Orphan Star

by Foster, Alan Dean;

  "I wonder if they'll still think so when some of their lights are put out," he muttered angrily. "Will they think my game is still fun after they've seen some of their friends lying on the ground with their insides burnt out by Rudenuaman's beamers?" He turned away, speechless with anger at himself and at the Ujurrians.

  "I wanted to take over the mine silently, by surprise, without killing anyone," he finally grumbled. "With all the noise they made breaking into the armory, I'm sure the remainder of the building staff heard and reported below. If she's smart, and she is, Rudenuaman will place her remaining people on round-the-clock alert and wait for us to come to her."

  He grew aware of Fluff standing nearby, looked deep into those expectant eyes. "I'm afraid your people are going to have to kill now, Fluff."

  The ursinoid looked back at him unwaveringly. "Is understood, Flinx-friend. Is a serious game we play, this civilization."

  "Yes," Flinx murmured, "it always has been. I'd hoped to avoid old mistakes, but ..."

  His voice died away and he sat on the floor, staring morosely at the metal surface between his knees. A cool leathery face rubbed up against his-Pip. What he didn't expect was the gentle pressure below the back of his neck, where his b-thorax would have been had he been thranx.

  Looking back and up he saw faceted eyes gazing into his. "Now you can only do the best you can do," Sylzenzuzex murmured softly. The delicate truhand moved gently, massaging his back. "You have begun this thing. If you don't help finish it, that female down there will."

  He felt a little better at that, but only a little.

  A sharp crack like tearing metal foil sounded clearly. Flinx was on his feet, running in the direction of the sound, which was followed soon by a second. From a transparent panel running the length of an access corridor they were able to peer out and down the gentle slope on the right side of the large building. It was devoid of growth, which had been cleared off for a distance of twenty meters from the side of the structure.

  Across the clearing, near the edge of the forest, they could see the hovering shapes of two groundcars. The same cars, Flinx noted, which had met their shuttle upon its arrival here so many weeks ago.

  Each car mounted, a small laser cannon near its front. Even as they watched, a thin red beam jumped from the end of one such weapon to the rocky slope ahead and above. There were several small shafts there, sunk into the cliffside.

  Soon the clean rock was scarred by three black ellipsoids, modest splotches of destruction where brush had been crisped and the lighter silicate rocks fused to glass.

  From somewhere at the upper end of the mine shaft a blue line from a hand beamer flashed down to strike the exterior of the groundcar. The car's screen was more than strong enough to absorb and dissipate such tiny bursts of energy.

  Unexpectedly, the two cars turned and moved rapidly back downslope toward the main installation. Their muted hum penetrated into the corridor where Flinx and the others watched silently as the cars, floating smoothly a meter above the surface on thick cushions of air, turned and stopped just out of beamer range.

  A moment later the familiar bulk of Bhiebright came churning around the corner toward them. Pulling up sharply, he let his words spill out in between steam-engine pants: "They have killed Ay, Bee, and Cee," he gasped, his enormous eyes wider than usual.

  "How did it happen?" Flinx asked quietly. "I told everyone that they wouldn't fire into these buildings. They won't risk damaging their equipment because they're not yet convinced we pose a serious threat to them."

  Fluff took over the explanation, having already communicated silently and rapidly with Bluebright. "Ay, Bee, and Cee went outside the metal caves."

  "But why?" Flinx half asked, half cried.

  "They thought they had created a new idea," Fluff explained slowly. Flinx showed no comprehension, so the ursinoid continued. "These past many days you have told us over and over that this game you call civilization should be played according to common sense, logic, reason. From what Bluebright tells me, Ay, Bee, and Cee decided among themselves that if this was so the cold minds and the others would see that it was reason and logic to cooperate with us, since we have taken their mine from them.

  "They went out without weapons to talk logic and reason to those in the machines. But," and Fluff's voice grew hurt at the wonder of it, "those did not even listen to Ay, Bee, and Cee. They killed them without even listening. How can this thing be?" The shaggy head peered puzzledly down at Flinx. "Are not the cold minds and the ones like you down there also civilized? Yet they did this thing without talking. Is this the reason you speak of?"

  Flinx and Sylzenzuzex had yet to see one of the jovial ursinoids angry. Fluff appeared close to it, though it really wasn't anger. It was frustration and lack of understanding.

  Flinx tried to explain. "There are those who don't play the game fair, Fluff. Those who cheat."

  "What is cheating?" wondered Fluff.

  Flinx endeavored to explain.

  "I see," Fluff announced solemnly when the youth had finished, "This is a remarkable concept. I would not have believed it possible. The others must be told. It explains much of the game." Turning, he and Bluebright left Flinx and Sylzenzuzex alone in the corridor,

  "How long," she asked, staring out the window panel toward the distant complex, "do you think they will sit down there before growing impatient and coming up after ns?"

  "Probably until the shuttles return. If we haven't resolved this before then-no, we must finish this before the Baron comes back. ... We have nothing but hand beamers here. They have at least two surface-to- space, gimbal-mounted laser cannons down by the landing strip, in addition to the smaller ones mounted on the groundcars. Possibly more. We can't fight that kind of weaponry. I hope Fluff and Bluebright can get that through their family's hairy skulls." He moved up alongside her to stare out the panel.

  "I'm sure the two big guns are directed toward us right now. If we tried a mass retreat they'd incinerate the lot of us, Just like Ay, Bee, and Cee. We're going to have to-"

  A high-pitched scream suddenly floated shockingly down the corridor. It rose from mid-tenor to the high, wavering shriek of the utterly terrified ... then stopped. It was undeniably human.

  The second scream was not. It came from an AAnn. Then came more screams of both varieties.

  Pip was fluttering nervously above Flinx's shoulder and cold perspiration had started flowing from beneath the crop of red hair.

  "Now what?" he muttered uneasily, as they started off in the direction of the screams. Every so often another scream would be heard, followed at regular intervals by an answering sound from the opposite camp,

  In one respect they were all alike-short and intense.

  They must have heard two dozen before encountering Moam and Bluebright.. "What happened?" he demanded. "What were those screams?"

  "Lights," began Moam.

  "Going out," Binebright finished.

  Flinx discovered he was trembling. There was blood on Moam's naturally grinning month. Both broad, flat muzzles were stained with it. There were small groups of workers and guards who had been unsuccessful in their attempt to flee the captured mine.

  "You've killed the prisoners," was all he could stutter.

  "Oh yes," Moam admitted with blood-curdling cheerfulness. "We not sure for a while, but Fluff explained to us and family. Cold minds and people down there," then gesturing in the direction of the main base, "cheat. We think we understand now what is to cheat. It means not playing the game by the rules, yes?"

  "Yes, but these aren't my rules," he whispered dazedly, "not my rules."

  "But is okay with us," Bluebright offered. "We understand these rules not yours, Flinx-friend. Not good rules. But cold minds make up new rules, we play that way okay too."

  The Ujurrians waddled off down the corridor.

  Flinx sank to his knees, leaned up against the wall, "Game, it's still all a game to them." Suddenly he looked at Sylzenzuzex and shuddered. "God
damn it, I didn't want it to happen like this."

  "You are she who rides the grizel," Sylzenzuzex said without anger. "You have wakened it. Now you must ride it."

  "You don't see," he muttered disconsolately. "I wanted Fluff and Moam and Bluebright and all the rest of them to be spared all our mistakes. I want them to become the great thing they can-and not," he finished bitterly, "just a smarter version of us."

  Sylzenzuzex moved nearer, "You still hold the grizel by its tails, Flinx. You haven't been thrown yet. It is not you who taught them to kill-remember, they do hunt meat."

  "Only when they have to," he reminded her. "Still," and be showed signs of relaxing some, "this may be a time when they have to. Yes, a snowtime hunt, to live. The rules have been altered, but we still have rules. They just need to be defined further."

  "That's right, Flinx, you tell them when it's all right to kill and when it's not,"

  He looked at her oddly, but if there was anything hidden beneath the surface of her words he couldn't sense it. "That's the one thing I never wanted to do, even by proxy."

  "What made you think you'd ever have the opportunity?"

  "Something ... that happened not so long ago," he said cryptically. "Now it's been forced on me anyway, I've been shoved into the one position I vowed I'd never hold,"

  "I don't know what you're rambling on about, Flinx," she finally declared, "but either you ride the grizel or it tramples you."

  Flinx looked up the corridor to where Moam and Bluebright had turned the corner. "I wonder who's going to ride whom?"

  The answer came several days later. There had been no assault from below, as he'd guessed, although the two groundcars pranced daily right next to the walls of the mine structures, daring anyone to show a fuzzy head.

  Fluff woke them in the small office Flinx and Sylzenzuzex had chosen for Sleeping quarters. "We have made a backtrap," he told them brightly, "and we are going to catch the groundcars now."

  "Backtrap ... wait, what ...?" Flinx fought for awareness, rubbing frantically at his eyes still rich with sleep. Vaguely he seemed to recall Fluff or Softsmooth or someone telling him about a backtrap, but he couldn't form a picture of it.

  "You can't stop a groundcar with a ..." he started to protest, but Fluff was already urging him to follow.

  "Hurry now, Flinx-friend," he insisted, listening to something beyond the range of normal hearing, "is started."

  He led them to the mill supervisor's office, a curving transparent dome set in the southernmost end of the building.

  "There," Fluff said, pointing.

  Flinx saw several of the ursinoids running on all fours over exposed, bare ground. They were racing for the upper slopes, near the place where the main shaft entered the mountain. Still well behind, Flinx could make out the two groundcars following.

  "What are they doing out there!" Flinx yelled, leaning against the transparent polyplexalloy. He looked helplessly at Fluff. "I told you no one was to go outside the buildings."

  Fluff was unperturbed. "Is part of new game. Watch."

  Unable to do anything else, Flinx turned his attention back to the incipient slaughter.

  Moving at tremendous speed, the three ursinoids passed the near end of the building, below Flinx's present position. Fast as they were, though, they couldn't outrun the groundcars. First one burst, then another jumped from the muzzles of the laser cannon. One hit just back of the trailing runner, impelling him to even greater speed. The other struck between the front-runners, leaving molten rock behind,

  The three runners, Flinx saw, would never make the open doorway at the upper end of the mill. The grolindcars suddenly seemed to double their speed, When they fired again, they would be almost on top of the retreating Ujurrians.

  He visualized three more of the innocents he had interfered with tamed to ash against the gray stone of the mountainside.

  At that point the ground vanished beneath the groundcars.

  There was a violent crash, the whine of protesting machinery, as the two vehicles were unable to compensate fast enough for the unexpected change in the surface. Still moving forward, both abruptly dipped downward and smashed at high speed into the far wall of the huge pit.

  Flinx and Sylzenzuzex gaped silently at the enormous rift which had unexpectedly appeared in the ground.

  "Backtrap," Fhiffi noted with satisfaction. "I remembered what you tell us about how the little machines work, Flinx-friend." Battered humans and AAnn-the latter's surgical disguises now knocked all askew-were fighting to get control of themselves within the wreck- age of the two cars.

  A mob of furry behemoths was pouring from the mine buildings toward the pits. Flinx could make out the narrow ledges of solid earth and rock that ran like a spiderweb across the rift. They formed safe path- ways across which the three decoy runners had retreated. By the same token, they were far too narrow to provide adequate support for the groundcars. The surface against which their air jets pushed had been suddenly pulled away.

  Hundreds of thin saplings now lined the edges of the pit. These had been used to support the heavy cover of twigs, leaves, and earth, all carefully prepared to give the appearance of solid ground.

  New screams and the flash of blue hand beamers lit the pit as the ursinoids poured in. Flinx saw a three-hundred-kilo adolescent male pick up a squirming AAnn and treat its head like the stopper of a bottle. He turned away from the carnage, sick.

  "Why is Flinx-friend troubled?" Fluff wanted to know. "We play game with their rules now. Is fair, is not?"

  "Ride the grizel," Sylzenzuzex warned him in High Thranx.

  By the head, not the tail, something echoed inside him. He forced himself to turn back and watch the end of the brief fight.

  As soon as it became clear to the observers down below what had happened, a red beam the thickness of a man's body reached upward from a small tower at the base's far end. It passed unbroken through several sections of forest, cutting down trees like a lineal scythe and leaving the stamps smoking, until it impinged on the mountainside to the left of the pit. A flare of intense light was followed by a dull explosion.

  "Get everyone back inside, Fluff," Flinx yelled. But an order wasn't necessary. Their work concluded, the ursinoids who had assaulted the pit were already running, dodging, scampering playfully back into the mine.

  Flinx thought he saw movement far below as the top of the tower started to swivel toward him, but apparently calmer heads prevailed. The mills itself was still out of bounds for destructive weaponry, Rudenuaman had no reason yet to raze the mountainside, to turn the complex mine and mill into a larger duplicate of the small slag-lined crater which now bubbled and smoked where the heavy laser had struck. Much as she might regret the loss of the two groundcars and their crews, she was not yet desperate.

  So no avenging light came to destroy the building. The simple natives were to be permitted their one use- less victory. Undoubtedly, Flinx thought with irony, Rudenuaman would attribute the brilliant lactic to him, never imagining that the huge dull beasts of burden had conceived and executed the rout entirely by themselves.

  "I wonder," he said to Sylzenzuzex over a meal of nuts and berries and captured packaged food, "if there's any point to continuing this. I've never really felt as if I were in control of things. Maybe ... maybe it would be better to run back to the caves. I can still teach from there-we both can-and we have a lot of life left in us."

  "You're still in control, Flinx," Sylzenzuzex told him. She tapped one truhand against the table in a pat- tern few human ears would have recognized. "The Ujurrians want you to be. But yon go ahead, Flinx. You tell them all," and she waved a hand to take in the whole mine, "that they should go back to their caves and resume their original game. You tell them that. But they won't forget what they've learned. They never forget."

  "O'Morion knows how much knowledge they've acquired from this mine already," Flinx mumbled, picking at his food.

  "They'll go back to digging their cave pattern, but th
ey'll retain that knowledge," she went on. "You'll leave them with the game rules Rudenuaman's butchers have set. If they ever do show any initiative of their own, after we've gone ..." She made a thranx shrug. "Don't blame yourself for what's happened. The Ujurrians are no angels." Whistling thranx laughter forced her to pause a moment. "You can't play both God and the Devil to them, Flinx. You didn't introduce these beings to killing, but we'd better make certain we don't teach them to enjoy it."

  "Moping and moaning about your own mistakes isn't going to help us or them. You've put your truleg in your masticatory orifice. You can pull it out or suffocate on it, but you can't ignore it." She downed a handful of sweet red-orange berries the size of walnuts.

  "We not enjoy killing," a voice boomed. They both jumped. The Ujurrians moved with a. stealth and quietness that was startling in creatures so massive. Fluff stood in the doorway on four legs, filling it completely.

  "Why not?" Sylzenznzex asked. "Why shouldn't we worry about it?"

  "No fun," explained Fluff concisely, dismissing the entire idea as something too absurd to be worthy of discussion. "Kill meat when necessary. Kill cold minds when necessary. Unless," and beacon-eyes shone on the room's other occupant, "Flinx say otherwise."

  Flinx shook his head slowly. "Never, Fluff."

  "I think you say that. Is time to finish this part of game." He gestured with a paw. "You come too?"

  "I don't know what you have planned this time, Fluff, but yes," Flinx concurred, "we come too."

  "Fun," the giant Ujurrian thundered, in a fashion indicating something less than general amusement was about to ensue.

  "I don't want any of the buildings down there damaged, if it can be avoided," Flinx instructed the ursinoid as he led him and Sylzenzuzex down corridors and stairways. "They're filled with knowledge-game rules. Mechanical training manuals, records, certainly a complete geology library. If we're going to be marooned on this world for the rest of our lives. Fluff, I'm going to need every scrap of that material in order to teach you properly."