Orphan Star

by Alan Dean Foster

  Challis was unable to tell him. “It does not. If you want additional information you’ll probably have to hunt it out of the original Church records—assuming you’ll be allowed access to them. You could begin in Allahabad, of course, but without a look at the original records it would be hard to tell where to start. Besides, Denpasar itself is much closer.”

  “Then I’ll go there.”

  “You’ll never gain access to those records. Do you think, dear boy, anyone who wishes is permitted the use of the original Church files?”

  “Just tell me where it is.”

  Challis grinned. “On an island called Bali, about five thousand kilometers northwest of here in the Indonesian archipelago.”

  “Thank you, Challis. You won’t see me again.” He turned, left the hall.

  As soon as the youth was out of sight Challis’ attention was drawn to several tiny screens set into a console. One showed his visitor about to leave via the front door. Challis touched a switch. The red-haired figure grabbed the door mechanism—and both he and the door dissolved in a blinding flash. The concussion shook the merchant where he stood.

  “I don’t make it easy for unwanted guests to get in,” he told the console grimly. “But once in, I see to it they don’t get out.”

  Challis had not become what he was by leaving anything to chance. Perhaps the boy’s absurd tale was true—and then, perhaps it was only a device to lure Challis into some unimaginable, fiendish trap. That the lad was cunning he had amply demonstrated. In any case, it cost nothing to make sure.

  Only his life.

  Shutting down the console, he walked leisurely toward the front of the house. He was surprised to see Mahnahmi standing in the hallway. Behind her, smoke still drifted from the blackened metal frame of the doorway, which now bordered a roughly rectangular crater. The depression extended the length of the hall and well out into the ferrocrete walk leading to the entrance.

  The girl was holding something. It was a piece of arm. Variously colored fluids dripped from it and tiny threads of material hung loosely from both torn ends.

  Challis was struck with a mixture of fear and admiration as he stared at the section of limb Mahnahmi was examining so intently. For the first time he began to wonder just what sort of creature he had selected for an enemy. That it was more than an unusually clever seventeen-year-old boy he had suspected ever since that incredible escape on Hivehom. Now he was certain of it.

  The arm, of course, was mechanical. The Flinx he thought to be real had been but a more convincing automaton, as Mahnahmi could have told him. Now Challis had gone and spoiled her game. But the leftover pieces were interesting. She studied the armature in seemingly casual fashion, compared it to a nearby fragment of mechanical flying snake.

  It just wasn’t fair! Since Challis had told the machine what it wanted to know, against her advice, she would never see the real Flinx again. And he had been so much fun.

  She would have to find someone else’s mind to play with. . . .

  Flinx watched the hermit crab, its terrestrial explorations concluded, disappear in an obliging wavelet. At the same time he flicked off the recorder at his belt. The tape had recorded nothing since the third simulacrum of himself had been destroyed by the merchant.

  Rising, Flinx brushed the sand from the bottom of his jumpsuit and thought sorrowful thoughts about the unfounded paranoia of Conda Challis. Everything he could learn from the fat trader he had finally learned, and the information was carefully stored in the little belt recorder, which functioned over surprising distances. The simulacrums had been an expensive gamble that had worked.

  Flinx returned to the rented groundcar. A special console had been rigged on one seat with five telltales at its center. Three were dark, while two still winked a steady green. Challis might have been interested to know that had he destroyed his third visitor before answering its questions, there were two additional elaborate Flinxes in waiting.

  For a delicious moment Flinx savored the thought of sending both of them into the merchant’s bedroom tonight. But . . . no. That would place him in the position of rendering a judgment of sorts on another.

  Instead he gave the two remaining simulacrums the return-to-base signal. The two remaining lights began to blink steadily, indicating they were operating properly and were in motion. They were on their way back to the fabrication plant from which Flinx had ordered them. There, their intricate innards would be salvaged, along with a concomitant part of Flinx’s badly depleted bank account.

  Starting up the powerful little car, he set it for a formal flight pattern leading to the atmospheric shuttleport. That strictly planetary terminal lay far to the south of the capital, nearer the suburban industrial city of Sydney.

  Challis had hinted it would be difficult for a stranger to gain admittance to the United Church headquarters. Well, he would know soon enough. There was an obscure genealogy there that he wanted very much to trace.

  Chapter Five

  Suborbital flights to and from every major city and province on Terra were regularly scheduled at the huge port. The clerk Flinx encountered was straight of body but mentally geniculate from a quarter century of answering the same inane questions. Not only could he expect no promotion, but he suspected that his youngest daughter was dating two old men and a young woman simultaneously. As Flinx drew near, the man was reflecting that in his day, children had behaved differently.

  “I just tried to buy a ticket to a city called Denpasar,” Flinx explained, “and the light on the dispenser flashed No Such Destination. Why?”

  “Where are you from, young sir?” the clerk inquired politely.

  Flinx was startled. He hadn’t been called “sir” but a few times in his whole life. He started to reply “Drallar, Moth,” but suddenly recalled an early dictum of Mother Mastiff’s.

  “Always answer a question as concise as you can, boy,” she had instructed him. “It makes folks think of you as intelligent and non-borin’, while givin’ ‘em as little information about yourself as possible.”

  So he said simply, “Off-planet.”

  “Far off-planet, I’ll venture,” the clerk added. “Didn’t you know, young sir, that Bali is a closed island? Only three classes of people are allowed to travel there.” He ticked them off on his fingers as he spoke. “Balinese and their relatives, Church personnel, and government officials with special clearance.”

  He studied Flinx carefully. “You could pass for Balinese, excepting that carrot top of yours, so you’re obviously not a native. You don’t claim to be an official of the Church and—” he couldn’t repress a little smile “—I don’t think you’re a special government representative. Why did you want to go there, anyway?”

  Flinx shrugged elaborately. “I’d heard it was the seat of the United Church. I thought it would be an interesting place to visit while I’m touring Terra, that’s all.”

  Ah, a standard query. Any incipient suspicions the old man might have had died aborning. “That’s understandable. If you’re interested in the same kind of countryside as Bali, though, you can get as close as . . .” he paused to check a thick tape playing on the screen before him, “. . . the eastern tip of the island of Java. I’ve been there myself. You can see the island from Banjuwangi and Surabaja’s a fine old city, very picturesque. You might even take a day-flyer over to Komodo, where the dinosaur-rebreeding station is. But Bali itself,” the man shook his head regretfully, “might as well try landing on the Imperial Home world than get into Denpasar. Oh, if you could slip onto a shuttle going in you might get into the city. But you’d never get off the island without having to answer some hard questions.”

  “I see,” Flinx replied, smiling gratefully. “I didn’t know. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “That’s all right, sir. Enjoy the rest of your stay on Terra.”

  Flinx left in a pensive mood. So there was a chance he could get onto the island, somehow. But did he want to have to answer those hard questions on his de
parture? He did not.

  That left him with the problem of gaining admittance to a place no one was allowed into. No, he reminded himself, whispering to the case and its leathery contents, that wasn’t entirely true. Three classes of people were permitted onto the island.

  He didn’t think it would be easy to forge government identification, and he was too young to claim to be anything worthwhile. There did exist the possibility of palming himself off as an acolyte of the Church. But what about . . . ? Hadn’t the old man said that save for his red hair he could pass for Balinese?

  Passing a three-story-high interior panel of polished metal, Flinx caught sight of his reflection. A little hair dye, a crash course in the local dialect, a small boat—surely it couldn’t be that easy!

  But there was the chance this plan was so simple that he might be overlooked by those on the watch for more sophisticated infiltrators. And Flinx had often seen how possession of a certain amount of brass—nonmetallic variety—could be more useful in fooling bureaucracy than all the formal identification in the Arm.

  Turning, he retraced his path to the ticket dispensers. A punched demand and the subsequent insertion of his cardmeter produced a one-way shuttle ticket for Surabaja. . . .

  The ancient market town had preserved much of its seventeenth-century flavor. Flinx felt right at home, learning something he had long suspected: one crowded marketplace is much like any other, no matter where one travels.

  Everyone spoke Terranglo and symbospeech in addition to the old local dialect known as Bahasa Indonesia. Flinx easily secured black dye, and with his hair color changed he quickly became one of the locals. A stay of several weeks was sufficient to provide him, a natural linguist, with an efficient smattering of the language.

  Procuring a small boat was simple enough. If the ploy failed he could always fall back on the story that he was a simple fisherman whose automatic pilot had failed, causing him to be blown off course. Besides, for any off-world spy the really hard part would be passing customs at Terra port-of-entry, and Flinx had already accomplished that.

  So it was that after several days of calm, automatic sailing he found himself in sight of the towering peaks of Mounts Agung and Batur, the two volcanoes that dominated the island.

  Under cover of a moonless night, he made his approach at the northernmost tip of the magnificent empty beach called Kuta, on the western side of the island. No patrol appeared to challenge him as he drew his small boat up on the sand. No automated beamers popped from concealed pits to incinerate him where he stood.

  So far he had been completely successful. That didn’t lessen his sense of unease, however. It was one thing to stand on an empty beach, quite another to penetrate the recesses of the Church itself.

  Making his way inland with his single bit of baggage—the perforated case holding a few clothes, and Pip—it wasn’t long before he encountered a small, unpaved road through the jungle that fringed the beach. After a walk of several hours he was able to hail a groundcar cultivator. The farmer driving it provided him with a ride into Bena and from there it was easy to hire an automatic bekak into Denpasar proper.

  Everything went as well as he dared hope. The farmer had assumed he was a stranger visiting relatives in the city, and Flinx saw no reason to argue with a story so conveniently provided. Nor had the young farmer shown any desire to switch from Terranglo to Bahasa Indonesia, so Flinx’s hastily acquired vocabulary was not put to the test.

  The innkeeper made Flinx welcome, though she insisted on seeing the animal in the bag. Flinx showed her, hoping that the woman wasn’t the garrulous sort. If word got around to representatives of the Church, someone might grow curious about the presence here of such an exotic and dangerous off-world species as the minidrag.

  But Flinx refused to worry. After all, he was ensconced in a comfortable room in the city he had been told he would have trouble reaching. Tomorrow he would set about the business of penetrating the Church system.

  The first thing he had to find out was where on the island the genealogical records were stored, then what procedures one was required to go through to gain access to them. He might yet have to resort to forgery. More likely he would end up stealing a Church uniform and brazening his way into the facility.

  Flinx the priest—he went to sleep smiling at the thought, and at Mother Mastiff’s reaction to him in Church garb. . . .

  The next morning, he began his private assault on the inner sanctums of the most powerful single organization in the Commonwealth.

  The first step was to select a car with a talkative driver. Flinx chose the oldest one he could find, operating on the theory that older men engaged in such professions were more inclined to gabble excessively and otherwise mind their own business. Flinx’s driver was a white-maned patriarch with a large drooping mustache. He was slight and wiry, as were most of the locals. The women had a uniform doll-like beauty and appeared to age in jumps, from fourteen to eighty with no in-between.

  A few of them had already regarded Flinx somewhat less than casually, something he was becoming used to as he grew older. There was no time for that now, however.

  “What did you have in mind for today’s journey, sir?”

  “I’m just a visitor, here to see my cousins in Singaradja. Before I’m swamped with uncles and aunts, I’d like to see the island unencumbered by family talk. The old temples . . . and the new.”

  The oldster didn’t bat an eye, merely nodded and started his engine. The tour was as thorough as the old man was loquacious. He showed Flinx the grand beaches at Kuta where the huge breakers of the Sunda Bali rolled in, unaware that Flinx had negotiated those same waves the night before. He took him to the great oceanographic research station at Sanur, and to the sprawling grounds of the Church University on Denpasar’s outskirts.

  He showed him various branches of Church research facilities, all built in the old Balinese style replete with ferrocrete sculptures lining every lintel and wall. He drove him over the ancient rice paddies that terraced the toy mountains—the most beautiful on all Terra, the old man insisted, even if the farmers in their wide hats now rode small mechanical cultivators instead of water buffalo.

  Half a day passed before Flinx was moved to comment, “It’s not at all like what I expected the headquarters of the United Church to be.”

  “Well, what did you expect?” asked the old man. “A reproduction on a grander scale of the Commonwealth Enclave in Brisbane? Black- and bronze-mirrored domes and kilo-high spires done in mosaic?”

  Flinx leaned back in the worn old seat next to the driver and looked sheepish. “I have never been to the capital, of course, but I have seen pictures. I guess I expected something similar, yes.” The old man smiled warmly.

  “I am no expert on the mind of the Church, son, but it seems to my farmer’s soul to be a collection of uncomplicated, gentle folk. The University is the largest Church building on the island, the astrophysics laboratory, at four stories, its tallest.” He became silent for a while as they cruised above a river gorge.

  “Why do you suppose,” he asked finally, “the United Church decided centuries ago to locate its headquarters on this island?”

  “I don’t know,” Flinx replied honestly. “I hadn’t thought about it. To be nearer the capital, I suppose.”

  The old driver shook his head. “The Church was here long before Brisbane was made Terra’s capital city. For someone who travels about with a Garuda spirit for a companion, you seem rather ignorant, son.”

  “Garuda spirit?” Flinx saw the driver looking back at the somnolent reptilian head that had peeked out from inside his jumpsuit He thought frantically, then relaxed.

  “But the Garuda is a bird, not a snake.”

  “It is the spirit I see in your pet, not the shape,” the driver explained.

  “That’s good then,” Flinx acknowledged, remembering that the monstrous Garuda bird was a good creature, despite its fearsome appearance. “What is the reason for the Church’s presen
ce here, if not to be near the capital?”

  “I believe it is because the values of the Church and of the Balinese people are so very similar. Both stress creativity and gentleness. All of our own arrogance and animosity is subsumed in our ancient mythology.”

  Flinx regarded the old man with new respect and new curiosity. At the moment he sounded like something more than merely an old groundcar driver—but that was Flinx’s overly suspicious mind looking to create trouble again.

  “Our most aggressive movement is a shrug,” the old man continued, staring lovingly at the surrounding landscape. “It is the result of living in one of the galaxy’s most beautiful places.”

  A light rain had begun to fall. The old man closed the car’s open top and switched on the air-conditioning. Flinx, who prided himself on his adaptability in strange environments and who until now had been forced to play the role of near-native, let out a mental sigh of relief at the first cooling caress of the air-conditioner.

  The humidity in one of the galaxy’s most beautiful places could be stifling. No wonder the thranx members of the Church had agreed to build its headquarters here, those many centuries ago.

  They paused in Ubud, and Flinx made a show of looking at the famous wood carvings in the shops the old man had recommended. This was not an exclusively Balinese custom. Mother Mastiff had her arrangements with guides in Drallar, too.

  The tour continued, and the need to show interest became more and more of a burden. Flinx yawned through the elephant cave, blinked at the sacred springs, and saw temples built on temples.

  An appropriate location for the home of the Church, Flinx thought, as the clouds cleared and a double rainbow appeared behind the smoking cone of 15,000-meter-high Mount Agung. The aquamarine robes and jumpsuits of passing Church personnel blended as naturally with the still flourishing jungle vegetation as the fruit trees which stood stolid watch over roadways and fields and rice terraces.