Orphan Star (3 page)

“Did you ever see one before?” Challis inquired.

“No. I’ve heard of them, though. I know enough to recognize one.”

Challis must have touched another concealed switch because a low-intensity light sprang to life at the table’s edge. Fumbling with a drawer built into the table, the merchant then produced a small boxy affair which resembled an abstract carving of a bird in flight, its wings on the downbeat. It was designed to fit on a human head. A few exposed wires and modules broke the device’s otherwise smooth lines.

“Do you know what this is?” the merchant asked.

Flinx confessed he did not.

“It’s the operator’s headset,” Challis explained slowly, placing it over his stringy hair. “The headset and the machinery encapsulated in that table transcribe the thoughts of the human mind and convey them to the jewel. The jewel has a certain property.”

Challis intoned “property” with the sort of spiritual reverence most men would reserve for describing their gods or mistresses.

The merchant ceased fumbling with unseen controls and with the headset. He folded his hands before his squeezed out paunch and stared at the crystal. “I’m concentrating on something now,” he told his absorbed listener softly. “It takes a little training, though some can do without it.”

As Flinx watched raptly, the particles in the jewel’s center began to rearrange themselves. Their motion was no longer random, and it was clear that Challis’ thoughts were directing the realignment. Here was something about which rumor abounded, but which few except the very rich and privileged had actually seen,

“The larger the crystal,” Challis continued, obviously straining to produce some as yet unknown result, “the more colors present in the colloid and the more valuable the stone. A single color is the general rule. This stone contains two and is one of the largest and finest in existence, though even small stones are rare.

“There are stones with impurities present which create three- and four-color displays, and one stone of five-color content is known. You would not believe who owns it, or what is done with it.”

Flinx watched as the colors within the crystal’s center began to assume semisolid shape and form at Challis’ direction. “No one,” the merchant continued, “has been able to synthesize the oleaginous liquid in which the colored particulate matter drifts suspended. Once a crystal is broken, it is impossible to repair. Nor can the colloid be transferred in whole or in part to a new container. A break in the intricate crystal-liquid formation destroys the stone’s individual piezoelectric potential. Fortunately the crystal is as hard as corundum, though nowhere near as strong as artificials like duralloy.”

Though the outlines shifted and trembled constantly, never quite firmly fixed, they took on the recognizable shapes of several persons. One appeared to be an exaggeratedly Junoesque woman. Of the others, one was a humanoid male and the third something wholly alien. A two-sided chamber rose around them and was filled with strange objects that never held their form for more than a few seconds. Although their consistency fluctuated, the impression they conveyed did not. Flinx saw quite enough to turn his stomach before everything within the crystal dissolved once again to a cloud of glowing dust.

Looking up and across from the crystal he observed that the merchant had removed the headpiece and was wiping the perspiration from his high forehead with a perfumed cloth. Illuminated by the subdued light concealed in the table edge below, his face became that of an unscrupulous imp.

“Easy to begin,” he murmured with exhaustion, “but a devilishly difficult reaction to sustain. When your attention moves from one figure, the others begin to collapse. And when the play involves complex actions performed by several such creations, it is nigh impossible, especially when one tends to become so . . . involved with the action.”

“What’s all this got to do with me?” Flinx broke in. Although the question was directed at Challis, Flinx’s attention was riveted on those two half-sensed figures guarding the exit. Neither Nolly nor Nanger had stirred, but that didn’t mean they had relaxed their watch, either. And the door they guarded was hardly likely to be unlocked. Flinx could see several openings in the floor-to-ceiling glassalloy wall which overlooked the city, but he knew it was a sheer drop of at least fifty meters to the private street below.

“You see,” Challis told him, “while I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve inherited a most successful family business in the Challis Company, neither do I count myself a dilettante. I have improved the company through the addition of people with many diverse talents.” He gestured toward the door. “Nolly-dear and Nanger there are two such examples. I’m hoping that you, dear boy, will be yet another.”

“I’m still not sure I understand,” Flinx said slowly, stalling.

“That can be easily rectified.” Challis steepled his fingers. “To hold the suspended particles of the Janus jewels, to manipulate the particulate clay, requires a special kind of mind. Though my mental scenarios are complex, to enjoy them fully I require a surrogate mind.
Yours!
I shall instruct you in what is desired and you will execute my designs within the jewel.”

Flinx thought back to what he had glimpsed a few moments ago in the incomplete playlet, to what Challis had wrought within the tiny god-world of the jewel. In many ways he was mature far beyond his seventeen years, and he had seen a great many things in his time. Though some of them would have sickened the stomach of an experienced soldier, most of them had been harmless perversions. But beneath all the superficial cordiality and the polite requests for cooperation that Challis had expressed, there bubbled a deep lake of untreated sewage, and Flinx was not about to serve as the merchant’s pilot across it.

Surviving a childhood in the marketplace of Drallar had made Flinx something of a realist. So he did not reel at the merchant’s proposal and say what was on his mind: “You revolt and nauseate me, Conda Challis, and I refuse to have anything to do with you or your sick private fantasies.” Instead he said: “I don’t know where you got the idea that I could be of such help to you.”

“You cannot deny your own history,” Challis sniggered. “I have acquired a small but interesting file on you. Most notably, your peculiar talents figured strongly in assisting a competitor of mine named Maxim Malaika. Prior to that incident and subsequent to it you have been observed demonstrating abnormal mental abilities through the medium of cheap sideshow tricks for the receipt of a few credits from passersby. I can offer you considerably more for the use of your talents. Deny that if you can.”

“Okay, so I can work a few gimmicks and fool a few tourists,” Flinx conceded, while studying the thin silvery bracelets linking his wrists and trying to find a hidden catch. “But what you call my ‘talents’ are erratic, undisciplined, and beyond my control much of the time. I don’t know when they come or why they go.”

Challis was nodding in a way Flinx didn’t like. “Naturally. I understand. All talents—artistic, athletic, whatever kind—require training and discipline to develop them fully. I intend to help you in mastering yours. By way of example . . .” Challis took out something that looked like an ancient pocket watch but wasn’t, pressed a tiny button. Instantly the breath fled from Flinx’s lungs, and he arced forward. His hands tightened into fists as he shuddered, and he felt as if someone had taken a file to the bones in his wrists. The pain passed suddenly and he was able to lean limply backward, gasping, trembling. When he found he could open his eyes again, he saw that Challis was staring into them, expectantly interested. His stare was identical to the one a chemist would lavish on a laboratory animal just injected with a possibly fatal substance.

“That . . . wasn’t necessary,” Flinx managed to whisper.

“Possibly not,” a callous Challis agreed, “but it was instructive. I’ve seen your eyes roving while you’ve talked. Really, you can’t get out of here, you know. Even should you somehow manage to reach the central shaft beyond Nolly and Nanger, there are others waiting.” The merchant paused, then asked abruptly, “Now, is what I wish truly so abhorrent to you? You’ll be well rewarded. I offer you a secure existence in my company. In return you may relax as you like. You’ll be called on only to help operate the jewel.”

“It’s the ethics of the matter that trouble me, not the salary,” Flinx insisted.

“Oh, ethics.” Challis was amused, and he didn’t try to hide it. “Surely you can overcome that. The alternative is much less subjective.” He was tapping two fingers idly on the face of the pseudo-watch.

While pretending to enjoy it all, Flinx was thinking. His wrists were still throbbing, and the ache penetrated all the way to his shoulders. He could stand that pain again, but not often. And anything more intense would surely knock him out. His vision still had an alarming tendency to lose focus.

Yet . . . he
couldn’t
do what Challis wanted. Those images—his stomach churned as he remembered—to participate in such obscenities . . . No! Flinx was considering what to say, anything to forestall the pain again, when something dry and slick, pressed against his cheek. It was followed by the feathery caress of something unseen but familiar at the back of his neck.

Challis obviously saw nothing in the darkness, since when he spoke again his voice was as controlled as before. His fingers continued to play lazily over the ovoid control box. “Come, dear boy, is there really need to prolong this further? I’m sure you gain less pleasure from it than do I.” A finger stopped tapping, edged toward the button.

“HEY!”

The shout came from the vicinity of the door and was followed by muffled curses and dimly perceived movement. Challis’ two guards were dancing crazily about, waving and swatting at something unseen.

Challis’ voice turned vicious, angry for the first time. “What’s the matter with you idiots?”

Nanger replied nervously, “There’s something in here with us.”

“You are both out of your small minds. We are eight floors from the surface and carefully screened against mechanical intruders. Nothing could possibly—”

Nanger interrupted the merchant’s assurance with a scream the likes of which few men ever encounter. Flinx was half expecting it. Even so, the sound sent a chill down his spine. What it did to Nolly, or to Challis, who was suddenly scrambling over the back of the chair and fumbling at his belt, could only be imagined.

Flinx heard a crash, followed by a collision with something heavy and out of control. It was Nanger. The half-face had both hands clamped tight over his eyes and was staggering wildly in all directions.

“The jewel . . . watch the jewel!” a panicky Challis howled. Moving on hands and knees with surprising rapidity, he reached the edge of the table and hit a switch. Instantly the light went out. In the faint illumination from the wall window Flinx could see the merchant disconnect the top of the apparatus, the globe containing the crystal itself, and cradle it protectively in his hands as he removed it.

Suddenly there was another source of light in the room, in the form of sharp intermittent green flares from a needler. Nolly had the weapon out and was sparring desperately with an adversary that swooped and dove at him.

Then something began to buzz for attention within the table, and Challis lifted a receiver and listened. Flinx listened too, but could hear nothing. Whatever was being said elicited some furious responses from the merchant, whose easygoing manner had by now vanished completely. He mumbled something into the pickup, then let it snap back into the table. The look he threw Flinx in the near blackness was a mixture of fury and curiosity. “I bid you adieu, dear boy. I hope we have the opportunity to meet again. I thought you merely a beggar with talents too big for his head. Apparently you may be something more. I’m sorry you elected not to cooperate. Your maternal line hinted that you might,” Challis sneered. “I never repeat mistakes. Be warned.” Still scrambling on hands and knees, he made his way to the hidden door. As it opened, Flinx caught a glimpse of a small golden figure standing there.

“Listening again, brat-child?” Challis muttered as he rose to his feet. He slapped the girl, grabbing her by one arm. She started to cry and looked away from Challis as the door cycled shut.

As Flinx turned his attention back to the other door, his mind was already awhirl at an offhand comment of the merchant’s. But before he could consider all the implications of the remark, Flinx was hit with a tsunami of maniacal mental energy that nearly knocked him from the couch. It was forceful beyond imagining, powerful past anything he had ever felt from a human mind before. It held screaming images of Conda Challis coming slowly apart, like a toy doll. These visions were mixed haphazardly with other pictures, and several views of Flinx himself drifted among them.

He winced under that cyclonic wail. Some of the fleeting images were far worse than anything Challis had tried to create within the jewel. The merchant’s mind may have been one of utter depravity, but the brain behind this mental storm did not stop with anything that petty.

Flinx stared back at the closing door, getting his last view of black eyes set in an angelic face. In that unformed body, he knew, dwelt a tormented child. Yet even that revelation did not spark the same wild excitement in him that Challis’ last casual statement had. “Your maternal line,” the merchant had said.

Flinx knew more about the universe than he did about his real parents. If Challis knew even a rumor of Flinx’s ancestry . . . the merchant was going to get his wish for another meeting.

Chapter Two

The door to the tower’s central shaft opened as the only other occupant of the room sought escape. Instead of an empty elevator, he found himself confronted by a figure of gargantuan proportions that lifted him squealing from the floor and removed the needler. The new arrival quickly rendered the weapon harmless by crumpling it in a fist that had the force of a mechanical press. Nolly’s fingers, which happened to be wrapped around the needler, suffered a similar fate, and a single shriek of pain preceded unconsciousness.

Small Symm ducked to clear the top of the portal, dropping the limp human shape to one side. Simultaneously a long lean shape settled easily about Flinx’s shoulders, and a single damp point flickered familiarly at his ear. Reaching back, Flinx scratched under the minidrag’s jaw and felt the long muscular form relax. “Thanks, Pip.”

Rising from the chair, he moved around the table-safe and played with the controls on the other side. Before very long he succeeded in lighting the entire room.

Where Nanger had crashed and stumbled, the expensive furnishings lay broken and twisted. His body, already growing stiff with venom-inspired death, lay crumpled across one bent chair. The unmoving form of his companion was slumped to one side of the doorway. A mangled hand oozed blood.

“I was wondering,” Flinx informed Symm, “when you’d get here.”

“It was difficult,” the bartender apologized, his voice echoing up from that bottomless pit of a chest. “Your pet was impatient, disappearing and then reappearing when I fell behind. How did he know how to find you?”

Flinx affectionately eyed the now somnolent scaly head. “He smelled my fear. Life-water knows I was broadcasting it loud enough.” He held out manacled wrists. “Can you do something about these? I have to go after Challis.”

Symm glanced at the cuffs, a look of mild surprise on his face. “I never thought revenge was part of your makeup, Flinx.”

Reaching down with a massive thumb and forefinger, Symm carefully pinched one of the narrow confining bands. A moment’s pressure caused the metal to snap with an explosive
pop.
Repeating the action freed Flinx’s other hand.

Looking at his right wrist as he rubbed it with his left hand, Flinx could detect no mark—nothing to indicate the intense pain that the device had inflicted.

He debated how to respond to his friend’s accusation. How could he hope to explain the importance of Challis’ remark to this good-natured hulk? “I think Challis may know something of my real parents. I can’t simply forget about it.”

The unaccustomed bitterness of Symm’s answer startled him. “What are they to you? What have they done for you? They have caused you to be treated like chattel, like a piece of property. If not for the intervention of Mother Mastiff you’d be a personal slave now, perhaps to something like Challis. Your real parents—you owe them nothing, least of all the satisfaction of showing them you’ve survived!”

“I don’t know the circumstances of my abandonment, Symm,” Flinx finally countered. “I have to find out. I
have
to.”

The bartender, an orphan himself, shrugged massively. “You’re an idealistic misfit, Flinx.”

“And you’re an even bigger one,” the boy shot back, “which is why you’re going to help me.”

Symm muttered something unintelligible, which might have been a curse. Then again, it might not. “Where did he get out?”

Flinx indicated the hidden doorway, and Symm walked over to the spot and leaned against the metal panel experimentally. The hinging collapsed inward with surprising ease. Beyond, they discovered a short corridor, which led to a small private lift that conveyed, them rapidly to the base of the luxurious tower.

“How did you get in, anyway?” Flinx asked his friend.

Symm twitched. “I told the security people I met that I had an appointments pass, the usual procedure in an inurb like this.”

“Didn’t anyone demand to see it?”

Symm didn’t crack a smile. “Would you? Only one guard did, and I think he’ll be all right if he gets proper care. Careful now,” the giant warned as the lift came to a stop. Crouching to one side, he sprang out as soon as the door slid open sufficiently to let him pass. But there was no ambush awaiting them. Instead, they found themselves in a ground-car garage, which showed ample sign of having been recently vacated.

“Keep your monumental ears open,” Flinx advised quietly. “See if you can find out where Challis has fled. I’m going to work my own sources. . . .”

When they left through the open doorway of the garage, no one challenged their departure, though hidden eyes observed it. But those behind the eyes were grateful to see the pair go.

“You’re sure they’re not still here?” Symm wondered aloud. “Someone could have taken the car as a diversion.”

Flinx replied with the kind of unnerving assurance Symm didn’t pretend to understand, but had come to accept. “No, they’re no longer in this vicinity.”

The pair parted outside the last encircling wall of the inurb. There was no formality, no shaking of hands—nothing of the sort was required between these two.

“If you learn anything get in touch with me at Mother Mastiff’s shop,” Flinx instructed the giant. “Whatever happens, I’ll let you know my plans.”

As he made his way back through the market’s concentric circles, he clutched his cloak tightly about him. The last drops of the morning rain were falling. In the distance an, always hopeful sun showed signs of emerging from the low, water-heavy clouds.

Plenty of activity swirled about him. At this commercial hub of the Commonwealth, business operated round the clock.

Flinx knew a great many inhabitants of this world-within-a-world on sight. Some were wealthy and great, some poor and great. A few were not human and more were less human than others though all claimed membership in the same race.

Passing the stall of the sweets vendor Kiki, he kept his attention resolutely ahead. It was too early and his stomach was too empty for candy. Besides, his innards still rocked slightly from the aftereffects of Challis’ seemingly harmless jewelry. So, at Chairman Nils he bought a small loaf of bran bread coated with nut butter.

Nils was a fortyish food vendor with an authoritative manner. Everyone called him the Chairman. He ruled his corner of the marketplace with the air of a dictator, never suspecting that he held this power because his fellow sellers and hawkers found it amusing to humor his gentle madness. There were never any delusions in his baked goods, however. Flinx took a ferocious bite out of the triangular loaf, enjoying the occasional crunch of chopped nuts woven into the brown butter.

A glance at the sky still hinted at the possibility of the sun breaking through, a rare occurrence in usually cloud-shrouded Drallar.

His snack finished, Flinx began moving through a section filled with handsome, permanent shopfronts—a section that was considerably different from the region of makeshift shacks and stores in which he had been raised. When he’d first proposed shifting the ancient stall from the noisome depths of the marketplace Mother Mastiff had protested vociferously. “I wouldn’t know how to act,” she had argued, “What do I know about treating with fancy customers and rich folks?”

“Believe me, Mother”—though they both knew she wasn’t his real mother, she acted as one to half the homeless in Drallar—“they’re the same as your old customers, only now the idiots will come with bigger bankrolls. Besides, what else would I do with all the money Malaika pressed on me?”

Eventually he had been forced to purchase the shop and thus present her with a
fait accompli.
She railed at him for hours when he told her—until she saw the place. Though she continued muttering dire imprecations about everything he showed her—the high-class inventory, the fancy living quarters upstairs, the automatic cooking devices—her resistance collapsed with unsurprising speed.

But there were two things she still refused to do. One was to change her handmade, homemade attire—as esoteric a collage of beads, bells, and cloth as could be imagined. The other was to use the small elevator that ran between the shop proper and the living quarters above. “The day I can’t climb a single flight of stairs,” she remonstrated, “is the day you can have me embalmed, stuffed, and put in the window at a curio sale.” To demonstrate her determination, she proceeded at once to walk the short stairway on all fours.

No one knew how old Mother Mastiff was and she wasn’t telling. Nor would she consent to submit to the extensive cosmetic surgeries Flinx could now afford, or to utilize any other artificial age-reduction device. “I’ve spent too long and too much effort preparin’ for the role of an aged crone, and I’m not about to give up on it now,” she told him. “Besides, the more pitiful and decrepit I look, the more polite and sympathetic the suck—the customers are.”

Not surprisingly, the shop prospered. For one thing, many of the better craftsmen in Drallar had come from equally humble origins, and they enjoyed selling their better products to her.

As Flinx rounded the corner, he saw she was waiting for him at the rear entrance. “Out all night again. I don’t suppose you’ve been anywhere as healthy as the Pink Palace or Sinnyville. D’you want your throat cut before you make eighteen?” she admonished, wagging a warning finger.

“Not much chance of that, Mother.” He brushed past her, but—not to be put off—she followed him into the little storeroom behind the shopfront.

“And that flyin’ gargoyle of yours won’t save you every time, y’ know. Not in a city like this, where everyone has a handshake for you with one palm and a knife for your back in the other. Keep walkin’ about at the depths of the night like this, boy, and one day they’ll be bringin’ you back t’ me pale and empty of juice. And I warn you,” she continued, her voice rising, “it’s a cheap funeral you’ll be gettin’, because I’m not workin’ my fingers to the quick to pay for a fancy send-off for a fool!”

A sharp buzz interrupted the tirade. “So I’ll tell you for the last time, boy . . .”

“Didn’t you hear the door, Mother?” He grinned. “First customer of the morn.”

She peered through the beads in the doorway. “Huh. Tourists, by the look of ‘em. You should see the tanzanite on the woman’s ring.” She hesitated, torn between the need to satisfy affection and avarice simultaneously. “But what’s a couple of customers when . . .” another hesitation, “still, that’s twelve carats at least in the one stone. Their clothes mark ‘em as Terrans maybe, too.” She finally threw up her hands in confusion and disgust. “It’s my punishment. You’re a visitation for the sins of my youth. Get out of my sight, boy. Upstairs and wash yourself, and mind the disinfectant. You smell of the gutter. Dry yourself well, mind . . . you’re not too big or old for me to blush your bottom.” She slipped through the screen and a radical metamorphosis took place.

“Ah sir, madam,” an oily voice cooed soothingly, the voice of everyone’s favorite grandmama, “you honor my small shop. I would have been out sooner but I was tending to my poor grandson who is desperately ill and in need of much expensive treatment. The doctors fear that unless the operation is performed soon, he will lose the power of sight, and—”

Her slick spiel was cut off as the elevator door slid shut behind Flinx. Unlike Mother Mastiff, he had no compunction about using modern conveniences—certainly not now, as tired as he was from the experiences of the night before. As he stepped into the upstairs quarters he did wonder how such disparate tones could issue from the same wrinkled throat.

Later, over the evening meal (prepared by him, since Mother Mastiff had been occupied with customers all day), he began to explain what had happened. For a change, she neither harangued nor chastised him, merely listened politely until he had finished.

“So you’re bound to go after him then, boy,” she finally said.

“I have to, Mother.”

“Why?”

He looked away. “I’d rather not say.”

“All right.” She mopped up the last of her gravy with a piece of bread. “I’ve heard much of the man Challis—plenty of rumors about his tastes in certain matters and none of them good. There’s less known about his businesses, though word is the Challis Company has prospered since he became the head.” She grunted noisily and wiped at her mouth with a corner of her multilayered skirt.

“You sure you got to do this, boy? You’ve only been off-planet once before, y’ know.”

“I think I can handle myself, Mother.”

“Daresay, daresay,” she replied disparagingly. “Though by all the odds you ought to have been dead a dozen times before your fifteenth birthday, and I don’t suppose that grinnin’ devil could have been responsible for savin’ you every time.”

She favored a small artificial tree with a poisonous stare. Pip was coiled comfortably around one of its branches. The minidrag did not look up. The relationship between him and Mother Mastiff had always been one of uneasy truce.

“Before you take off, let me make a call,” she finished.

While Flinx finished his dessert and fought to pry the last bits of thick gelatin from his back teeth, he listened to her mutter into the pickup of a small communicator at the far end of the room. The machine gave her a mobility she hadn’t possessed for decades. It was one of the few conveniences the shop provided that she’d use. It also made her the terror of every city official in any way responsible for the daily operation of the marketplace.

She was back at tableside soon. “Your friend Challis left on the freightliner
Auriga
this morning with his daughter and a covey of servants.” Her expression contorted. “From what I was told, he left in a real hurry. You and that great imbecile Symm must have thrown quite a scare into him, but then the giant’s enough by himself to frighten the polish off a mirror.”

Flinx did not return her inquiring gaze. Instead he played with one edge of the tablecloth. “What’s the
Auriga’s
destination?”

“Hivehom,” she told him. “The Challis Company has a lot of investments on the Mediterranea Plateau. I expect that’s what he’ll head for once he sets down.”