Patrimony

by Alan Dean Foster

  Peering out the foreport in the indicated direction, Flinx could see the two much larger, bulkier craft parked on the indicated section of tarmac. Clunky robotic haulers and more agile automated loaders swarmed around several gaping service bays. No humans or Tlel were in view, and the industrious mechanicals paid no attention to the new arrival.

  “Okay, I’ll walk,” he informed the controller. “What about Customs and Immigration?”

  “Someone will meet you.” A tinge of humor colored the rest of the reply. “It’ll give SeBois something to do.”

  Flinx did not have to secure the shuttle—the ship would see to such mundane safety measures on its own initiative. As soon as the landing ramp was deployed, he made sure the skin-sensitive soft-sealing collar of his jacket was snug around his neck and over Pip, and exited through the lock.

  The cold hit him immediately. Prepared for it, he was not surprised. If anything, the ambient temperature was less bracing than the shuttle’s readout had led him to expect. No doubt the chill was mitigated by the intensity of Gestalt’s sun at this altitude. His well-being was further enhanced by the planet’s slightly denser-than-Terranorm atmosphere, which helped to compensate for the altitude. Inhaling deeply and deliberately, he could not tell any difference from sea-level breathing on any Earth-normal world. Beneath his jacket, Pip twitched slightly against him but was otherwise untroubled by the sharp drop in temperature. As long as she could find enough food to power her dynamic metabolism, she would be fine.

  At the moment, food held no particular appeal for Flinx, since he had eaten prior to departing the Teacher. But he decided that if available, he wouldn’t turn down a hot drink. While the emergency reserve that did double duty as a component of his jacket insulation could supply that, he preferred not to access its limited volume unless he had to. Besides, it was always nice to try something local.

  Across the pavement and beyond the line of port buildings, the city of Tlossene crawled up a pair of opposing mountainsides that funneled into a sloping canyon in the distance. At the city’s higher elevations, poured and fabricated structures gave way or filtered into blue and green alien forest. None of the structures was taller than half a dozen stories. Though a real city with a population in the hundreds of thousands, Tlossene was no grand metropolis. Many of the central buildings he could see clearly looked weathered but tasteful. Their external appearance fit what he knew of the history of Gestalt’s settlement by humans. Scattered among them were distinctively dimpled domes and bulging egg-shaped constructions that hinted at a nonhuman sense of design. If these eye-catching edifices had not been built by the indigenous Tlel, they had at least been inspired by them.

  In the far distance beyond the city soared peaks whose heights Flinx could only estimate. If he needed to know exact altitudes, he could always check with the communit on his belt that had been loaded with all the information on this world that was available to the Teacher. Reaching the bottom of the ramp, he headed away from the shuttle, strolling in the designated direction.

  The pounding at the back of his head had nothing to do with the slight change in pressure from ship to surface. Such sometimes debilitating headaches were no stranger. As always, he would ignore the throbbing pain and attendant discomfort unless it became genuinely disabling. Only at such times did he reluctantly resort to medication or meditation. Sensing her master’s discomfort, Pip shifted uneasily against his shoulder. There was nothing she could do but empathize.

  If he were back on Arrawd, where the locals were in much more than one way of similar mind, his mind would be at peace. Or even if he were somewhere within that strange rain-forest-swathed world Midway—no, Midworld, he corrected himself. In all the Arm, those were the only two planetfalls he had made where he knew he could be reasonably certain of finding mental peace. Lips pressed tightly together against the pain, he strode grimly on. Learning the truth of the Meliorare Cocarol’s last revelation would go a long way toward easing any discomfort he felt while on Gestalt.

  He forgot about the all-too-recurrent pain in his head as he caught sight of something coming across the tarmac toward him. Someone will meet you, the amiable port controller had assured him. Flinx’s gaze narrowed. Whatever was coming toward him—and it was coming fast—was no genial representative of local officialdom. It was neither human nor Tlel. As it, or rather they, sped in his direction, they were sending out silent feelings of fear, anxiety, and confusion.

  They didn’t even have legs.

  The lack of visible limbs in no way hampered their progress. In fact, as they loomed larger in Flinx’s vision, it was apparent that legs would only have hindered their chosen method of locomotion. There were at least a dozen of the bizarre creatures tumbling and rolling rapidly in his general direction. Tumbling and rolling frantically, if his perception of the primitive emotions they were generating was correct. About the size of a human head, each of the roughly spherical creatures was completely covered in mottled white and brown fur. Longer, denser bristles stood out to the sides like oversized whiskers. They propelled themselves across the tarmac with four arms that terminated in wide, flat, fleshy pads. Working in unison, these grabbed at the hard surface and pushed off powerfully. Somewhere beneath all that fur, he imagined, must be nostrils, a mouth or trunk, and possibly eyes and ears. For all that they appeared blind and dumb, they did not roll into one another.

  Pursuing them was something much larger, far more ominous, and uncompromisingly threatening in appearance. As if to reinforce its menacing aspect, it was generating emotions that were as primitive as its obvious intentions. Hulking and bearish, it nonetheless traversed the pavement with a speed and grace that belied its bulk. Unlike its intended prey it did not roll, but instead lumbered forward on several dozen short, muscular legs that terminated in sharp-hoofed feet. White fur decorated with irregular splotches of pink combined to create an incongruously feminine façade. This initially disarming impression lasted only until one noticed the mouth. Almost as wide as the creature was broad, the protruding appendage skimmed along just above the ground, its horizontal maw gaping open. An enormous, trifurcated nostril set atop the blocky skull supplied the necessary air intake and outflow for the galloping carnivore, serving not only to fill its predatory lungs but also to allow the spatulate mouth to suction up anything in its path.

  That explained the visible absence of teeth or bony ridges inside the flexible jaws, Flinx realized. The meat-eater didn’t bite its victims, or crunch them, or bring them down with fang and claw. It simply, efficiently, and bloodlessly vacuumed them up. This particular alien carnivore, Flinx reflected, sucked.

  The distance separating the desperate dozen of the round, rolling creatures and the whistling predator shrank as he looked on. That this frenetic display of local predation was taking place right out on the tarmac of one of the planet’s main shuttleports would have been sufficiently surprising all by itself, even without the fact that the entire screeching, howling menagerie was bearing down on him at impressive speed. Perceiving the threat, Pip struggled to take to the air—only to find herself constrained by the soft-seal of her master’s jacket.

  Quadruple arms flailing wildly, a pair of the rolling furballs bounded past Flinx on his right. A trio shot past on his left. All five stank profoundly, emitting a pungent musk that was an olfactory reflection of their terror. It occurred to him that their route, rather than being arbitrary, might have been chosen with the intent of possibly placing a diversion into the path of their ravenous pursuer.

  That, he realized a bit late as he reached for the pistol holstered at his service belt, would be him.

  He had plenty of time to adjust the weapon’s setting. The trouble was, the gun was properly secured in its holster. The holster was attached to his service belt. His service belt was fastened comfortably around his waist—beneath the jacket, whose front was snugly sealed against the local climate. Sharing some of the emotional tumult of the last roller as it swerved wildly past him, Flinx began
to fumble a bit more hurriedly with the seal that kept the hem of his coat snug against his upper thighs. Oblivious to his concerns, the lumbering oncoming predator continued to head straight toward him. Flinx felt fairly sure that, unlike the rollers, it had no intention of going around. The broad, flattened, energetically suctioning mouth was more than capacious enough to vacuum him up as easily as it would have any of the fleeing, multiarmed furballs. Fumbling faster with the jacket’s lower seal, he tried projecting feelings of uncertainty onto the onrushing meat-eater. When that had no effect, he strove to project fear. Too primitive or too preoccupied with the hunt to respond, the creature took no notice of his increasingly harried mental efforts.

  Finally forcing her way free of the jacket, Pip took to the air. In the denser atmosphere, she had to work even less than usual to get aloft. Her iridescent body was a sudden burst of color against the blue sky. A blur of pleated blue-and-pink wings, she needed but a moment to orient herself before diving directly at the charging carnivore—only to hesitate in midair. The poison she spat was lethal when it struck the eyes of a target, and she was deadly accurate from a surprising distance. Only one thing kept her from dropping the whistling predator in its tracks.

  She couldn’t find its eyes.

  Either like the fast-fleeing rollers it had none, an increasingly uneasy Flinx surmised, or else they were so deeply concealed beneath the coat of white-rose fur they could not be seen. As the beast drew entirely too near, suction from its mouth began to pluck at the legs of Flinx’s thermotropic pants. Normally steady as sunshine, his fingers were uncharacteristically fickle as they fumbled ever more anxiously for the handgrip of his gun. The deep-toned whistling, he now noted, came not from the gaping cavity of the creature’s distinctive, expansive mouth, but from the exceptionally large tripartite nostril set atop its skull. Mouth, nostril. Drawn by what must be an enormous lung, or set of lungs, air was sucked in through the vacuuming mouth and expelled through the bony structure atop the head. If he did not do something to halt or divert the monster, very shortly he would find himself in a position to study this fascinating example of adaptive alien biology from the inside.

  As Pip darted and hovered overhead in a frantic but futile attempt to distract the lumbering carnivore, Flinx finally succeeded in pulling his pistol free of its holster and taking aim. Knowing nothing of the creature’s anatomy and in any case not having any time to evaluate it, he pointed the beamer’s muzzle at the center of the furmatted skull. Hopefully, the brain that powered the animal was located in the general region between mouth and nose.

  It was only when he had the pistol leveled and ready to fire that he noticed it was set on Heat, its lowest calibration, instead of Stun or Kill.

  CHAPTER 2

  Fingers working frantically, Flinx hurried to reset the weapon as he threw himself desperately to one side. At the same time, he could feel his feet beginning to slip out from under him as the full strength of the oncoming carnivore’s predatory suctioning began to pull forcefully at his legs. Out of time and out of options, he raised the pistol.

  A powerful odor of singed fur assailed his nostrils. The monster halted abruptly, its multiple legs bunching up beneath it like so many commuters trying to simultaneously pile into a transport featuring only a single open doorway. It stood where it had stopped, only a couple of meters from Flinx, swaying slightly on its plenteous foot-pads. Only when it keeled over onto its left side was he able to see the perfectly round fist-sized hole that had been punched clean through its skull from one side to the other. Exhaling, Flinx lowered the beamer.

  He hadn’t fired.

  The man who had was coming toward him. Bolted to a secure right-shoulder mount, a rifle that was nearly as long as the diminutive figure was tall whirred smoothly and softly as it slid backward on its brace to drop down into resting position against the gunner’s back. The shooter was clad in a single blue perflex suit designed to minimize weight while maximizing heat retention. The fabric over his right breast sported a couple of badly scuffed bronzed insignia. Though at first glance seemingly better suited to a diving competition than an outdoor stroll in Gestalt’s rough climate, the one-piece outfit was at once more practical and less cumbersome than Flinx’s makeshift cold-weather garb. Certainly if he lived on Gestalt, he reflected, he doubtless would opt for something similarly comfortable.

  Have to go shopping if I’m going to be here for a while, he told himself as he enviously eyed the approaching figure’s suppleness of movement and lack of bulky attire. Edging away from the lifeless mass of dead carnivore, he started toward the individual who had fired the single lethal shot. He did so as much to put the still-warm corpse’s stomach-turning smell behind him as to greet his rescuer. Behind him, the muted whine of port maintenance robots indicated the rapid approach of sense-deprived mechanicals. Indifferent to the intensifying stench, they would systematically undertake the necessary cleanup.

  Smiling, he extended a hand. Downward, since he was considerably taller than the man who had come to his aid. “Stimulating arrival procedures you have here.”

  The hand that gripped his fingers was small, dark, and strong as duralloy. White teeth gleamed in a dark face. It was impossible to tell if the official had any hair, since the integrated hood of the insulating perflex suit covered his head completely. His eyes were large and slightly almond-shaped. Though these were suggestive of Asian ancestry, the remainder of his features reflected the usual Terran homogeny. The only accent in his terranglo was local, the words emerging from his mouth slightly more clipped and formal than usual.

  “No extra charge,” he quipped. Turning, he looked on as a mechanical loader picked up the carcass of the dead predator and unceremoniously dumped it into the cargo bay of a self-powered transport. Pivoting in unison, the two mechanicals accelerated westward across the tarmac, heading for the nearest disposal bay.

  “That’s a kasollt that was coming for you. See them occasionally up in the foothills. They generally don’t come into town. You’re lucky to see one.” His nostrils flared slightly, testing the air. “You wouldn’t think a predator, trying its best to conceal itself, would stink like that. Or its prey, hoping to hide. But a lot of the local fauna has no sense of smell. That includes the Tlel. Strange bit of evolution, here. They make up for it by having specialized appendages on their heads that let them detect individual electrical fields. Like sharks on Earth.” Turning back to Flinx, he eyed the youthful newcomer appraisingly.

  Flinx’s reply was measured. “I think I was lucky to see you.”

  The official’s grin widened as he acknowledged the backhanded thank-you. “This port doesn’t get many noncommercial arrivals. As soon as the kasollt was spotted chasing the olu herd out onto the field, some of us over in control thought it might be a good idea for one of us to come out and meet you personally.” On his back, the intuitive rifle murmured softly by way of agreement. The man glanced at the shape that was moving around inside Flinx’s jacket. “I see that you’re not entirely alone. Just guessing based on the movement, I’d say your companion’s an interesting creature.”

  “So I’ve been told.” Through the fog of his breath, Flinx gestured toward the nearby complex of low-domed buildings. “Can we continue this inside? It’s chilly out here.”

  “It’s chilly everywhere here. This is Gestalt. Come on.” Turning, his host led Flinx away from the shuttle. Behind them, the onboard AI observed their departure, retracted the landing ramp, and switched to Secure mode. Then it settled down in comfortable cybernetic hibernation to patiently await its owner’s return.

  “I’m Third-Level Port Administrator Payasinadoriyung.” Before his guest could respond, he added, “Call me Paya.” This helpful and downright necessary recommendation was followed by an expectant pause.

  “Mastiff,” Flinx told him, utilizing the alias he had already supplied to landing control. “Skua Mastiff.”

  Accepting this without comment, the official nodded in the direction of the well
-equipped service belt that was concealed beneath the hem of Flinx’s jacket. “You didn’t defend yourself.”

  “I didn’t think I’d need a gun here, on the tarmac. Consequently, the burst level on my weapon was set too low. I was trying to adjust it when you saved me the need.”

  Paya nodded understandingly. “Make sure it’s properly set now.” He jerked a thumb back over his right shoulder. “You’ve met the kasollt. Gestalt’s home to multiple kinds of carnivore that all have one thing in common. They’re all hungry, all the time. Even downtown, everyone here carries some kind of defense. Charged gloves, flashers, adjustable auralite, projectile weapon—next time I probably won’t be around to moderate any informal encounters between you and the local fauna.”

  Flinx mulled the disconcerting advice. “I’ll need an activated weapon even in Tlossene?”

  “Anywhere you go walking within the city limits, yes.” Paya’s accompanying nod was emphatic. “The Tlel believe strongly in live and let live, even when the more aggressive examples of the local fauna do not. Essentially existing here as guests, the rest of us are obliged to go along with local values. So while it’s not an everyday occurrence, there’s always the chance of encountering something nasty roaming the streets. City maintenance does a pretty good job of keeping things clean and safe, but a knowing citizen is always on guard.”

  They were nearing the first building. Sheathed in the sprayed-on dark photogen that powered the structure, its curving outer wall flowed seamlessly upward like an inverted black wave to become the domed roof. The design was practical as well as reflective of Tlelian architectural influences.

  Advancing through the triple entranceway, Flinx experienced a sequential and most welcome rise in ambient temperature. Slipping free of its carrying harness, Paya divested himself of his impressive weapon and secured it in a waiting open locker before directing Flinx to a small, slightly raised platform.