“The old goat almost makes me want to transfer,” one of the Ministers whispered to another.
Not only did Flint overhear this, he knew the Regent heard it too, for the man’s lips twitched into the merest suggestion of a snarl. This Council was like a nest of piranha-beetles when the meat ran out, snapping at anything that moved, including each other. Flint’s own ire was simple: he wanted to go home. The Ministers’ ire was complex, but not his business, unless he could find some way to turn it to his own advantage. Maybe one of them would help him escape, just to spite the others?
For he had no intention of having his aura transferred. “Go to the stars—in some creature’s body?” Flint thought of being a wheeled Polarian, and was revolted.
“Precisely. And you will bring to those Spheres the secret of transfer itself, and enlist them in the galactic coalition—”
But Flint had heard more than enough. He turned and ran out of the chamber so quickly that the assembled Ministers were left staring. “Stop him!” the Regent cried.
Imperial guards appeared, barring Flint’s passage. But they were civilized and soft, while he was a tough Stone Age warrior. He dodged the first, ducked under the reaching arm of the second, and nudged the third into the fourth. He really felt crippled, without either spear or fingernails! He left them behind in a tangle.
He came to the capsule area and jumped into one. The transparent cover closed over him and the thing launched through the wall. This time Flint watched closely: The wall irised open as the blunt snout of the craft shoved in, so that it formed an aperture just the right size. He emerged outside, and looked back to see the wall closing behind like the anus of a grazing dinosaur. And what did that make the capsule and its occupant, ejected like this from the bowel of the building? Flint smiled briefly, thinking of what men called Polarians. Now Flint himself was the dinosaur dropping.
The capsule was on some sort of vine or wire that extended before and after, a bead on a string. That was why it didn’t fall into the chasm between buildings. Flint felt nervous, peering down into the void; if that string broke—but of course it wouldn’t. The Imps were very careful about things like that, being extremely dependent on their machines.
Now he had only a moment to make plans. The Imps would be waiting for him at the next stop. He had to outmaneuver them. But it would be foolish to go out into this awesome city; he would give himself away in an instant even if he found a way to cover up his green skin. He had to act in a manner they did not expect And he had to get home.
The capsule punched into the next building. Evidently it was a shuttle, going back and forth between the matter-mission center and the Ministry. Yet that was limited, and outside there had been a network of lines like the spreading limbs of a large vine tree. Surely the string continued to other places.
There was a little panel of buttons before him, and a sign. He could not read it, but could guess: This was a manual control system, like reins on the horses that more civilized worlds than Outworld used. He punched buttons randomly as the capsule slowed to a halt. He could see the Imp guards clustered at the landing.
Abruptly the capsule took off again. It shot past the surprised faces of the guards and on through the opposite wall. Now he was back in suspension, seeing the connecting lines spreading every which way. Each one represented potential escape, if only he could figure out the system in time. Flint punched more buttons, and the capsule slowed, as if confused by the multiple directions.
By quick experimentation and use of his excellent memory, Flint got a notion of how to operate the thing. Each button represented a preset destination, like telling a child runner “Go to Chief Strongspear.” The question was, where did he want to go—and illiterate as he was, how could he choose that particular button?
Once he got home, he would ask the Shaman to teach him how to read. It had become a survival skill.
Well, maybe he could use his own ignorance to advantage. Every time he punched a button, the capsule shifted its route to head for that location. By punching new buttons, he kept shifting his destination, so that the Imps could not tell where he was going. Evidently they could not intercept him here in the capsule en route, so he was safe for the moment. He had a chance to think.
First, he had to delve into his own motives. The Shaman had always disciplined him in this: “Know thyself.” Sometimes the obvious became spurious, and new truths manifested from the hidden mind.
Why was he fleeing? After a flurry of superfluous reasons, he penetrated to the basic one: He could not face the notion of being placed in the prison of an alien body. He had always been allergic to weakness, abnormality, or illness. Honeybloom’s stiff-finger hex had been more than a nuisance; it had forced a recognition of physical incapacity on Flint, to his emotional discomfort. Chief Strongspear’s threat of a pus-spell had been devastating, for the thought of making love to a sick woman completely unmanned Flint. He had always been supremely healthy himself. Good clean combat wounds were all right, but anything festering—ugh!
The idea of becoming a monstrous bug or stupid dinosaur or slimy jelly-thing—no, Flint could not face this. He knew himself to be brave in the conventional sense, but an abject coward in this. His essence, his spark of individuality, was his strength, and any weakening of that was like suffocation. He had to remain in his own good body. Even if this meant dying in it.
He spied a different kind of area, cleared of the huge buildings. What could this be, here in the perpetual metropolis of the Imperial Planet? A bit of forest?
He brought his capsule closer to it by punching buttons, coordinating them like the fracture lines of imperfect flint rocks. He had, after all, the touch of an expert. A little here, a little there, and the capsule jerked closer to a destination that was not programmed for any of its buttons. Finally the clearing expanded, and he spied a spaceship.
Flint had seen similar craft at the little spaceport on Outworld. It was an orbiter shuttle, a jet-propelled ship that carried things up to the orbiting interstellar ships. A starship would break apart if it ever tried to land on a full-sized planet, but there was no need for it to come down when the shuttle relayed everything.
This was Imperial Earth, origin planet of man. Spaceships still set out from here for all parts of Sphere Sol. If he could locate one going to Outworld and get aboard it…
But of course it would be two hundred years before he got home. Even if he were frozen—a notion he didn’t like—so that he didn’t age, he would still be way too late for Honeybloom. But at least he would be going in the right direction.
Who the hell was he fooling? Half the people on Freezers died in transit. Of every twelve shipfuls, three were lost in space and three more were lost in failed revivals. For some reason, he had once thought that was more than half gone, but the Shaman had corrected him. In any event, why should he risk throwing away his young life like that? The Shaman’s case had been different: He had been old, thirty-five, when he embarked on his freezer-voyage to Outworld.
Yet he couldn’t stand being cooped up in a metal lifeship for the rest of his life, either. He’d be stir-crazy, as the Shaman put it, before two months were out. There was no way home but mattermission: instant transport.
But he knew there was no chance of getting mattermitted back. Not on his own. Starships were not closely guarded; who in his right mind would stow away aboard a vessel that wouldn’t dock for fifty or a hundred years? But mattermission was such a special thing that everything to be sent had to be triple-checked, though it were no bigger than a grain of sand. Which was just about the size of the message capsules that zipped back and forth between the major planets. No sloppy procedures there!