Running from the Deity (12 page)

“Really?” Treappyn hardly knew how to respond. “It will not allow it. And it has a name, too.
Flinx.
The sounding smacks of barbarism.”

“I assure you, Noble,” replied Storra, “he is very sensitive, and cultured. I am sure he will see you—in his own good time.”

“
His
own good time? What about
my
own good time? I am on leave from the government.
Your
government.” He gestured sharply behind him. “Do you expect me to camp out here like the rest of this mind-addled rabble?” He indicated his bodyguards. “What if I and my escort decide to walk straight into that miserable building and confront this—whatever it is you’re hiding in there.” His voice tightened. “If this is some kind of clever fraud you have concocted to extort money from nave fellow citizens, I promise you here and now that you will not survive the consequences!”

He did not know whether to be pleased or disappointed when neither of them reacted fearfully. “It is no fraud, Noble,” the female assured him. “The alien is tense and uncertain at times. We do not know how he is armed, or to what degree, but have heard him say that he is; thus, we consider it sensible not to provoke him.” She hesitated meaningfully. “Though he prefers to see supplicants in the order in which they arrive, it might be possible, given your eminence, to bring you before him sooner.”

Under the curse he uttered silently, Treappyn could not help but admire the audaciousness of the couple confronting him. He no longer had any compunction against paying them their requested bribe. If this was all a skillful swindle, he would get his money back along with pieces of their limbs. If it was something more than that...

If it was something more than that, then the packet he now handed to the grateful net-caster would be money well spent.

Having finally been persuaded to make a contribution, he expected to be led into the “presence” immediately. But there was one more formality to conclude.

“Apologies, Noble,” Ebbanai told him, “but your raiment is far too elaborate. Such flamboyance seems to upset the alien. Perhaps you have simpler garb you could don for the audience?”

This was really too much, Treappyn huffed. Well, he would force himself to play along. Reckoning would come soon enough. At any moment he expected the couple to disappear, along with his money.

They did not. Leading him quietly toward the barn, clad now only in his plain cloth undergarments, they passed beside the line that stretched outward from the building. Surprisingly, none in the queue objected to their advance. Equally surprisingly, his hosts allowed the Noble’s bodyguards to accompany him—also in their undergarments, but in possession of their weapons. More than anything else, Treappyn was thankful none of his counterparts from court was present to witness the droll procession.

And yet, not a suggestion of humor arose from those standing silently in line. More than anything else about the situation, he found unsettling the graven solemnity of the queued commoners.

Then he and his guards were inside the barn, advancing deeper into the simple country structure. He thought he was prepared for anything he might see.

He was wrong.

CHAPTER

8

The young female had been carried in on a pallet of woven seashan stiffened with the oversized spines of some unknown plant, the sharp tips of which had been trimmed down so that the makeshift stretcher would not harm its bearers. As she was gently placed before him, Flinx could see she was in considerable pain. Days of working with ill and injured Dwarra had attuned him to the meanings of their expressions. Although their faces were not as flexible as those of a human, they were quite capable of communicating a wide range of emotions.

He did not need to see the pain in her angular, somewhat stiff face, of course. She was outputting her feelings without any attempt at moderation, her Sensitives weaving hypnotically and out of control, as if searching for someone, anyone, with whom to make emotional contact. The expressions of those who had carried her in and laboriously lifted her up to the platform inside the barn where he was working were equally eloquent. As for their feelings, they were a roiling jumble of hope and hopelessness. It was a combination he had come to know well since he had started helping the natives.

Holding the Dwarra-attuned, portable medical scanner he had brought back from his last visit to the
Teacher,
he prepared to pass it over the part of her body that was heavily bandaged. Both she and those who had brought her in looked alarmed. To allay their fears, he projected feelings of assurance onto each of them. That was another of his abilities he’d had ample opportunity to practice lately. They looked surprised, feeling relaxed when they felt they should not. What mattered was that no one moved to interfere with his work.

It took only moments to diagnose the young female’s problem: a shattered pelvis. What frightful accident had caused the damage, he did not know. It didn’t matter. What was important was stimulating the healing process. No one objected when he removed her bandages. After days of dispensing medical aid, the peculiarities of Dwarran anatomy no longer held any surprises for him. Using his recalibrated healer, he worked on the badly injured female for nearly half an hour. From her resting place nearby, Pip occasionally lifted her iridescent, emerald-green head to spare a glance for her master’s activities.

His efforts concluded, Flinx sat back and regarded the young female’s handlers. From experience, he knew they might be relatives, close friends, hired helpers, or a mix of all three.

“She’s healing now. Reapply the bandages and try to keep her as still as possible for as long as possible.” He checked the readings on his healer. “If everything goes well and there are no setbacks, she should be well enough to walk by herself in an eight-day or two.”

“Master Visitant!” The senior of the four males who had carried the patient in started to press his Sensitives to Flinx’s forehead, looked surprised as he remembered that the alien had none, and settled instead for bending to push them against the human’s free hand. “My life is yours. You have restored my only female offspring to me.”

“Not yet.” Gently, Flinx reached down and raised the elder’s angular, bony face. “Let’s see how her healing goes before you promise me anything.”

Gesturing with gripping flanges and Sensitives, the weathered native indicated understanding. But the gratitude that flowed out of him filled Flinx with the warmth he had come to know well over the preceding days. It was nourishment of a kind even the
Teacher
’s advanced food synthesizer could not provide.

It had been a particularly complex procedure. “That’s enough for now.” Peering down the line of disappointed hopefuls, his gaze found his hosts and the three males who were accompanying them. Unusually, two were armed. Sensing a change in her master’s emotional state, Pip raised her head from its resting place once more. This time she half unfurled her pleated pink-and-blue wings.

“Ebbanai, Storra,” he called down to them. “You’ve brought along some people who don’t appear to be ill.”

Below the simple platform, Treappyn started. The mere sight of the broad-bodied, limb-deprived alien had been shocking enough, and more than sufficient to instantly confirm the basis for the multitude of rumors that were spreading through the countryside. Watching it work on the crippled young female, without making contact and by simply passing several cryptic instruments repeatedly across her broken body, had been less conclusive. It wasn’t as if she had suddenly stood up and danced, miraculously cured. To the chary counselor, the painless, bloodless procedure smacked of outright fraud.

But how had the astonishing creature known that his new visitors were different from those who had preceded them? How could it tell he and his bodyguards were not seekers after healing like all who had gone before? Plainly, it had no Sensitives, nor any other visible means for perceiving what those around it were feeling. Yet the rumors insisted it was capable of doing so.

It should be easy enough to determine the truth. In his position as a counselor to the Highborn, he had long ago learned it was better to ask an awkward question than squat on comfortable ignorance.

“How do you know that there is nothing wrong with any of us? With myself, for example?”

The alien peered down at him. “Your present emotional state is not that of a sick person.” It was wonderful, Flinx felt, to be able for the first time in his life to be so open and honest about his Talent. Liberating, even. “The same is true for those who accompany you. You project wariness and curiosity. Those with you project wariness and tension.”

Remarkable, Treappyn decided. Though his whole world was spinning around him, he did not lose his balance. Drawing himself up, stretching all four forelegs to their limit, he announced, “I am Noble Treappyn, counselor to His August Highborn Pyrrpallinda, ruler of Wullsakaa. I have been sent by my government to ascertain the truth of your existence as a visitor among us.”

“Well?” Flinx flashed the slightly sardonic smile that many he had encountered, human and otherwise, had come to identify closely with his personality.

“I intend to say in my official report that I consider it verified—and then some.” Tentatively, he started toward the wide stairs that led up to the platform on which the alien squatted. No, he corrected himself. It was not squatting, as was normal and natural. Instead, it had somehow folded its body in the middle and was resting most of it on a wooden storage container. It was a feat of protean flexibility not even the most adroit Dwarra could duplicate.

“As representative of my government, I request an official audience.”

“I don’t give official audiences,” Flinx replied.

Treappyn thought fast. It was his best attribute. “Well then, can we have an informal chat?”

No hostility radiated from his new visitor, no overtones of deception. Flinx grinned. This individual was as different from his hosts as he was from the suffering he had helped. The Dwarra was not the only individual in the barn whose curiosity needed to be sated.

“Come up and have a seat,” he told the counselor. His fluency had increased to the point where he only occasionally needed the assistance of the translator hanging from his neck. Although the counselor could not take a seat, the idiom Flinx employed conveyed the same sentiment, if not the same biological requirements. “Just you,” he added when the counselor’s bodyguards moved to accompany him.

The two muscular soldiers looked uneasy, and Treappyn was less than thrilled with the stipulation himself. He was not by nature a bold individual. But curiosity overcame his caution.

“Remain here,” he told them. “Arms at the ready, but physically and mentally at ease.” He did not look up at the waiting alien as he spoke. “Though it has no Sensitives and makes no contact, it is already clear to me that the Visitant can tell what we are feeling.”

One of the bodyguards muttered a curse. “A creature of the Dark Pools.”

“We don’t know that yet,” Treappyn admonished him. “Myself, I tend to think not. Those who dwell in the Dark Pools do not bestir themselves to heal on behalf of the sick. Be alert, and wait for me.”

Turning, he started up the stairway, his stout form forcing him to labor. Climbing was not at the top of the list of his favorite activities. Approaching the last couple of steps, he was surprised when the Visitant, seeing—or perhaps feeling—the trouble Treappyn was having, extended a single right hand to help him ascend the rest of the way. The hand itself was conspicuously alien. Instead of splitting into a pair of flexible gripping flanges, it terminated in five short, bony digits, like miniature forearms. Wrapping themselves around the counselor’s wrist, they pulled gently but firmly.

Despite their small size, the strength in them was astonishing. Treappyn felt himself practically lifted up onto the crude wooden work platform. Nearby, he saw another fantastic creature resting on a pile of gathered seashan fibers. Brightly colored, winged, and limbless, it resembled nothing he had ever encountered outside of a dream. Or a nightmare.

Below, Storra and Ebbanai looked on with concern, though they tried not to show it. Or rather, to feel it, lest their unease be perceived by the alien. They had not been invited up onto the platform to join in, or to monitor, the conversation.

“It’s not a problem,” Ebbanai whispered to his mate as he touched Sensitives with her. “They will talk, the counselor from Metrel will leave, and things will go on as before.”

“Yes,” she agreed shrewdly, “but for how long?”

Ebbanai was unconcerned. “For as long as can be hoped.” His joy communicated itself to her through their entwined Sensitives. “We have already made more money than ever we dreamed of.”

“You never had much ambition, mate-mine,” she chided him—but gently. “Don’t be so quick to concede to the government that which is our discovery. Depending on how events develop, we may yet turn this encounter to our advantage.” Her eyes, contracting, studied the interaction taking place on the platform above. “For example, all may not go well between Flinx and this counselor. In that case, our services as intermediaries will be more necessary than ever.”

Contrary to Storra’s hope, however, the conversation between Flinx and his new visitor was going very well indeed.

Experienced in the ways of political intrigue, if not interspecies interlocution, Treappyn had settled himself into a comfortable squat near the edge of the platform. From there, he could leap to safety should something untoward suddenly occur, and it also provided his uneasy bodyguards with an unobstructed view of the important personage who was their responsibility. But the longer he conversed with the alien, whose mastery of the Dwarrani language was crude but serviceable, the more relaxed he became.

“So you really do come from the sky? From a world like this one?”

Relaxing between supplicants, Flinx nodded. “A world that circles a sun not unlike your own.” Though his guest could not perceive the difference, Flinx waxed wistful. “It’s a beautiful place, with dense forests and sculpted deserts.” Smiling, he raised a clenched fist and with an upraised finger drew a circle partway around. “It has partial rings, that gleam in the night sky.”

“It sounds fascinating,” Treappyn confessed, without entirely understanding. “And there are other worlds inhabited by your kind?”

“Many,” Flinx told him. “And even more inhabited by intelligent beings as unlike myself as I am unlike you.”

Treappyn could hardly believe what he was hearing. The answers to mysteries Dwarran scholars had debated for thousands of years were his for the asking. “Are all your kind as strong and knowledgeable as you?”

Flinx’s smile widened. “I am not so knowledgeable. I just seem to pick up bits and pieces of information in my travels. Which are, I admit, extensive. When I look back on my life—where I’ve been, everything that’s happened to me...” His voice trailed away and he suddenly stared at Treappyn so hard that the counselor wondered if he had said or done something wrong. “What about you, Noble Treappyn? Do you ever look back on your life? Do you ever wonder what you might have done differently?”

The counselor met the alien’s inflexible gaze without flinching. “We are not so very different, I think.”

Flinx leaned back against a thick piling. “As for my strength, that’s an accident of physics. The gravity on my homeworld, and the worlds where I tend to spend most of my time, is stronger than it is here.” He tapped one foot against the platform. “The pull of a planet goes a long ways toward determining the musculature with which species evolve. Though you look to be healthy enough, on my world, for example, you would have trouble just walking.”

Not so similar, then, Treappyn mused, wondering as he reflexively waggled his Sensitives if he understood what the alien was telling him. “So there are others of your kind who are physically more powerful than you?”

“Yes. And other species who are stronger still, or faster. And some who are weaker. Although, especially in the past few years, I’ve grown taller than most of my kind.” His voice fell to a contemplative murmur. “I hope
that
kind of growth, at least, has stopped.”

“And your companion.” Treappyn indicated the dozing flying snake. “Not intelligent?”

“Not in the way of you or I, no,” Flinx informed his guest. “But like the Dwarra and myself, she’s extremely sensitive to emotions. Even in the absence of Sensitives. Her name is Pip.”

Treappyn shifted his stance slightly. Below, his bodyguards tensed, then relaxed. “Then all other species where you come from are able to perceive the emotions of others?”

“No,” Flinx told him. “As far as I know, there’s just the Alaspinian minidrags—and me. Though,” he added as an afterthought, “there may be others. It’s something I’ve tried to learn more about all my life.” He gestured broadly. “I never expected, in all my journeying, in all my travels to distant places, to find a place like Arrawd where every member of an entire species can read the emotions of their friends and neighbors, just by making contact with special organs. It’s strange—in some ways, I feel more at home here than anyplace else I’ve ever been.”

“I am glad you are comfortable among us.” Treappyn’s thoughts were racing ahead of his words.