Mid-Flinx (Pip and Flinx)

by Alan Dean Foster

  His thoughts drifted to his barracks bed on the Keralkee, lined with fine yellow sand and heated to a nice soothing dryness. He’d had enough of humidity to last him a lifetime. There would be tales aplenty to brag upon when they returned to the ship with the peculiar human in tow. For the life of him, Tatrasaseep couldn’t see what was so important about the young mammal or his vessel, much less why a Lord of the AAnn would take a personal interest in the matter. If it had been up to him, the trooper would have shot all the humans on sight and been done with it.

  Less than an hour to go now. Then he would turn his post over to Creskescanvi and flatten himself comfortably on the branch until morning. Time enough for his associates to partake of this suffering.

  At the far end of the branch he knew Masmarulial was keeping watch. In between, the rest of the expedition slept. A few days march and with luck all would arrive safely back at the dangerous landing site. No more watches then. Only blissful dryness and the promise of promotion.

  Resting his chest on his knees, he shifted the pulse rifle to a more comfortable position. His tail twitched restlessly, flicking water from side to side. With little light to see by and only the steady drumming of the rain for company, time passed with agonizing slowness.

  Fortunately there was little wind in the depths of the forest and the rain fell straight down. Tiny luminous shapes slithered and crawled and flitted through the sodden night. Occasionally one ate its neighbor.

  Leaning slightly forward enabled him to peer into the dark depths, where other naturally refulgent shapes swam like zooplankton in a celestial sea. Stealthy silhouettes plucked the unwary from the damp air or dropped down on them from above. A few specially adapted life forms were active, even at the height of the nightly deluge.

  Something scratched on the branch behind him. Every sense suddenly alert, he jerked around and aimed his rifle in the same motion.

  Something was moving back in the leaves; a lumpish outline half his size. A soft mewling sound came from it, as if it were in pain. As he stared, it rolled over and stopped moving.

  It lay like that for some time, utterly motionless. Doing his best to ignore it, Tatrasaseep found that after a while his curiosity, not to mention prudence, dictated that he investigate a little closer. After a glance in the direction of the slumbering encampment, he ventured a soft hiss as he rose.

  Keeping the rifle pointed toward the lump at all times and two fingers on the triggers, he approached cautiously. Once he was careful to step around, not over, a clump of what appeared to be harmless grass growing from a bump in the wood. The lesson of the hapless Chorsevasin had not been lost on his fellow soldiers. The grassy blades were spotted with tiny black bumps that for all Tatrasaseep knew were as likely to contain a virulent poison as easily as harmless pollen. One could not be certain of anything on this hell-world, except that if something looked harmless, it probably wasn’t.

  He kept that thought in mind as he neared the immobile lump. It lay amidst a cluster of epiphytes bright with tiny white flowers whose petals had closed for the night. Black flowers blossoming from the same plants stood open to the rain. It wasn’t the first time they had encountered a plant that boasted two distinctly different types of flower, one blooming diurnally and its counterpart nocturnally. In this way the plant maximized its opportunities for pollination. In the face of eternal and relentless competition, individual growths on this world had evolved unique methods of survival.

  The lump quivered slightly and the trooper froze. A steady stream of dark liquid was trickling from an ugly lesion on its side. Whatever else it was, it was apparent that the creature was either sick or badly wounded. That would explain why its movements had been blatant and clumsy when every other life form traveling about at night was at pains to move quietly and with stealth.

  Taking a wary step forward, the trooper was able to locate the head. The three eyes were closed and more liquid flowed from the half-open mouth. The animal was of a type they had not encountered before.

  Should he awaken Field Officer Nesorey, kick this diseased mass over the side, or just ignore it and return to his post? He leaned toward nudging it into the depths as the most conclusive of the three possibilities. A single shove should do it. A quick look around revealed no movement nearby. Taking no chances, he kept the rifle aimed at the creature’s skull as he took another step forward. He was prepared and ready to deal with whatever surprises even a near-corpse might proffer.

  What he was not prepared for was a surprise from another source entirely.

  Dangling unseen from the underside of a branch ten meters directly overhead, Saalahan simultaneously released all six sets of claws. The AAnn never saw the half-ton mass that landed on his head, snapping his spine in several places. The soldier made not a sound, unless one counted the subsequent inconsequential snapping of numerous bones.

  Sliding from lax fingers, the pulse rifle bounced once and vanished over the side of the branch, its triggers unactivated, its destructive power still leashed. As a third figure came ambling out of the dense vegetation that lay in the direction of the trunk, the motionless form abed in the black-flowering epiphytes rolled to its feet.

  Moomadeem shook sharply, shaking pools of water from green fur. Then a paw reached back to flick the blood-sucking toet from its temporary home atop a rib. Settled onto a host, the parasite looked very much like an open wound. It was a sloppy drinker, spilling as much blood as it ingested. Carefully Moomadeem spat a second one from where it had been clinging to the inside of the furcot’s upper jaw.

  “Nasty,” it muttered with distaste. “Are you all right, Saalahan?”

  The big furcot nodded as it climbed off the smashed pulp that had moments earlier been a member of the Empire’s elite expeditionary forces. “Not a bad drop. You?”

  “I was wondering what was keeping you.”

  Saalahan indicated the engorged toets that were creeping slowly back down the branch in search of shelter. “Nothing to worry about. They would have stopped sucking soon.”

  “It wasn’t that. The one in my mouth tasted bad and I wanted to get rid of it.” Already the two wounds were healing over, a familiar well-known by-product of the toets’ anti-agglutination saliva. No successful parasite desires a useful host to perish from infection. Corpses make poor fonts of future nutrients.

  As Tuuvatem joined them, the three furcots studied the irregular outlines of the encampment. Saalahan absently used its back pair of legs to kick the remains of the dead soldier off the branch. The rain muffled the noise as it bounced down through the hylaea below, breaking branches and snapping vines.

  “What next?” Tuuvatem whispered interestedly.

  “They’re sleeping.” Moomadeem dug its front claws into the wood underfoot. “Let’s charge and knock them all off!”

  “No.” Saalahan did not move. It was studying, observing, analyzing. Or perhaps it was just instinct. “Not all of them may be asleep. Their snufflers shoot thunder, and we are not as quick as thunder. Come.”

  They melted back into the trees as silently as they had come.

  Ceijihagrast BHRYT was furious as he blinked at his chronometer. He was Tatrasaseep’s follow-up on watch, and it was the other soldier’s responsibility to wake his designated replacement. What was keeping him? Already Ceijihagrast had overslept his posting by an unforgivable margin.

  Angrily he fumbled with his rifle. Let Tatrasaseep try to claim compensation for unscheduled watch time! It wouldn’t play. Worse still for him if he’d fallen asleep on duty. Field Officer Nesorey would have the scales off his nostrils.

  Rifle armed and ready, he picked his way past his sleeping comrades as he strode down the branch. He hadn’t gone far before he paused and turned a slow circle. Tatrasaseep should be standing or sitting on this spot, just in front of the little grassy clump that protruded from a woody knot. There was no sign of him.

  Either the fool had sneaked back into camp and gone to sleep in violation of every conceivable direc
tive, or more likely, he had simply mispositioned himself. Difficult even in the rain to overlook the grassy knot, but not impossible.

  Ceijihagrast walked on past the patch of quasi-grass. The encampment was well behind him now. Where was the lazy sisstinp? Had the clumsy idiot gone for a walk to loosen his muscles, only to slip and tumble soundlessly to a green grave? Unlikely. Tatrasaseep would never make underofficer, but he was physically adept.

  Leaning slightly to his left, the trooper tried to see into the sodden reaches below the branch. If Tatrasaseep had fallen, he might be lying not far below, concealed from view by overarching leaves and blossoms. Even now he might be trying weakly to call for help, his portable beam broken or out of reach, his tail thrashing feebly beneath him.

  If a search was to be mounted, assistance was in order. Too easy to become disoriented and lost in the dense vegetation, too likely to meet up with something lethal in the dark.

  He called out, not too emphatically lest he wake the Lord Caavax. The thought that his comrade might have been attacked never crossed his mind, knowing for certain as he did that in that event any competent AAnn soldier would have been able to squeeze off at least a burst or two from his weapon which would have awakened the entire camp.

  No, either he was sleeping safely back in the encampment, in which case Ceijihagrast would be tempted to shoot him himself, or else he had met with an accident. Satisfied that he had considered every possibility, the trooper pivoted to return to camp.

  And promptly encountered an accident, waiting to happen.

  Something immense and dark had risen behind him, blocking not only his path but his view. Standing on hind legs, Saalahan scowled unblinkingly down at the soldier. Remnant moonlight outlined razor-sharp tusks.

  Ceijihagrast’s slitted pupils dilated sharply as he brought the pulse rifle up. He wasn’t nearly quick enough. Four massive paws came together, catching the soldier’s skull between them and crushing it like an egg. Messily decapitated, the body crumpled to the ground.

  With a disdainful snort, the furcot dropped to all sixes. “Clear?”

  “All clear.” Tuuvatem was scrutinizing the rain-soaked encampment while clinging to the side of the branch, indifferent to the twenty-meter drop beneath her. Thirty-six claws ensured that she did not fall.

  “You see?” Saalahan gestured with a bloodied paw. “Each night they do the same thing. Each night we will kill one or two more of them. Soon they will all be dead. Then we can go back to the Home-tree.”

  Effortlessly grasping the headless body in powerful jaws, it took a step to the edge of the branch and dropped it over the side. Pulse rifle still clutched convulsively in clawed fingers, the dead trooper went bouncing and spinning down in the wake of his predecessor. The forest swallowed both with equal efficiency.

  Saalahan considered the sky. “Soon the sun will rise and it will be lightness. Enough for one night. Tomorrow we will kill more of the nonpersons.” Shepherding the two youngsters, the big adult led them off into the depths of the verdure in search of a place to sleep.

  “There is no hurry.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Field Officer Nesorey was livid as he confronted his four remaining troops. “None of you saw anything? None of you heard anything?” His burning gaze fixed on Hosressachu. “You! You were on the last posting forward. Nothing disturbed your watch? No sounds, no sights piqued your interest?”

  To his credit, the frightened, unhappy soldier replied readily. “No, honored one. I saw only the rain and small glowing things. As did he who watched before me.” At this the trooper on his immediate right executed a decidedly sharp gesture indicative of first-degree concurrence.

  “Someone should have checked on Tatrasaseep,” the field officer muttered.

  “Probably Cheijihagrast did just that, honored one.” Proper sociomilitary etiquette notwithstanding, the soldier initially berated wasn’t about to concede control of the discussion. While he felt first-degree guilt over the loss of two comrades, he wasn’t about to take responsibility for their demise. Such unwarranted acquiescence would be decidedly un-AAnnlike.

  What fate had befallen the two soldiers, the survivors could only imagine. Nor were the human captives any help, responding to angry inquiries with blank expressions on their flat, soft-skinned faces.

  Morning sounds filled the air, a cacophony of creatures rising in endless variety and profusion to take back the forest from the citizens of the night. The music they made was pure dissonance to the surviving AAnn. Yellow-green light grated on their pupils as the unseen sun sucked at the lingering moisture. Several of them were certain they could feel their flesh rotting inside their suits even as they stood patiently waiting for the aristocrat and the field officer to make a decision.

  “Something took them both.” Lard Caavax’s gaze roamed the enveloping forest. “It is likely we will never know what. Evidently our nightly routine must be altered.”

  Field Officer Nesorey responded with a gesture of third-degree affirmation coupled with an overlay of frustration. “That which served adequately on our initial foray is obviously no longer valid procedure. There are not enough of us left to set out perimeter guards. We will have to keep close together, half of us sleeping while the other half remain on watch.” He was staring intently into the surrounding growths, searching for an assailant whose identity remained unknown to him. That was the worst part of it: not knowing what was stalking them.

  He was suddenly thoughtful. “Something has changed. There is something different about the forest.”

  A trooper disagreed. “Most likely it was an isolated, random attack, honored one.” Both soldiers looked to Lord Caavax for resolution.

  “There is validity to both preceptions,” the aristocrat finally remarked. “In any event, we will take additional precautions.” His gaze shifted to the four humans.

  Flinx kept his expression carefully neutral. A look from Teal confirmed what he’d already suspected. He’d been waiting for the furcots to make their move even before the AAnn had arrived on the scene. Their patience was uncommon. Last night their emotional presence had been stronger than usual. Early in the morning it had peaked, in concert with an emotional jolt from first one and then a second AAnn. That they were alien mattered not. The emotional spectrum he was erratically able to access did not discriminate according to species.

  Besides that, death had its own unmistakable emotional signature.

  The AAnn knew nothing of furcots, and Flinx wasn’t about to enlighten them. He wondered how confident the Lord Caavax would be if he knew he was being stalked not by mindless nocturnal carnivores but by intelligent symbiotes. Rescue wasn’t assured, but Flinx felt more confident than he had in days. The trick was not to show it. He would have to warn Teal not to sleep too soundly at night. To Caavax’s way of thinking, whatever was out there should be as much a threat to the humans as to their captors. To indicate otherwise would be to raise suspicions in the noble’s mind that would do them no good.

  As long as he was convinced that they were in danger only from mindless apparitions, Caavax would continue to act rationally. Was he rational enough to be reasonable? No harm, Flinx decided, in finding out.

  “Your escort is down to five, honored Lord. Why not give this up as a bad business and let us go? I know the AAnn, and I know it would be hard for you. But there are precedents.”

  “To which I will not add,” Caavax replied promptly. “So long as I live and can lift a weapon, we will continue together toward the landing site.”

  Flinx had expected nothing less from a high noble, but it had been worth a try. The attempt had been intended not only to secure their freedom but to prevent further deaths. Now he washed his hands of it, feeling that he’d done all he could. From this point onward, everything was up to Caavax. And the furcots.

  “Continue,” the aristocrat declared. Field Officer Nesorey indicated third-degree assent and hissed at his soldiers. With two troopers taking point and two bringing
up the rear, the much reduced-in-strength expedition moved out along the branch.

  Flinx glanced frequently in the direction of the field officer. To ensure that his subordinates were free to respond to any threat from the forest as quickly as possible, Nesorey had taken charge of the sack containing Pip. The flying snake could go several days without eating, but by tomorrow night would have to receive nourishment of some kind or she would begin to fail rapidly.

  At present Flinx knew she was estivating to conserve energy, something Alaspinian minidrags could do at will. Otherwise they couldn’t last a day without food because of their phenomenal metabolic rate. At least, he knew, she hadn’t been forced to expend any energy on flying. But conservation measures would only sustain her for so long. Somehow he had to get nourishment to her or free her from the containment bag.

  They were less than an hour’s march from the site of the previous night’s encampment when the soldier walking point on the right side let out a hissing screech and began firing madly into the forest. Before his companion could restrain him, he took off wildly, hissing obscenities as he blasted branches, lianas, fruit, flowers, and anything that moved.

  Exhibiting a frenzied surge of strength and agility, he leaped from branch to branch, entering into a maniacal search of hollows and crevices with wide, despairing eyes, firing until his rifle was discharged. Ignoring the pleas of his fellow soldiers and the outraged commands of the field officer, he jammed a fresh energy pack into his weapon and reembarked on his aimless orgy of destruction.