Orphan Star (4 page)

“I’d better get ready?” Flinx rose and started toward his room.

A strong, crinkled hand caught one of his wrists, and a face like a rift valley stared searchingly into his. “Don’t do this, boy,” she begged, her voice low.

He shook his head. “No choice, Mother. I can’t tell you what calls, but call it does. I have to go.”

The pressure did not ease on his wrist. “I don’t know what dealings you have with this bad man, but I can’t believe it’s this serious.” Flinx said nothing and she finally released him. “If it’s in you to go, go then.” She looked away. “I don’t know how your mind works, boy. Never did, never. But I do know that when you get somethin’ like this into it, only you can put it out. Go then, and my blessin’s with you. Even,” she concluded tightly, “if you won’t tell me the why of it.”

Bending over, he kissed the gray bun curled at the back of the old woman’s head. “Blessings on you too, Mother,” he said as she squirmed violently at the gesture.

It didn’t take him long to pack the few possessions he wanted to bring with him. They didn’t seem to mean much to him now. As he started to leave the room, he saw that the woman was still sitting alone at the table, a suddenly tiny and frail figure. How could he tell her he had to risk the life she’d coddled in a vain search for the people who had done nothing beyond giving him birth . . . ?

When he arrived at Drallar Port later that day, he found he was only physically tired. His mind was sharp and alert. Over the years he had gradually discovered that he required less and less sleep. Some days he could get by with as little as half an hour. His mind rested when it wasn’t being pushed, which was frequently.

He no longer had to worry about how he would travel, for there were sufficient funds registered on his cardmeter to sustain him for some time yet. Malaika had been generous. Not all the determining factors were financial, however. A glance at those waiting to board the first-class section of the shuttlecraft engendered an acute sense of unease in him, so he registered for standard fare.

Traveling so would be more enlightening anyway, for his first journey on a commercial spacecraft and his second time off Moth. As he followed the line into the shuttle, passing under the mildly aristocratic eye of the steward, he was shocked to discover that his about-to-be-realized childhood dream of traveling off-planet in one of the great KK-drive freightliners no longer held any thrill for him. It worried him as he strapped into his couch.

Mother Mastiff could have explained it to him it she were there. It was called growing up.

Though tolerable, the shuttle journey was rougher than his single previous experience with the little surface-to-orbit vessels. Naturally, he told himself, the pokier commercial craft would be nowhere near as luxurious as the shuttle carried by Malaika’s yacht, the
Gloryhole.
This one was designed solely to get as many beings and as much cargo as possible from the ground into free-fall as economically as possible. There they could be transferred—passengers and cargo alike, with sometimes equivalent handling—into the great globular bulk of the deepspace ship.

Following that transfer Flinx found himself assigned to a small, compactly designed cabin. He barely took the time to inspect it, and he had little to unpack. During the week-long journey he would spend the majority of travel time in the ship’s several lounges, meeting fellow travelers—and learning.

The shift from sublight to KK-drive superlight velocity was hardly a surprise. He had already experienced it several times on Malaika’s ship.

One part of the liner he especially enjoyed. From a forward observation lounge he could look ahead and see the immense length of the ship’s connecting corridor rods stretching outward like a broad narrowing highway to join the back of the colossal curving dish of the KK field projector. It blotted out the stars ahead.

Somewhere in front of that enormous dish, he knew, the drive unit was projecting the gravity well of a small sun. It pulled the ship steadily and, in turn, the drive projector which then projected the field that much further ahead—and so on. Flinx wondered still at the explanation of it and decided that all great inventions were essentially simple.

He was amusing himself in the ship’s game lounge on the third day when a neatly painted thranx in the stark brown, yellow, and green of commerce took the couch opposite. Less than a meter high at the b-thorax, he was small for a male. Both sets of wing cases still gleamed on his back, indicating that the traveler was as yet unmated. Brilliant, faceted eyes regarded Flinx through multiple gemlike lenses. The wonderful natural perfume odor of his kind drifted across the game table.

The creature glanced down at the glowing board, then its valentine-shaped head cocked curiously at the young human operating it.

“You play
hibush-hunt?
Most humans find it too complicated. You usually prefer two-dimensional games.” The insect’s symbospeech was precise and textbook-flat, the variety any good businessthranx would speak.

“I’ve heard a little about it and I’ve watched it played,” Flinx told his visitor modestly. “I really don’t know how to play myself.”

Mandibles clacked in a gesture of interest and understanding, since the insect’s inflexible chitonous face allowed for nothing as rubbery as a smile. A slight nod of the head was more easily imitated.

Question-response having served for a courteous greeting, the thranx settled himself more firmly on the couch, trulegs doubled up beneath the abdomen, foothands locked to support the thorax and b-thorax, and truhands moving with delicate precision over the board, adjusting the game plan. “My name is Bisondenbit,” he declared.

“I’m called Flinx.”

“One calling?” The thranx performed an insectoid shrug. “Well, Flinx, if you’d like to learn, I have some small skill at the game. Which is to say I know the rules. I am not a very good player, so I’ll probably make a good first opponent for you.” Again the mandible clicking, accompanied this time by a whistling sound—thranx laughter.

Flinx smiled back. “I’d like to learn very much.”

“Good, good . . . this is a standoffish group and I’ve been preening antennae till my nerves are beginning to twitch.” The head bobbed. “Your biggest mistake,” Bisondenbit began in businesslike fashion, “is that you’re still neglecting the ability of your pieces to move above ground and downward, as well as through existing tunnels. You’ve got to keep your antennae to the board and seek to penetrate your opponent’s movements.”

The thranx touched a silvery figure within the three-dimensional transparent board. “Stay attuned now. This is a
Doan
fighter and can move only laterally and vertically, though it can never appear on the surface. This divisible piece here . . .”

Flinx got to know Bisondenbit fairly well during the remainder of the trip. The alien kept his actual business veiled in vague circumlocutions, but Flinx got the impression he was an antique dealer. Perhaps there would be a chance to pick, up some interesting curios for Mother Mastiff’s shop.

Bisondenbit did display in full a trait which had helped endear his kind to humans: the ability to listen attentively no matter how boring the story being told. He seemed to find Flinx’s judiciously censored story of his own life up to his present journey fascinating.

“Look,” he told Flinx as they shared supper in one of the ship’s dining lounges, “you’ve never been to Hivehom before and you’re determined to look up this human what’s-his-name—Challis? At least I can help you get oriented. You’ll no doubt find him somewhere on the Mediterranea Plateau. That’s where most of the human settlers live.” The insect quivered. “Though why anyone would choose to set up housekeeping on a chilly tundra like that is beyond my understanding.”

Flinx had to smile. The mean temperature on the Mediterranea Plateau, a level area several thousand meters above the steaming, humid swamplands of Hivehom, was a comfortable 22° C. The thranx preferred the high thirties, with humidity as near one hundred percent as possible.

The word colonization was never mentioned in connection with such settlements—on either world. There were several such human regions on Hivehom, of which the Mediterranea Plateau, with a population of nearly three million, was by far the largest. The thranx welcomed such exploitation of the inhospitable regions they had always shunned. Besides, there were some four million thranx living in the Amazon basin on Terra alone—which sort of evened things out.

Most of the large human-dominated concerns, Bisondenbit explained, made their headquarters on the southern edge of the Plateau, near the big shuttleport at Chitteranx. This Challis had no doubt located himself there, too.

“The human city there has a thranx name—Azerick,” Bisondenbit went on, whistling softly. “That’s High Thranx for ‘frozen waste,’ which in this case has a double meaning I won’t go into, except to say that it’s a good thing you humans have a sense of humor approximating our own. After we land, I’ll be happy to take you up there myself, though I won’t stay long. I’m not equipped for arctic travel. Furthermore, Azerick is not cheap.” He hesitated politely. “You look pretty young for a human out traveling on his own. You have funds?”

“I can scrape by,” Flinx admitted cautiously. Probably it was his innate distrust of others, though he had to admit that in the past few days Bisondenbit had been not only helpful but downright friendly.

They boarded the shuttle together. Flinx sat near a glassalloy port, where he would have a good view of the principal thranx world, one of the Commonwealth’s dual capitals. The planet swung lazily below him as the shuttle separated from the freightliner and commenced its descent. Two large moons glowed whitely above the far horizon, one partly hidden by the planet. Wherever the cloud cover broke, Flinx could see hints of blue from Hivehom’s small oceans, rich green from its thick jungles.

Suddenly he felt the force of gravity pressing him back in his seat as the shuttle dropped tail first through the clouds. . . .

Chapter Three

Chitteranx was impressive. Though a small port for a world as populous and developed as Hivehom, it still dwarfed the shuttleport of Drallar.

“The city is mostly underground, of course. All thranx cities are, though the surface is well utilized.” The jeweled head shook in puzzlement. “Why you humans have always chosen to build up instead of down is something I’ll never comprehend.”

Flinx’s attention was more engaged by the view through the transparent access corridor than by the standard sights of the shuttle terminal. Lush jungle practically overgrew the plastic walls. It was raining outside—steaming, rather. The heat in the terminal was oppressive, despite the fact that it was a compromise between the delightful weather outside—as Bisondenbit called it—and the arctic air atop the nearby plateau.

Rain, Flinx had grown up with on Moth, but the humidity was something new and unpleasant. Humans could tolerate a hothouse climate, but not for long without protection, and never comfortably.

Bisondenbit, however, could only grumble about the chill inside the terminal. When Flinx remonstrated, he told him. “This is the principal human port of entry on Hivehom. If we’d landed near the equator, at
Daret
or
Ab-Neub,
you’d be wilting, Flinx.” He looked around as they emerged from the terminal proper into a cluster of roofed-over commercial buildings.

“Before I have to accompany you up to the plateau, and struggle into a hotsuit, let me enjoy a rational climate for a while. What about a drink?”

“I’d really like to start looking for Challis as soon as—”

“The plateau shuttles run every ten chronits,” Bisondenbit insisted. “Do come. Besides, you still haven’t told me: What do you keep in that box?” A truhand gestured at the large square case Flinx lugged with his left hand.

“It must be something exotic and valuable, judging from the care with which you’ve handled it.”

“It’s exotic, I suppose,” he admitted, “but not particularly valuable.”

They found a small eating place just inside the climate-controlled cluster of buildings. Only a few humans were present, though it was crowded with thranx. Flinx was thoroughly enchanted with the thranx resting couches, the subdued lighting which made even midday appear dim, and the ornately carved, communal drinking cannisters suspended from the ceiling above each booth.

Bisondenbit selected an isolated table at the back of the room and made helpful, though unnecessary recommendations. Flinx had no trouble deciphering the menu which was printed in four languages: High Thranx, Low Thranx, symbospeech and Terranglo.

Bisondenbit ordered after Flinx opted for one of the several thousand liqueurs which the thranx were masters at concocting.

“When do you want to go back to the terminal to pick up the rest of your luggage?” the insect asked casually, after their drinks arrived. He noted with approval that Flinx disdained a glass in favor of one of the weaving-spouted tankards used by the thranx themselves.

“This is it,” Flinx told him, indicating his small shoulder bag and the single large perforated case. Bisondenbit didn’t try to conceal his surprise.

“That’s all you’ve brought all this way with you, without knowing how long it will take you to find this human Challis?”

“I’ve always traveled light,” was his companion’s explanation. The drink was typically sweet, with a faint flavor of raisin. It went down warm and smooth. The trip, he decided, was beginning to catch up with him. He was more tired than he should be this early in the day. Obviously he wasn’t quite the urbane interstellar traveler he pictured himself as.

“Besides, it shouldn’t be hard to find Challis. Certainly he’ll be staying at his local company headquarters.” Flinx let another swallow of the thick, honeylike fluid slide down his throat, then frowned. Despite his age, he considered himself a good judge of intoxicants, but this new brew was apparently more potent than the menu description indicated. He found his vision blurring slightly.

Bisondenbit peered at him solicitously. “Are you all right? If you’ve never had Sookcha before, it can be a bit overwhelming. Packs quite a concussion?”

“Punch,” Flinx corrected thickly.

“Yes, quite a punch. Don’t worry . . . the feeling will pass quick enough.”

But Flinx felt himself growing steadily groggier. “I think . . . if I could just get outside. A little fresh air . . .” He started to get up, but discovered his legs responded with indifference while his feet moved as if he were walking on an oiled treadmill. It was impossible to get any traction.

Abandoning the effort, he found that his muscular system was entering a state of anarchy. “That’s funny,” he murmured, “I can’t seem to move.”

“No need to be concerned,” Bisondenbit assured him, leaning across the table and staring at him with an intensity that was new to Flinx. “I’ll see that you’re properly taken care of.”

As all visual images faded, Flinx feared his strange, new acquaintance would do just that . . .

Flinx awoke to the harmony of destruction, accompanied by curses uttered in several languages. Blinking—his eyelids felt as if they were lined with platinum—he fought unsuccessfully to move his arms and legs. Failing this, he settled for holding his eyes partially open. Dim light from an unseen source illuminated the little room in which he lay. Spartan furnishings of rough-hewn wood were backed by smooth walls of argent gunite. As his perceptions cleared he discovered that metal bands at his wrists and ankles secured him to a crude wooden platform that was neither bed nor table.

He lay quietly. For one thing, his stomach was performing gymnastics and it would be best to keep the surroundings subdued until the internal histrionics ceased. For another, the sensations and sounds surrounding him indicated it would be unwise to call attention to his new consciousness.

The sounds of destruction were being produced by the methodical dissection of his personal effects. Looking slowly to his right, he saw the shredded remains of his shoulder bag and clothing. These were being inspected by three humans and a single thranx. Recognizing the latter as his former games mentor and would-be friend, Bisondenbit, he damned his own naïveté.

Back in Drallar he would never have been so loquacious with a total stranger. But he had been three days isolated and friendless on board ship when the thranx had approached him with his offer of games instruction. Gratitude had shunted aside instinctive caution.

“No weapons, no poison, no beamer, needler—not even a threatening note,” complained one of the men in fluent symbospeech.

“What’s worse,” one of his companions chipped in, “no money. Nothing but a lousy cardmeter.” He held up the compact computer unit which registered and transferred credit in unforgeable fashion, and tossed it disgustedly onto a nearby table. It landed among the rest of Flinx’s few possessions. Flinx noted that there was one remaining object they had not yet broken into.

“That’s not my fault,” Bisondenbit complained, glaring with eyes of shattered prism at the three tall humans. “I didn’t promise to deliver any fringe benefits. If you don’t think I’ve earned my fee I’ll go straight to Challis himself.”

One of the men looked resigned. Taking a double handful of small metal rectangles from one pocket, he handed them to Bisondenbit. The thranx counted them carefully.

The human who had paid him looked over at the restraining bonds, and Flinx closed his eyes just in time. “That’s a lot of money. I don’t know why Challis is so afraid—this is just a kid. But he thinks it’s worth the fee you demanded. Don’t understand it, though.”

The man indicated the biggest of the three. “Charlie, here, could break him in two with one hand.” Turning, he tapped the large sealed case. “What’s in this?”

“I don’t know,” the thranx admitted. “He kept it in his cabin all the time.”

The third man spoke up. His tone was vaguely contemptuous. “You can all stop worrying about it. I’ve been examining that container with appropriate instrumentation while the rest of you have been occupying yourselves with a harmless wardrobe.” He gave the bag a shove. “There’s no indication it contains anything mechanical or explosive. Readings indicated that it’s full of shaped organics and organic analogs—probably the rest of his clothing.” He sighed. “Might as well check it out. We’re paid to be thorough.” Taking a pair of thick metal clippers from a neat tool case, he snipped through the squat combination lock. That done, the top of the case opened easily. He peered inside, grunted. “Clothes, all right. Looks like another couple of suits and—” He started to remove the first set of clothing—then screamed and, stumbling backward, clawed at the left side of his face, which was suddenly bubbling like hot mud. A narrow, beltlike shape erupted from the open case.

Bisondenbit chattered something in High Thranx and vanished out the single door. The one called Charlie fell backward across Flinx’s pinioned form, his beamer firing wildly at the ceiling as he dug in awful silence at his, own eyes. The leader of the little group of humans was close on Bisondenbit’s abdomen when something hit him at the back of his neck. Howling, he fell back into the room and started rolling across the floor.

Less than a minute had passed.

Something long and smooth slid onto Flinx’s chest.

“That’s enough, Pip,” he said to his pet. But the minidrag was beyond persuasion. His inspection over, he took to the air again and began darting and striking at the man on the floor. Gaping holes appeared in the supplicant’s clothing and skin wherever the venom struck. Eventually the man stopped rolling.

The first man who had been struck was already dead, while the second lay moaning against a wall behind Flinx. Pieces of skin hung loosely from his cheek and neck; and a flash of white showed where Pip’s extremely corrosive poison had exposed the bone.

Meanwhile the minidrag settled gently on Flinx’s stomach, slid upward caressingly. The long tongue darted out again and again to touch lips and chin. “The right hand, Pip,” Flinx instructed, “my right hand.” In the darkness the reptile eyed him questioningly.

Flinx snapped his fingers in a special way and now the minidrag half crawled, half fluttered over to the hand in question, rested his head in the open palm. A few scratches and then the hand closed gently but firmly. The snake offered no resistance.

Adjusting his pet with some difficulty, Flinx aligned Pip’s snout with the place where the metal band was locked to the table. His fingers moved, massaging various muscles behind the jaw. A few droplets of poison oozed from the tapered tube which ran through the minidrag’s lower palate.

There was a sizzling sound.

Flinx waited until the noise died away, then pulled hard. A second pull and the rotted metal gave way. Transferring Pip, with greater control now, he repeated the process on his other bindings, the snake doing his bidding through each step.

As he was freeing his left leg, Flinx noticed a movement on his right. So did Pip, and the minidrag took to the air again.

The single survivor shrieked as the dragon shape moved close. “Get away, get away, don’t let it near me!” he gibbered in total terror.

“Pip!”
Flinx commanded. A hushed pause. The minidrag continued to hover nervously before the crouching man, its wings a hummingbird blur, soulless, cold-blooded eyes staring into those of the bleeding human whose clavicle showed pale through dissolved clothing.

Flinx finally ripped clear of the last strap. Getting slowly to his feet, he made his way carefully to the other table. The clothes he’d been wearing were an unsalvageable mess. He began to slip into the second jumpsuit, in whose folds Pip had been so comfortably coiled.

“I’m sorry for your friends, but not too sorry,” he murmured. Zipping up the suit, Flinx turned to the shocked creature on the floor. “Tell me the whole story and don’t leave out any details. The more questions I have to ask, the more impatient Pip will get.”

A stream of information poured from the man’s lips. “Your thranx friend is a small-time criminal.”

“Antique services,” Flinx muttered. “Very funny. Go on.”

“It struck him odd that a kid like you, traveling alone, would be so interested in looking up Conda Challis. On a hunch he beamed Challis’ offices here and told them about you. Someone high up got upset as hell and told him to deliver you to us, to be checked out.”

“Makes sense,” Flinx agreed. “What was supposed to happen to me after I was—er—checked out?”

The man huddled into the corner farthest away from the fluttering minidrag, whispered, “Use your head—what do you think?”

“Challis claimed he was the thorough type,” Flinx observed. “I could have been an innocent passenger—it wouldn’t have mattered.” Repacking his few intact belongings in the hand case, Flinx started for the door that Bisondenbit had exited through only moments before.

“What about me?” the man mumbled. “Are you going to kill me?”

Flinx turned in surprise, his eyes narrowing as he regarded the human wreck who had confidently pawed through his luggage just minutes before. “No. What for? Tell me where I can find Conda Challis. Then I’d advise you to get to a hospital.”

“He’s on the top floor of the executive pylon at the far end of the complex.”

“What complex?” Flinx asked, puzzled.

“That’s right—you still don’t know where you are, do you?” Flinx shook his head. “This is the fourth sublevel of the Challis Hivehom Mining Components plant. The Challis family’s very big in mining machinery.

“Go to the corridor outside the door, turn to your left, and keep on until you reach a row of lifts. They all go to the surface. From there anyone can direct you to the executive pylon—the plant grounds are hexagon-shaped and the pylon’s at the northeast corner.”

“Thanks,” said Flinx. “You’ve been helpful.”

“Not helpful, you poisonous little bastard,” the unemployed cripple muttered painfully as soon as Flinx had departed, “just pragmatic.” He began to crawl slowly toward the open door.

In the corridor, once assured that no one waited in ambush, Flinx snapped his fingers again. “Pip . . . rest now.”