Exceptions to Reality_ Stories - Alan Dean Foster [106]
“I dunno.” His companion cocked his head slightly to one side. “He looks kind of peaceful to me.”
Fanole grunted, straightened. “We’ll have to mark the location. Another crew can haul out the body.”
“That’s for sure.” The first ranger started to turn away, hesitated, looked back and frowned. “What’s that he’s holding in his right hand?”
The other ranger squinted. Fanole had already started back toward their bivouac. “Plant stuff. Fern leaf, I think. I don’t guess that he’s holding anything. Fingers contracted while dying.” He sighed and shook his head sadly. “Rigor mortis.”
Still, the taller man hesitated. Then he shrugged and started after his companion. “Funny. For just a second there I thought they were feathers.”
Growth
An awful lot has happen to the characters of Flinx and his pet minidrag, Pip, since they first appeared in The Tar-Aiym Krang thirty-five years ago. Having matured both physically and mentally, Flinx has gone from being a pretty aimless teenager to someone (or perhaps something) of immense importance to everyone around him. It’s not a destiny he sought. But like so many of us, he can’t escape the inexorable. That does not mean he wouldn’t like to do so.
As a consequence of who he is and what he may yet become, all manner of individuals and even entire societies have acquired an interest in what happens to him. Sometimes even without him being aware of it…
There was no denying that there were times when Flinx enjoyed being alone. One of the few times he could allow himself to relax was in transit. Because when traversing the immense distances between the stars he was spared the constant, puerile emotional babble of supposedly sentient individuals who collectively gave “higher intelligence” a bad name. Though interstellar travel did not entirely relieve him of his recurring headaches, the debilitating attacks were considerably reduced in number when he was by himself.
Of course, he was not entirely alone on the ship. Pip, the empathetic Alaspinian minidrag and his constant companion since youth, was with him. He could also count on the presence of the Teacher’s advanced AI. For an automaton, it was a pleasant, sophisticated presence—and unlike the interminably gibbering mass of humanxkind, one he could simply shut down whenever he grew tired of the conversation.
Man and machine were chatting now as Flinx relaxed in the lounge. With its artificial pond, waterfall, and small forest, it was his favorite part of the ship. The Ulru-Ujurrians who had presented him with the craft had left the relaxation chamber comparatively bare and utilitarian in both content and design. Employing the ship’s automatics, Flinx had modified it repeatedly over the years.
Now as he reclined on the couch-lounge, he allowed music and the remnants of a good meal to slowly overtake consciousness. As he slipped sleepward, the AI’s thoughtful voice grew fainter and fainter. Gliding toward him from her perch in one of the many decorative live plants that composed the tiny woodland, Pip furled her wings as she landed on his chest. Coiling against his ribs, emotionally surfing his current wave of contentment, she shut her own eyes and joined him in sleep.
The lounge forest was home to a small but exceptionally varied collection of flora and fauna drawn from different worlds. Before being transferred to the enclosed, climate-controlled chamber, their individual biologies and backgrounds had been thoroughly vetted by the vessel’s Shell. Otherwise Flinx would not have felt comfortable going to sleep inside the lounge. He knew that none of the diminutive creatures that dwelled therein were capable of or inclined to do him harm.
It was not an animal, however, that was now advancing silently toward him.
The single oversized leaf split and split and split again into innumerable subsidiary tendrils, not unlike the singular twin leaves of the uncommon Terran desert plant Welwitschia mirabilis. The suddenly motile growth was one of many that had been given to Flinx by the adapted human inhabitants of the edicted