He thought back to his brief, enigmatic slumber atop the Tar-Aiym control platform. For whatever reason, the majestic and incomprehensibly ancient vessel below had resolved not to look upon him as an enemy. Whether that apparent decision constituted a permanent or temporary state of affairs he had no way of knowing—and he was not about to tarry in the vicinity to find out.
Several excited exchanges with the Teacher served to clarify the status of the approaching shuttlecraft. Flinx was not displeased to note that he had acquired a replacement for the one he had crashed on Pyrassis, though he wished the method of acquisition could have been otherwise. He genuinely regretted the premature death of any sentient being, even an AAnn.
His relief upon exiting the interior air lock to find himself once more within the comforting, familiar confines of his own ship was immense. Even the smell of it was exhilarating. Without pausing, he headed directly for the bridge. As he passed through the lounge where he tended to spend the majority of his time while traveling in space-plus, he noted absently that the decorative flora that had been presented to him by the considerate citizens of the distant planet its inhabitants called Midworld appeared to have held up exceptionally well in his absence. Oddly, there were even a few fragments of soil scattered across the otherwise spotless deck; moist terrestrial blemishes occupying locations unexpectedly far from their planters. No doubt a consequence of sluggish, limited movement by the burgeoning alien growths with whose intimate characteristics he was not yet wholly familiar. He made a mental note to see to it that the ship’s hygienics system was careful to recycle the scraps. In space, dirt was a precious commodity.
The bridge greeted his arrival contentedly, as if he had never been away, as if nothing untoward had occurred in his absence. As if the vapor-shrouded planet-sized body outside the port had not been unexpectedly transformed from an apparently ordinary methane dwarf orbiting an unremarkable star in a notably undistinguished star system to the most inconceivable and improbable discovery since the revelation that humans shared the galaxy with other intelligent species.
In addition to being the most unbelievable and improbable of its kind, the discovery was also, potentially, the most dangerous.
What would happen when he left? Abandoned once more to its isolated orbit, would the artifact regenerate its mantle of dense, artificially spawned methane atmosphere, resuming once again the appearance of a dreary, mundane world? And what of the effortlessly annihilated AAnn? Had they managed before their abrupt and absolute demise to communicate the true nature of their find to others of their kind? What about the departed Mahnahmi? If he was capable of activating a Tar-Aiym control platform, could she not do the same? The thought of a tool of true ultimate destruction the size and power of the artifact falling into the hands of his hate-filled sister raised possibilities too dreadful to contemplate. What could he do to prevent her return? If he warned the AAnn against her, they would uncover the nature of the artifact for themselves. He seemed to have few choices—all of them bad.
As it turned out, resolution and solution were provided by the artifact itself. Very soon following his return to the succoring confines of his ship, the alien orb began to move. Because of its unnatural proportions he did not notice the initial activity, and had to be alerted to the change by the Teacher.
“You’re sure it’s moving?” Gazing out the port at the immense, now internally illuminated sphere, it was difficult to ascertain any motion by sight alone.
“Yes, Flinx.” The ship’s AI was quietly emphatic. “Velocity is increasing exponentially and will shortly become salient to the unassisted human eye. There is evidence of the activation of a posigravity field of unparalleled dimensions evolving in the vicinity of what might freely be designated as the northern pole.”
As always, the AI’s analysis was correct. It was not long before Flinx could perceive not only movement but the blossoming of the space-distorting drive field as well.
“It’s going to have to move a lot farther than an orbit or two out-system if it’s going to safely initiate any kind of changeover,” he murmured, as much to himself as to the ship.
“Though in the absence of sufficient data I am unable to accurately compute mass, I would estimate the minimum secure distance for safe activation at not less than three-quarters of a local AU. Given no suspension of the speed at which the artifact continues to accelerate, it should reach that point in approximately two hours and thirty-four minutes.”
“Then,” Flinx declared with some alacrity, “we had better get moving ourselves.” Reacting to her companion’s surge of anxiety, Pip rose from his shoulder to hover solicitously above and behind him.
The Teacher replied to the assumption without remarking on its owner’s lack of specifics. “Shall I enter coordinates and initiate preparations for entry into space-plus?”
“Yes. Take us out and stand ready for changeover. I’ll supply a destination, but I want to remain in normal space until I see what happens. So long as we keep at a safe distance, we shouldn’t have any problems.”
The field being generated by the artifact continued to amplify to an extent that would have astonished Alex Kurita and Sumako Kinoshita, the architects of the first KK-drive. Two hours and thirty-six minutes after it had first begun to move, the artifact blurred briefly, was engulfed in an intense burst of celestial radiance, and vanished. A deeply contemplative Flinx spent a long time gazing at the empty space the evanesced world-ship had occupied. At what point in time would the AAnn notice that the system of Pyrassis now encompassed nine and not ten worlds? To what incomprehensible phenomena would they ascribe the inconceivable anomaly? People lost track of credits and diminutive personal effects and small items of clothing—not planets.
The important thing was that it was gone from where it had been, had taken itself elsewhere, was no longer where it had been known to be. Perhaps, he reflected thoughtfully, having been reanimated after a slumber of half a million years only to find itself with no traditional enemy to fight, it had gone in search of updated orders. If that was the case, it would go looking for them in the Blight. There it could wander harmlessly forever, in the vast stellar region of systems rendered sterile by the prehistoric war between the Tar-Aiym and the Hur’rikku, unmolested by bellicose AAnn or Hatharc, Quillp or Branner, human or thranx.
Most important of all, it would be far from Mahnahmi’s grasp. Some day, he knew, he would have to deal decisively with his sister. Or she with him.
But for now, he was free of such onerous concerns. Free to roam again in search of enlightenment and wisdom. It did not occur to him to travel in search of amusement, or simply for diversion. He did not have the mind-set. Pensive but no longer apprehensive, he absently began to caress the back of Pip’s head as she settled down again onto his shoulder. Soothed by the steady motion of his fingertips and the warmth of his body, she closed her eyes and went to sleep, her coils taut against him.
As he provided the Teacher with a destination and the ship obediently set about making preparations for changeover, he found himself wishing he had been more fully cognizant of what had taken place while he had been lying semiconscious on the Tar-Aiym control platform. While grateful for the outcome, it would have been nice to know how he had done what he had done: how much of it had been a consequence of his and Pip’s actions, and how much that of the artifact acting on its own. Perhaps it was just as well that he did not. He would have been both dumfounded and stunned by an explanation that was at once simplistic, incredibly convoluted, and pregnant with measureless meaning for far more than his own, singular future.
Everything that had happened from the moment he had lain down on the platform had occurred because the planet had been talking to a plant.
A NOTE ON THE HISTORY
OF INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL
Those with a taste for history know that the modern KK-drive that powers Commonwealth ships swiftly across vast interstellar distances was invented in 2280 A.D. by the husband and wife team o
f post-graduate students Alex Kurita and Sumako Kinoshita, of the technologically advanced Namerican tribe.
Working in the field of applied high-energy physics, the couple was initially drawn to the pioneering work of the German mathematicians Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein not because of their theories, but because, by one of those wonderful bits of serendipity that inform the entire history of science, the two men happened to have the same last initials as the married students.
With Einstein having previously shown that gravity arises from the four-dimensional curvature of space-time, the two Germans worked to demonstrate how the electromagnetic force arose from a fifth dimension, an unheard-of concept in 1919 A.D. According to the Kaluza-Klein theory, each point in normal space is actually a loop in the fifth dimension. Studying higher energy KK echoes of Z and Y bosons at the Winnipeg greater particle accelerator, Kurita and Kinoshita were able to develop a practical means for generating quantum gravity. Engineering designs based on their equations resulted in the construction of the first Caplis generator, variations of which power all interstellar vessels by accelerating them to speeds that allow them to slip into the fifth dimension, more commonly known today by its colloquial designation, space-plus. Later work by others building upon the work of Kaluza-Klein and Kurita-Kinoshita led to the discovery of a practical means for sending communications as resonating loops through the sixth dimension, or space-minus.
—Excerpted from A Technological History of the Commonwealth, supervising ed. Repinski & Mutombu; Heidelberg University Press, Europe, Terra; volume 446. All rights reserved, known space and multiple dimensions.
Alan Dean Foster has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the Star Wars® novel The Approaching Storm. He is also the author of numerous nonfiction articles on film, science, and scuba diving, as well as the novelizations of several films, including Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and Alien Nation. His novel Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work to ever do so.
Foster’s love of the faraway and exotic has led him to travel extensively. He’s lived in Tahiti and French Polynesia, traveled to Europe, Asia, and throughout the Pacific, and has explored the back roads of Tanzania and Kenya. He has rappeled into New Mexico’s fabled Lechugilla Cave, eaten panfried pirhana (lots of bones, tastes a lot like trout) in Peru, white-water rafted the length of the Zambezi’s Batoka Gorge, and driven solo the length and breadth of Namibia.
Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, reside in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from a turn-of-the-century miners’ brothel. He is presently at work on several new novels and media projects.
Visit the author at his Web site at www.alandeanfoster.com.
Books By Alan Dean Foster
The Black Hole
Cachalot
Dark Star
The Metrognome and Other Stories
Midworld
Nor Crystal Tears
Sentenced to Prism
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
Star Trek® Logs One-Ten
Voyage to the City of the Dead
. . . Who Needs Enemies?
With Friends Like These . . .
Mad Amos
Parallelites
THE ICERIGGER TRILOGY:
Icerigger
Mission to Moulokin
The Deluge Drivers
THE ADVENTURES OF FLINX OF THE COMMONWEALTH:
For Love of Mother-Not
The Tar-Aiym Krang
Orphan Star
The End of the Matter
Bloodhype
Flinx In Flux
Mid-Flinx
Reunion
THE DAMNED
Book One: A Call to Arms
Book Two: The False Mirror
Book Three: The Spoils of War
THE FOUNDING OF THE COMMONWEALTH
Phylogenesis
Dirge
Diuturnity’s Dawn
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A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2001 by Thranx, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/delrey/
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Foster, Alan Dean, 1946
Reunion: a Pip & Flinx novel / Alan Dean Foster.
p. cm.
“A Del Rey book.”
1. Humanx Commonwealth (Imaginary organization)—Fiction.
2. Flinx (Fictitious character)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3556.0756 R4 2001
813’.54—dc2l 2001016155
eISBN: 978-0-345-45458-4
v3.0
Reunion Page 31
