Of course, he did not know if the general orbital alert even had anything to do with him and his flight from Nazca. It might involve some other matter entirely. He knew only that he could not take the chance of finding out, much less risk the arrival of a heavily armed peaceforcer sent to take him into custody.
As he drifted out of the shuttle, gently tugging a fluttering Pip along by her tail, gravity began to return. He made sure that he was perpendicular to the deck so that when the field reached full strength, he would land on his feet and not on his head. Without pausing to check on the status of the rest of the vessel, he made his way quickly to the bridge. The ship greeted him informally, in accordance with its programming.
“Set course outsystem,” he told it as he settled into the lounge that fronted the main console. He could have given the same directions from anywhere on the vessel, including his bedroom, but would not have had access to the same number of reciprocal functions that he did here.
“Destination?” Today the ship spoke in the voice of a kindly old thranx.
“Manual transfer. Acknowledge receipt of coordinates.” Reaching into a pocket, he removed the nanostorage chyp and inserted it into an appropriate receptacle. The ship responded in less than sixty seconds.
“Coordinates received. I am obliged to give warning. The intended destination lies outside Commonwealth boundaries, away from all safe sectors, and beyond the neutral zone. Do you really wish to penetrate the spatial parameters of the AAnn Empire?”
“I am aware of the loci indicated by these coordinates. Proceed at speed.”
“It shall be as you command, O master.”
“And no sarcasm!” Flinx snapped at the ship’s AI, even though he was the one who had precountenanced such a possible response.
Out in front of the Teacher, beyond the vast generating fan that was the resonator of the KK-drive, a tiny pinpoint of light appeared as the Caplis generator was activated. Slowly at first, then gathering speed, the ship began to move. Flinx chafed at the pace. Changeover, the shift from space-normal to space-plus where interstellar travel became possible, could not take place within the Solar System. The Teacher’s own safety system would not permit it. Until he reached changeover, he could be followed. Whether he could be run down once under way was another matter.
The Teacher’s course took it out of the Sun’s system well below the plane of the ecliptic. Consequently, it was unlikely that interception from one of the many military or commercial bases located at outsystem sites such as Europa or Triton would be possible. The more distance he put between himself and Earth, the greater the likelihood of a successful escape.
A voice crackled in the cool, pleasant air of the room. “Commercial deepspace vessel Delarion Maucker,” it demanded, using the false identification Flinx had provided to orbital authority upon arrival, “there is a general hold on all departures from orbit. We show you cutting moonsphere in two minutes and continuing to accelerate. You have not received clearance for departure.”
“Sorry.” Once again, an omnidirectional pickup juggled his response. “We’ve got a schedule to keep. Important cargo for Rhyinpine. Guess someone mishandled the notice. Do you wish us to shut down departure program and return? Repeat, do you wish us to eventuate program and return?”
There was a pause, which Flinx had counted on. No one wanted to be responsible for forcing a commercial vessel that was already outbound to terminate its route. His immediate response to the query and indicated willingness to comply with its attendant directive would hopefully serve to diminish any incipient suspicion. It had better, he thought. Now that the ship’s KK-drive was fully active, he could not make use of the Teacher’s formidable masking and screening capabilities.
“Delarion Maucker.” the enjoining voice finally replied, “did you embrace docking with shuttlecraft one-one-four-six?”
“What’s that?” Numerals pregnant with meaning drifted above the console like stoned fireflies. Heading outsystem, the Teacher continued to accelerate rapidly. “You’re breaking up. There’s some trouble with clarification. Check your transmitter field, and we’ll run an amplified throughput on our receivers.”
There was, of course, nothing wrong with the communications at either end of the conversation. Flinx had heard every word sent in his direction with perfect lucidity. But by the time that fact had been established to everyone’s satisfaction, the Teacher was cutting the orbital sphere of Uranus, the impossibly bright glow from the dilating KK-drive field too bright to look at directly. The synthetic gravitational distortion had begun to warp into a teardrop shape, the shaft of the drop flowing backward to distort space immediately behind the bulge of the field—space occupied by the Teacher.
“Delarion Maucker.” The original voice had been replaced by another that was both irritated and insistent. “You are instructed to terminate passage to Rhyinpine and return immediately to Earth orbit. This directive is ship specific. Repeat, you are directed to—”
Around the Teacher, the imposing strength of the KK-drive field shunted itself and everything contained within it from ordinary space into that strange region of compacted reality known colloquially as space-plus. Velocity, as it was understood in the normal universe, increased explosively. The domineering phonation that belonged to Earth vanished, cut off by suddenly achieved distances best described as absurd. Having been summoned from Triton, two peaceforcer patrol craft proceeding at speed arrived at the intended rendezvous coordinates five minutes after nothing was there. On distant Earth itself, rankled authorities fumed impotently.
Within the unceremonious, homey confines of the Teacher, Flinx relaxed. One ship could not follow or confront another while in space-plus. The Teacher’s navigation kept it on course, proceeding not to Rhyinpine, but to an unknown world lying within the outer boundaries of the AAnn Empire.
No, not unknown, he reminded himself. Someone connected with an innocuous-seeming food manufacturer was going there. He was going there. By the very act of their going, the world in question removed itself from the index of the unknown. Who was preceding him, and why, he had yet to find out.
Commonwealth vessels did not stray beyond the neutral zone known as the Torsee Provinces. It was not a sensible thing to do. Cultural aspects and attitudes of the AAnn were well known. Playing the role of forgiving hosts was not among them. He would have to tread very quietly. In this he had, to the best of his knowledge, several advantages that were denied those preceding him. Thanks to the singular skills of its Ulru-Ujurrian builders, the Teacher was capable of several tricks no other KK-drive craft could replicate. To enter and leave AAnn space without incident, he might well need to make use of all of them.
His thoughts were not only of the enigmatic quest that lay before him, but of the unpretentious white-and-blue sphere that was now an invisible speck among the firmament aft. So—that was Earth. He had not thought much of it prior to his arrival, had not expected a second visit to do anything to change his opinion. Not until the old shaman Cayacu had put him in touch with its true past, one cool night on an isolated ocean shore in the presence of an entombed city, had anything been altered. Now he knew that, truly, it was his homeworld as well, in a way that Moth, the world of his youth, was not and never could be. Interesting, he mused. It appeared that one did not have to grow up in a place to recognize it as home.
His gaze rose to contemplate the sweep of distorted space outside the chamber port. Moth might be his childhood abode, and Earth his ancestral haven, but this ship was home to him now. Within his head, all was quiet for the first time in weeks. No tempestuous emotions flailed at him, no overwrought feelings instigated the familiar painful pounding at the back of his skull. His vision was clear. In void there was peace.
With a sigh, he settled back into the seat and bid the ship manufacture him something tall, cool, and sweet to drink. Such were the privileges of ownership and command. He would have traded them one and all for an ordinary life, for freedom from what he was and what
he had seen. In lieu of that, ice, sugar, and flavoring would have to do.
Within the hour he was reclining, drink at his side, in the ship’s main lounge. A refuge from overwrought thought as well as the peaceful cold deadness outside the hull, the spacious chamber had recently been redecorated and embellished to suit his unassuming preferences.
Instead of copies of great art, or synthesized enviros, or expensive holos, the lounge environment was presently composed entirely of natural materials. In this desire to keep something of the physical world close around him, Flinx was not exceptional among deep-space travelers. Hence the seeming incongruity of firms that specialized in placing reassembled boulders and beaches, trees and flowers deep within the wholly artificial confines of space-traversing vessels. In this the Ulru-Ujurrians had complied admirably with their young friend’s wishes. The Teacher contained mechanisms that allowed him to alter the decor as his mood demanded.
The log on which he was presently supine was composed of woody material, but it was not nor had it ever been in any sense alive. It was capable of motion, however, as it flexed to perfectly fit the curve of his spine. On the far side of the bathing pond, whose waters were held in place by the overflow of the KK-drive when the ship was traveling and by a transparent restraining membrane when it was not, a small waterfall tumbled and splashed into the clear water. Fish Flinx had added subsequent to the ship’s construction swam lazily in its depths while frogs that had hatched from imported tadpoles and willowy grunps from Moth hunted for food in the shallows.
Programmed breezes stroked the water and the landscaping that surrounded it. At present the light was evening post-rain, subject to luminary adjustment at Flinx’s whim. With a word, he could conjure up a cloudburst that would soak everything but him, a balmy tropical evening, a soft shower, brilliant sunrise or easygoing sunset, or a cloudless evening in which the stars put in their appearance with carefully preprogrammed deliberation. Any stars, as seen from any one of a hundred different worlds. If he wanted meteors, he could call for meteors. Or comets, or a visitation from a perambulating nebula. Decorative simulacra of anything in the universe were available for the asking.
Disdaining technology designed to fool the senses, he much preferred the waterfall, the pond, and the surrounding plants that the ship’s automatics looked after and groomed as attentively as any human gardener.
The plants themselves were an interesting hodgepodge, garnered from half a dozen worlds. Many had their origins in Terran species. Others did not. Among the latter was an enchanting assortment from his last port of call before Earth, an almost forgotten colony its inhabitants had named Midworld. When taking his leave of the place, he had left behind not only the frustrated thranx science Counselor Second Druvenmaquez, but friends among the original human inhabitants. Notable among them were the hunter Enoch and a comely young widow named Teal. Sorry they were to see him go, and would not hear of sending him off without gifts.
Expecting carvings or necklaces of local woods and seeds, he was a little surprised to find himself the new owner of several dozen carefully transplanted growths ranging in size from mosslike clusters of low-growing greenery to budding saplings. Unable to find a diplomatic way of refusing the offerings, he had seen to it that all were transferred onto his shuttle prior to his secretive departure. From its cargo hold, the Teacher’s automatics were then able to transport them safely to the lounge, where they were quickly and efficiently placed in available soils deemed most likely to facilitate their survival.
Looking back, the presentation that had taken him by surprise at the time seemed perfectly natural in retrospect. What more appropriate gift to bestow on a visitor by way of send-off and remembrance from a world entirely overlaid with forest than a carefully chosen assortment of houseplants? Or ship plants, in his case. Uncertain at first about the unusual gift, he had quickly come to appreciate their presence. They added color and fragrance to the lounge.
One shrub boasted long, broad flowers of deep vermilion speckled with bright blue. Another put forth stubby purple cones whose single seeds, when cracked and ground to powder, made the best bread flavoring he had ever tasted. A small sapling that he had been assured would not outgrow his ship sang like a flute every time an artificially generated breeze passed over its hollow branches. Two others filled the lounge with the heady scent of pomegranate and clove, while another smelled abundantly of vanilla.
The new plants contributed ambrosial smells, interesting foods, and quirky sounds, just as did the vast forest that engulfed all of Midworld. The chief difference lay in the fact that none of them, Teal had reassured him, were capable of the often murderous behavior common to a host of Midworldian growths. They had been carefully chosen by her and her friends. He need not worry about brushing up against his new green companions, or relieving them of their fruits or seeds. Having observed close at hand and all too often the singular means by which the aggressive vegetation of that world had evolved to defend itself, he was glad of the guarantee.
Despite the assurances of his friends, for the first few weeks he had moved cautiously in the presence of the most recent additions to the lounge’s decor. By the time he was preparing to drop out of space-plus and enter the Terran system, the last of his fears had fled. He wandered among the new plants as freely and easily as he did among the old. Save for the profusion of vivacious fragrances, there was not all that much to differentiate the new transplants from New Riviera roses or Alaspinian palmettes.
Actually, there was. And the difference was considerable: more so than he could have imagined. It was just that he could not see it.
His own state of mind might have provided a clue, had he been perceptive enough to notice the change. But someone who is generally healthy, relaxed, eating and sleeping well while at peace with the universe rarely stops to contemplate the causes of his contentment. An older, wiser individual might have thought to remark on the unusual degree of inner calm he was experiencing, but Flinx was too young to be anything other than abstractedly grateful. He went about his business without bothering to analyze the source of his serenity. Much of it was his own, a consequence of successfully departing Midworld while evading the professedly benign attentions of the visiting thranx. A good deal of the rest was due to outside influences.
Specifically, his newly acquired verdure.
The remarkable flora of Midworld, unmatched in profusion or diversity anywhere else in the galaxy, had over the eons developed a kind of massively diffuse planetary group-mind that participated in the ongoing evolution of something that was less than consciousness but more than thought. Forced to deal with the arrival of mobile consciousnesses containered within individual, highly mobile bodies, it had responded by trying both to understand these new mentalities and to selectively modify them. Drawing upon the intruders’ own thoughts and feelings, it had provided them with companions both Midworldian and familiar, in the form of the six-legged, wandering furcots.
Then a new mobile intelligence had come into the world, slightly but significantly different from those of its fellows. These latter might not recognize the discrepancies inherent in the new arrival, but the world-girdling greenness did. Setting out to learn, it was stunned and appalled by some of what it found. Clearly, there existed threats to existence, to the expansion and health of the forest that was the world, that the expansive greenness had never before been able to perceive. This it was now able to do, thanks to the unsuspecting lens that was the new arrival.
After some time spent in observation and study, of one thing the greenness was certain: It must not lose contact with the singular individual under scrutiny. What it knew had proven to be shocking. What it might be capable of doing might turn out to provide salvation for all.
Or nothing might come of it. But the collective subliminal greenness had not come to dominate an entire planet by ignoring possibilities. The individual had to be monitored. At all costs, contact must be maintained.
So when Flinx departed Midwo
rld, he did so in the company of some inoffensive decorative flora provided by his friends. Why they had chosen the particular growths that they had he did not know. He would have been intrigued to learn that Enoch, Teal, and the others of their tribe did not know why they had selected those certain plants, either. In actuality, the plants had chosen themselves.
Since the plants spawned no emotions he could sense, Flinx was unaware of the collective consciousness they possessed. Whether this constant flow of cognizance functioned in space-plus or space-minus depended on whether one considered it a product of sentience, or of something else not yet defined. It was enough that the awareness could exist simultaneously in two places at the same time, across distances that were vast only in human terms. Quantum thinking it was, different parts of the same discernment inseparable across distances measurable only in primitive and inadequate physical terms. Through a small portion of its own self, the greenness, the world-mind that was Midworld, was present on the Teacher as surely as it was on its far larger world of origin.
It would continue to be so, observing and perceiving, in its own undetectable, inexplicable fashion, unless deprived of light and water. It wanted, needed, to know all that Flinx knew, so that it might set about devising in its own uncommon manner a means for combating the overweening terror it sensed stored within him. While doing so, it would continue to provide the sentience it was studying with agreeable smells, pleasant tastes, and soothing sights.
None of the flora aboard the Teacher, transplanted from Midworld or elsewhere, bore acorns—but on that one small ship speeding through the lonely otherness that was space-plus, the seed of something exalted had nonetheless begun to germinate.
Chapter 6
Pyrassis was the fourth planet out from its star. For company, it could boast the usual brace of uninhabitable rocky globes, a couple of unspectacular gas giants, a trio of diaphanous asteroid belts, a single methane dwarf, and the usual assortment of icy comets, meteors metallic and stony, and assorted drifting junk: stellar breccia. It was not a memorable system, and Pyrassis itself a less than awe-inspiring planet. Typical of the type of worlds favored by the AAnn, its primary colors when seen from space were not blue and brown, but yellow and red, though there were significant and sizable streaks and splotches of bright blue and green. The atmosphere was nitrox in familiar proportions, the gravity familiar, and the ambient temperature everywhere except at the polar extremes, hot. Just the way the reptiloids liked it, only more so.