Trouble Magnet Page 27

  Taking note of the presence of other humans, Fluff took delight in switching to the mode of communication that involved intricate oral modulation of ambient air pressure.

  “Sensed Flinx in trouble, we did. Trouble even Flinx teacher could not play out of. So we dug a quick tunnel and came to help with current game. If Flinx dies, a part of the game comes to a stop.”

  Being able to connect a voice to a body helped a stunned Shaeb out of his daze. “Tunnel? Game? What is this? What are these?” Whirling, he glowered at the openmouthed figure of Theodakris. “You never said anything about this offworlder having oversized, furry, contentious alien allies!”

  “I don’t—that is, I didn’t…” Words simply failed the senior analyst. He could only stand, and stare.

  “You should have,” Shaeb said quietly before he pulled the trigger on the pistol he was holding. Theodakris dropped to his knees. Looking down at himself, he marveled at the tiny, smoking hole that had appeared in his chest. He could not, of course, see the corresponding one that had appeared in his back. Not even when he fell over sideways.

  With Fluff helping him, an unsteady Flinx was able to stand. Painfully and slowly, the effects of the neuronic bursts were wearing off. Nearby, Pip was struggling to get airborne. On the ground, Subar had recovered control over much of his nervous system, though not from the effects of the casual beating he had received. Wisely, he stayed where he was and made no attempt to rise.

  “Your digging has gotten faster,” Flinx mumbled as his brain regained control of the mechanics involved in forming recognizable speech.

  Fluff straightened proudly. “We’ve had a lot of practice since we saw you last.” Turning, he rumbled an admonition. “Moam, Bluebright! Stop fighting and come say hello to teacher.”

  Immediately, the other two aliens ceased their rough-and-tumble discussion to crowd close around Flinx. He remembered each of them as if it were yesterday, and why not? When folk make one a present of a starship, not to mention a ship unlike any other in the known cosmos, one retains fond memories of the givers.

  Something about the reunion steadied Piegal Shaeb’s nerves. Despite their size, there was nothing especially intimidating about the trio of unexpected arrivals. Perhaps he was reassured by a chronic cuddliness that seemed at variance with their still-unexplained method of arrival. Whatever the reason, in all his long and difficult life he had never gained anything by giving in to hesitation. Also, in his business he was nothing if not thorough.

  “All right,” he barked decisively. “Kill them all!”

  Rifles and pistols were steadied. As aim was taken, Bluebright and Moam jumped back into the coin-thick disc from which they had emerged. In the instant of astonishment that ensued, Shaeb’s subordinates neglected to open fire. One finally did so, but her shot went wild as she fell into a second disc. An exact duplicate of its predecessor, it had materialized beneath her feet. And those of the fighter standing next to her, and the one alongside him. It was wide enough to swallow every one of them, including a disbelieving Piegal Shaeb, who could not countenance that the natural laws of physics had been convinced to conspire against him.

  A hesitant Flinx staggered over to the edge of the second disc. It lay on the ground like a circle of dull black plastic. Leaning over carefully, he peered down and in. Shrieks and screams and wails drifted up to him. They arose from figures that were growing smaller and smaller with every passing instant. In a few seconds the sight of them had faded from view and the sounds of them from earshot.

  Turning, he looked back at Fluff as Moam and Bluebright crawled out of the vertical disc into which they had jumped. “How long will they fall?”

  “Awhile,” the easygoing Ulru-Ujurrian assured him.

  “Forever?” Flinx asked uncertainly.

  “Oh no!” Clambering back out onto the surface of Visaria, Moam laughed both audibly and telepathically. “A tunnel goes from place to place. Forever is not a place.”

  “Tunnel starts on Ulru-Ujurr,” Bluebright elaborated, “so bad people come out at end of tunnel there.” Sharp white teeth showed in powerful jaws. “Maybe Maybeso will be waiting for them.”

  That, Flinx reflected, remembering what was essentially a wild and undeveloped world lying under strict Commonwealth edict, should give Piegal Shaeb and his cronies something to think about. Especially if the nebulous and unfathomable Maybeso was waiting to greet them at the other end of their terrifying plunge. He walked over to one figure, now sitting up, that had not been caught within the consuming circumference of the second disc.

  “Subar, are you all right?” Reaching down, he gave the younger man a hand up.

  “My body feels like I’ve ingested three weeks’ worth of customi depressants in one sitting.” He nodded in the direction of the three ursinoids. “The fact that those things are still here doesn’t help.”

  Smiling, Flinx turned to join him in facing the Ulru-Ujurrians. All three of them had fallen to loud arguing. Being the only known true telepaths, they did not have to vocalize their wrangling. But they liked the noises that came out of their mouths.

  “They’re friends of mine,” Flinx explained. “Old friends. Good friends.”

  “Really weird friends.” Subar eyed the two black discs, one hovering perpendicular to the ground as if it had been pinned to the air, the other lying flat and unfathomable upon it. “I like their timing, though.”

  Flinx nodded. “We have between us—a kind of connection, I guess you’d say. That, and some history.” He considered the quarreling Ulru-Ujurrians fondly. “I guess, when they’re not ‘digging,’ they occasionally keep an eye on me. Ursinoidus ex machina.”

  “Keep an eye on you?” Still dazed, Subar could only shake his head in disbelief. “Keep an eye on you how?”

  Flinx’s tone was somber. “If I knew that, I think I’d have the answer to one or two questions that would keep Commonwealth physicists busy for a hundred years or so.”

  Careful to keep his distance from the edge, the younger man indicated the inscrutable black disc lying at their feet. “And this is?”

  His tall friend made a face. “Children like to play with toys. You and your friends like to play with more grown-up things, like guns and thievery.” He indicated the chattering ursinoids. “The Ulru-Ujurrians are kind of like children, except they like to play games with the fabric of space–time. Think of it as crocheting with superstrings.”

  “I’d rather not think of it at all.” Looking past the inscrutable offworlder, past the pushing, shoving, big-eyed aliens, Subar gazed longingly in the direction of the residential complex. He was remembering something, or rather someone, more important.

  “Ashile?”

  Flinx allowed himself the first unadulterated smile of the night. “She’s fine. They’re all fine. Why don’t you go and reassure them as to the future of their respective fineness?”

  Nodding briskly, the younger man started toward the building. After a few steps, he broke into a run. Flinx could sense his elation.

  Belatedly, his Talent had returned.

  Nor were he and Subar the only ones to recover from the shock they had absorbed from the neuronic weapons. Landing on his shoulder, a still woozy Pip slithered forward and nearly slid off before catching her tail around the back of his neck. One pink-and-blue wing kept hitting him in the face. Reaching up, he steadied her and was preparing to rejoin the three Ulru-Ujurrians when a voice made him look back. The words were barely audible. Peering into the darkness, which would soon give way to the blurry Visarian dawn, he saw that one other figure had escaped plummeting into the gaping mouth of the Ujurrian tunnel.

  Though he was physically fading fast, the man’s emotions were still strong and focused. Focused on him, the approaching Flinx noted. Kneeling beside the prone figure that had rolled over onto its back, Flinx took careful note of the hole in the chest, the faltering respiration, the glaze that was spreading like milk over the wide-open eyes.

  “I can’t help you,”
he murmured. “You need full healing. I have that capability on my ship, but not with me.” He looked around. “Tracken has a haulage skimmer. We can try getting you to a facility in Malandere, but I don’t think there’s time.” He added, almost as an afterthought. “I know a fatal wound when I see one.”

  Theodakris’s lips fluttered. “Philip Lynx.” Reaching up, a trembling hand touched the younger man’s chest. The fingers traveled sideways and downward, stroking Flinx’s arm, his wrist, the back of his right hand. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Flinx did not know how to respond. “Where should I be?”

  The barest suggestion of a smile creased the dying senior analyst’s lips. “You’re an Adept. You shouldn’t be anywhere. You shouldn’t—be.”

  Suddenly Flinx found himself leaning closer. “What are you babbling about? Who are you, that you know my name?” A sudden thought, too terrifying to contemplate, nearly overcame him. “You’re not—are you my father?” While it was not the response Flinx feared, the man’s reaction was also completely unexpected.

  He laughed.

  It wasn’t much of a laugh. More of a choking cough. The senior analyst did not have much strength left in him. But a laugh it was. Thoughts flying from every mental direction, Flinx wanted to lift the man up by his shirtfront and shake him.

  “What’s going on here? Who are you? Why are you laughing?”

  “I am—not your father, no, Philip Lynx. Philip Lynx—Number Twelve-A. But I know who your father is.”

  Fighting to restrain himself, starting to shiver, Flinx put his face as close to that of the dying man as he could. “You know my father? How—how do I know you’re not lying?”

  Eyes from which the life force was fast fading met his own. There was in them a wonderment and desperation—and also, oddly, a contrary kind of contentment.

  “You are not the product of a natural union. Your birth mother was a woman named Ruud Anasage. Your place of birth is listed as Sarnath, on Terra. You had one full and one half sister, both of whom are presumed dead.”

  “Not so,” Flinx told him, remembering the one of the two who was, in all probability, still alive.

  A surge of interest momentarily rejuvenated the rapidly weakening senior analyst. “Is that so? Fascinating! It only further confirms the potential of the twelve line.” He began to choke on his own blood.

  No longer able to help himself, Flinx clutched at the front of the man’s bloody shirt with both hands. Alarmed by the strength of the emotions she felt surging uncontrollably through her master, a frightened Pip took to the air, searching for a threat that did not exist. In the distance, the sky was beginning to lighten. “My father,” he husked. “The male donor responsible for the genes that Ruud Anasage carried to term. Who are you?”

  “My name—my name is Shvyil Theodakris. Né Theon al-bar Cocarol. I am a proud member of the Meliorare Society. The last member of the Meliorare Society.” He choked again, blood trickling from a corner of his mouth. “The last un-mindwiped member, anyway. The experiments—experiments are not supposed to have knowledge of their biological progenitors.” Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, in one of those astonishing and unpredictable but not unprecedented occurrences that immediately precede death, Theodakris–al-bar Cocarol reached up, grabbed Flinx’s shirt, and pulled himself into a half-sitting position.

  “Gestalt,” he rasped, wide-eyed—and died.

  Prying loose the dead man’s clutching fingers, Flinx let Shyvil Theodakris–Theon al-bar Cocarol, senior situations analyst for the city of Malandere and last surviving sensate member of the outlawed Meliorare Society, fall gently back to the ground. Rising, he beckoned Pip back to his shoulder. Doing so meant looking upward, and looking upward meant involuntarily contemplating the stars whose brightness was being slowly overcome by the approaching dawn.

  Gestalt, the old man had gasped. Searching his excellent memory, Flinx found the definition quickly enough. “A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.” Searching elsewhere, he recalled something of even more significance. Gestalt was also an H Class VIII colony world with a single moon. Located on the other side of the Commonwealth, it was about the same relative distance from Earth as the important thranx system of Amropolous.

  The inescapable inference of Theodakris–al-bar Cocarol’s last word was that he should look for his father on Gestalt. How appropriate.

  A world was bigger than a book, or a sybfile. But Gestalt was not Terra, or New Riviera, or the Centaurus system. He would be searching among millions, not billions. A hand came down on the shoulder not occupied by Pip. No, not a hand. A paw. Dexterous beyond imagining, but a paw nonetheless. Turning, he found himself gazing up into the wide, flat face of Fluff.

  “Great game goes on, Flinx. We keep playing our side, you keep playing yours. Always new elements are being introduced.” Teeth flashed in an enormous—and to anyone else intimidating—smile. “Keeps the game interesting.”

  Moam and Bluebright joined him, surrounding Flinx. “Changes brewing and bubbling and festering, Flinx teacher. Big changes. Sinister changes. Time is tick-tick-ticking away. Like the clocks you described to us, the universe is winding down.”

  “Don’t want it to stop too soon,” Bluebright added somberly.

  “At least, not until the game is finished,” Moam added encouragingly.

  Falling once more to arguing between themselves, the two of them turned and, without hesitation, hopped into the ominous black disc that was lying flat and round upon the ground. As soon as the last suggestion of brown fur had vanished within, so did the mouth of a kind of tunnel the most advanced contemporary physics did not possess a mathematical means of accurately describing.

  Retreating to the hovering, vertical disc, Fluff stuck one foot in. As it disappeared, the massive Ulru-Ujurrian hesitated.

  “Make sure you make the right moves, Flinx teacher. We can move our world, but we can’t move you. Only you can move you and—maybe other things.”

  The significance of the advice was not lost on Flinx.

  Fluff stepped the rest of the way into the tunnel. In his wake it proceeded to poof out of existence. Walking over to where it had hovered suspended in space, time, and who knew what other dimensions, Flinx passed his hands through empty air where a moment earlier there had hung a scandalous distortion of reality. A faint and rapidly fading warmth was the only indication that this corner of existence had just been occupied by something immeasurable and inexplicable.

  A voice called out to him. Several voices. In the strengthening light of morning he could see several figures making their way toward him. Their faces, and their emotions, were full of jubilation. His rifle now hanging at his side, the affable agrigeneer Tracken Behdulvlad brought up the rear. Walking in front of him were Missi, Zezula, and Sallow Behdul. To Flinx’s satisfaction, and not a little to his surprise, the soft-spoken Sallow Behdul had his arm around Zezula’s faultless shoulders. She was not shaking him off.

  Ahead of them, Subar and Ashile walked hand in hand. They were all of them exhausted both physically and emotionally, worn and battered but alive. Unless the Underhouse master Piegal Shaeb was far more adept at a certain remarkable kind of tunnel-digging than Flinx suspected, none of them had anything further to fear from either him or his murderous minions.

  As for himself and Pip, the dubious search for a wandering planet-sized weapons platform of the long extinct Tar-Aiym would have to wait just a bit longer. After more than a decade of intensive searching for the merest clue to his father’s identity, he had unexpectedly been given a specific locality to search. Irrespective of anyone else’s priorities, be they ex-stingship pilot, Eint, Counselor of the United Church, or Commonwealth representative, he had no intention of neglecting that suggestion. The Commonwealth, the cosmos itself, would have to wait on him awhile longer.

  Setting that momentous de
cision aside for the moment, he let himself reach out to the primarily youthful oncoming group, let their feelings of joy and relief wash over him. Those of Subar and Ashile were especially cleansing and refreshing. He luxuriated in them because he had experienced them so fully himself, in the company of a woman named Clarity.

  Clarity. She would wait awhile longer, too, he knew. He wondered what wonders Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex were showing her even as he stood lost in thought.

  Then his new Malanderean friends were clustering around him, the men clapping him on the back—careful to avoid contact with the minidrag dozing lightly there—and congratulating him, while the young women praised him with thankful smiles and the occasional virtuous kiss. In response, he smiled and laughed and joked back with them as together they started toward the residential complex. Safe now and for at least the foreseeable future, every one of them including Flinx discovered that they were absolutely starving.

  The galaxy might be in imminent danger, he knew, and its future survival might rest ultimately on his shoulders, but at least these kids who reminded him so much and not always flatteringly of his younger self—these kids who were among the current representatives of his often objectionable species—they were all right.

  And maybe, just maybe, worth saving.

  About the Author

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: The Approaching Storm and the popular Pip & Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of several films including Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and Alien Nation. His novel Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work ever to do so. Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners’ brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects.