Flinx Transcendent (13 page)

Turning away from where Pip was slinking through the depths of the lightweight accessory, Flinx leaned slightly to his right for a better view of the distant, sunken main residence. “How will you get free to escort me? I doubt I could find your friends on my own.”

“Truly alsso, Flinx-friend. Additionally, a more perssonal introduction iss necessary if your appearance iss not to sspread panic and confussion. It iss important, I think, that I perssonally explain your pressence
here lesst fright and alarm enssue. To address your concern: desspite my resstrictive sstudiess, I am permitted ssome sself-time. I have not in quite ssome time vissited in persson the friendss of whom I sspeak. We communicate electronically. Iss it not the ssame with my age counterpartss among your kind?”

“Depends on the individual. I never did much electronic communicating myself.”
Or communicating of any kind
, he added silently. “I'm more the listening than the talking type. I like to know how individuals—feel.”

“You will feel confident, I think, once we are outsside my ressidence compound and back among ssmall packss of my people.” Reaching down, he picked up the ijkk. As she slithered to one side, Pip raised her iridescent emerald-hued head and hissed at him. Kiijeem had no idea how fortunate he was that she did not perceive him as an enemy.

The young AAnn looked on in absorbed fascination as Flinx began the slow process of donning the simsuit. The interior lining was essentially one large spray-woven sensor. Picking up the slightest twitches of his muscles, ligaments, and tendons as well as the movements of his bones, millions of minuscule sensor points instantly transferred that information to the artificial counterparts that lined the interior of the suit. While Flinx moved like a human, the suit's interwoven computational system logics automatically transcribed the actions into the correspondingly appropriate movements for an adult nye. Fed to the suit's silent servos and other integrated systems, it allowed the wearer to simulate the physicality of an AAnn to a degree no actor could equal.

Slipping into her built-in internal pouch, Pip folded her wings tightly against her sides, curled up, and went to sleep against her master. While there was room for her to move around inside the simsuit without sacrificing its believability, unless something roiled Flinx's emotions she was quite content to rest and do as little as possible.

Only after the suit's ventral self-seal melded itself invisibly into its scaly milieu and the ocular pickups activated was the illusion complete. Turning to face his young host, Flinx spread his arms, at ease as the suit's sensors and servos were instructed by the integral woven computer to force his limbs into the AAnn gesture that best approximated his physical intent. The artifice was uncanny. Kiijeem's unmitigated astonishment
at the comprehensiveness of the consequent masquerade did not surprise Flinx. He had been fooling far more perceptive and mature nye for many days now.

“Truly I ssee,” the youth hissed softly, “and yet it iss sstill hard to accept. I know you are within. I ssaw you don the array mysself. Yet the russe iss sso complete that I think if I ssaw you on a city path I would not be able to ssingle you out from among the horde.”

“I should hope not,” Flinx told him. “If anyone does, then you won't have to worry about how your friends will react to me.” Crouching down by the side of the pool, he settled into the conventional AAnn posture for drinking from an open body of water and proceeded to sip lightly. He was not particularly thirsty: his suit provided for such needs. But he was especially proud of the way the suit's faux tongue worked and wanted to show off, just a bit, for his young friend.

“Crssagg
—amazing,” Kiijeem murmured as he looked on. When Flinx finally straightened, the youth was holding his visitor's AAnn garb out to him—along with the ijkk. “Dress yoursself. Do not put on the ijkk until we are well outsside the ressidence. We do not want to attract attention from the housse.”

Flinx indicated his understanding as he slipped back into the unprepossessing AAnn vest, kilt, and sandals he had worn since he had first donned the simsuit. Deftly manipulating the suit's clawed fingers, he secured the ubiquitous AAnn travel pouch around his waist. Clutching the lightweight head covering in one taloned hand, he followed Kiijeem as his host led the way out of the desert landscaping that had served as Flinx's sanctuary for the last several days.

Off to their left the main residence lay baking under the glare of Blasusarr's relentless star. As they made progress Flinx could see the rooflines of other expensive sunken residences; dull, natural, or gleaming according to their owners' tastes. Avoiding the main gate through which non-aircar vehicles entered, Kiijeem led him to a small, older side portal in the artificial stone barrier. The youth activated an interrupt in the photonic alarm system, the two of them stepped through, and for the first time in many days Flinx found himself once more striding along a pedestrian pathway.

Hardly any nye were out in the middle of the morning in the exclusive quarter, but crowds increased as they loped easily toward the nearest
commercial area. From there Kiijeem led the way onto a public transport and proceeded to enter the necessary individualized programming. A private vehicle, they both knew, might draw personal attention. Public transport was slower, but it was safer to take the extra time in a vehicle filled with other passengers and thereby limit the opportunities for detection.

While the ijkk Flinx wore loosely over his head drew the occasional curious, even kindhearted glance, the only real danger arose from Kiijeem's irrepressible nervousness. While Flinx had no difficulty relaxing in his resting crouch near the rear of the transport, Kiijeem exhibited the air of one who at any moment was expecting a formal challenge from one of Krrassin's grand champion fighters. Only after the back of the vehicle had emptied out a little did Flinx lean toward his young companion.

“No one suspects us, no one senses me.” The simsuit's voice box added an appropriate artificial rasp to his otherwise fluent command of the language. “Will you relax? You're attracting far more attention than I am.” Coiled in her pouch against his left side, Pip squirmed slightly as she sensed her master's tension. “Do I have to pin your tail against a wall to keep it from snapping?”

“Truly, you are right.” Kiijeem made an effort to calm down. His tail tip stopped banging against the transport's inner wall, though it did not stop twitching entirely. “I ssupposse we could even sspeak loud enough to be overheard without raissing any undue alarm.”

“Of coursse we can.” Flinx was at his reassuring best. “I conversed with many nye before I met you. None ever suspected my identity. You can even call me by my real name.”

Kiijeem considered. “Yess—Fflinxx
could
be an AAnn name. An unussual one, but it hass the right ssoundingss.”

“Anybody asks, just tell 'em I'm from the sticks.” Flinx was enjoying the view out the sweeping transparent wall of the transport as it soared eastward several meters above the manicured sands below.

“The
what?”
Kiijeem was confused by a term that did not translate well.

Flinx elaborated. “I'm from offworld. Some small, out-of-the-way Imperial planet with a reputation for backwardness.”

“Ahpessx,”
his friend responded understandingly, adding a third-degree gesture indicative of quiet glee. “I know jusst the world. We will
identify you as a vissiting agriculturalisst from Quepht-nuum. That fact by itsself will be enough to excusse any errorss you may make, verbal or otherwisse.” Kiijeem seemed pleased with the label he had assigned to his companion, while Flinx saw neither reason nor need to dispute it. He was not in the least ashamed to find himself designated the AAnn equivalent of an Imperial hick.

They were on the transport for what seemed an eternity. The interior was sealed and, of course, not air-conditioned. If not for his simsuit's ability to evaporate his mammalian sweat, recycle it as drinking water, and otherwise keep him cool and his body temperature stable, Flinx knew he would have fainted from heatstroke hours ago.

As the transport hummed eastward, picking up and disgorging passengers along the way, it occurred to Flinx that he could make an excuse for them to disembark. Once out of sight, he could kill Kiijeem easily. That would lose him the potentially useful contacts he sought, but would also allow him to find another hiding place in a completely different part of the city. Perhaps a location where he could safely hide out long enough to await the return of the reconfigured
Teacher
. That would mean he would not need the help of Kiijeem's more powerful friends.

Of course if he did such a thing, carried out such a disgraceful act, it would only prove that he was no more worth saving from the menace that lay behind the Great Emptiness than the other humans and assorted sentients he had been quick to disparage on previous occasions. Besides, he liked Kiijeem, even though he was quite aware that should the right opportunity present itself the young nye would swallow his dismay at the loss of his offworld acquaintance and happily sample the softskin's flesh. While such instinctive behavior might repel the average human or thranx, in Flinx's wide-ranging experience it did not disqualify Kiijeem's entire species from the prospect of salvation.

Anyhow, the entire galaxy was at stake. In order to save the benign species, he had to save them all.

Only two other passengers remained by the time the transport entered a part of the capital city's western residential zone. Marked by steep-sided hills and lengthy escarpments, so perfectly rendered were these geological features that he needed Kiijeem to confirm the artificiality of their nature.

So this was how the upper levels of AAnn society managed to enjoy sweeping views from their dwellings while still remaining largely underground, he reflected as the transport turned silently down a winding accessway. If the ground where you choose to live is flat, construct your residence and then build an obligatory mountain around it. Even to his undiscerning human eye, the amount of effort and expense that had to have gone into each individual dwelling in order to make it look as though it had been excavated from natural rock must have been considerable. There was even one estate that was “buried” entirely in a row of artfully sculpted barchan dunes. Characteristic longitudinal windows gleamed from the slip faces of sand that never shifted no matter how strong were the winds that blew against them. Clearly, the AAnn who could afford to live in this district must hold positions of considerable importance within the Imperial hierarchy. In response to his query, Kiijeem confirmed as much.

“Truly only the mosst important nye dwell here, outsside of the Imperial family itsself.” He motioned second-degree self-importance. The verbal equivalent in a human would have been called boasting.

“Like my friendss.”

Flinx regarded his guide from behind imitation AAnn eyes. “Your friends hold positions of such importance? Within the government?”

Kiijeem looked away and his tail drooped slightly.
“Fssabb
, not exactly. It would be more correct to ssay they are the offsspring of thosse who actually hold ssuch possitionss.”

Great
, Flinx thought as he studied the extensive, expensive surroundings. Additional juveniles to deal with. Not that it mattered, if they could provide the safeguarding he needed.

The transport slowed to a halt outside a picture-perfect replica of a small sand-swept butte that was complete down to fossils of extinct Blasusarrian life-forms that were embedded prominently in one layer of sedimentary “rock.” The complete structure was a good three stories high and gave no indication of how far the dwelling continued belowground. As the vehicle touched ground Flinx hopped off behind his escort, his simsuit's simulated leg muscles handling the shock of the short jump in faithful imitation of an adult AAnn.

Unlike at the AVM residence of Kiijeem's family, here there was no
fence. No visible fence, anyway. Pausing atop what looked like a vacant patch of desert soil, Kiijeem waited for the sensors beneath his feet to respond to his presence. While not expecting the kind of sophisticated internal scanning devices that might be present at an official checkpoint, Flinx nonetheless took care to stand just to the right of the dedicated clearing.

“We are being made known,” Kiijeem informed him helpfully. “I will sspeak to my friendss. When lasst I contacted them they were home alone, engrossed in their daily sstudiess.”

“Will
they make time for us?” Flinx continued to marvel at the beauty and perfection of the multiple layers of artificial stone.

Kiijeem made a gesture of second-degree assurance. “They are among my oldesst group-companionss. I have told them to expect mysself and a friend.” His tail slapped reflexively at the ground. “I think I am going to enjoy thiss.”

Why wouldn't you?
Flinx mused.
It's not your skin at stake if they lose control, panic, and decide to turn me in
.

Popping out of a camouflaged burrow, a diminutive automaton in the shape of a local
jarlt
approached them, stood up on its hind legs, and trilled musically before disappearing back into its hole.

“We are announced.” Kiijeem started toward the high, slightly overhung sandstone wall in which windows that had been treated to match the color of their surroundings were clearly visible. “Dwelling ssecurity hass been muted accordingly. Pleasse accompany me. And remain at my sside. For an adult to trail behind ssomeone of my age would look ssusspiciouss. My friendss are ssuppossed to be alone, the adultss in ressidence away at work—but we sshould sstill take care.”

“Don't worry.” Flinx lengthened his stride until he was walking parallel to his guide. “I've spent my whole life taking care.”

The hall they entered bespoke the wealth of the residence's extended family. Two stories high, opposing walls of simulated sandstone flaunted patterns composed of embedded synthetic gems. Water flowed down one wall; a singing, soulful reminder of a time when such scarce fluid meant life itself to the primitive ancestors of the modern AAnn.