“Will I ever see you again, Flinx LLVVRXX of the Tier Ssaiinn? Will I ever be able once more to crouch and conversse with you about peopless and worldss beyond my ken, that I will only be able to learn of and vissit in the form of your kind and knowing desscriptionss?”
The AAnn being very fond of protocol and formalities, Flinx had anticipated that the ritual surrounding his departure would be somewhat prolonged. He had expected to be impatient. He had expected to be tired. He had even expected to be bored.
He had not expected to be touched.
Flanking the entrance to the military shuttle, one of the soldiers who had been observing the ceremony let out a hiss of uncertainty as she noted the actions of the older and young nye on the ramp below. Their vacillation seemed a waste of time and energy. It made no sense to her. She glanced across at her colleague.
“I know that we were warned that there might be ssome asspectss to thiss particular leave-taking that could be perceived as out of the ordinary—but for what possible reasson could the passenger and the youth be gripping each other'ss handss like that?”
Tired from standing, the other soldier gestured third-degree lack of interest. “Who knowss? Perhapss they are preparing to fight.”
As the AAnn shuttle decelerated in preparation for rendezvousing with what appeared to be an unusually ill-equipped Imperial scientific research vessel, Flinx found himself gazing in admiration at a ship he did not recognize. In the course of its stealthy sojourn in space-plus the Teacher had completely revamped its exterior. Gone was the battered and slightly disreputable epidermis of an interworld cargo craft. In its place was an exterior adroit enough to fool the occupants of any Imperial craft. Once safely back within the boundaries of the Commonwealth, the ship would revert to a more mundane human-designed configuration. But until it passed beyond the borders of the Empire, it would continue to cleave to its latest nonhuman schematic.
A speedy, formal farewell to the commander of the shuttle, a transfer to a receiving lock equally disguised, and Flinx found himself back in the familiar, comforting surrounds of his ship. Outside, lit by the actinic glow of desert-swathed Blasusarr, the AAnn shuttle was pulling away. Once at a safe distance it ignited its main drive and dropped swiftly toward the world below. A world that he had experienced and come to know perhaps better than any other member of his species.
The accumulation of arcane knowledge and esoteric experiences was a habit he had no desire to break, he mused as he made his way through the familiar corridors.
“Welcome back.” The shipmind greeted him as he emerged into the command center. His favorite cold drink was waiting for him on one arm of the pilot's chair. He took the drink but did not sit down, preferring to sip as he stood and stared out the curved, sweeping port. Beyond, Blasusarr gleamed in the light of its star. He had gone where few humans had gone before him and had done so in a manner previously unimaginable. His achievement far exceeded anything he had dared hope for when he had arrived weeks ago. Not only was he leaving the Imperial homeworld in one piece, he was departing having made new friendships, having acquired new knowledge, and having secured (even if only for a year) a peace treaty between AAnn and humanxkind.
Not bad for a few weeks' furtive and highly illegal stopover, he reflected.
“It's good to be back. Did you miss me?”
“I was naturally concerned for your well-being,” the ship replied equably. “The question implies application of an emotion to which I am not mathematically privy.” There was a slight, probably programmed pause. “I do admit to wanting to know how you went from being flushed and chased from hiding to returning via an AAnn Imperial military shuttlecraft. I feel this perceptible contradiction constitutes a deficiency in my database that is seriously demanding of redress.”
Sighing deeply, Flinx turned from the port and slumped down in the chair. “I'll fill you in on all the details in the course of our journey. Prepare departure.”
“Should I take up again the previous vector?” was the prompt query. “So that we may continue with the prior search? Which, I am compelled to point out, has suffered recently from your detour and a delay that can only be described as grievous.”
“I know, I know,” Flinx muttered irritably. “I swear, you're like an old mother hen sometimes!”
“An important function of my programming, though in no wise avian. You yourself have repeatedly remarked on its importance.”
“I know that, too.” Flinx chugged the rest of his drink, deliberately chilling his mouth and throat. The headache that was coalescing at the back of his skull had nothing to do with the temperature of the liquid he was imbibing. “First Jast, then Visaria, then Gestalt, and now here.” Not for the first time he wished for a face he could look into, talk to, evaluate. But there was only the interior of the ship, with its molded walls and silent, compliant instrumentation. From the time he had accepted the ship from its builders, the Ulru-Ujurrians, he had refused to assign it a visible avatar.
He saw enough faces in his dreams.
“I've learned something from each of those visits to each of those worlds, ship. And the one thing I've decided is that I can't go on with this search by myself. I've got to have help. Support. And not just moral support of the kind offered by Bran and Tru. I don't think I can go on with this alone.”
“You are the only one who might establish contact with the wandering Tar-Aiym weapons platform that is the object of the search.” The ship's tone was simultaneously cool, unforgiving, and sympathetic. “What kind of help could you possibly need? Or find useful?”
“I'm trying to clarify.” Wrestling with words and concepts, Flinx struggled to explain himself to a machine. “It's just—it's too much for one person. It's too much for me anymore.” Looking up he found himself staring, in lieu of a face, at one of the several visual pickups that lined the room. “Maybe, at heart, that's the real reason I've kept off going back into the Blight.”
The ship lapsed into silence. When it felt that enough time had passed and the stillness had endured long enough, it inquired just as if there had been no discussion preceding its request, “Vector?”
Without hesitation this time, Flinx supplied one.
The Teacher did not delay in reacting. “You gainsay your own words. You contradict your own emotions. You do not seek the indicated destination in search of help. You have another motive. Reasons that have nothing to do with the critical search on which we are embarked.” Programming aside, the ship's tone was unabashedly accusatory.
“I understand your reaction, but you're wrong,” Flinx insisted. “Or half wrong. Yes, I have an ulterior motive for wanting to go there. But it's also where I hope to find help. The kind of help I most need. Once we're safely back in space-plus I'll fill you in on the details and try to make you understand. I know it's not an easy concept for a machine to grasp.”
“I already understand,” the shipmind grumbled. “You can parse all you want, but it will take some effort on your part to convince me that I have left anything out of my judgment. A detour is still a detour.”
That was all the Teacher had to say on the subject. Despite Flinx's demurral it knew enough about humans to follow his reasoning.
Just as it knew enough to recognize an equivocation when it heard one….
Not only was Clarity Held all wrapped up in her work, she was all worked up in her wrap. Whereas her irritation and impatience were on open display, the half-body bandage that extended from neck to waist and covered much of her torso was not. It would have taken a knowledgeable physician to spot the extensions and connectors where they emerged from the opening of the sleeveless tanning top.
Though much of the injury she had suffered in the fight to try to leave Nur with Flinx had long since healed, the bandage ensured that the skin on her back would redevelop without scars. Certainly it was more comfortable than the spray of synthetic chitin the Eint Truzenzuzex had initially used to stanch the bleeding and save her life. It was only days later,
while she was recovering from surgery, that the thranx philosoph and his human companion, the sociologist-soldier Bran Tse-Mallory, decided she was recovered enough to be told that Flinx had left to continue the search for the wandering Tar-Aiym weapons platform without her.
“We wanted to go with him, too,” Tse-Mallory explained, “but he insisted we stay behind to look after you. We've done that.”
And done it well, she knew. The nihilists of the Order of Null who wanted Flinx dead and had attacked them at the shuttleport had not shown themselves in his absence. So under the watchful eyes of the two senior Commonwealth scientists, one human and the other thranx, she was allowed to recuperate in peace.
Her spleen had been badly lacerated in the attack. Bioengineers had grown her a new one. Her lungs had been punctured. They had been stitched. Several veins had been shredded. The organosynth tubing that had replaced them was indistinguishable from the originals save for their vivid turquoise hue, which none could see unless she was opened up. Her blond hair had been burned away from the back of her neck to the top of her head. That, at least, had regrown all by itself.
Her irritation stemmed from the presence of minuscule specks of shrapnel, some of which even after a year were still lodged deep in her body. Sometimes difficult to detect, they were gradually working their way up and outward. Only a week ago a physician had squeezed a small bump just below her left clavicle and popped out a shard of sharp plexalloy.
“It's safer this way than utilizing repetitive probes or surgery,” he told her apologetically. “Given a little time and a little help, it's amazing how well the body does at healing itself. Better when and where possible to let Nature make the repairs in her own good time.”
Which was all well and fine, she muttered by way of reply, if you were not the one who had to deal with the continual itching and stinging as microscopic fragments of bone, metal, plastic, glass, and other insoluble invaders slowly worked their way to the surface of your epidermis.
Not only did the bandage help her flesh to heal, it also monitored her condition. If a piece of shrapnel migrated too close to a large blood vessel or internal organ, the sensors imprinted into the bandage would raise an alarm and pinpoint the location. Other sensors sent regular reports to her wrist or home communit, which then passed the information along to the local hospital.
At least she had been able to work, if not to go home. Her doctors insisted she remain at the facility for another couple of weeks. At that time the bandage would be removed. Though it was less of an imposition than a silk scarf, she would be glad to be rid of it.
This being Nur/New Riviera, the facility was more of a medical resort than a hospital. Located on the shore of one of the northern hemisphere's extensive, exquisite lakes, it offered all the comforts of a first-class lodge. From her room or outside on the beach she was able to communicate with the company she worked for in the capital city of Sphene. Her superiors at Ulricam had been genuinely concerned for her health and supportive of her efforts to maintain a daily work schedule. It helped that Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex had been able to suppress the literal details surrounding her injury. Insofar as her bosses knew, after seeing off a friend at the shuttleport she had been seriously injured in a subsequent skimmer accident.
The friend in question was in reality much more than that, and she had not seen him off. One moment the battle to reach Flinx's shuttlecraft had been raging in full fury, with weaponry erupting all around them. A bright flash had wiped out consciousness, vision, and sound. The next thing she remembered was waking up in the hospital, dazed, immobilized, swathed in protein bandages, hooked up to an assortment of imposing and intimidating instrumentation, and in spite of a sufficiency of numbing pharmaceuticals and soothing radiation, in considerable pain. That the only face looking down at her at that moment happened to be hard-shelled, antennaed, and boasting large compound eyes was not completely reassuring.
Flinx would be back, Truzenzuzex had assured her when she was coherent enough to understand. Between the need to find the wandering Tar-Aiym weapons platform and escape the attentions of the murderous Order of Null, it would have been foolish as well as counterproductive for him to linger on Nur. Hard as it had been for him to leave her, he had given in to the greater need and resumed his journey and search. But not before extracting promises from Truzenzuzex and Tse-Mallory to stay behind and look after her. This they had done while at the same time managing to continue their own research into the looming menace.
They were, doubtless, pursuing it right now, she told herself as she adjusted the trim on the sunfoil. Her right shoulder ached as the wind rippled the featherweight material. It did not matter that her doctors insisted that by now she should feel no pain in that area of her body. Physicians be damned, she thought. When she exerted too much pressure, it hurt.
Hurt almost as much as Flinx's absence. She pushed him out of her mind. It had been many months now since she had regained consciousness in the surgical ward in Sphene, only to learn of his departure. Yes, his need to flee without her had been forced on him by circumstances beyond their control. But this ongoing business of seeing her beloved only once every couple of years or so was beginning to grow old.
She shook her head even as she fought with the phototaxic craft's simplified control bar. Billowing sheets of light-sensitive material gathered energy that lifted the slim bar of reinforced aerogel out of the water. Sitting on the single seat, her legs pointed forward down the length of the craft, she shot eastward at high speed. With a shake of her head, half a dozen tightly bound blond braids trailed out behind her. Shaved into the hair on the left side of her head was the outline of a Terran scorpion, while the right side displayed an ancient swear word sheared in runic. One image pictorial, one written, both shouting a very personal kind of defiance at the universe.
She squinted ahead. Time to turn back. Clouds on the horizon hinted at the impending onset of bad weather. Of course, as a general rule, “bad weather” for the temperate reaches of paradisiacal Nur meant nothing worse than a steady, tepid rain. Still, that would not be the best time to be out sunfoiling, especially on a lake as big as Sintram. Rain would not harm her body bandage, but its sensors would report the drop in surface temperature and consequent stress on her body, just as they were doing right now. Taking a deep breath, she twisted her arms and brought the sunfoil around sharply. The triple sails adjusted accordingly, and a minute later she was shooting back toward the shore in the direction of the recuperation facility.
Momentarily taken aback by the sudden shift of direction, a brilliant pink and blue winged shape had to bank sharply and hurry to catch up. Wrapping a coil around the topsail, Scrap promptly buckled its upper half.
“Get off there!” Clarity waved crossly up at the uncomprehending minidrag. There was no danger, even if the flying snake collapsed the entire sail, but its loss would slow the rider's return.
Riding the curling bow wave of the sunfoil's three-centimeter-wide keel, native harru repeatedly broke the surface, their multiple horizontal fins giving them enough lift occasionally to take to the air.
Abandoning his momentary perch atop the sail, whose shape rebounded nicely, a diving Scrap snapped up a harru in his jaws, spun gracefully in midair, and dumped the squirming, eel-like water-dweller in Clarity's lap. Squealing involuntarily, she flailed at the flapping, convulsing creature until it slid back into the water.
“Just don't help, okay?” Patting her lap, she directed the minidrag to land there. It refused, preferring soaring to soaking.
Tambrogh Barryn was waiting for her at the dock. He was in love with her, she knew. So was Mandrassa, her chief physician, and at least half a dozen others at the convalescence complex. To each and every one she was polite, she smiled, she engaged in courteous conversation; and she brushed them all off. They could not understand why. Exceedingly attractive, well educated, with an enviable career, and unmated, she evinced none of the psychological signs of someone obsessed with personal priva
cy or captivated by the prospect of permanent solitude. On a social basis she mixed freely and enjoyably with the other patients as well as with those responsible for her treatment.
For a while, rumors persisted that she might be the tacit cohort of the tall, powerfully built scientist who called in regularly to check on her progress. It seemed unlikely. Not only was the untalkative visitor significantly older, no one ever observed them engaged in any physical intimacy beyond an occasional affectionate hug of the kind a brother might give to a sister. The frequent concomitant presence of an equally mature thranx during such visits further seemed to belie any deeper relationship.
Then why, patients and medical personnel and service attendants alike wondered as they continued to ponder her situation, did she continue to refuse any measure of social interaction beyond the purely civil? When frustrated would-be suitors finally inquired directly, she inevitably responded that she already had a swain. The ongoing nonappearance of this mysterious individual only further whetted the curiosity of the perpetually hopeful.
She let Barryn help her collapse the sunfoil and stow it in its locker. As they worked he admired the play of her muscles beneath the translucent bandage that covered most of her upper body. It would be coming off next week, she had told him. He shared her anticipation. Maybe some of her importunate inhibitions would disappear along with the bandage.
His gaze rose beyond her to take in the lake's flat horizon. “Rain coming.”
“I think so, too,” she agreed, “so I thought I'd better come back. Not that I couldn't have handled it.” Genuinely violent storms on New Riviera were confined to the polar regions; it was a world with a climate more benign than any humankind had yet to discover. “Anyway, I was getting hungry.” Reaching up, she stroked the back of the minidrag that rode on her neck and shoulder.
More than one potential courtier had been put off by the faithful presence of the flying snake. Its species hailed from a world called Alaspin, she told Barryn when he had first inquired about the minidrag. She further explained that they shared a deep empathetic relationship. One that the flying snake itself had initiated. The vividly colored minidrag was a constant companion, friend, and protector.