Flinx's Folly (11 page)

“A little of both,” she informed him. “Another hour’s walk and we’ll be someplace.” With one hand, she gestured back the way they had come. “I’d like to get away from the other tourists, wouldn’t you?”

Flinx was more than agreeable. The more privacy they had, the better he liked it. If only this sort of thing was as easy for him as it was for her. She could look around and see only forest and flowers, but he could not keep from picking up the nakedly broadcast emotions of every other wilderness hiker within kilometers. It wasn’t that he wanted to. He simply had no choice in the matter.

But she was as true as her word. The longer they walked and the farther they were from the transport line terminus, the fewer and fainter were human feelings he was able to perceive. It was not the total emotional silence of free space, but it was mentally much quieter than the emotional pandemonium of a city.

The sun was still rising when they reached the lake. Having tired themselves playing among the blossoms, and somewhat bloated from having tasted more than a few of the sweet-smelling blooms, both minidrags had long since returned to their perches on their masters’ shoulders.

Like the forest, the lake and its surroundings appeared so perfect as to have almost been landscaped instead of naturally formed. Set in a depression between rolling hills thickly carpeted with flower trees, the lake was supplied by a pair of small waterfalls rushing downward from opposing gullies.

Clarity pointed northward. “There are three larger lakes off that way. They’re closer to the transport terminus and have extensive beaches, so that’s where nearly everyone goes.” She smiled. “Remembering how you are, I thought you’d prefer privacy to convenience.”

“Actually, I like both,” he told her. One hand absently stroked the back of Pip’s head. “I usually don’t find either. Given the choice, though, I do prefer the former.”

Predictably, the water was just cool enough to be refreshing. Given the care with which the inhabitants of Nur looked after their environment, he wasn’t surprised to find that it was also potable. Lying on his back floating on the surface, he ignored the tiny, questioning touches against his body that were made by curious lake dwellers. None of them were dangerous, Clarity assured him. Pip and Scrap remained on shore, coiled up next to each other in the crook of a blue-boled tree, their forms nearly lost among the blossoms. Minidrags did not much care for swimming.

The sun was just warm enough and the water just cool enough for him to almost relax. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done so on the surface of a world. New Riviera was almost obscenely benign. Despite Clarity’s assurances, he was convinced it couldn’t last. For him, such serenity never did.

Climbing out of the water, they dried themselves and lay down on the compact blankets she had brought along. Though there was no beach, the mosslike ground cover that grew down to the water’s edge provided comfortable padding beneath their backs. With the sun warming his face and body, Flinx felt he could fall easily asleep and perhaps even enjoy it.

The subtle sound of branches being pushed aside alerted him to the presence of something larger than the harmless, stingless arthropods who worked tirelessly to keep the flower trees pollinated. Rising on one elbow, he turned to look in the direction of the noise. Next to him, Clarity was staring toward the forest.

“Don’t move,” she whispered tensely.

He eyed the creature that had emerged from the fragrant brush and was gazing directly toward them. “I thought Nur was a paradise world devoid of dangers.”

“Almost.” He could feel the apprehension rising in her. “That’s a breagar. I’m afraid it falls into the category of
almost
.”

The new arrival was the size of a Terran horse but twice as heavy, with massive shoulders that flowed down into stumpy, thick legs, the front ones longer than the hind pair. Its head was huge, with four long jaws that met like pincers. They were lined with rows of teeth designed to cut, with four much longer interlocking teeth tipping the end of each jaw. The breagar’s eyes were small, red, and set far back in the skull that comprised almost a third of the animal’s length. In place of ears half a dozen coiled, vibration-sensitive hairs protruded stiffly from the top of the skull. They were in constant motion, sampling the air and occasionally curling downward to touch the ground.

“Carnivore?” he whispered to his companion.

“Omnivore,” she told him. “Wholly indiscriminate. A breagar will eat anything. I’m told one was once found with half an air scooter in its stomach. The environment department can use only charge-guarded refuse recyclers in areas where they live because they’ll eat the recycler along with the garbage. If we keep still, it may very well go away. Probably it just came down for a quick drink.”

Sure enough, the scavenger lumbered past them to the water’s edge. Bending its front knees, it began to drink noisily. Lacking any sort of tongue, it suctioned water up through the tip of its nearly closed four jaws. Up in the flower trees, alert to their masters’ heightened tension, the two flying snakes were now fully aware of the potential danger. In the absence of panic on the part of either Flinx or Clarity, the minidrags remained on their blossom-bedecked perch. But it was good to know, Flinx thought, that they were watching.

Having drunk its fill, the breagar turned to leave. Water dribbling from its complex snout, it suddenly paused. Maybe it heard something; maybe it smelled something new and different. In any event, it turned and without warning broke into a gallop directly toward Flinx and Clarity. Only a dozen or so meters away, it had very little ground to cover.

The minidrags, unfurling pink and blue wings, launched themselves toward their masters. They had no chance, Flinx saw, of arriving in time. Letting out a shout that was half scream of fear and half warning, Clarity scrambled to rise and head for the lake. A breagar could swim but not half as fast as a human. Flinx saw that she would not make the water in time. Estimating the distance that the minidrags, Clarity, and the breagar had to travel raced through Flinx’s mind in an instant.

That same mind responded.

As Pip and Scrap sped toward them and a frantic Clarity threw herself into the water, he let that portion of himself that was so sensitive to the feelings of others range outward. The past several years had demonstrated that his ability to receive and influence the emotions of other beings was not restricted to the more Byzantine emotions of sentients but extended to any creature evolved enough to feel them.

From the breagar he received hatred and hunger. He responded by projecting the calm that had come over him ever since he had stepped off the transport earlier that morning. Concentrating, focusing, he dimly heard Clarity screaming at him to run for the water. He half closed his eyes, letting the peace of the day flow over him and take complete possession of his inner self.

Of course, if he was wrong, he might end up a mass of broken bone and meat. He would not have tried it if Pip had not been racing to his aid. He was gambling that if his efforts failed, she would arrive in time to stop the breagar. She might not kill it, but a well-placed glob of her highly corrosive venom should be more than sufficient to distract it.

For such a bulky, clumsy-looking creature, the breagar was surprisingly fast. It was almost on top of him when it abruptly slowed, then halted. Shoulder deep in the lake, Clarity stopped yelling and looked on in bewilderment. She shouldn’t be bewildered, she knew. This was Philip Lynx. She had seen what he could do. Whatever he had done and might still be doing to the breagar was neither visible nor perceptible.

Slowly, Flinx stood up. The four opposing jaws of the breagar swayed back and forth less than a meter in front of him. The creature was breathing hard from its short, powerful sprint, the immense head turned slightly to allow one red eye to focus on its intended prey. Pip and Scrap hovered anxiously overhead, the loud humming of their wings the only sound.

Reaching out with one hand, Flinx gently and without fear began to stroke the tip of the breagar’s long snout.

Arms moving slowly back and forth in the water, hardly daring to breathe for fear of doing something to upset the delicate, unnatural tableau, Clarity stared openmouthed at the scene on shore. Only when the breagar folded its legs beneath its massive torso, lay down, closed its eyes, and went to sleep did she dare emerge slowly from the lake.

Keeping Flinx between her and the snoring omnivore, she picked up a towel and began to dry herself. Lost in contemplation of the breagar, it finally occurred to him that she might have reasons for not speaking, other than inherent non-volubility.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “It won’t bother us now.”

“I saw a breagar in a zoo, once. I never expected to get any closer to one than that.” Reaching out with a tentative hand, she touched the long snout. The skin felt like warm leather. When the creature let out a contented snort, eyes still shut, she nearly jumped off the blanket.

Flinx had to smile. “I told you it was all right.” Tilting his head back slightly, he pointed. “See? Pip and Scrap know we’re in no danger.” She saw the two minidrags had perched on a sun-warmed rock sticking out of the water.

“You are one very strange man, Philip Lynx.”

His smile softened. “That’s why I went away, and it’s why I came back. If I were normal, I would never have left you in the first place.”

“What did you do to the breagar? I thought you could only
detect
the emotions of others.”

He nodded. “Originally, that was the case. Over the last few years, I’ve discovered that I can project them as well. Not always, and the degree of success varies, but I’m getting better at it. When it charged us, I sensed naked hostility mixed with hunger. Animal emotions are far less complex than those of sentients and can often be countered by equal simplicity and directness.” One hand caressed a tooth-lined jaw. The breagar snuffled like a giant pig.

“I tried to convince it that we represented no threat and that all was right with the world. Simple emotions. I certainly didn’t expect to put it to sleep. No, that’s not right. I didn’t put it to sleep. I relaxed it to the point where it decided that now might be a good time for a nap.”

She shook her head, unable to take her eyes from the dozing monster. “I think you and Nur must be a good match. What happens when it wakes up?”

“Easy to find out,” he replied, with a twinkle in his eye. Turning on his knees to face the animal, he smiled at it. He did not shut his eyes, wrinkle his face, or wave his arms. After a couple of moments, the breagar woke up. Clarity started to back away, but Flinx reached out to gently restrain her. Rising onto all fours, the breagar yawned mightily. It was an impressive display, with all four jaws expanding outward in opposite directions before shutting with an authoritative snap. Heedless of the presence of the humans, it turned, shook its head from side to side, and trotted off toward the flowering forest.

Clarity relaxed. “I remember you doing some amazing things, Flinx, but nothing quite so—so bucolic. Can you project like that to any creature?”

“I don’t know,” he told her honestly. “I haven’t had the opportunity to try projecting like this on any creature. But as long as my talents are under my control, I seem to have the ability to do it, yes.”

“So,” she continued on an utterly unexpected tack, “if you wanted to, you could project ardor on me, and make me love you.”

Surprised, he remembered the security guard on Earth to whom he had done precisely that, in order to aid him in his quest to access restricted records within the greater Terran box. He could have lied about it, but chose not to. If he was going to ask for Clarity’s help and understanding—and perhaps more—it wouldn’t do to try to resurrect a relationship on the back of fresh lies.

“I possibly could, yes. But I wouldn’t.”

“How would I know that?” Her expression was solemn.

“You might not initially, but you would eventually. To make you, or anyone else, love me month after month, year after year, would require constant effort on my part. Sooner or later I’d forget to project the necessary emotions, and you would realize what had happened, that you were living a lie.” He looked apologetic. “After that, you’d never trust me again. Also, I still sometimes completely lose my ability to receive as well as project. There’s no predicting when or if that is going to happen. If I was persuading you of my suitability as a partner and my ability to do that suddenly went away, you’re smart enough to recognize the results.

“I didn’t come here to lie to you, with either words or abilities. I came because you’re one of the few people who knows about me and my abilities, who understands, and who I can talk to.” He looked at her. “You’re the one I
wanted
to talk to. Because you know about me, because you’re a gengineer yourself, and—for other reasons.”

“Well, I’m flattered.” She lay down next to him. The perfect sun of Nur bathed them in its balmy, golden glow. Harpettes fluttered past overhead, describing gossamer crescents between them and the slow-moving clouds. “I’ll help if I can, Flinx. What do you want me to do?”

“Just listen. There are things that I’ve experienced that I can’t explain. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t want to know any more about them than I already do.”

She was openly sympathetic—and he felt it gratefully. “This has to be about your talent.”

He nodded as well as he could considering his prone position. “That—and other things. Whether they have anything to do with my talent, I don’t know. I have suspicions but no more than that.” He sighed deeply. “Projecting is always more of a strain than listening. You didn’t bring me all the way out here to listen to my troubles. You could have done that in the city.” Reaching over, he took her left hand in his right.

She looked down at their entwined fingers, then back up at him. “Bill wouldn’t approve.” But she did not pull her hand away.

They fell asleep in the sun like that; close but—except for their interlocking hands—not making physical contact. So relaxed was Clarity that she was not even disturbed by the thought that the breagar might come back. If it did, she felt, the remarkable man beside her would somehow make it feel sorry for itself or too content to want to kill anything or something equally nonthreatening.