Flinx Transcendent (54 page)

“In the lounge,” he told her, “noisily disputing statistics while toying with irreconcilable data among the ornamental flora.” He nodded forward. “Have a look.”

At first she thought the object floating in front of the
Teacher
was nothing more than the consequence of a great many stones large and small coming together to make one big one. Peering harder, she saw
that the fused rocky debris now formed a shape with a distinctly regular silhouette. Vaguely conical in shape, it flaunted an enormous dark maw at one end while the other tapered to a blunt, somewhat indistinct tip. Though more and more rocky detritus continued to arrive and add additional bulk to the drifting mass, the surge of material had markedly diminished. She found herself gazing at a massive, stark, simplistic configuration that radiated a subdued but steady green light from somewhere deep within. A tapering cone large enough to accommodate every starship in the Commonwealth. Simultaneously.

“Okay,” she heard herself murmuring softly to the man standing beside her, “as Syl said yesterday, you've definitely gone and activated
something
. It was made aware of your presence, and it's aware of
our
presence. But what is it?”

“That's one of the things Bran and Tru are arguing about.” He put his arm around her, forcing both minidrags to shift position. “It's beautiful, though, isn't it?”

Though glad of the comforting arm, its gentle grasp did not change her opinion of the enormous unidentifiable structure. “I don't know if I'd go that far. Dark green's not my favorite color, anyway.”

Voices sounded behind them, coming closer and growing louder. Tse-Mallory made himself heard before he and the philosoph entered the bridge.

“Tru and I have spent hours pondering the possible nature and function of the object. We think we know what it is.”

Flinx turned immediately. “What is it, then? What does it do?”

Truzenzuzex flicked the tip of one antenna in his direction. “Bran said that we know what it is. He said nothing about knowing what it does.”

“We believe that it is,” the sociologist-soldier declaimed importantly, “the receptor of the occasional transmission from Horseye. Your ship has checked and rechecked the relevant readings for us. There is no mistaking the confluence. The signals pass directly through the point in space now occupied by the assembled contrivance.”

“That's most interesting, esteemed Eighth,” Sylzenzuzex observed. “I confess, however, that I'm unable to see how this discovery has any practical ramification.”

Looking over at her, he switched to Low Thranx. “That's because we remain ignorant of it. But both Bran and I are convinced there must be one.” With his right truhands and foothands he gestured toward the port. “Otherwise, all the intriguing activity that we have been witness to here represents nothing more than a grandiose expenditure of energy in the service of no purpose.”

Flinx had a sudden thought. “The Krang is both a weapon and a musical instrument. Could this be a work of art?”

Tse-Mallory frowned at him. “Why beam intermittent signals all the way from the Horseye system to here just to identify the location of a piece of art? Though I have to admit that I, personally, certainly find it pleasing from an aesthetic as well as an engineering point of view.”

Truzenzuzex was not about to be sidetracked. “We have already had this argument, Bran. It
must
do something! And furthermore,
fss!is!kk
, it must do something of significance. It is too big, too impressive, and too joined to the Xunca alarm system to be nothing more than a diversion.”

“That's your opinion.” Tse-Mallory continued to play devil's advocate. “A Xunca might view the arrangement differently.”

“How do we find out?” Flinx looked down at the philosoph.

“Bran and I have been debating that all day.” The subdued light of the control room gleamed mirror-like from the dozens of individual lenses that comprised the venerable thranx's compound eyes. “Your physical and/or mental interaction with the orbiting matter galvanized, provoked, or otherwise set in motion the extraordinary orbital assembly process that has resulted in the new astronomical object we now see before us.” He did not hesitate. “It follows that if anything is likely to stimulate further activity on the part of the object, it will be your presence.”

Flinx swallowed. “You want me to put the suit on again and go out there—
into
there?” This time it was Clarity who put a protective arm around him.

Tse-Mallory nodded firmly. “Not alone, though. At least, not initially. We'll enter together. Then, if nothing happens and we can't come up with a better idea, that's when we will ask you to continue by yourself.”

Clarity blinked at the old soldier-scientists. “‘Enter’?”

Human and thranx nodded in tandem, though it was Truzenzuzex
who spoke. “Bran and I have concluded that we should take the
Teacher
into the large opening.” He gestured in the direction of the enigmatic alien construct. “There's certainly more than enough room. It may be that an apparatus that encloses such a considerable volume is in fact intended to act upon a single individual—but it seems, even for the Xunca, unnecessarily profligate in terms of expenditure. There is no reason not to take the whole ship inside. Unless”—and he executed a broad gesture of deference in Flinx's direction—“you choose not to. It is, after all, your vessel, and therefore your decision.”

Flinx considered his mentors' words carefully. He hated the thought of risking the
Teacher
. On the other hand, he told himself, if he chose to enter in a suit, alone, and something untoward happened, of what use would be his wonderful ship? Bran and Tru were watching him closely, Sylzenzuzex was watching her Eighth, and Clarity—Clarity at that particular moment looked as if she would rather be anywhere else in the universe, as long as it was with him. In fact, of all those present, only one had not yet ventured an opinion regarding the philosoph's request.

Twisting his head down and to his right, he murmured, “Well, Pip? What do you think? Do we take a dive into the alien well or do we try something else?”

Raising her gaze, the minidrag looked up at him and blinked. Then she yawned, dropped her head back into her upper coil, and went back to sleep.

“That's what I thought you'd say.” He turned back to the patient Truzenzuzex. “If you and Bran think it's something we should try, then I suppose we ought to go ahead and try it.”

“Sure,” an unhappy Clarity muttered, “just plunge ahead and hang the consequences.”

“What?” He looked over at her. “If you object, Clarity, or think we should try something else first…”

She sighed and shook her head. “Don't listen to me. I'm just tired, that's all.” She offered a wan smile. “My area of expertise is cosmetics, remember? Not of much use when it comes to trying to save civilization. As far as deciding how and when to experiment with alien artifacts, I'll be the first to admit I don't have any qualifications.”

“Sure you do,” he contradicted her. “I'm an alien artifact, and you've experimented with me.”

She gaped at him. Figuratively, he gaped at himself in self-inflicted shock.

I—I made a joke
, he thought numbly.
A joke about my genesis
. Try as he might, he could not remember having done anything of the sort ever before. His origins had always been a matter, to himself and to others, of utmost seriousness. Unsurprisingly, it had been left to Clarity to extract for the first time a scrap of absurdity from it.

Experiment
, he thought dazedly to himself. That was the origin of Philip Lynx. Serious, somber, stern, severe—and if you looked at it a certain way, from a particular angle, just possibly also a little—silly?

They were all staring at him. As much to his surprise as that of everyone else, he smiled. “All right. Let's go see what's inside the big glowing green stone thing. Maybe it's a Xunca surprise.”

“Let us hope it
is
a Xunca surprise.” Truzenzuzex whispered under his breath, his spiracles barely pulsing. “Otherwise we will be reduced to drifting mentally as well as physically while formulating hopeful hypotheses from nothing.”

Semisentient as it was, the
Teacher
might have been expected to raise an objection or two of its own to the scientists' proposal. It was sufficiently advanced, however, to recognize that the experiment was one that had to be tried. If its master and his fellow organic intelligences were willing to risk their continued existence in the service of such investigation, then as a properly programmed AI it could hardly do less.

The vast chasm at the enlarged end of the asteroidal aggregate loomed even bigger as the
Teacher
approached it. Not a hint of the soft, almost comforting green glow was apparent within. A sequence of barely visible silvery striations lining the interior were all that interrupted the otherwise interminable starless dark. As the ship moved deeper and deeper inward, Flinx could not shake off the sensation of being swallowed.

He forced it from his thoughts as the ship moved deeper. It was a foolish analogy anyway. There was not the slightest suggestion of the macrobiotic about the alien assembly whose immense curving walls now fully engulfed them. It was cold, dead, and manifestly unalive.

Which led him to wonder at the source of the faint violet glow that appeared directly ahead.

At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks and that the purple was visual, not external. Standing beside him, however, Clarity raised an arm and pointed toward the same glimmering.

“Flinx, do you see that?”

He nodded. “There's some color there.” He looked sharply to his left. “Bran, Tru?”

“Something there for sure.” Tse-Mallory moved forward until he was leaning against the smooth surface of the main console, as if the additional bit of space he had walked might bring him close enough to the flickering color to allow him to identify it.

Further reflection was interrupted by the
Teacher
. “Flinx, we are accelerating.”

“I didn't give that order.” He had not taken his eyes off the distant speck of profound purple. “Do you feel a need to or have evidence that suggests we need to increase our forward velocity?”

“It would not matter if I did,” the ship replied uninformatively. “I note only that we have begun to accelerate. Rather dramatically, if I may say so.”

Flinx and Clarity exchanged a glance, then looked across at the two scientists.

Tse-Mallory looked bemused. “I don't sense any increase in speed. Tru?”

The philosoph was likewise noncommittal. “I perceive nothing. Flinx, ask the ship to elaborate.”

Flinx needed no prompting. Except in cases of obvious emergency it was unlike the
Teacher
to take such action on its own initiative. In response to his query the ship replied readily, though as far as a rationale was concerned its explanation was no more illuminating than its initial announcement.

“What's our speed?” Flinx asked. “How much faster are we moving?” He continued to stare out the foreport. Had the splotch of purple refulgence grown slightly larger?

“We are not moving faster,” the
Teacher
replied. “In fact, we are not moving at all. Space, however, is. As to our speed, by my instruments, it is zero.”

“You're not making any sense.” An increasingly irritated Flinx glared at the nearest visual pickup. “If we're accelerating, how can we not be moving?”

He broke off. Additional detailed explication could wait until later. In fact, everything could wait until later. He felt pressure at his waist. Clarity was hugging him, hard. The two humans standing shoulder to shoulder allowed Pip and Scrap, mother and offspring, to push up against one another. Off to their left Bran Tse-Mallory, the Eint Truzenzuzex, and his relative Sylzenzuzex joined the two humans in staring straight ahead.

They did not know what they were seeing. They did not understand what they were seeing. They knew only that they could not turn away from it.

The
Teacher's
confusing and seemingly contradictory attempt at explanation notwithstanding, it appeared that they had entered some kind of tunnel. A tunnel or corridor composed entirely of energy that was simultaneously volatile and unwavering. It was as if, Flinx reflected in awe, someone had taken an entire galaxy in all its glory, replete with suns and nebulae, pulsars and masers, black holes and X-ray bursters, and attenuated it until it was no greater in diameter than the coruscating tube they were presently speeding through. The curved walls that enclosed them flung successive waves of electric crimson, intense cobalt, and eye-bending yellow at their stunned retinas. Some emerged from astern to overtake and blast past the ship itself. He had the feeling that if the
Teacher
was to drift to the left or right, up or down, and make the slightest contact with that scintillating, flaring cylinder of encircling energy, the ship and everything within it would evaporate like a cough in a hurricane.

“Some kind of plasma tunnel.” Tse-Mallory had found his voice. He spoke in that tone of barely controlled excitement scientists reserve for those special moments when they realize they have come across something that truly justifies the employment of the word “new.”

“Irrespective of what the ship says, I can't tell if we're moving through it or if it's moving around us.”

“I can tell you
this, cri!l!kk.”
Truzenzuzex's antennae were quivering like violin strings at the height of a Bartok arpeggio. “We are
traveling. Sitashk
, we are traveling! What I would not give to be able to
pause and step for a moment outside these sculpted walls of dynamic conveyance.”

Occasionally they had glimpses of other loops of force that might have been similar corridors. There were not many, and they were widely dispersed, but they materialized often enough to show that the one that was conveying them was not the only one of its kind. Glimpses of other such tunnels rapidly became fewer and fewer. Before long the occupants of the
Teacher
found themselves utterly alone, speeding down a channel formed of unfamiliar energies toward an equally unknown destination.