Patrimony (25 page)

He’s not looking at me, Flinx realized. He’s studying me.

“Stop it,” he snapped icily. “Stop it right now.”

“Stop what?” Anayabi’s emotions belied his innocence. “You have no idea how rewarding your unexpected appearance is for an old man. I am gratified merely to see you alive, Twelve-A. Alive and—”

Flinx could not keep himself from finishing the other man’s sentence. “Not warped? Not misshapen? Not some poor, miserable, crawling thing that needs to be put out of its misery?” Now it was his turn, as he stroked and soothed and restrained the increasingly restless Pip, to lean forward. “There are all kinds of distortions, old man.”

Though he tried to sustain his anger, he could no more do so than he could continue to deny to himself the truth of the relentless Anayabi’s statements. He was too stunned to marshal an appropriate response. What more could he say, what else could he do? The sense of loss, the emotional hollow that had materialized inside him, was overwhelming and threatened to drown him with its import.

After all these years, after more than a decade of desperate, hopeful searching, not only had he not found his father—he had lost a mother.

I am nothing, he thought.

No, that wasn’t quite true. He was certainly something. Some
thing
. A human thing, Anayabi had insisted. Had insisted with a hint of an emotional as well as visual smirk. What kind of human-thing not even the last of the Meliorares was able to say. Anayabi’s next words indicated that he very much wanted to know, however.

“When the representatives of the sanctimonious United Church combined with ignorant Commonwealth authorities to smash and scatter the Society, a number of incomplete experiments were dispersed throughout the Arm. Preoccupied with saving ourselves from mindwipe, those of us who survived the initial storm and its subsequent outrages quickly lost touch with our test subjects. In nearly every instance we never learned which of these were successes or failures. Tell me, Twelve-A—which are you? Without access to long-destroyed records, I cannot correlate generalized hopes with specific manipulations. Besides reading emotions what else, if anything, can you
do
?”

So earnest was the query, so genuine the request, that for a moment Flinx almost answered honestly. He caught himself in time. The last thing this cavalier toymaker deserved was any kind of insight into the life and nature of one of his unhappy, unwilling subjects. A new kind of calm settled over Flinx.

“Nothing,” he replied evenly. “Other than perceiving the emotions of others, I can’t do anything. Except, apparently, track down sinister dead ends like yourself.”

“Nothing at all? I have already decided from talking with you that your intelligence level is nothing remarkable.” Anayabi delivered this observation as coolly as if the subject of the slight were not sitting directly across from him. “No unusual abilities, no great physical strength, no exceptional enhancement of the other senses?”

“No,” Flinx told him categorically. “Nothing. Except for being cursed by the need to track down the truth about my origins, I’m—ordinary.”

“I see.
Ordinary.
An
ordinary
empathetic telepath.” Anayabi nodded at some private thought. “I am afraid, Twelve-A, that in the lexicon of the Society
ordinary,
when measured against the expectations of the Society and even if combined with what is after all not such a useful ability—a talent for reading emotions—must be placed in the same category as failure. Besides which, you now know not only where I live but also who I am.” The muzzle of the pistol started to rise slightly. “This has been fascinating and enlightening. Meeting you, reminiscing—but on balance and despite the brief burst of pleasure it has given me, it would appear that I should have left you in the snow.”

Preternaturally sensitive to such things, Pip perceived the stark shift in the other man’s emotional balance an instant before Flinx did. Unfurling her wings, slitted eyes focused unblinkingly on the other man, she rose from her master’s lap.

Possibly she was getting old. Despite his long association with her, Flinx had no idea how old she was and therefore had no idea how long she had to live. For self-evident reasons, records on lethally venomous Alaspinian minidrags were notoriously incomplete. Possibly Anayabi was just lucky. The reason was immaterial.

His pistol blew a hole in her left wing. He could not possibly have focused so quickly on and aimed so accurately at the pink-and-blue blur. One lucky shot in a lifetime of close association with Flinx finally brought her down. Spiraling awkwardly downward, she crashed to the floor and lay there, writhing and coiling in pain. A stunned Flinx found he could only stare.

“It was going to attack me,” a defensive Anayabi stated with confidence. “I have this feeling it will try to do so again. As always, first things first…” Training the pistol on the helpless flying snake, he took careful aim.

“No!”
Rising from the couch, Flinx unhesitatingly threw himself between the weapon and the animal with whom he had shared an unbreakable empathetic bond since childhood. It was not the first time in such a dire situation that he had acted without thinking.

It was not the first time in such a dire situation that something powerful and inexplicable overwhelmed him and consciousness fled.

CHAPTER 14

When light and awareness began to return in equal measure, Flinx found that he was not entirely mystified at what had happened. Because the same thing had happened to him several times before. Most recently on Visaria when an alien assassin had tried to kill him, and again on a previous occasion when the offending party had been comprised of human executioners. While he had confessed to Anayabi his abilities as an empathetic telepath, he had neglected to mention the singular and still-unknown attribute that had sporadically stepped in to defend him whenever he was on the verge of being killed. His impulsive and instinctive attempt to protect Pip had placed him in that position yet again, and had once more caused the mysterious mechanism to engage.

He wondered if Anayabi had survived long enough to be enlightened.

Pip was injured, but alive. She lay coiled on the floor, licking her perforated wing. Picking her up carefully, Flinx cradled her in his left arm while stroking her gently with his other hand and whispering soothing words. While comforting her, he studied the damage that had been done to the room. Though he had a good idea what had happened, he still had no clearer idea how he managed to wreak such havoc. As it had on all previous such occasions, the unidentified, innate mechanism that involuntarily engaged to protect his life had concurrently rendered him unconscious.

A perfectly round hole some two meters in diameter had appeared in the rear wall, about a meter above the floor and halfway between the still-smoldering fireplace and another doorway. Approaching the gap, he saw that another chamber lay beyond the one in which he was standing. Conspicuous in the next room’s far wall was a second hole. It was a perfect match to the one through which he was staring. Beyond it, another room and still another corresponding hole. Seen through this third consecutive circular gap, rocky landscape was visible. The faint rush of distant wind could be heard over the crackle of the fireplace. If his shadowy defensive ability had punched a hole in the weather, that was not visible.

Neither was Anayabi. There was no sign of the ex-Meliorare. That is, there was not if one discounted the revealing discolorations that stained the edges of the first hole. These sprayed outward from the still-crumbling periphery in a faint ray-like pattern, like a mottled sunburst. Some of the stains were pale white; others, a very faint red in hue. The explosive medium was comprised of bone and blood that had been powdered and vaporized.

Unaccountably, Flinx felt sick to his stomach. Having in his relatively short life already encountered far too much untidy death, he was no stranger to the ghastly fascia of gore. He had unavoidably been responsible for a portion of it himself. Then why should this one particular incident affect him so?

After all, Anayabi was not his biological father. In detailing Flinx’s origins, the Meliorare gengineer had callously admitted as much. He was no more Flinx’s father than Theon al-bar Cocarol had been. Their “relationship” to him had been that of manufacturers to a product, of scientists to an experiment. So what if they were the closest things Flinx would ever know to a paternal parent?

How many men, he mused mordantly, got to kill their father twice over?

The two Meliorares were not all that his visit to Visaria and now Gestalt had dispatched. Following Anayabi’s harsh and uncompromising explication, something else inside Flinx had died. Whereas previously he had only felt terribly, dreadfully alienated, there was now a vast emptiness within him, as if he had gone all hollow inside.
You were made,
the late, unlamented Anayabi had told him.
You are a manufacture.

A manufacture. A human manufacture. Wasn’t that a contradiction in terms? But then, he told himself, what was
Homo sapiens
stripped of pretension and self-importance if not an organic machine? In the end, was it the process of manufacture that was important, or the product? Certainly the Meliorares had subscribed to the latter belief. If he believed similarly, was he the same as they? Was there in the final analysis anything to differentiate him from his cold, calculating progenitors?

Ethics, perhaps. Morals. A sense of purpose. The last, he knew, was in imminent danger of slipping away. Concern for others, certainly. He was sure that still held true because he spent the next hour searching the house for medical supplies with which to treat Pip’s injured wing. Careful scrutiny with the handheld scanner he found indicated that the damage was confined mostly to membrane. Given time and care, it should heal good as new. Pip would soar again. Would he?

A check of a chronometer showed that several hours remained until evening. That was when the transportation Anayabi had earlier unwittingly engaged to take his then as-yet-unidentified house guest back to Tlossene was due to arrive. Flinx would go out to meet the transporter as soon as it appeared. It would be more circumspect to do that than to allow potentially querulous visitors a look at the building’s violently altered interior.

While he was treating Pip, yet another unwelcome thought presented itself. Were the Meliorares the only ones who knew the truth of his origins? Could there be others who had been monitoring his progress, his life, his activities, all along? Had the Eint Truzenzuzex and Bran Tse-Mallory really just casually made his acquaintance in Drallar one day all those many years ago? For a moment, feverish suspicion and acute paranoia threatened to overwhelm all other thoughts.

Then his reflections turned to Mother Mastiff. There had been no guile in that gruff old woman, he was certain. If any of the deeply held sentiment she felt toward him was made up, he would long since have perceived its speciousness.

Take one step at a time,
she had often told him, wagging a finger warningly in his face as she did so.
Even if it’s a small step.

Very well. That was what he would do. Care for Pip, make his way back to Tlossene, board his shuttle, and rejoin the
Teacher
. Once more back in familiar, secure surroundings, he could then decide how to proceed. With the task Tse-Mallory and Tru had placed on him. With his life. If he decided the first was worth completing. If he decided the second was worth pursuing.

Lost within himself and just plain lost, he also lost track of the time. It seemed that mere minutes had passed since he had finished treating Pip when he heard the sound of the approaching transport. Setting and sealing her wounded wing as best he could, he wrapped her loosely in the same blanket that had warmed him earlier and carried her outside.

While he waited in the open alcove that fronted the residence, isolated flakes of pink snow swirled around him, perishing against the warmth of his face or lingering longer on his clothes. What thoughts he succeeding in mustering were focused elsewhere, on matters and people and worlds far from Gestalt. He had to decide whether to return to deal with them and if so, what questions to ask, what challenges to put forward. He had to decide not only how much he was willing to extend himself to help others survive, but also himself. It was going to be harder than ever to implement such tasks. Coming to Gestalt in hopes of expanding his own reality, he had been left instead with an empty shell.

The approaching skimmer did not bother to circle. Its confident pilot brought it down straight and true onto the small landing pad that fronted a large, nearby storage structure. Blinking away blowing snow, Flinx started jogging toward it, holding a squirming Pip as close to his chest as he could without risking further damage to her wounded wing. As he drew near, he automatically reached out with his Talent to perform a cursory scan of the craft’s interior. There was only the one male pilot, whose emotions were controlled, internally focused, and nonhostile.

As soon as the side portal opened he hurried on board, not wanting to delay, not wanting to give the pilot time to inquire as to the whereabouts of the person who had hired him. Once engaged in conversation, Flinx was sure he could talk his way around that absence. Like anyone operating in Gestalt’s wild and undisciplined backcountry, the skimmer’s pilot would be interested first and foremost in receiving payment for his services. As long as this was forthcoming, he was not likely to question the source of his recompense.

“Find yourself a seat, citizen,” a gruff, slightly irritated voice called back to Flinx from the vicinity of the forward console. “I’ll have you in Tlossene fast as weather permits.” As Flinx had hoped, the busy pilot did not even bother to inquire about Anayabi.

Once above treetop level, the skimmer pivoted cleanly and accelerated. Peering out a transparent portion of the canopy, Flinx watched as the dead Meliorare’s dwelling receded into the distance. The damage that had been inflicted by his mystifying, enigmatic defensive capability had never been visible from the craft.

“Don’t go wandering around unless you have to,” the pilot told him. “We might hit some chop, and I won’t be responsible if you go banging off the walls. Your passage has been prepaid, but I guess you already know that.”

Flinx had not, and was grateful to hear that was the case. It would allow him to settle back and enjoy the journey without having to worry about monetary negotiations.

Setting the skimmer on auto, the pilot swung his seat around to face the single passenger. “So tell me, how are things up in this part of the northlands? There’s talk that several NaTl-Seeker villages are going to combine their efforts to—”

His chatter halted abruptly. Preoccupied with Pip, Flinx had been paying only half a mind to the conversation. The other half now detected a pointed, unexpected spike in the pilot’s emotional state. Frowning, Flinx focused his perception. Indifference was replaced in the pilot first by uncertainty, then by excitement, and lastly by a briskly burgeoning antagonism. Without revealing that he was aware of any of these emotional developments, Flinx carefully set Pip and her blanket to one side. It wasn’t easy, because the flying snake was doing everything possible to free herself from the encumbrance of the blanket. Try as she might, however, she could not possibly rise on only one good wing.

By the time Flinx had placed Pip out of the way, the pilot had drawn his handgun and taken aim at his passenger. Flinx eyed him evenly.

“Have I done something wrong?”

“Hmm.” The pilot’s tone turned quietly mocking. “Let’s see. You almost destroyed my skimmer, forcing me to rely on this nondescript and thoroughly inadequate loaner until the very expensive repairs to mine can be completed. You did something to me that I still can’t figure out. If it feels like you’re trying to do it again, I won’t hesitate: I’ll shoot you before whatever it is can take effect. And you had the indecency not to die conclusively. That oversight can be fixed more cheaply than my skimmer.”

The account was detailed enough to tell Flinx whom he was dealing with. The more he perused the pilot’s emotions, the more the memory of his previous encounter with them strengthened, like a blurry picture slowly coming into focus.

“You’re the one who shot down the skimmer I hired to come up here,” he growled accusingly. “You’re the one responsible for Bleshmaa’s death.”

A blend of amusement and contempt filled Halvorsen’s face as well as his emotions. “You had a Tlel with you? Of course—an escort. Customary. Well, if it’s dead, then the planet’s a slightly cleaner place. It may be theirs by birthright, but frankly Gestalt is too good for the fetid little flat-heads.” The muzzle of the pistol did not shift. This man, Flinx saw as well as sensed, would not be easily distracted. He would have to proceed with great care.

He did not wonder why he had failed to detect the hunter’s true nature during the skimmer’s approach and touchdown, or immediately upon boarding. Unaware that the solo passenger he had contracted to pick up was the very one he had previously tried to kill, Halvorsen’s emotions had been devoid of aggression. Ironically, had he known that Flinx was his intended passenger, he would have been unable to mask his emotions and Flinx’s Talent would have provided advance warning. Halvorsen’s ignorance had proven his greatest advantage.