Authors: Alan Dean Foster
“What does this suggest to you?” the Baron asked.
Josephson looked up from the scope, shaking his head slowly.
“It suggests,” the Baron hissed tightly, “that the structures may be built deeply into the mountains. By whom or how deeply we will not know, unless we go down to see for ourselves.”
“Wouldn’t advise that,” a new voice boomed.
Josephson gave a cry and stumbled out of the chair, pressing himself back against the console. The technician and the Baron whirled, both reaching simultaneously for their sidearms.
An apparition stood solidly in the center of the room. It was a good three meters tall, standing on its hind legs, and its bulk nearly dented the deck. Huge yellow eyes glared balefully down at them.
“Wouldn’t advise it,” the apparition repeated. “Get lost.”
The Baron’s hand beamer was aimed—but now there was nothing to shoot at.
“Hallucinations,” Josephson suggested shakily, after his voice returned.
The Baron said nothing, walked to the place where the creature had stood. He knelt in a way no human could, hunting for something on the floor. “A very hirsute hallucination,” he commented, examining several thick, coarse hairs. His mind was churning furiously.
“You know I’ve never been outside the main installation,” Josephson declared. “What was it?”
“An Ujurrian primitive,” the Baron explained thoughtfully, rubbing the hairs between false-skinned fingers
“What . . . what was it talking about?”
Disgust was evident in the Baron’s voice. “There are times when I wonder how you humans ever achieved half of what you have.”
“Now, look,” the executive began angrily, “there’s no need to get abusive.”
“No,” the Baron admitted. After all, they were still within Commonwealth territory. “There is no reason to get abusive. I apologize Josephson-sir.” Turning, they left the room and the wide-eyed technician.
“Where are we going now?”
“To do what the creature said.”
“Just a minute.” Josephson eyed the unblinking AAnn aristocrat firmly. “If the Madam is in trouble down there . . .”
“
Sssisssttt
. . . use your brain, warm-blood,” the Baron snorted. “Where there was a small base there is now a rapidly growing city. Where there used to be a single welcoming signal there is now a multitude of peculiar local communications. From a few clusters of cave-dwelling natives, there comes a teleport who advises us curtly not to land. Who advises us curtly—in your vernacular I might add, Josephson-sir—to make haste elsewhere.
“I think it reasonable, considering the evidence, for us to comply quickly. I act according to realities and not emotions, Josephson-sir. That is why I will always be one who gives orders and you will always be one who takes them.” He hurried his pace, pushing past the man and leaving him standing, to gape down the corridor after him.
As directed by the Baron, the freighter left Ulru-Ujurr’s vicinity at maximum velocity. Resting in his sumptuous cabin, the Baron pondered what had taken place during his absence. Something of considerable importance, with unknowable implications for the future.
Of one thing he was certain: Madam Rudenuaman and the enterprise they had collaborated on no longer existed. But there could be a host of reasons why.
That the natives were more than ignorant savages now seemed certain . . . but how much more certain he could not say. A single genius among them could have been mnemonically instructed to deliver what had been, after all, an extremely brief message. A new experimental device could have projected him aboard the freighter.
The burgeoning city below could be the product of the Church, the Commonwealth, a business competitor, or an alien interloper. This section of the Arm was still mostly unexplored; anything could be setting itself up on an isolated, unvisited world like Ulru-Ujurr.
He had done well by the venture. There were a number of small stones still in his possession, which he could ration out slowly to the Commonwealth over the years. His status at the Emperor’s court had risen considerably, though the Imperial psychotechnicians’ scheme of implanting suicidal impulse-plays into the Janus jewels and then selling them to important humans and thranx would now have to be abandoned.
That was too bad, for the program had been very successful. Yet this could have been worse. Whatever had wiped out the installation and Madam Rudenuaman could also have taken him, had he not gone in pursuit of the human child.
A pity the way she happened to encounter that human patrol vessel, forcing him to abandon any hope of eliminating her. Almost as if she’d known what she was doing. But it did not matter much, he knew. Let her rave about Ulru-Ujurr to any who might be credulous enough to listen—for now that world was no concern of his.
In the future, given the inevitable triumph of the Empire, he could return with an Imperial fleet, instead of skulking about in disguise like this and in the forced company of despised mammals and insects. Then he might re-establish control, nay, sovereignty over that enigmatic world, holding all the glory and profits to be gained therefrom for himself and the house of WW.
Maybe so, he mused pleasurably, maybe so.
He did not hear the voice that echoed in response from the depths of Someplace Else. A voice that echoed . . . maybe not!
The day dawned bright and warm. Sylzenzuzex found she could walk about freely with only the flimsiest covering.
She had developed a special rapport with the shy adolescent female called Mask, who had turned out to be a wonderful guide to the history and unexpectedly complex interrelationships of the Ujurrians. So Sylzenzuzex was reveling in her study of a subject dear to her heart.
Perhaps someday it would form the basis for a monograph, or even a full dissertation, one important enough to win reinstatement in the Church for her. Although the discovery that the Church had indeed been responsible for quarantining these people continued to cause her to question that organization’s standards, and her own future participation in it.
She left her quarters in the building, intending to mention yesterday’s revelations to Flinx. But he did not seem to be anywhere around, nor was he at the landing strip school, nor at any of the factory centers ringing the old mine. One of the ursinoids finally directed her to a place at the far end of the valley, where she had once fled Rudenuaman’s grasp. After a fair climb up a steep bluff, she found him sitting cross-legged on a ledge consorting with a local insect no larger than his finger. It was enameled green and ochre, with yellow-spotted wings.
Pip was darting through the nearby bushes, worrying an exasperated, sinuous mammal half his size.
From here one could look back down the full length of the valley, see the azure lake cradled between snowcapped peaks, and watch the steady progress of construction along the south shore.
When Flinx finally turned to her, he wore an expression so sorrowful it shocked her.
“What’s the matter . . . why so sad?” she inquired.
“So who’s sad?”
She shook her valentine-shaped head slowly. When he didn’t respond, she gestured toward the lake valley.
“I don’t know what you have to be disappointed about. Your charges seem to have taken to your game of civilization with plenty of enthusiasm. Is it the ship Maybeso boarded? Whatever he told them must have been effective. They haven’t come back, and there’s been no sign of another ship in the months since.”
By way of reply he pointed toward the north shore of the lake. A vast metal superstructure was rising there. It was nearly as long as the lake itself.
“Something about the ship?”
He shook his head. “No . . . about the reason behind it. Syl, I’ve only accomplished half of what I set out to do. I know that my mother’s dead, but I still don’t know who my father was or what happened to him.” He stared hard at her. “And I want to know, Syl. Maybe he’s long dead, too, or alive and even a worse human animal than my sister turned out to be; but
I want to know.
I
will
know!” he finished with sudden vehemence.
“How does that connect with the ship?”
Now he cracked a wan smile. “Why do you think the Ujurrians are building a ship?”
“I don’t know . . . for fun, to explore . . . why?”
“It’s my present from them—Moam’s little surprise. He knows I want to go looking for my father, so they’re doing their best to help me look. I told them they couldn’t construct a KK-drive ship here . . . that it had to be done clear of a planet’s gravity. You know what he said? ‘We fix . . . too much trouble other way.’
“He located an Ujurrian—skinniest one I ever saw—who thinks only in mathematical terms. She’s so weird—her name-translation came out as ‘Integrator’—she can almost understand Maybeso. Moam set her the problem. Two weeks ago she cracked the problem of landing in a gravity well on KK-drive. Commonwealth scientists have been trying to solve that puzzle for a couple of hundred years.”
He sighed. “All to help me find my father. Syl . . . what happens if the Ujurrians don’t find the rest of the cosmos, our civilization, to their liking? What if they decide to ‘play’ with it?
What have we unleashed?
”
She sat back on trulegs and foothands and pondered. Long minutes passed. The gem-encrusted bug flew away.
“If nothing else,” she told him finally, staring down at the ship, “a way to go home. You worry overmuch, Flinx. I don’t think our civilization will hold much of interest for these creatures. It’s
you
they’re interested in. Remember what Maybeso said . . . if this new game bores them, they’ll go back to their old one.”
Flinx considered this, appeared to brighten. Then abruptly he rose, brushed the dust from his legs. “I suppose you’re right, Syl. I can’t do any good worrying about it. When they finish the ship, it
will
be time to go home. I need Mother Mastiff’s acerbity, and I need to lose myself again, for a while.” He glanced up at her oddly. “Will you help?”
Sylzenzuzex turned great, glowing multifaceted eyes on Pip, watched as the minidrag folded pleated wings to dive down a burrow after the retreating mammal. Sounds of scuffling came from below.
“It promises to be intriguing . . . from a purely scientific point of view, of course,” she murmured.
“Of course,” Flinx acknowledged, properly straight-faced.
A narrow reptilian head popped out of the burrow and a pointed tongue flicked rapidly in their direction. Pip stared smugly back at them, a Cheshire cat with scales. . . .
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 the
Star Wars
®
novel
The Approaching Storm.
He is also the author of numerous nonfiction articles on film, science, and scuba diving, as well as the novelizations of several films, including
Star Wars,
the first three
Alien
films, and
Alien Nation.
His novel
Cyber Way
won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work to ever do so.
Foster’s love of the faraway and exotic has led him to travel extensively. He’s lived in Tahiti and French Polynesia, traveled to Europe, Asia, and throughout the Pacific, and has explored the back roads of Tanzania and Kenya. He has rappeled into New Mexico’s fabled Lechugilla Cave, eaten panfried pirhana (lots of bones, tastes a lot like trout) in Peru, white-water rafted the length of the Zambezi’s Batoka Gorge, and driven solo the length and breadth of Namibia.
Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, reside in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from a turn-of-the-century miners’ brothel. He is presently at work on several new novels and media projects.
Visit the author at his Web site at
www.alandeanfoster.com
.
Books By Alan Dean Foster
The Black Hole
Cachalot
Dark Star
The Metrognome and Other Stories
Midworld
Nor Crystal Tears
Sentenced to Prism
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
Star Trek
®
Logs One-Ten
Voyage to the City of the Dead
. . . Who Needs Enemies?
With Friends Like These . . .
Mad Amos
Parallelites
THE ICERIGGER TRILOGY:
Icerigger
Mission to Moulokin
The Deluge Drivers
THE ADVENTURES OF FLINX OF THE COMMONWEALTH:
For Love of Mother-Not
The Tar-Aiym Krang
Orphan Star
The End of the Matter
Bloodhype
Flinx In Flux
Mid-Flinx
Reunion
THE DAMNED
Book One: A Call to Arms
Book Two: The False Mirror
Book Three: The Spoils of War
THE FOUNDING OF THE COMMONWEALTH
Phylogenesis
Dirge
Diuturnity’s Dawn
To learn more about other great ebook titles from Ballantine, please visit
www.randomhouse.com/BB/ebooks.htm
.
To enjoy other great science fiction and fantasy titles visit
www.delreydigital.com
.
A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1977 by Alan Dean Foster
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto, Canada.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-30376
eISBN: 978-0-345-45452-2
v3.0