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world had been cold, but devoid of humidity. The red grass formed a thick,
lush carpet beneath his feet.
Blissfully blue, the sky was vacant of cloud. While not a comforting yellow,
the single ripe red‑orange star that dominated the firmament did not
inspire dread, either. It wasn't Senisran‑but it was better. He wasn't
home, but it felt like he was back in the neighborhood.
Something irritated his throat and he suffered through a brief coughing jag.
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The red dust, down in his lungs, or some impurity in the atmosphere?
Attractive as his new surroundings night be, he knew he couldn't stay long.
With a sigh, he fondled the conjoined stones.
How extensive was the route it followed? How many worlds could it access?
Undoubtedly it offered a means of selecting one's destination, but he didn't
have a clue as to how that might work. He'd found the ignition, but steering
remained a mystery to him.
He might die of hunger or thirst before he twisted his way back to Senisran.
Or it might be the next stop on a preprogrammed, alien itinerary. Meanwhile,
as the old saying went, he might as well try to enjoy the ride.
Was the green glow fading slightly? If whatever pow-ered the system failed, he
would be marooned forever. Marooned by the side of a Parpamati road, he mused,
with no one likely to come along and offer him a lift. The source of the
stone's energy remained as much a mystery to him as its alien engineering.
Maybe the glow wasn't weakening. Maybe the color change was due to some
quality of the local atmosphere. Forcing himself to accept that comforting
hypothesis, he took a deep breath and twisted hard on the stone.
His hands came loose and went drifting slowly off over the grass. They were
followed by his forearms, which broke free at the elbows and began to spin
lazily end over end in the direction of his peramubulating hands.
There was no blood, no pain. Just an unmistakable physiological parting of the
ways. As he lunged instinc-tively after his escaping body parts, his torso
detached from his hips and his legs came apart in sections. Last of all, his
head popped free of his neck.
Obeying some unknown, unimaginable herding in-stinct, his component bits and
pieces remained in the same general vicinity. Too focused to scream, he strove
to will his corpus whole again. Though fully functional, his disembodied head
no longer exercised any control over the muscles in his limbs. His hands
seemed to
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file:///F|/rah/Alan%20Dean%20Foster/Foster,%20Alan%20Dean%20-%20Flinx%208%20-%
20The%20Howling%20Stones.txt have the most mobility. Fingers fluttering like
thick cilia, they darted in and around the rest of him, kicking backward
through the air. One hand latched onto a forearm and rested there like a bird
taking roost on a branch.
As he stared dazedly, the yellow bushes began to de-tach themselves from the
ground and drift off into the sky. Pulling themselves free of the soil, roots
separated from branches and drifted off on their own. Indeed, the soil was
beginning to separate from the ground.
Caught by a rising breeze, clumps of grass were whisked toward the eastern
horizon. Elevated from their subterranean homes, burrowing creatures twisted
help-lessly in the air, only to be preyed upon by flying teeth that seemed to
have no trouble coping with the jabber-wockean change in conditions.
Overhead, the orange‑red sun was coming apart, fiery prominences dancing
in all directions. In the distance he saw the handsome brown and yellow
grazers coming apart, only to re‑form as a spherical mass of floating
eyes, legs, horns, and bodies.
This time only the absence of lungs prevented him from screaming.
In the center of rising chaos hovered his backpack, the stone pulsing
peacefully within. It didn't matter, since he was no longer in
control‑or even possession‑of his hands. He closed his eyes. That
he could still do.
When he opened them again everything was coagulat-ing. The spherical herd of
grazers separated back out into its component parts, reformulating animals
instead of in-sanity. Branches returned to bushes, bushes to roots, and roots
to their place in the earth. Feeding time over, the flying teeth disappeared.
The surface resolidified beneath him. Up in the sky, the local star became
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once again a familiar rounded ball of burning hydrogen. As he stared mutely,
the rambling bits of his body re‑formed. Only his hands resisted,
waiting until the last instant to reattach themselves to his wrists.
He had a bad moment when he thought they were going to hook up with his ankles
instead.
Slowly turning to left and then to right, he found his head once more firmly
positioned on his neck. Arms and legs responded to mental command‑He
took incalculable pleasure in being able to execute a short hop.
Next time the effect might last longer, the consequences prove more severe,
the distances between liberated limbs turn out to be dangerously greater.
Given another taste of freedom and independence, his hands might not return.
As if in confirmation, they seemed reluctant to grasp the stone and twist on
its ends.
Finding himself arguing with his own body, he forced them to obey. Chaos might
be a liberating place to visit, but he didn't want to live there.
Was he any nearer Senisran? Was he even in the same galaxy? The same universe?
Already he'd visited corners of the cosmos that defied natural law as he knew
it. He wanted out.
That's what he got.
As his fingers relaxed on the stone, he found himself in a place of utter
blackness. No, he decided, it was blacker than black. It wasn't an absence of
light so much as the fact that in this place it seemed never to have existed.
It was an abstract concept, a fever dream, a product of delirium.
He could not see, could not perceive. Sensing that he was floating, he felt
with his feet and hands for a solid surface and found none. There was nothing
to orient him-self against, no point off reference. He could not see but was
not blind, could not hear but was not deaf. His nose wrinkled. That sense,
too, was functional. He wished it wasn't.
His incomprehensible surroundings stank of the char-nel house.
He could still feel. The backpack was heavy against him, but for the first
time he could not see what had come to be the solacing glow of the stone.
Groping within the pack, he felt of its outline, its weight, reassuring
himself of its reality. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]