Flinx Transcendent (18 page)

“We are ready to begin, noble nye. Or at least to try. Do you have anything that will help you sleep?”

It was always the same. It was always slightly different. Different and the same. It was always horrifying.

When he regained consciousness he was drenched in sweat. At least, he reflected, by letting himself drift and be drawn mentally outward toward the distant reaches of the universe while he was naked he did not come back to reality encased in cold, wet clothes. Forcing open his eyes, he immediately looked downward in the direction of the slight weight on his chest. Eyes open, Pip was struggling to uncoil her body and unfurl her wings. She did not sweat, but he could sense her distress. As a more primitive empath, she shared his feelings without knowing exactly what he felt. This time she seemed in an unusual rush to regain her strength.

Possibly it had something to do with the weapons Eiipul IXb and IXc were aiming in his direction.

Kiijeem stood behind them. At the moment, his own emotions were badly muddled. While looking askance at his friends, he was eyeing the
rapidly reviving Flinx with the usual expectation and uncertainty—but this time there was also an unmistakable trace of the innate aggression he had radiated when he had first encountered the visiting human.

Something was wrong, Flinx realized. Pip was perceiving it as well, which explained why she was fighting harder than usual to recover from the experience. She was in a hurry to get airborne so that she could protect him. Reaching down, he put a hand around her body, pinning her wings against her sides as he exuded feelings of tranquility and reassurance. She relaxed a little, but not completely. It was evident she did not altogether buy the contrived calm he was struggling to impart.

He was not sure that he did, either.

“What have you done to our patriarch?”
Eiipul IXc hissed threateningly as she kept the pistol she was holding pointed directly at the center of Flinx's torso.

“Nothing more or less than what I said that I would try to do.” In the absence of specifics he spoke as calmly as he could while facing the weapon. “Which was to attempt to provide incontrovertible proof of my story. I think that I did that. I
felt
that I did that, though in the state of stasis that is entered it's difficult to be certain of anything.”

“Be certain of thiss,” her brother growled at him. “If the damage perssisstss, the next sstate you enter will be that of extinction.”

As soon as he felt enough of his strength had returned, Flinx sat up. “Damage?” A coldness began to creep up his spine. What had he done? “I don't understand.”

Without lowering their weapons, the twins stepped back. “Look upon the Lord Eiipul, and you will.” The pistol jerked in the brother's hand. “Try to flee and you will die, along with your gaudy pet.”

Still holding tightly to Pip, Flinx locked eyes with the minidrag before depositing her gently onto his right shoulder. Under the circumstances he was having a difficult time sustaining the emotional illusion that all was well and everything was fine. Her gaze kept darting from him to the Eiipul offspring and back again. He struggled to contain her with his feelings even as his own were seriously conflicted.

Lord Eiipul IX lay on a horizontal resting platform nearby, where his offspring and Kiijeem had moved him. The nye was lying on his right side (AAnn did not lie on their backs), eyes wide open, nictating
membranes retracted, staring into the distance. Bending toward him under the watchful, seething glares of his progeny, Flinx waved one hand slowly back and forth over his host's face. The eyes did not respond. The AAnn was breathing slowly and steadily, but he did not react to any of Flinx's physical stimuli nor indicate in any other fashion that he was still alive. Though no expert on AAnn physiology, Flinx felt fairly confident in voicing a diagnosis.

“Lord Eiipul is in shock.”

“Truly,” growled his daughter. “Tell uss ssomething we know not. Tell uss how to bring him back.”

“I'd try some energizing medications,” Flinx told her. “Anything organic and benign that's likely to give the nervous system a jolt and …”

“We have already done thuss.” With his free hand Eiipul IXb pointed to a nearby spiral table. A small air injection device rested on the polished stone. Glancing at the attached opaque clip, Flinx had no way of telling whether it was full or empty. “Hiss body twitchess in ressponsse to sspecific sstimulantss, but otherwisse there iss no reaction. Sshouting ssimilarly provokess no ressponsse.”

His mind
, Flinx mused. It was his mind. The AAnn's consciousness was adrift. Eiipul had not come back all the way. Clarity had survived the shared experience of a glancing contact with the Great Evil without suffering any permanent physical or mental side effects. Had he misjudged the mature nye's capacity for coping with the same kind of contact? Was the makeup of the AAnn psyche so different that it could not survive a similar encounter?

Once more he looked down at the immobilized nye. Flinx felt he was rapidly running out of time. Traditionally impatient by nature, the younger Eiipuls would not wait forever before shooting to cripple him and then calling for assistance.

If he could not reach the benumbed AAnn physically or through eye contact, Flinx realized, then he would have to try to do so emotively.

Closing his eyes, he reached out. He had done this under pressure before. The present circumstances were no more or less threatening than a number of similar situations he had been forced to cope with.

At first he encountered nothing. Emotionally Lord Eiipul was a blank, an empty vessel devoid of feeling. Probing the alien emotive
void, Flinx grew more and more apprehensive. If the paralysis extended this deeply, Lord Eiipul might truly be gone, his mind locked in permanent retreat.

There—something. A hint of awareness, cowering in the distance, enveloped in fear and anxiety. He reached toward it, projecting the most serene and soothing feelings he could muster. What he touched was not human. It was thoroughly AAnn. Certain sentiments, however, or at least variants thereof, are common to the majority of sentient species.

Dread and loathing, for example.

Lord Eiipul IX was the descendant of a long line of noble nye whose ancestry could be traced back to single-planetary origins. He was highly intelligent, a trained fighter, skilled in the arts of war, politics, economics, and status rivalry. Decades of intense competition within the fierce upper strata of AAnn society had left him scarred but never bowed. There was nothing in the Empire, the Commonwealth, or the unknown dark galactic reaches framing both that he found intimidating. Gently, expertly, with skill born of years of ever-increasing experience, Flinx massaged and worked to repair the AAnn's tattered emotions.

Lord Eiipul woke up screaming.

Nothing they had experienced in their young lives prepared Eiipul's offspring or Kiijeem for that reaction. The brother dropped his pistol while his sister, stumbling backward until she pressed up against the nearest wall, just did manage to keep a shaky grip on hers. To his credit Kiijeem held his ground. Or perhaps he was simply unable to move. Frozen to the spot, he stared at the resting platform on which the noble, the estimable, the most venerable Lord Eiipul IX was twitching and tossing and shrieking like a newborn that had been cast into a fire. AAnn, especially those in their prime, did not react like this. No matter the circumstances, regardless of pain or suffering, they forever held fast to a legacy of stoicism that bordered on the fanatical.

Confronted with the unexpectedly violent reaction, Flinx did the only thing he could think of: bending over and reaching down, he wrapped both arms around the possessed nye and held him tightly as he tried to still the convulsions. While Pip slithered crazily around his neck and shoulders, he pulled the AAnn as close to him as he dared. Madly flailing claws slashed at his bare chest. Wincing from the pain, turning his head to one side to protect his eyes and face, Flinx ignored the cuts and lacerations as he concentrated on projecting feelings of reassurance, comfort, and support onto the sufferer. Uncertain how to
react, desperately wanting to help but afraid to interfere, the three younger AAnn remained as they were and just stared.

Slowly, agonizingly, little by emotive little, Flinx brought Lord Eiipul IX back. Back to reality, back to himself. The AAnn's turbulent emotions calmed, the terror that had inundated him receded. An outer eyelid flickered, then the inner. His mind began to clear and his gaze to focus. Unhelpfully, the first thing they saw was the naked alien specter of Flinx hovering over him.

Instinctively, a four-fingered, claw-tipped hand rose and pushed. Releasing his hold with his left arm, Flinx quickly slid his right out from beneath the AAnn's back and moved away. Blood from the nye's unconscious, automatic clawing oozed down the tall human's bare chest and belly to mix with the perspiration that always lingered from the debilitating mental journey.

Tentatively, Eiipul IXc stepped forward to peer down at the patriarch. “Honored ssire, we have been sso truly truly vexed! We have sseen you alive yet dead. We did not know what to do, how to help.” Her gaze rose to the wounded softskin bleeding silently nearby. “We wanted to kill the vissitor—but at the ssame time we were afraid to kill it.”

Grimacing, Lord Eiipul raised himself to a sitting position. His unusually rapid breathing was the only remaining indication that he had undergone an experience out of the ordinary. That, and the dark red liquid trickling from his mouth. His jaws had been clenched tightly enough to bleed.

He did not answer his offspring, did not respond to her declaration. Swinging his legs and tail off the platform, he placed his sandaled feet on the floor, stood motionless long enough to be confident of his balance, and then started toward the watching Flinx. On the third step he stumbled and nearly fell. Alarmed, the twins broke in his direction, but he waved them off. Using his tail for balance, he resumed his slow advance on the softskin.

Halting within arm's reach, Eiipul turned his head to the left and exposed his throat. Within the room, no one breathed. When Flinx continued to hesitate, the noble reached out, took the human's right hand, and placed it against his unprotected neck.

“You cannot kill me,” he declared solemnly, “becausse I have jusst died.”

As he observed the tableau, Kiijeem found himself remembering. Remembering how insistent he had been that the softskin allow him to share in the hazily described experience. How the human had refused and how angry he, Kiijeem AVMd, had become. He tried to swallow, only to discover that all the moisture had fled from his throat.

Flinx lowered his arm, allowing the AAnn to turn his head back to him once again. “I'm sorry. When words failed, I didn't know any other way to convince you.” Turning, he walked over to the sweeping window. Inclining his head, he bent slightly at the waist in order to look up at the night sky.

“It keeps speeding up. The phenomenon that's coming this way. I and my friends—the few Commonwealth scientists who are also aware of it—thought it would be hundreds of years before the danger it poses would become imminent.” Straightening as he reached up to caress Pip, he turned to look back at his host. “Each time I reach out to encounter it I'm less certain of that time frame. If it keeps on accelerating it's conceivable it might burst out of the Great Emptiness and begin to affect the outer reaches of the galaxy as soon as in our lifetimes.”

“Sshannt, ssoftsskin. There iss no need for additional emphassiss. I will not doubt your word again.” Pivoting slightly, he finally addressed his offspring. “Sstand and breathe. I am alive, I am well, but I am changed. As would be anyone who had been obliged to sshare what I have jusst sshared.” He looked back at Flinx. “I do not know how you did what you jusst did, human. Manifesstly, you are different. The how and why of that I leave to cleverer, more sspecialized mindss than mine. For now I will content mysself with that which I know. With what I have—experienced. I know it wass not an illussion. Would that it had been. You have accomplisshed what you intended, human. I believe your sstory.”

For the first time that evening, Flinx allowed himself to unwind slightly. “Then you agree to hide me until my ship can return to pick me up, and will help me travel to the pickup site unobserved?”

Lord Eiipul regarded the softskin standing before him. “No.”

Flinx could not hide his surprise. The AAnn's emotions belied his response. Something was being left unsaid. “I don't understand.”

“As you have all too clearly sshown,” Eiipul replied, “thiss danger iss one that threatenss all civilizationss, all living thingss. It iss not,
sshould not, be the province of one sspeciess—far less a ssingle repressentative of that sspeciess. You bear a burden I would not sshare for the chance to be chossen Emperor.

“The Empire and the Commonwealth sstand at oddss yet pressently hold to an uneassy peace. It iss plain to me that all ssuch conflict musst be put asside lesst an unforesseen incident, an unpredictable encounter, might interfere with your effortss to try and counter thiss … thiss …”