Thranx are stiff-jointed but extremely sure of foot. Nevertheless, Flinx's pronouncement caused his insectoid companion to stumble. Multiple-lensed eyes regarded him with astonishment.
"My... what?"
Flinx hesitated as they turned still another corner. How far did this underground world extend laterally, he wondered. Perhaps for the length and breadth of the whole island?
"I might not have the pronunciation correct," he said awkwardly. "But aren't you related to an old philosoph named Truzenzuzex?"
"Say that one more time," she coaxed him. He did so. "You're sure of that stress on the family syllable?" A positive nod. "I'm not sure 'uncle' would be a proper Terrangio analog, but yes, we are closely related. I haven't seen Tru in several years, not since my adolescence began."
"You know him well?"
"Not really. He was one of those childish gods-you understand, an adult whom other adults idolized? How do you happen to know him?"
"We were companions on a journey not long ago," Flinx explained.
"He was an Eint, you know," she went on thoughtfully. "Very famous, very controversial in his beliefs. Too controversial, many in the Clan thought. Then when I heard he had left the Church ..."
The sentence died quickly. "It is not discussed in the Clan. I've heard practically nothing of him since he vanished many years ago to engage in private research with a human stingship partner of his youth."
"Bran Tse-MaHory," Flinx supplied, reminiscing.
The girl nearly stumbled again. "I've never known a human so full of the nectar of the unexpected. You are a strange being, Flinx-man."
When the question of his strangeness came up it was always a good time to change the subject.
He gestured upward. "So the Records Depot above- ground isn't much more than camouflage for the real Church center."
"I ..." She looked ahead and Flinx noted that the Counselor hadn't missed a word of their conversation, judging from the speed with which he replied.
"Go ahead and tell him, padre-elect. If we don't he'll probably divine it anyway. How about it, son - are you clairvoyant?"
"If I was, I wouldn't be asking, would I?" Flinx shot back nervously, trying to conceal his increasing unease at the Counselor's pointed comments. He had to get out of here. If he was still present when word of his extraordinary escape on Hivehom trickled down to Jiwe's level, they might never let him go. He would become something he had always fought to avoid-a curiosity, to be studied and examined like a pinned butterfly under glass.
But he couldn't turn and run. He would have to wait this out.
Now that she'd been granted permission, Sylzenzuzex explained enthusiastically, "The aboveground De- pot is fully utilized, but the majority of the installation extends under much of Bali, in many directions. There are only two ways in and out. Through the records center, above and behind us now, and through the undersea shuttleport facing Lombok." Her eyes glistened.
"It's a wonderful place. So much to study. So much to learn here, Flinx!"
Flinx's reaction so far had been something less than boundless enthusiasm. He suspected Sylzenzuzex came from a rather coddled family. His own blithe trust of honored people and institutions had died somewhere between the ages of eight and nine.
He noticed how the overhead fluorescents filled her enormous eyes with ever-changing rainbows. "The active volcanic throat of Mount Agung is channeled and controlled. It supplies all the power the Church complex requires. The entire island is completely self-contained and self-sustaining. It..."
She broke off as Namoto and Jiwe stopped in front of a door flanked by two Church guards wearing aqua- marine uniforms. Their apparent relaxation, Flinx sensed, was deceptive, as was the casual way they seemed to hold their beamers.
Proper identification was exchanged, and they were admitted to a much smaller corridor. Two additional screenings by six more armed men and thranx finally gained them entrance to a modest chamber. In the center of this room was a narrow bed. It sat like a spider in its web at the center of a gleaming mass of highly sophisticated medical machinery.
As they moved toward the bed Flinx saw it contained a single immobile man. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. Indirect, carefully aligned lighting insured that his vacant eyes would not be damaged and a tiny device regularly moistened his frozen-open orbs. Awake but unaware, conscious but not cognizant, the man floated nude save for wires and tubes on a bed of clear medical gelatin.
Flinx tried to follow the maze of lines and cables and circuitry that stopped just short of metallic mummification, decided that more than anything else the immobile man resembled an over utilized power terminal.
Jiwe glanced once at the sleeper. "This is Mordecai Povalo." He turned to Flinx. "Ever hear of him?"
Flinx hadn't.
The Counselor leaned over the motionless figure. "He's been hovering between life and death for weeks now. On certain days he'll show some slight improvement. Other days will require the efforts of a dozen physicians to keep him living. Whether he has any will to live left no one can tell.
"The technicians insist his mind is still active, still functioning. His body tolerates the machines that keep it running. Although his eyes are open we can't tell if they're registering images. Just because his visual centers continue to operate doesn't mean he's seeing anything."
Flinx found himself drawn to the frozen figure. "Will he ever come out of his coma?"
"According to the doctors it's not properly a coma. They don't have a term for it yet. Whatever it is ... no. They expect him to stay like this until his mind quits or his body finally rejects the life-sustaining equipment."
"Then why," Flinx wanted to know, "keep him alive?"
On Evoria there dwelt a thranx Di-einf ccaled Tintonurac, who was universally famed for his brilliance - though of present, he wore the look of a happy idiot.
Of course, his insectoid face could not produce a human expression, but in the years since the Amalgamation humans had learned to read thranx expressions with the some facility their quasi-symbiotic insect associates had teamed to interpret mankind's.
No human or thranx noticed his expression at the moment, an expression alien to the face of the most acclaimed member of his Hive.
Head of his clan, he was a credit to his aunts and uncles, to his hive-mother and to his real parents, Tintonorac's particular wizardry lay in the ability to translate the concepts and schemes of others into reality-for he was o Master Fabricator, or precision engineer. Not only did his mechanical creations improve upon their originator's initial drawings, they were as attractive to look upon as they were supremely functional. Debate raged among his admirers as to whether their idol should more properly be considered o sculptor than an engineer.
Among his many products were a device which neatly dispatched a virulent human disease, an energy multiplex system for the hydroeleciric plants so prevalent on thranx worlds, and an improved fire-control system for the sometimes wild yet irresistible SCCAM weapons system that was the mainstay of the combined human-thranx peace-forcer fleet. There were still others, some more esoteric than believable, which only his magic could transform into working devices.
But none of his inventions was the cause of his giddily pleased expression in this eighth month of the tail end of the Season of High Pollen on Evorio. The source of his pleasure was a glistening object that he kept concealed in a drawer of his workbench. He was staring of if now, reveling in ifs message and its glory as he sat at work in the laboratory, his six assistants attending to business around hint. All were respected scientists and engineers in their own right. Of the group, four were thranx and two human. It was a measure of the admiration accorded Tintonurac that such people would volunteer to serve as his assistants, when they could easily have had laboratories and staffs of their own.
The Di-eint's mandibles moved in thranx laughter as he chuckled of a new thought. How curious a thing to occur to him! What might it be like to combine the two liquid metals in the flasks on his truhand's left with the catolyst solvent locked in its container across the room?
Acting as if half asleep, Tintonurac walked to the cabbinet and removed the solvent. Turning back to his lounge-seat, he discovered that the pleasure grew deeper and more profound as he pursued this course of action.
Dridenvopca was working with the human Cassidy, but not so intensely that he foiled to notice the Di-eint's actions. Distracted, he left his work to store as Tintonurac poured the syrupy contents of one flask info a second. Be'jeweled compound eyes glittered uncertainly when the contents of the overfull flask gushed the new mixture onto the bench, then to the floor. The Di-eint was as clean in his physical manipulations as in his mental, and this was not like him. Nor was the mask of pure, unthinking delight on his face.
Dridenvopa started to comment, then held himself back. Surely the Di-eint knew what he was doing. That reassuring thought sent him back to his own task, until he and Cassidy both noticed the brightly labeled container the Di-eint was transferring from a toothand to a truhand.
"Isn't that ...?" the human Cassidy began in puzzled symbospeech, the all-purpose galactic patois, as the Di-eint unlocked the container. Instead of finishing the question he lei out a strange human yowl and tried to cross meters of intervening benches and equipment before the inevitable occurred. But he was unable to get there in time to prevent a small portion of the harmless liquid in the container from entering the flask of the harmless, mixed liquid metal. Together, these harmless substances formed a rapidly expanding boll so hot and intense as to make white phosphorus seem arctic cold.
Despite the increasing incandescence, Tintonurac concentrated on the pleased beauty within the object...
The always efficient fire-fighting arm of the local thranx municipality arrived with its usual speed. All that remained for them to lavish their attention on was a scorched region between two buildings. The incredible heat had incinerated the metal walls of the laboratory. Its organic inhabitants had perished.
The investigators decided that someone had made an unusual yet possible mistake. Even the most brilliant scientist could make a fatal slip, even a thranx could lethally err, when hypnotized by a magnificence that the investigators might have understood, had it not been cremated along with the rest of the laboratory's contents-as had been intended.
Jiwe reflected on Flinx's question. "Because he's symptomatic of something which has been happening with distressing frequency lately throughout the Commonwealth. Most people refuse to see any pattern to it, any connection between incidents. A very few, myself among them, aren't so certain these events are unrelated.
"Over the past several years, important people with unique talents have exhibited an unnerving tendency to blow themselves to bits, along with a sometimes equally unique apparatus. Taken individually, these incidents affect only the immolated. Taken collectively, they constitute something potentially dangerous to a great many others."
The silence in the chamber was punctuated only by the efficient hum of life-sustaining equipment, the eerie wheeze of a mechanical zombie.
"Out of dozens, Povalo here is the only one who wasn't quite thorough enough in doing away with himself. Though for all the difference, he might as well be dead. He's certainly no good to himself anymore."
"You say some of yon believe these suicides are all linked," Flinx ventured. "Have you discovered anything to connect them?"
"Nothing positive," Jiwe admitted, "which is why there are so few of us. All of them did have one thing in common, though. Not one appeared to have any reason for wanting to kill himself. I happen to think that's mighty significant. But the Council doesn't agree."
Flinx showed little interest. Now was the time to quash personal curiosity and get about the business of getting out. "What do you want of me?"
Jiwe moved to a nearby chair, threw himself into it. "Povalo was a wealthy, intelligent, wholly self- possessed engineer doing important research. Now he's a vegetable. I want to know why a man like that-why many humans and thranx like that-seem to find it suddenly necessary to murder themselves. Yes, self- murder ... I can't call it suicide when I truly believe it's something else."
"What am I supposed to do?" Flinx asked warily.
"You detected that AAnn infiltrator when no one else suspected his presence."
"That was lust an accident," Flinx explained. He scratched Pip's jaw. "It happens only when. Pip gets excited, when he perceives a possible threat to me." He indicated Povalo. "Your subject is hardly a threat."
"I'm not expecting a thing," Jiwe calmed him, "I'm just asking yon to try. I'll try tarot readers and tea leaves after you've failed."
Flinx sighed elaborately. "If you insist..."
"Ask," the Counselor reminded him gently, "not insist."
Semantics, Flinx thought sardonically; but he dutifully turned to face the bed and concentrated on its limp occupant. He struggled to reach past those sightless eyes, more afraid of what he might discover than what he might not.
Pip tightened reflexively on his shoulder, sensing his master's effort. Flinx hoped without much confidence that Jiwe hadn't noticed the minidrag's reaction. What he had failed to consider was that his very unease as he concentrated on Povalo was enough to stimulate Pip. There was a threat present, even if only in his own mind.
No faint haze obscured his vision. There was no lilting music in his ears to distract him. The bed, its cocoon of circuitry, the shining equipment, and the translucent gelatin suspension-all were clear as ever to his eyes. And yet ... there was something in his mind that he saw without those eyes, something that hadn't been there a moment ago. It was part of the creature on the bed.
A young man in the fullness of youth-an idealized distortion of Mordecai Povalo-was courting a woman of supernal beauty. Together they floated in thick cumulus clouds engorged with moist love. Side by side they dove ecstatically to the glassy green depths of a shallow ocean. From time to time the figures changed slightly, in build, in coloring, but the subject was ever the same.
Without warning the woman disappeared-swam off, flew off, ran away, depending on the terrain of the moment. Distraught beyond hope, the man walked to a workbench, depressed a switch on a tiny instrument board which would make everything well again.
In the magnificence of youth, Povalo-plus courted a woman of supple grace, swirling and spinning in love- tarns about her as they floated among pink clouds....
Flinx biinked once, looked away from the bed. Jiwe was watching him intently. "I'm sorry," he said softly.
"I couldn't detect a thing."
The Counselor held his stare a moment longer, then slumped back into the chair. He appeared to age ten years.
"I got what I expected. I thank you for trying, Flinx."
"May I leave, now?"
"Hm? Oh, yes, of course. Padre-elect," he directed Sylzenzuzex, "you'd better go with our young friend and show him his way out." Then he looked again at Flinx. "I'll authorize a blank voucher for travel any where on Terra. You can pick it up on your way out."
"If it's all right with you, sir," Flinx declared, "I'd like to make one more trip to Records. I think I might find some related information on my parents. And I'd like to replay the copy of the information I already have."
Jiwe looked blankly at Namoto, who reminded him: 'The boy's parents, remember?"
"Yes. Naturally any help we can give you we will gladly provide. Padre-elect, you can assist our friend Flinx in finding any information he requires. One last thing, son," Jiwe finished, managing to smile slightly again, "if you run into any more visitors who smell like an old jacket instead of a human or thranx, please speak up before your pet assassinates them?"
"I'll do that, sir," Flinx agreed, smiling back. His relief as they left the room was considerable.
"Where do you want to go?" Sylzenzuzex inquired as they re-entered the main hospital corridor. "Back to Genealogy?"
"No ... I think I've gotten all I can from there. Let's try your Galographics Department. I think I may have located the world my parents moved to." This was a lie.
"No problem," Sylzenznzex assured him, her mandibles clacking politely.
As they continued down the corridor, Flinx mulled over what he had seen in Povalo's mind. The idealized vision of himself, the woman, the clouds, seas, and rolling hills-all gentle, simple images of an uncomplicated paradise.
Except for the console. Everything had been all golden and red and green. He had not seen reality, of course, but merely a simulation of it which the comatose engineer had thought was reality.
Those simple colors. The shifting body outlines. Flinx had seen them before.
Just prior to his death, the engineer Mordecai Povalo had owned and played with a Janus jewel.
Povalo's jewel naturally led Flinx to think of Conda Challis and his own little crystal playhouse. Conda Challis had been in the mind of the infiltrating AArm, along with the unknown world Ulru-Ujurr.
A bizarre series of coincidences which undoubtedly led nowhere. Never mind the AAnn and to perdition with poor Mordecai Povalo! Flinx had no room in his mind for anything now save Challis and the information be had removed from the Church archive.
That was why he was going to Galographics. His parents ... they could quite easily have died right here on Terra. To find out for certain he had to find Challis; and the merchant might well have fled to an unfamiliar globe Eke this Ulru-Ujurr-if indeed such a world existed and was not merely some aspect of the AAnn's mind that Flinx had misinterpreted.
It felt as if they had walked for hours before they reached the bank of lifts again. Once more Sylzenzuzex employed the complex card key, once more they traveled an angular pathway.
The level they eventually stepped onto was deserted, a far cry from the bustle of the hospital section. She led him past doors with long compound names engraved in them until they entered the one they sought.
Physically, Galographics looked like a duplicate of the Genealogy Archives, with one exception. This room was smaller and it contained more booths. Furthermore, the monitoring attendant here was much younger than the one he had encountered before.
"I'd like some help hunting up an obscure world."
The attendant drew herself up proudly. "Information retrieval eliminates obscurity. It is the natural building block of the Church, on which all other studies must be based. For without access to knowledge, how can one learn about learning?"
"Please," Flinx said, "no more than two maxims per speech." Behind him, Sylzenzuzex's mandibles clicked in barely stifled amusement.
The attendant's professional smile froze. "You can use the catalog spools, three aisles down." She pointed.
Flinx and Sylzenzuzex walked toward the indicated row. "The world I want to check on is called Ulru- Ujurr."
"Ujurr," she echoed in symbospeech, the odd word sounding more natural when spoken in her consonant- oriented voice. Flinx watched her closely, but she gave no sign that she had ever heard the name before.
He couldn't immediately decide whether that was good or bad.
"Is that symbospeech spelling?" she asked after he made a show of blocking it out. "The tape doesn't say for sure. There may be variables. Let's try phonetic first, though." The attendant appeared to hesitate slightly, wondering if perhaps a Church tape would be so unspecific. But there were variable spellings of far better known worlds, she reminded herself.
They walked down an aisle lined by the vast, nearly featureless walls of the information storage banks. In those metal ramparts, Flinx knew, were stored trillions of bits of information on every known world within and without the Commonwealth.
These records nrobablv had an annex buried somewhere beneath them in the true labyrinth of the Depot complex, an annex closed to casual inspection. For that reason, if Flinx's globular quarry happened to be of some secretive, restricted nature, it might not appear in the spools here.
He was somewhat surprised when they found what appeared to be the proper compartment. Sylzenzuzex pressed a switch nearby and the metal wall responded with oral confirmation.
"It could be a different Ulru-Ujurr," she warned him, as she studied the labels and minute inscriptions identifying the spool case. "But there don't appear to be any cross-references to another world with a similar name."
"Let's try it," Flinx instructed impatiently.
She inserted a card key into the appropriate slot. It was a far simpler device than the one used to operate the multilevel lifts. They were rewarded with a tiny spool of thread-thin tape. She squinted at it-though that was merely an impression Flinx interpreted by her movements, rather than by a physical gesture, since she had no eyelids to narrow.
"It's so hard to tell, but it seems as if there's very little on this tape," she finally told him. "Sometimes, though, you can find a spool that looks like it contains two hundred words and in actuality it holds two mil- lion. They could make this system more efficient."
Flinx marveled at anyone who could call such a sys- tem inefficient. But, he reminded himself, even the lowliest members of the Church hierarchy were constantly exhorted to find ways to improve the organization. Spiritual methodology, they called it.
Only a few of the booths were occupied. They found one at the end of a row, isolated from the other users.
Flinx took the chair provided for humans, while Sylzenzuzex folded herself into the narrow bench designed for thranx and inserted the fragment of sealed plastic into the playback receptor. Then she activated the viewscreen, using the same procedure Namoto had employed earlier. The screen lit up Immediately.
Displayed was the expected statistical profile: Ulru-Ujurr was approximately twenty percent larger than Terra or Hivehom, though its composition produced a gravity only minimally stronger. Its atmosphere was breathable and uncomplicated and it contained plenty of water. There were extensive ice caps at both poles. Further indicative of the planet's cool climate was the extent of apparent glaciation. It was a mountainous world, its temperate zone boasting intemperate weather, and primarily ice north of that.
"It's not a true iceworld," Flinx commented, "but it's cooler than many which are suited to humanx habitation." He examined the extensive list closely, then frowned. "A little cold weather shouldn't discourage all humanx settlement on an otherwise favorable world, but I don't see any indication of even a scientific monitoring post. Every inhabitable world has at least that. Moth supports a good-sized population, and there are humanx settlements of size on far less hospitable planets. I don't understand, Sylzenzuzex."
His companion was all but quivering with imagined cold. " 'Cool,' he calls it. 'Habitable.' For you humans, perhaps, Flinx. For a thranx it's a frozen hell."
"I admit it's far from your conception of the ideal." He turned back to the readout. "Apparently there's both animal and vegetable native life, but no descriptions or details. I can see how the terrain would restrict such studies, but not eliminate them totally the way they seem to have been." He was growing more and more puzzled.
"There aren't any significant deposits of heavy metals or radioactives."
In short, although people could live on Ulru- Ujurr-there just wasn't anything to entice them there. The planet lay on the fringe of the Commonwealth, barely within its spatial borders, and it was comparatively distant from the nearest settled world. Not an attractive place to settle.
But dammit, there ought to be some sort of outpost!
That was the end of the tape except for one barely legible addendum: THOSE DESIROUS OF OBTAINING ADDITIONAL STATISTICAL DETAIL CONSULT APPENDIX 4325 SECTION BMQ....
"I presume you're as tired of reading statistics as I am," Sylzenzuzex said as she set the tiny tape to rewind. "As far as your parents are concerned, this world certainly looks like a dead end. What do you wish to see now?"
Trying to keep his tone casual, he said, "Let's go ahead and finish with this one first."
"But that means digging through the sub-indexes," she protested. "Surely you ..."
"Let's make sure of this," he interrupted patiently.
She made a thranx sound indicating moderate resignation coupled with overtones of amusement, but she didn't argue further.
After nearly an hour of cross-checking they hunted down Appendix 4325, Section BMQ; obtained the necessary sub-index, and prodded the somehow reluctant machine to produce the requested tape sub-sub- heading. Someone, Flinx thought, had gone to a lot of trouble to conceal this particular bit of information without being obvious about it.
This time his suspicions were confirmed. Slipped into the viewer and activated, the screen displayed glaring red letters which read: ULRU-UJURR ... HABIT- ABLE WORLD ... THIS PLANET AND SYSTEM ARE UNDER EDICT....
The date of the first and only survey of the planet was listed, together with the date on which it was placed under Church Edict by the Grand Council.
That was the end of it, as far as Sylzenzuzex was concerned. "You've reached the Hive wall. I can't imagine what led you to think your parents could be on this world. You must have made a mistake, Flinx. That world is Under Edict. That means that nothing and no one is permitted to travel within shuttle distance of its surface. There will be at least one automated peaceforcer in orbit around it, programmed to intercept challenge anything that tries to reach the planet. Any- one ignoring the Edict ... well," she paused significantly, "you can't outrun or outmaneuver a peace- forcer." Her eyes glistened. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because I'm 'going there. To Ulru-Ujarr," he added, at her expression of disbelief.
"I retract my first evaluation," she said sharply. "You are more than strange, Flinx-or perhaps your mind is becoming unhinged by the traumatic events of today."
"My mind's hinges are fastened down and working smoothly, thanks. You want to hear something really absurd?"
She eyed him warily. "I'm not sure."
"I think all these suicides of important people that Jiwe is so worried about have something to do with the Janus jewel."
"The Janus - I've heard of them, but how ...?"
He rushed on recklessly. "I saw powder that might have come from a disintegrated jewel on the body of the infiltrator."
"I thought that was from destroyed crystal syringe- darts."
"It could also have been from a whole jewel."
"So what?"
"So . . . I don't know what; but I just have a feeling everything ties together somehow: the jewels, the suicides, this world-and the AAnn."
She looked at him somberly. "If you feel so strongly about this, then for the Hive's sake why did you not tell the Counselor?"
"Because ... because ..." his thoughts slowed, ran into that ever-present warning wall, "I can't, that's all. Besides, who'd listen to a crazy theory like that when it comes from .. ." then he smiled suddenly, "an unhinged youngster like myself."
"I don't think you're that young," she countered, pointedly ignoring the comment about him being unhinged. "Then why tell anyone ... why tell me?"
"I ... wanted another opinion, to see if my theory sounded as crazy out loud as it does in my head."
Her mandibles clicked nervously. "All right, I think it sounds crazy. Now can we forget all this and go on to the next world your research turned up?"
"My research didn't turn up any other worlds. It didn't turn up Ulru-Ujurr, either."
She looked exasperated. "Then where did you find the name?"
"In the ..." He barely caught himself. He had al- most confessed that he'd plucked it out of the mind of the dying AAnn. "I can't tell you that, either."
"How am I supposed to help you, Flinx, if you refuse to let me?"
"By coming along with me,"
She stood there dumbstruck.
"I need someone who can override a peaceforcer command. You're a padre-elect in Security or you wouldn't have been monitoring a station as sensitive as the surface lift corridor. You could do it." He stared anxiously at her.
"You had better go talk to Counselor Jiwe," she told him, speaking very slowly. "Even assuming I could do such a thing, I would never consider challenging a Church Edict."
"Listen," Flinx said quickly, "a higher-ranking Church member wouldn't consider it, and would be followed, if only for protective reasons. Not even a Commonwealth military craft would. But you're not so high up in the hierarchy that it would cause alarm if you suddenly deviated from your planned activities. I'm also betting that you've something of your uncle in you, and he's the most brilliant individual I ever met."
Sylzenzuzex was looking around with the expression of one who suddenly awakens to find herself in a locked room with a starving meat-eater.
"I am not hearing any of this," she muttered frantically. "I am not. It ... it's blasphemous, and ... idiotic." Never taking her eyes off him, she started to slide from the bench. "How did I get involved with you, anyway?"
"Please don't scream," Flinx admonished her gently. "As to your question, if you'll think a minute ... I saved your life...."