The End of the Matter (27 page)

With the hand he tapped the peculiar, as-yet-unidentified substance. “Dead, inert, harmless, as anyone can see.” He drew back his hand, compensated for the movement in zero g, and smacked the surface hard. “Why do you not trust your own knowledge,
lya-nye?
Why do you doubt your own evident wisdom?” He moved until be was directly opposite the edge of one of the dark gaps in the artifact’s surface.

“We cannot see into this space, yet there must be a space there. In the presence of instrumental indecision, we AAnn have always reacted efficiently.” So saying, he reached out a hand, fingers spread, and shoved against the darkness. His hand passed through the black surface and vanished; and for a length of time just this side of instantaneous, he became the first and only one of his kind to touch Elsewhere.

Matter in Elsewhere triggered the device. Of course, the device was not actually there, within the AAnn Warship. It was somewhere half a million years back in space, where the system of Cannachanna had once been. It was connected to its present manifestation by an unimaginably vast buildup of FCI energy. When Baron Lisso PN triggered it, that energy and the actual device slipped, avalanched through a different state of space.

It all came together inside the AAnn warship. There was no explosion as a result, however. The accumulated energy simply gave the slingshotted artifact a little shove. The Hur’rikku device was a needle. What it did was punch a tiny hole in the fabric of the universe.

Into the other universe.

Elsewhere waterfalled into Here. The Baron vanished. The scientists around him vanished. Everything in the immediate spatial vicinity, which consisted of eleven armed vessels of various sizes and their crews, vanished. They disappeared in tiny flashes of supernal brilliance, going out of existence like moths in a firestorm.

Only an electronic angel on board the
Teacher
saved Flinx and his companions. The computer detected the danger and threw the ship into space-plus just in time to save it from annihilation. Since that annihilation was racing toward them only at near light-speed, the
Teacher
didn’t have to accelerate enormously. Only rapidly.

When they started picking themselves off the deck, it was the resilient, armored Truzenzuzex who was first on his feet and back at the consoles. Long-range scanners were activated, and the scene forming behind them came into view. There was no need to increase their velocity. They needed only to travel a little above light-speed to outspace the pursuing destruction.

Flinx and the others crowded around the screen. So stunned was the youth that he didn’t notice a terrified Pip had vanished out the passageway.

“Gone.” Tse-Mallory studied the detectors in disbelief. “They’re gone, Tru. All eleven ships. Not a trace of them.”

“Somehow they activated the device,” murmured Truzenzuzex. Awed, he studied the picture on the screen. “Humanx, pay attention. What we are witnessing is unique.”

Out of the region where the AAnn war sphere had drifted seconds before, something had emerged. An intense sphere of pure white brilliance, it was bordered by a black fire that could not be seen through. A tentacle of that blackness which was more than black seemed to shine as it stretched outward. That was impossible, of course. Nothing could glow black.

It was a distortion of every known physical law, yet it existed, even if a normal spectrum would have been appalled by it. From several hundred million kilometers away, a similar tendril of intensely glowing white fire was extending out from the event horizon of the collapsar.

“It’s drawing matter out of the black hole, out of the rogue,” said Tse-Mallory in a stunned whisper.

“That’s crazy.” September knew enough to sound confident about that. “Things fall into black holes. They don’t come out of them again. Ever.”

“Nevertheless, that is what is taking place, or else we and the instruments on board this vessel have all gone mad.” Truzenzuzex’s flashing compound eyes moved constantly from screen to other instruments. “I would not wager on that possibility. But then, I would never previously have wagered I would ever actually see an expandar. A
white
hole.”

As it left the event horizon of the collapsar, the stream of incredibly dense matter pulsed with increasing intensity, until it was so bright that the
Teacher’s
compensators were hard pressed to stop down the light to where it wouldn’t burn out the detectors: It approached the expandar slightly above the angle of approach of dark material from the latter’s event horizon.

Mutual attraction altered angular momentum. Both streams twisted, turned, spiraled in toward each other. At the center of the two entwining spirals, they met.

On board the
Teacher,
a gauge which measured levels of radiant energy exploded. Another simply snapped. They had been pushed beyond the range their designers had imagined existed.

Where the two tendrils, brilliant and black, came together, a sphere of multicolored, incredible energy formed. It grew and steadied as they watched.

“Imagine that at one time all the matter in the universe was concentrated in one collapsar,” Tse-Mallory mused. “It finally meets a weak point in space. The point gives and the two universes or more meet. What you get is a very Big Bang. What you get, maybe, is the new energy which later coalesces to form our present galaxies.”

“You also get something which totally annihilates matter,” Truzenzuzex pointed out. “An efficient irresistible weapon.” The philosoph looked pale. “How do you stop an immense concentration of matter? Why, with an equal amount of antimatter.” Light in the observation blister bounced off his eyes as if from a crystal chandelier. “Thank the Hive we never explored the trap after Ab set it. Any amount of matter, a single touch, probably would have been enough to set it off. But that’s not what shakes me.” He paused a moment to collect himself.

“We were going to drive the Hur’rikku device and ourselves into the collapsar. Had we done that, there would have been no gradual matter-antimatter annihilation, as we are seeing now. The white hole would have been created within the collapsar. All,
all
of the collapsar matter would have been destroyed at the same time.

“If that collapsar contains the remains of a hundred million suns, all would have turned to energy simultaneously.” He rubbed at his mandibles. “I’ve always wanted to know what a quasar looked like, gentlesirs and lady—but not from close up!”

He turned back to the screen. “The flow of matter into antimatter appears relatively constant. That matches what the instruments tell us. We have a new star, gentlefolk. A rainbow star.”

Tse-Mallory looked up from the console. “Tru, the motion of the collapsar has changed. No,” he added quickly at the expression of alarm on the philosoph’s face, “it’s not moving toward the white hole. No quasar in
our
back yard. It looks like they’re both going to orbit around the new star, if you can call it a star. Distance between the two remains, I’m happy to say, constant.”

“How long will it burn?” wondered Hasboga, her arm around September’s left. “It’s beautiful.”

“You’ll be able to see it for a few million years at least, I’d guess,” said Tse-Mallory. “But that’s not where the real beauty will come from.” She eyed him quizzically.

“The Velvet Dam,” explained Truzenzuzex. “The extensive dark nebula that lies between here and the Commonwealth worlds. When the energy from this steady annihilation reaches it, it will turn a dark nebula into the most magnificent sight in our galaxy. I would not be surprised if the colors become visible on Terra and Hivehom in the daytime. We will not live to see it, I am sorry to say. But we have made a wonderment for our grandchildren and the generations to follow.”

They continued to watch until the clashing colored energies of the rainbow star had faded to a small spot of brilliance on the screen. Then Flinx put the
Teacher
on course for Twosky Bright, the nearest major Commonwealth world. Primarily thranx-settled, it would be a good place for Truzenzuzex to communicate the knowledge of their accomplishment to officialdom. He could also help raise research funds for Isili Hasboga, who brightened at the announcement of the philosoph’s intention to help.

Flinx paused, a hand going reflexively to his shoulder. The familiar form was not there. He did not remember when Pip had left him, but it had been some time ago, he was certain. For a second he panicked, thinking back to that awful time on Alaspin when he feared his pet had abandoned him forever.

That was no worry here, however, and he relaxed. The minidrag had to be somewhere aboard the
Teacher.
In fact, he mused, the minidrag had been absenting itself for longer and longer periods ever since they’d left Alaspin. No doubt, he thought reluctantly, the experience of brief freedom had made his beloved pet permanently more independent. He would have to cope with it.

It was no problem to excuse himself to go hunting for Pip. Everyone else’s attention was focused elsewhere. Truzenzuzex and Tse-Mallory were deep in a discussion of the new phenomena now receding behind them. September and Isili Hasboga were equally engrossed in each other.

So Flinx went prowling through corridors and cabins, shouting out Pip’s name. The minidrag had to be somewhere in the living quarters or the few other pressurized sections of the ship. Working his way methodically back and down from the observation blister, he eventually reached his own cabin.

“Pip! Come on out, Pip. It’s all right. My mind is calm now.”

An answering hiss sounded from behind his bed. He frowned. It was an unusually soft hiss. Was Pip sick? Maybe, he thought worriedly, that was the reason for the extended absences. He took an anxious step toward the bed.

“Pip, are you all . . . ?”

Something that resembled a tiny missile shot past his ear, droning like a herculean bumble bee. He froze. A second shape whizzed by him, then another, followed by three more. He stood in befuddled amazement in the middle of the room as four, five, six tiny winged shapes dove and hummed around his head.

There was a much throatier hiss from behind the bed. Immediately all six shapes dashed over the covers in ragged formation.

Flinx found Pip coiled neatly on a rumpled blanket on the other side, sequestered comfortably between the bed-bulk and the metal wall. As he watched, the winged sextet settled itself neatly around the much larger diamond-patterned Pip, looking for all the world like a squadron of stingships hovering around a mothering cruiser.

Looking up, slitted eyes stared directly into his own. Flinx felt a warm mental thrum pass between the minidrag and his own sensitive mind. It was the second time he had become a father today—first to a new kind of star, and now to six undeniably cute cable-shapes of winged poison.

“All these years we’ve been together,” Flinx murmured comfortingly, “and you turn out to be a she.”

No wonder he—she, he corrected himself—had vanished with the impressively muscled minidrag Balthazaar. No wonder their return and parting had resembled the conclusion of some unseen aerial ballet. Neither minidrag had abandoned his master. They had merely taken a brief sojourn in response to a higher directive that itself was part of the jungles of Alaspin.

“You ought to have told me, Pip,” Flinx said reprovingly, but he was unable to restrain a broad smile. As if in response, six tiny empathic shapes soared up at him. They buzzed him, picking curiously at his ears, pulling his hair, fluttering in front of his eyes with the ravenous curiosity of all newborns. Pip watched to make sure everything was all right, then nuzzled her triangular head deeper into the folds of the blanket.

Undoubtedly, Flinx mused, she was seeking maximum warmth—but all the same, it
could
have been something akin to embarrassment.

Alan Dean Foster
has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the
Star Wars
^®
novel
The Approaching Storm.
He is also the author of numerous nonfiction articles on film, science, and scuba diving, as well as the novelizations of several films, including
Star Wars,
the first three
Alien
films, and
Alien Nation.
His novel
Cyber Way
won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work to ever do so.

Foster’s love of the faraway and exotic has led him to travel extensively. He’s lived in Tahiti and French Polynesia, traveled to Europe, Asia, and throughout the Pacific, and has explored the back roads of Tanzania and Kenya. He has rappeled into New Mexico’s fabled Lechugilla Cave, eaten panfried pirhana (lots of bones, tastes a lot like trout) in Peru, white-water rafted the length of the Zambezi’s Batoka Gorge, and driven solo the length and breadth of Namibia.

Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, reside in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from a turn-of-the-century miners’ brothel. He is presently at work on several new novels and media projects.

Visit the author at his Web site at
www.alandeanfoster.com.

Books By Alan Dean Foster

The Black Hole

Cachalot

Dark Star

The Metrognome and Other Stories

Midworld

Nor Crystal Tears

Sentenced to Prism

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye

Star Trek
^®
Logs One-Ten

Voyage to the City of the Dead

 . . . Who Needs Enemies?

With Friends Like These . . .

Mad Amos

Parallelites

THE ICERIGGER TRILOGY:

Icerigger

Mission to Moulokin

The Deluge Drivers

THE ADVENTURES OF FLINX OF THE COMMONWEALTH:

For Love of Mother-Not

The Tar-Aiym Krang

Orphan Star

The End of the Matter

Bloodhype

Flinx In Flux

Mid-Flinx

Reunion

THE DAMNED

Book One: A Call to Arms

Book Two: The False Mirror

Book Three: The Spoils of War

THE FOUNDING OF THE COMMONWEALTH

Phylogenesis

Dirge

Diuturnity’s Dawn