Reunion (7 page)

There were three of them, seated at their positions behind a shieldscreen. It buzzed slightly as Cayacu made contact, a warning to stay back. Anyone trying to force the screen would receive a strong enough shock to lay them out flat—outside the portal. Bored, one of the guards looked up from his battery of security monitors and eyed the two men reluctantly.

“Yar? What is it?”

The old man spoke while Flinx hovered in the background, trying to conceal his face without appearing to do so. “I be Cayacu of Pacyatambu, a shaman of much experience and great knowledge.” He indicated Flinx. “This is Gallito, my assistant.”

The sentry was somewhat less than impressed. “So?”

“I have been asked by friends of the owner to bless a vessel stored here.” Reaching into the sack secured at his waist, he pulled out a feathered rattle from which issued an especially noxious smell and shook it lightly in the guard’s direction. “I have everything with me that I need.”

Another sentry glanced up from his bank of monitors. “Process ’em, Avro, and let ’em in.” Ignoring the silent Flinx, the senior sentry focused on the weathered shaman. “Better make it a short ceremony. You’ve got ten minutes.”

“Thank thee, sir.” Cayacu bowed gracefully and shuffled to his left, to stand within the confines of the security scanner. Flinx edged into the circular space alongside the old man.

There was a brief hum as the security device was activated. Other than a slight tingling of the scalp, there was nothing to indicate that anything had happened. The hum ceased, the warning lights went out, and the two visitors stepped clear.

“Just a minute.” Frowning at one of his monitors, the second guard gestured to the third. “What’s this here?”

“Hold it, you two.” The first sentry remained seated, but his right hand had slipped downward to shade the butt of the weapon holstered at his waist. He waited for further details from his companions.

The middle sentinel spoke up. “You, ‘assistant.’ Come over here.” Flinx sensed wariness, uncertainty, challenge within the woman. Not a promising combination.

Estimating the height of the fence that enclosed the shuttle service area, Flinx gauged his chances of making it up and over before port security personnel could run him down. The
Teacher’s
shuttle was located about halfway across the crowded tarmac. He decided his chances were slight, even if the fence was not electrified or otherwise charged to keep out the unauthorized. He took a couple of hesitant steps forward.

The woman who had called out to him was eyeing him intently. After a moment of silence, she addressed the younger man for a second time. “What’s that coiled up under your outfit? On the shoulder? It shows here as organic.” She indicated one of her monitors.

Flinx replied deferentially. “It’s a minidrag—a flying snake.” Should he say something else, he wondered?

Cayacu stepped in. “We use many serpents in our ceremonies. Some live, some dead, some pickled.”

The woman made a face. “Spare me the details. Save it for those tourists with more money than sense.” Turning back to her monitor, she muttered to her companion. “That gibes with what I see here. Let ’em through.”

Heart pounding, Flinx followed a buoyant Cayacu as they passed through the deactivated section of fence. With a slight cracking sound it sprang back to life behind them. Ten minutes, the sentry had told them. He tried not to look back. At any moment he expected to hear the whine of security sirens and the shouts of eager police closing on them. Catching up to the shaman, he urged the old man to walk faster.

Flinx had been privy to many spectacular sights in his time, but none were as stirring as the silhouette of the
Teacher’s
shuttle, parked where he had left it many days ago. It did not appear to have been touched. Verbal contact activated its AI, which promptly assured him that its integrity had not been violated and that no unauthorized individuals had recently come snooping around. The shuttle could use force to prevent any such from boarding, Flinx knew, but denial of access could in itself be enough to set off alarms among the authorities. If anyone had linked him to this particular shuttle, they had not yet managed to pass the information along to those in a position to make use of it. He had no intention of giving them any more time to make the connection.

A few coded commands delivered verbally, a concise security check performed by the ship’s AI, and the ventral loading elevator stood open awaiting his next move. Turning, he bade farewell to the old shaman, taking both deeply creased hands in his own.

“I owe you a lot, Cayacu. How can I repay you?” A quick glance southward showed that all was still quiet in the vicinity of the security post. Its denizens needed to remain bored for another few minutes, and then he would be beyond their reach.

The old man smiled encouragingly. “Continue to confound authority, sonny. Always do the unexpected.” Chuckling, he stepped back and began fumbling in his sack. “I have a feeling thou hast a talent for it.”

Smiling gratefully, Flinx turned to go, then hesitated. “What are you doing?”

A battered rattle heavy with colorful tropical feathers emerged from the sack. “Preparing to properly anoint thy craft, of course. Thou don’t think I’d let thee get off without receiving the blessings of the ancients, do thou?” Half closing his eyes, he launched into a chant not unlike the one Flinx had heard him sing in the buried city.

“My thanks.” Flinx started toward the elevator, speaking back over his shoulder. “Just don’t linger too long, or you’ll find yourself anointed by shuttle backdraft.”

Cayacu finished and walked away as the powerful engines of the shuttle sprang to hollow-voiced life. A word into a pickup, and he was passed out of the parking sector and back into the port proper. As he cajoled his superannuated skimmer out the main exit and back into the coastal night, a flurry of activity could be seen off to his left, where the main entrance to the port accessed the main north-south Lima conurbation track. An unusual amount of excitement for this time of night, he mused. What could possibly be the cause?

Far overhead, a very small but efficient shuttlecraft was already streaking through the stratosphere. Turning south toward home, the shaman had no one to smile to but himself. It was enough. Not all magicians were old, he knew, and not every magic familiar. Some magicks were small, some great, and some inexplicable even to other shamans. It did not matter. He was neither resentful nor envious.

It was good to have been able to help a brother in trouble.

Chapter 5

The clean, clear emptiness of space as the shuttle emerged from Terran atmosphere filled Flinx with relief. Not that he was safely on his way yet. In addition to the commercial stations that ringed the homeworld there were a number of orbiting military depots and other government facilities to which the public was not granted access. No one could simply approach as sensitive a place as Earth and set down in a shuttle. The identities of decelerating vessels and those individuals they carried had to be processed; quarantine procedures had to be acknowledged and followed; clearances had to be granted.

Leaving, however, was a far less complicated business. No one particularly cared if a contaminated crew or cargo set out to infect the void.

Even so, and even though he was not challenged as his shuttle’s engines powered down from escape velocity to maneuvering mode, he paid close attention to every monitor within the cockpit. His presence was not necessary: The shuttle would warn him if they were challenged. But he was too nervous to stay stuck in transport harness while the craft worked its way through orbital traffic toward the drifting
Teacher.
He floated loosely in the command chair, held in place only by his grip on the arms.

Within the cabin, Pip tumbled free, twisting and turning contentedly. She had adapted to weightlessness years ago and thoroughly enjoyed the occasional release from gravity. Freed from the constraints of Earthpull, she coiled and contorted in the air, pleated wings fluttering gaily, looking more like a free-swimming nudi-branch than an Alaspinian minidrag. Once back on board the
Teacher,
the overdrift from its posigravity drive would force her once again to beat air to stay airborne.

Like all ships waiting to depart outsystem, the
Teacher
was parked well away from the overcrowded equatorial belt. The farther the shuttle traveled from that glittering planetary necklace of stations large and small, automated and inhabited, the more Flinx relaxed. When at last the
Teacher
loomed large enough in the port to see with the naked eye, he would have jumped for joy had not the danger of doing so in zero g restrained him.

There was nothing for him to do now but loosen up, watch, and wait. Automatons handled nearly all modern navigation, with greater speed, efficiency, and accuracy than any human pilots could manage. In ancient times, he knew, machines had been built to serve as backups to people. Now the humans functioned as backups for their superbly crafted machines. Shuttle and mother ship communicated in high-speed bursts of compressed information while their master and his serpentine companion awaited their conjoined cybernetic permission to change ships.

A telltale lit up on the console and a voice, clear and crisp, filled the cockpit. “Shuttle ident one-one-four-six, this is peaceforcer station
Chagos.
The favor of a reply is requested.”

Cursing silently, Flinx hesitated for as long as he thought tolerable before responding. By that time the shuttle’s engines had shut down completely and the atmospheric transport was drifting with regulated precision into the open, expectant hold on the
Teacher’s
port side.

“
Chagos
station, this is one-one-four-six. How’s the weather where you are?” Outside, the terminator line cut a black swath across the sapphire splendor of the Indian Ocean.

“Depends what side of the station you’re sunbathing on, one-one-four-six. We are in receipt of a general query from western South America to hold all, repeat all, departures for half an orbital period. This is a general caution for all vessels that have applied to depart outsystem and is not specific to you. Can you comply?”

Muted clanking sounds reverberated through the shuttle’s hull as it coupled with and was locked down in its holding bay. Pushing off gently, Flinx floated effortlessly out of the command chair. Gathering up Pip, he then kicked toward the main exit. Proper gravity would not return to his surroundings until the underpinnings of the
Teacher
’s KK-drive were reactivated.

“No problem.” He responded promptly, knowing that the shuttle’s omnidirectional pick-up would find and amplify his voice. “Hey, drifter, tell me—what’s going on?”

“We don’t know yet.” The voice from the station was devoid of duplicity. “We’re promised details within half an hour. But something has a lot of important bureaucratic types stirred up downstairs. Whatever it is, it’s significant enough to kick orbital as well as dirt-grubber backsides into action. Drift easy, and you’ll get the word as soon as we do.”

“Must be serious.” With a soft hiss, air from the recently drowsing and now revived
Teacher
blended with that of the shuttle. By his presence, Flinx announced his return. In corresponding silence, the ship acknowledged his arrival, identified him, and began to rouse itself. It would take only a little while for all systems to be up and online, Flinx knew. That was a good thing, since he now had less than thirty minutes in which to leave the Solar System and still avoid a confrontation.

Of course, he did not know if the general orbital alert even had anything to do with him and his flight from Nazca. It might involve some other matter entirely. He knew only that he could not take the chance of finding out, much less risk the arrival of a heavily armed peaceforcer sent to take him into custody.

As he drifted out of the shuttle, gently tugging a fluttering Pip along by her tail, gravity began to return. He made sure that he was perpendicular to the deck so that when the field reached full strength, he would land on his feet and not on his head. Without pausing to check on the status of the rest of the vessel, he made his way quickly to the bridge. The ship greeted him informally, in accordance with its programming.

“Set course outsystem,” he told it as he settled into the lounge that fronted the main console. He could have given the same directions from anywhere on the vessel, including his bedroom, but would not have had access to the same number of reciprocal functions that he did here.

“Destination?” Today the ship spoke in the voice of a kindly old thranx.

“Manual transfer. Acknowledge receipt of coordinates.” Reaching into a pocket, he removed the nanostorage chyp and inserted it into an appropriate receptacle. The ship responded in less than sixty seconds.

“Coordinates received. I am obliged to give warning. The intended destination lies outside Commonwealth boundaries, away from all safe sectors, and beyond the neutral zone. Do you really wish to penetrate the spatial parameters of the AAnn Empire?”

“I am aware of the loci indicated by these coordinates. Proceed at speed.”

“It shall be as you command, O master.”

“And no sarcasm!” Flinx snapped at the ship’s AI, even though he was the one who had precountenanced such a possible response.

Out in front of the
Teacher,
beyond the vast generating fan that was the resonator of the KK-drive, a tiny pinpoint of light appeared as the Caplis generator was activated. Slowly at first, then gathering speed, the ship began to move. Flinx chafed at the pace. Changeover, the shift from space-normal to space-plus where interstellar travel became possible, could not take place within the Solar System. The
Teacher
’s own safety system would not permit it. Until he reached changeover, he could be followed. Whether he could be run down once under way was another matter.

The
Teacher
’s course took it out of the Sun’s system well below the plane of the ecliptic. Consequently, it was unlikely that interception from one of the many military or commercial bases located at outsystem sites such as Europa or Triton would be possible. The more distance he put between himself and Earth, the greater the likelihood of a successful escape.

A voice crackled in the cool, pleasant air of the room. “Commercial deepspace vessel
Delarion Maucker
,” it demanded, using the false identification Flinx had provided to orbital authority upon arrival, “there is a general hold on all departures from orbit. We show you cutting moonsphere in two minutes and continuing to accelerate. You have not received clearance for departure.”

“Sorry.” Once again, an omnidirectional pickup juggled his response. “We’ve got a schedule to keep. Important cargo for Rhyinpine. Guess someone mishandled the notice. Do you wish us to shut down departure program and return? Repeat, do you wish us to eventuate program and return?”

There was a pause, which Flinx had counted on. No one wanted to be responsible for forcing a commercial vessel that was already outbound to terminate its route. His immediate response to the query and indicated willingness to comply with its attendant directive would hopefully serve to diminish any incipient suspicion. It had better, he thought. Now that the ship’s KK-drive was fully active, he could not make use of the
Teacher
’s formidable masking and screening capabilities.

“Delarion Maucker.”
the enjoining voice finally replied, “did you embrace docking with shuttlecraft one-one-four-six?”

“What’s that?” Numerals pregnant with meaning drifted above the console like stoned fireflies. Heading outsystem, the
Teacher
continued to accelerate rapidly. “You’re breaking up. There’s some trouble with clarification. Check your transmitter field, and we’ll run an amplified throughput on our receivers.”

There was, of course, nothing wrong with the communications at either end of the conversation. Flinx had heard every word sent in his direction with perfect lucidity. But by the time that fact had been established to everyone’s satisfaction, the
Teacher
was cutting the orbital sphere of Uranus, the impossibly bright glow from the dilating KK-drive field too bright to look at directly. The synthetic gravitational distortion had begun to warp into a teardrop shape, the shaft of the drop flowing backward to distort space immediately behind the bulge of the field—space occupied by the
Teacher.

“Delarion Maucker.”
The original voice had been replaced by another that was both irritated and insistent. “You are instructed to terminate passage to Rhyinpine and return immediately to Earth orbit. This directive is ship specific. Repeat, you are directed to—”

Around the
Teacher
, the imposing strength of the KK-drive field shunted itself and everything contained within it from ordinary space into that strange region of compacted reality known colloquially as space-plus. Velocity, as it was understood in the normal universe, increased explosively. The domineering phonation that belonged to Earth vanished, cut off by suddenly achieved distances best described as absurd. Having been summoned from Triton, two peaceforcer patrol craft proceeding at speed arrived at the intended rendezvous coordinates five minutes after nothing was there. On distant Earth itself, rankled authorities fumed impotently.

Within the unceremonious, homey confines of the
Teacher,
Flinx relaxed. One ship could not follow or confront another while in space-plus. The
Teacher
’s navigation kept it on course, proceeding not to Rhyinpine, but to an unknown world lying within the outer boundaries of the AAnn Empire.

No, not unknown, he reminded himself. Someone connected with an innocuous-seeming food manufacturer was going there.
He
was going there. By the very act of their going, the world in question removed itself from the index of the unknown. Who was preceding him, and why, he had yet to find out.

Commonwealth vessels did not stray beyond the neutral zone known as the Torsee Provinces. It was not a sensible thing to do. Cultural aspects and attitudes of the AAnn were well known. Playing the role of forgiving hosts was not among them. He would have to tread very quietly. In this he had, to the best of his knowledge, several advantages that were denied those preceding him. Thanks to the singular skills of its Ulru-Ujurrian builders, the
Teacher
was capable of several tricks no other KK-drive craft could replicate. To enter and leave AAnn space without incident, he might well need to make use of all of them.

His thoughts were not only of the enigmatic quest that lay before him, but of the unpretentious white-and-blue sphere that was now an invisible speck among the firmament aft. So—that was Earth. He had not thought much of it prior to his arrival, had not expected a second visit to do anything to change his opinion. Not until the old shaman Cayacu had put him in touch with its true past, one cool night on an isolated ocean shore in the presence of an entombed city, had anything been altered. Now he knew that, truly, it was his homeworld as well, in a way that Moth, the world of his youth, was not and never could be. Interesting, he mused. It appeared that one did not have to grow up in a place to recognize it as home.

His gaze rose to contemplate the sweep of distorted space outside the chamber port. Moth might be his childhood abode, and Earth his ancestral haven, but this ship was home to him now. Within his head, all was quiet for the first time in weeks. No tempestuous emotions flailed at him, no overwrought feelings instigated the familiar painful pounding at the back of his skull. His vision was clear. In void there was peace.

With a sigh, he settled back into the seat and bid the ship manufacture him something tall, cool, and sweet to drink. Such were the privileges of ownership and command. He would have traded them one and all for an ordinary life, for freedom from what he was and what he had seen. In lieu of that, ice, sugar, and flavoring would have to do.

Within the hour he was reclining, drink at his side, in the ship’s main lounge. A refuge from overwrought thought as well as the peaceful cold deadness outside the hull, the spacious chamber had recently been redecorated and embellished to suit his unassuming preferences.

Instead of copies of great art, or synthesized enviros, or expensive holos, the lounge environment was presently composed entirely of natural materials. In this desire to keep something of the physical world close around him, Flinx was not exceptional among deep-space travelers. Hence the seeming incongruity of firms that specialized in placing reassembled boulders and beaches, trees and flowers deep within the wholly artificial confines of space-traversing vessels. In this the Ulru-Ujurrians had complied admirably with their young friend’s wishes. The
Teacher
contained mechanisms that allowed him to alter the decor as his mood demanded.