Orphan Star (Pip & Flinx)

by Alan Dean Foster

  Then he turned to face the young thranx. “Padre-elect Sylzenzuzex, you were about to call a lift. Do so now.”

  “Yes, sir.” She appeared to have recovered completely from the shock of her near-abduction. Returning the Counselor’s request with a poised salute of truhand and left antenna, she moved to the nearest lift door and inserted a complex three-pronged card into a slot on its right.

  Following an intricate push-and-twist of the card, the slot immediately lit with a soft green glow. A matching telltale winked on above the doorway, beeped three times. Sliding silently aside, the door revealed an elevator car of surprising size.

  Flinx entered after the padre-elect. Something . . . something about her was nudging a familiar memory. The thought faded as his attention was caught by the rank of numbers set just inside the door.

  In descending order the panel read: 2-1-0-1-2-3—and so on down to twelve. Twelve stories below ground level and only three above. Mentally, he smiled, remembering. Now he was certain that his groundcar driver had been something more than a talkative oldster. But he hadn’t lied to Flinx—he had simply described the Depot only as it was, without bothering to mention what couldn’t be seen.

  The thranx inserted the card into a slot below the panel of numbers. Flinx saw there were no switches, buttons, or other controls. Someone without a card might force the doorway into a lift, but without that intricate triangle-shape it could not be activated.

  She cocked her head toward Jiwe. “Sir?”

  “Seventh level,” the Counselor directed her, “quadrant thirty-three.”

  “That’s the hospital, isn’t it, sir? I don’t get out that way very often.”

  “That’s right, Padre-elect.”

  Inserting the card into the slot, she made another complex turn with it. The number seven lit on the panel, and a long series of tiny numbers appeared within the material of the card itself. Holding it firmly in place, she slipped one digit over the number 33. As soon as the light was covered, the door slid shut.

  Flinx felt the lift move downward, accelerate, and shift in directions he could not follow. Several minutes later it stopped. Combining changes of direction with an approximation of their steady, smooth speed, he decided rapidly that they were no longer beneath the visible structure of the Depot.

  When the door finally slid aside Flinx stepped out into a crowd of humans and thranx that was startling in its density. Here white was the predominant color of clothing, though every uniform, robe, or jumpsuit was touched at some spot or another with the identifying aquamarine.

  Jiwe and Namoto led while Flinx lagged behind, keeping pace with the young thranx. His nagging supposition concerning her had blossomed impossibly.

  She spoke first, however, reaching up to put a delicate truhand on his free shoulder. “I did not have a chance to thank you and your pet for saving my life. My delay shames me. Accept those thanks now.”

  He inhaled deeply of her natural fragrance. “All the thanks belong to Pip, not me,” he mumbled, embarrassed. “Listen, what did the Counselor call you?”

  “Padre-elect. The rank is approximately—”

  “Not that,” he corrected curiously. “Your name.”

  “Oh . . . Sylzenzuzex.”

  “That would break down as Syl, of the Hive Zen, family Zu, the Clan Zex?”

  “That’s right,” she acknowledged, unsurprised. Any human could break down a thranx name. “What’s yours?”

  “Flinx . . . yes, one calling. But I’ve another reason for making certain of yours, one that goes beyond exchanging identification.” They rounded a bend in the pastel-walled corridor.

  “You see, I think I know your uncle. . . .”

  Chapter Seven

  Thranx are stiff-jointed but extremely sure of foot. Nevertheless, Flinx’s pronouncement caused his insectoid companion to stumble. Multiple-lensed eyes regarded him with astonishment.

  “My . . . what?”

  Flinx hesitated as they turned still another corner. How far did this underground world extend laterally, he wondered. Perhaps for the length and breadth of the whole island?

  “I might not have the pronunciation correct,” he said awkwardly. “But aren’t you related to an old philosoph named Truzenzuzex?”

  “Say that one more time,” she coaxed him. He did so. “You’re sure of that stress on the family syllable?” A positive nod. “I’m not sure ‘uncle’ would be a proper Terranglo analog, but yes, we are closely related. I haven’t seen Tru in several years, not since my adolescence began.”

  “You know him well?”

  “Not really. He was one of those childish gods—you understand, an adult whom other adults idolized? How do you happen to know him?”

  “We were companions on a journey not long ago,” Flinx explained.

  “He was an Eint, you know,” she went on thoughtfully. “Very famous, very controversial in his beliefs. Too controversial, many in the Clan thought. Then when I heard he had left the Church . . .”

  The sentence died quickly. “It is not discussed in the Clan. I’ve heard practically nothing of him since he vanished many years ago to engage in private research with a human stingship partner of his youth.”

  “Bran Tse-Mallory,” Flinx supplied, reminiscing.

  The girl nearly stumbled again. “I’ve never known a human so full of the nectar of the unexpected. You are a strange being, Flinx-man.”

  When the question of his strangeness came up it was always a good time to change the subject.

  He gestured upward. “So the Records Depot above-ground isn’t much more than camouflage for the real Church center.”

  “I . . .” She looked ahead and Flinx noted that the Counselor hadn’t missed a word of their conversation, judging from the speed with which he replied.

  “Go ahead and tell him, padre-elect. If we don’t he’ll probably divine it anyway. How about it, son—are you clairvoyant?”

  “If I was, I wouldn’t be asking, would I?” Flinx shot back nervously, trying to conceal his increasing unease at the Counselor’s pointed comments. He had to get out of here. If he was still present when word of his extraordinary escape on Hivehom trickled down to Jiwe’s level, they might never let him go. He would become something he had always fought to avoid—a curiosity, to be studied and examined like a pinned butterfly under glass.

  But he couldn’t turn and run. He would have to wait this out.

  Now that she’d been granted permission, Sylzenzuzex explained enthusiastically, “The aboveground Depot is fully utilized, but the majority of the installation extends under much of Bali, in many directions. There are only two ways in and out. Through the records center, above and behind us now, and through the undersea shuttleport facing Lombok.” Her eyes glistened.

  “It’s a wonderful place. So much to study. So much to learn here, Flinx!”

  Flinx’s reaction so far had been something less than boundless enthusiasm. He suspected Sylzenzuzex came from a rather coddled family. His own blithe trust of honored people and institutions had died somewhere between the ages of eight and nine.

  He noticed how the overhead fluorescents filled her enormous eyes with ever-changing rainbows. “The active volcanic throat of Mount Agung is channeled and controlled. It supplies all the power the Church complex requires. The entire island is completely self-contained and self-sustaining. It . . .”

  She broke off as Namoto and Jiwe stopped in front of a door flanked by two Church guards wearing aquamarine uniforms. Their apparent relaxation, Flinx sensed, was deceptive, as was the casual way they seemed to hold their beamers.

  Proper identification was exchanged, and they were admitted to a much smaller corridor. Two additional screenings by six more armed men and thranx finally gained them entrance to a modest chamber. In the center of this room was a narrow bed. It sat like a spider in its web at the center of a gleaming mass of highly sophisticated medical machinery.

  As they moved toward the bed Flinx saw it contained a s
ingle immobile man. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. Indirect, carefully aligned lighting insured that his vacant eyes would not be damaged and a tiny device regularly moistened his frozen-open orbs. Awake but unaware, conscious but not cognizant, the man floated nude save for wires and tubes on a bed of clear medical gelatin.

  Flinx tried to follow the maze of lines and cables and circuitry that stopped just short of metallic mummification, decided that more than anything else the immobile man resembled an overutilized power terminal.

  Jiwe glanced once at the sleeper. “This is Mordecai Povalo.” He turned to Flinx. “Ever hear of him?”

  Flinx hadn’t.

  The Counselor leaned over the motionless figure. “He’s been hovering between life and death for weeks now. On certain days he’ll show some slight improvement. Other days will require the efforts of a dozen physicians to keep him living. Whether he has any will to live left no one can tell.

  “The technicians insist his mind is still active, still functioning. His body tolerates the machines that keep it running. Although his eyes are open we can’t tell if they’re registering images. Just because his visual centers continue to operate doesn’t mean he’s seeing anything.”

  Flinx found himself drawn to the frozen figure. “Will he ever come out of his coma?”

  “According to the doctors it’s not properly a coma. They don’t have a term for it yet. Whatever it is . . . no. They expect him to stay like this until his mind quits on his body finally rejects the life-sustaining equipment.”

  “Then why,” Flinx wanted to know, “keep him alive?”

  On Evoria there dwelt a thranx Di-eint called Tintonurac, who was universally famed for his brilliance—though at present, he wore the look of a happy idiot.

  Of course, his insectoid face could not produce a human expression, but in the years since the Amalgamation humans had learned to read thranx expressions with the same facility their quasi-symbiotic insect associates had learned to interpret mankind’s.

  No human or thranx noticed his expression at the moment, an expression alien to the face of the most acclaimed member of his Hive.

  Head of his clan, he was a credit to his aunts and uncles, to his hive-mother and to his real parents. Tintonurac’s particular wizardry lay in the ability to translate the concepts and schemes of others into reality—for he was a Master Fabricator, or precision engineer. Not only did his mechanical creations improve upon their originator’s initial drawings, they were as attractive to look upon as they were supremely functional. Debate raged among his admirers as to whether their idol should more properly be considered a sculptor than an engineer.

  Among his many products were a device which neatly dispatched a virulent human disease, an energy multiplex system for the hydroelectric plants so prevalent on thranx worlds, and an improved fire-control system for the sometimes wild yet irresistible SCCAM weapons system that was the mainstay of the combined human-thranx peace-forcer fleet. There were still others, some more esoteric than believable, which only his magic could transform into working devices.

  But none of his inventions was the cause of his giddily pleased expression in this eighth month of the tail end of the Season of High Pollen on Evoria. The source of his pleasure was a glistening object that he kept concealed in a drawer of his workbench. He was staring at it new, reveling in its message and its glory as he sat at work in the laboratory, his six assistants attending to business around him. All were respected scientists and engineers in their own right. Of the group, four were thranx and two human. It was a measure of the admiration accorded Tintonurac that such people would volunteer to serve as his assistants, when they could easily have had laboratories and staffs of their own.

  The Di-eint’s mandibles moved in thranx laughter as he chuckled at a new thought. How curious a thing to occur to him! What might it be like to combine the two liquid metals in the flasks on his truhand’s left with the catalyst solvent locked in its container across the room?

  Acting as if half asleep, Tintonurac walked to the cabinet and removed the solvent. Turning back to his lounge-seat, he discovered that the pleasure grew deeper and more profound as he pursued this course of action.

  Dridenvopa was working with the human Cassidy, but not so intensely that he failed to notice the Di-eint’s actions. Distracted, he left his work to stare as Tintonurac poured the syrupy contents of one flask into a second. Bejeweled compound eyes glittered uncertainly when the contents of the overfull flask gushed the new mixture onto the bench, then to the floor. The Di-eint was as clean in his physical manipulations as in his mental, and this was not like him. Nor was the mask of pure, unthinking delight on his face.

  Dridenvopa started to comment, then held himself back. Surely the Di-eint knew what he was doing. That reassuring thought sent him back to his own task, until he and Cassidy both noticed the brightly labeled container the Di-eint was transferring from a foothand to a truhand.

  “Isn’t that . . . ?” the human Cassidy began in puzzled symbospeech, the all-purpose galactic patois, as the Di-eint unlocked the container. Instead of finishing the question he let out a strange human yowl and tried to cross meters of intervening benches and equipment before the inevitable occurred. But he was unable to get there in time to prevent a small portion of the harmless liquid in the container from entering the flask of the harmless, mixed liquid metal. Together, these harmless substances formed a rapidly expanding ball so hot and intense as to make white phosphorus seem arctic cold.

  Despite the increasing incandescence, Tintonurac concentrated on the pleased beauty within the object. . . .

  The always efficient fire-fighting arm of the local thranx municipality arrived with its usual speed. All that remained for them to lavish their attention on was a scorched region between two buildings. The incredible heat had incinerated the metal walls of the laboratory. Its organic inhabitants had perished.

  The investigators decided that someone had made an unusual yet possible mistake. Even the most brilliant scientist could make a fatal slip, even a thranx could lethally err, when hypnotized by a magnificence that the investigators might have understood, had it not been cremated along with the rest of the laboratory’s contents—as had been intended.

  Jiwe reflected on Flinx’s question. “Because he’s symptomatic of something which has been happening with distressing frequency lately throughout the Commonwealth. Most people refuse to see any pattern to it, any connection between incidents. A very few, myself among them, aren’t so certain these events are unrelated.

  “Over the past several years, important people with unique talents have exhibited an unnerving tendency to blow themselves to bits, along with a sometimes equally unique apparatus. Taken individually, these incidents affect only the immolated. Taken collectively, they constitute something potentially dangerous to a great many others.”

  The silence in the chamber was punctuated only by the efficient hum of life-sustaining equipment, the eerie wheeze of a mechanical zombie.

  “Out of dozens, Povalo here is the only one who wasn’t quite thorough enough in doing away with himself. Though for all the difference, he might as well be dead. He’s certainly no good to himself anymore.”

  “You say some of you believe these suicides are all linked,” Flinx ventured. “Have you discovered anything to connect them?”

  “Nothing positive,” Jiwe admitted, “which is why there are so few of us. All of them did have one thing in common, though. Not one appeared to have any reason for wanting to kill himself. I happen to think that’s mighty significant. But the Council doesn’t agree.”

  Flinx showed little interest. Now was the time to quash personal curiosity and get about the business of getting out. “What do you want of me?”

  Jiwe moved to a nearby chair, threw himself into it. “Povalo was a wealthy, intelligent, wholly self-possessed engineer doing important research. Now he’s a vegetable. I want to know why a man like that—why many humans and thranx like that�
��seem to find it suddenly necessary to murder themselves. Yes, self-murder . . . I can’t call it suicide when I truly believe it’s something else.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Flinx asked warily.

  “You detected that AAnn infiltrator when no one else suspected his presence.”

  “That was just an accident,” Flinx explained. He scratched Pip’s jaw. “It happens only when Pip gets excited; when he perceives a possible threat to me.” He indicated Povalo. “Your subject is hardly a threat.”

  “I’m not expecting a thing,” Jiwe calmed him, “I’m just asking you to try. I’ll try tarot readers and tea leaves after you’ve failed.”

  Flinx sighed elaborately. “If you insist . . .”

  “Ask,” the Counselor reminded him gently, “not insist.”

  Semantics, Flinx thought sardonically; but he dutifully turned to face the bed and concentrated on its limp occupant. He struggled to reach past those sightless eyes, more afraid of what he might discover than what he might not.

  Pip tightened reflexively on his shoulder, sensing his master’s effort. Flinx hoped without much confidence that Jiwe hadn’t noticed the minidrag’s reaction. What he had failed to consider was that his very unease as he concentrated on Povalo was enough to stimulate Pip. There was a threat present, even if only in his own mind.

  No faint haze obscured his vision. There was no lilting music in his ears to distract him. The bed, its cocoon of circuitry, the shining equipment, and the translucent gelatin suspension—all were clear as ever to his eyes. And yet . . . there was something in his mind that he saw without those eyes, something that hadn’t been there a moment ago. It was part of the creature on the bed.

  A young man in the fullness of youth—an idealized distortion of Mordecai Povalo—was courting a woman of supernal beauty. Together they floated in thick cumulus clouds engorged with moist love. Side by side they dove ecstatically to the glassy green depths of a shallow ocean. From time to time the figures changed slightly, in build, in coloring, but the subject was ever the same.