Flinx Transcendent Part 28

No longer alone, a startled Flinx realized. Furthermore, the ent.i.ty identified inside his mind had a familiar feel to it.

IT IS GOOD TO BE WITH YOU AGAIN, FLINX-MAN, the voice in his dreaming declared. IT IS WELL THAT THIS TIME HAS FINALLY COME.

"I know you," Flinx found himself thinking. Flinx found himself thinking. "You've been with me before. Several times you helped push me out to perceive the danger that threatens us all." "You've been with me before. Several times you helped push me out to perceive the danger that threatens us all."

US ALL, the voice concurred. WE ARE COUSINS, YOUR KIND AND MINE. WE CANNOT REACH OUT AS YOU CAN-BUT WE CAN PUSH. WE CAN BOOST. THAT WE HAVE DONE.

"Who are are you?" you?" he inquired, not for the first time but more adamantly than ever before. he inquired, not for the first time but more adamantly than ever before.

An image took shape in the theater of his mind. A picture of a world of few humans but of many-cousins. Long separated by corporeal evolution, but not by intelligence, they kept to themselves and to their new world. The sentiment he received, the emotions that flooded over and through his self, enveloped him like a warm, protective blanket.

I know that world, he realized with sudden excitement.

"Cachalot," he thought. he thought.

WE ARE ONE WITH YOU TO HELP. WE WILL BE AS A CUSHION FOR YOUR MIND.

AND I WILL HELP TO DIRECT AND GUIDE YOU.

The source of the second presence did not necessitate speculation. He had communicated with it only recently.

The Tar-Aiym Krang.

The triangle, he remembered. In order for him to have a chance of countering the oncoming peril, a cooperative triangle of different minds and means of thinking was required. Though not a part of the triangle itself, he was supposedly the trigger, the key, to something greater still.

What and where was the still missing third part? Of what did it consist and what minds lay behind it? If a Tar-Aiym itself, then there was no hope. Peot, the last living Tar-Aiym, had expired near the world of Repler not long ago. The Xunca? They had gone away. What then the third and last const.i.tuent of the triangle, and where to look for it?

Seek and ye shall find, he told himself. He reached out anew, as forcefully as he could, in concert with the two minds that had now joined themselves to his. Reached out-and made contact. With something as unexpected and utterly alien as it was near. It was waiting for him.

There was a relay. On his ship.

As his Talent had grown and matured, Flinx had encountered many minds. Human and thranx, AAnn and Quillp, Sakuntala and Tolian. The ancient machine-mind that was the Krang and now the group-mind of the cetacea of Cachalot. But he had never come across, had never even imagined, the bizarre cognitive processes that now invaded his awake-dreaming awareness. They sprang from a unified consciousness that encompa.s.sed an entire world yet could focus as tightly as the mind of a single individual. It was necessary for millions, perhaps billions of individual life-forms to come together to generate this sentience, which was as different from his or from those of any other he had encountered as was his from that of a stone. Except that a stone did not have consciousness.

Yet in spite of all that, in spite of an alienness that was clearly conscious but outside ordinary concepts of cognizance, he recognized it. Like the soothing group-mind of the cetacea, like the straightforward machine-mind of the Krang, it had been with and a part of him once before. In fact, he had walked among it.

The whales of Cachalot came to him with warmth.

The Krang came to him with an icy clarity.

And the untranslatable, inexplicable, globe-girdling greenness of the world-mind of Midworld came to him with-power.

The triangle was complete. How the Xunca would have replicated it he did not know and had no way of knowing, but that did not matter. He felt the energy flowing through him in a torrent. Though he could not see it or sense it, he could perceive through others and especially through the twisting, twitching serpentine shape lying on his chest that something was stirring Outside. Beyond the bubble. Like a shiver on a clear winter morning, something was working its way through the immense fabric of the Great Attractor. Lying there guarded by the combined minds of the cetacea, guided by the Krang, and energized by the verdant world-mind of Midworld, a semiconscious Flinx steeled himself for whatever might come to pa.s.s.

With every iota of his being thus preoccupied and mentally walled off and isolated from the rest of the cosmos, it was hardly surprising that he did not notice or sense the arrival of another ship.

Those on board the Teacher Teacher, however, did. Or rather, the Teacher Teacher detected the emergence of the visitor from the mouth of the plasma tunnel and hastened to notify Flinx's friends. detected the emergence of the visitor from the mouth of the plasma tunnel and hastened to notify Flinx's friends.

"Impossible!" Tse-Mallory blurted out as he and Truzenzuzex gaped at the instantly recognizable image that had arrived within range of the Teacher's Teacher's sensors. "No one else knew about the Xunca terminal at Senisran. It didn't even exist until Flinx brought it back into being." sensors. "No one else knew about the Xunca terminal at Senisran. It didn't even exist until Flinx brought it back into being."

"Which means that this vessel and whoever it holds must have been following very close." Truzenzuzex could not believe his own conclusion, far less what he was seeing. "But that makes even less sense. No one can track or follow a KK-drive ship through null s.p.a.ce. This is not possible."

Tse-Mallory inhaled heavily. "My friend, we are in a place where the not possible is made real. Like you, I begin to doubt the evidence of my own senses." He turned to the nearest pickup. "Ship, is that truly another vessel we are seeing? Or could it be a corrupted duplicate of yourself, or an optical illusion generated by something in our surroundings?"

"It is another vessel." As ever, the Teacher's Teacher's reply was cool and a.s.sured. "A transport of Commonwealth origin. The externals and markings suggest a commercial craft of advanced design." reply was cool and a.s.sured. "A transport of Commonwealth origin. The externals and markings suggest a commercial craft of advanced design."

The two scientists exchanged a long look before a grim-faced Tse-Mallory addressed the ship again.

"Destroy it."

"I cannot do that." The shipmind sounded almost sympathetic even as it was unyielding. "Only Flinx, my master and guide, can give such a directive. It is one of many security measures installed at his command."

"Cannot the command be overridden if he is in imminent danger?" Truzenzuzex wondered tersely.

"There is no evidence that this new arrival presents any threat to him."

Tse-Mallory ground his teeth helplessly. Even the most advanced AI could be d.a.m.nably literal. "Why else would this craft have followed us here?"

"I believe we are about to find out. They are hailing us now. I will saturate the transmission."

A communication holo appeared in the appropriate spot near the forward console. The image that formed was that of a middle-aged man. He did not look particularly threatening, Tse-Mallory thought. That meant nothing.

"Ship," the man declared, "stand at rest to receive visitors."

Tse-Mallory took it upon himself to reply. "Thanks just the same, but we're a little busy right now and we've no time for company. Who are you? How did you discover the plasma tunnel? What do you want here?"

By way of reply the man offered a thin smile. "All questions will be answered in due time. If you refuse to allow us to board, we will fire upon the radiant sphere that contains the individual Philip Lynx, perhaps better known to you as Flinx."

Tse-Mallory found himself stunned into silence. This was madness! How could they know that Flinx was inside the luminous red orb? Between its softly pulsing brilliance and increased opacity it was impossible to peer within, far less see that it presently held a single individual.

"Ship," Truzenzuzex declared, "the new arrival threatens your master! I say again, obliterate it!"

"I cannot." The Teacher's Teacher's tone was almost sad. "The threat is purely verbal. In any case, the visitor has halted itself on the other side of the luminescent orb precisely in line with our present position. At this point any unleashing of my weaponry in the direction of the new arrival would risk striking the sphere itself. I confront too many logical contradictions and practical difficulties to respond as you request." tone was almost sad. "The threat is purely verbal. In any case, the visitor has halted itself on the other side of the luminescent orb precisely in line with our present position. At this point any unleashing of my weaponry in the direction of the new arrival would risk striking the sphere itself. I confront too many logical contradictions and practical difficulties to respond as you request."

"Then ask Flinx! Inform him of the changed state of affairs and ask him what you should do."

"I cannot," the ship responded. "When the visitor first manifested itself I attempted to do just that. He is right there before me yet completely out of reach."

The two scientists conferred anxiously. "We're going to have to allow these people to board, s!!laksk s!!laksk," Truzenzuzex insisted. "We will engage them in conversation. Whatever they want, we can and will keep them occupied for as long as possible." He indicated the incandescent crimson sphere. "It is evident that Flinx has succeeded in initiating a process of some significance. We must not allow it to be interrupted."

"Flinx has to know what's happening," Tse-Mallory muttered.

"You heard his ship, my friend." Antennae bobbed restively. "He is out of contact with us. These visitors, whoever they are, want to come here. We should let them. As long as they are here, we can talk. As long as we can talk, we can delay."

Tse-Mallory considered. "They may kill us."

"Certainly they may." Leaning back so that he stood only on his four trulegs, the Eint Truzenzuzex stood as tall as evolution allowed. "What happens to us does not matter. We are nothing. The process Flinx hopefully has inaugurated is everything. The longer we can keep these people busy, the more time it will give him to rouse-something."

Tse-Mallory nodded slowly. "Well, death is an old acquaintance." He smiled fondly. "Almost as old as you, bug."

Truzenzuzex trilled a thranx laugh. "I will issue the invitation. Up the universe, pulpskin."

Tse-Mallory offered an appropriately acerbic rejoinder as the philosoph turned to the nearest visual pickup.

There was nothing noteworthy about the appearance of the shuttle that detached from the new ship and made its way toward the Teacher Teacher. It was automatically guided into the appropriate bay. Then there was nothing for the two scientists to do but wait.

The visitors arrived on the bridge within moments. A dozen men and women, they were armed with neuronic weaponry that was not only viciously efficient but could safely be employed inside a ship without any risk to the integrity of its hull. They were also, Tse-Mallory reflected as he sized them up one by one, a somewhat motley-looking group. While a few individuals moved with the ease and grace of those who have had martial training, others appeared unsure of themselves and in questionable physical condition. The control chamber had become crowded, reducing the advantage of numbers in any conflict. Mentally, he started listing options. Doubtless Truzenzuzex was doing the same. He and his friend were old, but in a fight an elderly well-trained soldier is always a better bet than a young and inept civilian.

Then one more figure stepped into the room and everything he had been thinking was overturned.

The woman was tall and striking, with close-cropped blond hair and jet-black eyes. Tse-Mallory would have said that those corneas offered a window into her soul, except that he did not perceive the existence of one. Though she moved with the animal authority of a Qwarm and projected a barely contained ferocity, there was nothing else to indicate whether she might be a member of that murderous Guild. Certainly her attire was far removed from that favored by the professional a.s.sa.s.sins.

Those who had preceded her made way for her. As they did so they exhibited a deference that went beyond what was normally accorded a leader or chief. It took Tse-Mallory a moment to categorize the reaction he was observing.

They were afraid of her.

Halting, she stood silently as one of the armed but patently less threatening men stepped forward to confront the two scientists.

"We are of the Order of Null," he announced calmly.

Tse-Mallory kept his expression unreadable. "I know you people. You're the ultimate nihilists."

The man smiled slightly. "We have our beliefs, yes." Looking past man and thranx, he indicated the glowing red sphere that was visible through the foreport and beyond the great disk of the Teacher's Teacher's Caplis generator. "We require, nay demand, the death of the person presently within that scarlet orb." Caplis generator. "We require, nay demand, the death of the person presently within that scarlet orb."

Truzenzuzex could no longer stand the not-knowing. "How are you aware of his presence there, sil!!ak? sil!!ak? How do you know his name? And how did you find the means for traveling to this place?" His wing cases fairly shook with frustration. "You could not have tracked this ship all the way from the depths of the Blight! You could not have tracked it the instant we initiated changeover and entered s.p.a.ce-plus. Such a thing is not possible!" How do you know his name? And how did you find the means for traveling to this place?" His wing cases fairly shook with frustration. "You could not have tracked this ship all the way from the depths of the Blight! You could not have tracked it the instant we initiated changeover and entered s.p.a.ce-plus. Such a thing is not possible!"

At his words, the striking woman came forward. Tse-Mallory noted the deference the much larger and stronger speaker displayed as he stepped aside for her. The sociologist also noted, perhaps even more significantly, that among all the boarders she alone was not armed.

"You're right, insect." She employed the insult casually, as if unaware of its import and indifferent to its possible effect. Truzenzuzex ignored it. Contenders within his chosen fields of expertise regularly employed far more stylish invective. "It is impossible to follow a ship through s.p.a.ce-plus. The obvious corollary therefore is that we did not follow your ship."

When neither scientist responded, she laughed loudly. With proper modulation the sound could have been as attractive as the rest of her, Tse-Mallory reflected. Except that it was cracked and broken, more a musical bray than an expression of delight.

"If you didn't follow the ship ... ?" he prodded her.

Obsidian eyes looked right through him. "It seems that subsequent to our last encounter six years ago, I find it has become easier and easier to locate my brother."

Sociologist and philosoph gaped. In his conversations with them, Flinx had more than once made offhand mention of a half sister. He had told them that she was an Adept like himself, the only other survivor of the outlawed and disbanded Meliorare Society's genetic experiments, a girl of unknown abilities. Except that the person standing before them was no longer a girl.

"You are," Tse-Mallory whispered as he stared back at her, "Mahnahmi."

"Not the same Mahnahmi Flinx has told you about." Her gaze raked the room. "I'm older, stronger. More in tune with myself. I'm sure you're aware that as Flinx has aged he has gained more control of his abilities. Though we are different, in that respect we are the same. I can do things now that I could only inexactly envision the last time he and I-met. This, for example."

Something caught Tse-Mallory's brain in a vise. Reaching up, he grabbed at the side of his head and staggered. Next to him, Truzenzuzex had half collapsed to the floor. The philosoph's antennae stood out straight and stiff from his skull and a steady low whistle emerged from his collapsing spiracles. As fast as it had hit, the pain went away.

Blinking to clear his blurred vision, Tse-Mallory stared at her. She was not smiling, not laughing quietly. Just studying the two of them the way he and Tru would have devoted similar attention to any experiment.

"Six years ago I was just learning how to do that." She spoke as calmly as if she had just used a tissue to wipe at a speck of dirt. "I'm much, much better at it now." She started toward him. A defiant Tse-Mallory held his ground, but she was not interested in a physical confrontation. Walking past him, she stopped to gaze out the foreport at the hovering, luminant red sphere.

"My brother. The only one like me. The only one who could reasonably give me trouble or cause me grief. My mind is linked to his. He's like a disease I can't shake. His continued existence infects me when I'm in important meetings, announces itself to me when I'm trying to make critical decisions, wakes me when I sleep." She turned back to the two attentive scientists.

"Sometime after our last meeting I learned of these good people here and of their organization. Through various means and channels I informed them that there was one individual who might, just might, somehow be able to interfere with the impending apocalypse they revere. At first they didn't believe me. Nothing merely mortal, they insisted, could possibly affect in any way the coming cleansing. I was able to show them certain things, provide information that would otherwise have been unavailable to them. Though not all were convinced that he posed a danger to their agenda, I succeeded in convincing enough of them that there was no harm in taking precautions.

"Unfortunately, despite everything I told them and showed them, despite my warnings and admonitions, they did not prepare adequately when they attempted to eliminate Flinx on New Riviera. When I arrived, in hopes of cleaning up the mess they had made, I discovered that he had left for a world that, while not a part of the AAnn Empire, was dominated by it." She turned introspective.

"I completely lost track of him there, on a world called Jast. It was exceedingly strange, almost as if he had died. For the first time in a very long while I was unable to perceive his presence. Though unable to verify his apparent pa.s.sing, I departed and returned to looking after my considerable interests.

"It was about a year later that I sensed his existence anew. It shocked me, I can tell you. How could I have been so stupid? I should have known that my brother could not be guaranteed dead until I saw his body and verified its demise with my own eyes. As soon as I was able to do so, I went after him. I missed him at Repler, then at Visaria, and lastly at Gestalt. I lost him again when he disappeared with you into the Blight." Now she did smile again. "But when you emerged I thought I was ready again. I and my friends of similar intent raced to the Senisran system only to have my intimation of Flinx's continued existence vanish. Nothing remained of him to be perceived.

"But in lieu of his presence there was a device. The sort of mechanism for which my brother demonstrates a remarkable and repeated affinity. We explored it, we entered it, and it brought us here." She gestured toward the foreport and the intensely luminous sphere beyond. "The instant we emerged in this place I recognized this ship of his-and simultaneously perceived his presence." Turning away from the two scientists, ignoring them as if they did not exist, she stared once more out the port in the direction of the resplendent red orb.

"Now it will end here. He He will end here. And I will at last be free of the nuisance he represents. Of the last two Adepts propounded by the Meliorares, only one will survive." will end here. And I will at last be free of the nuisance he represents. Of the last two Adepts propounded by the Meliorares, only one will survive."

Tse-Mallory didn't hesitate. "If you've a.s.sociated yourself with these people, then you know full well what they believe and support. You've said as much. If the abomination that's headed this way from outside our galaxy is allowed to proceed unchecked, it will annihilate everything. Every world, every sun, every civilization. The entire galactic disk will disappear into it, after which it will move on to devour others."

c.o.c.king her head slightly to her right, she studied the burly sociologist. Her tone was appallingly, unspeakably, indifferent. "I know. But by then I'll be dead. My life will have been a glorious one, replete with individual aggrandizement and the acc.u.mulation of personal power. Small payback for what the Meliorares made of me." Her gaze narrowed sharply. "For what certain individuals did to me. I won't allow Flinx or anyone else to jeopardize my recompense. It is my due. I am owed."

"What about civilization, the lives of hundreds of billions of other sentient individuals? What are they owed?"

She shrugged. "A one-way ticket to the h.e.l.l of their choice, for all I care. Let them all perish. Let so-called civilization return to dust. Allow the Order's descendants to happily greet the apocalypse. It means nothing to me and I care nothing for any of it."

She spoke so nonchalantly, Tse-Mallory thought. Having been compelled to contemplate destruction on a galactic scale, he now found himself confronting egocentricity of similar magnitude. It was scarce to be believed. But in discussing the ultimate horrors she so casually dismissed she was being absolutely truthful. He could hear it in her voice, see it in her eyes.

So badly hurt had she been, so deep and immutable was her personal fury, that she wanted wanted the universe to go to perdition. the universe to go to perdition.

That was when Truzenzuzex, with the still formidable power of all six of his legs, launched himself.

Several of the Order members brought up their weapons. They were too late. Notwithstanding his advanced age the philosoph was astonishingly quick. But not, alas, quicker than the mind. Something came out of the woman Mahnahmi-something as poisonous as it was powerful. It caught Truzenzuzex and threw him across the control chamber to smash into the far wall. As he lay there twitching, alive but hurt, Tse-Mallory rushed to his side. He did not try to take advantage of his friend's attack to make a similar run at Flinx's half sister. The soldier-sociologist was brave, but not foolhardy. It would do no one any good, least of all an unaware Flinx, if he too was injured.

Truzenzuzex was whistling his pain, but nothing appeared to be seriously damaged. A human thus flung aside would probably have broken bones. A thranx's chitinous exoskeleton could take tougher punishment. Tse-Mallory looked back over his shoulder at the beautiful deformation that was the product of another of the Meliorares' many biological missteps.

"If your aim is Flinx's death, why bother to board this ship? If you know that he's inside the red orb, why didn't you just destroy it the instant you arrived?"

The tip of her tongue stroked first her upper lip, then the lower. "All in good time, old man. A death delayed is a death magnified. A demise shared is a demise savored. I've worked a long time to reach this moment. Don't try to talk me out of my pleasure." She indicated their surroundings. "I know those who built this vessel for him. I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to see what kind of friends he had made." She locked eyes with the irate sociologist. Did she ever blink? he wondered.

"You will watch him die," Mahnahmi murmured contentedly. "Then I will kill you both. After that I will try to make a prize of this ship. If not..." She shrugged again. "It will be enough to have made the attempt. As for this astonishing place, whatever it is, wherever it is, it will return to the obscurity from which my brother has only momentarily resuscitated it."

Rising from the injured Truzenzuzex's side, Tse-Mallory favored her with a stare of wizened incredulity. "You don't realize the significance of these surroundings, do you? You followed Flinx's ship without having the slightest notion of where it might lead. As we stand here talking you still have no idea how far you've come or what wonderment surrounds you."

"I don't know and I couldn't care less," she shot back. "If I can't exploit it for my own ends, then as far as I'm concerned it's just another grandiose alien folly. Like most follies, one probably better off forgotten."

She would have continued-except that the ongoing, rambling, half-mad declamation that preoccupied her and claimed her full attention was interrupted by a pair of unexpected arrivals. The newcomers to the conversation were not members of her entourage and did not subscribe to their beliefs or to their leader's objectives. Having carried out a necessarily hasty but nonetheless efficient reconnoiter of the state of affairs extant in the Teacher's Teacher's control chamber, the newcomers proceeded to take steps to rectify them. control chamber, the newcomers proceeded to take steps to rectify them.

As a fully anointed padre in the Security Services of the United Church, Sylzenzuzex never traveled anywhere without the personal armaments that were part of her private kit. She would have felt naked without them. Opportunely, though each was designed to be manipulated by small, four-digited thranx hands, at least one of the weapons was sufficiently undemanding that Clarity could operate it.

With their ordnance tuned for in-ship combat, the two females used the entry portal for cover as they fired repeatedly into the control chamber. Their fully-charged shockers brought down several members of the Order of Null before the survivors managed to find some cover of their own and return fire. Adding to the confusion, Sc.r.a.p had launched herself from Clarity's shoulder. Streaking around the bridge just below the ceiling, dodging the panicky shots of increasingly fl.u.s.tered Order members, the flying snake spat death at those attempting to conceal themselves.