Flinx Transcendent (50 page)

Stepping forward, Softsmooth loomed over the two humans. A massive but soft seven-fingered paw came down to rest on Flinx's unoccupied shoulder. Huge eyes full of wisdom that were at once childlike and incomprehensible peered down into his own.

“We can do no more and there is no more we can do, Flinx-friend. Outcome of all games, end of biggest game, is in your hands now. You were the key, you are still the key.”

Flinx suddenly felt both small and vulnerable, and not because the hulking Ujurrian was so much larger than he was. He spread his arms helplessly. “The key, the key! You keep telling me that, but I don't know what I'm supposed to be the key
to
! Or the trigger: it's all chaotic and confused.”

“Is usual condition of life and universe,” Moam pointed out without hesitation. “You have seen and experienced enough of it to know that, Flinx-friend. Only help we can provide is keep you alive.”

“That's not good enough.” His frustration threatened to broker a return of one of his devastating headaches.

Clarity leaned toward him. “Be thankful for small favors, Flinx.”

Fluff came forward. Standing side by side, the two ursinoids were a
dominant presence. “We simple folk, Flinx. We play at our game. We keep you live. We dig our tunnels. That what we do.”

A new thought caused Flinx to pause a moment before responding. “Maybe that's what happened to the Xunca. The race that built the alarm system that's centered on Horseye. You told me years ago that they ‘went away.’” He eyed each of the Ujurrians in turn. “Maybe they made a tunnel similar to the kind you're digging, and they went ‘away’ through it.”

The Ujurrians exchanged looks along with thoughts. “Our tunnels can go far places through interesting ways. Or interesting places through far ways. But not far or interesting enough to get away from evilness that is coming.”

“If we could do that,” Moam added, “we would already have made the going. And asked you to come with us,” he added as an afterthought. “Would miss Flinx-friend, Flinx-teacher.” Turning, he lumbered with great dignity toward the hole that was hovering in the atmosphere. “Cannot save ourselves, Flinx-friend. All falls to you.”

“But I don't know what else to
do,”
he wailed earnestly. Clarity put an arm around him while Pip snuggled closer against his neck. Each, in their own different and distinctive way, sensed and was reacting to the suffering he was undergoing.

Contrary to his hopes, the only thing the Ulru-Ujurrians had left to offer was compassion.

“Flinx-friend hurts.” Reaching out, Softsmooth patted down his red hair with a paw that was large enough to cover his entire head. “We hurt for Flinx-friend. But this is a tunnel he must dig for himself.” She shook abruptly, fluffing out the fur that covered her head and upper body. “You are the key. Find what you must unlock, or this game will be the last game. Ever.”

Pivoting, she moved to rejoin Moam. Bluebright followed. Only Fluff lingered a moment longer. The thoughts he projected were tinged with heaviness and regret.

“So much burden for one small thinking fella-being. I sorry it you, Flinx-friend. I glad it not I. Try avoid situations like just now.” Enormous eyes shifted to Clarity. “Next time maybe we not dig fast enough to save.”

One by one the Ujurrians stepped or jumped back into the opening
in the aether. A deep rumble followed Fluff's disappearance, following which the hole snapped in upon itself like a circlet of interdimensional elastic and was gone. Nothing remained to indicate that anyone other than Flinx, Clarity, and the two minidrags had ever been there.

Well, almost nothing. Bending down, Flinx picked up half a handful of gray-brown fur and lifted it to his nose. It smelled strongly of myrtle and musk: Softsmooth. Turning, he found himself once again surveying their implausible environs. Any xenologist in the Commonwealth would gladly have given up several years' stipends for the privilege of spending a single day in such surrounds, and here he could not enjoy it for a moment because—because he was some kind of stupid, enigmatic, inscrutable key.

He shook his head. Following procrastinating visits to worlds as diverse as Visaria and Jast he had resolved to do whatever he could to try to save the Commonwealth. Someone else might have said “to fulfill his destiny”—except that he did not for an instant believe in such nonsense. It was all so much superstition and silliness.

There was nothing nonsensical about the Great Evil, however. His reluctant, innermost self had been thrust outward to perceive it. It was as real and remorseless and dangerous as his dreams of a normal life were wish fulfillment.

“Flinx? Are you all right?” Clarity was looking at him with concern. Such a simple gesture. Such an essential one.

“I'm unchanged,” he responded carefully. “Whether that makes me all right or not I don't know and I no longer much care. But since you ask—yeah, I feel ‘all right.’” His words relieved her evident alarm.

Alarm.

He thought back. Back to when he had gone to New Riviera to reunite with Clarity. What was it that Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex had told him a small coterie of their fellow researchers had learned about that mysterious apparatus that had been left behind on Horseye by the long-vanished Xunca?

He remembered.
Two
sources had been recorded. Down through the millennia the incredibly ancient mechanism had been monitoring not one but two locations. One was, of course, the threat represented by the Evil that was coming out of the Great Emptiness. The other was something unknown that was located in a unique region of space known as
the Great Attractor. A point in the continuum that all local galaxies were shifting toward. An inexplicable physical anomaly with the energy of ten thousand trillion suns. It was utterly unique in the universe. No known physics or mathematics could account for such an incredible concentration of energy.

Could the Xunca?

Contemplating the anomaly, Flinx and the two scientists had previously speculated on whether the Xunca had actually considered constructing something capable of moving entire galaxies, including their own, out of the path of the oncoming menace. It had remained just that, nothing more than speculation. But what if, he found himself wondering, the Great Attractor, or something at the heart of that fantastic force, was actually designed to do something else? The instrumentality on Horseye not only monitored both sites, it also sporadically sent some kind of signal through a deviation of normal subspace toward an unknown third location. According to Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex the scientists studying the Xunca mechanism had not even been able to determine how the information was being sent, much less what was being transmitted or what might be on the receiving end.

Constant monitoring of the approaching threat he could understand. Constructing and monitoring something capable of moving an entire galaxy, much less several, out of the way of that threat was a physical undertaking that could barely be comprehended by mere organic entities. But why the third signal? What did it consist of, where was it being beamed, and what was it intended to accomplish?

Perhaps nothing, he told himself. Maybe it was an unintentional byproduct of the monitoring/alarm system. Maybe it was only an inadvertent leak of deformed radiation into subspace. Having latched on to the thought and fallen into speculation, he could not let it go. Always, ever, eternally curious, and usually to his detriment, he needed an answer. Where and how to find an answer to a question that some of the Commonwealth's finest scientists had only recently learned to ask? He was stuck on an uninhabited, long-dead alien world in the middle of the sterile Blight, cut off from any planetary information shell, with access only to the library that was part of his ship's mind.

Not quite a dead world, he reminded himself. Something was tugging at his arm.

“Where'd you go?” Clarity asked him intently.

“Hmm?” He blinked. “I've been right here.”

“No.” She smiled perceptively. “I know that self-inflicted stasis. You went somewhere. I'm sorry to break in, but I couldn't take it anymore. The silence, and the distance.”

“Sorry,” he apologized. “Something one of the Ulru-Ujurrians said got me to thinking.”

Her expression twisted. “I don't think I like the sound of that.”

“It just sparked a question,” he explained, a little too quickly, a little too disingenuously. “Not a solution. Just a question.” Looking past her, he nodded in the direction of the Krang's silent contact platform. “The only drawback is that I have to ask it of the machine.”

She looked around sharply, then back at him. “Again? If I didn't know you better and appreciate what putting yourself under those transparencies costs you in terms of physical and mental wear, I'd say you were getting addicted to the experience.”

He had to smile. “Hardly. It's every bit as tiring and draining as you say. But I don't have any choice. Even if we had access to the Terran Shell itself, the answer I need isn't available there. Or from any humanx knowledge resource.” His expression reflected the helplessness he was feeling. “I
have
to try, Clarity. It might be the last thing I can think of to try.”

She chewed her lower lip. “I wish you'd wait until the others are back.”

He shrugged. “Why? Would Bran somehow make the experience easier? Is Tru's presence going to lessen the strain? Can Syl find a way to keep me from burning axons?” He shook his head. “I'd rather do it and get it over with than have to listen to their advice and deal with their worries.”

Her tone was subdued almost to the point of inaudibility. “What about
my
worries?”

Reaching out, he did his best to reassure her. “This will be the least amount of time I've ever spent on one of those contact slabs, I promise. I'll just make contact, pose my question, receive an answer or a rebuff, and slip back out.”

She looked up at him. “You make it sound as harmless as requesting a zoning change on a piece of undeveloped property on Nur.”

“Okay,” he acknowledged, “so there's some risk involved.” He indicated their alien surroundings. “Look where we are. Consider where we recently were and what I experienced beyond the Rim. Compared to that and everything else you and I have been through, soliciting the answer to a single question from an alien machine I've already been in contact with counts as a minor diversion.”

She sniffed. “I don't know why I bother to raise concerns: you're going to do what you want to do anyway.”

He straightened. “I'm going to do what I
have
to do, Clarity. You, of all people, should know that.” Reaching up to stroke Pip, he started deliberately past her. As he headed down the wider-than-human aisle toward the distant dais, she watched him go.

It seemed like she was always watching him go.

As soon as the skimmer settled gently to ground and its loading ramp deployed just inside the entrance to the alien monolith, Truzenzuzex, Tse-Mallory, and Sylzenzuzex disembarked. Seeing the human female sitting by herself, Syl wandered over and proffered politeness.

“Sirrintt
, Clarity. You are feeling well?”

“As well as can be expected, Syl.” She nodded past the thranx in the direction of the two senior scientists. “How did it go? Did you find the solution to everything—or anything?”

“I'm afraid not.” Settling back on all six legs, Syl used both truhands to pull down her right antenna and commenced preening. “There's certainly much to see and learn—there is an entire city to explore, after all—but we found nothing more remarkable than what was expected. As a xenoarchaeological expedition it has been a great success.” She gestured regret. “Insofar as finding something to use against the advancing threat, it has been a total failure.” Continuing to groom, she looked back over her thorax. “My Eighth and his companion try to exude optimism, but at hearts they are realists.”

Clarity nodded understandingly. “Well, as long as they search without expecting to find anything they won't be disappointed.”

“Chilarr-ah-Ksa!!tt
, so true it is,” the security officer agreed. Looking past Clarity, she found herself searching the area immediately behind her friend. She could not frown—inflexible chitin rendered thranx
facial expression virtually nonexistent—but she gestured her sudden distress.

“Where is Flinx?”

“Speaking of optimism…” As her voice trailed away Clarity raised a hand and pointed.

Sylzenzuzex had no difficulty identifying the distant solitary figure mounting the dais. Responding to her loud, sharp whistle of exclamation, Truzenzuzex and Tse-Mallory hurried over to see what was happening.

Clarity sighed knowingly as they approached. “I guess we'd better get ready for another concert.”

“But what is he doing?” As he tracked the progress of the familiar tall biped, Truzenzuzex could not hide his puzzlement. “Why is he going to submit himself to the stress and strain of reconnecting with the alien device? It has already indicated it cannot do anything to inhibit the advance of the approaching peril.”

“I believe,” she explained, “that he intends to ask it a question.”

Tse-Mallory was also tracking the progress of the tall redhead. “What kind of question? A question about what?”

“I don't know. Flinx doesn't tell me everything that goes on in his head. I think he's doing his best to spare me.” She gestured in the direction of the platform. “You can ask him yourself when he's finished. Maybe he'll even get an answer to his question.”

“He didn't say what the question was?” Truzenzuzex persisted.

“No.” Despite telling herself that this time she was not going to watch, she felt herself turning to join the others in gazing at the distant dais. Flinx had assured her he was not going to be under its influence for very long. That was small comfort, but she would take what she could get.

“But doesn't… ?” Sylzenzuzex began. Then her antennae flattened back against her head as she winced.

Thunder filled the Krang's interior as tame lightning emerged from the structures protruding from its walls and began to crawl ceilingward. The deafening, clashing howls of alien music assailed their ears even as flaring bursts of luminosity skipped off their retinas like stones on the flat surface of a lake. The Krang was alive again; with sight, with sound, and with presentiment. Beneath the inner of the double domes, Flinx
could be seen sprawled out on the operator's platform, Pip coiled tightly above his head. Young man and ancient machine were talking again.