Flinx Transcendent (53 page)

Stepping outside the ship was more interesting than he had anticipated. While over the years he had viewed the
Teacher's
exterior from every conceivable angle, he had nearly always done so from the comfortable
confines of one of its two shuttles. He could not remember the last time he had ventured outside in deep space in nothing but a survival suit.

The stars were very bright, and the looming striped mass of the system's outermost gas giant was brilliant and colorful.

“Everything all right, Flinx?” Tse-Mallory's voice emerged muted and modulated from the survival suit's cranial speaker.

“I'm fine. Let's get this over with. Ship?”

“Flinx?” the
Teacher
responded promptly.

“Withdraw to distance. Follow the honored Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex's instructions unless contradicted by me.”

“I will continue monitoring your vitals for any evidence of abnormality,” the shipmind replied. “For example, your blood pressure currently is …”

Flinx cut it off. He knew how the
Teacher
could go on. Especially when it was concerned about him. “You can recite all the statistics when I'm back on board. In order to conduct the philosoph's experiment appropriately, I should be left in silence.”

Another voice reached him: Clarity. “I know you're supposed to be reaching out for a Tar-Aiym contact or something like that, Flinx, but—just watch what you wish for.”

“I'm wishing I was back on the ship,” he offered by way of reply. “I'm wishing I…”

“Flinx …” Truzenzuzex's perfectly modulated terranglo was both stern and suggestive.

“I know, I know. Try to think like a Xunca. Going to silence,” he muttered.

The
Teacher
began, very carefully, to move away. The acceleration was extremely measured. Activating his suit's propulsion unit, Flinx headed off in the opposite direction. The sensation of weight dropped off quickly until, once clear of the ship's artificial gravity field, he felt himself floating, falling, adrift among the asteroid belt.

He chugged past his first planetoid some ten minutes later. It was about the size of the chair he had been sitting on during the early meal. The lump of dark flinty material looked comparatively solid. Not an aggregate, then, he decided. Utilizing the suit's propulsion system, he pivoted—and experienced a moment of mild panic. The
Teacher
was nowhere to be seen.

It took him a moment to find it—a point of light moving away at an angle to all the other drifting shapes. How much distance would Truzenzuzex think was necessary to put between it and him? He had not been boasting when he had told the philosoph that he was not afraid of being out in deep space by himself. The
Teacher
knew where he was every nanosecond. It would not, could not, lose track of his position.

Could it?

Could he, despite every precaution, end up lost and alone, doomed to drift forever among the shattered shards of an alien planetary system, floating free until his suit's air could no longer be satisfactorily recycled, dying forgotten among …

Stop it
, he scolded himself.
The Teacher knows where you are at all times. It's right over there, just over that way. Distant now yet continuously aware of your presence, your location. You are not isolated. You are not abandoned
.

You are not fulfilling your mentor's straightforward request by wasting your focus on such nonsense, either
, he reminded himself.

Settling down, calming himself, doing his best to transmit reassuring readings of his blood pressure and all other relevant biological indicators to a concerned
Teacher
, he forced himself to start concentrating on the reason for the solo excursion. He projected outward as best he was able, trying to recall and offer up the same state of mind he entered when he was lying beneath receptive Tar-Aiym contact domes. Unfortunately, the unidentified whatever that he was trying to make contact with was not of Tar-Aiym origin. Very little was known about the Xunca other than the fact that they had existed. Nothing whatsoever was known of their works except what little had been learned from study of the alarm complex on Horseye.

As his body drifted, so, inevitably, did his thoughts. He found himself looking away from the larger asteroids, away from the Jovian giant, and outward toward the stars. Stunning they were in their own right, joyous in what they represented. It was horrifying to think of them disappearing, snuffed out one by one like so many candles as they were sucked down and absorbed by the malevolent immensity that was even now rushing this way.

The contrast with the dreary rocks among which he was drifting was striking. Dull and lifeless, these precessed uneventfully in their primordial
orbits. Making slight adjustments to his velocity, he fell in among them so that he was now drifting at the same speed as the majority. Several came quite close. Carefully extending an arm in the zero gravity, he reached out and wrapped his fingers around the nearest. His fingers caused the particulate matter that had collected on the hard surface to float away from the stone's minuscule gravitational field. A little of it clung to his gloved hand.

Using his other hand he flicked the dust away, then idly brushed at the fist-sized rock itself. More dust floated off, adding to the number of orbiting objects without altering their collective mass. Blinking, he brought the potato-shaped rock closer to his face. Was that a hint of color there? Murmuring a command, he activated the external light that encircled the suit's faceplate.

There was unquestionably some color there, he decided. Where he had brushed the dust away the stone showed a distinct shade of green. Well, the mineral olivine was a known component of many asteroids and meteors. Its presence here was not surprising. Releasing the stone and letting it drift free, he plucked another from its orbit. This one was the size of a melon. Finger-swept, it too revealed the same dark greenish tint. As he was examining it more closely, something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.

The first stone was coming back to him.

Startled, he let go of the rock he had been examining and put up a hand to ward off the first stone, but his intervention wasn't necessary. It turned out that the rock was not moving in his direction, but toward the second, larger piece of rubble he had been holding. Coming together in total silence, the two stones seemed to fuse. In the process green sparks flared briefly, illuminating the borders. Fascinated, Flinx would have studied the two rocks in more detail if he had not been distracted by another unexpected phenomenon. Looking around, he saw that other stones untouched by him were now also beginning to move in his direction. As they approached, some changed course away from him to intersect the vector of another, resulting in a melding luminously similar to the first two.

Adjusting his position, he commenced a slow pirouette. What he saw caused his jaw to drop in amazement. It looked as if every pebble, every stone, every planetoid within range of his vision, was now in motion.

Some of those that had already merged had begun to glow with a pale green efflorescence.

Hurriedly, he addressed the suit's communit. “Ship, I think you'd better come and pick me up. There's something happening here. Some of these stones around me, they're moving. A number of them are starting to commingle, or fuse—I'm not sure of the methodology involved.”

The
Teacher
responded immediately. “I am already on my way, Flinx. I have detected initiation of the same unidentified processes here. I will arrive at your location as rapidly as is feasible and safe.”

“I don't think there's a need for any special hurry as long as you're on your way.” Flinx looked on enchanted as more and more of the stony matter around him began to come together. The process seemed to be accelerating. “I don't see any danger. While a great deal of the material is in motion, it also seems to be avoiding me.”

“Best not to take any unnecessary chances, Flinx,” the ship told him. “While you have not yet been impacted, it is not possible to assure that all of the many orbiting objects will continue to steer clear of you.”

“I'm not concerned.” Inside the suit, Flinx smiled. “You're pretty good at predicting the movement of objects.”

“That is so,” the
Teacher
replied. “However, the number of orbiting fragmentational objects that are currently in motion exceeds my capacity to keep track of them.”

Flinx's smile gave way to a frown. The
Teacher's
computational and predictive abilities were exceptional. “I don't understand.” He looked around again. “How many of the stony objects are moving toward me?”

“All of them.”

He was silent for a moment, uncertain he had heard correctly. “I'm not sure I understand, ship. All of the objects in my vicinity are moving toward me?”

“That depends on how you choose to define ‘vicinity,’ Flinx.” The
Teacher's
voice was dry and dispassionate “They are
all
moving in your direction. The entire asteroid belt, billions and billions of individual objects, is now in motion and giving every indication of commencing a slow but accelerating collapse. You are in the approximate center of it.”

Flinx looked around uneasily. It did not unsettle him that as far as he could see into the void, rocks and stones of every size and shape were
rushing in his direction. It did not bother him that as more and more of them slammed into one another and melded together, a great green glowing shape was taking on contour and character not far from where he floated. Emerald sparks flew in all directions, lighting the darkness. It was as if he were drifting across the top of Vulcan's anvil.

It was only when a trio of asteroids each of which was at least fifty kilometers across appeared out of the dark and came tumbling toward him at high speed that he finally comprehended the enormity of what the
Teacher
had told him.

Once back on the ship Flinx could hardly wait for the lock to cycle shut to begin struggling out of the survival suit. Clarity and Sylzenzuzex were waiting for him on the other side. They had to wait their turn until a brilliant pink and blue winged shape finished caressing him with her pointed tongue.

“Flinx, you're all right? You didn't get hit?” An anxious Clarity was looking him up and down as if unable to believe he had not been crushed or otherwise injured.

He shook his head as Pip settled down on his shoulder. “I'm fine, Clarity, fine. Not so much as a scratch. There was stuff all around me, yes, and some of it was starting to move really,
really
fast by the time you arrived. But not one of them touched me. Not one.”

Sylzenzuzex was staring at him. “You activated something while you were out there, Flinx. Something that responded to your presence while also deliberately avoiding it. Truzenzuzex was right.”

He nodded as he started for the control room. “I'm beginning to think so. But right about
what?”

Truzenzuzex and Tse-Mallory barely acknowledged his arrival. They were far too absorbed in the view out the foreport. Around them, images projected by the
Teacher
provided various views with the ship as its locus. No matter which direction one studied, the spectacle was the same.

From planetoids the size of cities to gravel splinters no bigger than a fingernail, the entire asteroid belt that ringed the outer reaches of the Senisran system was collapsing toward a single point. Not one of the incoming objects had hit Flinx. Not one struck the
Teacher
. Those that looked as if they might do so swerved over, under, and around the ship as they sped toward rendezvous. Tse-Mallory was quick to comment on the seemingly conscientious evasion.

“Something is not as it appears. Chondrites don't have built-in avoidance systems,” he muttered.

“These do.” Truzenzuzex was studying a floating image close by his right shoulder that supplied a view astern. “They'd better.”

Bearing down on them was a rectangular cliff face twice the size of the
Teacher
. Even if Flinx had given a command to do so, there was no time to move out of the oncoming monster's course. A moment later, when it was less than a dozen ship-lengths distant, it changed course. They could follow its progress easily as it shot past. Braking at the last possible instant, it rotated forty degrees and with incomparable delicacy slipped into a notch in another drifting planetoid even bigger than itself. The hurtling cliff face fit the empty notch as perfectly as a tooth fit its socket. The massive merge was accompanied by a blinding but brief burst of intense greenish lightning.

Only when exhaustion finally overcame fascination did they withdraw, one by one, to their cabins to rest.

When Clarity awoke, Flinx was no longer beside her. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she gathered up Scrap and tracked him back to Control. Sylzenzuzex was standing nearby. For the most ephemeral of instants Clarity recognized and shamefacedly cast aside a flicker of irrational jealousy.

“Where are your mentors?” she asked as she came up beside him.