Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 8 - The Howling Stones.pdf - Foster, Alan Dean - margozap

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Author: Alan Dean Foster

Title: The Howling Stones

Series: A Novel of the Humanx Commonwealth

Series No: Flinx 08

Original copyright year: 1997

Genre: Science Fiction

Date of e-text: 12/23/2000

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Last Revised: / /

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Version: 1.0

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By Alan Dean Foster : Published by Ballantine Books:

The Icenggger Trilogy

ICERIGGER

MISSION TO MOULOKIN

THE DELUGE DRIVERS

The Adventures of Flinx of the Commonwealth

FOR LOVE OF MOTHER‑NOT

THE TAR‑AIYM KRANG

ORPHAN STAR

THE END OF THE MATTER

FLINX IN FLUX

MID‑FLINX

BLOODHYPE

THE HOWLING STONES

The Damned

Book One: A CALL TO ARMS

Book Two: THE FALSE MIRROR

Book Three: THE SPOILS OF WAR

THE BLACK HOLE CACHALOT

DARK STAR THE METROGNOME and Other Stories

MIDWORLD NOR CRYSTALTEARS

SENTENCED TO PRISM SPLINTER OF THE MIND'S EYE

STAR TREK@ LOGS ONE‑TEN VOYAGE TO THE CITY OF THE

DEAD

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . . ... WHO NEEDS

ENEMIES?

MAD AMOS PARALLELITIES*

* forthcoming

Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity

discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund‑raising, and special

sales use. For details, please call 1‑500‑733‑3000.

*******************************************************

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is

coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed"

and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

A Del Rey© Book Published by Ballantine Books Copyright O 1997 by Thranx, Inc.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House,

Inc., New York, and simulta-neously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,

Toronto.

http://www.randomhouse.com

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97‑92418

ISBN 0‑345‑40645‑1

Printed in Canada

First Hardcover Edition: January 1997

First Mass Market Edition: January 1998

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

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Chapter One

People tended to overlook Pulickel Tomochelor in a crowd. It was something he'd

grown used to. He'd always been overlooked: in academia, in sports, at social

gather-ings. Only a few unusually perceptive instructors had taken note of his

singular abilities. These he'd paid close attention to, and by cleaving to them,

he had been corre-spondingly raised up.

His accomplishments were never spectacular but always solid, satisfying without

standing out. He was, in short, that most valued of all commodities in both

business and government: the reliable employee without a personal agenda.

And yet there was enough there, determination com-pensating for lack of

brilliance, for him to be called upon more than once to deal with problems that

others could not solve. Where they could not succeed, Pulickel To-mochelor

invariably produced results. From this he took, as was his manner, a quiet

instead of boisterous satis-faction. Not for him a plethora of medals or awards,

not for him applause during multiple personal appearances or the rapt attention

of the media. A commendation in his official record was recognition enough. Nor

did he dis-dain the occasional bonus.

There had been a woman once, too, to offer praise and support. She had moved on,

leaving behind a confusion of memories leavened with vague dissatisfaction.

Do-mesticity was the sole task at which he had failed; the only matter left

inconclusive in his life. It rankled and left him unfulfilled inside. As with

the responsibility, the fault was not entirely his, but it ate at him

nonetheless. He stored it in a far recess of his mind and moved on,

concentrating on his work and his career, which by all ac-counts were far more

successful than any selective com-ponent of his personal life.

Keeping busy was part of it. His schedule allowed little time in which to

develop a social life, much less raise a family, and the nature of his work

mitigated against long-term relationships. It was hard enough to sustain

intimacy when one was sent to different parts of the same world and well‑nigh

impossible when constantly on the move from world to world.

Other men and women managed to establish and main-tain long‑term unions, but

they usually worked together. Pulickel preferred to operate alone, with his

thoughts his sole companion. Or so he frequently strove to persuade himself.

While the sociology of other beings opened for him like ripening fruit, the

actions and reactions of repre-sentatives of the opposite gender of his own

species re-mained as impenetrable as the core of a neutron star, and often

weighed on him equally as heavy.

There was a lurch as the shuttle skewed sideways and the pilot's voice sounded

apologetically over the cabin speaker. A couple of passengers grumbled. Senisran

be-ing a frontier world, there weren't many of them. Save for a few barely

developed diplomatic communities and a smattering of isolated scientific

outposts linked by satel-lite relay, the world expanding in the viewport off to

his left was populated solely by a substantial but scattered native population.

The locals raised no objections to the relay system because they couldn't see it

and didn't know it was there anyway, their knowledge of astronomy be-ing limited

to that which could be observed by the naked seni eye.

Pulickel shifted in his seat as much as the landing har-ness would allow. He was

shorter than the Common-wealth average, slim but well built, his olive‑hued skin

reflective of his ethnic heritage. His features were small, fine even, and

distinctly non-threatening. Similar in ap-pearance to the superb wood carvings

his Javanese an-cestors had turned out in quantity, he revealed his inner

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humanity only when he smiled, his teeth a slash of per-fect white like an ivory

inlay set among paduk wood. He did not turn the eyes of attractive women, but

neither did they find him displeasing to look upon. His desert‑dry personality

generally took care of any initial interest, fil-tered through speech that was

always proper, polite, and reflective of an advanced education.

His eyes were small, black, and active, his hair black, long, and combed

straight back. Pressed as if in prepara-tion for a formal dinner, his field

shorts and short‑sleeved shirt collapsed in a jumble of angles against the less

dis-ciplined curves of his body. An experienced traveler, he'd brought one case

only. It rested snug in back, in the cargo bay, and if properly looked after

contained everything he would need no matter the length of his stay.

He spared yet another glance for the attractive middle-aged woman seated on the

aisle two rows in front of him. It was always difficult when they were taller

than you, he reflected, and many were. Unfortunately, he did not possess the

drive necessary to overcome his perceived handicap. As a result, he had not

spoken to her since board-ing, and doubtless would not speak to her when they

disembarked. Experience had shown him that attractive single women preferred

their men tall, muscular, slightly uglified, and dangerous. He was none of those

things.

With a sigh he turned to the port and studied the atmosphere through which the

shuttle was dropping rapidly. One day he'd find someone, he told himself. One

day when he had time to look and his work didn't interfere. Meanwhile he would

have to content himself with the ac-colades of superiors and colleagues, which

he received in ample quantity.

The sky outside darkened and Pulickel thought imme-diately of inclement weather.

Again the shuttle bounced and for a second time the pilot was apologizing.

"Sorry. We just ran past a flock of cemacerotic gliders. At least, that's what

I'm told they were. Minor evasive maneuvers were in order. We're descending and

now they're slightly above us and to port. Those of you on that side may still

be able to see them."

Everyone on the left side of the shuttle leaned up against their respective

ports. Among the thick clouds overhead could be seen rapidly vanishing flaps of

vast membranous wings. Pulickel recalled his weeks of study- prep on Senisran

and its natives, flora, and fauna. The cemacerotic gliders were enormous aerial

fliers who lived by skimming the surface of Senisran's seas for plankton- size

life‑forms, straining them through gigantic beaks that were lined with a

substance not unlike the baleen of a whale. Living in small colonies on the

peaks and crags of the highest islands, they were inoffensive, harmless

creatures‑unless one happened to run into you. Such ac-complished soarers were

they that some biologists sus-pected they often circumnavigated the globe

without ever touching land.

Recently discovered Senisran was an ocean planet, not unlike the long‑settled

and well‑known Cachalot. In lieu of any continental landmasses, the

globe‑girdling seas were spotted with thousands upon thousands of islands: some

isolated, some clustered tightly together, most strung out like the strands of

broken necklaces in hundreds of indi-vidual archipelagoes. A few were sizable

but none espe-cially impressive, the largest being about half the size of

Earth's Madagascar. All save the northern‑ and southern-most were hot, though

the humidity varied with location and latitude. There were no polar ice caps on

Senisran.

On these innumerable island groupings dwelt the na-tive population, organized

into hundreds of different tribes, clans, associations, and alliances, each with

its own gov-ernment, social system, religion, and morality. It was this riot of

cultural diversity that made formal contact between offworlders and locals a

difficult and time‑consuming proposition. Not only was a planetary government

non-existent, the aboriginal seni had yet to conceive of the idea of

nation‑states. In some cases, on small isolated islands, visitors making contact

were reduced to signing treaties with the representatives of individual extended

families, whereupon they would have to begin negotiations all over again with

the inhabitants of the next island.

As if things weren't complicated enough, Senisran had been discovered

simultaneously by the Commonwealth and the AAnn Empire. The result was that both

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sides had representatives on the planet, each attempting to secure covenants of

friendship and alliance with as many of the native governments as possible. On a

number of island clusters, contact teams operated in direct competition with one

another. It was a frustrating, time‑consuming process made all the more

difficult by the sense of com-petition that existed between contact teams.

Local arrangements complicated matters even further. Humanx and AAnn

representatives sometimes found them-selves expected to go to war with

neighboring islanders as soon as they formalized a treaty with a set of new

friends, who, it subsequently developed, had formal al-liances with three other

island groups, but not the one just over the horizon. Or ancient family quarrels

entered into the negotiating process. There was nothing straight-forward about

any of it.

Which was one reason why Pulickel had been sent for.

Neither the Commonwealth nor the Empire would take up arms on behalf of any

native. That was strictly against the rules of contact agreed upon by both

sides. They could only stand by and watch helplessly as treaties settled through

arduous and difficult negotiation frequently came apart under the strain of

local conflict, whereupon all would have to be completely renegotiated from

scratch. It was a diplomatic nightmare, none of which would have had any

ramifications beyond those tribes immediately involved save for two things:

Senisran was strategically located in a region claimed both by the Commonwealth

and the Em-pire, and it offered an assortment of valuable commodi-ties actually

worth transporting through space‑plus. It was valuable both from a

politico‑military and commercial standpoint.

Certainly the natives were willing to cement formal contracts and to open trade,

he mused as the shuttle be-gan its final approach. According to all the reports

he'd perused, only a few island groups were openly hostile to outside contact.

Since these more hostile natives ex-pressed an equal dislike for humans, thranx,

and AAnn, they could for now be passed over. They, too, would come around once

they saw the advantages that accrued to‑ their neighbors through contact with

more technologically ad-vanced off‑world civilizations.

With Senisran boasting a planetwide insufficiency of flat, dry land, the shuttle

set down on unsinkable pon-toons, momentarily disappearing within a traveling

fountain of its own making. As the craft slowed, Pulickel considered how best to

acquire an assortment of the re-markable native handicrafts for which the semi

were rapidly becoming known. He'd promised at least a dozen colleagues back home

a representative sample each. Origi-nal art was one commodity that technology

had yet to supplant and was therefore an item highly amenable to interstellar

trade.

It being an ancient truism that commerce treads hard on the heels of

exploration, many of the great Common-wealth trading houses already had

representatives at work on Senisran. Dozens of others pressed the appropriate

government departments for access credentials, eager to trade with the locals

for their exquisite wood, shell, and bone carvings, necklaces, and sculpture. It

seemed as if every island group had its own distinctive style, each more

striking and beautiful than the next. The acquisitive AAnn were no less

enthusiastic. Such trade was carefully regulated, lest the semi procure

technology too advanced for their society to absorb.

In addition to an astonishing range of handicrafts, Senisran also offered an

expanding selection of unique comestibles. The well‑off of Earth, New Riviera,

and other sophisticated worlds were and had always been willing to pay

outrageous prices for new tastes, new sensations. Any dozen half‑competent

companies could introduce new electronic gadgets onto the market, but a new

fruit or vegetable was infinitely more valuable.

It was endlessly frustrating to the backlog of commer-cial interests to have to

wait for official contact to be es-tablished with each island or island group,

but it was the responsibility of Commonwealth authority to see to it that trade

and interchange proceeded smoothly and with-out acrimony. Commerce was not

allowed to proceed un-til a point scout had established formal relations with

the group of natives in question. First‑person first‑contact was a delicate and

sensitive undertaking that called for highly trained individuals with plenty of

experience.

Individuals like Pulickel Tomochelor.

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He was a specialist's specialist, whose talents were in demand throughout the

frontier. As there was only one of him, his time had to be rationed. He had

devoted his ca-reer to unraveling seemingly insoluble conundrums. As a

consequence of his success, it was going on ten years since he'd been given

anything resembling an easy as-signment. He didn't mind. It made his personal

sense of satisfaction all the greater.

He smiled to himself as the shuttle turned to port and entered the harbor at

Ophhlia, the principal Humanx base on Senisran. In exchange for its use, the

increasingly so-phisticated locals received a hefty monthly fee. A ridge of high

mountains ran from east to west along the mid-line of the sizable island,

protecting the harbor and its thriving facilities from the daily cloudbursts

that blew up out of the south.

Personally, Pulickel always sympathized with the con-fusion that was common to

undecided native groups, who were by far in the majority. Beset by endless

requests and frequently contradictory promises from two different sides and

species, whom were they to believe: human or AAnn? From the native viewpoint,

who held the real power and offered the most benefits? With whom should they

ally themselves? In such critical negotiations, the skill of each side's on‑site

negotiator was paramount.

Where Pulickel shone was in his ability to understand alien cultures and an

alien point of view. He might never reach the exalted rank of Counselor, but in

another ten years or so he could see himself in charge of the entire xenology

department, passing judgment on the reports of others and handing out

assignments from a spacious office high atop the Science Tower in Denpasar.

Solving the problem for which he'd been sent to Senisran would serve to carry

him a few steps farther toward that goal.

The distant whistle from the shuttle's engines faded as it coasted to a stop

inside the enclosed, climate -controlled landing dock. Though they were now in a

sealed environment, the climate processors could only mute the heat and

humidity, not eliminate them entirely. Suitable comments were exchanged among

the passen-gers as they disembarked. Pulickel kept silent, measuring the

conditions against what he'd been led to expect.

Through the transparent tube that encased the walk-way, disembarking passengers

could see the shuttle float-ing behind them on brilliantly clear water. Beyond

the polarized, diffusing material, tropical sunlight illuminated the jumble of

low‑rise buildings that comprised orderly Ophhlia. It flashed green off the

mountaintops beyond. Even within the disembarkation lounge, the pervading smell

was of damp green growing things: the musk of fresh soil. Inside, the treated,

mechanically massaged at-mosphere was cool but heavy.

He gave a mental shrug. He'd spent time on more than a dozen alien worlds, some

hotter, some colder, a few where the atmosphere would kill anyone who tried to

breathe it. Compared to the average, the air of Senisran felt like home. After

the long journey out from Earth, he was eager to leave the shallow trappings of

imported civi-lization behind and get out into the field. He looked for-ward to

it much as another man might look forward to a date.

"Tomochelor?" A rough‑looking, stocky, heavily bearded individual broke from the

small crowd to block Pulickel's path. He wore a duty uniform of green shorts,

shirt, and sandals. Insignia decorated his sleeves and shoulders. "Eric Train.

On behalf of the department, wel-come to Senisran." He extended a hand and

flagged Pulickel's up and down. "No hand luggage?"

"No. I just have the one case."

"That'll be waiting for you in the baggage area." He turned and Pulickel fell in

step alongside him. "I've seen your schedule. You have a couple of days here in

town before you have to head out to the site. I'd be glad to show you around."

"I'd enjoy that." Actually, Pulickel wasn't sure that he would, but he'd learned

early on in his career that when traveling, no amount of research, no matter how

thor-ough, could substitute for the knowledge of someone lo-cal. While Train was

exposing him to the few simple pleasures Ophhlia had to offer, Pulickel would

patiently pump him for more practical information.

"How was your flight?"

"Like any KK‑drive journey. Pleasant enough. Quiet and busy. I had plenty of

time to study and to work with the language synapse. It's a long way from

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