Running from the Deity (3 page)

As he finished perusing the limited information and waved off the floating, three-dimensional imagery, he decided that perhaps the inhabitants of looming, scenic Arrawd were not as much like himself as he had first thought.

Upon arrival, conducting leisurely observations from high orbit, the
Teacher
was able to reconfirm the available historical data on the state of Dwarran civilization. It was impossible to tell what, if any, advances the locals had made since the time the robot probe had carried out its survey, but there was no question that the alien civilization spreading across the world below remained at a low-tech level of scientific accomplishment. There were cities, but they were unexceptional in size and even under high resolution exhibited nothing in the way of explosive technological development. If there were factories, they were fueled by nothing more exotic than the simplest of hydrocarbons. Though roadways were present in abundance, none appeared to be paved with any material more advanced than stone.

Harbors displayed a more sophisticated appearance, boasting among other recognizable components ingenious slipways for the handling and repair of large vessels. Evidence for extensive commerce was present in the form of extensive built-up areas and warehousing complexes. The seas of Arrawd, many in number and unassuming in extent, would be highly conducive to waterborne transportation. The smaller the body of water, the less ferocious were likely to be any prevailing storms, though the lighter gravity would permit higher waves. Mountain ranges further reduced the efficacy of land-based transportation and would tend to cause the locals to focus even more intensively on waterborne shipping. Even so, further observation revealed the presence of nothing more elaborate or advanced than large sailing craft.

Unfortunately for his purposes, while there were no great, sprawling conurbations, all indicators pointed to a sizable and largely dispersed population. When the
Teacher
finally announced that it had located an area appropriate to its needs, Flinx decided that he’d had enough of staring blankly from orbit. The small peninsula the ship had chosen was reasonably far from the nearest community of any size, distant from even a small harbor, and rippling with titanium-rich sand dunes. There was also ample carbon locked up nearby in the form of an extensive and untouched deposit of fossilized plant growth. No indicators of urban population, no signs of commerce, no agriculture. A better spot might be found, but it would take more time to search.

“I concur,” he told the ship-mind. “Take us down as fast as practical. At the slightest sign of reaction from the native population, return to orbit and we’ll try again on another continent.”

“I will be as subtle as possible,” the ship-mind replied. A slight lurch indicated that the
Teacher
had already commenced its owner-approved descent.

Of course, what it was doing was not only highly illegal, but almost universally thought to be impossible. By their very nature, KK-drive craft were not supposed to be able to come within a specified number of planetary diameters of any rocky world without causing destruction on the ground and damage to the ship. Only the Ulru-Ujurrians, who had fashioned the
Teacher
as a gift to Flinx, had been able to find a solution to the problem, which continued to bedevil the physicists and engineers of all other space-going species.

Not that the Ulru-Ujurrians could properly be called space-going, Flinx mused as the ship continued to drop surfaceward. More like otherwhere-going.

The touchdown of the
Teacher
would have enormously impressed anyone on the ground—had there been anyone around to witness it. Executed under cover of night, as far as Flinx could tell the massive shape terminating in its coruscant Caplis projector came to rest in near silence among the thirty-meter-high dunes of the bucolic peninsula unnoticed by any living thing save for a pair of nesting amphibians. What little noise the ship generated was masked by a nocturnal onshore breeze, with the result that even the two jet-black, half-meter-long creatures hardly stirred in their burrow.

For several long minutes, an edgy Flinx paced the confines of the command cabin while the ship-mind made note of and absorbed everything about its immediate surroundings, from the chemical composition of the gentle sea nearby (less salty than terrestrial oceans, its tidal shift hardly affected by the three small moons in the sky) to the efforts of a number of surprisingly mobile nearby plants to uproot themselves and move away from the
Teacher
’s imposing bulk. Walking up to the curving foreport, he gazed down the length of the ship’s service arm toward the now dark disc of the KK-drive generating fan. His craft was as exposed, obvious, and unnatural a part of the landscape as a thranx clan meeting in the arctic.

“How much longer?” The ship-mind was sufficiently intuitive that he did not have to specify the subject of his query.

“Working,” the
Teacher
replied succinctly. “I do not foresee a lengthy study period. The immediate surroundings are simple and straightforward and will be easy to mimic.”

“Then how about simply and straightforwardly concealing us?” Responding to her master’s uncharacteristic irritability, Pip looked up from her resting place on the forward console.

“Processing.” The
Teacher
could be talkative when the environment was relaxed, and equally concise when the situation demanded it. “Observe.”

Once again, Flinx turned his attention toward the bow of the ship. It was no longer there. In its place was a narrow, low dune that terminated in a higher barchan of mineral-rich sand. The programming and complex projection mechanics that enabled the
Teacher
to alter the appearance of its exterior to resemble anything from a contract freighter to a small warship also allowed it to impersonate more mundane surroundings. Gazing at the forward part of his vessel, a relieved Flinx had no doubt that the larger habitable section that formed his home now also blended effectively into its immediate surroundings.

Not far off to the left, a placid sea glistened invitingly in Arrawd’s dim, tripartite moonlight. After weeks spent cooped up on board, the thought of a nocturnal swim in tepid salt water was tempting. No doubt his presence in such waters, however, would prove equally enticing to whatever predators roamed the perhaps deceptively sluggish shallows. Taking a reckless plunge in an alien sea was a good way to meet one’s maker in advance of one’s designated time. He would wait until morning, see what developed, have the
Teacher
run a bioscan out to depth, and then decide if his present locale was safe enough for him to take the plunge.

Seduced by the serene, moonlit surroundings of solid ground, he had already set aside his promise not to emerge from the ship.

“How soon before you can begin acquiring necessary raw materials and commence repairs?”

“I already have,” the ship informed him. Somewhere deep within its self-maintaining mass, faint mechanical noises sifted upward into the living quarters.

Flinx gestured toward the console. Obediently, Pip rose on thrumming, chromatic wings and glided over to settle on his shoulders. “That’s great. If I’m not up, wake me at sunrise.”

The ship responded affirmatively, even though it knew the request was unnecessary. The ability of its human’s biological clock to reset itself almost immediately to whatever new world Flinx happened to find himself on was one that never ceased to amaze the multifaceted artificial mind. Flinx called it “making myself at home.”

Perhaps, ship-mind thought to itself, the human had developed this unusual ability to make himself at home wherever he happened to be because he had never really had such a place of his own.

CHAPTER

2

Ebbanai made sure each thorall bulb was planted firmly in the sand before starting to insert the next one. It was not a difficult task, but did require attention to one’s work. Jam it too deeply into the shallow rippling sands in the waist-deep water, and much of the thorall’s bulb would be hidden, rendering it useless. Set it too high, and the occasional gentle wavelet might dislodge it and send it floating away. Gathering thoralls required time and effort, and he had no intention of wasting even one tonight.

They squirmed against the pair of strong opposing flanges that gripped them, reluctant to comply. There was little more they could do. The filter feeders at the top of each glowing sphere lay flat against the curved, semi-gelatinous surface, helpless and useless when out of the water. Once implanted where he wanted them, they would hesitantly extend their feathery tendrils and resume feeding on the tiny pisceans and rotoforms that came into the shallow bay to feed at night, safe from the voracious predators that haunted the deeper waters beyond. In turn, larger sinuous marrarra and fat ferraff would come to feast on the smaller creatures.

Implanting the last of the thoralls by jamming its single spike-like foot into an appropriate segment of sand, he stood back on both legs to survey his handiwork. Water lapped against his four forelegs and his unshod feet. His efforts had resulted in the creation beneath the surface of a neat half circle of phosphorescent light. Walking to one end of the semi-circle, he lowered his torso into his pelvis and settled himself down on all fours into a comfortable holding squat as he prepared to wait. Marrarra and ferraff were choosy about when they would enter the shallows. Ebbanai glanced skyward. Arrawd’s three moons had last been high in the sky together nearly a forenight ago. Nighttime harvests had been sparse since then. Hopefully, tonight would see him bring in a good haul. He needed to. He was hungry, and Storra would lambaste him unmercifully if he returned yet again with an empty collecting sack.

The sea was warm against his bare foot-flanges and ankles. On this pleasant eve, he wore only a conical kilt and a light vest. Both were cut and shredded appropriately to allow him to raise and lower the epidermal flaps that covered his body. More close-fitting attire would have held these flat against his musculature. Unable to ventilate his body by raising and lowering the hundreds of small skin flaps, he would rapidly have developed all manner of unpleasant diseases.

As he stood there, the small bits of his epidermis rising and falling reflexively and in unison to catch every slight breeze wafting in off the bay, he reflected on his life. It could be worse, he knew. Owning a piece of patrilineal land on the bay brought with it the right to harvest its bounty. While his mate of ten years might use her flexible palate to occasionally mouth-lash him, that same orifice was skilled at obtaining the highest possible price in the town market for his catches as well as for the fine, sturdy cloth she wove from the seashan he gathered during the day. As a mated couple, then, they had access to both food and clothing without having to pay money for it. The ancestral stone home that as a sole offspring he had inherited upon the untimely passing of his parents was both solid and spacious.
Sfaa,
he decided contentedly. While they were not of the nobility, or even the upwardly mobile business class, their lives were certainly better than those of many commoners.

Leaning forward slightly but not moving his legs, he contracted his eyes in their muscular sockets to focus on sudden movement within the semi-circle of light he had made. A pair of marrarra in the catch-cup already, feeding on the rich faunal soup that had been drawn to the thoralls’ lights. And wasn’t that a ferraff next to them? One big enough for broiling, no less, and not just for the stewpot. He felt relieved. As long as the wind didn’t pick up, it was going to be a good night.

One double-jointed, double-limbed arm bent backward to reach around behind him and remove the neatly rolled net from the bag slung across his back. Skin flaps rising and falling with anticipation, he methodically unscrolled the fishing gear. Fashioned from the toughest fibers of the same seashan Storra loomed into cloth, he shook it out preparatory to casting. Properly thrown, it would seal the mouth of the thorallian cup. Forcefully nudging a thorall or two would cause the legless creatures to blink their lights with furious intensity. Designed to startle and frighten off possible predators, the reaction should scare the feeding marrarra and complacent ferraff straight into the waiting depths of his net.

He held the braids of the latter in the four grasping flaps of his left hands and readied himself to cast it with those of his right. A poor throw and his quarry would panic and might slip away. It could happen, even to one as experienced as himself. Antennae stiff and protruding forward from his forehead, he kicked at the thorall nearest him, moved quickly to the next and repeating the action. Taking their cue from these first two, the other thoralls in the semi-circle responded by pulsing violently to scare off the perceived threat. Quickly, he drew back all four forearms simultaneously and heaved. Flying into the darkness and expanding as it caught the night air, the weighted seashan latticework struck the water with a gentle slap, sinking quickly downward to trap and entangle everything trapped beneath its inescapable mesh.

Sucking air through the vent in his face, Ebbanai moved fast to check on his catch. There was one marrarra, there the other, and—not one sizable ferraff, but two! Two ferraff broilers, and on his first throw of the night. Rightly and for once, Storra would be full of praise for his efforts. Perhaps even enough to alter her body chemistry and render it suitable to generate the necessary hormonal flash that would permit copulation. He tugged eagerly at the net, pulling it in, closing the trap on the fine catch. Glancing gratefully upward, he gave thanks to the three moons Hawwn, Terlth, and Vawwd for their bounty this night.

And that was when he dropped the net.

Slipping slowly from his usually strong grasp, the slick strands of tough seashan fell into the water. As the mesh expanded, now floating aimlessly, the panicky marrarra and greatly desired ferraff found the gaps that resulted from inattention and sprinted unhesitatingly for the safety of deeper water. If not for the small weights sewn intermittently along its edge, the net itself would have drifted out to sea.

Ebbanai did not care. He could not pick up the net, did not watch as his fine catch made its escape. His thoughts were no longer on harvesting, or his mate, or on anything else. Every iota of his being, every fraction of his attention, was focused and locked on the impossible thing he was seeing.

A fourth moon had appeared in the sky, and it was falling straight toward him.

He wanted desperately to move, to run, to flee—but he could not. His legs would not work. The slender muscles were as paralyzed as his thoughts. As the incredible, implausible fourth moon came ever closer, he saw that it was flecked here and there with colored lights brighter than those of any thorall; more intense even than those that bedecked the castle of His August Highborn Pyr Pyrrpallinda of Wullsakaa.

Thoughts of the Highborn finally gave him the push he needed to react. Getting all four legs under him, he broke for the nearest beach dune. Knowledge of what Storra would have to say if he returned without the precious net was imprinted on him deeply enough to make him pause just long enough to gather up the precious folds and take them with him. With bits of mesh trailing behind and on both sides and threatening to trip him at every stride, he ran through the shallows as fast as his podal flaps would propel him, not caring how much noise he made or what potential catch he might be frightening away.

Seizing on the first dune whose crest rose higher than his head for a suitable hiding place, he threw the sodden net down to one side and collapsed his legs beneath his body. Trying to squeeze his torso down into his hips, breathing hard, he peered over the crest of the dune and through a clump of thin, trembling chourdl as the swiftly descending moon settled to ground.

His astonishment was only magnified when he saw that it was no moon, but an artificial construction of some kind. While one end was huge and rounded like a flattened bowl, it was the size of the apparition that awed him: the machine, or whatever it might be, exceeded in length the walls of the Highborn Pyrrpallinda’s fortress. In height it was taller than even the great waterwheel at Pwygrith. Wishing to hide in the sand but unable to wrench his gaze from the sight, he tried to determine the nature of the material from which the arrival had been fashioned, only to realize that he could not. Surely something so immense had to be made of metal, but in the light of the three moons it did not look like metal. It had a soft, almost pliable appearance, which was of course quite impossible. But then, the notion of something so large and angular managing controlled flight without the aid of gas-filled lifting bags was equally impossible.

If he thought the night’s wonders had come to an end with the appearance and touchdown of the machine, he was much mistaken.

Coming to rest among the dunes well inland of the high-tide mark, the massive mechanism settled partway into the sand. The depth to which it sank with no visible effort was indicative of its great weight. A high-pitched squeal, just at the limit of Dwarran hearing, escaped from somewhere within the dark depths of the device. Following this mechanical ululation, the lights that dotted its curving flanks and the great dish shape at one end went dark.

Then the entire great, impossible alien mass began to disappear right before his astonished stare.

Ebbanai’s eyes contracted in disbelief, and his skin flaps pressed so tight against his body that he feared he would sprain every one of them. Before his gaze the exterior of the immense intruder seemed to shimmer, as if the very moonlight illuminating it had begun to flex. Under his stare, towering, smoothly curving flanks of maybe-metal were altering their appearance. They became less foreign, less solid, and more—sand-like.

It was all over in less time than it would have taken Storra to spit and braise one of the marrarra. Where the piece of sky had lain, dominating the moonlit eastern horizon, there now rose a new series of interlinked, rippling sand dunes. Only their height hinted at anything out of the ordinary. Only one who had witnessed the actual transformation would recognize that the outline of the new dunes closely paralleled that of the machine that had preceded them. Even in the depths of his terror and bewilderment Ebbanai had to admit that the illusion, if that was what it was, was perfect. Of course, it would be a simple matter to establish if the new manifestation was nothing more than an illusion. All he had to do was walk over to it and touch it.

In fact, he had almost managed to convince himself that he was the victim of nothing more threatening than an elaborate hallucination when a small portal appeared in the side of one soaring dune, and the creature came out. Or creatures, he corrected himself, once more spellbound by the sight of the impossible. There were two of them.

Though of average Dwarran height, the larger of the two alien beings exhibited a build that was heavier and more muscular. It had two lower limbs for locomotion and two upper, the latter presumably intended for manipulation, though neither was subdivided. Gawking at it in fascination, Ebbanai wondered how the creature managed to stand upright on only two forelegs. Furthermore, its hands appeared to split into numerous smaller digits instead of the usual solid, gripping flanges. Its eyes were almost tiny and placed right out front, vulnerable and nearly parallel to the rest of the face. He could not think of a function for the small projection that thrust outward from the center of the face, nor those that protruded from the sides of the head. The cranium itself was covered with what appeared to be hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny red tentacles. Though the visitor was very different in appearance, it was not entirely horrible to look upon.

The second creature was small and winged. As it rose into the air, its pleated wings gave off a steady thrumming sound. It was swift, agile, and curious, darting from one place to another as it examined its surroundings while never straying far from the much larger being.

Then the latter bent its ridiculous knees and jumped high into the air.

Given the visitor’s apparent mass, the vertical leap was extremely impressive. Only the most athletic Dwarra could have hoped to have equaled it. What other remarkable abilities the alien might possess Ebbanai did not know. What he did know was that he was not about to wait around, in the middle of the night, to experience them firsthand. When the creature turned away to inspect the massive sand dune where its vehicle, or whatever it was, had been, the terrified net-caster took the opportunity to make a break for the inland path. Glancing back over a shoulder, he had a moment of fright when it seemed as if the colorful winged thing had spotted the movement and was coming after him. But in response to a loud mouth-noise from its companion, it whirled in midair and returned to its larger companion.

Breathing with difficulty, all eight bare foot-pads swishing sand beneath him, Ebbanai ran until he couldn’t run anymore. Following that, he walked, until after what seemed like an eternity the lights of his solid, ancestral home welcomed him at the base of the path. Thankfully, they were not brightly colored, and the house did not transform itself into a dune or anything else as the exhausted gatherer staggered toward the wide, arched entrance.

“Pip!”

Just the name was all it took. He didn’t have to whistle, didn’t have to yell, did not have to utter a complicated stream of commands. Actually, even the use of the minidrag’s name was superfluous. Flinx’s heightened anxiety would be enough to draw her back to him as she sensed his shift in mood. But it always felt right to call her by name.

Mildly curious as to what had momentarily drawn her attention away from him, Flinx peered into the Dwarran night. The three small moons cast just enough light for him to make out the rolling edges of the surrounding dunes, like so many ocean waves frozen in time and blasted beige by the sun. Odd flora responded to the occasional breeze off the nearby bay by bending low to hide their sensitive heads in the sand. A few burrowing creatures of as yet undetermined lineage made fitful dashes from hole to hole. Overhead, yet another new set of constellations peered down at him.