Orphan Star (10 page)

Pip had all but exploded from his shoulder perch, fast enough to mark the skin beneath Flinx’s jumpsuit. Fumbling the cassette into a pocket, he scrambled to his feet and raced down the aisle after his panicked pet.

“Pip . . . wait . . . there’s nothing wrong . . . !”

The minidrag had already reached the entrance. Both Namoto and the monitor on duty had moved away from the desk. They were watching the snake warily while backing slowly away. The minidrag beat at the translucent plexite for a moment as Flinx rushed from the booth aisle. He was calling to the reptile verbally and mentally, praying that the snake would relax before someone, gentle and understanding or not, took a shot at him.

The minidrag backed off, fluttering and twisting in the air, and spat once. A loud hissing sound, and a large irregular hole appeared in the door. Flinx made a desperate grab for the receding tail, but too late—the elusive reptile had already squeezed through the aperture.

“Open the door,” he yelled, “I’ve got to go after him!”

The attendant stood paralyzed until Namoto murmured tensely, “Open the door, Yena.”

Yena moved rapidly then. “Yes, sir—should I sound an alarm?”

Namoto looked to Flinx, who was ready to rip the door from its glide. “Pip wouldn’t hurt anyone unless he sensed a threat to me.”

“Then what’s the matter with him?” the padre asked as the door slid back. Flinx plunged through, the padre close behind.

“I don’t know . . . there he goes! Pip . . . !”

The curling tail was just vanishing around a bend in the corridor. Flinx plunged after.

In the twists and turns of the labyrinthine building, Flinx occasionally lost sight of his pet. But ashen-faced human personnel and thranx with uncontrollably shivering antennae marked the minidrag’s path as clearly as a trail of crimson lacquer. Despite his bulk, Padre Namoto remained close behind Flinx.

It felt as if they had run around kilometers of corners before they finally caught up with the minidrag. Pip was beating leathery wings against another doorway, much larger than any Flinx had seen so far.

Only this time there was more than a single studious monitor in attendance. Two men wearing aquamarine uniforms were crouched behind a flanking tubular barrier. Each had a small beamer trained on the fluttering minidrag. Flinx could see a small knot of Church personnel huddled expectantly at the far end of the corridor.

“Don’t shoot!” he howled frantically. “He won’t hurt anyone!” Slowing, he moved closer to his pet. But Pip refused every summons, remaining resolutely out of grabbing range as he continued to beat at the doors.

“Whatever’s berserked him is on the other side.” He called to the two armed men. “Let him through.”

“That’s a restricted area, boy,” one of them said, trying to divide his attention between the flying snake and this new arrival.

“Let us through,” a slightly winded Namoto ordered, moving out where he could be seen clearly. The guard’s voice turned respectful.

“Sorry, Padre, we didn’t know you were in charge of this.”

“I’m not, the snake is. But open the doors anyway. My authority.”

Flinx had barely a minute to wonder exactly how important his helpful guide was before the surprisingly thick double doors started to separate. Pip squeezed through the minimal opening and an impatient Flinx had to wait another moment before the gap was wide enough to admit him.

Then he was on the other side, which proved to be a corridor no different from any of the many he had already traversed.

Except . . .

Except for the bank of six lifts before him. Two padre-elects were waiting in front of the lift at far left. One was a very old, tall, and oddly deformed human. He stood next to a young female thranx.

Pip was hovering in midair as Flinx and Namoto slipped into the corridor. Then he suddenly dived at the couple, completely ignoring the other Church personnel who were beginning to notice the presence of the venomous reptile in their midst.

“Call him off, Flinx,” Namoto ordered. There was no hint of obsequiousness in his voice now. He had his beamer out and aimed.

Flinx suddenly sensed what had pulled so strongly at his pet. As Pip dove, the bent old man ducked and dodged with shocking agility, fairly throwing his young companion against the lift door. She twisted herself as she was shoved. It was sufficient to prevent a nasty break, but too weak to keep her from slamming hard into the unyielding metal. Shiny blue-green legs collapsed and she folded up against the door.

The old cleric’s extraordinary suppleness caused Namoto and the others to delay intervening. Producing a beamer of his own from within the folds of his robes, the man—who had yet to utter a word, even a simple cry for help—took a wild shot at Pip. The minidrag spat, and inhuman reflexes enabled his target to just avoid the corrosive venom. It scorched the finish on the wall behind him.

“
Pip, that’s enough!”
Something in his master’s voice apparently satisfied the minidrag. Hesitating briefly, the reptile pivoted in midair and raced back to Flinx. But the flying snake still felt uncomfortable enough to disdain his normal shoulder perch, opting instead to remain hovering warily near Flinx’s right ear.

For several silent seconds a mass of people were momentarily unified by the paralysis of uncertainty. Then Namoto broke the spell. “What branch are you working with, sir?” he inquired of the object of Pip’s assault. “I don’t believe I recognize . . .”

The padre became silent as the beamer recently directed against the snake shifted to cover him. Trying to look in every direction at once, the man moved a shifting, glacial glare over the small crowd which had gathered. No one challenged him, electing instead to wait and watch.

“Keep back, all of you,” he finally warned. His accent was one Flinx did not recognize, the words almost more whistled than articulated.

As the man began backing toward the portal Flinx and Namoto had just passed through, Flinx cautiously edged around to where he could aid the injured young thranx. She was just regaining consciousness when he came near her. Getting both hands around her thorax, he lifted steadily. “He . . . threatened to kill me,” she was murmuring groggily, still none too steady on trulegs and foothands. He could feel her b-thorax pulsing with uneven breathing.

Abruptly in control of herself again, the thranx looked accusingly across at her attacker. “He said if I didn’t take him down to command level he’d kill me!”

“You can’t get out of this building, sir,” Namoto informed the man whom the girl had just accused. “I’m going to have to ask you to put down that beamer and come with me.” The beamer waved at him and the padre ceased his approach after a single step.

“To be rational is to live,” the man whistle-talked.

Without releasing his grip on the beamer, the man reached into the folds of his robes—exceptionally voluminous they were, Flinx noted. A moment’s search produced a small brown cube sporting wires and several awkwardly installed knobs.

“This is a hundred-gram casing of kelite—enough to kill everyone in this corridor.” His explanation was enough to send the younger of the watching acolytes scurrying in retreat.

Namoto didn’t budge. “No volume of explosives could get you out of this complex,” he informed the nervous man, his voice steady now. “Furthermore, although that cube looks like a kelite casing, I find that most unlikely, since no volume of explosives can get
into
this complex without being detected. Furthermore, I don’t think you’re an authorized member of the Church. If that’s true, then you can’t be in possession of an activated beamer.”

The padre took another step forward.

“Keep away, or you’ll find out whether it’s activated or not!” the man shouted shrilly.

Every eye in the corridor was locked on the two principals in the threatening standoff—every intelligent eye.

Flinx thought he saw something move close to the ceiling, suddenly glanced to his right. Pip was no longer there.

There was no way of telling whether the same thought occurred simultaneously to the old man, or whether he simply detected motion overhead. Whatever the cause, he was ducking and firing before Flinx could shout to his pet.

Namoto had been right and wrong. The tiny weapon looked like a beamer but wasn’t. Instead it fired a tiny projectile that just passed under the minidrag’s writhing body. The projectile hit the far wall and bounced to the floor. Whatever it was was nonexplosive, all right; but Flinx doubted its harmlessness.

This time, Pip was too close to dodge. Powerful muscles in jaws and neck forced the poison out through the hypodermal tube in the minidrag’s mouth. The poison missed the eyes, but despite his uncanny agility, the old man couldn’t avoid the attack completely. The venom grazed head and neck. A sizzling sound came from dissolving flesh, and the man emitted an unexpected piercing hiss, sounding like an ancient steam engine blowing its safety valve.

It was not a sound the human throat could manufacture.

Namoto and Flinx rushed the falling figure. But even as he was collapsing he was fumbling with the cube of “kelite.”

The confidence of a dying man was reason enough for Namoto to fall to the floor and yell a warning to everyone else. Suddenly there was a muffled explosion—but one far smaller than kelite would have produced, and it did not come from the brownish cube. A few screams from the crowd, and the threat was past.

As Flinx climbed back to his feet, he realized that Namoto’s observations were once again confused. First, the beamer had turned out to be a weapon, but not a beamer. And now it seemed this intruder had succeeded in smuggling a minimal amount of explosive into the complex, but not enough to hurt anyone else. If it was indeed kelite, it was a minute amount; but nonetheless, it made an impressive mess of the man’s middle. His internals were scattered all over this end of the corridor.

Flinx was still panting when Pip settled around his shoulder once again. Moving forward, he joined Namoto in examining the wreckage of what minutes before had been a living creature.

With death imminent, the creature’s mind had cleared, his thoughts strengthened multifold. Flinx suddenly found his head assailed with a swirl of unexpected images and word-pictures, but it was the familiarity of one which shocked him so badly that he stumbled.

Flinx could sense the ghostly rippling picture of a fat man he desired strongly to see again, the man he had given up hope of ever relocating: Conda Challis. This vision was mixed with a world-picture and the picture-world had the name Ulru-Ujurr. Many other images competed for his attention, but the unexpected sight of Challis in the dying intruder’s mind overwhelmed them beyond identification.

Pip had sensed his master’s fury at that very individual long minutes ago, back in the archives. Then this wretched person suddenly—undoubtedly—pictured the very same merchant, in terms unfavorable to Flinx. So Pip had reacted in proportion to Flinx’s emotional state. Whether the minidrag would still have attacked the stranger had he not drawn a weapon was something Flinx would never know.

Namoto was studying the corpse. The explosion had been contained but intense. Little was left to connect the head and upper torso with the legs. Most of the body between had been destroyed.

Reaching down, the padre felt what appeared to be a piece of loose skin. He tugged . . . and the skin came away, revealing a second epidermis beneath. It was shiny, pebbled, and scaly—as inhuman as that final cry had been.

As inhuman as the thoughts Flinx had entered.

A low murmur of astonishment began to rise in the crowd, continuing as Namoto, kneeling, pulled and tore away the intricate molding which formed the false facial structure. When the entire skull had been exposed, Namoto rose, his gaze moving to the sample of forged flesh he held in one hand. “A nye,” he observed matter-of-factly. He dropped the shard of skin, wiped his hands on his lower robe.

“An adult AAnn,” someone in the crowd muttered.

“In
here!”

“But why? What did he hope to accomplish with so small an explosive?”

Someone called for attention from the back of the crowd, held up a tiny shape. “Crystal syringe-dart,” she explained. “That’s how he got past the detectors—no beamer, no explosive-shell weapon.”

“Surely,” someone approached Namoto, “he didn’t come all this way with all this elaborate preparation, just to kill someone with a little dart gun?”

“I don’t think so, either,” the padre commented, gazing down at the body. “That explosive—that was a suicide charge, designed to kill him in the event of discovery. But perhaps it was also there to destroy something else.”

“What kind of something else?” the same person wondered.

I don’t know. But we’re going to analyze this corpse before we dispose of it.” Kneeling again, Namoto pawed slowly through the cauterized meat. “He was well armed as far as it went—his insides are full of pulverized crystal. Must have been carrying several dozen of those syringe-darts.”

Flinx jerked at the observation, started to say something—then turned his budding comment into a yawn. He couldn’t prove a thing, and it was an insane supposition anyway. Besides, if by some miracle he were half right, he would certainly be subjected to a year of questioning by Church investigators. He might never find Conda Challis then. Worse, by that time the indifferent merchant might have destroyed the missing record he had stolen, that remaining piece in the puzzle of Flinx’s life.

So he could not afford to venture a childish opinion on what those fragments might be of.

A full crew of uniformed personnel entered the corridor. Some began dispersing the still buzzing crowd while others commenced an intensive examination of the corpse.

One small, very dark human glanced casually at the organic debris, then walked briskly over to confront the padre.

“Hello, Namoto.”

“Sir,” the padre acknowledged, with so much respect in his voice that Flinx was drawn from his own personal thoughts to consideration of the new arrival “He was well disguised.”

“An AAnn,” the short package of mental energy noted. “They’re feeling awfully bold when they try to slip one of their own in
here.
I wonder what his purpose was?”