Running from the Deity (17 page)

Alien or not, he reflected, it seemed that every individual of every sentient species had a public face and a private one. It was his ability and curse to be able to see both simultaneously.

“I can’t help any more of you,” he told them, and they quieted so as to be able to hear his words. “I’ve helped as many as I could. Now it’s time for me to go. I have work of my own to do.”

A pair of young males stumbled forward and, awkwardly, prostrated themselves. “What hurries a god, who can make and take his own time?” declared the elder who had accompanied them. “Only an evil, uncaring god would refuse aid to the most needy!”

The rush of inimical emotion that flashed through the mob threatened to make Flinx physically ill.

“I am not a god!” he yelled at them, communicating the denial with all the force of the fluency he had acquired during the preceding weeks. “I am only a mortal being like yourselves. A traveler with work to do who stopped here for a short time. While here, I ended up helping a few of you—and then more, and still more.” Turning slightly, he glared back at Storra, who under that furious alien gaze tried to shrink out of sight behind her mate.

He looked back at the seething, desperate crowd. “I’ve helped as many as I could, as many as was feasible. Now
I have to go
. You have to let me go.”

Their fury and frustration was an emotional storm in his head. The wonderful, matchless peace he had known since landing on Arrawd was gone. Shattered, blasted away by the desperation of the sick and injured, and by their selfishness and individual need. He had found paradise, and in trying to improve a small portion of it, had forever ruined it for himself.

And to think, he told himself as he kept a careful watch on the crowd, that I once actually thought of settling down here. He had underestimated reality and overestimated his environs. Like a quantum state, his presence had disturbed his surroundings to such a degree that they would never be the same.

“Heal us!” a gravid female yelled from the front of the crowd.

“Please put right my offspring!” howled another as she pushed Nurset and damaged progeny forward.

It was as if they hadn’t heard, or comprehended, a word he had said. Those in front began to surge forward, urged on by the press of disheartened bodies behind. Terrified, no longer resolute, Storra clung for protection to her equally alarmed mate.

There were too many, Flinx saw immediately. Too many, too close, to try to influence with his Talent. Fortunately, albeit reluctantly, he had access to resources other than his unpredictable ability.

He pulled his gun.

The beamer had been set to kill. Now he adjusted it and pointed it at the crowd. Those in front hesitated, pushing against those shoving from behind. All eyes focused on the device held in the alien’s strange hand. It did not look like something for making magic. It looked solid and functional, like a piece of well-maintained tethet tack.

Muttering to himself, perhaps not even fully aware of what he was doing, the elder who had placed the mantle of evil on the Visitant’s head took a couple of steps forward. Swinging the muzzle of the beamer around, Flinx triggered the weapon. The tip glowed softly, briefly.

Suddenly the oldster was jumping and swatting at his simple raiment. As flames began to start from the fabric, he frantically tore at the fasteners and flung the burning pieces onto the ground. A few blisters began to appear on his sensitive, exposed skin where the epidermal flaps had not closed. As the crowd gawked at this exhibition, Flinx adjusted the strength of his handgun’s output a second time.

“This weapon heated that person’s clothing and skin. I have now set it to kill. I’ve spent these past many eight-days attending to the sick and carrying out healing among your people. Please don’t force me to do the opposite to any of you.”

The silence that ensued fell over the homestead like a heavy cloak. Then, in twos and threes, in family groups and as individuals, the mob began to break up, bits and pieces of it flaking off and shuffling back the way they had come, with the majority following in a downcast, disconsolate body. The emotions they generated threatened to eradicate the memory of all the good and grateful feelings that had been projected by those Flinx had helped.

As an agitated Pip settled herself back down on her master’s shoulders, Ebbanai and Storra moved up to rejoin the visitor. Though outwardly concerned for her guest, Storra’s feelings as she eyed the weapon reflected an unmitigated greed she could not suppress.

I have definitely stayed here too long, Flinx thought wearily. He had not stopped here seeking a refuge and, despite his initial impressions of Arrawd and its people, it was now clear he had not found one. There was no such place for him, anywhere. There was only the need to do what he could to try to save others: the few he could count as his friends, and the billions he could not.

He had nearly forgotten all about his driving youthful desire to try to ascertain the identity and truth of his parentage. Nearly, but not entirely.

“They are ungrateful.”

Turning, he saw Ebbanai staring back at him. No hint of falsehood or deception colored the humble net-caster’s observation. He was genuinely apologetic for the behavior of his kind.

“You know that I can’t stay here, forever healing the sick among you.” Flinx’s anger faded as he spoke to his host. “Even if I wished to do so, I have a limited supply of certain items that my ship can’t continue to perpetually synthesize.”

“You have done more than enough for the Dwarra,” Storra put in. “They should be grateful for the time you have spent, and the efforts you have made on our behalf. Many have benefited.”

Not the least of whom have been you and your partner,
Flinx added silently. But if Storra was more overtly acquisitive than her modest mate, she was no less honest in her thanks. He mumbled something about having tried to do his best and turned away, heading for the house.

Ebbanai’s confusion was reflected in his words as well as his feelings. “But—you said that you are leaving, friend Flinx?”

“First thing in the morning.” It was late, and he didn’t feel like walking in the dark all the way back to where the
Teacher
was waiting for him.

He could have called out the skimmer, but that vision, at least, of Commonwealth technology he had managed to keep from the sight of the locals. Also, he was tired from his final day’s work of healing and from the unpleasant confrontation with the irate crowd. Nor did he relish leaving Arrawd under cover of night, speeding away inside the skimmer’s protective bubble. It smacked of demoralized flight.

No, he would leave as he had arrived: under his own power, crossing the peninsula on his own two feet. Could he at least hope for a last good night’s sleep?

Ebbanai gestured with two forearms in the direction of the path that led eastward toward the junction with the main road. “I don’t think any of them will be back to bother you, friend Flinx. The demonstration of your powers was instructive, and the threat sufficient to discourage even the most persistent supplicants.”

Arrive with questions, stay to help, depart on the murmur of a threat. As he entered the pleasant house, made fragrant with expensive local perfumes paid for with money extorted from hopeful travelers by his ever-helpful hosts, he determined to leave future first contacts to those Commonwealth teams specially trained for the purpose. He did not feel he had done too badly, but he certainly could have done better.

Ebbanai was right. None of those anxious supplicants he had so summarily dismissed dared return to risk the god’s wrath, and he slept better than he expected.

CHAPTER

12

Morning saw his spirits improved. Now that the decision to leave had been made, and the memory of those he had been forced to turn away had receded somewhat in his mind, he was able to eat with some enjoyment the last native morning meal Storra—or, rather, Storra’s new servants—prepared for him. He did not even object when she pleaded to join her mate in escorting him back to his vessel. She had made her desire to see the
Teacher
plain on more than one occasion. It was a simple enough request, a last request, and he decided to accede. Despite her avaricious nature, she had only done what she believed to be best for herself and her mate. If her motivations had been slightly less than altruistic, she had nonetheless been genuinely solicitous of his welfare.

They started out early, the two Dwarra packing food and drink for their return journey, Flinx doubly eager to be on his way now that the moment to depart had come. So much time had he spent on Arrawd and so focused had he become on healing its ill and injured that it was hard to believe he was actually leaving. None of the new servants his hosts had hired with their semi-ethical gains bothered to see them off. They had work to do.

As the trio crested the first rise Flinx glanced briefly back at the homestead. There the domed house, now much transformed by expensive improvements, there the baryeln barn, beyond it the small garden where Storra grew basic foodstuffs. It was a far more domesticated view than many of the other alien landscapes he had trod: Midworld and Jast, Longtunnel and Terra, Moth and New Riviera.

New Riviera. His thoughts went out to that world, though they could not reach it, that was home now to close friends and to one woman in particular. So very far away. Taking a deep breath, he filed Arrawd with them in his mental catalog of worlds visited and turned away, setting his gaze and his stride toward the center of the peninsula. He had some dedicated spatial wandering ahead of him, and would not see any of those other worlds until it was concluded.

The disappointed ailing masses of Arrawd left him and his unpretentious escort alone, but the wildlife of Dwarra seemed reluctant to let him go.

“Vuuerlia,” Ebbanai told him as a flock of the creatures wafted through the waist-high growth around them. The inoffensive flying creatures stayed aloft more by gliding and riding the air currents off the nearby ocean than by flapping their paper-thin, meter-wide wings. Though the pale, ivory-hued appendages were so thin as to be translucent, Ebbanai informed Flinx that the membranous tissue was strong enough to cope with even the occasional gales that blew across the peninsula. The front of each long, slender brown animal was tipped with a single piercing bill that was half the length of the creature itself, while the aft end terminated in a pair of flaring tails. One vertical and the other horizontal, they helped to steer and stabilize the creature in the roughest weather. In their appearance the vuuerlia were elegant and angular—not unlike the Dwarra themselves.

The three trekkers stood and waited while the flock of nearly a hundred passed over and around them. This gave Flinx time to observe how the creatures would fly as close to the tops of the surrounding vegetation as possible, skimming the crests of the grass-like growths as they used their long, pointed bills to pick off any plant-dwellers foolish or unlucky enough to be lingering near the top of the sward. Once it had its prey pinned, the vuuerlia would flip it into the air and catch it neatly in the small, surprisingly flexible mouths at the base of each bill. It was like watching a flock of anorexic hawks attack in slow motion.

The vuuerlia had exceptionally sharp eyes, or some other means of perceiving what was in their path. Except for the occasional brief brush from a feather-light wing tip, Flinx and his companions had no contact with the flock that glided over and around them. Not that a direct collision was anything to fear. He doubted the heaviest vuuerlia weighed more than a kilogram, and flew no faster than he could run.

As for Pip, she delighted in the opportunity to swoop over, around, and through the flock, disconcerting the placid creatures with her slashing, brightly colored presence. Utterly alien to their experience, the vuuerlia did not know what to make of the winged, serpentine shape that darted through and among them, teasing the uncertain and intercepting the leaders, only to keep just out of reach as they made futile attempts to stab her with their bills.

“Once again, I marvel at the agility of your pet,” Storra commented as she watched the display.

“She is that,” Flinx agreed, “when she’s not sleeping, which is most of the time.”

Pushing forward as the last of the vuuerlia coasted past, he had covered another ten meters or so when he suddenly pulled up short. Ebbanai came up alongside the alien and gazed into his face. During the past many eight-days, he had learned to recognize certain human expressions by connecting Flinx’s words with the concurrent distortion of his facial muscles. But he did not recognize the one that was featured on his alien friend’s face now. He waited for it to change, and it did not. This was in itself, the net-caster felt, significant.

“Friend Flinx, is something wrong?” As Ebbanai spoke, he noted that Pip came rocketing back from where she had been playing with the disappearing flock of vuuerlia, showing speed the net-caster and his mate had not seen before. Whatever had brought their visitor to an abrupt halt, it was clearly serious.

Flinx proceeded to confirm this. “There are other Dwarra approaching. Many.” He scanned the tops of the surrounding verdure. They had entered into a part of the peninsula where the grass-like growths, though still single-bladed, grew tree-high. “They are intent on,” he added without the slightest change in tone, “killing. Whether just me or all of us I don’t know.”

A froth of bubbles and gargling issued from his companions. Not knowing what else to do, unable to see or hear the potential assassins the alien had somehow perceived, they moved closer to him. Ebbanai drew his longknife. It was all he and Storra had brought with them. What need was there for serious weapons on a stroll through their beloved peninsula, where potential dangers were few, far between, and most often encountered at night?

“Who are they?” Storra strained to see through the surrounding greenery.

“I don’t know.” Pip remained airborne, hovering a meter or so over Flinx’s head. She had sensed the same approaching animosity as her master. “I can’t perceive identities. Only emotions. Homicidal ones, in this instance.” Reaching down, he drew his pistol, made sure it was still charged. If the feelings he was picking up were anything to go by, when those projecting them finally showed themselves there would be no time for demonstrations or illustrative examples of what his weapon could do. He was likely to need stopping power.

Why bother? a part of him wondered unexpectedly. Why not end it all here, now, today? This was as good a place and time as any. Put an end to all the wandering, internal conflict, and frustration. It was a mark of his depression that he would even entertain such a thought. It did not last. He couldn’t let any locals kill him, he reasoned, even if he did welcome such an end. Could not, because if a discontented contingent of them were allowed to kill a beneficent “god,” when word of what had happened spread to the wider population at large it could very well incite even more fighting and killing as those he had helped took up arms to take revenge on his killers. Reflecting on the possibilities inherent in such a demise, not for the first time he found himself marveling at the irony that underlay so much of his existence.

I can’t even let myself be killed, because it wouldn’t be the moral thing to do.

As he stood pondering the incongruity of it all, the emotions he was perceiving reached an intensity that reflected the proximity of their promulgators to his present position. Clad in conical clothing that covered their bodies from head to foot-flange, a dozen or so Dwarra burst from the surrounding vegetation. Like so many maniacal, multicolored pinwheels, they converged from two directions on the alien and his terrified companions. They were armed with long, thin, sharp-edged swords and clumsy but effective-looking hand weapons made of wood and metal.

Storra screamed “barbolts!” and fell over onto her side. Ebbanai replicated her desperate fall a moment later. His own emotions a disturbed fusion of dogged determination and sorrowful regret, Flinx raised his weapon and put a shot into the nearest attacker as that individual raised the device he was carrying.

The burst of energy made a neat hole in the center of the assailant’s chest. A few tiny flames flickered from the front of his tapering attire where the blast had entered and from the back where it had exited. Ceremonial raiment smoking, the attacker crumpled to the ground like a collapsing building. At the same time, Pip dove toward another of the attackers and spat directly in his face. The corrosive venom had the same effect on the onrushing Dwarra as it did on any carbon-based tissue. Smoke immediately began to rise from where the toxin hit and began to eat away at the eyes and surrounding flesh. Screaming madly, an uncontrolled stream of bubbles emerging from his mouth, the struck assailant stumbled and staggered backward into the undergrowth from which he had emerged.

Taken together, these two defensive responses were more than sufficient to cause the dead assailants’ companions to pause in their attack.

At his feet, collapsed in on themselves as much as their muscles could manage, Ebbanai and Storra were torn between watching their attackers and gazing in awe up at Flinx. Despite what he had casually told them about his ability to look after himself, until now that ability had only been buttressed by words. The disquieting demonstration of alien power, both technological and organic, found them eyeing him with an entirely new mind-set. For the first time since he had arrived at the homestead, they were afraid of him. More afraid than they had been when each of them had initially encountered him.

As a consequence, something had been lost, and even though he was preparing to depart Arrawd forever, Flinx was not happy about it.

Before he could depart, however, he still had a dangerous number of potential assassins to deal with. Overcoming their initial shock at seeing what the alien and its pet could do, they began to advance anew, urged on by their leader.

“For Rakshinn!” Kredlehken swallowed his fear as he strove to rally the other acolytes and their Pakktrinian allies. Trying to keep one eye on the murderous alien flying thing, he raised his barbolt. Fearsome or not, there was still only one of the two-legged aliens. It could only shoot one of them at a time. With luck, a barbolt or two might strike him. Once wounded, Kredlehken was certain the creature of flesh and blood could be finished off with ordinary swords.

As he took aim at another of the advancing attackers, Flinx was struggling with the same conundrum. If they all came at him in a rush, and fired together...should he dodge left, or right? Shoot the nearest of his assailants first, the biggest, or their apparent leader?

Unexpectedly, a flood of fresh emotions coursed through him. They were not his own, nor those of his two terrified companions, nor even those of his would-be assassins.

“FOR WULLSAKAA AND THE HIGHBORN!”

Whirling, he was just in time to see a host of armed Dwarra explode from among the tallest growths. Unlike his ceremoniously garbed attackers, these newcomers wore strips of metal and leather armor designed to protect their limbs and vital parts. Crested helmets with slits in front allowed their Sensitives to protrude freely. They wielded lances as well as different examples of the complex, pistol-like barbolts. The mounts they rode were like slimmed-down versions of the horned, heavy-bodied tethets whose appearance Flinx had grown accustomed to: similar in origin but an entirely different breed. These new animals were as greyhounds compared to mastiffs.

Ebbanai and Storra cowered at his feet, certain now that death was only moments away. High above the scene of battle Pip hovered uncertainly, reading her master’s feelings for clues as to how to proceed. Flinx raised his pistol in the direction of the nearest of the new arrivals—and promptly lowered it. Their emotions were certainly murderous—but they were not directed toward him. Instead, they were channeled unmistakably, and gratefully, elsewhere.

Falling in among the conically clad assassins, the newcomers proceeded to spread havoc and death. Their attention diverted by the armored arrivals, the well-armed attackers managed to bring down two of the newcomers. Then, their number swiftly halved, the survivors scattered into the surrounding undergrowth. With single-minded determination, the majority of the newcomers went after them. The sounds of pursuit, and the grisly end to first one and then another, resounded from different locations within the tall foliage.

Those who had not joined in the pursuit approached Flinx. Recognizing the insignia they wore, and seeing that—so far, anyway—their rescuers meant them no harm, Ebbanai and Storra struggled to their feet. One of the newcomers immediately slipped off his steed, went up to her, and entwined his Sensitives with hers, then carried out the same exchange with her mate. Their sense of relief was immediate.

Dismounting with some difficulty due to his unusual bulk, the leader of the newcomers was panting audibly as he staggered over to Flinx. As he did so he struggled to straighten his helmet, which had been knocked askew on his head during the battle.

“Your pardon,” he wheezed. “Unfamiliar as I am with such martial exertions, I find myself more than a little out of breath.” He started to extend his Sensitives before remembering yet again that in that regard the alien was lamentably disadvantaged.

Flinx eyed the speaker for a moment. Recognizing both the face and emotional state of the Dwarra confronting him, he holstered his pistol. Descending in a sharp spiral, Pip settled down on his right shoulder, her tail curling firmly around his neck.

“I know you. Teelin...,” Flinx quickly corrected himself. “Treappyn.”

The counselor to His August Highborn Pyrrpallinda sucked in a long, deep breath. It helped. “As I said on the occasion of our previous parting, I hoped we should meet again—though I never could have imagined it would be under such shameful circumstances.” Turning slightly, he gestured with a pair of flanges in the direction of the thick vegetation that had swallowed Flinx’s attackers and the squad of Wullsakaan soldiers who were still pursuing them.