“What, exactly, is a ‘Class-A’ mind?”
The planet-sized ship showed him.
“He moved! I saw him move. I'm sure of it!” Rising so abruptly from where she had been sitting that a startled Scrap had to spread his wings to keep from falling off her shoulder, Clarity lunged toward the crackling, flaring, energy-engulfed dais. Heedless of any danger, she ignored the lambent, writhing bolts of distilled lightning exploding all around her.
Using both foothands and truhands, a pursuing Sylzenzuzex caught the distraught Clarity and gently but forcefully drew her back.
“It doesn't matter that he may have moved,” the security officer click-whistled. “I agree that any sign of life is a good sign. But we must wait to celebrate until he sits up and waves.”
Recognizing the truth of the thranx's observation as well as the danger inherent in approaching the furiously flaring platform too closely, a despondent Clarity reluctantly restrained herself.
Having lost contact with the Teacher and unable to influence the airlock exit, they had been moving back and forth between the shuttlecraft and the chamber containing the galvanized contact platform for over a week now. The shuttlecraft's limited stock of supplies had compelled them to ration their food and drink. Carefully allocated, they had enough to last several additional weeks. After that…
Meanwhile, the vivid electrical fury enveloping the dais and the young man lying at its center gave no indication of abating.
“I just wish I knew what was happening.” Pulling her knees up to her chest, Clarity wrapped her arms around them and lowered her face forward until her chin was resting on her forearms.
Though no less vexed, Sylzenzuzex tried to raise the spirits of her human friend. “You said that you saw him move.”
Clarity's head came up to meet the young thranx's multilensed gaze. “I did. I'm sure of it.”
“Then at least we know he's still alive.” Sylzenzuzex gestured second-degree encouragement.
“I regret to say that we know nothing of the sort.”
Truzenzuzex had walked over to join them. “The fact that Flinx's body may have moved is inconclusive. The nervous system of humans and thranx alike can continue to function for some time after the brain, for example, has been permanently shut down.”
“Thanks for that encouragement.” Clarity dropped her head back onto her arms.
“I did not say that was what I think to be the case.” Truzenzuzex gestured disapproval of her acrimony. “I only point out what is possible.” Looking past her, he gazed at the continuing barrage of light and sound. In his compound eyes was reflected a wealth of ejected color. “I believe that shrouded inside that wellspring of erupting energy Flinx not only lives but carries on.”
Wanting desperately to be encouraged, Clarity raised her head. “Carries on doing what?”
Reaching out, the four chitinous digits of a delicate truhand came to rest perceptively on her shoulder. “I'm sure Flinx will tell us when he emerges.”
The observation being optimistic without being in any way conclusive, she chose to take it with a grain of salt.
Several more days passed. To the watchful Clarity's increasing dismay Flinx did not move again. As to what was happening outside the minuscule fraction of the great ship they had explored, they had no way of knowing. The capabilities of the shuttlecraft's limited internal instrumentation had long since been exceeded. They had been able to deduce only that the immense weapons platform was moving and that it had passed beyond range of shuttle-to-Teacher contact. Unless the city-sized portal that closed the airlock off from outside showed signs of irising open, they could not even use the shuttlecraft to explore the exterior of the alien vessel in their vicinity.
There was very little they could do, in fact, except husband their supplies, speculate on what was happening outside and around them, try to get some sleep amid all the sound and fury being discharged by the contact platform where Flinx lay, console one another—and wait.
The intergalactic void. The space between galaxies. Stars becoming few and far between even when measured by interstellar distances, until at last only a few scattered and isolated rogues and wanderers remain. A place seen but not experienced, vastness on such a scale that attempting to measure or quantify it becomes meaningless, just as the numbers one attempts to assign to it become meaningless. A region observed and studied for centuries by humans and thranx alike but never actually visited or touched upon.
Until now.
With his eyes closed Flinx saw by other means. The ship showed him, entering the perceptive information directly into his brain.
Behind: an immense disk of stars and nebulae, pulsars and novae, neutron stars and X-ray stars, and the entire panoply of other highly evolved stellar phenomena. Energy and life and consciousness all thrown together in a spectacular swirling spiral of existence and experience.
Ahead and far distant: much more of the same.
Except in one region. Except in one still far-off section of the cosmos closed to view by the Great Emptiness. Behind that and on the verge of emerging, a void so utter and complete that not even the glow of a match could be discerned within a square parsec of its lightless, menacing self.
WE GO NO FARTHER. EVEN IF I COULD CROSS THE GULF, WHAT CONFRONTS US IS NOT A MATTER OF DISTANCE BUT OF TIME.
Flinx did not venture a thoughtful response. He was too awed by the vision offered up by the weapons platform. He and his friends were the first of their kind to step outside the realm of the Milky Way. The first to be able to view the home galaxy from outside and not via artificial constructs or artfully imagined images. It was big, it was beautiful, it pulsed with the fever of stars dying and being born. It was life itself. It could not be allowed to be extinguished, like a candle casually snuffed.
He was only one man, and biotechnically not even that. What could he do? Lying on the slant, he twitched slightly. He could do what human beings had always done.
He could try.
“Are my companions seeing any of this?” As always, he framed the thought carefully before allowing it to drift outward.
NO. I CANNOT PUT IT INTO THEM. THEY HAVE NOT THE RIGHT TYPE OF MINDS.
What a shame, Flinx reflected sadly. So much beauty and it could not be shared. He would have to describe it to Clarity and the others as best he could when he emerged from his present state. If he emerged. Another might find it unsettling, being forced to lie motionless and helpless while contemplating the possibility of imminent death. Not Flinx. He'd been there before.
“Why are we stopping here?” he inquired. He thought he had an inkling of the answer, but he wanted to hear it. The ship did not disappoint.
TO SAFELY DISCHARGE THE ENERGY FROM ONE OF MY WEAPONS I MUST BE A CERTAIN MINIMAL DISTANCE FROM ANY SOLID OBJECT. TO FIRE ALL OF THEM SIMULTANEOUSLY, TO GENERATE A COHERENT EFFECT, I MUST BE AT A CONSIDERABLY GREATER DISTANCE. HERE, FAR BEYOND THE NEAREST STAR, IS THE SAFEST PLACE.
“The Great Evil lies much farther away still,” Flinx pointed out. “I've touched upon it, but only through means I don't pretend to understand, and certainly not physically. I presume that to affect it, it must be impacted physically. Given the extraordinary distances involved, how can this be done?”
I HAVE TRAVELED HERE THROUGH THE SUB-DIMENSION YOU CALL SPACE-MINUS. IF A SUFFICIENT FORCE IS UNLEASHED THROUGH THAT IDIOSYNCRATIC INTERPLAY OF THE COSMIC CONTINUUM, IT WILL ACCELERATE EXPONENTIALLY. DISTANCE ITSELF, AS YOUR KIND UNDERSTANDS IT, CEASES TO HAVE MEANING. TWO POINTS IN SPACE-TIME CAN, FOR A BRIEF INSTANT OF TIME, BE MADE CONGRUENT. THE CONSEQUENCES CAN BE OBSERVED IN REAL TIME. BUT NOT BY ME. ONLY BY YOU.
Flinx swallowed. Sitting, talking, passing time away from the refulgent contact platform, none of his companions noticed the brief movement in his throat—not even Clarity.
“You're going to boost me out there mentally to perceive the result, aren't you?”
I—AND OTHERS.
“About these others…,” Flinx began. He did not h
ave time to finish the inquiry. The immense sphere was already focusing its energies elsewhere.
Deep within the core of the planet-sized machine, engines of destruction capable of generating energies that belonged more to the realm of poets than of physicists ignited for the first time in half a million years. Out on the methane-shrouded surface of the globe first one Krang came to life. Then two more, then a dozen. With no one in a position to note the spectacular, in less than a day more than a hundred of the towering devices were vibrating with readiness. Eons ago, when the Tar-Aiym did battle with their ancient enemies the Hur'rikku, the intent was for only one Krang at a time to be discharged. Such was the power of each radiant spire. Nothing in its design or programming prevented the gargantuan weapons platform of which they were a part from unleashing the energy of all of them simultaneously, however.
It did so now.
Each minuscule Schwarzchild discontinuity projected by a Krang was capable of swallowing an entire fleet. Several combined could implode an entire world into nothingness. More than a hundred discharging at once—there was no predicting what their combined effect might be because such an assault had never been unleashed before. There had never been the need for such a concentration of collapse. Defensively or offensively, a discontinuity of such scale would have amounted to serious overkill.
Flung outward through space-minus instead of existing normality, the energy of the hundred-plus Krangs pooled at a safe distance from the hovering weapons platform. A slight quiver ran through the body of the entire ship. It was the only hint of the immense discharge. Blessed with more sensitive feet and a lack of intervening footwear, Sylzenzuzex and her Eighth experienced it as a negligible tremor, one so insignificant that neither thought it worthy of mention.
As soon as the collated strike had been hurled on its way, the ship relayed the information through a different fold of space-minus back to the single Krang situated on Booster. That device in turn contacted not one but two other entities with a deep interest in both the attack and its outcome. Responding, they merged their efforts to reach outward to the vessel that was drifting beyond the edge of the galactic disk. Taking hold of a certain singular mind they found there, the amalgamated tripartite entity boosted it outward at the speed of thought.
Flinx felt that he had prepared himself and that he was ready for anything. But he never was. How could anyone, regardless of whatever twists and tricks had been implanted or had evolved in their unique mind, be ready for such a literally mind-bending alteration of consciousness?
As he had on multiple previous occasions he felt his inner self being thrust outward. Already beyond the edge of his own galaxy, he had the sense of racing past others. Great glowing orbs and disks, whirlpools of gas and energy, sped past his awareness like so many snowflakes drizzled on black velvet.
The dark shadowed section of space that was the Great Emptiness drew near. That, at least, he was ready for because he had penetrated it before. Within lay an immensity of nothingness. Beyond, on the far side, lay that mindless smothering of reality it was better for sane minds not to acknowledge. Instinctively, he shunned it, turned away from it, tried his best to ignore its baleful existence.
As he struggled to keep his pitiful inner self clear of the crushing malevolence, he perceived via his massively attenuated but in no wise diminished core essence something impacting that galactic pool of horror. For the first time since he had been compelled to awareness of it, a light appeared at its forefront. Glowing argent, the collected projected discharge of the Tar-Aiym weapons platform struck the Great Evil and sliced a curving trail along its leading edge. The gash that was extending itself before Flinx's real-time acuity was hundreds of parsecs in length—and no greater in diameter than his thumb. As the space-time rip lengthened in both directions like a flash of lightning against a moonless sky, the first glimmer of radiance ever to appear on that dark shadow began to eat into it.
The Evil screamed.
Had Flinx been present physically that reaction would have shredded the atomic bonds holding together his being. It would have sent stars into overload, with novae breaking out everywhere like radiant popcorn. But in that darkness there was nothing extant, nothing solid to be destroyed. His sanity was protected by the very inimitability that allowed him to be present and to observe in the first place.
A small portion of the unidentifiable thing that was the Evil was destroyed. The parsecs-long silvery split flickered, and then faded to blackness. Having no center, no nexus, the oncoming horror could not be shattered by a single well-directed assault no matter how powerful. As a questing filament of darkness reached for him Flinx felt himself falling, falling, being drawn swiftly backward and away. Back through the Great Emptiness. Back past intervening galaxies. Back to reality. Though still in the comatose state induced by the fiery contact platform, all of him was soon back within himself.
Lying there, breathing long and deep, he remembered what he had perceived. As always, the strenuous mental journey left him sweating, exhausted, and instilled with fresh insight. The galaxy had always seemed immense. But whenever he passed witness to thousands more, it was reduced to homeliness.
WHAT CONSEQUENCE?
It took Flinx a moment to realize that the great planetary weapons platform was asking for his assessment of what had just transpired. It was seeking the opinion of a lone and lowly dust mote composed of water and a few twisted proteins that dared to aspire to cognizance.
“You hit it,” he thought without hesitation. “You hurt it. But not enough, I'm afraid. It's still coming.”
The gigantic machine voiced no disappointment. Guns do not sulk when they fail to kill.
SUCH WAS THE PREDICTION. BUT IT HAD TO BE TRIED. IT IS DIFFICULT TO FIGHT SOMETHING THAT EXISTS OUTSIDE OF THE KNOWN LAWS OF PHYSICS.
Flinx twisted slightly on the platform. “Can't you attack again?”
SEVERAL TIMES, YES. BUT OPTIONS ARE LIMITED. IF NO SUBSTANTIAL DAMAGE WAS DONE THIS TIME IT IS UNLIKELY ADDITIONAL EFFORTS WILL BE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE EFFECTIVE.
“You have to try,” Flinx entreated.
NO I DO NOT.
It was a perfectly cold and perfectly valid response. A device, the ship saw no reason to sustain an effort that was unlikely to produce a desired result. To do so would be to waste energy and effort. But not to do so, Flinx knew, meant subscribing to the inevitability of the demise of everything, the ship itself included. Then he realized that was not necessarily the case. Able to travel through space-minus at speeds no humanx vessel could begin to approach, the weapons platform could take itself elsewhere. Out into the intergalactic gulf, perhaps even far and fast enough to avoid the oncoming Evil. The designers and builders to whom it owed allegiance were half a million years dead. If not for him, Flinx realized, the Krang on Booster and the weapons platform would not even have made the failed attempt.
He had tried. The weapons platform had tried. It was over, it was done. There was nothing left to do.
No, he told himself, that wasn't quite true. There were two things left to do.
“Take my friends and me back,” he projected. “Back to the system of Booster, back to my own ship. And one other thing.”
DECLARE.
“Let me wake up—please.”
So inured by now to the constant flaring lights and continuous underlying roar in the chamber were Clarity and the others that it was more of a shock when both abruptly ceased than it had been when they had initially exploded to life. The sudden, unexpected silence echoed almost painfully. Eyes that had become accustomed to the ubiquitous bursts of multihued lightning strove to readjust to far more muted illumination. Despite the transformation in their surroundings, her first thought was for the young man who had been lying so long on the alien platform.
Her concern was rewarded when he slowly sat up, wincing. Rocketing off her shoulder, Scrap shot across to the dais and was soon snuggling and sharing his body warmth with Pip. For the moment, the two minidrags totally ign
ored their respective humans.
Clarity shared more than body warmth as she all but threw herself against Flinx, hugging him and covering his face with kisses.
“I was starting to worry that you might not be coming back.” Her eyes glistened with moisture as she looked up at him. “I knew you weren't dead because you kept twitching and moving. But you didn't respond to words, and Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex warned me not to go under the domes while they were active.”
Rubbing at the back of his head, Flinx found it an effort just to sit up. She eyed him fretfully.
“One of your headaches?”
“No, not this time. I'm just tired.” Turning to his right he extended an arm. Disengaging from her reunion with her offspring, Pip used the limb like a pole as she slithered slowly back up to her familiar resting place on his shoulder. “And famished,” he added. “I feel like I haven't eaten for a week.”
Whirling, Clarity yelled back toward the anxiously watching other members of the little group. “He's okay! He's hungry!”
Leaning over, Tse-Mallory murmured to the two thranx standing beside him. “That's a human for you. No matter how farsighted and intellectually accomplished, we never forget the physical aspects of our being.”
“Our supplies grow dangerously low.” Truzenzuzex eyed the dais where Clarity was helping Flinx to stand. “Let us hope that despite the travails of his trial our young friend leaves something for the rest of us.”
In the restored silence the philosoph's words carried to the platform. “No need to worry about that, sir.” Though he was giving a reassuring response, Flinx did not smile. “We're already on our way back to the Booster system. We'll be back aboard the Teacher in a few days.”
It was not surprising that those on board had failed to notice the latest change in the weapons platform's position. Within the planet-sized sphere there was no sense of acceleration or movement.