modules broke the device’s otherwise smooth lines.

  “Do you know what this is?” the merchant asked.

  Flinx confessed he did not.

  “It’s the operator’s headset,” Challis explained slowly, placing it over his stringy hair. “The headset and the machinery encapsulated in that table transcribe the thoughts of the human mind and convey them to the jewel. The jewel has a certain property.”

  Challis intoned “property” with the sort of spiritual reverence most men would reserve for describing their gods or mistresses.

  The merchant ceased fumbling with unseen controls and with the headset. He folded his hands before his squeezed out paunch and stared at the crystal. “I’m concentrating on something now,” he told his absorbed listener softly. “It takes a little training, though some can do without it.”

  As Flinx watched raptly, the particles in the jewel’s center began to rearrange themselves. Their motion was no longer random, and it was clear that Challis’ thoughts were directing the realignment. Here was something about which rumor abounded, but which few except the very rich and privileged had actually seen,

  “The larger the crystal,” Challis continued, obviously straining to produce some as yet unknown result, “the more colors present in the colloid and the more valuable the stone. A single color is the general rule. This stone contains two and is one of the largest and finest in existence, though even small stones are rare.

  “There are stones with impurities present which create three- and four-color displays, and one stone of five-color content is known. You would not believe who owns it, or what is done with it.”

  Flinx watched as the colors within the crystal’s center began to assume semisolid shape and form at Challis’ direction. “No one,” the merchant continued, “has been able to synthesize the oleaginous liquid in which the colored particulate matter drifts suspended. Once a crystal is broken, it is impossible to repair. Nor can the colloid be transferred in whole or in part to a new container. A break in the intricate crystal-liquid formation destroys the stone’s individual piezoelectric potential. Fortunately the crystal is as hard as corundum, though nowhere near as strong as artificials like duralloy.”

  Though the outlines shifted and trembled constantly, never quite firmly fixed, they took on the recognizable shapes of several persons. One appeared to be an exaggeratedly Junoesque woman. Of the others, one was a humanoid male and the third something wholly alien. A two-sided chamber rose around them and was filled with strange objects that never held their form for more than a few seconds. Although their consistency fluctuated, the impression they conveyed did not. Flinx saw quite enough to turn his stomach before everything within the crystal dissolved once again to a cloud of glowing dust.

  Looking up and across from the crystal he observed that the merchant had removed the headpiece and was wiping the perspiration from his high forehead with a perfumed cloth. Illuminated by the subdued light concealed in the table edge below, his face became that of an unscrupulous imp.

  “Easy to begin,” he murmured with exhaustion, “but a devilishly difficult reaction to sustain. When your attention moves from one figure, the others begin to collapse. And when the play involves complex actions performed by several such creations, it is nigh impossible, especially when one tends to become so . . . involved with the action.”

  “What’s all this got to do with me?” Flinx broke in. Although the question was directed at Challis, Flinx’s attention was riveted on those two half-sensed figures guarding the exit. Neither Nolly nor Nanger had stirred, but that didn’t mean they had relaxed their watch, either. And the door they guarded was hardly likely to be unlocked. Flinx could see several openings in the floor-to-ceiling glassalloy wall which overlooked the city, but he knew it was a sheer drop of at least fifty meters to the private street below.

  “You see,” Challis told him, “while I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve inherited a most successful family business in the Challis Company, neither do I count myself a dilettante. I have improved the company through the addition of people with many diverse talents.” He gestured toward the door. “Nolly-dear and Nanger there are two such examples. I’m hoping that you, dear boy, will be yet another.”

  “I’m still not sure I understand,” Flinx said slowly, stalling.

  “That can be easily rectified.” Challis steepled his fingers. “To hold the suspended particles of the Janus jewels, to manipulate the particulate clay, requires a special kind of mind. Though my mental scenarios are complex, to enjoy them fully I require a surrogate mind. Yours! I shall instruct you in wha
t is desired and you will execute my designs within the jewel.”

  Flinx thought back to what he had glimpsed a few moments ago in the incomplete playlet, to what Challis had wrought within the tiny god-world of the jewel. In many ways he was mature far beyond his seventeen years, and he had seen a great many things in his time. Though some of them would have sickened the stomach of an experienced soldier, most of them had been harmless perversions. But beneath all the superficial cordiality and the polite requests for cooperation that Challis had expressed, there bubbled a deep lake of untreated sewage, and Flinx was not about to serve as the merchant’s pilot across it.

  Surviving a childhood in the marketplace of Drallar had made Flinx something of a realist. So he did not reel at the merchant’s proposal and say what was on his mind: “You revolt and nauseate me, Conda Challis, and I refuse to have anything to do with you or your sick private fantasies.” Instead he said: “I don’t know where you got the idea that I could be of such help to you.”

  “You cannot deny your own history,” Challis sniggered. “I have acquired a small but interesting file on you. Most notably, your peculiar talents figured strongly in assisting a competitor of mine named Maxim Malaika. Prior to that incident and subsequent to it you have been observed demonstrating abnormal mental abilities through the medium of cheap sideshow tricks for the receipt of a few credits from passersby. I can offer you considerably more for the use of your talents. Deny that if you can.”

  “Okay, so I can work a few gimmicks and fool a few tourists,” Flinx conceded, while studying the thin silvery bracelets linking his wrists and trying to find a hidden catch. “But what you call my ‘talents’ are erratic, undisciplined, and beyond my control much of the time. I don’t know when they come or why they go.”

  Challis was nodding in a way Flinx didn’t like. “Naturally. I understand. All talents—artistic, athletic, whatever kind—require training and discipline to develop them fully. I intend to help you in mastering yours. By way of example . . .” Challis took out something that looked like an ancient pocket watch but wasn’t, pressed a tiny button. Instantly the breath fled from Flinx’s lungs, and he arced forward. His hands tightened into fists as he shuddered, and he felt as if someone had taken a file to the bones in his wrists. The pain passed suddenly and he was able to lean limply backward, gasping, trembling. When he found he could open his eyes again, he saw that Challis was staring into them, expectantly interested. His stare was identical to the one a chemist would lavish on a laboratory animal just injected with a possibly fatal substance.