Orphan Star (2 page)

“My name’s Mahnahmi,” she informed him softly, her voice running up and down like a piccolo trill, “what’s yours?”

“Everybody calls me Flinx.”

“Flinx.” She was sucking on the knuckle of her big finger. “That’s a funny name, but nice.” A smile showed perfect pearly teeth. “Want to see what my daddy brought me?”

“Daddy,” Flinx echoed, looking around the room. It was dominated by the great curve of the transparent wall and balcony and the sparkling panorama laid out below. It was night outside . . . but was it that same night? How long had he lain unconscious? No way to tell . . . yet.

The room was furnished in late, Siberade: lush cushions, chairs and divan mounted on pencil-thin struts of duralloy, with everything else suspended from the ceiling by duralloy wires so thin that the rest of the furniture appeared to be floating in air. A massive spray of luminescent spodumene and kunzite crystals dominated the domed roof. They were surrounded by circular skylights now open to the star-filled night sky. Climatic adjusters kept the evening rain from falling into the room.

His captor was a very wealthy person.

Petulant-rich with nonattention, the girlish voice interrupted his inspection. “Do you want to see it or not?”

Flinx wished the throb in his upper arm would subside. “Sure,” he said absently.

The smile returned as the girl reached into a suit pocket. She moved closer, proudly opened her fist to reveal something in the palm of her hand. Flinx saw that it was a miniature piano, fashioned entirely from filigree gold and real pearls.

“It really plays,” she told him excitedly. She touched the tiny keys and Flinx listened to the almost invisible notes. “It’s for my dolly.”

“It’s very pretty,” Flinx complimented, remembering when such a toy would have cost him more credit than he ever thought he would possess. He glanced anxiously past her. “Where is your daddy right now?”

“Over here.”

Flinx turned to the source of those simple, yet somehow threatening words.

“No, I already know you’re called Flinx,” the man said, with a wave of one ring-laden hand. “I already know a good deal about you.”

Two men emerged from the globular shadow. One had a sunk-in skull half melted away by some tremendous heat and only crudely reconstructed by medical engineers. His smaller companion exhibited more composure now than he had when he’d held the syringe on Flinx in the bathroom at Symm’s.

The merchant was talking again. “My name is Conda Challis. You have perhaps heard of me?”

Flinx nodded slowly. “I know of your company.”

“Good,” Challis replied. “It’s always gratifying to be recognized, and it saves certain explanations.” The uncomfortable pulsing in Flinx’s shoulder was beginning to subside as the man settled his bulk in a waiting chair. A round, flat table of metal and plastic separated him from Flinx. The half-faced man and his stunted shadow made themselves comfortable—but not too comfortable, Flinx noted—nearby.

“Mahnahmi, I see you’ve been entertaining our guest,” Challis said to the girl “Now go somewhere and play like a good child.”

“No. I want to stay and watch.”

“Watch?” Flinx tensed. “Watch what?”

“He’s going to use the jewel. I know he is!” She turned to Challis. “Please let me stay and watch, Daddy! I won’t say a word, I promise.”

“Sorry, child. Not this time.”

“Not this time, not this time,” she repeated. “You never let me watch. Never, never, never!” As quick as a sun shower turns bright, her face broke into a wide smile. “Oh, all right, but at least let me say good-bye.”

When Challis impatiently nodded his approval she all but jumped into Flinx’s arms. Much to his distress, she wrapped herself around him, gave him a wet smack on one cheek, and whispered into his right ear in a lilting, immature soprano, “Better do what he tells you to, Flinx, or he’ll rip out your guts.”

Somehow he managed to keep a neutral expression on his face as she pulled away with a disarmingly innocent smile.

“Bye-bye. Maybe Daddy will let us play later.” Turning, she skipped from the room, exiting through a doorway in the far wall.

“An . . . interesting little girl,” Flinx commented, swallowing.

“Isn’t she charming,” Challis agreed. “Her mother was exceptionally beautiful.”

“You’re married, then? You don’t strike me as the type.”

The merchant appeared truly shocked. “Me, life-mated? My dear boy! Her mother was purchased right here in Drallar, a number of years ago. Her pedigree claimed she possessed exceptional talents. They turned out to be of a very minor nature, suitable for parlor tricks but little else.

“However, she could perform certain other functions, so I didn’t feel the money wholly wasted. The only drawback was the birth of that infant, resulting from my failure to report on time for a standard debiojection. I didn’t think the delay would be significant.” He shrugged. “But I was wrong. The mother pleased me, so I permitted her to have the child. . . . I tend to be hard on my property, however. The mother did not live long thereafter. At times I feel the child has inherited her mother’s minuscule talents, but every attempt to prove so has met with failure.”

“Yet despite this, you keep her,” Flinx noted curiously. For a second Challis appeared almost confused, a sensation which passed rapidly.

“It is not so puzzling, really. Considering the manner of the mother’s death, of which the child is unaware, I feel some small sense of responsibility for her. While I have no particular love for infants, she obeys with an alacrity her older counterparts could emulate.” He grinned broadly and Flinx had the impression of a naked white skull filled with broken icicles.

“She’s old enough to know that if she doesn’t, I’ll simply sell her.” Challis leaned forward, wheezing with the effort of folding his chest over his protruding belly. “However, you were not brought here to discuss the details of my domestic life.”

“Then why was I brought here? I heard something about a jewel. I know a little about good stones, but I’m certainly no expert.”

“A jewel, yes.” Challis declined further oral explanation; instead, he manipulated several switches concealed by the far overhang of the table between them. The lights dimmed and Challis’ pair of ominous attendants disappeared, though Flinx could sense their alert presence nearby. They were between him and the only clearly defined door.

Flinx’s attention was quickly diverted by a soft humming. As the top of the table slid to one side, he could see the construction involved. The table was a thick safe. Something rose from the central hollow, a sculpture of glowing components encircled by a spiderweb of thin wiring. At the sculpture’s center was a transparent globe of glassalloy. It contained something that looked like a clear natural crystal about the size of a man’s head. It glowed with a strange inner light. At first glance it resembled quartz, but longer inspection showed that here was a most unique silicate.

The center of the crystal was hollow and irregular in outline. It was filled with maroon and green particles which drifted with dreamy slowness in a clear viscous fluid. The particles were fine as dust motes. In places they nearly reached to the edges of the crystal walls, though they tended to remain compacted near its middle. Occasionally the velvety motes would jerk and dart about sharply, as if prodded by some unseen force. Flinx stared into its shifting depths as if mesmerized. . . .

On Earth lived a wealthy man named Endrickson, who recently seemed to be walking about in a daze. His family was fond of him and he was well liked by his friends. He also held the grudging admiration of his competitors. Endrickson, though he looked anything but sharp at the moment, was one of those peculiar geniuses who possesses no creative ability of his own, but who instead exhibits the rare power to marshal and direct the talents of those more gifted than himself.

At 5:30 on the evening of the 25th of Fifth Month, Endrickson moved more slowly than usual through the heavily guarded corridors of The Plant. The Plant had no name—a precaution insisted on by nervous men whose occupation it was to worry about such things—and was built into the western slope of the Andes.

As he passed the men and women and insectoid thranx who labored in The Plant, Endrickson nodded his greetings and was always gratified with respectful replies. They were all moving in the opposite direction, since the work day had ended for them. They were on their way—these many, many-talented beings—to their homes in Santiago and Lima and New Delhi and New York, as well as to the Terran thranx colonies in the Amazon basin.

One who was not yet off duty came stiffly to attention as Endrickson turned a corner in a last, shielded passageway. On seeing that the visitor was not his immediate superior—a gentleman who wore irritation, like his underwear, outside his trousers—the well-armed guard relaxed. Endrickson, he knew, was everyone’s friend.

“Hello . . . Davis,” the boss said slowly.

The man saluted, then studied him intently, disturbed at his appearance.

“Good evening, sir. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, thank you, Davis,” Endrickson replied. “I had a last-minute thought . . . won’t be long.” He seemed to be staring at something irregular and shiny that he held cupped in one palm. “Do you want to see my identity card?”

The guard smiled, processed the necessary slip of treated plastic, and admitted Endrickson to the chamber beyond which contained the shop, a vast cavern made even vaster by precision engineering and necessity. This was the heart of The Plant.

Moving with assurance, Endrickson walked down ‘the ramp to the sealed floor of the enlarged cavern, passing enormous machines, long benches, and great constructs of metal and other materials. The workshop was deserted now. It would remain so until ‘the early-morning shift came on five hours later.

One-third of the way across the floor he halted before an imposing door of dun-colored metal, the only break in a solid wall of the same material that closed off a spacious section of the cavern. Using his free hand while still staring at the thing in his other hand, he pulled out a small ring that held several metal cylinders. He selected a cylinder, pressed his thumb into the recessed area at one end of it, then inserted the other into a small hole in the door and shoved forward. A complex series of radiations was produced and absorbed by the doorway mechanism. These passed judgment on both the cylinder and the person holding it.

Satisfied that the cylinder was coded properly and that its owner was of a stable frame of mind, the door sang soft acquiescence and shrank into the floor. Endrickson passed through and the door noted his passage, then rose to close the gap behind him.

A not quite finished device loomed ahead, nearly filling this part of the cavern. It was surrounded by an attending army of instruments: monitoring devices, tools in repose, checkout panels and endless crates of assorted components.

Endrickson ignored this familiar collage as he headed purposefully for a single black panel. He thoughtfully eyed the switches and controls thereon, then used another of his ring cylinders to bring the board to life. Lights came on obediently and gauges registered for his inspection.

The vast bulk of the unfinished KK-drive starship engine loomed above him. Final completion would and could take place only in free space, since the activated posigravity field of the drive interacting with a planet’s gravitational field would produce a series of quakes and tectonic adjustments of cataclysmic proportions.

But that fact didn’t concern Endrickson just now. A far more, intriguing thought had overwhelmed him. Was the drive unit complete enough to function? he wondered. Why not observe the interesting possibilities firsthand?

He glanced at the beauty in his palm, then used a second cylinder to unlock a tightly sealed box at one end of the black board. Beneath the box were several switches, all enameled a bright crimson. Endrickson heard a klaxon yell shrilly somewhere, but he ignored the alarm as he pressed switches in proper order. His anticipation was enormous. With the fluid-state switches activated, instructions began flowing through the glass-plastic-metal monolith. Far off on the other side of the locked door, Endrickson could hear people shouting, running. Meanwhile the drive’s thermonuclear spark was activated and Endrickson saw full engagement register on the appropriate monitors.

He nodded with satisfaction. Final relays interlocked, communicated with the computermind built into the engine. For a brief second the Kurita-Kita field was brought into existence. Momentarily the thought flashed through Endrickson’s mind that this was something that should never be done except in the deep reaches of free space.

But his last thoughts were reserved for the exquisite loveliness and strange words locked within the object he held in his hand. . . .

Had the unit been finished there might have been a major disaster. But it was not complete, and so the field collapsed quickly, unable to sustain itself and to expand to its full, propulsive diameter.

So, although windows were shattered and a few older buildings toppled and the Church of Santa Avila de Seville’s ancient steeple cracked six hundred kilometers away in downtown Valparaiso, only a few things in the immediate vicinity showed any significant alteration.

However, Endrickson, The Plant, and the nearby technologic community of Santa Rosa de Cristóbal (pop. 3,200) vanished. The 13,352-meter-high mountain at whose base the town had risen and in whose bowels The Plant had been carved was replaced by a 1,200-meter-deep crater lined with molten glass.

But since logic insisted the event could have been nothing other than an accident, it was so ruled by the experts called upon to produce an explanation—experts who did not have access to the same beauty which had so totally bedazzled the now-vaporized Endrickson. . . .

Flinx blinked, awakening from the Janus jewel’s tantalizing loveliness. It continued to pulse with its steady, natural yellow luminescence.