Orphan Star

by Alan Dean Foster

“Possibly,” Flinx conceded. “But even if they can do nothing, I think we’ll have a far better chance of surviving among them than there, than waiting for Rudenuaman to get tired of having us around. When that happens she’ll dispose of us as casually as she would an old dress.” He let his mind wander, saw no reason to hide himself from Sylzenzuzex anymore. “There’s only one guard outside the door.”

  “How do you know . . . oh, you told me,” she answered herself. “How extensive are your talents?”

  “I haven’t the vaguest notion,” he told her honestly. “Sometimes I can’t perceive a spider in a room. Other times . . .” He felt it better to keep a few secrets. “Just take my word that there’s only one guard outside. I guess our docility has convinced Rudenuaman we don’t require close watching. As she said, there’s nowhere for us to run to.”

  “I’m not sure I disagree with her,” Sylzenzuzex murmured, her gaze going to the chill mountains outside. “Though I must admit that if we do escape, she may leave us alone. We would be no more danger to her in the mountains than we are here.”

  “I’m hoping she thinks so,” he admitted. “The Baron wouldn’t agree with her. We have to leave now.” Sliding off the bed, he walked to the door and knocked gently. The door slid aside and their guard eyed them carefully—from several paces away, Flinx noted.

  He was a tall, thin human with a worn expression and hair turned too white too soon. As near as Flinx could tell, he was not an AAnn in human disguise.

  “You interrupted my reading,” he informed Flinx sourly, indicating the small tape viewer that rested nearby. This reminded Flinx of another tape he wanted to read himself. Despite the anxiety surging inside him, he would have to wait until much later, if ever, to see that tape.

  “What do you want?” It was clear that this man was well informed about their cooperation thus far. Flinx shouted with his mind, conjuring up a sensation of half-fear.

  Pip shot out from under the pillows on the bed and was through the door before the man could put his viewer aside. A beamer came up, but instead of firing the man crossed both hands in front of his face. Flinx jumped through the opening and planted a foot in the other’s solar plexus. Only closing lids kept his eyes from popping out of his face.

  The guard hit the far wall with a loud whump, sat down, and leaned like a rag doll against the chair leg. This time the minidrag responded to Flinx’s call. He settled tensely back on Flinx’s shoulder, glaring down at the unconscious guard.

  Sylzenzuzex came up hurriedly behind him. “Why didn’t he shoot immediately? As a matter of fact . . .” She hesitated, and Flinx sensed her mind working.

  “That’s right. No one here recognized Pip as a dangerous animal. The only one I told was Rudenuaman’s bodyguard. In all the rush she must have neglected to inform everyone else. We were trapped here without hope of escape, remember? The only others who knew were Challis and Mahnahmi. He’s dead, and she’s fled.”

  Flinx gestured behind him. “That’s why I called Pip off and knocked him out myself. Everyone’s still ignorant of Pip’s full capabilities. Sooner or later, Linda will remember to tell her mistress. But by then we should be free. We’d better be—Rudenuaman won’t give us a second chance.”

  “What are we going to do now?”

  “No one’s seen us except a small corps of armed security personnel and a few people up at the mine. This is a good-sized installation. Act as if you know what you’re doing, and we might walk out of here without being challenged.”

  “You are crazy,” she muttered nervously, as they entered the lift. “This may be a large base, but it’s still a closed community. Everyone here must know everyone else.”

  “You participate in a bureaucracy and still you don’t understand,” Flinx observed sadly. “Everyone in a complicated operation like this tends to stick pretty much to his own specialty. Each one interacts with people within that specialty. This is hardly a homogeneous little society here. Unless we encounter one of the guards who met us on landing, we ought to be able to move about freely.”

  “Until our guard regains consciousness,” she reminded him. “Then they’ll come looking for us.”

  “But not beyond the boundary of the base, I’ll bet. Rudenuaman will be more irritated than angry. She’ll assume the environment here will take care of us. And it will, if the Ujurrians don’t help us.”

  They entered the lift car, started downward. “What makes you think they will?”

  “I got the impression that they’re anxious to talk to me. If you have ten marooned thranx speaking only Low Thranx and an eleventh suddenly appears, wouldn’t you want to talk to him?”

  “Maybe for a while,” she conceded. “Of course, after I’d heard everything he had to say I might want to eat him, too.”

  “I don’t think the Ujurrians will do that.” The lift reached ground level.

  “What makes you so certain? Berries or not, they are omnivorous, remember. Suppose they’re simply telepathic morons?”

  “If I’m wrong about them, then we’ll die a lot cleaner than at Rudenauman’s hands. I’m betting on two things—a dream, and the fact that I never before saw Pip fly at any being he didn’t intend to attack.” Reaching down, he rubbed the back of Pip’s head through the jumpsuit fabric.

  “You were right, Syl, when you said he was flying toward greater warmth, but the warmth wasn’t in the Ujurrian’s fur.” The lift door slid aside and they strode boldly out into the deserted hall.

  Leaving the structure they started walking between buildings, heading toward the lake. Several people passed them. Flinx didn’t recognize any of them, and fortunately none of them recognized the two prisoners.

  As they neared the outskirts of the base Flinx slowed, his senses alert for anything like an automatically defended perimeter. Sylzenzuzex searched for concealed alarms. They didn’t find so much as a simple fence. Apparently there were no large carnivores in this valley, and the merchantwoman’s opinion of the natives they already knew.

  Once they reached the concealing trees, they accelerated their pace, moving as fast as Sylzenzuzex’s injured leghand would permit. Despite the abnormally long day, the sun was low in the sky before they slowed. When the sun finally moved behind one of the towering snowy peaks, its warmth would dissipate quickly in the mountain air. Sylzenzuzex would be affected first, and most severely; but Flinx didn’t doubt that he’d also be dangerously exposed in his thin jumpsuit.

  He hoped their furry hosts could do something about that. If no one was waiting for them at the far end of the lake—the “long water” of his dream—he was going to be very embarrassed. And very sorry.

  At its lower end the lake narrowed to a small outlet, then tumbled with the bright humor of all mountain streams down a gentle slope, dancing and falling with fluid choreography over rocks and broken logs and branches. Despite the density of the forest overhead, the thick heatherlike ground cover was lush here.

  Flinx picked out small flowering plants with odd needlelike leaves and multiple centers. Minute furred creatures dug and twisted and scurried through this low-level jungle.

  Sylzenzuzex sniffed disdainfully, her spicules whistling, as they watched a tiny thing with ten furry legs and miniature hooves dart down a hole in the far bank of the stream.

  “Primitive world,” she commented. “No insects.” She was shivering already. “That’s not surprising. This world is too cold for them—and me.”

  Flinx began hunting through the trees and was rubbing his hands together. Occasionally he would reach into his jumpsuit to fondle Pip. The minidrag also came from a hothouse world. It had grown still in an instinctive effort to conserve energy and body heat.

  “I’m not exactly at home here either, you know,” Flinx told her. Glancing worriedly upward, he saw that the sun had been half swallowed by a mountain with a backbone like a crippled dinosaur.

  “We can freeze to death out here tonight, or go back and take our chances with that female,” Sylzenzuzex stammered.
“A wonderful choice you’ve given us.”

  “I don’t understand,” he muttered puzzledly. “I was so certain. The voices were so clear.”

  “Everything is clear in a dream,” she philosophized. “It’s the real world that never makes sense, that’s fuzzy at the fringes. I’m still not sure that you’re not a little fuzzy at the fringes, Flinx.”

  “Ho, ho,” a voice boomed like a hammer hitting the bottom of a big metal pot. It was a real voice, not a telepathic whisper.

  “Joke. I like jokes!”

  Flinx’s heart settled back to its normal beat as he and Sylzenzuzex whirled, to see an enormous wide shape waddle out from between two trees. There was little to distinguish one native from another physically.

  Flinx, however, now knew to hunt for something less obvious. It blinked brightly out at him, a strong, concentrated mental glow—like a firefly, he reminded himself.

  “Hello, Fluff. You ‘have a sense of humor, but don’t, please, sneak up on us like that again.”

  “Sense of humor,” the giant echoed. “That mean I like to make jokes?” On hind legs he towered above them. “Yes. What is better than making jokes? Except maybe building caves and eating and sleeping and making love.”

  Flinx noticed that the broadly grinning mouth was moving.

  “You’re talking,” Sylzenzuzex observed simultaneously. She turned to Flinx. “I thought you said they were telepathic?”

  “Can do mind-talk too,” something said inside her head, making her jump.

  “So that’s telepathy,” she murmured at the new experience. “It’s kind of unnerving.”

  “Why trouble with talking?” Flinx wondered.

  “Is less efficient, but more fun,” Fluff husked.

  “Lots more fun,” two voices mimicked. Moam and Bluebright appeared, shuffling toward the stream. Lowering to all fours, they began lapping the water.

  “Why don’t you talk like this to the people at the base?”

  “Base? Big metal caves?”

  Flinx nodded, was rewarded with a mental shrug.

  “No one ask us to talk much. We see inside them that they like us to talk like this,” and he proceeded to produce a few grunted words and snorted phrases.

  “It make them happy. We want everyone to be happy. So we talk like that.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Flinx admitted, sitting down on a rock and shivering. A monstrous shape materialized at his shoulder, and Sylzenzu-zex jumped half a meter into the air.

  “No doubt about it,” thundered Maybeso. One paw cuddled two wrinkled objects while the other held a large plastic case. Flinx felt a warm thought flow over him like a bucket of hot water and then Maybeso was gone.

  “What was that?” a gaping Sylzenzuzex wanted to know.

  “Maybeso,” Flinx told her absently, examining what the mercurial Ujurrian had brought. “Thermal suits—one for you and one for me.”

  After climbing into the self-contained heated overclothing they spent a few luxurious moments defrosting before they began their inspection of the big case’s contents.

  “Food,” Sylzenzuzex noted. “Two beamers . . .”

  Flinx reached into the depths of the container, aware he was trembling. “And this . . . even this.” He withdrew his hand, holding a small, slightly battered spool.

  “How?” he asked Fluff, awed. “How did he know?” Fluff’s smile was genuine and went beyond the one frozen into his features.

  “Maybeso plays his own games. Everything is a game to Maybeso, and he’s very good at games. Better than any of the family. In some ways he’s just like an overgrown cub.”

  “Cub,” agreed Moam, “but a big light.”

  “Very big light,” Bluebright agreed, raising his head and licking water from his muzzle with a long tongue.

  “It’s fun to have someone who can talk back,” Fluff observed playfully. Then Flinx had the impression of a hurt frown. “Others came but did not land. Maybeso saw them and says they did some strange things with constructs—with instruments like those at the metal caves. They got very excited, then went away.”

  “The Church exploration party,” Flinx commented unnecessarily.

  “We didn’t understand why they went away,” a troubled Fluff said. “We wished they would have come down and talked. We were sad and wanted to help them, because they were frightened of something.” Again the mental shrug. “Though we could have been wrong.”

  “I don’t think you’re wrong, Fluff. Something frightened them, all right.”

  Sylzenzuzex paid no attention to him. She was staring at Fluff, her mandibles hanging limp. Flinx turned to her, asked, “Now do you understand why this world was put Under Edict?”

  “Under Edict,” Fluff repeated, savoring the sound of the spoken words. “A general admonition embodying philosophical rationalizations which stem—”

  “You’re a fast learner, Fluff,” gulped Flinx.

  “Oh sure,” the giant agreed with childish enthusiasm. “Is fun. Let’s play a game. You think of a concept or new word and we try to learn it, okay?”

  “It wasn’t a game to the exploration party which took readings here,” Sylzenzuzex announced suddenly. She looked over to Flinx. “I see what you were trying to tell me.” To the giant: “They didn’t land because . . . because they were afraid of you, Fluff.”

  “Afraid? Why be afraid of me?” He slapped his meters-wide torso with a paw that could have decapitated a man. “We only live, eat, sleep, make love, build caves, and play games . . . and make jokes, of course. What to be afraid of?”

  “Your potential, Fluff,” Flinx explained slowly. “And yours, Moam, and Bluebright, and you too, Maybeso, wherever you are.”

  “Someplace else,” Moam supplied helpfully.

  “They saw your potential and ran like hell instead of coming down to help you. Put you Under Edict so no one else would come to help you, either. They hoped to consign you all to ignorance. You have incalculable potential, Fluff, but you don’t seem to have much drive. By denying you that the Church saw they could—”

  “No!” Sylzenzuzex shouted, agonized. “I can’t believe that. The Church wouldn’t . . .”

  “Why not?” snorted Flinx. “Anyone can be afraid of the big kid down the block.”

  “Is wrong to fear,” Fluff observed mournfully, “and sad.”

  “Right both times,” concurred Flinx. Suddenly aware his stomach demanded attention, he dug a large cube of processed meat and cheese from the plastic container, sat down on a rock. After removing the foil sealer, he took a huge bite out of it, then started searching the container for something suitable for Pip.

  Sylzenzuzex joined him, but her inspection of the supplies was halfhearted at best. Her mind was a maelstrom of conflicting, confusing, and destructive thoughts. The knowledge of what the Church had certainly done was shattering beliefs she’d held since pupa-hood. Each time another ideal came crashing down, it sent a painful stab through her.

  Flinx had reached a decision. “You wanted to talk, to play a concept and words game?”

  “Yes, let’s play,” Moam snuffled enthusiastically, ambling over.

  “Let’s talk,” agreed Bluebright.

  Flinx looked grim, considered what he was about to do, and was gratified to discover that it made him feel more satisfied than any decision he’d made in his entire life.

  “You bet we’ll talk. . . .”

  Chapter Eleven

  “But not here,” Fluff put in.

  “Definitely not here,” Bluebright echoed. “Let’s go to the cave.” Turning away from Flinx, he and Moam started off into the trees, matching each other stride for stride. Fluff waddled after them, gesturing for Flinx and Sylzenzuzex to follow.

  “The cave?” Flinx inquired later as he and the shaking thranx struggled to maintain the blistering pace. “You all share the same cave?”

  Fluff seemed surprised. “Everyone shares the same cave.”

  “You’re all part of the same
family, then?” Sylzenzuzex panted.

  “Everyone same family.” The big native was obviously puzzled at these questions.

  It occurred to Flinx that Fluff might have something other than immediate blood relationships in mind. A word with multiple meanings could be confusing to a human, to say nothing of an alien with a bare knowledge of the language.

  “Are we of the same family, Fluff?” he asked slowly. Heavily furred brows wrinkled ponderously.

  “Not sure yet,” their unassuming savior finally told him. “Let you know.”

  Another hour of scrambling hectically over rocks and ditches, and Flinx found himself becoming winded. It was much worse for his companion, who finally settled to an exhausted halt in the middle of a clump of flowering growth.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, “I can’t keep up. Tired and—cold.”

  “Wait,” he instructed her. “Fluff, wait for us!” Ahead, the three Ujurrians paused, looked back expectantly.

  Flinx knelt and gently examined the broken leghand. Though Sylzenzuzex wasn’t putting any pressure on it, the joint didn’t seem to be healing properly.

  “We’re going to have to splint that break,” he muttered softly. She nodded agreement.

  “Do at the cave,” Fluff advised, having retreated to join them.

  “I’m sorry, Fluff,” Flinx explained, “but she can’t go any further unless we fix this break.” He considered, suggested, “You three continue on—leave a trail of broken branches and we’ll catch up with you later.”

  “Foolish,” the native advised. He moved nearer, his huge bulk dwarfing the slim youth. Flinx noted that Pip hadn’t moved. If his pet expressed no concern, then it sensed no threat behind those advancing luminous eyes.

  Fluff studied the quaking Sylzenzuzex, asked curiously, “What to do, Flinx-friend?”

  “If you think it’s foolish of us to follow your trail,” he told the Ujurrian carefully, alert for any indication of outraged anger, “you could let us ride.”

  Bluebright scratched under his chin with a hind foot. “What is ride?” he asked interestedly.