She slipped her arm around his back. Mildly irritated, Scrap slithered across the back of her neck to take up residence on the opposite shoulder. “I know. I understand.”
“They're not likely to find anything,” he continued. “I'm thinking that the only thing that might have a chance of working against what's coming this way is a completely different approach. Another way of thinking. An entirely different take on physical reality.”
Drawing back, she frowned at him. “You think differently from most people, Flinx, but not entirely differently. Not enough to do what you say.”
“Not me.” Shifting around so that he was facing her, he said with a perfectly straight face, “Take out your gun.”
Her expression was something to behold. “What?”
He repeated himself. “Take out your pistol and point it at me. Try to summon up some hate. Think of what you dislike about me. I know that you love me. The corollary to love is the ability to recognize the faults in whomever you love.”
She pursed her lips. “When I said that you think differently, I didn't mean to imply that you'd gone completely over the edge.”
He nodded. “I know what I'm doing—I hope. The only way this works is if there's a conviction that I'm on the verge of being killed.” He stared hard at her, his eyes imploring. “You have to make it seem real, Clarity. You have to make it feel real.”
She was shaking her head slowly. “Maybe if you'd explain to me what this is about, I might…”
“No!” The vehemence of his response startled her. It unnerved Pip as well and the flying snake took to the air. Concurrently, Scrap unfurled his wings and lifted clear of Clarity's shoulders. “The more you know, the less genuine the effort will feel. Get mad at me, Clarity! You've had several opportunities to live a satisfying, normal life. I've taken all that away from you. I've exposed you to constant danger. Truly wicked people have tormented you, have tried to kill you. That's what you have to look forward to if you stay with me!” He leaned toward her and she drew back without thinking.
“Draw your gun!” Reaching up with a forefinger he tapped himself forcefully between his eyes. “Aim it here, right here! Here's where the source of all your troubles lie. Here's where the source of all my troubles lie! Do it, Clarity! Put an end to it! Save us both!”
The pistol was in her hand, though how it got there she was not sure. What was wrong with him? Had he gone completely mad? Had the failure with the weapons platform driven him over the edge, unleashed something deep within him that was previously unseen and un-revealed? Though her fingers trembled slightly she had full control of the weapon. In a gesture of pure reflex, one finger was on the trigger. Looking on from above, Scrap and Pip whirled about in utter confusion. Confronted by the conflicting emotions being projected by their respective masters, each was unable to decide how to react or what to do next.
“Shoot, Clarity! Finish this! Put an end to all your troubles! SHOOT, YOU STUPID BITCH!” His fist came forward, aiming for her face.
Wild-eyed, she pulled back on the trigger.
Several things happened at once. An unbelievably deep rumbling echoed in her ears. To her left, a hole appeared in the air; a perfectly smooth, circular black disk. Something warm, heavy, and rife with musk slammed into her. Stunned, she felt herself tumbling. At the same time she heard a frantic Flinx yelling, “Don't hurt her, don't hurt her! It's okay, it's a sham! Pip, Scrap—stay back!” On his feet, he was shouting and crying and waving his arms all at the same time.
Her vision blurred and her thoughts rattled from the force of the impact she had just absorbed, she retained consciousness just long enough to make out a shape standing over her. Enormous yellow eyes glared into her own. A muscular seven-fingered hand adorned with glowing rings was reaching down.
As she blacked out, it struck her that she had seen that same daunting alien visage somewhere before….
“Clarity. Clarity!”
She mumbled something incoherent. As consciousness slowly returned and she once more became aware of her surroundings, she realized that Flinx was holding her up with one arm beneath her back. Above him, Pip and Scrap continued to circle in confusion, utterly bewildered by what had just transpired below them. Tears were running down Flinx's cheeks. He looked thoroughly, completely, absolutely miserable.
Good, she thought.
The first thing she did when she regained full control of her senses was to smack him across the face as hard as she could.
“What was that?” she growled wrathfully as she sat up, pushing his arm aside. “Yelling at me like that, trying to get me to shoot you….” Furious, she looked around. “Where's that gun? Give me another chance….”
Her words trailed away. Searching for the pistol, her gaze encountered a third visage. Memory came racing back. Though the face she was staring into was not human, she thought she could put a name to it.
“Fluff?” she mumbled hesitantly.
The giant Ulru-Ujurrian smiled hugely, showing gleaming white teeth. His kind being the only true telepaths ever discovered, he replied to her straightforwardly and without hesitation.
“Clarity-friend! Good to see Flinx-friend's best friend again!” Paws that could pulverize rock embraced her, pulling her close to a furry chest and threatening to smother her. When Fluff finally let her go she was gasping for air. “Sorry hug you so hard.” The Ulru-Ujurrian's mental apology reeked of genuine contrition. “Sensed life-danger to Flinx-teacher and had to come quicklike.” Marvelously and quite unexpectedly, the huge ursinoid winked. “Always still keeping an eye on Flinx.”
He stepped back and she saw that he was not alone. Flinx's hulking savior was flanked by three other familiar figures. She recognized them as well: the thoughtful Moam, the appropriately named Bluebright, and Softsmooth, festooned with more rings than any of her companions. A fourth stood off by himself, glaring at her.
“Interruptions. Always interruptions.” An Ujurrian of few words, Maybeso promptly folded himself and disappeared into the hovering disk that constituted a dark hole in midair. Having done his job of locating Flinx, the most enigmatic of all the ursinoids had returned to wherever it was he went when he was not participating in the communal tunnel digging.
Rising shakily to her feet, she extended an arm to provide a perch for a returning Scrap. As soon as the poor minidrag landed and coiled around her extended arm, she began to stroke and reassure it. Her bewildered serpentine companion was trembling with insecurity.
“It's all right, Scrap. Everything is all right,” she whispered soothingly. Her gaze shifted to the watching ursinoids. “I'm fine, Fluff. I understand now what happened and why you did what you did.” Turning, she glared at Flinx. “You I'm still mad at.”
“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Clarity!”
She put her free hand to her head. “Okay, okay! Stop projecting on me or I'm going to start crying myself.”
“It was the only way,” he told her helplessly. “Remember how Fluff and his friends responded when I was in danger from Coldstripe's people, back when you and I first met? Fluff and the others reacted again when I was on Visaria recently and was threatened there. I figured—I hoped—they would come to my aid once more if I could initiate similarly threatening conditions. But,” he mumbled contritely, “the threat had to be real.”
“Fooled us,” Bluebright declared, her loud-thinking buoyantly cheerful.
“Fooled me, too.” Clarity gazed across at Flinx. “What would have happened if your friends hadn't responded to the apparent danger and come to your aid? What would have happened if they'd been—late?”
“I would have projected onto you.” His tone was as serious as she had ever heard. “Tried to deflect your intention, or at least affected your emotions enough so that your shot would have missed.”
She was staring at him. “Are you sure that would have worked?”
“No,” he told her quietly, “I was not. But when I commit to something, I commit wholeheartedly. I don't know ho
w to do anything halfway.” He paraphrased Truzenzuzex. “With all of civilization at stake, extreme measures are justified.”
“You committed to me,” she reminded him forcefully.
He swallowed hard and looked away. “I said I was sorry.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Realizing they had intruded on something profound, the normally inquisitive Ujurrians responded with uncharacteristic silence.
“I'm sorry, too, Flinx,” she told him firmly. “Not necessarily about failing to shoot you. That remains to be determined.” He stared blankly at her taciturn expression. She managed to hold it for a moment longer before throwing herself into his arms. “The galaxy may die, the galaxy may survive,” she declared soberly, “but one constant remains unchanged throughout: the profound obtuseness of the human male.”
The quartet of Ujurrians looked on as the two human-friends embraced.
Moam thought frankly at Softsmooth, who was standing next to him. “This is all part of the human game. Not civilization game. It is less important.”
“No—more important.” Softsmooth was insistent, and the four of them immediately fell to soundless arguing.
With the traumatized minidrags once more put at ease and Clarity (more or less) reconciled to Flinx's desperate effort, he did his best to explain to the curious Ujurrians the rationale behind his ruse.
“I had to make you think my life was in danger.” He tried not to lose himself in the plate-sized yellow eyes that were staring candidly back at him. “The last time that happened, on Visaria, you came through one of your tunnels in time to save me. You also did it years ago, at Coldstripe. Now I need your help again.” He paused. “Everybody needs your help.”
“The big danger is coming.” Moam was making an observation, not asking a question. “We know. We showed you.”
Flinx nodded. “There was a weapon devised by the people who once inhabited this world. I was able to convince it to attack the oncoming Evil. It did not have enough of an effect to deflect the danger. So I thought I would ask if there's anything more you can do.” He tried to sound encouraging. “Maybe you could ‘dig’ one of your tunnels in front of it and it would fall in?”
A sequence of amused grunts emerged from deep within Bluebright's chest. Nearby, Fluff was apologetic.
“Cannot dig a hole that big, or at that distance, Flinx-teacher. Maybe in few billion of your years. But do not have that kind of time. Do not have enough minds or hands.” The rings on his fingers pulsated softly, emanating subdued internal hues. “We have done all we can do by passing along the warning, which we got from the dead people's alarm machine on world you call Horseye and local people call Tslamaina.”
Stepping forward, Softsmooth loomed over the two humans. A massive but soft seven-fingered paw came down to rest on Flinx's unoccupied shoulder. Huge eyes full of wisdom that were at once childlike and incomprehensible peered down into his own.
“We can do no more and there is no more we can do, Flinx-friend. Outcome of all games, end of biggest game, is in your hands now. You were the key, you are still the key.”
Flinx suddenly felt both small and vulnerable, and not because the hulking Ujurrian was so much larger than he was. He spread his arms helplessly. “The key, the key! You keep telling me that, but I don't know what I'm supposed to be the key to! Or the trigger: it's all chaotic and confused.”
“Is usual condition of life and universe,” Moam pointed out without hesitation. “You have seen and experienced enough of it to know that, Flinx-friend. Only help we can provide is keep you alive.”
“That's not good enough.” His frustration threatened to broker a return of one of his devastating headaches.
Clarity leaned toward him. “Be thankful for small favors, Flinx.”
Fluff came forward. Standing side by side, the two ursinoids were a dominant presence. “We simple folk, Flinx. We play at our game. We keep you live. We dig our tunnels. That what we do.”
A new thought caused Flinx to pause a moment before responding. “Maybe that's what happened to the Xunca. The race that built the alarm system that's centered on Horseye. You told me years ago that they ‘went away.’” He eyed each of the Ujurrians in turn. “Maybe they made a tunnel similar to the kind you're digging, and they went ‘away’ through it.”
The Ujurrians exchanged looks along with thoughts. “Our tunnels can go far places through interesting ways. Or interesting places through far ways. But not far or interesting enough to get away from evilness that is coming.”
“If we could do that,” Moam added, “we would already have made the going. And asked you to come with us,” he added as an afterthought. “Would miss Flinx-friend, Flinx-teacher.” Turning, he lumbered with great dignity toward the hole that was hovering in the atmosphere. “Cannot save ourselves, Flinx-friend. All falls to you.”
“But I don't know what else to do,” he wailed earnestly. Clarity put an arm around him while Pip snuggled closer against his neck. Each, in their own different and distinctive way, sensed and was reacting to the suffering he was undergoing.
Contrary to his hopes, the only thing the Ulru-Ujurrians had left to offer was compassion.
“Flinx-friend hurts.” Reaching out, Softsmooth patted down his red hair with a paw that was large enough to cover his entire head. “We hurt for Flinx-friend. But this is a tunnel he must dig for himself.” She shook abruptly, fluffing out the fur that covered her head and upper body. “You are the key. Find what you must unlock, or this game will be the last game. Ever.”
Pivoting, she moved to rejoin Moam. Bluebright followed. Only Fluff lingered a moment longer. The thoughts he projected were tinged with heaviness and regret.
“So much burden for one small thinking fella-being. I sorry it you, Flinx-friend. I glad it not I. Try avoid situations like just now.” Enormous eyes shifted to Clarity. “Next time maybe we not dig fast enough to save.”
One by one the Ujurrians stepped or jumped back into the opening in the aether. A deep rumble followed Fluff's disappearance, following which the hole snapped in upon itself like a circlet of interdimensional elastic and was gone. Nothing remained to indicate that anyone other than Flinx, Clarity, and the two minidrags had ever been there.
Well, almost nothing. Bending down, Flinx picked up half a handful of gray-brown fur and lifted it to his nose. It smelled strongly of myrtle and musk: Softsmooth. Turning, he found himself once again surveying their implausible environs. Any xenologist in the Commonwealth would gladly have given up several years' stipends for the privilege of spending a single day in such surrounds, and here he could not enjoy it for a moment because—because he was some kind of stupid, enigmatic, inscrutable key.
He shook his head. Following procrastinating visits to worlds as diverse as Visaria and Jast he had resolved to do whatever he could to try to save the Commonwealth. Someone else might have said “to fulfill his destiny”—except that he did not for an instant believe in such nonsense. It was all so much superstition and silliness.
There was nothing nonsensical about the Great Evil, however. His reluctant, innermost self had been thrust outward to perceive it. It was as real and remorseless and dangerous as his dreams of a normal life were wish fulfillment.
“Flinx? Are you all right?” Clarity was looking at him with concern. Such a simple gesture. Such an essential one.
“I'm unchanged,” he responded carefully. “Whether that makes me all right or not I don't know and I no longer much care. But since you ask—yeah, I feel ‘all right.’” His words relieved her evident alarm.
Alarm.
He thought back. Back to when he had gone to New Riviera to reunite with Clarity. What was it that Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex had told him a small coterie of their fellow researchers had learned about that mysterious apparatus that had been left behind on Horseye by the long-vanished Xunca?
He remembered. Two sources had been recorded. Down through the millennia the incredibly ancient mechanism had been monitoring
not one but two locations. One was, of course, the threat represented by the Evil that was coming out of the Great Emptiness. The other was something unknown that was located in a unique region of space known as the Great Attractor. A point in the continuum that all local galaxies were shifting toward. An inexplicable physical anomaly with the energy of ten thousand trillion suns. It was utterly unique in the universe. No known physics or mathematics could account for such an incredible concentration of energy.
Could the Xunca?
Contemplating the anomaly, Flinx and the two scientists had previously speculated on whether the Xunca had actually considered constructing something capable of moving entire galaxies, including their own, out of the path of the oncoming menace. It had remained just that, nothing more than speculation. But what if, he found himself wondering, the Great Attractor, or something at the heart of that fantastic force, was actually designed to do something else? The instrumentality on Horseye not only monitored both sites, it also sporadically sent some kind of signal through a deviation of normal subspace toward an unknown third location. According to Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex the scientists studying the Xunca mechanism had not even been able to determine how the information was being sent, much less what was being transmitted or what might be on the receiving end.
Constant monitoring of the approaching threat he could understand. Constructing and monitoring something capable of moving an entire galaxy, much less several, out of the way of that threat was a physical undertaking that could barely be comprehended by mere organic entities. But why the third signal? What did it consist of, where was it being beamed, and what was it intended to accomplish?
Perhaps nothing, he told himself. Maybe it was an unintentional byproduct of the monitoring/alarm system. Maybe it was only an inadvertent leak of deformed radiation into subspace. Having latched on to the thought and fallen into speculation, he could not let it go. Always, ever, eternally curious, and usually to his detriment, he needed an answer. Where and how to find an answer to a question that some of the Commonwealth's finest scientists had only recently learned to ask? He was stuck on an uninhabited, long-dead alien world in the middle of the sterile Blight, cut off from any planetary information shell, with access only to the library that was part of his ship's mind.