Though the shuttle was more or less flying itself, Flinx kept his attention on the instrumentation in case his input was needed. “Three kilometers high and each side at the base is more than a kilometer. Five hundred million years old, give or take a few million. And when we were here before, we never did really figure out what it was made of. We do know it contains a lot of incredibly dense, unidentifiable ceramic alloy.”
Standing alongside Clarity, Sylzenzuzex clicked in symbospeech. “That's the tallest artificial structure I have ever seen. I don't think there is anything like it even on human worlds—and your people adore tall buildings.”
“I assure you, dear Syl,” Truzenzuzex clicked, “that its height, sili!!ppk, is the least of its extraordinary characteristics.”
Passing swiftly over the remnants of what must have been a spaceport of immense size, the little shuttlecraft set down cleanly at the base of the bluff dominated by the tower of the Krang. The airstream outside read thirty-four kph. On either side of the shielding bluff it rose to a steady hundred and twenty, with gusts as high as two hundred. Even that constituted nothing more than a stiff breeze compared to the shocking gales that ripped around the planet's equator.
Prior to disembarking, Flinx made sure that Clarity donned a pair of protective goggles. Tse-Mallory had his own, and Tru looked after his young relative Sylzenzuzex. Collecting daypacks filled with basic supplies, they filed through the Teacher and into the skimmer waiting in the holding bay.
Following the irregular layers and ledges the ceaseless wind had cut into the bluff, they rode the skimmer up to the base of the Krang. Sheltered in the lee of the massive structure, they set down directly in front of a vitreous, dull gray, thirty-meter-high metal door.
An all-too-familiar dull pounding had started up at the back of Flinx's skull. Not now, he cursed himself. Not here. But there was nothing he could do about it except try to rest—and he had no intention of resting here and now.
Clarity was staring out the front of the skimmer's transparent dome at the gargantuan doorway. “How do you get inside? How did you open it the last time?”
The throbbing at the back of his head kept Flinx from smiling. “We didn't. It sensed us and opened for … there it goes now!”
He was more relieved than he cared to admit when the two halves of the colossal portal began to part in front of them. If the doorway had not opened of its own accord, he and his companions would have been obliged to try to find an alternate means of entry. Forcing their way into the Krang was not a prospect he would have looked forward to with delight.
He was worrying needlessly. They were in.
Rising, they moved cautiously through the portal. Once they were inside, the twenty-meter-thick metal barrier commenced to slide silently shut behind them. Clarity looked uneasily at Flinx. When he did not react to the blocking of their exit, she quite rightly assumed the action had been anticipated. Returning her attention forward, she got her first view of the interior of the Krang—and sucked in her breath sharply. Resting nearby on all six legs, Sylzenzuzex let out a long, low whistle.
Remembering his own first sight of the Krang's core, Flinx smiled to himself. The headache was not worsening and the pain was manageable—for the moment. Behind him, in the center of the skimmer, Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex were reminiscing aloud as they identified salient points of the alien edifice's extraordinary interior.
Though viewed this time through the eyes of a world-weary adult instead of those of an awestruck child, the sight that spread out before the skimmer was every bit as remarkable to Flinx as it had been the first time he had seen it. Visible through the intensifying but still diffuse blue-green artificial light that was concentrated in wavelengths intended for nonhuman eyes, wisps of cloud hovered near the impossibly distant ceiling of the colossal structure's hollow heart. Soaring a hundred meters high and more from the floor and extending downward toward the core of the planet itself, arcane machinery and alien instrumentation lined all four inner walls. Above that rose an infinitude of tubes and protrusions of every imaginable size, shape, and length. Some no bigger than a finger, others great enough in diameter to swallow a small ship.
Within the impenetrable walls of the Krang there was no wind. It was dead quiet. Half a million years dead quiet, Flinx reminded himself. Unlike the previous visit, when he and his companions had been forced to hike across the vast space, this time they traveled across the immense amphitheater, passing its alien chair-lounges, to the far side of the structure in the seats of the comfortable skimmer. Their destination was a platform that rose slightly above the rest of the yellow-white floor.
He threatened to drown in the flood of memories that washed over him at the sight of it.
After the skimmer set down gently, he waited until everyone else had disembarked. Overcome by the sights surrounding her and by the moment, even Clarity did not linger to wonder what was holding him back. She and Scrap exited along with the others.
He followed in due course. The two scientists discoursed on their surroundings and how accurately they corresponded to their respective recollections. Clarity and Sylzenzuzex stood and marveled. But Flinx's attention was focused on the glassy, transparent dome that formed a canopy above the Tar-Aiym resting place. Like the rest of the Krang's interior, the platform was exactly as he remembered it: tilted slightly toward the amphitheater, a second smaller dome suspended above the lower, fibers and filaments and strands of alien conduit running from its pedestal to vanish into the walls and ground.
This had all happened yesterday, he told himself as he stared fixedly at the unassuming nexus of power and contemplation. In reality it had all happened more than a decade ago.
His, Bran Tse-Mallory's, and the Eint Truzenzuzex's memories were not the only ones that were stirring.
Deep within the heart of the unimaginable complexity that was the Krang, an awakening had begun. In response to the arrival of sentient beings, long-dormant connections were reestablished. Quiescent links flared to life. Illumination manifested itself in photonic blinks and flashes whose significance would have been lost on human or thranx. Bit by bit, section by section, element by element, core components of instrumentation that to an outsider would have appeared to owe their functionality more to magic than to known physics began to return to life.
At its core was a synthetic consciousness that was as different from the artificial intelligence that ran the Teacher as that simulated mind was from the brain of a fish. For the Krang, hardly any time at all had passed. Recently (“recent” being, to the Krang, in itself a highly relativistic term) there had been certain developments of significance on its watch. It divined that more of these were now in the offing.
The great machine that was the Krang had been conceived and fabricated to protect its builders and itself from external danger. The threat that now loomed, distant but all too real, was beyond its considerable capability to defeat. In consequence of that it had periodically reached through realities other than space-plus and space-minus in hopes of finding allies that might serve to counter the oncoming menace. In its devout and consistent searching it had located two. Both, it developed, were also aware of the threat. Both by themselves were equally as helpless as the ancient Tar-Aiym weapon to offer up or propose a defense against the danger.
Operating in unison offered more promising possibilities. Particularly if a force able to bind all three of them together could be found. Unfortunately, such a unique and specialized link capable of functioning over such great distances could not be engineered—certainly not in the time remaining before total annihilation arrived.
Astoundingly, unexpectedly, unpredictably, it turned out that such a force already existed. Incredibly, the necessary trigger, the requisite input, had already been contrived. Made aware of its astonishing existence, all three inconceivably disparate entities had for years toiled with subtlety and sensitivity to raise the trigger's awareness of itself and of what was at stake. To some extent the effort ha
d clearly been successful. In exceedingly minute increments, progress had been made. The key had, if nothing else, been made cognizant of itself and its importance.
Whether it would function effectively remained to be seen.
Clarity had moved to stand next to Flinx. As she talked softly, Pip and Scrap engaged in a feint fight from their perches on their respective masters' shoulders. Iridescent triangular heads darted sharply forward only to withdraw from each counterthrust as pointed tongues flicked harmlessly.
“The Tar-Aiym Krang.” As befitted the surroundings, Clarity's tone was suitably subdued. “As many times as you've mentioned it to me, as often as you've tried to describe it, I don't think anything even you could have said, Flinx, could prepare someone for the reality.”
Staring at the familiar tilted platform that beckoned from beneath the twin transparent domes, he nodded thoughtfully. “Images wouldn't have helped much, either. There's just too much of everything.”
“And the weapons platform constructed by the same race, the one Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex want you to try and find again,” she went on, “is the size of a small planet and has dozens of such devices?”
“Maybe hundreds,” he muttered. “I didn't have time to take the full measure of it, Clarity. When I was on it I was—preoccupied.”
She considered before replying. “How can something like this—building—do battle against the menace you've shown me?”
“It can't, by itself. But I'm hoping”—he nodded toward where Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex were conversing with Syl—“that the artificial intelligence in control of it can make contact with the corresponding AI that controls the weapons platform and obtain its coordinates and course.” He indicated the resting place beneath the dome. “That's where the operator, or performer, lies. I've occupied that place myself, and another one very much like it on board the weapons platform.” He looked down at her. “We're here so I can try to make contact again.”
Her eyes met his. “What happens if you fail, Flinx? What if the intelligence that directs the Krang is no longer functional?”
“I believe it will still be functional, Clar. It survived lying dormant for half a million years. I don't think it will have stopped working in the past ten. It can't have changed that much in so short a period of time.” He looked back toward the empty, beckoning platform. “On the other hand, I have.”
“For the better,” she insisted, putting a hand on his arm.
“Maybe.” A sharper stab of pain shot through the back of his head. The throbbing that had commenced outside the entrance to the Krang had returned, with fervor. “We're likely to find out.”
As she leaned close against him her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “Don't lie to me, Flinx. Don't try to make things easy, or mollify me with evasions, or patronize me out of love. How dangerous is this?”
Preempted by her directness, he could do nothing but resort to irony. “I'm going to try and make mental contact with a half-million-year-old alien war machine built by a battle-loving species that, when activated, is capable of projecting a Schwarzchild discontinuity strong enough to swallow starships and, for all I know, maybe entire planets.” Putting his left arm around her shoulders, he squeezed firmly. “No danger there.”
She smiled encouragingly. “Maybe you haven't changed as much as you think.”
While he and Clarity were immersed in each other, his old friends and frequent mentors had arrived to rejoin them. Sylzenzuzex stood beside her Eighth, ready to lend support to both Flinx and the expedition's other female.
“Well?” was all Bran Tse-Mallory said dryly.
That was what the bold, ebullient merchant Maxim Malaika had exclaimed on numerous occasions during Flinx's first visit to this place, so many years ago. Well, it was time to move on. He was going to the well to see what kind of water he could draw. Well he would be if he survived. Well, well, and well.
What the hell, he thought cynically. All he could do was die.
He climbed the dais to its skewed summit and paused there, peering underneath the transparent canopy at the vacant, waiting platform. Everything looked exactly as he remembered it. That much could have been anticipated. What mattered was, would everything feel as he remembered it. Having previously been exposed to unimaginable, unknown forces beyond human ken, he had reacted and responded instinctively. Could he do so one more time and perhaps this time retain some control? Taking a last impassive breath he stepped forward and eased himself beneath the edge of the canopy.
On his right shoulder Pip immediately went taut, alerted to something commanding and unseen. The pebbly surface beneath Flinx's feet began to vibrate. From somewhere far below emerged the first inklings of a deep, pulsating mechanical moan that grew progressively more audible. The throbbing in his head grew abruptly more intense.
He considered stepping back, then steeled himself. There was no going back, really. Not now, not here. Ignoring the pain and a growing dizziness, he stumbled forward until his legs bumped up against the platform. Leaning forward, his hands resting on the edge of a superficially simplistic structure that was designed to accommodate a much larger body, he shook his head as he fought to retain balance and control.
Seeing him falter, Clarity started forward, only to find herself restrained by both Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex. Her worried gaze remained focused on Flinx. He was starting to sway, and not because of the increasingly frequent tremors under their feet.
“Let me go! He's in trouble, he's … !”
“… Doing what needs to be done, child.” The philosoph's gleaming compound eyes regarded her sympathetically. “Collect yourself, have courage, and watch.”
Unable to break free of the combined human-thranx grasp, there was little else she could do.
“It hurts….”
Trembling slightly, Flinx reached one hand up to his forehead. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. This was not how he remembered it. This …
A voice, or words, or a sudden thought. Somewhere between migraine and migrant. Inside his head. Inside his own thinking, but not his. Yet for all that, familiar.
WELCOME—BACK.
Just like that, his headache was—gone. Evaporated like spit on the sun. His skull still throbbed, but there was no pain. Refusing to dwell on the apparent contradiction, he climbed up onto the platform and lay down, positioning himself in the center. Slithering upward from his shoulder, Pip bundled herself into a tight coil near the top of his head. In a normal prone resting position she would have done so on his chest or his stomach. Reaching up, he stroked her muscular shape affectionately. She was and always had been his friend. His companion. His protector. Also an empathetic lens, involuntarily and reflexively focusing his peculiar Talent.
Taking a deep breath and using his heels, he pushed both of them upward. Up, until his head emerged beneath the second smaller, inner dome. He shut his eyes. Or perhaps they were shut for him.
Looking on from outside, Sylzenzuzex vocalized a sequence of clicks, whistles, and exclamations the likes of which she had never intoned before. Nearby, Clarity's eyes got very, very wide. As for Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex, they simply stood flanking her while providing the comfort of their physical presence. They had seen it all before.
The inner dome above Flinx's head began to pulsate with metallic bursts of the most intense deep purple. The outer dome exploded in a blistering burst of color in every conceivable hue: scorching crimson, crushing azure, fluorescent pinks, and electric greens. At unpredictable intervals balls of colored lightning swelled to form bulges on the upper curves and crest of the dome. When they reached a certain blazing, crackling volume, they detached themselves and rose like electrified balloons toward the distant apex of the Krang's interior.
All that only signaled the beginning.
The great pipes and cylinders that lined the kilometers-high walls had sprung to life with sound as well as color. While bands of intense color ran up their towering flanks like flights of electricity
from God's own van DeGraff generator, something deeper and harsher, wilder and more profound than the rumble underfoot began to fill the vast interior space. It caused Clarity to cover her ears, and then it made her drop her hands and listen. The vibrations penetrated her flesh and being and soaked directly into her bones.
“That's music!” she shouted, trying to make herself heard above the martial alien thunder.
Next to her Tse-Mallory nodded, leaning close to yell into her ear. “Tar-Aiym music. Alien harmony and dissonance. Instrumentation of a scale and scope unequaled anywhere in the Commonwealth.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Contemplate it: mass as Mass.”
She raised an arm toward the dome that was now fully enveloped in opaque, coruscating color. “What about Flinx? Does he hear it?”
On her other side the venerable philosoph turned from shout-whistling at Sylzenzuzex. “Only Flinx knows what he hears! And what he hears, Kssa!!lk, is barred to the rest of us. What we learned on our previous visit, so many years ago, is that this relic of an ancient people is both a musical instrument and a weapon.”
Indicating that she understood, she returned her attention to the color-masked platform. Beneath the two domes occasional glimpses of her beloved flickered within the maelstrom of color and light. She assumed he was still alive and all right. She assumed so because she had to.
Flinx kept waiting for the pain in his head to return. It did not. Instead, he experienced a lucidity of perception he had come into contact with only rarely before. Experimentally, tentatively, he tried reaching out, as he had done when lying on a similar platform beneath a similar structure inside the great space-traversing Tar-Aiym weapons platform itself. There had been no pain then, either. He had communicated successfully, albeit briefly and with notable directness and simplicity. This exchange would be more difficult, more fraught with uncertainty. His intention was not merely to make and maintain contact, but to ignite nothing less than a conversation.
WELCOME BACK.