Tse-Mallory nodded. “That's possible. I believe, however, that in addition to everything else they abandoned, they also left behind the means by which we may find out.” Moving to the foreport, he leaned to his right and pointed.
No one had noticed the object before. Or maybe it had not been present until just then and it was their arrival that had caused it to appear. Or possibly, Flinx thought a little wildly, it had drifted out of this brane and into another and back again. If Bran, Tru, and the Teacher were to be believed, anything was possible here. They were in a space-place unprecedented, a minuscule bruise on the skin of the space-time continuum that teetered on the cusp of outrageous calculation. Anyone attempting to state for certain why something was happening, or even why something was, might as easily be right dead as dead right.
Careful, he told himself. Concentrate on the knowable. The Teacher. Pip. Clarity. Those were solid things, those were real things. They consisted of actualities he could hang on to. Or were they and himself and everything else he believed to be real nothing more than transitory expressions of the tortuous, convoluted physics and mathematics of some whimsical long-vanished species?
At least what Tse-Mallory had singled out looked real enough.
It was a hemisphere. Translucent red, it was so dark it was almost brown. Flinx was not surprised when the Teacher revealed that it occupied the exact center of the plasma bubble. At his direction, the ship cautiously adjusted its position to move closer—but not too close. That the Teacher could maneuver at all in such an outré environment was in itself surprising—and encouraging. It was with relief that he saw that not every law of nature had been abstracted in this place.
As they drew carefully nearer the hemisphere, which was the color of fine burgundy, they saw that it contained, hovering within it, a lump of some wrinkled maroon material shaped like a kidney bean. Three loops of what appeared to be gold wire but were undoubtedly something else encircled the object lengthwise like slender hovering halos. At no point did they come into contact with the material or each other. The center of the bean shape was occupied by a prominent concavity.
A mesmerized Flinx studied the object intently. If the depression in the center was intended to cradle a living entity, its dimensions suggested that the Xunca had been physically much smaller than the Tar-Aiym, smaller even than humans. Though the long-since-departed master engineers were closer in size to the thranx, he had no doubt who was going to be asked to take up a position within that beckoning indentation. His initial trepidation began to diminish even before the issue was brought up for discussion. After all, wasn't this what he had come all this way for?
Staring absently out the port, he found himself remembering a slightly built redheaded youth who with his pet minidrag had once innocently and without a care haunted the byways and back alleys of bustling, beguiling, aromatic Drallar. A boy who had worried only about staying one step ahead of the authorities, having enough to eat, looking after his elderly adoptive mother, and learning, learning, learning absolutely everything there was to know.
What a long, strange journey it had been.
It was Clarity who voiced what everyone was thinking. “That depression looks like it might be about the right size and shape to accommodate a body, Flinx.” Lips pressed together, she looked over at him. “I don't want you to find out if it is, but I know you have to.”
He nodded slowly and peered past her. Tse-Mallory, Truzenzuzex, Sylzenzuzex—eyes single-lensed and compound stared back at him with equal intensity. No one said anything. No one had to. They were waiting on him.
He hugged Clarity, and that made him not want to go, too. As they gently disengaged he turned back to his mentors, one human, the other not. “I don't know what to do.” He gestured at the object visible through the foreport. “I don't even know if it's designed to do anything and if it is, what it's supposed to do.”
“Remember the first time you lay down on the operator's dais inside the Krang?” Tse-Mallory spoke encouragingly to his young friend. “The same lack of comprehension applied.” He indicated the hovering, motionless hemisphere outside the ship. “I see no sign of anything like a switch, dial, button, headset, or even the overarching domes that allow activation of the Krang. Clearly this is not a Tar-Aiym device. It was made by a race as far in advance of the Tar-Aiym as they were beyond us.” The soldier-sociologist shrugged helplessly. “All you can do, Flinx, is go out there, fit yourself to the beckoning concavity as best you can, and see what happens.”
Flinx nodded. He had already reached the same conclusion. But it didn't hurt to hear Tse-Mallory confirm it.
“We're wasting time, and the more I think about it the less of a mind I have to want to do it.”
They took turns helping him to suit up. There was no atmosphere, breathable or otherwise, inside the plasma bubble. In fact, as near as the Teacher's instruments could tell, there was nothing at all within the sphere that kept untold forces at bay except for the claret-colored hemisphere. They were surrounded by the most perfect vacuum imaginable, devoid even of a hint of interstellar hydrogen. Beyond, the plasma container seethed and churned enough energy to shred the electrons from their orbits around the nuclei that composed their bodies, and then reduce the resultant basic particles to the subatomic equivalent of dust. Inside the ship inside the bubble, everything remained scandalously normal.
Pip went with him, of course. Pip almost always went with him, whatever the circumstances, whatever the danger. The flying snake was as much a part of him as an arm or a leg. The minidrag had been crucial to his contact with the Krang and with the Tar-Aiym weapons platform. It was impossible to know whether she would or could perform a similar function here, but to Flinx that was not what was important. What mattered was that he had his friend with him. There was plenty of room in the survival suit.
It was more than a little disconcerting to be traveling in a survival suit through a spatial vacuum that was pure white instead of jet-black. As he jetted away from the Teacher he spared only occasional glances at the curved, enfolding walls of force that held total annihilation at bay. The greater part of his attention was focused on the reddish-purple hemisphere looming steadily larger in his vision.
Halting his forward momentum within arm's length of the artifact, he commenced a circumnavigation, examining it closely from all sides, underneath, and from above. Tse-Mallory's distanced assessment proved accurate: there was nothing visible in the way of a control or any kind of instrumentation. Just the three encircling gold wires, if wires they were. The future of his civilization, of his galaxy, might depend on his ability to make this incredibly ancient relic respond in some way. But how?
Only one way to find out, he told himself unenthusiastically.
Skillfully manipulating his suit's thrusters to avoid the floating wires, he eased himself over the upper edge of the hemisphere and down toward its midpoint. Lowering himself carefully, he eased downward until he made contact with the half-moon-shaped indentation in the center. The object seemed to exert a very slight gravitational pull. Turning off his thrusters, he let it draw him in until he was lying on his back. Encased as he was in the survival suit he had no way of ascertaining the composition of the material beneath him, other than that it exhibited no give. Relaxing as best he could, he gazed out through the pure whiteness of his surroundings at the protective arc of the plasma bubble. At least, he thought to himself, there was one thing about his present condition he knew for a certainty. He knew exactly where he was.
He was alone. Again.
Except for Pip. Slithering up his left side, she stretched herself out between the inner lining of the survival suit and his chest, her iridescent emerald-green head facing his chin. Raising up, he looked down at her. Did the tenets of convergent evolution allow for the presence of an alien snake in an alien Garden of Eden? If that was where he had fetched up, where then the tree, where the apple? He was certainly no Adam, but he knew exactly where Eve was. Back on the Teacher, waitin
g for him to come back to her. Waiting for him to do—something.
He closed his eyes, tried to concentrate, struggled to reach out with his Talent as he had so many times before. He reposed like that for minutes, for half an hour, for an hour plus additional minutes.
Nothing.
No response of any kind was forthcoming. There was no splendid display of coruscating light, no thundering blare of alien music. Whatever kind of artifact was currently cuddling him, it bore no operational relationship to a Krang contact. The same silence that had greeted him when first he had lain down within the smooth-sided concavity still echoed in his ears. Extending himself through his Talent he could perceive Clarity and the others on board the Teacher, so he was confident his facility was functioning. But there was nothing else to be perceived. Nothing more.
Yet there had to be something more. Else why the entrée tunnel, why the enclosing protective sphere, why the hovering relic?
Try again, he told himself. Go to sleep. You can do that, can't you? It's peaceful, it's comforting. You're exhausted anyway. Why not have a nice nap? The worst thing that will happen is that you'll wake up, the universe will be exactly as you left it, but you'll be rested and refreshed. Is that not an end greatly to be desired in and of itself?
Why shouldn't he? he mused. Nothing else was happening. Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex would chide him for squandering an opportunity, but Clarity would understand completely. Once again he closed his eyes against the all-pervading white space.
So quiet. So still. He felt himself go limp as he let go for the first time in days. So much accomplished and learned, perhaps to no avail. His time to sleep, to take a mental break, was past due. He had earned the right.
A shock ran through his entire system as if a mischievous interloper had suddenly pressed one of his toes against a power transmission plate.
He and Pip were no longer alone.
On board the Teacher, Clarity gasped as she pointed out the foreport. “Look. Oh, look.”
The hemisphere in which Flinx had stretched out had become a solid sphere that glowed like a ruby lit from within. From the newly formed orb the crimson radiance extended outward perhaps ten meters in all directions. The artifact's original translucency had given way to opacity and he was no longer visible.
Pressure on her right arm caused her to look over and down. Sylzenzuzex was standing beside her, her left truhand and foothand gripping the soft flesh of the taller human. The thranx could not smile—but Clarity sensed that the security officer was doing so, even if only internally.
“You don't have to watch this.” Sylzenzuzex's tone was somber. “Something is happening. Knowing Flinx, something more is likely to. Whatever the outcome, good or bad, you watching will not alter it.”
Clarity considered a moment, then nodded appreciatively. “I'm going back to the cabin. Our cabin. You can tell me when everything is—over.”
Antennae bobbed and a truhand gestured understanding. “If you would like some company, I'll come with you. At awkward times and in difficult circumstances my kind always prefer to have others nearby. It's what comes of subterranean living in close quarters.”
Clarity nodded understandingly. “My kind didn't evolve underground, but I'd be glad of your company, Syl.” Heading for the master's cabin, the pair abandoned the control chamber to Truzenzuzex and Tse-Mallory. So immersed in what they were seeing were the two scientists that they didn't even notice their companions' departure.
No longer alone, a startled Flinx realized. Furthermore, the entity identified inside his mind had a familiar feel to it.
IT IS GOOD TO BE WITH YOU AGAIN, FLINX-MAN, the voice in his dreaming declared. IT IS WELL THAT THIS TIME HAS FINALLY COME.
“I know you,” Flinx found himself thinking. “You've been with me before. Several times you helped push me out to perceive the danger that threatens us all.”
US ALL, the voice concurred. WE ARE COUSINS, YOUR KIND AND MINE. WE CANNOT REACH OUT AS YOU CAN—BUT WE CAN PUSH. WE CAN BOOST. THAT WE HAVE DONE.
“Who are you?” he inquired, not for the first time but more adamantly than ever before.
An image took shape in the theater of his mind. A picture of a world of few humans but of many—cousins. Long separated by corporeal evolution, but not by intelligence, they kept to themselves and to their new world. The sentiment he received, the emotions that flooded over and through his self, enveloped him like a warm, protective blanket.
I know that world, he realized with sudden excitement.
“Cachalot,” he thought.
WE ARE ONE WITH YOU TO HELP. WE WILL BE AS A CUSHION FOR YOUR MIND.
AND I WILL HELP TO DIRECT AND GUIDE YOU.
The source of the second presence did not necessitate speculation. He had communicated with it only recently.
The Tar-Aiym Krang.
The triangle, he remembered. In order for him to have a chance of countering the oncoming peril, a cooperative triangle of different minds and means of thinking was required. Though not a part of the triangle itself, he was supposedly the trigger, the key, to something greater still.
What and where was the still missing third part? Of what did it consist and what minds lay behind it? If a Tar-Aiym itself, then there was no hope. Peot, the last living Tar-Aiym, had expired near the world of Repler not long ago. The Xunca? They had gone away. What then the third and last constituent of the triangle, and where to look for it?
Seek and ye shall find, he told himself. He reached out anew, as forcefully as he could, in concert with the two minds that had now joined themselves to his. Reached out—and made contact. With something as unexpected and utterly alien as it was near. It was waiting for him.
There was a relay. On his ship.
As his Talent had grown and matured, Flinx had encountered many minds. Human and thranx, AAnn and Quillp, Sakuntala and Tolian. The ancient machine-mind that was the Krang and now the group-mind of the cetacea of Cachalot. But he had never come across, had never even imagined, the bizarre cognitive processes that now invaded his awake-dreaming awareness. They sprang from a unified consciousness that encompassed an entire world yet could focus as tightly as the mind of a single individual. It was necessary for millions, perhaps billions of individual life-forms to come together to generate this sentience, which was as different from his or from those of any other he had encountered as was his from that of a stone. Except that a stone did not have consciousness.
Yet in spite of all that, in spite of an alienness that was clearly conscious but outside ordinary concepts of cognizance, he recognized it. Like the soothing group-mind of the cetacea, like the straightforward machine-mind of the Krang, it had been with and a part of him once before. In fact, he had walked among it.
The whales of Cachalot came to him with warmth.
The Krang came to him with an icy clarity.
And the untranslatable, inexplicable, globe-girdling greenness of the world-mind of Midworld came to him with—power.
The triangle was complete. How the Xunca would have replicated it he did not know and had no way of knowing, but that did not matter. He felt the energy flowing through him in a torrent. Though he could not see it or sense it, he could perceive through others and especially through the twisting, twitching serpentine shape lying on his chest that something was stirring Outside. Beyond the bubble. Like a shiver on a clear winter morning, something was working its way through the immense fabric of the Great Attractor. Lying there guarded by the combined minds of the cetacea, guided by the Krang, and energized by the verdant world-mind of Midworld, a semiconscious Flinx steeled himself for whatever might come to pass.
With every iota of his being thus preoccupied and mentally walled off and isolated from the rest of the cosmos, it was hardly surprising that he did not notice or sense the arrival of another ship.
Those on board the Teacher, however, did. Or rather, the Teacher detected the emergence of the visitor from the mouth of the plasma tunnel and hastened to notify
Flinx's friends.
“Impossible!” Tse-Mallory blurted out as he and Truzenzuzex gaped at the instantly recognizable image that had arrived within range of the Teacher's sensors. “No one else knew about the Xunca terminal at Senisran. It didn't even exist until Flinx brought it back into being.”
“Which means that this vessel and whoever it holds must have been following very close.” Truzenzuzex could not believe his own conclusion, far less what he was seeing. “But that makes even less sense. No one can track or follow a KK-drive ship through null space. This is not possible.”
Tse-Mallory inhaled heavily. “My friend, we are in a place where the not possible is made real. Like you, I begin to doubt the evidence of my own senses.” He turned to the nearest pickup. “Ship, is that truly another vessel we are seeing? Or could it be a corrupted duplicate of yourself, or an optical illusion generated by something in our surroundings?”
“It is another vessel.” As ever, the Teacher's reply was cool and assured. “A transport of Commonwealth origin. The externals and markings suggest a commercial craft of advanced design.”
The two scientists exchanged a long look before a grim-faced Tse-Mallory addressed the ship again.
“Destroy it.”
“I cannot do that.” The shipmind sounded almost sympathetic even as it was unyielding. “Only Flinx, my master and guide, can give such a directive. It is one of many security measures installed at his command.”
“Cannot the command be overridden if he is in imminent danger?” Truzenzuzex wondered tersely.
“There is no evidence that this new arrival presents any threat to him.”
Tse-Mallory ground his teeth helplessly. Even the most advanced AI could be damnably literal. “Why else would this craft have followed us here?”
“I believe we are about to find out. They are hailing us now. I will saturate the transmission.”
A communication holo appeared in the appropriate spot near the forward console. The image that formed was that of a middle-aged man. He did not look particularly threatening, Tse-Mallory thought. That meant nothing.