Orphan Star

by Alan Dean Foster

  The old cleric’s extraordinary suppleness caused Namoto and the others to delay intervening. Producing a beamer of his own from within the folds of his robes, the man—who had yet to utter a word, even a simple cry for help—took a wild shot at Pip. The minidrag spat, and inhuman reflexes enabled his target to just avoid the corrosive venom. It scorched the finish on the wall behind him.

  “Pip, that’s enough!” Something in his master’s voice apparently satisfied the minidrag. Hesitating briefly, the reptile pivoted in midair and raced back to Flinx. But the flying snake still felt uncomfortable enough to disdain his normal shoulder perch, opting instead to remain hovering warily near Flinx’s right ear.

  For several silent seconds a mass of people were momentarily unified by the paralysis of uncertainty. Then Namoto broke the spell. “What branch are you working with, sir?” he inquired of the object of Pip’s assault. “I don’t believe I recognize . . .”

  The padre became silent as the beamer recently directed against the snake shifted to cover him. Trying to look in every direction at once, the man moved a shifting, glacial glare over the small crowd which had gathered. No one challenged him, electing instead to wait and watch.

  “Keep back, all of you,” he finally warned. His accent was one Flinx did not recognize, the words almost more whistled than articulated.

  As the man began backing toward the portal Flinx and Namoto had just passed through, Flinx cautiously edged around to where he could aid the injured young thranx. She was just regaining consciousness when he came near her. Getting both hands around her thorax, he lifted steadily. “He . . . threatened to kill me,” she was murmuring groggily, still none too steady on trulegs and foothands. He could feel her b-thorax pulsing with uneven breathing.

  Abruptly in control of herself again, the thranx looked accusingly across at her attacker. “He said if I didn’t take him down to command level he’d kill me!”

  “You can’t get out of this building, sir,” Namoto informed the man whom the girl had just accused. “I’m going to have to ask you to put down that beamer and come with me.” The beamer waved at him and the padre ceased his approach after a single step.

  “To be rational is to live,” the man whistle-talked.

  Without releasing his grip on the beamer, the man reached into the folds of his robes—exceptionally voluminous they were, Flinx noted. A moment’s search produced a small brown cube sporting wires and several awkwardly installed knobs.

  “This is a hundred-gram casing of kelite—enough to kill everyone in this corridor.” His explanation was enough to send the younger of the watching acolytes scurrying in retreat.

  Namoto didn’t budge. “No volume of explosives could get you out of this complex,” he informed the nervous man, his voice steady now. “Furthermore, although that cube looks like a kelite casing, I find that most unlikely, since no volume of explosives can get into this complex without being detected. Furthermore, I don’t think you’re an authorized member of the Church. If that’s true, then you can’t be in possession of an activated beamer.”

  The padre took another step forward.

  “Keep away, or you’ll find out whether it’s activated or not!” the man shouted shrilly.

  Every eye in the corridor was locked on the two principals in the threatening standoff—every intelligent eye.

  Flinx thought he saw something move close to the ceiling, suddenly glanced to his right. Pip was no longer there.

  There was no way of telling whether the same thought occurred simultaneously to the old man, or whether he simply detected motion overhead. Whatever the cause, he was ducking and firing before Flinx could shout to his pet.

  Namoto had been right and wrong. The tiny weapon looked like a beamer but wasn’t. Instead it fired a tiny projectile that just passed under the minidrag’s writhing body. The projectile hit the far wall and bounced to the floor. Whatever it was was nonexplosive, all right; but Flinx doubted its harmlessness.

  This time, Pip was too close to dodge. Powerful muscles in jaws and neck forced the poison out through the hypodermal tube in the minidrag’s mouth. The poison missed the eyes, but despite his uncanny agility, the old man couldn’t avoid the attack completely. The venom grazed head and neck. A sizzling sound came from dissolving flesh, and the man emitted an unexpected piercing hiss, sounding like an ancient steam engine blowing its safety valve.

  It was not a sound the human throat could manufacture.

  Namoto and Flinx rushed the falling figure. But even as he was collapsing he was fumbling with the cube of “kelite.”

  The confidence of a dying man was reason enough for Namoto to fall to the floor and yell a warning to everyone else. Suddenly there was a muffled explosion—but one far smaller than kelite would have produced, and it did not come from the brownish cube. A few screams from the crowd, and the threat was past.

  As Flinx climbed back to his feet, he realized that Namoto’s observations were once again confused. First, the beamer had turned out to be a weapon, but not a beamer. And now it seemed this intruder had succeeded in smuggling a minimal amount of explosive into the complex, but not enough to hurt anyone else. If it was indeed kelite, it was a minute amount; but nonetheless, it made an impressive mess of the man’s middle. His internals were scattered all over this end of the corridor.

  Flinx was still panting when Pip settled around his shoulder once again. Moving forward, he joined Namoto in examining the wreckage of what minutes before had been a living creature.

  With death imminent, the creature’s mind had cleared, his thoughts strengthened multifold. Flinx suddenly found his head assailed with a swirl of unexpected images and word-pictures, but it was the familiarity of one which shocked him so badly that he stumbled.

  Flinx could sense the ghostly rippling picture of a fat man he desired strongly to see again, the man he had given up hope of ever relocating: Conda Challis. This vision was mixed with a world-picture and the picture-world had the name Ulru-Ujurr. Many other images competed for his attention, but the unexpected sight of Challis in the dying intruder’s mind overwhelmed them beyond identification.

  Pip had sensed his master’s fury at that very individual long minutes ago, back in the archives. Then this wretched person suddenly—undoubtedly—pictured the very same merchant, in terms unfavorable to Flinx. So Pip had reacted in proportion to Flinx’s emotional state. Whether the minidrag would still have attacked the stranger had he not drawn a weapon was something Flinx would never know.

  Namoto was studying the corpse. The explosion had been contained but intense. Little was left to connect the head and upper torso with the legs. Most of the body between had been destroyed.

  Reaching down, the padre felt what appeared to be a piece of loose skin. He tugged . . . and the skin came away, revealing a second epidermis beneath. It was shiny, pebbled, and scaly—as inhuman as that final cry had been.

  As inhuman as the thoughts Flinx had entered.

  A low murmur of astonishment began to rise in the crowd, continuing as Namoto, kneeling, pulled and tore away the intricate molding which formed the false facial structure. When the entire skull had been exposed, Namoto rose, his gaze moving to the sample of forged flesh he held in one hand. “A nye,” he observed matter-of-factly. He dropped the shard of skin, wiped his hands on his lower robe.

  “An adult AAnn,” someone in the crowd muttered.

  “In here!”

  “But why? What did he hope to accomplish with so small an explosive?”

  Someone called for attention from the back of the crowd, held up a tiny shape. “Crystal syringe-dart,” she explained. “That’s how he got past the detectors—no beamer, no explosive-shell weapon.”

  “Surely,” someone approached Namoto, “he didn’t come all this way with all this elaborate preparation, just to kill someone with a little dart gun?”

  “I don’t think so, either,” the padre commented, gazing down at the body. “That explosive—that was a suicide
charge, designed to kill him in the event of discovery. But perhaps it was also there to destroy something else.”

  “What kind of something else?” the same person wondered.

  I don’t know. But we’re going to analyze this corpse before we dispose of it.” Kneeling again, Namoto pawed slowly through the cauterized meat. “He was well armed as far as it went—his insides are full of pulverized crystal. Must have been carrying several dozen of those syringe-darts.”

  Flinx jerked at the observation, started to say something—then turned his budding comment into a yawn. He couldn’t prove a thing, and it was an insane supposition anyway. Besides, if by some miracle he were half right, he would certainly be subjected to a year of questioning by Church investigators. He might never find Conda Challis then. Worse, by that time the indifferent merchant might have destroyed the missing record he had stolen, that remaining piece in the puzzle of Flinx’s life.

  So he could not afford to venture a childish opinion on what those fragments might be of.

  A full crew of uniformed personnel entered the corridor. Some began dispersing the still buzzing crowd while others commenced an intensive examination of the corpse.

  One small, very dark human glanced casually at the organic debris, then walked briskly over to confront the padre.

  “Hello, Namoto.”

  “Sir,” the padre acknowledged, with so much respect in his voice that Flinx was drawn from his own personal thoughts to consideration of the new arrival “He was well disguised.”

  “An AAnn,” the short package of mental energy noted. “They’re feeling awfully bold when they try to slip one of their own in here. I wonder what his purpose was?”

  Flinx had an idea, but it formed part of the information he had chosen not to disclose. Let these brilliant Churchmen figure it out for themselves. After he recovered the lost piece of himself from Challis, then he would tell them what he had guessed. Not before.

  While the new man talked with Namoto, Flinx turned his attention back to the swarm of specialists studying the corpse. This was not the first time he had encountered the reptilian AAnn, though it was the first time in the flesh.

  An uneasy truce existed between the Humanx Commonwealth and the extensive stellar empire of the AAnn. But that didn’t keep the reptilians from probing for weak spots within the human-thranx alliance at every opportunity.

  “Who penetrated its disguise?”

  “I did, sir,” Flinx informed him, “or rather, my pet did, Pip.” He fondled the smooth triangular head and the minidrag’s eyes closed with pleasure.

  “How,” Namoto asked pointedly, “did the snake know?” He turned to his superior, added for his benefit, “We were in genealogy at the time, sir, halfway around the complex.”

  Flinx’s reply walked a fine line between truth and prevarication. What he left out was more important, however, than what he said.

  “The minidrag can sense danger, sir,” he explained smoothly. “Pip’s an empathic telepath and we’ve been together long enough to develop a special rapport. He obviously felt the AAnn posed a threat, however distant, to me and he reacted accordingly.”

  “Obviously,” murmured the smaller man noncommittally. He turned to face the young thranx. “How are you involved in this, Padre-elect?”

  She stopped preening her antennae, snapped to a pose of semiattention. “I was on monitor duty at the lift station, sir. I thought it was a human. He approached me and said he had to go down to command level”

  Down to—Flinx’s mind started envisioning what wasn’t visible.

  “I wondered why he didn’t simply use his own lift pass. No one without a pass should be allowed this far. He had one, and showed it to me. He insisted that either it didn’t work or else that the lift receptor was out of order.”

  She looked downward. “I suppose I ought to have sensed something then, but I did not.”

  Namoto spoke comfortingly. “How could you know? As you say, he got this far. His forgery wasn’t good enough to fool the lift security ‘puter, though.”

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I tried my own pass on Lift One, and it responded perfectly. Then I tried his and it didn’t even key the Acknowledge light. So he asked me to call a lift for him. I told him it would be better to have his pass checked for malfunction, first. He said he didn’t have time, but I was obstinate. That’s when he pulled the weapon and told me to call him a lift or he’d kill me.”

  Flinx noted that she was still unsteady despite the support of four limbs.

  “Then these two gentlemen arrived, just as I was about to call the lift.” She indicated Flinx and Namoto.

  “You couldn’t sound an alarm?” the smaller man wondered gruffly.

  She made an elaborate thranx gesture of helplessness with her truhands.

  “When he pulled the weapon I was away from the silent alarm at the desk, sir. I couldn’t think of a reason to get back to it . . . and, I was frightened, sir. I’m sorry. It was so unexpected. . . .” She shivered again. “I had no reason to suspect it was an AAnn.”

  “He looked human to everybody else,” Flinx said comfortingly. The valentine-shaped head looked gratefully across at him. Though that face was incapable of a smile, she clicked her mandibles at him in thanks.

  “Every experience that doesn’t end in death is valuable,” the short man pontificated. That appeared to end her involvement as far as he was concerned. His attention was directed again to the people working with the body.

  “Get this cleaned up and report to me as soon as preliminary analysis is completed,” he snapped. His motions, Flinx noted, were quick, sharp, as if he moved as well as thought faster than the average being. One of those movements fixed Flinx under a penetrating stare. “That’s an interesting pet you have, son. An empathic telepath, you say?”

  “From a world called Alaspin, sir,” Flinx supplied helpfully.

  The man nodded. “I know of them, but I never expected to see one. Certainly not a tame one. He senses danger to you, hmmm?”

  Flinx smiled slightly. “He makes a very good bodyguard.”

  “I dare say.” He extended a hand too big for his body. “I’m Counselor Second Joshua Jiwe.”

  Flinx now understood the deference which had been shown this man. He shook his hand slowly. “I never expected to meet anyone so high in the Church hierarchy, sir.” Though he didn’t add that in Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex, who had been with him in the hunt for the Tar-Aiym Krang, he had met two who had at one time ranked even higher.

  “I’m in charge of Depot security.” Again that head whipped around, instead of turning normally, to face Namoto. “What do you know about this young man?”

  “He’s come a long way in search of his natural parents. I’ve been doing my best to help him locate traces of them.”

  “I see.” Jiwe spun on Flinx again. “No doubt you’re anxious to leave?”

  “I’ve done everything here I can,” Flinx admitted. Jiwe could be the man to ask the awkward questions Flinx always feared.

  The Counselor Second reminded him of a Canish, a small, superactive little carnivore that haunted the chill forests of Moth. It was a quick, sharp-eyed killer whose movements were as hard to pin down as a muffled curse in a crowd, and a threat to creatures many times its size.

  Like this Jiwe, Flinx suspected. The man was too interested in Pip and in the minidrag’s relationship to Flinx. It was difficult to concentrate on Jiwe, however, when Flinx’s mind was still astorm with the knowledge that Conda Challis had appeared in the thoughts of the dying AAnn. What had a human merchant to do with the lizards?

  “Are you all right, Flinx?” Namoto was eying him concernedly. “You looked dazed.”

  “I was. I was drifting home in my mind . . . where my body ought to be headed.”

  “And where is that?” Jiwe inquired interestedly.

  Damn the man! “A central trading world, name of Moth, city of Drallar.”

  The Counselor looked thoughtful. �
�I know the world. Interesting, a lightly populated planet with a long history of settlement. Very independent-minded people. The local government’s a benevolent monarchy, I believe.”

  Flinx nodded.

  “An indifferent monarchy would be more accurate, I think,” ventured Namoto.

  The Counselor smiled. “It all amounts to the same thing as far as the locals are concerned.” He even grinned like a Canish, Flinx mused.

  “And you say you can occasionally sense his thoughts and he yours, son?”

  “Feelings, not thoughts, sir,” Flinx corrected hastily.

  The Counselor seemed to consider for a moment before asking, “I wonder if you’d have a minute or two to spare? We won’t delay your departure very long. If you’ll just accompany us downstairs . . .”

  “Sir . . .” Namoto started to interrupt, but the Counselor waved his objection away.

  “It doesn’t matter. This is a perceptive young man and he’s heard more than enough to know by now that there are levels to the Depot below what is visible on the surface. I think he’s sufficiently mature to know when to keep his mouth shut and what not to talk loosely about.” He stared piercingly at Flinx. “Aren’t you, son?”

  Flinx nodded vigorously, and the Counselor rewarded him with another quasi-carnivorous smile. “Good . . . I like a free spirit. Now then, we have a small problem we’ve been unable to solve. You might be able to approach it differently than anyone else. All I ask is that you make an effort for us. Afterward, regardless of the results, we’ll put you on an atmospheric shuttle free to anywhere on Terra. What do you say?”

  Since he couldn’t very well refuse the offer without making the Counselor twice as suspicious of his peculiar abilities as he already was, Flinx smiled cheerfully and replied with a marvelous imitation of innocent enthusiasm.

  “I’ll be happy to do anything I can, of course!”

  “I thought you might say that. I hoped so. Padre Namoto, you might as well join us—this could be instructive. Someone else can temporarily cover your normal duties.” He gestured at the reptilian corpse. “Security will be working with this mess for quite a while yet.”