Reunion (8 page)

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 Midworld, 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.

Approaching from outsystem with extreme caution, Flinx had the
Teacher
’s preceptors make a thorough examination of the immediate spatial vicinity. A pair of lifeless, unprepossessing moons circled their parent world. Both were drab, heavily cratered, and insofar as his ship could determine, devoid of anything indicative of intelligent visitation beyond a couple of insignificant and probably long-dormant scientific monitoring terminals.

As for Pyrassis itself, the single network of artificial satellites locked in equatorial and circumpolar orbits was as elementary as Flinx had ever encountered, designed to facilitate nothing more complicated than rudimentary ground-based and low-orbital communications. By positioning itself within the umbra of the nearest moon, the
Teacher
would render itself invisible to detection from the ground. Analysis of surface-based signals suggested the presence of only a single deepspace carrying beam, and nothing in the realm of sensitive military detectors. Surface-to-surface signals were low-gain and infrequent, hinting at a trifling and widely scattered AAnn presence. Not one of the battered satellites circling in languid low orbit was large enough to pose a threat to an arriving vessel.

The lack of security did not surprise him. Clearly, the AAnn presence on Pyrassis was limited. There were no cities, most likely a single shuttleport, little in the way of surface infrastructure, and certainly nothing beyond minimal military facilities. With so little to defend, there was no reason for the Empire to waste precious equipage, resources that could be better employed elsewhere, in fortifying it. By every measurable criterion, here was an out-of-the-way, strategically unimportant world just barely worthy of the notice of the Empire that claimed it. Sheltered by its location within Empire boundaries, it required nothing else in the way of protection. There was not much here for the AAnn to watch over, and less for raiders to seize.

The last thing any AAnn based on the surface would expect to have to deal with was an illicit intrusion from the Commonwealth. They would be shocked to discover that an unauthorized ship was settling in behind the nearer moon, the better to keep clear of any roving sensors. Had they bothered to look closer, they would have been utterly stunned to discover not one but two unsanctioned craft occupying the same obscure location.

The
Crotase
did not react to his arrival. No hailing frequency activated the
Teacher
’s communications module. No salutation image materialized above the command console in front of Flinx. As he directed the
Teacher
to tuck in close beside the other Commonwealth vessel, Flinx examined the
Crotase
for visible indications that it was engaged on a mission fraught with extraordinary possibilities. Nothing he saw suggested that this was the case. The Larnaca Nutrition transport sported a standard light-freight configuration, with two passenger/cargo modules comprising the stern of the elongated KK-drive craft. Other than appearing to be in unusually good condition, there was nothing exceptional about the vessel.

Well, if they were going to ignore him, he decided, then it was incumbent upon him to open communication. Maybe they were waiting to make sure the recently arrived craft was crewed by humans or thranx, and was not a captured vessel being operated by the cunning AAnn to lead them into exposing themselves.

No one responded to his queries. Close enough to exchange personnel via suits, the two ships drifted in the shadow of the nearer moon, the
Teacher
calling, the
Crotase
not answering. What its presence here had to do with Edicted information on the Meliorare Society Flinx still could not imagine. As his ship’s AI patiently continued trying to evoke a response from the other Commonwealth craft, he contemplated how best to proceed.

Like him, those aboard the
Crotase
had placed their ship in the shadow of this moon to avoid detection by the AAnn residing on the Pyrassisian surface. There was no other reason for their ship to be where it was. It therefore seemed sensible to conclude that whatever they were doing here, they were not cooperating with the lizards. The elimination of this one possibility failed to elicit enlightenment, since it still did not explain what they were doing in such a dangerous and seemingly unpromising locale in the first place.

Pyrassis might be a world of inconceivable natural riches, though that struck Flinx as an unlikely reason for a Commonwealth vessel to pay it a visit. First, because its location rendered it impractical for any human agency to subsequently exploit, and second because the AAnn themselves had not done so. Or if they had, their diminutive presence on the planet suggested an enormous effort to conceal any kind of extensive development. There was no reason for them to make the effort to do so on a world they fully controlled.

Curioser and curioser, he decided. AAnn intentions aside, the best way to find out what the crew of the
Crotase
was doing here was to confront them in person with the questions they were reluctant to answer via intership contact. Making plain via open broadcast that he planned to pay them a visit, and directing the
Teacher
to repeatedly state his intentions, he left the command chamber and made his way to one of the ship’s locks. Sensing that his master’s excitement was conflicted with other emotions, Pip alternated humming along the corridor in front of him with landing repeatedly on his shoulder.

If they would not react to verbal or coded inquiries, Flinx decided as he entered the outer lock, perhaps they would respond to a knock on their front door.

Taking no chances, he donned a full survival suit before entering the
Teacher
’s shuttle bay. While the suit was awkward to wear, it would provide a degree of protection in the event of trouble. Its internal pickup automatically adjusted volume and modulation so that he could effortlessly deliver verbal orders to the shuttle’s command nexus. Coiled tightly against his shoulder, Pip made a noticeable but not restrictive bulge within the suit.

He could have directed the
Teacher
to ease right up alongside the drifting freighter, but in the event unforeseen difficulty reared its Hydralike head, he wanted his ship out of easy attack range. Programmed to react in specific ways to explicit assaults, he had no qualms about leaving it to maneuver on its own. He had spent a good deal of time preparing the AI to cope with difficulties in his absence. Feeling confident that the vessel could take care of itself, he directed the shuttle to move out and head toward the elongated bulk of the silent
Crotase.

If anything ought to have brought a response from the freighter, it should have been the approach of another large metallic object advancing on a collision course. But though he kept all hailing frequencies open, Flinx heard nothing from the ship he was approaching. It was a good deal more massive than the
Teacher,
with a bulbous cargo bay appended to the crew and passenger quarters. Light flaring from ports and telltales indicated that power was on throughout the KK-drive craft’s entire attenuated length.

There was nothing remarkable about the ship. In detail as well as silhouette it fit the standard schematic for its type: a purely commercial vessel bearing no surprises. Shuttle bays were located where he expected to find them. Maneuvering cautiously around the cargo carrier’s bulk, he discovered one bay open and empty. Designed to accommodate a much larger cargo shuttle, it offered easy ingress to the heart of the mother ship.

Once more he attempted direct verbal contact, and once again was rebuffed with silence. Shrugging, he directed the shuttle to dock in the most expedient manner possible. The automatics on the
Crotase
responded to his intrusion with alacrity. In less than two minutes his craft was tightly snugged in the bay. He barely had time to push free of the command chair before the shuttle felt the effects of the freighter’s powered-down KK-drive field. Gravity once more took hold of his body.

Exiting in his self-contained survival suit, breathing canned air, he examined the outer lock controls. As with the rest of the
Crotase,
everything was stock and familiar. As a fully qualified, experienced thief, he was used from childhood to breaking into homes and businesses. Breaking into a quiescent starship required a greater command of existing technology, but many of the same techniques. Using the equipment on his suit’s tool belt, which was in turn linked to the shuttle’s AI, he was able to break manually into the freighter’s living quarters. Within minutes he had accessed the autochthonous AI. In less than half an hour it had accepted him as a valid user.

Responding to his commands, it proceeded to secure the bay. He did not order it to close the outer hatch. No sensible thief locks doors behind him.

If Mother Mastiff could see me now, he found himself musing. It was a long way from pilfering bread to stealing a starship. He had no use for the
Crotase
itself, however. He had come to loot only information.

The inner lock doors opened as readily as the outer, responding briskly to his directives. Nothing emerged to impede his advance. Though his sensors indicated the presence of fully pressurized, uncontaminated, temperature-controlled atmosphere throughout the corridor he was traversing, he did not unseal his suit. There was no need to take chances. He felt confident he could get what he had come for without taking unnecessary risks.

Around him, the ship hummed efficiently while continuing to manifest only mechanical life. Corridors and rooms were brightly lit. In a prosaically decorated crew lounge he found dishes piled high with snack foods in addition to indications of at least two meals abandoned unfinished. No trays lay mute on the deck, however, and no food or drink had been scattered violently about. There was nothing to indicate that the diners had abandoned their fare in haste.

The entire ship lay open to him. His progress was restricted only by privacy codes that barred entrance to individual living quarters. Since several of these stood open to inspection, he had no reason to assume that the others contained anything of especial note, and he made no effort to bypass their personal security. He was not here to spy on an unknowing crew.

What crew? Where was everyone? Had they been surprised by the AAnn and taken down to the surface for interrogation? That particular experience was one that, fortunately, had so far been denied to him. From everything he had heard, a discomfiting gallimaufry of fact and fiction, it was one he would gladly continue to avoid. Had the crew committed mass suicide by blowing themselves out a lock into space? There was nothing on board to indicate anything so excessive had taken place. There were no signs of violence, of struggle, or even of internal dissention.

Based on what he found, or more properly, what he did not find, everything suggested that they had voluntarily transported themselves down to the surface on the freighter’s other shuttlecraft. He could not imagine what for. What off Earth did a company that manufactured processed foods want with a desert world like Pyrassis? He stood outside the bridge, uncomprehendingly shaking his head. For that matter, he had yet to figure out what they wanted with Edicted records of Meliorare doings.

Like everything else aboard the
Crotase,
the command-and-control blister was considerably larger than its counterpart on the
Teacher.
Unmonitored glowing consoles beckoned, efficient instrumentation silently declaimed reams of unperused information, and chairs reposed unoccupied. Anyone else thrust abruptly into such hushed surroundings could easily and quickly have become spooked. Not Flinx. In his short life he had seen and been forced to deal with far more intimidating surroundings than a deserted ship. Avoiding the empty command chair, he settled himself into one of the secondary seats.

The freighter’s AI was no less responsive in the control center than it had been in the outer lock. It replied to his queries promptly and without hesitation as he prodded it to divulge the information he had come so far to recover. Unfortunately, the admirably expeditious response did not take the form Flinx desired.

“The information you request is contained in an Edicted sybfile.”

“I know that.” Flinx had trouble controlling his impatience. Sensing it, Pip stirred beneath the fabric of the survival suit. “I don’t seek disclosure. Transfer of the physical file to a blank storage chyp will suffice.” He emphasized the request by running a finger over the Activate proximity control set in the arm of his chair.

“Transfer cannot be accomplished.” The voice of the
Crotase
was serenely implacable.

“Why not?” Flinx inquired sharply. “Is there a command string lacking? Define the nature of the problem.”

“It is straightforward,” the AI responded by way of explanation. “The sybfile in question no longer resides within my cortex. It has been removed, and there is no copy.”

Flinx slowly took a deep breath. He had not traveled an unconscionable number of parsecs to hear what he had already heard once before, on Earth. “Where is it now? Trace all echoes and ghosts.”

“That will not be necessary.” The AI’s assurance was calming. Finally, something positive! “The sybfile you request has been transferred to and at last check resides within the storage mode of personal recorder DNP-466EX.”