Strange Music

by Alan Dean Foster

  All eyes turned to Felelagh na Broon. Three-fingered hands slid closer to the hilts of swords and the awkward triggers of clumsy long guns. Contrary to what everyone in the ranks expected, the Hobak did not give the command to fire or to attack. Quite unexpectedly, he answered.

  “When I-I was young, so very young, came hither the Ureleak Horde, came down from the north, to pillage and to plunder. Came to Minord, with sword and fire, to kill and destroy, to take what they could.” Murmurs of memories much rather forgotten rose from the senior officers among the assembled ranks of soldiers.

  “Slain without pity, without thought or c-compassion, any who resisted, any who fought back. Among the latter was m-my family: father and mother, two elder brothers. One Ureleak held m-me and made m-me watch, while first m-my brothers, they slew before m-me. Held m-me close so that I-I would feel their blood, warm and salty, as it sprayed in m-my face. I-I screamed and fought, but could not break free, could not turn, from the slaughter before m-me. Then m-my father, brave but foolish, th-they cut h-his throat, and cast h-him aside. Lastly m-my mother, th-they held bent toward m-me, and when h-her throat was slit, h-h-her lifeblood m-my eyes blinded.” He paused for a moment, recalling that which was best forgotten.

  “Picked m-me up, did the one holding m-me, picked m-me up and threw m-me aside. Like garbage I-I slammed, into a wall unyielding, and lost all thinking, only to awake, as y-you see m-me now.” Making a great effort, he raised the heavy cane and, tottering, used it to stab at Flinx.

  “Now to y-your question, y-you have your answer, and before you die, I-I would have one to mine. What possible purpose could y-you have in the posing, of such a query, of such an intimate, of such an insulting line?”

  In their encounters with the Hobak, several things had impressed themselves upon Flinx. Like everything else he noted when on another, new world, he had filed those observations without thinking he might ever make use of them. Now they might make the difference between life and death. Not only for him, but for Wiegl, the Firstborn Preedir ah nisa Leeh, and perhaps even for one who believed himself to be ruler of all he surveyed.

  “I think,” he sang quietly, “if you will let me, if you will trust me…that I can help you.”

  For a second time, murmurings of disbelief rose from the assembled. Only Wiegl remained entirely composed. Because nothing about his offworld friend surprised him. After all, was he not a magician?

  He had better, the guide thought, be a good one.

  Felelagh na Broon stared back at the tall visitor. “None can help me, for I-I am broken, broken as I-I explained, broken till comes m-my end.”

  Flinx shook his head despite knowing that the Hobak might not understand the meaning of the gesture. “I have watched you, and found it curious, that in certain moments, your breaking varies, your breaking shifts. This I think, is that you were shaken, not so much physically, as in your mind, as in your heart. That you are crippled, but not in body, so much as in mind, so much as in emotions, that twist your frame. I can fix that, maybe, possibly; if you will let me, I will try.”

  Once more, all eyes turned to the Hobak. Felelagh na Broon considered.

  “I-I think you are mad, a mad magician, who from desperation, proposes miracles. Why should I-I trust you, why should I-I place, m-myself in y-your hands, or whatever y-you would use?”

  “You might kill me,” Flinx replied as calmly as he could manage, “and my friends here, but that would gain you, nothing worthwhile.”

  From the Hobak’s throat rose the by-now-familiar barking Larian laugh. “Nothing worthwhile? Y-you underestimate, the pleasure to be gained, the satisfaction to enjoy.”

  “True to yourself, I cannot deny it,” Flinx responded despite Wiegl tugging frantically at his coat, “yet still I offer, one chance fleeting, to help you where none here, anything can do. One chance fleeting,” he concluded with a coda-like flourish. “I will not touch you, with my hands, not with my body, but with my being.”

  “Y-you speak nonsense,” the Hobak sang back, “y-you who prattle, of things unthinkable, of ways impossible. Why should I-I think, y-you would not take, the opportunity presented, then to kill m-me?”

  “If I wanted, to do that thing, to do it quickly, so none could stop me, I would already, perforce have done it.”

  The Hobak stood motionless, staring back at Flinx. Then he gestured understanding, slowly. “Y-you speak sense, y-you speak truth, if not wisdom, from y-your flat little mouth. Do y-your best then, try y-your utmost, and when y-you fail, I-I can kill y-you after.”

  Flinx nodded tersely. Then he reached out.

  It was all there: coiling, writhing, raging within the Hobak. He winced as he perceived it. So much pain, so much anger and hurt, crying out for repair, for restoration. Would his talent function now? Could he do to the Hobak the emotional opposite of what he had done to Vashon?

  Why not simply do what he had done to Vashon? a small voice prompted him. As he had briefly contemplated earlier, why not render the Hobak insensible, unable to give orders, unable even to respond? What would his troops do in the face of such an unnatural, otherwordly assault? They might flee in panic instead of attacking, allowing Flinx and his companions to escape. It was a definite possibility.

  It was also one he considered only for an instant. Where his ability was concerned, he had long ago determined that whenever there was the slightest chance to use it to heal instead of to hurt, that was the way he would take. He began perceiving.

  There the pain; from the memories, never shut away and always present. He pushed, he prodded, he did his best to soothe.

  The back of his head started to throb.

  Next the anger; poisoned serpents of emotion that burned and bent within the Hobak’s mind. Flinx adjusted, he reassured, he strained to break the chains that fastened the crippling feelings to the Hobak’s thoughts.

  Pain lanced through his skull and he stumbled. Voh rushed to support him while Wiegl slipped under his arm on the other side. Yet another gasp of astonishment came from the ranked soldiers as the Hobak’s right hand uncurled. The webbed digits straightened. Looking down at his hand as if seeing it for the first time, the leader of Minord beheld normal fingers. His fingers.

  Now the hurt; the worst inflammation of all, filling the Hobak’s whole being with an unforgotten, unimaginable desolation. Flinx mentally massaged it, pushing it away, aside, forcing it from the Larian’s mind, until it was gone, all gone, like dark clouds on a rare sun-filled Largessian day.

  Turning his torso to his left, Felelagh na Broon did something he had not done since he was an infant. He stood straight.

  Cheers broke out from the soldiers. Larian cheers, full of whistling and barking, as they crowded around their Hobak, miraculously restored. The most senior officer among them, equivalent in rank to the missing Zkerig, could hardly speak as he addressed his liege.

  “How is it, most noble, most high and respected, this wonder that the offworlder magician, has wrought in your body?”

  Na Broon’s nictitating membranes flashed. He looked down at his body, rotating and turning his arm, flexing his long webbed fingers. He was not yet sure how to answer and he certainly could not explain, but he did his best.

  “Still lingers does the shock, of what has happened, and will take some time, to fully apprise. Yet one thing for certain, I…I…can tell you.” He looked at the officer, then let his gaze rove over his overjoyed troops. “This strange sensation, that through me courses, it is quite shocking, to…normal…feel.”

  Looking on, Flinx smiled. Then the pain in his head became at last too much, and despite their support he slumped unconscious in the arms of the assassin and the guide while a concerned Preedir stood ready to offer what assistance she could. Meanwhile Pip zoomed out of the tube to hover anxiously above them all. Sensing the desire of the others trying to help, the minidrag stood off and waited, helpless in the absence of her master’s guidance and any readily perceivable enemies.

  Na Broon
and his officers rushed over immediately. It was not until they reached the spot where Voh and Wiegl laid Flinx down on the ground that the Hobak realized he had left his cane behind. At the moment, he was too concerned for the condition of the human magician to wonder at subsidiary marvels.

  “Is he dead or is he sleeping,” he inquired anxiously, “the one who has restored me, who has returned to me a life?”

  If there was one thing Chela Voh knew intimately, it was death. Kneeling and leaning forward, she put an ear to Flinx’s chest, then straightened.

  “He is not deceased but neither slumbers, but lies now in a state that needs attention. From others who know, better than I, how to treat, his present condition.” She felt compelled to add, “He will live, if I am a judge, but it is possible, never awaken.” Rising, she gestured toward the forest that came close to the east side of Minord.

  “I ask your help, the magician to carry, to my transport, which in the woods lies waiting.”

  Quickly the Hobak sang instructions to his soldiers. Putting down their arms, a dozen of the strongest came to gently lift the motionless form of the offworlder, forcing themselves to overcome their nervousness at the presence of the winged shape resting on his chest. Wiegl walked by Flinx’s side as they carried him out of the city.

  Once in the forest, the Hobak let his soldiers marvel at the skimmer while he addressed the other human.

  “You who come from worlds beyond the sky, you who would make of my world a single Leeth, know here that I, Felelagh na Broon, swear I will work, for the end you seek. To this I pledge, the new life I have been given, on behalf of your Commonwealth, for one who lies dreaming, in hopes he will awake.”

  Voh was distinctly uncomfortable. “I am something not a diplomat, in fact quite the contrary, yet your song I will convey, as best I am able, to those for whom its meaning, will be most welcome, will be well received.”

  Nearby, Preedir ah nisa Leeh eyed the Hobak of Minord, he who had taken her prisoner for his own ends, for his own purpose, and instead of anger and insults, found in her heart only pity. She said nothing, which, for her, constituted a kind of forgiveness.

  Advised to step back, the soldiers watched in awe as the skimmer lifted off. Briefly visible against the cloud cover, it turned and accelerated toward the south. The soldiers watched it go, sing-chattering excitedly among themselves. In seeing the skimmer, they had been given a foretaste, however prohibited, of what offworld technology could do, and what it might bring even to far Minord. Only Felelagh na Broon, the grand, the powerful, master of all the lands and islands he surveyed, did not follow its departure with his eyes.

  He was too busy contemplating the fluttering fingers of his right hand.

  —

  Utilizing the same masking technology she had employed to allow her to illicitly take a skimmer out of Borusegahm, Chela Voh steered them unseen back to the Leeth. A last exchange of credit between her and the unscrupulous merchant who had rented her the vehicle completed the forbidden transaction.

  Asserting that it was better her true identity remain unknown to local Commonwealth authorities, she left it to Wiegl, Preedir, and the wagonmaster they hired, to convey the insensible Flinx to Church headquarters. There Padre Jonas took charge. Too relieved and delighted at the return of Borusegahm’s Firstborn to ask too many questions, she focused her attention on the one who had somehow made Preedir’s return possible.

  Flinx lay unconscious for a week and a day. On that last day, he opened his eyes to find himself in the Commonwealth outpost hospital, surrounded by the gleaming whiteness of contemporary medical tech. After so many days spent jouncing about in a brund saddle and then in Minord, he…

  Minord. What had happened? The last thing he remembered was easing the remaining painful memories from the mind of that Leeth’s emotionally tormented Hobak, then…nothing.

  Something warm and slender slithered down from the top of the bed to coil up on his chest. Pip eyed him for a moment, then promptly closed her eyes and went to sleep. It was as reassuring a sight as he could have wished for.

  She could not supply answers to his questions, nor could the tech that surrounded him, but a certain semi-reputable local guide could. Easing himself forward off the supportive tripod composed of his legs and tail, an energized Wiegl brought curved black eyes close to Flinx.

  “You live, I am glad to see, for final payment, I am now sure to receive!”

  Flinx smiled. His head hurt, but not badly. Not anything like the sharp, cleaving pain that had shot through him when last he could remember anything.

  “You’ll certainly get the last of the money that’s owed to you, because I suspect I wouldn’t be here now, in this place, if not for you and—” At Wiegl’s scrunched expression, Flinx hastened to re-form and singspeak his words. Then he remembered that the guide could understand and speak some terranglo. The pained look came not from the singspeech, but from Flinx’s stressed rendition of it.

  “You didn’t get me safely back here,” he continued, “just for the money.”

  “No, I not…did not.” Wiegl confirmed Flinx’s remembrance of the guide’s linguistic ability. “Who else among the Larians can claim a magician as a friend? The greatest magician known? The coin can wait.” He leaned forward. “What I would know, what would most please me,” he said, reverting to the singspeech of his kind, “is the learning of the secret, the knowing of how, you transformed the Hobak Felelagh of Minord.”

  Flinx tried to raise his head, winced, and settled for lying back down and turning toward the guide. “Come closer and I’ll tell you.” Eagerly, Wiegl complied. Flinx whispered to him.

  “I had a feeling….”

  —

  Having been apprised of his arrival, Clarity was waiting for him when the skimmer sidled back up to the side of their floating home. After disembarking, he watched while its AI guided it aloft, sharply increasing the angle of ascent on its way back to the waiting Teacher. Espying Scrap, Pip launched herself from his shoulder. He looked on while the two minidrags circled each other above the residence, dancing together in the clear blue sky. He stretched.

  It was good, so good, to be warm again.

  Warm also was the kiss Clarity bestowed on him. Stepping back, she searched his face and frowned slightly.

  “I thought this little jaunt was going to be a simple one. Did the bug lie? And what have you done to your hair?”

  Reaching up, he felt of his lingering chevron. “A, um, sign of appreciation from the locals of Largess. As for Sylzenzuzex, she told the truth…as well as she knew it.”

  “Equivocating again.” Clarity shook her head. “Sometimes I think that as long as I live I’m never going to get a straight answer out of you.”

  “Here’s a straight answer, and you don’t have to be able to read my emotions to know it’s true. I love you.”

  They kissed once more, longer this time. When she again stepped back, her eyelids fluttered.

  “Okay, I’m convinced. Plenty of truth in that, for sure.” Her tone turned serious. “What are you going to do now? How soon before I have to worry about you getting ‘bored’ again?”

  “Not for a while, anyway,” he assured her. “I think I’m going to try to exercise a different talent for a change.”

  She perked up. “You have a different talent?”

  “Some would say so.” Turning, he gazed out upon the endless ocean of Cachalot. They had friends here, swimming deep. “If they’ll teach me, I think I’d like to learn whalesong.”

  TO DEAN ABLES

  Thank you for everything you’ve done for everyone…including Speckel.

  By Alan Dean Foster

  PIP & FLINX ADVENTURES

  For Love of Mother-Not

  The Tar-Aiym Krang

  Orphan Star

  The End of the Matter

  Flinx in Flux

  Mid-Flinx

  Reunion

  Flinx’s Folly

  Sliding Scales

  Run
ning from the Deity

  Bloodhype

  Trouble Magnet

  Patrimony

  Flinx Transcendent

  Strange Music

  FOUNDING OF THE COMMONWEALTH

  Phylogenesis

  Dirge

  Diuturnity’s Dawn

  ICERIGGER TRILOGY

  Icerigger

  Mission to Moulokin

  The Deluge Drivers

  STANDALONE COMMONWEALTH NOVELS

  Nor Crystal Tears

  Voyage to the City of the Dead

  Midworld

  Drowning World

  Quofum

  The Howling Stones

  Sentenced to Prism

  Cachalot

  THE DAMNED TRILOGY

  A Call to Arms

  The False Mirror

  The Spoils of War

  THE TAKEN TRILOGY

  Lost and Found

  The Light-Years Beneath My Feet

  The Candle of Distant Earth

  THE TIPPING POINT TRILOGY

  The Human Blend

  Body, Inc.

  The Sum of Her Parts

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of several New York Times bestsellers and the popular Pip & Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of numerous films, including Transformers, Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and the most recent one, Alien: Covenant. Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners’ brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects.

  alandeanfoster.com