"So do the AAnn, which led to some unpleasant business many years ago," Tse-Mallory put in.
Truzenzuzex gestured concurrence. "What raises Comagrave above the level of casual interest are the fascinating, sometimes immense monuments left behind by the world's dominant sentients, a race known as the Sauun. For a long time it was believed that they were extinct. It was later discovered that this is not the case."
Clarity's expression twisted. "Seems to me I've read or seen something about them. Aren't a lot of them buried in a special mausoleum, or something?"
"Or something," the thranx agreed. "During the past fifty years, millions of them have been found at several similar but widely separated sites. They are not dead, but suspended in stasis, their metabolisms slowed almost to a standstill. Thus far, no attempt has been made to revive any of them, since a technique for safely doing so has yet to be discovered. Various theories have been advanced to explain why an entire intelligent species would choose to abandon what by all evidence was a thriving, successful society to consign itself to a condition so close to mass death." Truzenzuzex looked over at Tse-Mallory, who took up the refrain.
"Drawing on our work with ancient civilizations, and particularly the recent revelations from Horseye, Tru and I think we might have stumbled on one possible explanation. The substance of your dreams, Flinx, as related to Padre Bateleur only serve to strengthen our hypothesis." He cleared his throat.
"Tru and I surmise that, whether by means of tapping into the Xunca system or via some other methodology, long ago the Sauun, too, became aware of the approaching danger that lies behind the Great Emptiness. Ascertaining its magnitude indicated to them that their technology was neither sufficient to counter this threat nor to allow them to flee from it."
"So they chose to bury their heads in the sand," Clarity murmured.
Tse-Mallory offered a thin smile. "Not exactly. Your analogy implies an attempt to ignore a problem in the hope that it will go away. In contrast, the Sauun chose mass racial stasis in the faint hope that they would not be revived until the danger had passed or until another intelligent species had found a way to overcome it. Through their vast, collective racial effort they may hope not to ignore the crisis but to sidestep it."
"Cowards?" Flinx muttered uncertainly.
"No, clever," Tse-Mallory corrected him.
"Not so clever if they think a species like ourselves is likely to come up with a solution."
"Speak for yourself, Flinx," countered Truzenzuzex. "Of course, chu!!k, it's true that we do not yet even understand the exact nature of the danger. As to that, you may know more than anyone else alive."
"I only know that it's malevolent and aware," Flinx mumbled. "I couldn't tell you its size, shape, color, or anything else."
"It may possess none of those characteristics." The thranx's tone was calming if not reassuring. "It may not be necessary to know them in order to find a way to deal with the threat being posed. The important thing is that your dreams confirm not only the report filed by the Redowls but also our theory about the Sauun. We will continue to add pieces to the puzzle."
"I don't think I like the picture you're putting together, Tru."
"None of us do, Flinx." Still staring out the window, Tse-Mallory spoke without turning. Raising one hand, he gestured out toward Sphene's busy thoroughfares. "All these people, of many diverse species, are blissfully unaware of the danger that threatens not them but their descendants." He looked back into the room. "It is left to such as us-those who seek knowledge, such as Tru and me and to those upon whom knowledge is thrust, perhaps unwanted, such as you-to make a beginning, to try to do something about it, assuming something can be done. It isn't the first time."
Flinx felt himself drowning in the brutal, inexorable truth of Tse-Mallory's words. Like all other truths, it was inescapable. But Flinx could no more flee from what he knew than he could from what he was.
Clarity interrupted his inner turmoil. "Do you think that's what the Xunca did also-put themselves in suspended animation in the hope the danger will pass them by or be averted by others?"
The two scholars exchanged a glance. "No such place has yet been found," Truzenzuzex told her, "which, of course, doesn't mean one does not exist. Yet it strikes both Bran and me as odd that a species would put in place such an elaborate warning system as is centered on Horseye-one designed and built to last through eons-if they did not expect to be conscious to receive its transmissions. Then there is the matter of the subspace wave indications the system sometimes emits. Is anyone, or anything, receiving them? Or are they simply being beamed outward to a location from which the intended recipients have long since departed?"
Flinx asked, "Then you think that, instead of putting themselves into extended suspension like the Sauun, the Xunca may simply have fled elsewhere?"
The thranx responded with a gesture of overriding significance that required the simultaneous use of all four hands. "Who can say what a race like the Xunca may have done? Any species capable of bringing into existence an astronomical phenomenon like the Great Attractor in an attempt to shift the position of an entire galaxy, if indeed they did so, might be accounted capable of anything. We are dealing with technologies here, my young friend, that are as far beyond anything we can imagine as the KK-drive is to the first human wheel or the thranx talk-stick."
"The Xunca may be asleep somewhere," Tse-Mallory added, "or they may have gone somewhere or they may have tried to escape by engaging in some distortion of physical reality we do not even have sufficient terminology or mathematics to describe. We simply don't know."
"What we do know," Truzenzuzex asserted, "is that there is something vast and disagreeable concealed behind the Great Emptiness and that it is coming this way. The Xunca warning system affirms it, the condition of the Sauun underscores it, and your dreams, Flinx, provide us with the best depiction of it that we have so far been able to obtain."
Uncomfortable, Flinx looked away. Through inference, Truzenzuzex had yet again placed on him the sense of responsibility he had been feeling for years. Had been feeling and was unable to escape.
Clarity saw it in his expression and moved instinctively to comfort him. So did Pip, who offered no objection to the ministrations another human was offering to her master. "Flinx, it's nothing you can do anything about." Clarity placed a warm palm against his cheek. "I know that you feel otherwise, but listening to your friends"-she glanced back to where the two scholars were looking on-"it's pretty obvious there's nothing you or anyone else can do about this phenomenon, whatever it is. I mean, if one advanced race elects to put itself to sleep and another to run away, what can one sentient of any species hope to do?"
What indeed? he mused as he put his hand over hers and pressed it more tightly against his face. What, except try to run away from what he felt and what he knew. That wouldn't work. He'd tried it on several occasions, only to fail each time. He knew what he knew and was what he was.
Whatever that was.
"Yes, I've dreamed of this thing-or seen it or perceived it or however you want to describe what I've experienced. So what? What can I do about it? What can anyone do? Seeing isn't stopping."
Tse-Mallory nodded gravely, while Truzenzuzex's antennae dipped forward and slightly to opposite sides.
"What you say is true enough, Flinx," the thranx readily admitted. Delicate truhands described small arcs that were as meaningful as they were graceful. "But remember that Bran and I have seen you do other things besides see-activate and make use of a machine built by the Tar-Aiym, for example." Air whistled from his spicules. "If only the Tar-Aiym or the Hur'rikku had built a device capable of projecting a singularity intense enough to adversely impact this malevolence that is coming toward us. But there was only the one anticollapsar weapon, and it has been used, and only the one Krang."
Flinx cleared his throat. "I don't know about any other Hur'rikku anticollapsar mechanisms, but I do know that there is more than one Krang."
&nb
sp; "How do you know that, Flinx?" Tse-Mallory asked.
Clarity stared at Flinx. The automaton in his dream? she found herself wondering. Did it have anything to do with the device of which they were speaking? Or was that mechanism something else? What was a "Krang," anyway? Hadn't Truzenzuzex just referred to it as a weapon? And what was all this talk of anticollapsars and intense singularities?
What had happened to the two of them just taking in an evening's entertainment or going for strolls in the countryside?
"Because I've seen them," Flinx answered, "on an artificial world disguised as a brown dwarf that was formerly the second outermost planet of the Pyrassis system."
"Pyrassis lies within the AAnn area of influence." Tse-Mallory frowned uncertainly.
"Yes, clr!rk" Truzenzuzex added thoughtfully. "And what exactly do you mean by formerly?"
"It's not there anymore," Flinx explained flatly. "It moved itself. Through circumstances too involved and complicated to relate here-"
"Yet more discussion for later," the thranx clicked under his breath.
"-I found myself there in the middle of an altercation involving humans and AAnn. As the disagreement developed, the true nature of this construct made itself known. I... made contact with it, in much the same way I did with the Krang on Booster. This disguised world ship was dotted with Krangs-I don't know how many."
"Exciting," the thranx commented. "I wonder. If the projections from such devices could be combined and appropriately focused, would it be sufficient to make an impression on a menace of astronomical dimensions?"
"It certainly sounds more promising than anything we've been able to come up with," Tse-Mallory agreed. Black eyes bored into Flinx's own. "You said it moved itself, Flinx. To where? Where did this world-size weapons platform go, and where is it now?"
"To your questions, Bran: yes and I don't know." Flinx spread his hands helplessly. "It entered space-plus and vanished from the Pyrassian system. I can't imagine where something that big and that ancient might want to go after being unexpectedly revived from the stasis in which it had been placed. I have no idea if it's even still functional."
"If it is intact, it will still be functioning. Tar-Aiym technology was built to last."
"Perhaps it entered the Blight," Truzenzuzex proposed, "in search of long-dead masters and additional instructions. Perhaps it never came back out of space-plus. Perhaps it emerged from space-plus inside a sun and was annihilated. We'll never know if we don't try to find out."
"And how do you propose to do something like that?" Clarity could not keep herself from asking.
Both man and thranx gazed silently at Flinx. When he did not comment, Tse-Mallory prodded him. "You are our best hope for finding this potentially valuable artifact, Flinx. You've experienced that which is coming toward us, whatever it is, and you've engaged previously with Tar-Aiym weapons technology. Help us find it again."
Flinx would have fled, but a wall blocked his retreat. "Forget it! I want to get away from these things, not go looking for them." Clarity put both arms around him and glared at the two scientists.
"Ah." Truzenzuzex dipped his head, the better to preen one antenna. "An unexpected element is added to the equation."
"It doesn't matter." Tse-Mallory continued to force the issue.
"Nothing here matters, Flinx. Not you, I, or anyone else in this room. Infinitely greater issues are at stake."
"What do you expect me to do," Flinx snapped, "jump in a ship and go look for a massive object that by now could be anywhere in the cosmos?"
"Not exactly look." Truzenzuzex was less insistent than his companion. "You have at your disposal a unique means of perceiving, Flinx. Could it not be put to use in such a search?"
"No!" Flinx shot back with sufficient vehemence to surprise even himself. Pip looked up but only briefly. "I am capable of sensing emotions in others, and sometimes projecting them. That's all."
Not quite all, Clarity knew-but she was not about to volunteer such information.
"You might be able to contact the device again, under the right circumstances." Dripping with honeyed clicks and whistles, Truzenzuzex's tone was annoyingly persuasive. "Bran and I could help you."
"Oh, really?" Flinx did not try to hide his disdain. "And exactly how might you do that?"
"With training and advice," Tse-Mallory told him without missing a beat. "Tru and I were both struck from the moment we first met you, Flinx, that your special potential was only partly realized. Clearly, that's changed somewhat. With proper guidance, it might be changed significantly more."
Truzenzuzex rested his left truhand and foothand on Flinx's leg. "No one knows what you are ultimately capable of, Flinx. Not Bran, not me, and certainly not you. Perhaps even something as improbable as becoming able to perceive the emotional state, and therefore the location, of a machine."
His words gave Flinx a jolt. He had discussed the same issue with the AI that controlled the functions of the Teacher.
"If nothing else, Flinx," Tse-Mallory continued compellingly, "you can help us physically search for something that only you have encountered and that only you may be capable of recognizing."
"At least, this appears to be our best hope for possibly countering this threat," Truzenzuzex said, staring at him. Or at least, Flinx had the impression the thranx was staring. With those compound eyes it was always hard to tell. "Should something more efficacious come along, rest assured we will pursue it as a potential solution with equivalent vigor."
"You really intend to try and fight whatever's coming." Flinx's gaze shifted back and forth between his two old friends.
Truzenzuzex made a gesture indicative of unavoidable promise. "We will not put ourselves in stasis, as did the Sauun, and we will not run as the Xunca might have done, because we don't know how to do either." Four hands gestured meaningfully. "What else can we do but fight?"
"Who else knows of the danger?" Flinx heard himself asking.
"A few individuals who work in Commonwealth Science Central. Perhaps some others who may have come across the original report. It will not be more widely distributed. It would do no good to do so. Only panic and fear would ensue. Without reason, since the threat will not become imminent for several generations at the earliest."
"Though we can't be sure of that," Bran put in. "The phenomenon continues to accelerate."
"True," the thranx admitted. "Bran and I will organize and initiate a search for this perambulating Tar-Aiym weapons platform because it offers the best chance for countering the approaching danger that has thus far been made known to us. Will you help us, Flinx? In return, we will attempt to tutor you, to edify you. To enlarge your knowledge of yourself. Isn't that what you want? What you've always wanted?"
Yes, yes! But not at the expense of any chance of real happiness. Not at the risk of losing what little serenity and joy he'd managed to scrape together from the shattered detritus of a damaged life. Though he'd spoken not a word, an alarmed Pip lifted her upper body to peer anxiously into his face and caress it with her tongue.
He found he wanted to scream.
For the first time in many years he had succeeded in talking about and sharing the particulars of his troubled inner self with someone else, shared them far more effusively than he had intended, but shared nonetheless. Did that mean that he loved Clarity Held? He loved Mother Mastiff; he knew that. And he loved Pip (at which thought the flying snake coiled in upon herself in a small paroxysm of delight). But did he love Clarity, or was he simply grateful for her sympathy and understanding? It would make a difference to know.
More important, did she love him and could he trust such feelings? The older he grew, the more chary he became of human emotions. Better than most-perhaps better than anyone before or since, save for, possibly, certain poets-he knew how fleeting they could be. Could he build a life on such an insubstantial human ephemera? Did he want to try?
What was the alternative? To continue his search for his father, since he now kne
w the disagreeable history of his mother. To travel and learn-to what end? Bran and Tru were offering instruction and training-perhaps the best he could hope to find anywhere. But at a price. Not much of a price, he reflected. They only wanted his help in trying to save the Commonwealth. No, not the Commonwealth, he corrected himself, the galaxy. Save the galaxy: it sounded like an ecologist's bad slogan.
Why should he? What did he owe the galaxy or the Commonwealth? Both had dealt him a raw deal. Let both disappear, smothered by whatever was advancing from behind the Great Emptiness. Let everything start over fresh and new and clean.
Except, if the astronomers were right, there was nothing behind the Great Emptiness. No material to make new stars and new planets, much less new civilizations. There would be no fresh start in this corner of the cosmos. He cringed inwardly.
Some people were anxious about bills. Some fretted about their marriages, their kids, or the career promotion that might never come. Some were concerned for their health. Me, he thought, I'm expected to worry about the fate of a couple hundred million stars and a few civilizations. That, he reminded himself, and what to do about Clarity Held. Somehow in his mind the two had become linked.
Because you're the key, he told himself. The trigger of a triad consisting of an ancient artificial intelligence that he had long since decided involved the Krang, an intense green something that he had come to suspect concerned the life-forms of Midworld, and a mysterious warm sapience as yet unidentified. Could the latter consist of his inscrutable friends from the proscribed world called Ulru-Ujurr? If so, why didn't they admit their involvement? It wasn't like the jovial, furry manipulators of time and space to be deliberately obscure. And if they were not the third component of the resistive harmony he kept encountering in his dreams, then who was?
I don't want to be a key, he cried inwardly. I don't want to be a trigger. I want to lead a normal life!
Sure, he told himself more calmly. As a rogue genetic mutation that's the creation of a universally reviled, outlawed medical group. A normal life. With Clarity Held? Agonized, he looked at her and saw that she felt his pain. Love? Or just empathy? Even for him it was hard to tell the difference.