Orphan Star by Alan Dean Foster

for a stranger to gain admittance to the United Church headquarters. Well, he would know soon enough. There was an obscure genealogy there that he wanted very much to trace.

 
    Chapter Five
     
     
     
    Suborbital flights to and from every major city and province on Terra were regularly scheduled at the huge port. The clerk Flinx encountered was straight of body but mentally geniculate from a quarter century of answering the same inane questions. Not only could he expect no promotion, but he suspected that his youngest daughter was dating two old men and a young woman simultaneously. As Flinx drew near, the man was reflecting that in his day, children had behaved differently.
    “I just tried to buy a ticket to a city called Denpasar,” Flinx explained, “and the light on the dispenser flashed
No Such Destination.
Why?”
    “Where are you from, young sir?” the clerk inquired politely.
    Flinx was startled. He hadn’t been called “sir” but a few times in his whole life. He started to reply “Drallar, Moth,” but suddenly recalled an early dictum of Mother Mastiff’s.
    “Always answer a question as concise as you can, boy,” she had instructed him. “It makes folks think of you as intelligent and non-borin’, while givin’ ‘em as little information about yourself as possible.”
    So he said simply, “Off-planet.”
    “Far off-planet, I’ll venture,” the clerk added. “Didn’t you know, young sir, that Bali is a closed island? Only three classes of people are allowed to travel there.” He ticked them off on his fingers as he spoke. “Balinese and their relatives, Church personnel, and government officials with special clearance.”
    He studied Flinx carefully. “You could pass for Balinese, excepting that carrot top of yours, so you’re obviously not a native. You don’t claim to be an official of the Church and—” he couldn’t repress a little smile “—I don’t think you’re a special government representative. Why did you want to go there, anyway?”
    Flinx shrugged elaborately. “I’d heard it was the seat of the United Church. I thought it would be an interesting place to visit while I’m touring Terra, that’s all.”
    Ah, a standard query. Any incipient suspicions the old man might have had died aborning. “That’s understandable. If you’re interested in the same kind of countryside as Bali, though, you can get as close as . . .” he paused to check a thick tape playing on the screen before him, “. . . the eastern tip of the island of Java. I’ve been there myself. You can see the island from Banjuwangi and Surabaja’s a fine old city, very picturesque. You might even take a day-flyer over to Komodo, where the dinosaur-rebreeding station is. But Bali itself,” the man shook his head regretfully, “might as well try landing on the Imperial Home world than get into Denpasar. Oh, if you could slip onto a shuttle going in you might get into the city. But you’d never get
off
the island without having to answer some hard questions.”
    “I see,” Flinx replied, smiling gratefully. “I didn’t know. You’ve been very helpful.”
    “That’s all right, sir. Enjoy the rest of your stay on Terra.”
    Flinx left in a pensive mood. So there was a chance he could get onto the island, somehow. But did he want to have to answer those hard questions on his departure? He did not.
    That left him with the problem of gaining admittance to a place no one was allowed into. No, he reminded himself, whispering to the case and its leathery contents, that wasn’t entirely true. Three classes of people were permitted onto the island.
    He didn’t think it would be easy to forge government identification, and he was too young to claim to be anything worthwhile. There did exist the possibility of palming himself off as an acolyte of the Church. But what about . . . ? Hadn’t the old man said that save for his red hair he could pass for Balinese?
    Passing a three-story-high