Orphan Star

by Foster, Alan Dean;

  "Gone again," Flinx observed with disembodied detachment.

  "That's Mayheso, remember?" reminded Fluff-voice. "Sometimes he's not here. The rest of us are always here. We don't change our names, either, but Maybeso comes and goes and changes his name every weektime or so,"

  "Where does Maybeso go when he goes?"

  Bluebright replied openly, "We don't know."

  "Where does he come from when he comes back, then?"

  "Nobody knows," Moam told him.

  "Why does he change his name from weektime to weektime?"

  "Ask him," Moam and Bluebright suggested together.

  Maybeso came back, his light brighter than any of theirs.

  "Why do you change your name from weektime to weektime, and where do you go when you go, and where do you come from when you come back?" Flinx-voice wondered,

  "Oh, there's no doubt about it," Maybeso told him in a dream-singsong, and winked away again.

  Fluff spoke in a confidential dream-whisper: "Maybeso, we think, is a little mad. But he's a good fellow all the same."

  Flinx noted absently that he was beginning to sink beneath the surface of the black lake. Above him the four lights swirled and dipped curiously.

  "You're the first who's talked to us," Fluff-voice murmured,

  "Come and talk to us more," Moam requested with pleasure. "It's fun to have someone to talk to. The little hard one listens but cannot talk. This is a fun new thing!"

  Flinx's dream-voice bubbled up through the deepening oily liquid. "Where should I come and talk to you?"

  "At the end of the long water," Moam told Him.

  "At the end of the long water," confirmed Bluebright.

  "At the far end of the long water," added Fluff, who was rather more precise than the others.

  "No doubt about it," agreed Maybeso, winking on for barely a second.

  About it, about it ... the words were subsumed in gentle rippling currents produced by Flinx's slowly sinking body. Sinking, sinking, until he touched the bottom of the lake. His legs touched first, then his hips, then back, and finally his head.

  There was something peculiar about this place, he thought. The sky had been blacker than the water, and the water grew lighter instead of darker as he sank. At the bottom it was so bright it hurt his eyes.

  He opened them.

  A glistening, almost metallic blue-green face dominated by two faceted gems was staring down at him with concern. Inhaling, he smelled cocoanut oil and orchids. Something tickled his left ear.

  Looking for the source, he discovered Pip's small reptilian face lying on his chest. A long pointed tongue darted out and hit him several times on the cheek. Apparently satisfied as to his master's condition, the minidrag relaxed and slid off the pillow to coil itself comfortably nearby.

  Pillow?

  Taking a deep breath, Flinx smiled up at Sylzenzuzex. She backed away and he saw that they were in a small, neatly furnished room. Sunlight poured in through high windows.

  "How are you feeling?" she inquired in the sharp clicks and whistles of symbospeech. He nodded and watched her slump gratefully onto a thranx sleeping- sitting platform across the room.

  "Thank the Hive. I thought yon were dead."

  Flinx rested his head on a supporting hand. "I didn't think that mattered much to you."

  "Oh, shut up!" she snapped with unexpected vehemence. He detected confusion and frustration in her voice as feelings and fact vied within her. "There have been plenty of times when I would have cheerfully cut your throat, if I hadn't been under oath to protect it. Then there have been an equal number of other occasions when I almost wished you didn't wear your skeleton outside in.

  "Like the time back on Terra when you saved my life, and the way you've stood up to that barbaric young female." Flinx saw her antennae flicking nervously, the graceful curve of her ovipositors tightening uncertainly. "You are the most maddening being I have ever met, Flinx-man!"

  He sat up carefully, found that everything worked inside as well as out. "What happened?" he asked, confused. "No, wait ... I do remember blacking out, but not why. Did something hit me?"

  "Nobody laid a parcel hook on you. You collapsed when your pet charged one of the native workers. Fortunately, that maneuver seems to have been just a bluff. The native didn't know enough to be frightened." Her expression turned puzzled. "But why should that make you faint?"

  "I don't know," he answered evasively. "Probably the shock of visualizing the rest of the natives rending us into pieces after Pip killed one of their number. When he didn't, the shock was magnified because Pip just doesn't take to strangers that way." Flinx forced himself to appear indifferent. "So Pip likes natural fur better than a thermal suit, and he snuggled down in one of the natives. That's probably what happened."

  "What does that prove?" Sylzenzuzex wondered.

  "That I faint too easily." Swinging his legs off the bed, he gave her a grim look. "At least now we know why this world's Under Edict."

  "Shhh!" She nearly fell off her sleeping platform. "Why ... no, wait," she admonished him. Several minutes passed during which she made a thorough in- spection of the room, checking places Flinx would never have thought to inspect,

  "It's clean," she finally announced with satisfaction. "I expect they don't think we have anything to say that's worth listening to."

  "You're certain?" Flinx asked, abashed. "I never thought of that."

  Sylzenzuzex looked offended. "I told you I was training in Security. No, there is nothing in here to listen to you save me."

  "Okay, the reason this world has been placed Under Edict by the Church met us in the tunnel today. It's the natives ... Rudenuaman's grunting, goblin- eyed manual laborers. They're the reason."

  She continued to stare at him for another minute, considered laughing, thought better of it when she saw how serious he was.

  "Impossible," she muttered finally. "You have experienced a delusion of some sort. Surely the natives are nothing more than they appear to be--big, amiable, and dumb. They have not yet developed enough for the Church to isolate this world."

  "On the contrary," he objected, "they're a great deal more than they appear to be."

  She looked querulous. "If that's true, then why do they perform heavy manual labor for long hours in freezing temperatures in exchange for a few miserable nuts and berries?"

  Flinx's voice dropped disconsolately. "I don't know that yet." He glanced up. "But I know this-they're natural telepaths."

  "A delusion," she repeated firmly, "a hallucination you experienced."

  "No." His voice was firm, confident. "I have a few slight talents of my own. I know the difference between a hallucination and mind-to-mind communication."

  "Have it your way," Sylzenzuzex declared, sighing. "For the sake of discussion let us temporarily assume it was not an illusion. That is still no reason for the Church to place a world Under Edict. A whole race of telepaths is only theory, but it would not be enough to exclude them from associate membership in the Commonwealth."

  "It's not just that," Flinx explained earnestly. "They're ... well, more intelligent than they appear."

  "I doubt that," she snorted, "but even a race of intelligent telepaths would not be considered such a threat."

  "Much more intelligent."

  "I won't believe that until I see evidence to prove it," she objected. "If they represented any kind of serious threat to the Commonwealth ..."

  "Why else would the Church put this world Under Edict?"

  "Flinx, they have no tools, no clothing, no spoken language-no civilization. They run around grubbing for roots and fruits, living in caves. If they're potentially as clever as you claim, why do they persist in dwelling in poverty?"

  "That," admitted Flinx, "is a very good question,"

  "Do you have a very good answer?"

  "I do not. But I'm convinced I've found the reason for the Church's actions. What is the effect of putting a race Under Edict?"

  "No contact
with outside parties, space-going peoples," she recited. "Severest penalties for any infraction of the Edict. The race is free to develop in its own way."

  "Or free to stagnate," Flinx muttered. "The Commonwealth and the Church have aided plenty of primitive peoples, Why not the Ujurrians?"

  "You set yourself up as arbiter of high Church policy," she murmured, drawing away from him again.

  "Not me!" he half shouted, slamming both hands noisily against the bedcovers. His hands moved rapidly as he talked. "It's the Church Council that sets itself up as the manipulator of racial destinies. And if not the Church, then the Commonwealth government does, And if not the Commonwealth, then the great corporations and family companies. Then there is the AAnn Empire which sets itself above everything." He was pacing angrily alongside the bed.

  "My God, but I'm sick to death of organizations that think they have the right to rule on how others ought to develop!"

  "What would yon have in its place?" she challenged him. "Anarchy?"

  Flinx sat down heavily on the bed again, his head sinking between his hands. He was tired, tired, and much too young. "How should I know? I only know that I'm getting damned sick of what passes for intelligence in this corner of creation."

  "I can't believe you're so innocent," she said, more gently now. "What else do you expect from mere mammals and insects? The Amalgamation was just the beginning of your race's and mine's emergence from long dark age. The Commonwealth and the United Church are only a few of your centuries old. What do you expect of it so soon-Nirvana? Utopia?" She shook her head, a gesture the thranx had acquired from man- kind.

  "Not for me or you to set ourselves up above the Church, which helped bring us out of those dark times."

  "The Church, the Church, your almighty Church!" he shouted. "Why do you defend it so? You think it's composed of saints?"

  "I never claimed it was perfect," she responded, showing some heat herself. "The Counselors them- selves would be the last to claim so. That's one of its virtues. Naturally it's not perfect-it would never claim to be."

  "That's what Tse-Mallory once said to me," he murmured reflectively.

  "What ... who?"

  "Someone I know who also left the Church, for reasons of his own."

  "Tse-Mallory, that name again," she replied thoughtfully. "He was that stingship mate of my uncle's you mentioned before. Bran Tse-Mallory?"

  "Yes."

  "They talk of him as well as of Truzenzuzex at the Clan meetings." She snapped herself back to the present-no use thinking wistfully about things she would probably never be able to experience again.

  "Now that you've decided the universe is not perfect and that the instrumentalities of intelligence are somewhat less than all-knowing, what do you propose we do about it?"

  "Have a talk with our friends-to-be, the Ujurrians."

  "And what are they going to do?" she smirked. "Throw rocks at the Baron's shuttles when he returns? Or at the beamers that are surely stocked in plenty here?"

  "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 ns 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 Fliax 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 yon know what you're doing, and we might walk out of here without being challenged."

  "Yon 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 every- one else."

  "Yon 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 d
idn'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 lowlevel jungle.

  Sylzeiiziizex 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."