Without asking permission, Flinx came around the barrier and ran his fingers over the screen’s secureboard. The man looked up at him.
“You can’t mean that.”
By way of reply Flinx pressed screen run. The machine beeped as it recorded the transaction. The man let out a long breath.
“What now? What do you want me to do?”
“Go have something to eat, or go to the bathroom, or go call your wife.”
“I’m not married,” the clerk mumbled dazedly.
“Then go call a friend.”
“Yeah. Right.”
He left the office quickly. Flinx locked the door behind him.
“What did you do?” Clarity asked, watching him closely.
“Rented the facilities. Come with me.”
She followed. “What kind of place is this?” Piles of crates and boxes filled platforms and shelves in the long chamber behind the office.
“You’ll see. Stand here.” He positioned her on a circular platform.
“What are you going to do?” She eyed the platform and the nearby machinery warily. “Build me a disguise?”
“Not exactly.” He sat down opposite another large LCD screen and keyboard, studying it thoughtfully.
“What if they find us here?” He had been examining the screen and board for five minutes, and she was starting to fidget.
“They won’t find us here,” he said absently. “Hold still.” His fingers rose to the keys.
She looked down, startled. “Hey, what—”
“I said, don’t move.”
She froze, puzzled but trusting. She had no choice but to trust him.
It was a very elegant box. Normally it was used for transporting live, exotic tropical vegetation. The two-meter-tall cylinder was tinted green and brown to match its usual contents and came lightly scented. It occurred to Flinx that he had neglected to ask if she was claustrophobic, but it was too late now.
The packaging equipment wove the custom container out of a special fibrous material produced on Alaspin. The strong celluloid base would allow the free flow of air while simultaneously shielding the container’s contents from radiation, which meant it would also foil any casually applied detection scanners. Internal noise would be muted. As befitted the transportation of expensive tropical vegetation, it was heavily padded on the inside. It moved on its own built-in, yttrilithium battery-powered repulsion kit. Gyroscopic programming kept it perfectly upright to protect the delicate petals of the plant inside. As a final touch he had stenciled on the exterior, product of alaspin—sensitive flora—do not open, screen, or handle.
“I hope that’s comfortable,” he said aloud when he had finished. There was no answer, of course. She couldn’t hear him, nor he, her. The air inside the cylinder would be a little on the warm side, but while temporarily uncomfortable, she was in no danger of suffocation.
He kept a surreptitious eye out for suspicious types as he convoyed his personal baggage through port Security. No one intercepted him in the lounge, and no one confronted him as he guided the cylinder through the boarding corridor toward his shuttle. Then he was loading the little craft’s cargo bay, a touch on the throwaway repulsor’s control sending it rising by itself into the belly of the ship.
“Almost clear,” he said aloud, though she still could not hear him.
He instructed the shuttle’s computer verbally, giving simple lift-off and docking instructions, then settled back into the pilot’s seat and waited. Upon receiving departure clearance from port authority, the shuttle taxied itself into position. A moment later it was roaring down the runway, gathering speed, its wheels folding up into the delta wings and nose as they cleared the first marsh grass. Thin purple blossoms vibrated in the wake of its passing. Clarity had worried needlessly. Whoever had kidnapped her might be resourceful, but they were not omnipotent. He rose. Using interior handholds as gravity left him, he pulled himself back toward the cargo hold. It was time to unpackage his passenger.
The woman standing over him was very tall and extremely pretty, much too beautiful for the vapid-faced young man who had come in with her. An oddly matched couple, but very polite. Almost deferential.
“You said he had a woman with him? A young woman?” The towering blonde wore the uniform of a port authority guard.
“Yes.” This excited both of them tremendously, though they took obvious pains to hide it. He still could not decide which one was in charge. “Why? Is there a problem?” The size of the bribe he had received from his earlier visitor was, weighing heavily on his mind.
“No, no problem,” the young man said softly. “We just want to ask the young lady a couple of questions.”
“Excuse me.” A matronly woman in a bright pink and yellow dress came through the door, a plant basket slung under one arm. “I have some fresh-cured maniga root I’d like shipped today to Tasc—”
The tall blonde stepped in front of her. “Sorry. This office is closed.”
The clerk behind the narrow counter blinked. “Closed? No, we’re open here until six.”
“It’s closed,” the blonde reiterated without looking back at him.
“But he just said . . .” the matron began.
The tall woman reached down, put a hand in the center of the older woman’s chest, and shoved. The matron stumbled backward, barely keeping her balance, and gaped.
“Well, if you’re closed, you’re closed!” She spun and hurried out of the office.
“Hey, wait a minute!” the clerk shouted, rising from his chair. “Official port business is one thing, but—”
“It won’t take long.” The young man moved nearer as his tall female companion gently shut and locked the door. “And it will go much faster if you cooperate.”
“Of course I’ll cooperate,” the clerk told him irritably, “but that’s no reason to close us down.”
“Questions are understood much better when they’re not interrupted in the asking,” the blonde said.
What a lovely speaking voice, the clerk thought, staring at her. Everything about her was gorgeous—except her attitude. And the port guards were noted for their politeness.
“Maybe,” he said suddenly, “I’d better make a call and check with some people before I answer any more questions.” He reached down for the com unit slung beneath his terminal.
The blonde reached it in two strides and locked her fingers around his wrist. “Maybe,” she said softly, “you’d better not.”
He tried to break her grip, but it was as if his wrist had been lassoed with wire. He forced himself to calm down. All these people wanted was some information, and who was he to deny them? There was the back door, but as she released his wrist he had the idea that making a run for it would not be a good idea. Why ruin his day and maybe more than that to shield some stranger’s privacy?
“All right.” He sat carefully back in his chair. “Go ahead and ask your questions.”
“Thanks,” the young man said. His left eyelid was jumping noticeably. “The people we’re after are trying to ruin an entire world. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
“Of course not. What right-thinking citizen wants that for any world?”
The twitching went away, though it did not stop completely. “See?” He looked back up at the overpowering blonde. “I told you it would be okay.”
“I still think we should do it the other way, but—” She shrugged. “—get on with it.”
The clerk found that he was trembling slightly inside, even though he had made the right decision.
Chapter Seven
Although she relaxed completely for the first time since he had met her once the shuttle cleared ionosphere, Flinx did not. He had been around too much and seen too much to know that mere vacuum offered no assurances of safety. He watched and listened intently, but nothing came near them. Traffic around Alaspin was nonexistent. The com unit was silent. They were alone.
Clarity Held had been impressed by his descr
iption of, the Teacher. She was overwhelmed when the long, sleek mass of the starship hove into view beyond the shuttle’s viewports. When she finally set foot inside after transferring through the personnel lock, the only reaction remaining to her was awe.
They were in the area that on a commercial vessel would have been designated a commons but that Flinx domestically called his den. In the center stood a raised pond filled with tropical fish from several worlds. It was surrounded by bushes and well-tended plants. The ceiling was dressed in a type of vine that grew extremely well in artificial light and did not shed.
Flinx was very fond of green. The world on which he had been raised was thick with evergreen forest. Pip’s home world was all jungle and savanna. He had seen enough of both desert and ice to care for neither.
Artificial gravity made it all possible, even the bubbling fountain in the center of the pool that spouted both normal and light water. Heavy water behaved normally on board, but light water could be stained different colors. It was a blend of glycerine and gases encased in incredibly thin polymer membranes. It burst into the air in the form of multihued bubbles that were sucked up to vanish into a cone concealed by the ceiling vines. The cone condensed and recycled the bubbles through the water below.
The furniture was real, rough-hewn wood layered with thickly stuffed cushions that responded musically to whoever sat on them, adjusting their melodies to the movements and emotions of the sitters. Purple and deep blue forms chased each other seemingly at random around the circular walls, like so many bugs at a racetrack. The randomness of the chase was part of the art. The den was a remarkable mix of angular geometric shapes and glowing lights, of green growing things and sparkling water, of nature and science.
Clarity wandered around the room inspecting flora and art. Each element of the decor stood out bright as a child’s eyes, as carefully crafted and arranged as if by a professional. Flinx had simply thrown it all together.
When she was finished, she found her breath again. “You actually do own all this?”
“People tend to give me things.” Flinx smiled in embarrassment. “I don’t know why. A few I’ve picked up on my travels.” He gestured. “The fountain and the plants are there because I enjoy looking at both. There are robots, but I prefer working with growing things myself. I seem to have a way with plants.”
He did not tell her he thought his success with plants had something to do with his empathic telepathy, nor did he mention the theories that stated that plants were capable of emotion and feeling. She already thought of him as weird, even if he had saved her life.
Maybe I should’ve been a farmer, he thought. Not that there was much room for farmers on Moth. If he had asked for help, the kind of plants Mother Mastiff would probably have encouraged him to grow would have been illegal.
“We ought to leave,” she said abruptly, as if remembering what they were doing on his ship.
“We’re already on our way.”
“Where?” She looked around in surprise, but there were no ports in the common room.
“Outsystem, away from Alaspin orbit.” He checked his wrist chronometer. “It’s an easy command to give. The ship takes verbal direction. Much easier than trying to enter it via keyboard. If you hear a third voice speaking, cool, feminine-neutral, that’s the Teacher. It’s not capable of reasoning, so don’t try arguing with it. I prefer it that way. I wanted something that would respond immediately to my wishes and not debate possibilities with me.”
“Unlike me?” She walked over to the rock rimwall that enclosed the pool and sat down on the edge, trailing one hand in the water. A flash of crimson steel drifted over on turquoise wings to inspect her fingers. She reached lazily in its direction, and it darted away with a flick of trifinned tail.
“People give you things. Like this ship, you said.”
“I have a number of interesting friends. They built it for me, actually.” He shook his head with the remembrance of it. “I still don’t know how they did it. Somehow it didn’t strike me as the kind of thing they’d be good at, but then, they didn’t seem good at anything. Surprising friends.”
“Oh, how lovely!” She rose and stepped away from the pool. “What’s this?”
She ran her hand over what looked like a dozen Möbius strips orbiting a common center. Where they met and intersected they appeared to vanish into nothingness. When she touched one, a deep bass rumbling filled the common room. Touching another generated a crude whistling. There was nothing holding the arrangement in place a meter and a half above the deck.
“Some kind of gravity projection?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I acquired it without instructions or explanation, I’m afraid.” He nodded forward. “Put your hand in the middle, where the strips converge.”
“Why? Will it disappear?”
He smiled. “No.”
“All right.”
Eyeing him challenging, she slowly moved her hand into the intersecting space. Her fingers were slightly parted. Instantly, her eyes shut tight and a look of pure bliss passed over her face. Her mouth parted slightly to reveal teeth tightly clenched. Slowly her head arched backward, then rolled forward, taking her whole upper body with it like a ribbon caught in a sudden breeze. He had to run to catch her.
He half carried, half dragged her to the nearest lounge and gently placed her on the responsive upholstery. The back of her left hand rested against her forehead, and beads of sweat were collecting on her skin like Burmese pearls. She wore the expression for two minutes. Then she blinked, wiped away the sweat, and turned to face him.
“That wasn’t fair,” she said huskily. “I didn’t expect—anything like that.”
“Neither did I the first time I put my hand inside. It’s a little overwhelming.”
“A little?” She was gazing longingly at the floating confluence of Möbius strips. “I’ve never felt anything like that in my life, and my hand was only in there for a moment. But it wasn’t just my hand, was it?” She looked back up at him. “It was my whole body.”
“It was your entire being, your self plugged into a high-voltage socket without the danger. At least, I think there’s no danger. Just that wondrous surge of pleasure.”
“That,” she said firmly as she sat up straight on the lounge, “ought to be illegal.”
He turned away from her. “It is.”
“I never heard of such a device. Where’s it built?”
“On an illegal world by illegal people. There are no restrictions on it because, insofar as I know, it’s the only one of its kind. Nobody else knows it exists. The people who made this ship for me—” He looked around the commons room. “—made that as well. Another gift. They wanted to make sure I felt happy all the time, so they provided me with the means to do so.”
“You could die from that much happiness.”
“I know. Its designers have greater tolerances for everything, including happiness. You have to watch the dose. I only use it when I’m seriously depressed.”
“And do you find yourself seriously depressed often, Flinx?”
“I’m afraid I do. I was always kind of moody, and it’s worse now than when I was a child.”
“I see. It’s none of my business and you don’t have to tell me, but is there anyone else on this ship?”
“Only you and I, unless you count Pip and Scrap.”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t expect you to tell me about your illegal suppliers.”
“I don’t mind. They’re really fine folks. Special. I sometimes find myself thinking that they’re the universe’s chosen ones. They’re innocents. Utter innocents, though I’ve taken some basic steps to remedy that. The Church knows about them, and the government, and they’re afraid of that kind of innocence. My friends are also incomprehensible.”
“Would I know of them?”
“Possibly, but I doubt it.” Moving to a tall blue-green fern, he pushed aside one of the thick fronds to reveal a tiny keyboard. He let his
fingers play over the keys. It would have been easier to have entered the command verbally, but he had a childish desire to impress her further.
To anyone unschooled in galographics, the star clusters that materialized in midair between Flinx and the fountain would have appeared haphazardly aligned. Only on closer inspection could a viewer make out the tiny bright green letters that floated above each sun. A very small proportion of the imaged stars were labeled with yellow pinpoint letters instead of green.
“The Commonwealth,” he explained unnecessarily.
The AAnn Empire was not shown, though she did not doubt he could call it up with the flick of a finger. Nor was the Sagittarius Arm visible. The holo displayed only Commonwealth vectors and schematics. While she looked on, the entire complex configuration oriented itself to the position of the Teacher.
“It’s a long ways out.” He was peering deeply into the slowly rotating holo. “Maybe within Commonwealth boundaries, maybe not. Up near the Rosette nebula, out toward the galactic edge. Not a big world. Not impressive.” He brushed the controls inside the fern, and she saw a green blip brighten to emerald.
His hand moved anew, and the holo shifted drastically. When it halted, a completely different world blazed brighter than any other. “Alaspin.” His hand moved yet a third time, highlighting a world on the very fringes of the Commonwealth.
“Existing world, different perspective. The first holo was legal. A mask. The positions are falsified. These are correct, and proscribed.”
She stared. The new world he had brought to brilliance moved perceptibly, enough to throw off anyone trying to locate it. This time it was not green but an intense red.
“I don’t have much use for a floating map,” she murmured, “but I’ve seen worlds marked green and blue and pink and yellow, but never that color before.”
“It means the world in question is under full Church Edict. No one’s supposed to know it’s there. There are automated weapons stations in multiple orbit stationed six planetary diameters out to prevent unauthorized approaches, much less landings.” He waved his hand, and the entire holo vanished, an evaporative cosmos. “If people knew it was there and Under Edict, someone would try to go there simply because it’s forbidden. The result would be dead adventurers and a discomfited bureaucracy.”