Flinx Transcendent (22 page)

“I am ssure, however, that ranking memberss of the Ssecurity Sservicess will find your ramblingss entertaining—at leasst for a little while. They will, I fear, be far more interessted in how you as a repressentative of your sspeciess ssucceeded in arriving ssafely here on
Blasussarr without attracting their attention than in any of your entertaining but less ssenssible ramblingss. I will mysself be interessted in the ressultss of thosse engagementss. I ssusspect your revelationss may ressult in damage to more than a few careerss.” With a soft hiss, he turned back to his resting post.

“Remove the creature. Keep me apprissed of any worthwhile findingss that may ressult from itss interrogation. Lord Eiipul I will deal with later. He iss desserving of a little time to get hiss family affairss in order.”

Swallowed up as bodyguards and a handful of close retainers and advisers closed in around him, the Emperor disappeared. Soldiers and nobles immediately pressed forward to contain Flinx and his increasingly panicky host. Weapons were raised and aimed in Pip's direction. Uncertain which of the numerous targets below to deal with first, she flew higher and waited for some kind of indication from her master as to how she should respond.

Flinx found himself reflecting sadly that there was no time. Never enough time to do anything the way he preferred to do it. It didn't seem to matter which sentient he was trying to connect with: a member of his own kind, thranx, AAnn, representatives of other species. Individual minds were always so impatient, individual bodies unable to wait.

A plethora of clawed hands reached for him. He knew he had one chance. It was not the first time in his life he had only had one chance. On that proverbial one chance had frequently hinged his hopes of accomplishing wildly different things.

Facing the place where the Emperor had been surrounded by his protectors, Flinx closed his eyes and focused. Like it or not, the casually dismissive leader of the Empire was going to see what Flinx had seen, experience what he had experienced. Flinx concentrated as hard as he ever had, intent on transporting the mind of that one supremely powerful representative of AAnn-kind along with him on the difficult and dangerous mental journey he had made so many times before. He felt himself slipping, slipping, away from his surroundings, away from the noise and the eyes and the reaching alien hands. It was happening again. Even there in The Eye of the Nye it was happening. He anticipated it, he foresaw it, he expected it.

What he did not expect was taking along all of them….

So many stars, brilliant and blinding. So many nebulae, vast and diffuse. Above all, so much space, stark and infinite and so very, very black.

No nestling greenness accompanied his outward reaching this time. The profound and reassuring deep warmth was also absent, as was the coldly calculating presence of a certain incredibly ancient weapon. He no longer needed their help. Having several times previously been boosted outward, he could now cast his inner self to that terrible, distant place without external assistance. Knowing where and what it was that he sought, he flung his awake-asleep consciousness toward it.

Each time he suffered to make the contact it became more familiar, the process of state-of-mind journeying more clear-cut. Each time it changed him a little, not only physically but mentally. An unavoidable corollary of his unique mind and extraordinary nervous system, he was certain. The Meliorares who had made him would no doubt have been pleased. He wished he could have met them all, known them all. So he could have killed them all. He wished, as he had on many occasions, that he had never been born. Of course, if that had been the case then it was likely that his mother would not have been paid. For her services.

The intergalactic abyss, Bran Tse-Mallory would have told him, was a poor place for a pity party. Whimper if you want, but save civilization first. Not because it's your duty, not because you'll be a hero, but because it's the right thing to do. In the abrogation of rightness only anarchy wins.

Blackness and stars he sensed rather than saw—and a presence. No, Flinx corrected himself. A multiplicity of presences. Navvur W, Emperor of all the AAnn, was there, just as Flinx had intended. So too was the small, affectionate, familiar mind-shape of Pip. What he had not intended and could not entirely account for was the presence of dozens of other nonhuman species. In projecting powerfully enough to drag the essence of the Emperor along with him, he had inadvertently also brought along a hundred of Navvur's closest advisers. Each time he used his Talent, he reflected bemusedly, it strengthened a little more. He could only hope it would not strengthen to the point of killing him.

The scene in The Eye, he mused, must be one of complete chaos. He could only hope that no one would panic and shoot down his physical
body. Should that happen, his inner self might be lost forever in the frightful nether regions of interstellar space.

No time to ruminate on that now. His thoughts and those he had brought with him had been projected elsewhere. To the edge of the galaxy and beyond. Distance was not a state of mind: mind was a state of distance. At least it was to the intentionally garbled and cunningly reassembled DNA of Philip Lynx.

Dragging the minds of the Emperor and his advisers along with him, Flinx felt his thought-self burst through the space occupied by the obstructing gravitational lens. Explosive stars and radiant nebulae vanished. They had been swallowed up, consumed, obliterated by something so immense it could only be described as a series of dark equations. Where previously the gloom had been pierced by points and swaths of light, now there was only darkness. An utter absence of luminosity.

But not of presence.

As on previous occasions a thin tendril of hesitant perception reached out to scarcely skim the outermost reaches of the onrushing Evil. The feeblest touch, the slightest contact, was all that was necessary to convey the colossal malignancy of the force that was rushing toward the galaxy—and, he sensed, continuing to accelerate. Flinx knew it, recognized it, was far more familiar with it than he had ever wanted to become.

The incalculable foulness was new to the quintessence of the Emperor Navvur W, however. Equally, it was something never experienced and not imaginable by the essences of his hundred advisers. Among them all only one diminutive spark of consciousness proved able to cope with the assault on the senses. Flinx recognized the thought-self of Lord Eiipul. Along with everyone else who had been standing adjacent to the Emperor when Flinx had projected, he too had been wrenched outward by the force of the human's metaphysical dislocation.

In consequence of barely perceiving the outermost edge of the onrushing Evil that lay behind the Great Emptiness, a host of silent, terrified screams momentarily filled a minuscule portion of the endless extragalactic desolation. Like saplings caught in a hurricane, individual specks of sanity began to fragment and splinter. It would do no good to confirm his thesis to a congregation of the hopelessly insane, Flinx realized. He began to pull away, to recoil. Away from a supraphysical malignancy
too vast to be comprehended, too excessively loathsome to be understood.

Cognizance fled from that place of interstellar horror, the diversity of confused and confined nonhuman minds drawn and shepherded away by one that was more than human. Fled and retreated back to a region of welcoming warm stars, of planets swarming with life, of respiration and intimation and meditation. A hundred and two minds withdrew all the way back to just one of those star systems, to a single world as blissfully unknowing as all the others of the unspeakable fate awaiting it. Back to one moderately spacious chamber inside one building within the boundaries of one city. Not all of them, alas, returned whole.

It was a risk a reluctant Flinx had been forced to take.

Opening his eyes, he stopped swaying and once more took stock of his surroundings. His physical self was intact. He had not been shot. As near as he could determine, he had not been touched. The slight weight on his left shoulder was that of an Alaspinian minidrag. Glancing down, he saw that Pip was exhausted but otherwise unchanged by the experience they had just shared. Turning his attention to the milling throng of larger, more sentient reptilian shapes that surrounded him, he found himself confronting a far greater range of consequences.

Pandemonium reigned in the great chamber of The Eye of the Nye. To his right, the Emperor Navvur W was struggling to stand upright. In this he was aided by a frightened bevy of newly arrived technicians. Grim-faced medical personnel worked their way through the shocked, confused crowd, attending to the unconscious, the gibbering, the sobbing, and those whose thought-selves had returned only in part. Close to the naked human, a dazed but otherwise coherent Lord Eiipul stood staring fixedly in the direction of the Emperor.

“The venerable Navvur appearss to have ssurvived the encounter,” Flinx's host commented coolly. Sharp eyes turned to study the bewildered crowd. “Not sso all of my dissbelieving brethren.”

Observing the newly arrived medical forces at work, Flinx could only concur. “I meant to convey only the Emperor with me. Sometimes—no, make that many times—I don't know what my Talent is going to do or how it's going to react to the demands I place on it.” His mouth tightened. “I've damaged some of those here. I've damaged people before. I never
mean to. Unless they're trying to hurt me, and even then I try to minimize the effects.”

Lord Eiipul turned sharply on the softskin. “‘Minimize the effectss’? What ‘effectss’? The effectss of what? Can you do more than jusst sshare thiss dreadful and dangeroussly enlightening experience, Flinx LLVVRXX? Iss there more to you and your capabilitiess than you have told?”

Turning quickly away, Flinx started toward where Navvur W was showing signs of rapid recovery. “Hadn't we better be sure we stay close to the Emperor lest some of his destabilized and more assertive bodyguards decide to resolve matters on their own initiative?” Keen to further change the subject, he indicated some of the less speedy-to-recover nobles receiving medical attention. “Assuming we're not killed, won't you benefit from the unintended damage that the experience has inflicted on some of your rivals?”

Distracted by the notion, Eiipul scrutinized the surrounding circle of badly battered AAnn nobility, then looked back up at the human. “Truly you comprehend our cusstomss in wayss I would never have thought possible for a ssoftsskin.”

Flinx shrugged, aware that the meaning behind the shoulder-lifting gesture might be lost on his host. “Since I feel comfortable everywhere and at home nowhere, I've had to learn to empathize with every species' customs.”

It was not the response Eiipul had been expecting. He felt an unexpected and entirely deviant surge of sympathy for the human. “I ssensse that you are obliged to deal not only with demonic forcess on the outsskirtss of the galaxy but alsso within yoursself.”

Flinx started to nod, remembered to gesture second-degree concurrence. “There are times when I don't know which troubles me more.” He resumed advancing toward the rapidly improving Emperor.

By the time the two of them had approached to within speaking distance of Navvur, the ruler of all the AAnn had recovered to the point where he took note of their presence. Bodyguards, this time with weapons drawn, moved to intercept the noble and the softskin. Unmistakably shaken by the experience he had just undergone but with his innate perspicacity unimpaired, Navvur W gestured his sentinels aside.

Stopping just out of arm and tail reach, Flinx stared placidly back at
the Emperor of all the AAnn. As it often did at the most inopportune moments, his inborn sarcasm chose that moment to reassert itself.
“Tssant
, venerable Navvur. Did you find my ramblings entertaining?”

To his credit, the Emperor ignored the gibe. As he had stated earlier, he had little time to waste. “What jusst happened here, and how did you do it?”

Flinx sighed. “I did what I promised I would do. I showed you the threat of which I spoke. That's all I can do. How I did so doesn't matter. What matters is your response. Are you going to believe me or are you going to kill me?” He paused only a moment. “It really doesn't matter, because in the long run if I'm not allowed the opportunity to try and find a way of stopping what's coming, everyone and everything is going to die anyway.”

“You sspeak too much of death,” Navvur hissed softly in reply. “Sspeak to me of life.”

“Let me go. Let me rendezvous with my ship.”

The Emperor hesitated. “You will return to the Commonwealth, sspeak of your experiencess here, and tell them we are weak.”

Flinx gestured first-degree demurral. “I will return, yes, but only to pursue a defense against what you just experienced. I have little interest whatsoever in the unending historical squabbles that divide the Empire and the Commonwealth.”

“Ah.” Navvur looked pleased. “You guard firsst of all your own interesstss. How very like a nye. In that event, why sshould you care what happenss to anyone elsse, far less everyone elsse?”