Flinx's Folly (6 page)

It didn’t matter, he decided firmly. Once he turned the repeller in to the rental agency he would take the first high-speed transport back to Reides. The capital’s main shuttleport was located a considerable distance from the outermost urbs. Having been forced more than once to gain access to his grounded shuttlecraft under far more difficult conditions, he had no doubt he would be able to successfully board it at Reides Port.

Still, it was nice to be able to settle back in the private charter vehicle and relax as it left Memeluc, accelerating rapidly toward the capital. There had been no sign of his pursuers while he was turning in the repeller and making arrangements for the transport. Nor had he sensed anything suspicious in his immediate vicinity: no hate directed his way, no bloodlust, no anger or killing frenzy, only the soothing emotional babble of town dwellers and country folk, so much more relaxed and less mentally irksome than the frenetic emotional surge projected by the urbanites.

The transport would deposit him directly at Reides Port. Since he had his own private craft, from there it would take only a few moments to make his way through Emigration. Once aloft, no one could trouble him. If any tried, he had at his disposal a number of means for avoiding interception. So secure did he feel in the privacy of the self-guiding hired transport that he allowed himself to drift into a gentle sleep, the still largely unspoiled landscape of Goldin IV blurring past beyond the single plexalloy window.

It was a mistake.

Not a lethal one. Not by any means. No mysterious, far-ranging sources sent his thoughts racing outward beyond the limits of the galaxy to test his perception and his sanity. Instead, his thoughts churned and dreams roiled as he tossed and twisted uneasily on the padded seat. Helpless as always to calm her master at such times, Pip could only lie coiled nearby, tongue flicking anxiously, eyes staring, her triangular head moving nervously from side to side. Her master’s perturbed dreaming was the one persistent adversary she could affect with neither bite nor toxin.

The vehicle’s pleasant-voiced arrival announcement woke him. He found himself curled up on the floor of the transport, wet under his arms and on his forehead, his neck damp. His head pounded, though not with one of the terrifying, extreme headaches that made him want to run headfirst into a wall and knock himself unconscious just to make the pain stop. He fumbled with his service belt until he found its integrated medipak. Five minutes after swallowing the appropriate capsule, the throbbing at the front of his head began to recede. Ten minutes later, the transport pulled into the shuttleport commuter station.

The occasions when he unexpectedly and unwillingly found his sleeping consciousness thrust infinitely outward remained infrequent. It was the simpler dreams that had begun to wear on him. More and more often he found it difficult to get a good night’s rest. Nightmares that far exceeded anything he had experienced while growing up on Moth plagued him with disquieting regularity. Unable to exorcise the demons that beset him, suffering from more frequent and stronger headaches, the combination of lack of sleep and stabbing head pain was making him tense, irritable, and unable to think clearly. It was the last he feared the most. With assorted folk trying to arrest, examine, or kill him, mental lucidity was the one defense he could not afford to lose.

As if to emphasize that he was even now mentally adrift, even as he contemplated his situation, the transport had to remind him that they had arrived at the programmed destination. And unless he was prepared to pay waiting charges, it was time for him to exit the vehicle.

He did so, making sure both his compact travel satchel and even smaller companion were both with him. Pip remained coiled out of sight, a muscular bulge beneath his tunic, lest the sight of her unsettle other travelers. Highly venomous, she would never have been allowed to travel with passengers on a commercial shuttle. Since Flinx had his own craft, both of them were expeditiously waved through Security. Used to adopting and discarding false identities the way a traditional croupier shuffled cards, one “Sascha Harbonnet,” his unusual but complaisant pet, and their one small article of luggage rapidly and efficiently cleared Goldin IV’s unpresumptuous departure procedures. Of a certain Philip Lynx, there was no official sign. As for young “Arthur Davis,” formerly a patient at Reides Central Hospital, the small-scale search for him had not yet been extended this far.

As soon as the passenger shifter deposited him at the base of his shuttle, he entered and moved swiftly to settle himself in the pilot’s seat. Reciting a by-now familiar series of commands, he secured himself and Pip in the harness while the craft’s AI ran through a corresponding sequence of preliftoff checks. When both artificial and organic intelligences were satisfied with each other’s responses, Flinx requested and was promptly granted a window for departure by Port Operations.

Waiting alone in his shuttle, snugged tight in the flight harness, he recollected the details of his visit to Goldin IV. One more world cursorily visited, a few more experiences acquired, many more people encountered, another attempt to kill him by still another new set of assailants. With each passing year he seemed to acquire greater knowledge and more enemies. None of which would matter, he knew, if he failed to find a solution to his nightmares, his lack of sleep, his terrible headaches, and the concerns that had dogged him ever since he was old enough to realize that he was seriously different from everyone else. Not to mention his involvement with something unimaginably vast, threatening, and all but beyond human ken.

Just your average boy’s life, he mused as the engine roared and he was pressed back into the chair and harness. Only he wasn’t a boy anymore, and, except for a brief period on Moth, when he had roamed free and without a care under the casual supervision of the tolerant Mother Mastiff, he was not sure he had ever been one. Time to put away childish things. Trouble was, Flinx had been more or less forced to do that when he had turned twelve.

Through the shuttle’s foreport the sky faded smoothly and rapidly from blue to purple to the familiar endless blackness flecked with stars. One light flashing larger and brighter than the others shot past his field of view to starboard: an incoming shuttle, carrying cargo and passengers preoccupied with the mundanities of normal, everyday lives. An ordinariness, a blissful ignorance he had come to envy. It was a condition that had been denied him for many years now and one that the immediate future held no prospect of his experiencing.

If only all he had to worry about, he reflected, were death and taxes.

“Missed him!”

The woman who had been riding one of the two repellers removed the illegal jack she had used to tap into the shuttleport’s box. The faces of her four companions reflected their disappointment.

“What ship?” asked one of the five who had been dispatched by the Order of Null to Goldin IV in an attempt to terminate the potentially unsettling problem that was Philip Lynx.

The woman scanned the information she had downloaded from the port’s system. “The only traveler who matches his description was passed by Security and Emigration and left through the private lounge about three hours ago.”

“Three hours!” The other woman in the group murmured something under her breath that would have sounded innocuous to most had she voiced it aloud. “He’ll be in space-plus by now and untraceable.”

“We’ll find him.” One of her two male companions displayed the quiet confidence that was so characteristic of the members of the Order—or, given their philosophical basis, perhaps
fatalistic
would have been a better description. “Wherever he goes, to whatever world, members of the Order will be waiting and looking for him.”

“It would have been better to have concluded this now.” The senior member of the group looked resigned. “Though I suppose there is no hurry, as long as he makes no attempt to disseminate what he knows.”

“On the contrary,” declared his companion encouragingly, “he appears inclined to silence.”

“All the better for our ends.” The other woman knew their quarry’s silence would not keep him from being killed. There were no certainties except death, as members of the Order knew far better than most.

“If he left via the private lounge”—the senior among them was speaking again—“that means he has access to a private starship. I wonder who it belongs to? Given his age, surely it’s not his own?”

“On loan from a large Trading House, perhaps. It is evident that he must have powerful friends, to have avoided the Commonwealth authorities for so long.”

“It does not matter.” The senior man gestured toward the busy main assembly area. “Let’s get something to eat. Important friends or not, he has to die. If any others interfere, they may have to share the same fate.”

“The fate that is coming to us all,” added the woman with satisfaction.

“Strange, is it not,” murmured the senior man as he turned to go, “how our colleagues, experienced fliers both, were suddenly overcome by an overwhelming fear of heights?” He contemplated the mystery even as he addressed his companions. “That is a matter that demands deeper examination.”

The five strolled in the direction of the port’s busiest area. They were dressed in clean but unspectacular attire, and attracted not the slightest attention. They might have been a group of friends on holiday, members of an extended family setting off to visit far-flung relations, or simply locals out for an afternoon’s diversion, intent on sampling the delights of the port’s many shops and restaurants.

They certainly did not look like the earnest devotees of ultimate destruction.

CHAPTER

4

Drifting in stately procession against the radiant background of stars—separate, apart, and smaller than most of the numerous other vessels in orbit—the
Teacher
awaited his arrival. His ship was unpretentious enough to be innocuous yet large enough for one person to rattle around in in the depths of space for weeks at a time without becoming bored. To anyone who had observed it at its last port of call, it would not have been recognizable.

As always, and as programmed, it welcomed him with music. The undulating opening glissando of Retsoff’s
Second Soirée for Orchestra and Bandalon
tickled his ears as he strode purposefully from the shuttle bay to the command and control center. Pip joyfully disengaged from his shoulder and shot forward, glad to be back home. As he passed through the living quarters’ relaxation chamber, with its tinkling waterfall, fountains, and aerial displays, the fronds and leaves of some of the decorative foliage from the edicted planet known as Midworld inclined in his direction. The visible motile response no longer surprised him. Plants, he had come to believe, were capable of surprisingly sophisticated responses to external stimuli. It was a personal discovery he intended to delve into in much greater detail one day, when he had the time.

Attuned to his voice, the
Teacher
’s peerless AI welcomed him to the compact bridge. Settling himself into the pilot’s seat, he regarded the starfield beyond the curving port. The basso thrumming of Pip’s wings ceased as she folded them flat against her sides and took up a comfortable resting position atop one of her favorite instrument panels—one of the few that gave off any heat. Her presence blocked the lens of its heads-up projector, but he had no need of its function at the moment.

“Instructions, O master of a thousand confusions? And how was your sojourn on beautiful, bucolic Goldin Four?”

The sarcasm, like the pleasant feminine voice, was employed at the discretion of the sophisticated AI. It did its best to vary its tone in an attempt to keep him amused. He could have banished it in favor of something banal and less prickly, but decided to let the AI pick its own way. The tenor suited his mood.

More than that, it struck uncomfortably close to home.

“The initial weeks were very pleasant. It’s a nice world. But the last couple of days, unknown persons of homicidal bent tried to kill me.”

“What, again?” The synthetic voice managed a maternal tut-tut. “You really must find another hobby, Flinx.”

“It’s not funny,” he muttered as he shifted uncomfortably in the chair.

“Sorry.” The AI was immediately contrite. “That portion of my humor programming, combined with concurrent library research, suggested that it would be.”

He sighed. Debating the roots and timing of human humor with an artificial intelligence, no matter how advanced, was inevitably a dead end. “Another time it probably would be. Not your fault. I appreciate the effort to entertain me.”

“It’s my job.” The voice managed to sound relieved. “You have no idea who these disagreeable persons are or what organization they represent?”

“None. Only that they have no fear of death. I mean, none whatsoever. It’s very strange.” He straightened. “But hopefully avoidable. I doubt they tracked me here. Head outsystem, please.”

A rising hum took the place of the just completed
Soirée
. The chair vibrated ever so slightly. “Destination or vector?”

He had given it no thought. “Just take us a sufficient number of AU’s out so the drive can be legally engaged.”

Readouts soon showed Goldin IV beginning to recede behind him. Pip dozed atop her chosen panel. Hours later, as they approached the outermost of the system’s five gas giants, Flinx had decided on the latest change of appearance. But not for him.

Starships did not molt, but thanks to the skills of the Ulru-Ujurrians who had built this one for him as a gift, the
Teacher
was capable of a few, very distinctive tricks besides its unique ability to actually land on a planet—a feat no other KK-drive ship Flinx knew of could duplicate.

Having chosen the new configuration from a standard Commonwealth shipping file, he gave it and the necessary command to the
Teacher
. Within, everything remained the same. But through subtle manipulation of the actual metal, plastic, ceramic, composites, and other materials of which the vessel was fashioned, its exterior began to change.