At the same time he knew that there were areas where Teal’s people, would benefit from contact with the rest of humanxkind. Flinx was too young and too much a realist to succumb, as certain romantics did, to a fatuous belief in the inherent perfection and nobility of the forest-roaming primitive. The unfortunate Jerah, for example, would have been delighted by the gift of a heat-sensing, compact magazine, rapid-firing pistol.
Somehow a happy medium of contact would have to be found. Surely the quality of life here could be improved without being destroyed. At the same time he was considering the problem, he was acutely aware of his lack of experience in such matters.
Truzenzuzex and Bran Tse-Mallory would know how to proceed, he thought. If only that remarkable pair didn’t choose to move about as often as he did himself. With a shock he realized that he didn’t know if his early mentors were even still alive.
One day I will have to stop wandering, stop playing, and attend to business, he told himself.
He wasn’t going to do much of anything, he knew, until he could figure out a way of getting off this world safely. Reaching his shuttle and lifting off without incident was going to be difficult, and docking successfully with the Teacher next to impossible so long as the AAnn kept careful watch. He knew they wouldn’t grow tired and give up. The Imperial Authority could always rotate ships on station to relieve boredom among their crews. Precivilization AAnn would watch a hole containing prey until either they or their quarry starved. Their modern, technologically sophisticated descendants were no less tenacious.
Could he strike some kind of bargain with them? In order to do that he would first need something to bargain with. If he was patient, perhaps time and chance would provide it.
He remained alert to any possibility while allowing Teal and her friends to show him the wonders of the hylaea, of which there was a plethora within a day’s hike of the Home-tree. He was also pleased to see that the scout who had met them in the forest, the providentially unmated Enoch, had taken an abiding and ongoing interest in Teal’s welfare.
For her part, she paid little attention to him, preferring to devote most of her free time to looking after Flinx. He accepted this, knowing that it was only temporary. At present he was a novelty, one to whom she felt she owed something. When it came time for him to leave, she would turn gradually and gratefully to the attentive and worthy Enoch.
At his request they climbed one day to the upper reaches of the second level. Each level was marked by distinctive changes in the type and density of vegetation, much of which he’d come to recognize. A willing Teal and Enoch filled in the gaps in his knowledge.
But none of them, not even Ponder, would go any higher. Nor would they descend below the vegetative border that separated the sixth level from the seventh, where light came more from eerily phosphorescent fungi than from a distant and shadowed sun. Despite his interest in the actual nature of the planet’s surface, when he finally found himself poised on that border contemplating the unwholesome, stygian depths, Flinx understood that it was a journey no one would be criticized for postponing indefinitely.
“Terrible things live down there.” Ponder stood next to him, his nose wrinkling at the fetid odor rising from the abyss. Teal, several hunters, and their furcots waited uneasily overhead. “We should go.”
Beneath the sickly branch on which they stood, something monstrous went scuttling through the depths, a slightly brighter shade of black than its noisome surroundings. Flinx imagined a foamless wave cresting on a moonless night and shuddered. Turning without regret, he followed Ponder upward, toward the light.
Chapter Twenty-one
Two months and a week had passed without any sign of the AAnn. Thanks to the information the Teacher relayed to him via the shuttle, he knew they were still about, waiting for him to give up and return.
The fact that the shuttle’s relay continued to function suggested that they were content to retire to orbit and await communication. Whether the shuttle would respond to flight commands or not remained to be seen. Easy enough to leave it intact and at his disposal, save for its ability to fly. Disabling it would leave him planet-bound and at their mercy.
If he was going to be marooned, there were several items aboard he very much wished to have; supplies that would make an extended stay on this world a deal more tolerable. Foremost among these were a replacement sidearm and fresh power cells for his positioner and communicator. And while the local foodstuffs were tasty as well as edible, he hungered for more familiar shipboard fare.
A prisoner of my environment, he reflected, even if I carry it around with me.
Enoch, Teal, and two other hunters agreed to accompany him, together with their four furcots.
“I don’t think any AAnn will be waiting in ambush,” he told them as they made their way through the hylaea. Pip fluttered on ahead, examining each and every fruit and flower. “There’s no reason to station troops at the landing site. A shuttle doesn’t have room for and isn’t designed to accommodate passengers for any length of time.”
“Why wouldn’t the nonpersons simply set up a camp outside their skyboat?” Enoch asked.
Flinx had to smile. “Assuming they managed to make it back to their own skyboat and lift off successfully, the not-person AAnn who captured Teal and I would share tales of their experience with their fellows. I don’t think they’d find many volunteers to spend any amount of time on your world.” He ducked under a limb.
“Besides, there’s no need for them to go to the trouble of establishing a permanent camp. They know I can’t get offworld without their permission. All they have to do is wait me out.” He tapped his instrument belt. “I’m sure that’s why they’ve left my communications alone. I can’t surrender if I can’t talk to them.”
“Are you going to surrender, Flinx?” Despite his longer stride, Teal kept pace with him effortlessly.
“No,” he told her fondly. “Not a chance.”
“Then what will you do?”
“Survive. Live. Try to be patient.” He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze, noting with amusement Enoch’s stolid sideways glance as he did so. “It’s not such a bad thing to spend time in the company of good friends.” He waved at the surrounding forest. “There’s so much to learn here. So much newness.”
“Only new to those who are ignorant,” Enoch groused.
“And I am ignorant, Enoch. That’s why I’m relying on experienced, knowledgeable people like yourself to enlighten me.”
The other man tried not to appear flattered, but failed.
They made excellent time through the forest, untroubled by wandering carnivores. This wasn’t surprising: not with adult furcots flanking the group on either side as well as above and below. Traveling with a party consisting entirely of seasoned adults, Flinx was astonished at the progress that could be made.
Dangerous growths were easily and rapidly avoided, difficult places expertly negotiated as they followed the course supplied by the positioner. Initially dubious as to its efficacy despite Teal’s assurances, the hunters soon came to trust the compact device. Each of them wanted to caress it, turning it over and over in their fingers as if mere contact could impart some of its magic to the holder. For their part, the furcots dismissed it with a collective snort, preferring to trust in their own instincts and sense of direction.
In the company of eight capable guides, Flinx found he was able to relax, though his companions still expected him to watch out on his own for the smaller, more easily sidestepped threats.
There was even time for some play, as when they each made a ten meter leap onto the comforting leaves of a close relative of the gargalufla plant that had allowed Flinx, Teal, and her children to finally escape the clutches of the AAnn.
Nearing the landing site, the party was attacked for the first time. The reech consisted of a small, pallid round body from which extended half a dozen three-meter-long arms. As it charged it gave forth an unexpectedly farcical
roar that Flinx could only describe as a squonk. There was nothing amusing about the mouth, however, which was all hooked, serrated teeth.
The combination of waving, flailing arms and small body made for a difficult target. While the furcots diverted the charge and kept it occupied, Enoch and One-Eye slipped close with their snufflers. Two poison darts struck the reech, one just under the lower jaw, the other square in the center eye. Losing its grip, it fell spinning and tumbling into the green depths, its attenuated arms thrashing convulsively like a starfish on speed.
That night they camped in the shelter of a slyone grove, surrounded by two-meter-tall flowers which were at once incredibly graceful and strong. The tubular stems and blossoms glistened like glass, not surprising since they contained more silicon than carbon. When the night-rain commenced, Flinx felt as if he were sleeping in the woodwind section of a symphony orchestra. Each droplet drew forth from the flower it expended itself upon a different note, all tinkling and gemlike.
Around midnight he was awakened by the muted shush-shush of multiple wings. He watched while Teal explained how the blind hyels, boasting ears big enough to put those of any Terran bat to shame, pollinated the scentless sylone, locating the blossoms by sound alone and feeding on the odorless nectar with tongues as long as her arm. In this way pollinator, plant, and rain were intertwined, as without the rain to strike them the sylone would produce no sound.
Awed yet anew by the synchronicity of nature, Flinx allowed the flower-music to lull him back to sleep.
The following morning the furcot Beelaseec, who had been walking point, returned to announce that according to Flinx’s description of the landing site it must lie just ahead, for they had reached a place where the forest was growing directly upon naked rock.
A glance at the positioner confirmed the furcot’s supposition. “We should start ascending now,” Flinx informed his companions. “Be easier to climb through the trees than on the rock.”
“You mean to enter the Upper Hell,” Saalahan declared. “That is not for us. We will remain close, but concealed.” It was a measure of the terror in which the open sky was held that even furcots refused to present themselves to its openness. Having been exposed to its dangers before, Flinx understood and sympathized.
“No one needs to leave the cover of the trees. I can make it to my skyboat by myself.”
Enoch stepped forward. “I will come with you, Flinx, if you need me.”
Flinx put both hands on the other man’s shoulders, in the accepted fashion. “Thank you, Enoch, but there’s really nothing you can do up on the rock or aboard my boat. Better you stay with the others and keep watch. Pip will look after me. Keep an eye on Teal.”
A smile cracked the smaller man’s face and he responded in kind, grasping Flinx’s shoulders firmly.
When they were a hundred meters from the top of the canopy the first glimmerings of blue began to appear through the leaves. Shortly thereafter, a comfortable resting place was located and Flinx bade temporary farewell to his friends. The branches soon grew narrower, the supporting vines thinner as he approached the rock face, making his way upward.
When he had vanished from sight, one of the hunters turned to Teal. “What do you think truly of this tall skyperson?”
“In the ways of the world he is very young.” She was looking at the place in the branches where Flinx had disappeared. “In others, he is old beyond his years. Older than is fair.”
The hunter nodded sagely. “It’s better, then, that he works this thing with his skyboat alone.” Satisfied, he found a comfortable place to sit and removed the food pouch from his backpack.
Teal tried to put Flinx out of her mind but found she could not. Horrific creatures inhabited the Upper Hell, alert and ready to snatch up anyone who ventured too close to the sky. Yet Flinx spoke of flying through the sky and beyond it, as her own ancestors were said to have done. Surely he would be all right.
Surely.
Though she had no appetite, she forced herself to join the others in eating.
It was strange for Flinx to stand again beneath a sky in which blue rather than green was dominant. The yellowish-blue atmosphere was alive with colorful, drifting shapes. Some soared on thin, membranous wings, others flapped rainbow-hued feathers, while a flock of peeled spheres coiled through the air like animated corkscrews. A trio of slim fliers boasting six stubby wings apiece shot past overhead, the wind whistling with their passage.
Not every inhabitant of this world’s atmosphere was a predator, Flinx observed as he ducked under the tip of a branch and emerged onto bare granite. Seed and fruit eaters dominated the clouds.
Still, he paused to crouch beneath the last protective vegetation as he scanned the crowded yellow-blue for signs of taloned hunters. Weeks of experience had taught him that on this world safety was an illusion, and confidence a sure path to disaster.
It was immensely reassuring to see his shuttle squatting exactly as he’d left it. After so much green, the rudimentary dull gray of it came as a shock to his retinas. Outwardly undisturbed, it hugged its chunk of exposed mountaintop, the boarding ramp still temptingly affixed to bare rock. A flick of the transmitter that was on his belt would open the lock, readmitting him to a world temporarily set aside.
Next to it stood a second shuttle, larger than his own and equally devoid of animation. It was of a familiar design, relatively common throughout the Commonwealth.
Coerlis’s ship, he knew. Waiting patiently for a crew that would never return.
Of the AAnn shuttle there was no sign, unless one counted the scorched, blackened section of rock in front of his own craft. Either Lord Caavax had made it back to his vessel with the remnants of his party and had safely lifted off, or else another shuttle had descended and put aboard a reclaim crew to recover the craft. Flinx suspected the former. Caavax was stubborn, but resourceful.
Resting comfortably in orbit, waiting to hear from me, he told himself. Well, that was a communication he intended to delay for as long as possible. Rising, he stepped out of the concealing vegetation and started toward his ship.
Only to halt abruptly as an unfamiliar emotion from within his shuttle impacted on his thoughts.
While Pip hovered nearby, alert and wary, he strained for identification. Tumbling the sentiment in his mind, examining it from every angle, he felt the overriding sensation to be one of all-pervasive calm. It could come from a waiting AAnn, but there were distinctive differences that suggested another source entirely. One, he decided, that was not human. For one thing, the internalized conflict that was always present in his own kind was absent.
Alien emotions were always difficult to recognize, much less analyze.
Who, or what, had taken up residence inside his shuttle? Certainly nothing local. Not even the cleverest furcot could solve the security of the outer lock.
A furcot, however, would know enough not to stand so long exposed to the open sky. Keeping low and moving fast, Flinx hurried in the direction of the boarding ramp.
Hiding beneath the ramp, he twisted and leaned out far enough to see that, as expected, the lock was still secured. Could some peculiar animal, perhaps one that generated similar frequencies for attack or defense, have accidentally broadcast the signal that would open the lock, only to subsequently find itself trapped inside? It was a far-fetched scenario, but given what he’d seen on this world in the previous few weeks, he believed the creatures that inhabited it capable of anything.
No, he decided. Nothing native was involved. There was too much of the familiar about the emotional condition he was sensing. Nor could it be an AAnn. Only a single mind was projecting. Had it been Lord Caavax’s intention to post a guard on board his craft, most surely he would have assigned more than one.
None of it made any sense.
As time passed, nothing occurred to suggest that whatever was within was aware of his presence beneath the ramp. If he could crack the outer lock, slip quickly inside, and reach a certain storage lock
er, he would be better able to confront whatever had taken possession of his vessel. In any event, there was nothing to be gained by huddling beneath the ramp in expectation of nightfall.
As he stepped out from under cover and started up the ramp, something like a winged, ribbed barrel fell out of the sky. Its beak or bill, which was as long as the stubby body and ended in a needle-sharp point, would have been more appropriate on a fish-eater.
Possibly it reached the same conclusion, because as Pip rose to intercept, it veered off and shot past its intended quarry, the wind of its passing ruffling Flinx’s hair.
Another half-dozen steps found him at the top of the ramp. His hand reached for the transmitter . . . and hesitated. Might as well see if the shuttle’s vorec system is still functioning, he decided. He directed his voice to the grid set flush in the door.
Responding promptly to his verbal command, the barrier slid aside on permanent low-friction seals, admitting him to the lock. A second command opened the inner door, and he made a mad dash for the storage locker.
“Come on, come on!” he muttered aloud as he fumbled with the recalcitrant latch. Seconds later it was free, allowing him to liberate the sidearm secured inside. A quick check showed a full charge, as expected.
Pip was just settling on his shoulder when the owner of the emotions he had detected from without appeared in the fore portal. His symbospeech was fluent, the accent familiar.
“I really don’t think you want to shoot me. At least, I hope that you don’t.”
A relieved Flinx let out a long sigh. The creature standing before him had four legs, two arms, and a pair of limbs that could be employed as either, according to the demands of the moment. It wore very little; a double pack strapped across its thorax, and leggings that were more decorative than functional. Its insignia was inlaid in the shoulder of one truarm.
From half his height the iridescent-gold compound eyes gazed back at him thoughtfully. Feathery antennae inclined in his direction.
Mid-Flinx Page 28