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  Unlike some corresponding facilities of municipal importance on more developed worlds such as recently visited Visaria, there were no guards at the entrance. Security was not entirely absent, however: only more unobtrusive. He knew this because a Tlel armed with both a humanx-manufactured sidearm and a traditional slim, conical knife approached as he entered and addressed him in the guttural wheeze of the dominant dialect. As Flinx fiddled with his translator, he reflected on the strangeness of meeting the gaze of a creature that had no eyes in the familiar sense: only a lens-like arc of photosensitive organosilicate material. The disc-shaped head was tilted back on the short neck, staring up at him. He had a brief, unconscionable urge to wonder if it would spin if he slapped it sideways.

  The wide mouth beneath the eyeband parted, and the grumbling challenge was repeated. While the gripping cilia at the ends of both arms splayed outward to help balance the stocky body, the tendrils beneath the chin area flexed in a fashion that could only be called impatient.

  “Just a minute—I’m getting it. Takes a moment for the presets to adapt to actual auditory input. There!” Speaking into the translator’s pickup, Flinx heard his own words transcribed into the aural gargle of pharyngeal and epiglottal consonants and hard vowels that passed for Tlelian speech.

  It transpired that the sentinel’s concern was not with the human visitor but with his much smaller, slimmer, and largely concealed companion. Noting how thoroughly the motionless Pip was buried beneath his jacket, Flinx found himself wondering how the Tlel had divined the flying snake’s presence. Peering past the sentry, he could not see any kind of obvious detection gear. That did not mean it was not present, he reminded himself; perhaps it was camouflaged as a reading device, a bit of décor, or the floor itself.

  He hastened to explain that Pip was his close companion, that she was under his complete control, and that she posed no threat to anyone. This confessional was at least half true. He did not outright lie and say that she was harmless. His swift explanation and genuine openness apparently sufficient to satisfy the sentinel and any unseen colleagues, the Tlel turned away, rumbling by way of parting something perfunctory that Flinx’s translator did not catch.

  As expected, the public terminals available for accessing the Gestalt Shell were located on the ground floor. Out of more than two dozen, only one was in use. That was not surprising. Though a sufficiency of such free terminals was mandated on every civilized world, most citizens preferred to use their personal communits to communicate, range their local Shell, and gather information.

  Always wary of standing out or drawing attention to himself, he settled into an empty booth at the far end of those that were not in use. A standard citizen’s request activated the booth’s visual and verbal privacy screen. Now no one could look in on him or hear any verbal commands he might choose to voice. Anyway, unlike occasions during which he had been obligated to perform illegal searches or scans, what he was going to do now was perfectly legitimate. Or so it would have seemed to anyone standing alongside him within the booth.

  They did not see him slip the mazr into an open port. It would not only mask his inquiries from anyone who might use the terminal after him but also thoroughly homogenize, shunt, self-encrypt, and rephrase his requests so that they resembled perfectly conventional searches for everyday, sanctioned information. Without the use of the mazr a deep-thrust query on “Meliorare Society,” for example, might trigger an automatic follow-up alert somewhere. That was unlikely, especially on a laid-back world like Gestalt. But Flinx had not succeeded in staying always a step or two ahead of those pursuing him by taking informational as well as personal security for granted. The hard lessons he had learned when he had illegally penetrated a main hub of the Terran Shell several years earlier had led him to take more proactive precautions prior to making such intrusions.

  Taking a seat in the booth’s single chair and slipping the tiara-like, featherweight, pale green induction band over his hair, he let it automatically adjust until the fit was snug against his forehead and over his ears. Detecting the presence of an operator, the terminal swiftly read his E-pattern and activated the neural connection. Above the concealed projector located within the shelf in front of him, weft space began to take shape. When the glow had strengthened sufficiently, he readied himself to input.

  Much to his surprise, he found that he was trembling slightly. Worried by the conflicting emotions she was receiving, a concerned Pip poked her head out from beneath his jacket. Though no overt threat was discernible, she remained edgy and alert. Reaching up and across with his left hand, he stroked the back of her head and upper body. It could be argued that the habitual response was intended more to relax him than her.

  Taking a deep breath, he double-checked to make sure the mazr was running before voicing the initial queryought as clearly as he could. “Does the edicted Meliorare Society have any history on the planet Gestalt, also known by its indigenous name of Silvoun?”

  As expected, the response of the planetary Shell was as near instantaneous as it was brief.

  “No.”

  Concise and conclusive, he told himself. Well, he had expected nothing less. Now that he was in, with a query that theoretically contained the potential to alert certain security nodes but had not done so, he found that some of the tension eased out of him. The mazr was doing its job.

  “What do you know of a Commonwealth citizen named Theon al-bar Cocarol?”

  As it had with his initial inquiry, the Shell came up empty. It was the same when he repeated the query using the now-deceased Meliorare’s alias, Shyvil Theodakris. Though he was already less hopeful than when he had sat down, he was not yet disillusioned. His preliminary queries had been blunt and undemanding. To ensure that the Shell had access to the full range of Commonwealth knowledge, he pulled up a general sybfile on the Society itself. That, at least, should be readily accessible to anyone with an uncontroversial interest in the straightforward history of Commonwealth science.

  The Shell hub responded immediately and exhaustively, presenting him with the complete official history of the Meliorares: how they and their activities had been discovered and quickly placed under edict, the nature of their banned eugenics experiments, how they had been hunted down one by one, tried, convicted, and sentenced, and an analysis of the small but sordid chapter they represented in the history of Commonwealth biological research.

  It was the sanctioned history that the Shell gave him. He allowed himself a small smile as he perused the proffered information. Not everything had worked out exactly as the official records stated. For one thing, a certain Meliorare experiment named Philip Lynx was still at large, harassed and besieged both within and without, but as yet wholly himself and most decidedly unmindwiped. He shifted in the chair, mentally preparing himself. It was time to probe deeper, and differently.

  He started tunneling.

  Some of what he did was legal, some not. Having previously penetrated the Terran Shell itself, he had no difficulty avoiding the internal floating security of the considerably less well-defended Shell on Gestalt. Its secure sections opened for him, if not like a book, at least in a pattern of three-dimensional sybfiles—a flower of information. Despite the cool air within the administration building, perspiration began to bead on his forehead as he dug and drilled and pushed ever deeper into the depths of the local hub.

  He found little that was palpably illicit—this was not Visaria, after all—and a good deal that certain citizens had reason to wish to keep hidden, but nothing whatsoever related in any way, shape, weft, or form to the dead Meliorare Cocarol or to the disturbing proscribed society to which he had belonged. The deeper Flinx wormed, the more discouraged he became. Risking discovery, he entered his own true name, his nickname, and even what he had learned of the personal history of his mother. All to no avail, all for naught. There was nothing. Not a hint in words, not a glimmer in weft space, not a suggestion of anything connected to the Society, to his ancestry, or to him.r />
  When probing directly yielded nil, he tunneled sideways. He searched in reverse, trying to find the tiniest possible chyp of information that would allow him to work in a different direction, along another node. He promulgated requests that were grounded in fantasy and fancy as much as in fact. Everything he tried came up the same. Empty.

  Physical hunger, as primitive and unsophisticated an intrusion as it was demanding, caused him to glance at his wrist chrono. He was startled to see that he had been in the booth nearly all day. His throat was dry. It had not occurred to him to bring along anything to drink or to take a sip from his jacket’s emergency supply. Contemplating options, he realized reluctantly that even if he wished to stay and continue the investigation, Pip’s active metabolism demanded that she be fed. Why not take a break?

  He wasn’t getting anywhere, anyhow.

  Cramped muscles unlocking, he broke the connection, slipped the neuronic headband off over his head, and replaced it in its holder. A simple tug and twist removed the mazr from the console; he quickly slipped it into a pouch on his belt. The device would leave behind no trace of its masking presence. Seriously disheartened, he exited the booth and then the building. Neither the Tlel nor the few humans who were still working inside gave him so much as a curious glance.

  It was dark outside and, in the absence of Gestalt’s bright sunshine, noticeably colder. The material of his jacket and pants immediately responded to keep him warm. Pip burrowed even deeper beneath his protective attire, a warm muscular cable relaxed against his inner shirt and chest.

  There were only two Shell hubs on Gestalt: one in Tlossene and the other on the far side of the planet in the second city of Tlearandra. There was nothing to be gained by flying halfway around the globe to pose it the same queries. The hubs’ content, operation, and resources would be identical. Law as well as custom demanded it, since one unit would have to be available to refresh the other in the event either suffered a catastrophic failure. Should he go there, only the scenery would change. Nor was Gestalt big or important enough to warrant the existence of a private, access-restricted hub. For example, there was no military presence significant enough to justify such an expense. The chill that was beginning to creep over him had nothing to do with the nocturnal climate. It arose from disappointment, and from within.

  Maybe the Teacher was right. A waste of time, it had called his impulsive detour to Gestalt’s system. That, and selfish.

  He had tried the planetary Shell and found it wanting. Probed long and deep and learned nothing for his efforts. It was past time to resume the search for something more real, more tangible, in the form of the brown dwarf-sized Tar-Aiym weapons platform that Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex had pleaded with him to locate. It was apparent he would learn naught here, unearth nothing on this cold, minor world, about either himself or his paternal ancestry.

  He did not cry, but he wanted to.

  On Visaria a dying Meliorare’s words had provided the best hope of finding out something about the nature and identity of his father. If despite his most intense searching they had led him nowhere but here, where would he look next? In the absence of any other clue or information, how would he pick up the DNA thread? Should he even bother to try? Perhaps it was simply one of those things he was destined never to know. He would gladly have traded it for one of the many dispiriting, somber, sobering things he did know.

  The lights had come on in the city. In the clear, oxygen-rich air Tlossene’s many-domed and gracefully curving structures took on the appearance of a fairy-tale town, albeit one in which contemporary high-tech had utterly replaced fantasy. Photoemitting walls illuminated the streets. Even at this comparatively early hour these were largely devoid of human pedestrians, though Tlel were present in number. Their guttural chuckling and gabbling filled the night with a steady burble of contented alien chatter. It was all that disturbed the otherwise perfectly still air. He kept his translator switched off. At the moment, he did not especially want to know what they were saying. At the moment, he did not want to know what anyone was saying.

  Maybe, as the Teacher had suggested, the devious Meliorare Cocarol had expired with little more than a teasing lie on his lips, sending the youth responsible for his death off on a desperate wild-goose chase. Flinx refused to countenance the possibility. Not yet, anyway. He would try again, somehow. There were other ways of finding things out. Methods that were not as fast or efficient as directly querying a planetary Shell, perhaps, but still serviceable.

  For starters, he would ask around.

  CHAPTER 3

  He began the following morning, starting by accessing freely available Shell sybfiles via his communit. These readily offered up the names of a number of organizations and businesses fronted by individuals who had lived on Gestalt all their lives. They represented a broad cross section of settlers. He quickly winnowed the list down to those involved with immigration, obscure social activities, and any that might offer services to citizens who had reason to be exceptionally protective of their personal privacy. He was looking for any person or commercial concern that might have contact with other individuals who had more than the usual reasons to keep the details of their identity discreet. In particular, he was looking for one such individual who more than a quarter century earlier had sold or donated sperm to the Meliorare Society and might subsequently have fled to the minor colony world of Gestalt.

  Though still extensive, the final list represented the best he could do based on a preliminary search. He had to start somewhere. Simply checking every male inhabitant of the appropriate chronological age was certain to prove an interminable as well as unrewarding task. Furthermore, the Meliorares had manipulated his DNA to produce results to their taste, to fulfill a specific design. His paternal donor might as easily be short and dark-haired as tall and redheaded, and of any age over the necessary minimum of forty. Flinx felt that he was likely to have more luck looking for distinctive, revealing social traits than for specific physical characteristics that might be nothing more than coincidence.

  Nevertheless, whenever any male who fell within the appropriate age parameters cropped up on his initial list, he felt compelled to run at least one cursory check of that individual’s history. Men who chose to live alone also came in for particular scrutiny, as did those companies that maintained even the most peripheral involvement with gengineering or other types of biological research. While it struck him as unlikely that his father would be so foolish or disdainful of his past as to become openly involved with such enterprises, rigor and possibility demanded that they still be investigated.

  His ability to tunnel the Shell helped immensely. Hundreds of years ago, the search process would have taken forever, or rendered insufficiently specific replies. Most of the searches he ran, though not all, were perfectly legal. Those privacy shields he encountered he brushed aside. Gestalt’s Shell and germane technology were not primitive, but neither were they particularly sophisticated. As days passed and he worked his way through sybfile after sybfile, he reflected on how much, and yet how little, his life had changed.

  Look at all the progress I’ve made since Mother Mastiff took me under her wing, he thought as he sat and worked at the public terminal in the administration building. Why, I’ve advanced all the way from stealing things to stealing information. And so far not very encouraging information, at that.

  Once, on the third day of searching, he thought he was seriously on to something. Paid in advance, a local investigator—even a world as minor as Gestalt had need for such services, it appeared—circumspectly provided him with a list of artisans who had dropped out of and no longer belonged to any formal planetary aesthetic associations. Some of the documented iconoclasts doubtless objected to association policy, some to the need to belong, and some had abandoned the organizations out of sheer irascibility.

  Scrutinizing this registry of creative malcontents, Flinx found a number whose personal information was privacy-guarded. Brushing aside these pro
tections, he came across one composer who not only was the appropriate age but also physically resembled him in several respects. Furthermore, and most intriguingly, Sadako Basrayan was not a native Gestaltian but had emigrated from Earth itself some twenty years earlier.

  Flinx could hardly restrain himself. Even the Teacher, contacted through his communit, allowed as how its owner might just possibly have stumbled onto a lead that held a shade more promise than fantasy. Ostensibly to discuss the musical accompaniment to an opera he was writing, Flinx managed to arrange a meeting with the reclusive Mr. Basrayan. Once assured by his guest that the colorful minidrag accompanying him was only reflecting her master’s excitement when she rose from his shoulder to buzz the living room, the relieved composer readily if unknowingly complied with Flinx’s needs. Basrayan did this not by suggesting music that caused his younger visitor’s imagination to take flight, but by sporting a great deal of hair. Though it was black and not red, Flinx was not discouraged. He only needed one such strand, which he surreptitiously co-opted halfway through the visit from a chair the composer had been occupying.

  Running any DNA sequence was a simple enough process. Not wishing to take the time to return the sample to the Teacher, an excited Flinx utilized a self-service analytical facility in Tlossene. The service would extract the musical Mr. Basrayan’s genetic code and compare it with a sample of Flinx’s own.

  The following day he accepted the service’s hard copy with hands that did not shake. But his face was flushed. Initial excitement and high hopes soon gave way to crushing dejection as he eagerly scanned the readout. The codes did not match. They were not even close. Tossing the costly analysis into the nearest public waste disposal, he strode grimly out of the facility and back onto the street.