Flinx in Flux (15 page)

“Do you realize what that means to a thranx? You know how afraid they are of damaged exoskeleton. It’s about the severest kind of external injury they can suffer. They haven’t cracked the problem yet, but we’re trying to help. We’d split the profits from such a discovery. It would be a major medical advance in the treatment of thranx trauma and would save many lives. Isn’t that worth fighting for?”

“I wouldn’t know.” He turned away from her and studied the wall. “I’m a little young to be debating the great ethical issues. I have enough trouble sorting out my own sense of ethics, let alone humanxkind’s.”

She was obviously disappointed. “Then you don’t agree that what we’re doing here is worth the slight alterations to the ecosystem?”

“Certainly they’re worth it to Coldstripe. All the rest—it’s not for me to say.”

“But we’re not tampering with the ecology,” she said in exasperation. “The fungi that became Verdidion Weave still exist in a ‘natural’ state. We’re only growing the gengineered variety we developed. There’s no impact on the subterranean environment whatsoever.”

He turned so sharply that it startled her. “I’m only here because of you. I have no right to an opinion on the matter either way.” He took a step toward her, halted abruptly, and eyed the floor. “Also, it’s about time I was on my way.”

“Leaving?” She looked puzzled. “You just got here. You said you were a student. I thought you were enjoying your tour of the facilities, meeting the other workers and learning about their projects. If that’s boring you, why not study Longtunnel itself? Check out an outfit and go spelunking.”

He glanced back at her. “What do you care? Why are you interested in what I do?”

“Because you saved my life, of course, and in doing so probably saved the whole installation. Because I like you.” She frowned at her own words. “That’s odd. I usually prefer older men. But there’s definitely something about you, Flinx. I’m talking about more than what we shared on the journey here.”

“What?” He spoke more sharply than he had intended, but as always he suspected perception where there was only guilelessness.

“You’re just—different.” She moved close to him. Pip fluttered her wings but remained on his shoulder as she slipped both arms around him from behind, not trying to pin his arms to his sides, just holding him. The contact made him shiver.

“I guess I’m not making myself clear,” she whispered. “I’m better at making myself understood on the Hydroden. What I’m saying, Flinx, is that I more than just like you. I want you to stay here. Not to study. To be with me. We haven’t had much time to talk about that, about us. I’ve been so busy since I got back. All I’ve talked about is Longtunnel and its importance and my work. It’s time to talk about you and me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” He wanted to sound utterly calm, cool, uninvolved, but the proximity of her body made that impossible.

She sensed it, hugged him tighter, and pressed herself against him. “Isn’t there? You’ve become special to me. I like to think I’ve become a little special to you. I think ours is a relationship that, if nurtured, could grow into something really spe—”

“Stop it!”

The violence of his reaction shocked her into letting him go. “I thought. . . .”

“You ‘thought.’ There’s nothing to think about, Clarity. You don’t understand. You don’t understand anything about me.”

Alarmed by her master’s emotional outburst, Pip took to the air in search of an unseen enemy. In this instance the enemy was not visible because it was Flinx himself.

Clarity’s confession of almost-love shattered the emotional balance Flinx had carefully nurtured the past weeks. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was so obviously attracted to him. He had dealt with that previously. It was because he was so deeply drawn to her, mentally as well as physically. She was intelligent and beautiful and older, but she did not talk down to him. It was the first time in his life he had experienced that kind of all-enveloping emotional surge in a woman. More than anyone else could know, he knew it was genuine. So he coped the only way he knew how to cope with what he perceived to be an intrusion—by pushing back, pushing away, and trying to maintain objectivity. It was frightening to discover that he could not be half as cold as he wanted to be. The reality of love was infinitely more difficult to deal with than the philosophical concept.

“What’s wrong, Flinx? Tell me.”

“You don’t really know me. You only know what I’ve let you see.”

“Then let me see everything so I can understand,” she implored him. “Let me have that chance. I could get to know you well enough for us to be happy together.”

“We could never be happy together,” he said decisively. “I can never be happy with anyone.”

Hurt joined confusion in her voice. “You’re not making any sense.”

There was nothing to do but plunge on ahead. The small craft that tossed and flung him down the rapids of his life never seemed to put into shore.

“You’re a gengineer and a good one. Surely you’ve heard of the Meliorare Society.”

“The—” She hesitated. Clearly that was not what she had expected him to say. But she recovered quickly. “Outlaws of the worst kind. Renegade eugenicists. They did genetic alteration of unborn human beings without consent or approval.”

“That’s right.” Suddenly Flinx was very tired. “Their intentions were honorable, but their methodology blasphemous. They violated every law covering gene splicing and cosmetic DNA surgery that exists. I understand a few new ones were added to the code specifically to cope with their offenses.”

“What about them? As I recall, the last of them was hunted down and hospitalized or mindwiped a long time ago.”

“Not so very long ago. Not as long ago as the official records suggest. The last of them were active up until a few years back.” He eyed her strangely. “As a legitimate gengineer I expect you disapprove of what they did far more than would the average citizen.”

“Of course I do. The details of their work were never made public. The government kept it as quiet as possible, but being in the field I had access during my studies to bits and pieces of information that fell through the cracks in security. I know what the Meliorares did, or tried to do. They were replicating the barbarities of the twentieth-century b.a. on a much larger scale.

“Now they’re history. The Meliorares were criminals with scientific training. None of their work will ever make it into the legitimate gengineering journals. The government ordered all of it sealed.”

“True. The only problem they couldn’t solve was that while they could lock up all Meliorare research, they couldn’t account for the results of all their experiments. Oh, they caught up with most of them, cured those they could, put those who were damaged beyond hope of a normal life out of their misery. But they didn’t find everyone. At least one of the Meliorare’s experimental subjects reached adulthood without giving himself away or manifesting any serious illness. There may have been others. Nobody knows. Not even the Church.”

“I wasn’t aware of that. The final report on the matter, which is standard reading in gengineering histories, says that the last of the Society members was rounded up and dealt with years ago, and that all their work had been accounted for.”

“Not all of it,” Flinx corrected her. “They didn’t get everyone.” His eyes were fastened on hers. “They didn’t get me.”

Pip had finally settled down on a nearby railing. Scrap had moved away from Clarity to be close to his mother. He was confused and frightened by Flinx’s outburst and allowed Pip to shelter him beneath one wing.

Clarity stared at the young man who had suddenly moved away from her. Finally she smiled—but it was a crooked, uncertain smile.

“What kind of talk is that? ‘They didn’t get me.’ You aren’t old enough to have been a member of the Society, not even in its final days.”

It was his turn to smile humorlessly. “I told you you didn’t understand anything. I wasn’t a member of the Society. I’m one of the experiments. Funny, isn’t it? I look normal.”

“You
are
normal,” she replied with conviction. “You’re more normal than anyone I’ve ever met. Shy, yes, but that’s just another sign of normality.”

“I’m not shy; I’m careful. I wear shadows to hide my self, I keep to the darkness and try not to leave even memories behind.”

“You’ve certainly failed in my case. Flinx, you can’t be serious about this. There’s no way you could know in any case.”

“I was on Moth when the last Society members fought the authorities and both groups blew themselves to hell. They were fighting over me. But I didn’t get blown up. I got away.” He did not tell her how he had escaped, because he still had no idea how he had done so, and it troubled him to think about it.

Her eyes were searching. No doubt seeking the bulging forehead, the extra fingers, any physical manifestation of the possible mutations he was alluding to, he thought sardonically. She would not find anything. The changes that had been wrought in his system had been made while he was still in the womb. Only he thought they were visible.

“I wasn’t born, Clarity. I was built. Constructed, conceived in a design computer.” He tapped the side of his head. “What’s up here is a perversion of nature. I’m just a working hypothesis. The people who thought me up are dead or wiped, so there’s no one left who knows what they were trying to make of me.

“Naturally I’m as illegal as the Society members. Guilt by birth instead of association. If the authorities find out what I am, they’ll take me into custody and start poking and probing. If they determine that I’m harmless and certifiably normal, they
may
let me go free. If they find otherwise . . .”

“You can’t be sure of this, Flinx. No matter what you’ve seen, or learned, or been told, there’s no way to be sure.”

But he saw that besides shocking her, his confession had made her uncertain. Her attitude toward him was still hopeful, still affectionate, but more considered now. The unrestrained emotions had faded beneath the weight of the questions he had planted in her mind. It was shaming to spy on her feelings like that, but he could not have stopped himself had he wanted to. No longer was she certain of the man standing across from her. The simplistic lens she had been seeing him through had been permanently shattered. With it had gone something he feared might be lost to him forever.

Not that any choice had been left to him. It was important for her to back off, to realize what a freak she was dealing with. Because he knew he had been on the verge of falling hopelessly and dangerously in love with her, and he was not yet in a position to permit that. He might never be.

“Flinx, I don’t know what to make of what you’ve just told me. I don’t know how I can believe any of it, even though you obviously do. All I know for certain is that you’re good and kind and caring. That much I don’t have to submit to inquiry! I’ve observed it, experienced it. I don’t think any of that was . . .” She hesitated before hazarding the word. “. . . programmed into you before you were born. Those characteristics are functions of your personality, and they’re what attracted me to you.”

She meant every word of it, he knew. It was an honest, straightforward outpouring of affection. It made him tremble inside.

“Everyone has problems,” she went on. “If any of what you say is true, then who’s better equipped to understand them and sympathize with your troubles than me?”

“You have no idea what I might do,” he warned her. “I don’t know myself. As I get—older, I can feel myself changing, and I’m not referring to the passing of adolescence. It’s deeper than that. It’s physical—here.” He touched the side of his head again.

“Changing how?”

“I don’t know. I can’t say; it’s impossible to tell. There’s just the feeling that something major is happening to me. Something I can’t control. Once I thought I knew what it was all about, that it was something I could study and learn to master. Now I’m not sure. I have this feeling that it’s much more than I originally thought it was. Maybe a lot more than what my designers intended. The mutation is mutating, and whence it goes, nobody knows.

“As you get older, you’re supposed to start finding answers to your questions. I only seem to come up with more questions. It’s maddening sometimes.” Seeing the look that came over her face, he hastened to reassure her. “I don’t mean maddening in the sense of going insane, but maddening as in frustrating and puzzling.”

She managed a small, wan smile. “I have moments like that myself, Flinx. Everyone does. I just want for us to be together. I think if we’re together and you come to feel for me the way I feel about you, there’s nothing we can’t cope with. I have access to sealed records. My security clearance is very high. Coldstripe may be small, but our contacts are excellent.”

He was shaking his head. “You’ll never get into the Church records concerning the Society. There’s a moral imperative lock on them. I know, I’ve tried. You can work your way through the government copies with bribes and coercion, but you can’t do that within the Church.”

“We’ll manage. Anything’s possible when you’re in love.”

“Are you so sure you’re in love?”

“You don’t give a centimeter, do you?”

“I can’t afford to. Are you?”

“I’m not sure, now. I thought I was, but—is anyone ever really sure?” Her smile expanded. “See, you aren’t the only one who can be badly upset by something happening inside them. What I don’t understand is why you keep pushing me away when all I want is to help and comprehend. Why won’t you let me help you?”

“Because I am dangerous. Isn’t that obvious?”

“No, it isn’t. Just because some misguided people tinkered with your genes before you were born,
if
any of that is true, doesn’t make you a threat. When I look at you, all I see is a young man unsure of himself and his future who went out of his way to help me when I was in trouble, and who could just as easily have ignored me and gone on his merry way. A young man who risked his life to save that of a stranger. A man who is kind and gentle and intelligent, if a bit cynical at times. Why should I see a threat in that?”