Running from the Deity

  The ship responded affirmatively, even though it knew the request was unnecessary. The ability of its human’s biological clock to reset itself almost immediately to whatever new world Flinx happened to find himself on was one that never ceased to amaze the multifaceted artificial mind. Flinx called it “making myself at home.”

  Perhaps, ship-mind thought to itself, the human had developed this unusual ability to make himself at home wherever he happened to be because he had never really had such a place of his own.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Ebbanai made sure each thorall bulb was planted firmly in the sand before starting to insert the next one. It was not a difficult task, but did require attention to one’s work. Jam it too deeply into the shallow rippling sands in the waist-deep water, and much of the thorall’s bulb would be hidden, rendering it useless. Set it too high, and the occasional gentle wavelet might dislodge it and send it floating away. Gathering thoralls required time and effort, and he had no intention of wasting even one tonight.

  They squirmed against the pair of strong opposing flanges that gripped them, reluctant to comply. There was little more they could do. The filter feeders at the top of each glowing sphere lay flat against the curved, semi-gelatinous surface, helpless and useless when out of the water. Once implanted where he wanted them, they would hesitantly extend their feathery tendrils and resume feeding on the tiny pisceans and rotoforms that came into the shallow bay to feed at night, safe from the voracious predators that haunted the deeper waters beyond. In turn, larger sinuous marrarra and fat ferraff would come to feast on the smaller creatures.

  Implanting the last of the thoralls by jamming its single spike-like foot into an appropriate segment of sand, he stood back on both legs to survey his handiwork. Water lapped against his four forelegs and his unshod feet. His efforts had resulted in the creation beneath the surface of a neat half circle of phosphorescent light. Walking to one end of the semi-circle, he lowered his torso into his pelvis and settled himself down on all fours into a comfortable holding squat as he prepared to wait. Marrarra and ferraff were choosy about when they would enter the shallows. Ebbanai glanced skyward. Arrawd’s three moons had last been high in the sky together nearly a forenight ago. Nighttime harvests had been sparse since then. Hopefully, tonight would see him bring in a good haul. He needed to. He was hungry, and Storra would lambaste him unmercifully if he returned yet again with an empty collecting sack.

  The sea was warm against his bare foot-flanges and ankles. On this pleasant eve, he wore only a conical kilt and a light vest. Both were cut and shredded appropriately to allow him to raise and lower the epidermal flaps that covered his body. More close-fitting attire would have held these flat against his musculature. Unable to ventilate his body by raising and lowering the hundreds of small skin flaps, he would rapidly have developed all manner of unpleasant diseases.

  As he stood there, the small bits of his epidermis rising and falling reflexively and in unison to catch every slight breeze wafting in off the bay, he reflected on his life. It could be worse, he knew. Owning a piece of patrilineal land on the bay brought with it the right to harvest its bounty. While his mate of ten years might use her flexible palate to occasionally mouth-lash him, that same orifice was skilled at obtaining the highest possible price in the town market for his catches as well as for the fine, sturdy cloth she wove from the seashan he gathered during the day. As a mated couple, then, they had access to both food and clothing without having to pay money for it. The ancestral stone home that as a sole offspring he had inherited upon the untimely passing of his parents was both solid and spacious. Sfaa, he decided contentedly. While they were not of the nobility, or even the upwardly mobile business class, their lives were certainly better than those of many commoners.

  Leaning forward slightly but not moving his legs, he contracted his eyes in their muscular sockets to focus on sudden movement within the semi-circle of light he had made. A pair of marrarra in the catch-cup already, feeding on the rich faunal soup that had been drawn to the thoralls’ lights. And wasn’t that a ferraff next to them? One big enough for broiling, no less, and not just for the stewpot. He felt relieved. As long as the wind didn’t pick up, it was going to be a good night.

  One double-jointed, double-limbed arm bent backward to reach around behind him and remove the neatly rolled net from the bag slung across his back. Skin flaps rising and falling with anticipation, he methodically unscrolled the fishing gear. Fashioned from the toughest fibers of the same seashan Storra loomed into cloth, he shook it out preparatory to casting. Properly thrown, it would seal the mouth of the thorallian cup. Forcefully nudging a thorall or two would cause the legless creatures to blink their lights with furious intensity. Designed to startle and frighten off possible predators, the reaction should scare the feeding marrarra and complacent ferraff straight into the waiting depths of his net.

  He held the braids of the latter in the four grasping flaps of his left hands and readied himself to cast it with those of his right. A poor throw and his quarry would panic and might slip away. It could happen, even to one as experienced as himself. Antennae stiff and protruding forward from his forehead, he kicked at the thorall nearest him, moved quickly to the next and repeating the action. Taking their cue from these first two, the other thoralls in the semi-circle responded by pulsing violently to scare off the perceived threat. Quickly, he drew back all four forearms simultaneously and heaved. Flying into the darkness and expanding as it caught the night air, the weighted seashan latticework struck the water with a gentle slap, sinking quickly downward to trap and entangle everything trapped beneath its inescapable mesh.

  Sucking air through the vent in his face, Ebbanai moved fast to check on his catch. There was one marrarra, there the other, and—not one sizable ferraff, but two! Two ferraff broilers, and on his first throw of the night. Rightly and for once, Storra would be full of praise for his efforts. Perhaps even enough to alter her body chemistry and render it suitable to generate the necessary hormonal flash that would permit copulation. He tugged eagerly at the net, pulling it in, closing the trap on the fine catch. Glancing gratefully upward, he gave thanks to the three moons Hawwn, Terlth, and Vawwd for their bounty this night.

  And that was when he dropped the net.

  Slipping slowly from his usually strong grasp, the slick strands of tough seashan fell into the water. As the mesh expanded, now floating aimlessly, the panicky marrarra and greatly desired ferraff found the gaps that resulted from inattention and sprinted unhesitatingly for the safety of deeper water. If not for the small weights sewn intermittently along its edge, the net itself would have drifted out to sea.

  Ebbanai did not care. He could not pick up the net, did not watch as his fine catch made its escape. His thoughts were no longer on harvesting, or his mate, or on anything else. Every iota of his being, every fraction of his attention, was focused and locked on the impossible thing he was seeing.

  A fourth moon had appeared in the sky, and it was falling straight toward him.

  He wanted desperately to move, to run, to flee—but he could not. His legs would not work. The slender muscles were as paralyzed as his thoughts. As the incredible, implausible fourth moon came ever closer, he saw that it was flecked here and there with colored lights brighter than those of any thorall; more intense even than those that bedecked the castle of His August Highborn Pyr Pyrrpallinda of Wullsakaa.

  Thoughts of the Highborn finally gave him the push he needed to react. Getting all four legs under him, he broke for the nearest beach dune. Knowledge of what Storra would have to say if he returned without the precious net was imprinted on him deeply enough to make him pause just long enough to gather up the precious folds and take them with him. With bits of mesh trailing behind and on both sides and threatening to trip him at every stride, he ran through the shallows as fast as his podal flaps would propel him, not caring how much noise he made or what potential catch he might be frightening away.

/>   Seizing on the first dune whose crest rose higher than his head for a suitable hiding place, he threw the sodden net down to one side and collapsed his legs beneath his body. Trying to squeeze his torso down into his hips, breathing hard, he peered over the crest of the dune and through a clump of thin, trembling chourdl as the swiftly descending moon settled to ground.

  His astonishment was only magnified when he saw that it was no moon, but an artificial construction of some kind. While one end was huge and rounded like a flattened bowl, it was the size of the apparition that awed him: the machine, or whatever it might be, exceeded in length the walls of the Highborn Pyrrpallinda’s fortress. In height it was taller than even the great waterwheel at Pwygrith. Wishing to hide in the sand but unable to wrench his gaze from the sight, he tried to determine the nature of the material from which the arrival had been fashioned, only to realize that he could not. Surely something so immense had to be made of metal, but in the light of the three moons it did not look like metal. It had a soft, almost pliable appearance, which was of course quite impossible. But then, the notion of something so large and angular managing controlled flight without the aid of gas-filled lifting bags was equally impossible.

  If he thought the night’s wonders had come to an end with the appearance and touchdown of the machine, he was much mistaken.

  Coming to rest among the dunes well inland of the high-tide mark, the massive mechanism settled partway into the sand. The depth to which it sank with no visible effort was indicative of its great weight. A high-pitched squeal, just at the limit of Dwarran hearing, escaped from somewhere within the dark depths of the device. Following this mechanical ululation, the lights that dotted its curving flanks and the great dish shape at one end went dark.

  Then the entire great, impossible alien mass began to disappear right before his astonished stare.

  Ebbanai’s eyes contracted in disbelief, and his skin flaps pressed so tight against his body that he feared he would sprain every one of them. Before his gaze the exterior of the immense intruder seemed to shimmer, as if the very moonlight illuminating it had begun to flex. Under his stare, towering, smoothly curving flanks of maybe-metal were altering their appearance. They became less foreign, less solid, and more—sand-like.

  It was all over in less time than it would have taken Storra to spit and braise one of the marrarra. Where the piece of sky had lain, dominating the moonlit eastern horizon, there now rose a new series of interlinked, rippling sand dunes. Only their height hinted at anything out of the ordinary. Only one who had witnessed the actual transformation would recognize that the outline of the new dunes closely paralleled that of the machine that had preceded them. Even in the depths of his terror and bewilderment Ebbanai had to admit that the illusion, if that was what it was, was perfect. Of course, it would be a simple matter to establish if the new manifestation was nothing more than an illusion. All he had to do was walk over to it and touch it.

  In fact, he had almost managed to convince himself that he was the victim of nothing more threatening than an elaborate hallucination when a small portal appeared in the side of one soaring dune, and the creature came out. Or creatures, he corrected himself, once more spellbound by the sight of the impossible. There were two of them.

  Though of average Dwarran height, the larger of the two alien beings exhibited a build that was heavier and more muscular. It had two lower limbs for locomotion and two upper, the latter presumably intended for manipulation, though neither was subdivided. Gawking at it in fascination, Ebbanai wondered how the creature managed to stand upright on only two forelegs. Furthermore, its hands appeared to split into numerous smaller digits instead of the usual solid, gripping flanges. Its eyes were almost tiny and placed right out front, vulnerable and nearly parallel to the rest of the face. He could not think of a function for the small projection that thrust outward from the center of the face, nor those that protruded from the sides of the head. The cranium itself was covered with what appeared to be hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny red tentacles. Though the visitor was very different in appearance, it was not entirely horrible to look upon.

  The second creature was small and winged. As it rose into the air, its pleated wings gave off a steady thrumming sound. It was swift, agile, and curious, darting from one place to another as it examined its surroundings while never straying far from the much larger being.

  Then the latter bent its ridiculous knees and jumped high into the air.

  Given the visitor’s apparent mass, the vertical leap was extremely impressive. Only the most athletic Dwarra could have hoped to have equaled it. What other remarkable abilities the alien might possess Ebbanai did not know. What he did know was that he was not about to wait around, in the middle of the night, to experience them firsthand. When the creature turned away to inspect the massive sand dune where its vehicle, or whatever it was, had been, the terrified net-caster took the opportunity to make a break for the inland path. Glancing back over a shoulder, he had a moment of fright when it seemed as if the colorful winged thing had spotted the movement and was coming after him. But in response to a loud mouth-noise from its companion, it whirled in midair and returned to its larger companion.

  Breathing with difficulty, all eight bare foot-pads swishing sand beneath him, Ebbanai ran until he couldn’t run anymore. Following that, he walked, until after what seemed like an eternity the lights of his solid, ancestral home welcomed him at the base of the path. Thankfully, they were not brightly colored, and the house did not transform itself into a dune or anything else as the exhausted gatherer staggered toward the wide, arched entrance.

  “Pip!”

  Just the name was all it took. He didn’t have to whistle, didn’t have to yell, did not have to utter a complicated stream of commands. Actually, even the use of the minidrag’s name was superfluous. Flinx’s heightened anxiety would be enough to draw her back to him as she sensed his shift in mood. But it always felt right to call her by name.

  Mildly curious as to what had momentarily drawn her attention away from him, Flinx peered into the Dwarran night. The three small moons cast just enough light for him to make out the rolling edges of the surrounding dunes, like so many ocean waves frozen in time and blasted beige by the sun. Odd flora responded to the occasional breeze off the nearby bay by bending low to hide their sensitive heads in the sand. A few burrowing creatures of as yet undetermined lineage made fitful dashes from hole to hole. Overhead, yet another new set of constellations peered down at him.

  So many worlds circling so many distant suns. In his short life he’d already seen too many of them, and yet not enough. Or at least, he corrected himself, not the right ones.

  So far this one seemed amenable, if not openly inviting. Unable to see anything that might have drawn Pip’s attention, he tried to reach out with his Talent, only to find that, as was too often the case, it had decided to shrink to an unperceiving blur in the back of his mind. Such lapses in his singular ability had become less and less common as he grew older, but they still struck him with alarming unpredictability.

  Unable to perceive any emotions in his immediate environs save his own, he decided to carry out physiological experiments instead. Bending his knees, he executed another vertical leap. Due to the lower gravity here, he found that he could jump much higher than the terrestrial norm. Contrary to popular belief, bounding about in light gravity was not all pure exhilaration. He would have to watch his stride lest he put his feet down in awkward places they would automatically avoid on t-gravity-normal worlds. For example, if he did not gauge distance correctly, he might find himself accidentally leaping over a cliff—or into one. On the other hand, he would be able to cover longer distances on foot than was normal, and with less effort.

  Not that he intended going for any long walks. He knew little enough of this world, could at present sense nothing of it, and the Teacher’s archive had been less than all-inclusive on the subject. He was, after all, embarked on a journey of some importan
ce. Futile as that might seem, he was anxious both to be on his way and to avoid contravening any more of the Commonwealth restrictions that applied to a society like that of the Dwarra.

  Glancing back, he studied the curving side of the sham dune. “Good job,” he told the ship. “I can’t detect any sign of artificiality even up close.”

  “My work is invariably first-class,” the Teacher replied softly via a temporarily extruded external speaker disguised to look like a specimen of local vegetation. Its reply was a statement of fact. Artificial intelligences were immune to such weaknesses as false pride.

  “How long?” Even as he posed the question, Flinx was aware that his usual impatience would do nothing to accelerate their departure.

  “I told you. When it’s done. The ore here is of good quality and should be simple to process. While the amount of carbon locked in fossilized vegetation is located deeper, I will manage as necessary. Meanwhile, why don’t you try to relax?”

  Flinx made a low sound. “Like on Jast?”

  The ship sighed. That, it was programmed to do. “Like you are the first human to set foot on this world, a circumstance that is entirely probable. The climate is salubrious, the air devoid of pollutants natural or otherwise, and my sensors perceive nothing potentially dangerous in the immediate vicinity. While I would not advise going for a nude swim in the absence of additional information on the local water-dwelling life-forms, I see no harm in taking a short stroll. You have your minidrag with you, hand weapon, communicator, survival gear, and can walk for a considerable distance without traveling beyond range of my instrumentation. Why should you not enjoy your immediate surroundings? Are you not glad to be outside of myself?”

  Pursing his lips, Flinx once more studied the dunes and shallow bay. “It’s been my unfortunate experience that during my many travels my immediate surroundings have a way of jumping up and biting me on the ass. But you’re right, as usual. A walk would be nice.” He inhaled again of the fresh, pleasantly scented alien atmosphere. Above him, Pip whirled in effortless circles, scanning their surroundings.