“We’ve simplified the drilling equipment for their use. Their fur is thick enough so that the cold inside the mountain doesn’t seem to bother them, which is fortunate for us. Even with thermal suits it would be hard for humans and impossible for AAnn to work the gem deposits anymore, considering how deep the shaft now runs into the mountain. If they mind the cold, they seem willing to risk it for the rewards we give them in return for each stone.”
“What do you reward them with?” Flinx wondered curiously. The bulky shapes were still coming slowly toward them. The hair on the back of his neck prickled and Pip stirred violently within the folds of the warm suit.
“Berries,” Meevo snapped in disgust. “Berries and fruits, nuts and tubers. Root eaters!” he finished, with the disdain characteristic of all carnivores.
“They’re vegetarians, then?”
“Not entirely,” Rudenuaman corrected. “They’re apparently quite able to digest meat, and they have the teeth and claws necessary for hunting, but they much prefer the fruits and berries our automatic harvester can gather for them.”
“Dirt grubbers,” the AAnn engineer muttered. He glanced at Rudenuaman. “Excuse me from your play, but I have work to do.” He turned and lumbered back up the shaft.
By this time the four natives had come near enough for Flinx to discern individual characteristics. Each was larger than a big man and two or three times as broad—almost fat. How much of that bulk was composed of incredibly dense brown fur marked with black and white splotches he couldn’t tell. In build and general appearance they were essentially ursinoid, though sporting a flat muzzle instead of a snout. It ended in a nearly invisible black nose that was almost comical on so massive a creature.
Short thick claws tipped the end of each of four seven-digited members, and the creatures appeared capable of moving on all fours or standing upright with equal ease. There was no tail. Ears were short, rounded, and set on top of the head. By far the most distinctive features were the tarsier-like eyes, large as plates, which glowed amber in the tunnel’s fluorescent light. Huge black pupils like obsidian yolks floated in their centers.
“Nocturnal from the look of them, diurnal at the least,” was Sylzenzuzex’s intrigued comment.
The natives noticed the new arrivals, and all rose onto their hind legs for a better look. When they stood upright they seemed to fill the whole tunnel. Flinx noted a slight curve at the back of their mouths, which formed a falsely comic, dolphinish grin on each massive face.
He was about to ask another question of Rudenuaman when something stirred violently within his suittop. Flinx’s frantic grab was too late to restrain Pip. The flying snake was out and streaking down the shaft toward the natives.
“Pip . . . wait, there’s no . . .!”
He had started to say there was no reason to attack the furry giants. Nothing fearful or threatening had scratched his sensitive mind. If the minidrag were to set the group of huge natives on a rampage, it was doubtful any of them would get out of this tunnel alive.
Ignoring his master’s call, Pip reached the nearest of the creatures. On its hind legs, the enormous animal was nearly three meters tall and must have weighed at least half a ton. Great glowing eyes regarded the tiny apparition, whose venom was nearly always fatal.
Pip dove straight for the head. At the last second pleated wings beat the air as the minidrag braked—to land and curl lightly about the creature’s shoulder. The monster eyed the minidrag dispassionately, then turned its dull gaze on Flinx, who gaped back at the giant in shock.
For the second time in his life, Flinx fainted. . . .
The dream was new and very deep. He was floating in the middle of an endless black lake beneath an oppressively near night sky. So dark was it that he could see nothing, not even his own body . . . which might not have been there.
Against the ebony heavens four bright lights drifted. Tiny, dancing pinpoints of unwinking gold moved in unpredictable yet calculated patterns, like fireflies. They danced and jigged, darted and twitched not far from the eyes he didn’t have, yet he saw them plainly.
Sometimes they danced about each other, and once all four of them performed some intricate weaving in and out, as complex and meaningful as it was quickly forgotten.
“He’s back now,” the first firefly observed.
“Yes, he’s back,” two of the others agreed simultaneously.
Flinx noted with interest that the last of the four fireflies was not the steady, unwavering light he had first thought. Unlike the others, it winked on and off erratically, like a lamp running on fluctuating current. When it winked off it disappeared completely, and when it was on it blazed brighter than any of the others.
“Did we frighten you?” the winker wondered.
A disembodied voice strangely like his own replied. “I saw Pip . . .” the dream-voice started to say.
“I’m sorry we shouted at you,” the first firefly apologized.
“Sorry we shouted,” the other two chorused. “We didn’t mean to hurt you. We didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“I saw Pip,” Flinx mused, “settle around one of the native’s shoulders. I’ve never ever seen Pip do that to a stranger before. Not to Mother Mastiff, not to Truzenzuzex, not to anyone.”
“Pip?” the third voice inquired.
“Oh,” the second firefly explained, “he means the little hard mind.”
“Hard but tasty,” agreed the first one, “like a chunut.”
“You thought the little hard mind meant to hurt us?” first voice asked.
“Yes, but instead he responded to you with an openness I’ve never seen before. So you must also broadcast on the empathic level, only your thoughts are friendly thoughts.”
“If you say we must,” third firefly elucidated, “then we must.”
“But only when we must,” fourth voice said sternly, blazing brighter than the other three before vanishing.
“Why does the fourth among you come and go like a fog?” Flinx’s dream-voice murmured.
“Fourth? Oh,” first voice explained, “that’s Maybeso. That’s his name—for this weektime, anyway. I am called Fluff.” Flinx got the impression the other two lights brightened slightly. “These are Moam and Bluebright.” The fourth light blazed momentarily.
“They’re mates,” it said, and then winked out once more.
“Gone again,” Flinx observed with disembodied detachment.
“That’s Maybeso, remember?” reminded Fluff-voice. “Sometimes he’s not here. The rest of us are always here. We don’t change our names, either, but Maybeso comes and goes and changes his name every weektime or so.”
“Where does Maybeso go when he goes?”
Bluebright replied openly, “We don’t know.”
“Where does he come from when he comes back, then?”
“Nobody knows,” Moam told him.
“Why does he change his name from weektime to weektime?”
“Ask him,” Moam and Bluebright suggested together.
Maybeso came back, his light brighter than any of theirs.
“Why do you change your name from weektime to weektime, and where do you go when you go, and where do you come from when you come back?” Flinx-voice wondered.
“Oh, there’s no doubt about it,” Maybeso told him in a dream-singsong, and winked away again.
Fluff spoke in a confidential dream-whisper: “Maybeso, we think, is a little mad. But he’s a good fellow all the same.”
Flinx noted absently that he was beginning to sink beneath the surface of the black lake. Above him the four lights swirled and dipped curiously.
“You’re the first who’s talked to us,” Fluff-voice murmured.
“Come and talk to us more,” Moam requested with pleasure. “It’s fun to have someone to talk to. The little hard one listens but cannot talk. This is a fun new thing!”
Flinx’s dream-voice bubbled up through the deepening oily liquid. “Where should I come and talk to you?”
“At the end of the long water,” Moam told him. “At the end of the long water,” confirmed Bluebright.
“At the far end of the long water,” added Fluff, who was rather more precise than the others.
“No doubt about it,” agreed Maybeso, winking on for barely a second.
About it, about it . . . the words were subsumed in gentle rippling currents produced by Flinx’s slowly sinking body. Sinking, sinking, until he touched the bottom of the lake. His legs touched first, then his hips, then back, and finally his head.
There was something peculiar about this place, he thought. The sky bad been blacker than the water, and the water grew lighter instead of darker as he sank. At the bottom it was so bright it hurt his eyes.
He opened them.
A glistening, almost metallic blue-green face dominated by two faceted gems was staring down at him with concern. Inhaling, he smelled cocoanut oil and orchids. Something tickled his left ear.
Looking for the source, he discovered Pip’s small reptilian face lying on his chest. A long pointed tongue darted out and hit him several times on the cheek. Apparently satisfied as to his master’s condition, the minidrag relaxed and slid off the pillow to coil itself comfortably nearby.
Pillow?
Taking a deep breath, Flinx smiled up at Sylzenzuzex. She backed away and he saw that they were in a small, neatly furnished room. Sunlight poured in through high windows.
“How are you feeling?” she inquired in the sharp clicks and whistles of symbospeech. He nodded and watched her slump gratefully onto a thranx sleeping-sitting platform across the room.
“Thank the Hive. I thought you were dead.”
Flinx rested his head on a supporting hand. “I didn’t think that mattered much to you.”
“Oh, shut up!” she snapped with unexpected vehemence. He detected confusion and frustration in her voice as feelings and fact vied within her. “There have been plenty of times when I would have cheerfully cut your throat, if I hadn’t been under oath to protect it. Then there have been an equal number of other occasions when I almost wished you didn’t wear your skeleton outside in.
“Like the time back on Terra when you saved my life, and the way you’ve stood up to that barbaric young female.” Flinx saw her antennae flicking nervously, the graceful curve of her ovipositors tightening uncertainly. “You are the most maddening being I have ever met, Flinx-man!”
He sat up carefully, found that everything worked inside as well as out. “What happened?” he asked, confused. “No, wait . . . I do remember blacking out, but not why. Did something hit me?”
“Nobody laid a parcel hook on you. You collapsed when your pet charged one of the native workers. Fortunately, that maneuver seems to have been just a bluff. The native didn’t know enough to be frightened.” Her expression turned puzzled. “But why should that make you faint?”
“I don’t know,” he answered evasively. “Probably the shock of visualizing the rest of the natives rending us into pieces after Pip killed one of their number. When he didn’t, the shock was magnified because Pip just doesn’t take to strangers that way.” Flinx forced himself to appear indifferent. “So Pip likes natural fur better than a thermal suit, and he snuggled down in one of the natives. That’s probably what happened.”
“What does that prove?” Sylzenzuzex wondered.
“That I faint too easily.” Swinging his legs off the bed, he gave her a grim look. “At least now we know why this world’s Under Edict”
“Shhh!” She nearly fell off her sleeping platform. “Why . . . no, wait,” she admonished him. Several minutes passed during which she made a thorough inspection of the room, checking places Flinx would never have thought to inspect.
“It’s clean,” she finally announced with satisfaction. “I expect they don’t think we have anything to say that’s worth listening to.”
“You’re certain?” Flinx asked, abashed. “I never thought of that.”
Sylzenzuzex looked offended. “I told you I was training in Security. No, there is nothing in here to listen to you save me.”
“Okay, the reason this world has been placed Under Edict by the Church met us in the tunnel today. It’s the natives . . . Rudenuaman’s grunting, goblin-eyed manual laborers. They’re the reason.”
She continued to stare at him for another minute, considered laughing, thought better of it when She saw how serious he was.
“Impossible,” she muttered finally. “You have experienced a delusion of some sort. Surely the natives are nothing more than they appear to be—big, amiable, and dumb. They have not yet developed enough for the Church to isolate this world.”
“On the contrary,” he objected, “they’re a great deal more than they appear to be.”
She looked querulous. “If that’s true, then why do they perform heavy manual labor for long hours in freezing temperatures in exchange for a few miserable nuts and berries?”
Flinx’s voice dropped disconsolately. “I don’t know that yet.” He glanced up. “But I know this—they’re natural telepaths.”
“A delusion,” she repeated firmly, “a hallucination you experienced.”
“No.” His voice was firm, confident. “I have a few slight talents of my own. I know the difference between a hallucination and mind-to-mind communication.”
“Have it your way,” Sylzenzuzex declared, sighing. “For the sake of discussion let us temporarily assume it was not an illusion. That is still no reason for the Church to place a world Under Edict. A whole race of telepaths is only theory, but it would not be enough to exclude them from associate membership in the Commonwealth.”
“It’s not just that,” Flinx explained earnestly. “They’re . . . well, more intelligent than they appear.”
“I doubt that,” she snorted, “but even a race of intelligent telepaths would not be considered such a threat.”
“Much more intelligent.”
“I won’t believe that until I see evidence to prove it,” she objected. “If they represented any kind of serious threat to the Commonwealth . . .”
“Why else would the Church put this world Under Edict?”
“Flinx, they have no tools, no clothing, no spoken language—no civilization. They run around grubbing for roots and fruits, living in caves. If they’re potentially as clever as you claim, why do they persist in dwelling in poverty?”
“That,” admitted Flinx, “is a very good question.”
“Do you have a very good answer?”
“I do not. But I’m convinced I’ve found the reason for the Church’s actions. What is the effect of putting a race Under Edict?”
“No contact with outside parties, space-going peoples,” she recited. “Severest penalties for any infraction of the Edict. The race is free to develop in its own way.”
“Or free to stagnate,” Flinx muttered. “The Commonwealth and the Church have aided plenty of primitive peoples, Why not the Ujurrians?”
“You set yourself up as arbiter of high Church policy,” she murmured, drawing away from him again.
“Not me!” he half shouted, slamming both hands noisily against the bedcovers. His hands moved rapidly as he talked, “It’s the Church Council that sets itself up as the manipulator of racial destinies. And if not the Church, then the Commonwealth government does. And if not the Commonwealth, then the great corporations and family companies. Then there is the AAnn Empire which sets itself above everything.” He was pacing angrily alongside the bed.
“My God, but I’m sick to death of organizations that think they have the right to rule on how others ought to develop!”
“What would you have in its place?” she challenged him. “Anarchy?”
Flinx sat down heavily on the bed again, his head sinking between his hands. He was tired, tired, and much too young. “How should I know? I only know that I’m getting damned sick of what passes for intelligence in this corner of creation.”
“I can’t believe you’re so innocen
t,” she said, more gently now. “What else do you expect from mere mammals and insects? The Amalgamation was just the beginning of your race’s and mine’s emergence from long dark age. The Commonwealth and the United Church are only a few of your centuries old. What do you expect of it so soon—Nirvana? Utopia?” She shook her head, a gesture the thranx had acquired from mankind.
“Not for me or you to set ourselves up above the Church, which helped bring us out of those dark times.”
“The Church, the Church, your almighty Church!” he shouted. “Why do you defend it so? You think it’s composed of saints?”
“I never claimed it was perfect,” she responded, showing some heat herself. “The Counselors themselves would be the last to claim so. That’s one of its virtues. Naturally it’s not perfect—it would never claim to be.”
“That’s what Tse-Mallory once said to me,” he murmured reflectively.
“What . . . who?”
“Someone I know who also left the Church, for reasons of his own.”
“Tse-Mallory, that name again,” she replied thoughtfully. “He was that stingship mate of my uncle’s you mentioned before. Bran Tse-Mallory?”
“Yes.”
“They talk of him as well as of Truzenzuzex at the Clan meetings.” She snapped herself back to the present—no use thinking wistfully, about things she would probably never be able to experience again. “Now that you’ve decided the universe is not perfect and that the instrumentalities of intelligence are somewhat less than all-knowing, what do you propose we do about it?”
“Have a talk with our friends-to-be, the Ujurrians.”
“And what are they going to do?” she smirked. “Throw rocks at the Baron’s shuttles when he returns? Or at the beamers that are surely stocked in plenty here?”
“Possibly,” Flinx conceded. “But even if they can do nothing, I think we’ll have a far better chance of surviving among them than there, than waiting for Rudenuaman to get tired of having us around. When that happens she’ll dispose of us as casually as she would an old dress.” He let his mind wander, saw no reason to hide himself from Sylzenzuzex anymore. “There’s only one guard outside the door.”