The End of the Matter

by Alan Dean Foster

  Chapter Five

  The Teacher slipped into a stabilized parking orbit above Alaspin. A few preparations and then Flinx and Ab were dropping planetward.

  Pip hissed softly as Flinx considered what he had learned during their journey to the frontier world they were approaching. The planet was warm, though not especially humid, consisting mostly of patches of jungle spotted about vast, sweeping savannas and reedy river plains. Alaspinport was a small city by Commonwealth standards. In fact, this little-explored globe boasted a very modest humanx population.

  Considering that, Flinx had been surprised at the number of ships hovering above Alaspin’s surface. There was evidently interstellar traffic disproportionate to the populace. In a way, that should not have surprised him. Alaspin was rich in two things: gemstones and history. The prospectors, mining companies, and many universities and research institutions with interests on the planet could account for the kind of heavy traffic to and from the surface that he encountered.

  Despite overcrowding, it was no problem to secure his shuttle at the port. Lodgings were plentiful, and he got a room in a modest hotel in town.

  Walking through the hot streets, he saw that the population was divided almost equally between humans and thranx. If anything, there were more of the busy, active insects than humans. They tolerated the dryness and thrived in the heat of midday.

  The mixture of scientists and fortune hunters was a peculiar one. Flinx passed studious individuals arguing alien sociology, then overheard a conversation dealing with the smuggling rates on Catchalot. Alaspin was filled with two institutions: libraries and brothels.

  One of the greatest multiple-culture populations in this part of the galaxy had risen and passed on here before the Commonwealth was more than a dream in a few visionaries’ eyes. “It’s true, Flinx,” the Junoesque, henna-haired concierge was telling him upon his return to the hotel. “They say that the Alaspinians explored all through the region of the Commonwealth and beyond.”

  “Then why aren’t there any left?” he asked reasonably.

  She shrugged. “According to the research folks I’ve chatted with, the locals liked long-range exploring, but never gave a thought to colonizin’ anyplace else.” She made a show of adjusting the complex of straps beneath her yellow-and-silver dress as she explained the function and operation of the water-retrieve and other devices in his room.

  “Xenohistorians I’ve had stay here told me the Alaspinians died out less than eighty thousand Terran standard years ago. They think it was a gradual thing, not sudden like. Almost as if the Alaspinians had lived a full racial life, got tired, and decided to diffuse out.” She manipulated the air purifier and tempioner. There was a soft hum, and cool air filled the room.

  The hennaed coiffure, the garish make-up were a disguise, he suspected. There was a vulnerability beneath the paint that appealed to him.

  “You’re a damn sight younger than most of the solitaires I get in here, Flinx. You said you’re not a miner?”

  “No,” he confessed, beginning to wonder if she was as vulnerable as he imagined. He smiled in what he hoped was a pleasant yet neutral manner. “I tend more toward research—you might even say sociology.”

  “That’s okay,” the landlady declared amiably, “I like intellectuals too. If they aren’t snobbish about it. You’re not snobbish, I think.”

  Ab saved Flinx the necessity of commenting by chiming in with a particularly loud rhyme. Distracted, the hotel owner gazed at the alien with distaste. Mild distaste, because no one could look at Ab and not be amused.

  “You going to keep that thing with you?”

  “If it’s permissible, Ab doesn’t get in the way. He won’t trouble anyone.”

  “Doesn’t matter to me,” the woman responded evenly. “Is it clean?”

  “As far as I know.”

  She frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Ab performs objectionable bodily functions, if he has any, out of my sight.”

  “That’s okay then. Only thing is, I don’t know whether to charge you double room rate for two, or single with a pet. Which is it?”

  “Whatever you think appropriate,” Flinx advised her.

  That was the wrong thing to say. She smiled broadly at him. “Whatever I think’s appropriate? I’ll remember that.” Her gaze traveled over him. Somehow he got the impression she wasn’t admiring his attire. “Yes, you’re a damn sight younger than most. If you need anything . . . later . . . if the air controls don’t work right, you let me know.” Her voice dropped an octave. “It’s hot during the day, but it can get chilly here at night.”

  Flinx swallowed. “I’ll be sure and let you know, ma’am.”

  “Mirable,” she corrected him. “Mirable Dictu.” She sidled toward the door. “It’s nice to find someone who’s not a fanatic about what they’re here for. Scientists get too wrapped up with thinkin’, and the prospectors never do. Good to have a guest who embodies a bit o’ both.”

  His last view was of her perambulating form drifting suggestively toward the stairway. He almost called out to her. However . . . He sighed. With serious business unfinished, he had no time for such foolery. But if Alaspin proved to be the final dead end, as he half suspected it would, then he might have time and need of some sympathetic company. In that event, he might strike up a more serious friendship with the voluptuous Mirable.

  She was the first one he asked about the enormous man with the white hair and gold earring. As expected, Mirable had no knowledge of anyone fitting that description.

  Several days of questioning around the town produced memories of numerous men with rings in their ears, some of the ornaments gold or gold-colored. But if the men were the right size they didn’t wear the earring, and if they wore one they were never big enough. Or they were large enough and beringed, but their hair was brown or red or black or blond.

  A cargo loader finally told Flinx of a friend who almost fit the description. The only thing he was unsure of was the earring’s color. In a burst of excitement, Flinx tracked the man down and found that he still worked in Alaspinport.

  Unfortunately, he was only twenty-two years old and had never been to Moth in his life. Nor did he know offhand of anyone resembling himself who was older.

  That disappointment had nearly caused Flinx to give up.

  “Eh, my handsome young guest,” Mirable had chided him, “so many years you think on this, and then a couple of days and you’re ready to forget it?”

  He stayed on Alaspin and kept asking questions.

  Various inquiries around the town the next day elicited no leads, but did bring Flinx to the office of a garrulous, enthusiastic clerk. He was in charge of Temporary Residences, and Flinx had to see him to get his permit stamped so he could legally remain on Alaspin.

  “Entry to Alaspin is strictly limited and watched,” the clerk rambled on. “You already had a taste of our security procedures when you set down at the port.” Flinx nodded. They had seemed unusually thorough for a frontier world. “That’s because of the gems.” The clerk winked. “Local police have to keep tabs on everyone. Claim stealing, robbery—we have our share. Adds to the spice of life here.”

  Sure, Flinx thought, when you can sit in a nice, cool office and watch the arrests and shootings on the tridee.

  “And it’s not only the gemstones,” he went on. “Oh no. Constant fighting between the research people and the prospectors. Constant. It’s not easy keeping peace between them. Each group has little sympathy for the other. The scientists think the miners are destructive Neanderthals, and the miners consider the scientists cloud-walkers each with a fat credit pipeline to some research group.”

  “I don’t understand,” Flinx admitted openly. “A little conflict I can see, but persistent battling—what for? Isn’t each group after different things?”

  The clerk shook his head at the newcomer’s ignorance. “Let me give you an example. Have you ever heard of the Idonian Mask?”

&
nbsp; Flinx shook his head.

  “It cost the lives of sixteen people, on Alaspin and off, before the Commonwealth finally stepped in. Declared it a treasure of the people and appropriated it for the Pre-Commonwealth Societies Museum on Hivehom.” He eyed Flinx. “The mask was about your height and twice your width, Flinx, and decorated with sixty thousand carats of flawless blue diamonds set to form the face and history of some long-gone local god or politician or chief thug—they don’t know which yet. All done on worked, poured crysorillium.”

  “Now that I’ve heard of,” Flinx interrupted.

  The clerk nodded, smiling sagely. “Uh-huh . . . rare heavy metal that looks a little like iridescent azurite, only greener and much tougher. Thranx call it fonheese, or Devoriar metal. They prize the stuff, but it’s even more valuable to men, because there’s none of it on Earth, and little on the other explored worlds. Here they call it blue gold.

  “Itinerant old dirt-grubber found the mask first, nearly forty years ago,” the clerk went on. “I still remember the first faxes of it. Beautiful thing. The local scientists went crazy on seeing it. They said it held clues to a hundred missing years of Alaspinian history. Of course, the miner and his buddies were only interested in how many diamonds and how many kilos of crysorillium they could get out of it.

  “The mask went back and forth, changing hands between miners and scientists and back again, losing a certain amount of metal and diamonds with each transfer and replacing them with blood. Nor were all the deaths between contesting miners and researchers, no. I remember the story of two thranx scientists who published simultaneous identical interpretations of the mask’s upper writing. They ended up in a duel and killed each other. That’s why the Commonwealth government had to step in and take the thing over, to prevent any more deaths. Even so, the last two people the mask ‘killed’ were murdered over a plot to break into the museum and steal it.”

  He waved a hand at the bustling street outside the office window. “From what’s been learned, they say Alaspin once boasted several hundred different societies, united by a worldwide system of engineering and weights and measures, that sort of thing. But each society different. There are tens of thousands of mapped ruined structures out there, Flinx, and that’s estimated to be only a small portion of the total. Each culture worshipped its own gods. So, you see, it became kind of a sporting competition to see whose temples could be the most lavishly decorated. Jungle and swamp have taken many of them over, but it’s still a treasure hunter’s paradise out there, for anyone who wants to risk the weather, the hostile flora and fauna, and the aborigines.”

  “Aborigines?” Flinx exclaimed. That was enough to set the clerk to gabbing again.

  “The sociologists working here aren’t sure about the abos. They don’t seem to bear much resemblance to reconstructions of what the original Alaspinians were like. No one can decide for sure if they’re in fact degenerate remnants of the original dominants, or simply another semisentient group that’s evolved to take the place left by the vanished major culture.” He fumbled with some tapes. “I’ve got to get back to my own work, young man. Sorry if I bored you.”

  “No, you’ve been very informative,” Flinx told him honestly.

  “That’s Alaspin then, son. A place where fortunes and reputations can be made, sometimes together. And I am sorry,” he added, remembering his visitor’s original reason for coming, “that I don’t know of your oversized quarry with the gold ring.”

  Flinx left the office, and found himself wandering in no particular direction through the town. Casual conversation and random questioning had gained him nothing. His best chance for finding out anything lay with the local arm of the Commonwealth peaceforcers. They should have records of just about everyone who ever set foot on this world and passed through the screenings at the port. But a direct inquiry would likely be met with questions. The police did not supply faxes and biographs to anyone who walked in off the street and asked for them. He didn’t think they would cooperate without a few answers—answers Flinx would rather not give.

  Passing a street vendor, he palmed a food stick and replaced it without being detected. Old habits were hard to break. But stealing the right fax tape would be hard to do, perhaps even impossible. The local peaceforcers would not be city-soft.

  That left him with only the prospect of endless questioning ahead. Angrily he mused that coming here had probably been a mistake. Mother Mastiff was right—he was going to find nothing. In his anger he didn’t notice that he was now walking through a section of town he had not been to before.

  Besides, there were his responsibilities to the Ulru-Ujurrians. Without his supervision their innocent experiment could prove dangerous, to themselves and to others. They needed him to explain the rules of civilization as they constructed their own.

  What was he wasting his time for, then? Probably the man he sought had never set foot on the soil of Alaspin, had acquired his minidrag elsewhere, just as Flinx had. Time was passing. Why, in a little while he’d be twenty. Twenty! An old man.

  A tightening on his shoulder caused him to look that way and speak comfortingly. “I know, Pip . . . don’t worry.” The minidrag stared back up at him with slitted, anxious eyes. “I’m just nervous, that’s all.” But it wasn’t Flinx’s state of mind which had caused his pet to tense. The source lay ahead.

  A group of locals—prospectors, by the look of their clothes—were chatting in front of a business which managed to flourish a garish front even in the still-bright light of late afternoon. Concluding their conversation, one man and the two women miners left and walked on up the street. They turned to wave a goodbye, which the two men who stayed behind returned before entering the building.

  Flinx had a good look at one, less so at his companion. The man nearest him was short, his skin darker than Flinx’s but not black. That color was reserved for his hair, which fell straight and slick to just above his shoulders. Cheekbones bulged in his face like apples in a child’s pocket, and his nose was as sharp and curved as the fins of an atmosphere flier. The other man was not nearly so swarthy, and was of a different ethnic background.

  These details were interesting, but they were only incidental to what had caused both man and minidrag to tense. Each man had displayed a curled form on a shoulder, one on the left, the other on the right. Even from a distance there was no mistaking that blue-and-pinkish-red pattern of interlocking diamond shapes.

  Minidrags!

  Tame ones, probably as domesticated as Pip. His pet was the only miniature dragon Flinx had ever seen. While he had known that Pip came from here, he had had no idea that the practice of domesticating the venomous creatures was popular. Certainly it wasn’t widespread, because he had wandered through much of the town without seeing any tame flying snakes. Until now.

  He increased his speed and found himself facing the entrance. If nothing else, he would learn something of his pet on this trip. The two men inside, living as they did on the snakes’ native planet, likely knew more about minidrags than Flinx had been able to learn on his own. Seeing the two men together, he suspected that the bond achieved between man and reptile led to one between men capable of taming such a dangerous animal. It was a suspicion compounded of equal parts naiveté and reason. If he was right, they would greet him as a friend.

  Despite his anxiety, the entrance to the structure still gave him pause—the two men had entered a simiespin. Flinx was familiar with the notorious, barely tolerated simie booths. Places of unrefined amusement often advertised such booths for use.

  In a simie booth, an individual’s thoughts were read, amplified, and displayed three-dimensionally in the booth user’s mind. The dreamlike simulacrum was complete with all relevant sensory accompaniment: sight, smell, touch, everything. All it took was the modest fee.

  Naturally, a simie booth was private. Intrusion into a private booth, during which the intruder could also partake of some private dream, was one of the most universally decried offenses in the
Commonwealth. This because the most unassuming individual could rid him or herself of the most depraved, obnoxious fantasies no matter how hellish they might be, without harming anyone.

  Since booth owners didn’t care what fantasies their patrons conjured up, simies were once considered obscene and had been banned. The resultant great legal battle had finally been decided in favor of the simie manufacturers. Freedom of thought, one of the pillar principles of the Commonwealth, was brought to bear on the argument, and it was that which had finally defeated the censors. That, and the solemn testimony of a Church medical team. The team had deplored the uses to which the booths were sometimes put while simultaneously ruling that the booths had therapeutic value.

  What Flinx was confronting was something at once less disreputable and more unsettling. In effect, a simiespin was a greatly enlarged simie booth which surrounded an entire establishment—a restaurant, a bar, sometimes even a travel agency. Preprogrammed, the simiespin machinery projected mass three-dimensional illusion. It provided an always-changing environment, keyed by the random thoughts of its patrons but preprogrammed with nondestructive simulacra. The thrill was in never knowing where a visitor might find himself next.

  Simiespins vied with one another in the detail of their programming and the intensity of their simulations. Unwary visitors had been known to suffer from spells of madness, unable to cope with the rapid-fire change of environments, but these cases were insufficiently common to close the simiespins down. Ample warnings were posted outside to keep the unwary and uncertain from entering.

  There was additional protection, as Flinx discovered after paying the fee and entering. He found himself in a long hallway, dark and lined with fluorescent murals depicting scenes from different worlds. It was more than a mere entranceway. He could feel a tickling at his mind.