Proceeding with care it took nearly an hour to free her from the last of the casing. When the final cut was made and he was able to remove the last piece of foam from her right leg, she collapsed forward into his arms. Unable to do more than twitch inside the sheath, her muscles were badly cramped. She was content to sit as he tenderly massaged her arms and legs, and he was more than happy to do so.
As soon as she was able to sit upright by herself he extracted a medikit and went to work on Pip's damaged wing. Strands of all-purpose synthetic organocarbon bound the edges of the wound together as cleanly and expertly as if the repair had been woven by a spider with an M.D. A spray of mistskin was applied to sheath the fibers. Sitting back, he eyed his handiwork. The membrane should heal quickly as the flying snake's own tissue replaced the artificial fibers and mistskin.
Returning to where Clarity was continuing to rub sensation back into her thighs and upper arms, he addressed the recovered communit that once more encircled his left wrist. The response to his call was immediate.
The image the unit projected in front of him showed a man and a thranx. Both evinced extreme agitation that began to diminish only when they saw that the caller was in good health and under no visible duress.
“First positive.” Truzenzuzex was visibly relieved. “You are not dead.”
“Yes, I can confirm that,” Flinx replied blithely.
“And your consort?” Tse-Mallory added quickly.
“Clarity's fine,” Flinx assured him. “We're all fine. Sylzenzuzex is here, too. Did you know anything about that?” Raising his arm and turning his wrist, he allowed the communit's sensor enough room to image Clarity and then the young thranx.
At the unexpected sight of his youthful relation, Truzenzuzex promptly unleashed a stream of clicks, whistles, and wordings too fast and too furious even for Flinx, who was fluent in both High and Low Thranx, to decipher. Using her own communit, Sylzenzuzex latched on to the relevant channel and replied in kind. This alien dialogue continued until Flinx felt compelled to interrupt with his own version of what had just transpired. Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex listened in silence until he was finished.
“While your chronology is compelling and the details satisfying,” the elderly thranx replied, “I can't escape a feeling in my sphincter that certain important minutiae are missing. For example, while I am of course relieved to hear that my Eighth-Once-Removed has succeeded in rescuing you, I am much more interested to learn how she came to find you.”
“As am I,” Flinx told him. “In fact, I think I'm going to ask her to explain that right now. We'll rejoin you very soon. And Tru—you and Bran need to make preparations to leave Nur immediately.”
“Interesting,” Tse-Mallory's image replied. “Tru and I were about to make the same suggestion to you. You see, we just had our own separate run-ins with the happy folk of the Order.”
That explained why they had not come to his aid, Flinx surmised. It did nothing, however, to explain how and why Sylzenzuzex had done so.
“You'll have to tell me all about it,” he responded, “when we get back to Sphene.”
“Wait!” As Tse-Mallory tried to maintain the link, Flinx cut his old mentor off—something he would never have thought of doing as recently as just a few years ago. But he was tired and sore, and concerned for both himself and for Clarity. There would be plenty of time for conversation and reflection later, once they were safely away from both New Riviera and the murderous Order of Null.
A hand touched his shoulder. Looking around, he saw Clarity gazing up at him. “Thanks for closing the conversation. Your fatherly friends are wonderful, and caring, and they watched over me all through my long convalescence.” She smiled ruefully. “But they do like to talk.”
“I know. Just, whatever you do, don't ever call Bran Tse-Mallory ‘fatherly’ Or Truzenzuzex either, for that matter.” On his shoulder Pip was squirming for attention. When he turned to eye his serpentine companion, she lifted her upper body away from him and used her head to point.
“O'Morion's Mother!” he exclaimed contritely. “I forgot about Scrap.”
The transparent container that restrained the young minidrag might be fashioned of impervious material, but it was secured by a pair of straightforward mechanical latches. Flinx unsnapped them and opened the box. Wind from the flying snake's humming wings brushed the human's hair as the Alaspinian rocketed past his liberator's face. Darting about like an oversized hummingbird, the joyful minidrag swarmed Clarity.
“All right, all right!” she laughed. “I'm glad you're out of that box, too!”
Reassured that his human was unhurt, Scrap zipped over to confront the more mature minidrag resting on Flinx's shoulder. Pip snapped playfully at her offspring as the other flying snake nipped in and out, his pointed tongue flicking at her as he danced blissfully in the static air of the circular chamber. Eventually exhausting himself, he finally settled back down on Clarity's right shoulder. Reaching up and stroking him, she cooed softly to her pet as he folded his multihued wings against his ribs and rubbed his head against her bare neck.
Flinx walked over to Sylzenzuzex as she finished securing the last of the recovering Order members. Turning toward him, she gestured with a poise and confidence that had not been present in the young padre-elect whose insecurities he well recalled from a decade ago.
“Don't worry,” she assured him in perfect, crackling symbospeech. “I've been careful to disarm them all, and in any case they are well bound, kss!lpp. A task that is much simpler when one is securing beings with only four limbs instead of the normal eight.” She indicated her communit. “I have summoned a security team to take them into custody.” Gleaming in the light from overhead, golden compound eyes looked back into his own single-lensed oculars.
“I wasn't worrying about your work,” he told her. “You still haven't explained your sudden, unexpected, and extraordinarily timely reappearance in my life.”
She whistled archly: thranx laughter. “I can see where you would find it something of a surprise.” She gestured with a truhand. “But I'm afraid the explanation is entirely prosaic.
“A couple of years ago, as a matter of family and clan etiquette, I finally made contact with my Elder Eighth-Once-Removed, the esteemed Eint Truzenzuzex. A polite correspondence ensued. Limited, as you would expect, by the twin exigencies of distance and expense. In the course of this ongoing communication he mentioned that he was in regular and close contact with someone who turned out to be a mutual acquaintance—you.”
Flinx nodded. “I remember my surprise years ago when you told me you were related to Tru.”
She gesticulated understanding. “Time passed. Among the many postings available to those who work in Church Security, one eventually opened up here on Nur/New Riviera. I applied for it and was delighted to have my request honored. I am sure that hailing from the Hive Zu and having a renowned relative with the rank of Eint did not hurt my application. I was elated. The transfer offered an opportunity to finally meet and interact with my eminent Eighth-relation.” Feathery antennae alternated switching slowly back and forth.
“It was also, I hoped, an opportunity to encounter once again the singular young human with whom I had shared so much trauma and travail so long ago.” The valentine-shaped head looked him up and down. “You are less young. In many ways, I think.”
“We're all a lot less young, in many ways,” he commented somberly.
She indicated third-degree concurrence. “While I had no difficulty making contact with my Eighth, I was disappointed to learn from him and his companion that you had left Nur to engage in vital research. I was told you had departed under difficult and rushed circumstances.” She indicated the struggling bodies littering the floor of the chamber. “Conflict was alluded to, but this Order was not mentioned.
“More time passed. Then I was informed by Truzenzuzex that you had finally returned in advance of resuming your important research.” As she declaimed the latter she gestured with a truhand and a foo
thand to where Clarity was continuing to play with Scrap. “And other matters.”
“If Tru told you I was back,” Flinx murmured, “then he must have also told you where I was staying. Why haven't you come to see me?”
“Believe me, cr!!akk, I was eager to do so, but my Eighth suggested that I remain in the background for at least a little while. In order to give you time to recover from your long journeying and”—she gestured in Clarity's direction—“to mate.”
Flinx had the grace to blush. “Remind me to have a word about semantics with a certain elderly thranx.”
Sylzenzuzex continued. “Once these and other issues had been satisfactorily dealt with, the intention was to surprise you with an unanticipated appearance on my part, chlakkt. I waited for my Eighth to announce a time. Alas, he is old and older, and I think my eagerness to see you again kept slipping his mind. Tiring of his continued unresponsiveness, I chose to set aside his plan and decided on my own initiative to reunite with you today.
“I went to your hotel intending to do this, only to discover that you were away. Oddly, the attendant gave the impression I was expected. My initial reaction to this was that my Eighth had finally told you of my presence on Nur without so informing me. Though somewhat confused, I took the information splinter you had left behind for a ‘friend.’ When I perused the contents, it provided me with your intended destination. Nothing more.” She gestured second-degree regret. “Had I known of the circumstances, I would have brought half a dozen police skimmers with me.”
So that was what had happened. Nodding to himself as much as to Syl, Flinx remembered leaving the memory splinter “for a friend.” When she had identified herself as such, the clerk had passed to her the coordinates that had been intended for Bran and Tru. With their full attention occupied by the Order, they had been unable to get to the hotel earlier to check up on him and retrieve the splinter. Not that the mix-up on the hotel clerk's part had worked out badly in the end.
But—after waiting so long at Truzenzuzex's behest, why had Syl finally decided to go to the hotel to make contact with him today?
When he asked, she gestured second-degree bafflement. “I could not say, Flinx. As I told you, I was tired of waiting for my Eighth to settle on a date for a reunion. All I can tell you is that today the time felt right.”
Standing nearby, Clarity reflected on their close escape as she continued to caress Scrap. The youthful minidrag was finally winding down from the excitement of being freed and reunited with his master and his mother. She shook her head knowingly.
“You don't see it, do you, Flinx? You project your emotions even when you don't know you're projecting. Maybe you were broadcasting your anxiety all over the place and Syl picked it up, and that's what led her to try and make contact with you today.”
He considered the theory. “If that's the case, then why didn't Tru or Bran react?”
Clarity smiled tightly. “Maybe they were too far away. Maybe having to deal with the Order's attempts on their own lives overrode their sensitivity to anything you might have been sending out. Maybe you have a deeper emotional relationship with this thranx.” She eyed the impassive Sylzenzuzex. “Maybe it was just a fortuitous coincidence. Such things do happen, you know. Are you asking me to try and explain you to you?” When he failed to reply she added, “If you weren't such a wonderful human being and I wasn't so acutely in love with you, I think I'd be scared to death of Philip Lynx.”
He met her gaze somberly. “You know what, Clarity? Sometimes I'm scared to death of me, too.”
While her command of terranglo was very good, Sylzenzuzex found this exchange inordinately puzzling. “Though I understand your words and there is nothing the matter with my hearing, I have the feeling that I'm missing something. Just as there were times when I thought I was missing something, Flinx, when you conversed with the natives on Ulru-Ujurr so many years ago.” She sounded wistful. “I wonder how their tunnel digging is progressing.”
Flinx had to smile at the remembrance. “A few millennia yet to go, I should imagine.”
“‘Ulru-Ujurr’?” Clarity moved over to join them. “‘Tunnel digging’?” She looked up at Flinx. “Maybe you could fill me in on what you two are reminiscing about?”
“Maybe so,” Sylzenzuzex agreed, underscoring the comment with whistling thranx laughter.
More old memories came flooding back to Flinx. As was usual with his remembrances, not all of them were pleasant. “Syl and I have some history together,” he told the curious Clarity. “I suppose I better explain.”
“That would be helpful.” She did not add that, given the obvious depth of feeling that existed between him and a female with whom he had evidently shared a great deal prior to meeting her, it was also helpful that Sylzenzuzex belonged to an entirely different species.
It was a long story replete with details that Flinx decided not to elaborate on until he had a lot more time in which to do so. It was enough that Clarity learned how, in the ongoing search to unravel the secrets of his parentage, he and Sylzenzuzex had found themselves thrown together on the edicted world of Ulru-Ujurr, that they had struck up an enduring friendship with its extraordinary natives in the course of doing battle with unscrupulous exploiters and a distant relative of his, and that upon surviving numerous potentially fatal encounters they had subsequently gone their separate ways.
“It's all part and parcel of my long, strange, jagged journey,” he concluded. As he put a hand on the shoulder that was not occupied by the minidrag Scrap, the sounds of arriving skimmers drifted in to them from outside. “A journey that's led me to some answers, to more questions, to a lot of knowledge and maybe a tiny bit of wisdom, to a partial understanding of the monstrous thing that's approaching our galaxy, and most importantly of all—to you.” Leaning forward, he lightly kissed her upturned lips.
She was smiling when he pulled back. “If that ‘tiny bit of wisdom’ involves knowing how to properly conclude an explanation, I find I'd have to agree.” Pulling his head down toward her, she kissed him again; harder this time.
Sylzenzuzex looked on with the combination of tolerance and quiet amusement her kind reserved for much of what passed for intimate social interaction among their bipedal mammalian allies. As far as the average thranx was concerned this involved the exchange, in varying amounts according to the particular activity involved, of far too much in the way of bodily fluids. A delicate brush of antennae, a truhand caress, struck her as a far more sensible and civilized way to achieve a similarly intimate result.
It was all a matter of contradictory cultures, she knew. No doubt it had much to do with physiology as well. When pressed together, soft and flexible human flesh tended to meld, whereas performing the same action with part of a chitinous exoskeleton only resulted in potentially disfiguring blemishes and scrapes. Then there was the whole business of ovipositors versus … and … well …
The time available for such captivating speculation vanished as a team of alert and armed Church Security personnel arrived on the run. Identifying herself, she detailed the reasons behind her emergency call-in and explained what needed to be done. As a full padre, her authority to do so and to direct that the members of the Order be placed in custody was not questioned. That could very well come later, but it was not a concern of the newly arrived security personnel. Instructed to ignore the sometimes passionate protestations of those being detained, they rounded up the recovering members of the Order with a proficiency and single-mindedness that was a credit to the Church.
As he watched his nemeses being led away, Flinx knew that in a couple of days, at least a few members of the Order were likely to be released. Formal grievances might then be lodged. But by the time the Nurian judicial system fully engaged with that of the local Church hierarchy and consequent summonses could be issued, he and his friends would be aboard the Teacher, far out in space-plus on a vector for deep into the Blight, safe from both the homicidal machinations of the minions of the Order of Null and
the tentacles of meddlesome Commonwealth bureaucracy.
At least, he hoped so.
Flanked by two burly Church operatives, the portly speaker was being hustled toward the hallway that led to the villa's entrance. Now fully recovered from the bewildering effects of Flinx's emotive projection, he was visibly less happy than he had been when lying on the floor immersed in its influence.
“This isn't over!” Twisting in the grasp of his escort, he turned to shout back at Flinx. “There are more of us than you know, more than you can imagine! Others of the Order will find you. The Purity will arrive unhindered and the cleansings will be done! But first, you and those around you will be … !”
“Quiet!” It was the Elder, roaring with surprising strength as he was ushered out ahead of the speaker. “You idiot!” the old man added for good measure. Thus chastened, the speaker lapsed into a petulant silence.
Clarity clung to Flinx, the two minidrags flicking pointed tongue-tips at each other from the shoulders of their respective masters, and watched as the rest of the trussed acolytes were led out.
“I know we'll be gone before they're released from detention, Flinx, but they still scare me.”
He shrugged, doing his best to make light of her concern. “Extremists are always frightening, Clarity.” He offered a reassuring smile. “With luck, though, we'll never see any of them ever again. It's a big Commonwealth.” He turned to Sylzenzuzex. “Do you have to go with the security team, Syl? To make your report?”
Gesturing a negative, she skittered up alongside him. “I'll file it via my communit. What do you want to do now?” Thoughtfully, she leaned slightly to her right to make eye contact with the woman who was holding on to his left arm. “Both of you.”
Flinx considered. Though few preparations were required before he could leave New Riviera, some could not be avoided. The Teacher's AI could handle most of the necessary procedures. A couple of days were all it would take. Meanwhile …
“Why don't we have that reunion?” Reaching out with his right hand, he swept his palm across the middle of her antennae, bending them forward.