Treappyn considered carefully. “It is difficult to say, Highborn. He was not long among us, and his immediate influence, while profound, was limited to those few who saw him or were directly helped by him.” He turned back to the outside. “Of course, if he, or others like him, were to return to Arrawd...”
Pyrrpallinda eyed the younger male intently. “Do you think that will happen?”
“Again, who am I to speculate on matters of the unknowable? But if I were pressed, I would say no. Only because that is what the alien himself told me, and I have no reason to doubt his word. Also, I sense that the longer he remained among us, the greater became his discontent.” The counselor gestured in a way that indicated inner confusion. “I don’t know why this should be, since we of Wullsakaa, at least, did our best to make him feel welcome among us. But I believe it to be so. I believe it in my bones. I do not think he will be back.”
His August Highborn Pyrrpallinda was silent for a while. When he next spoke again, it was as if he was talking to himself as much as to the counselor standing attentively nearby.
“Just as well. No way to predict the actions of the un-Dwarra. A whim might have seen him side later with the Jebilisk, or another of our enemies.” Uttering a noise unbecoming a Highborn, he added cynically, “This peace will last as long as most of them do.” Remembering that he was not alone, he looked back at Treappyn.
“I intend to convene a full meeting of all senior and junior advisors for tomorrow morning. We have a realm to run.” Turning, he started back into the depths of the room. “I’ll need cost estimates for the repair of at least one and possibly three bridges. And a bastion wall.”
“Yes,” Treappyn agreed, trailing respectfully behind his liege. “It should be cheaper if the Treasury can afford to contract for simultaneous repairs. Economies of scale dictate that...”
Visiting alien gods all but forgotten, their conversation grew more animated as they made their way deeper into the fortress. Whatever Flinx was, had been, or meant was soon lost in the very real need to manage reality instead of conjecture.
In the courtyard outside, those milling true believers who still remained occasionally pointed but more rarely gazed skyward as they began to compile the beginnings of what would eventually become the Liturgy of the Alien Flinx. Whether this would become canon or whimsy, whether it would remain a provincial curiosity of Wullsakaa or spread throughout the length and breadth of all Arrawd, only time and the perseverance of its tentative but energetic devotees would tell.
“Everything, I take it, is functioning properly, and the repairs we came here to make are holding appropriately?”
“One would have to have access to, or be, a precision instrument in order to tell that any change had been effected,” the Teacher assured him confidently.
“Ready to leave?”
“I am preparing to implement departure along the new vector you have suggested.”
“Good.” Slumping down in the welcoming embrace of the lounge chair, the moist air surrounding him filled with small, colorful, harmless flying things, listening to water cascade into the artificial pond while the striking fragrances of exotic vegetation gathered from several worlds pungently scented the air around him, Flinx stroked Pip’s back as she lay contentedly on his stomach. “Then maybe you have a suggestion or two about how to repair me.”
The ship-mind’s reply was devoid of mockery. “I was not aware that you were broken, Flinx.”
“You know what I mean. You’re perceptive enough to understand.”
The Teacher also knew enough to know how to pause for effect before replying. “If you are lamenting the fact that your attempt to sow good among the native population did not eventuate as effectively as you intended, you must not blame yourself. Analysis of cause—you—and effect—one localized war, now terminated, and one incipient religion, future undetermined—suggests that the Dwarra are heavily prone to both, and that your presence only temporarily exacerbated a set of endemic cultural conditions.”
Flinx stirred on the lounge, forcing an annoyed Pip to shift her coils to avoid slipping off his restless torso. “Could you put that another way?”
The ship-mind responded efficiently. “The Dwarra would fight among themselves and run through many different beliefs whether you had appeared among them or not.”
“Well, maybe...,” he muttered, slightly reassured. The Teacher had the ability to comfort him without being overly specific. “You try to do good—” he began.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t try so hard,” ship-mind interrupted him. “It is a historical characteristic of humans that when they try to do ‘good’ among others, including themselves, their efforts all too often have the opposite effect. You have a strenuous course set before you. Given such conditions, future diffident attempts at ancillary altruism might best be avoided.”
Lying back on the lounge and letting it more fully adapt to his weight and frame, he gazed ceilingward. It was not necessary to look for a lens. The ship’s visual and audio pickups were everywhere.
“That’s not my nature. If I see someone needing help, I feel compelled to extend it. It’s because of who I am. What I am,” he added thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s because I feel I need so much help myself that I feel the need to help others when and where I can.” He paused a moment. “Otherwise I’d be setting you on a course straight back to New Riviera, I’d pick up Clarity, and we’d go somewhere pleasant and quiet and live out our lives as normally as my internal modifications would permit.”
He could almost imagine the ship-mind nodding tolerantly. “But you’re not going to do that, Flinx. You’re going to do as Bran Tse-Mallory and the Eint Truzenzuzex suggested, and try to save a galaxy whose inhabitants might not ever know your name or the extent of your efforts on their behalf. Because that’s also who, and what, you are.”
Folding his arms over his chest above where Pip was resting contently, he growled at no one in particular. “Yeah, I know, I know.” He took a deep breath. It didn’t help. “And I’m not getting any of anything done lying here swapping inanities with you. Get us moving.”
“Right away, master,” the Teacher replied, in a subtle, suavely modified tone that might or might not have contained just a soupon of sarcasm.
CHAPTER
16
Bugs everywhere. No, not bugs, Clarity hastily corrected herself. Old cognomens were slow to fade from collective memory. The thranx themselves didn’t mind. They found human attempts to avoid comparing their chitinous friends with primitive Terran insects amusing. The thranx sense of humor was dry, but not wanting.
They had landed on Hivehom at Chitteranx and hurriedly boarded an atmospheric shuttle that had transported them down to Yalwez, far to the south on Hivehom’s largest continent. There, well inland from the shores of vast Maldrett Bay and not far from the site of ancient thranx civilization known as the Valley of the Dead, Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex had introduced her to members of a stealth research branch of Commonwealth Science Central of which the Eint was a prominent member.
She had encountered thranx before, of course. As humanity’s closest friends and allies among the known intelligent species and as cofounders of the Commonwealth, the mastiff-sized, eight-limbed insectoids were present in varying numbers on every one of its developed worlds. Their large colonies in the Amazon and Congo on Earth found their counterparts in the substantial human outposts on Hivehom’s Mediterranea Plateau and industrial-commercial interests on Humus.
But Yalwez and the ancient Valley of the Dead were quite distant from such cool highlands, she was very far from her comfortable home on New Riviera, and save for the amiable but sometimes inscrutable Tse-Mallory, she had not seen another human since they had left behind the main shuttleport at now far-off Chitteranx.
She could have stayed on New Riviera. Tse-Mallory had assured her that through their contacts, he and Truzenzuzex could guarantee her privacy from the attentions of inquisitive Commonwealth officials and disrepu
table groups such as the Order of Null. Besides, it was Flinx such organizations, legal and not, were after—not her. Or, they offered, she could come with them. Having recovered from the injuries she had sustained when Flinx had taken flight from her world, she did not have to consider long. As was proving to be more and more frequently the case, she elected to follow her heart instead of her brain.
Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex had sent Flinx on a mission. When he returned from it, whether successful or not, he would obviously report first to them. Therefore, she was most likely to see him soonest if she remained in the company of the unusual pairing of elderly scientist-adventurers who were his closest friends. So she had tidied up her affairs, taken a leave of absence from her job, security-sealed her home, and agreed to follow them. Now she found herself in a new place, somewhere she had never expected to visit: the venerable thranx homeworld and Commonwealth co-capital of Hivehom.
Where she presently found herself, along with Tse-Mallory, towering over Truzenzuzex and the senior thranx researcher who had greeted them. Like those of her female colleagues, Kesedbarmek’s ovipositors had stiffened in suspicion at the sight of the unknown human female, until Truzenzuzex had assured her that Clarity had more than earned the same access to restricted information as himself and Tse-Mallory.
“Her status in the ongoing investigation of the singular phenomena that forms the basis of our mutual interest is unique,” the Eint had assured his chary, aquamarine-hued colleague.
Once that declaration had worked its way throughout the surreptitious facility, Clarity no longer found herself the subject of recurring stares on the part of its wholly thranx staff. Though, she told herself, given the nature of their compound eyes, it was difficult to tell when a thranx was staring at you and when it was not. Already, she had learned to identify the subject of their attention by looking not at their large, golden eyes, but at the direction in which their graceful, feathery antennae happened to be pointed.
Presently, the four of them were walking down a corridor that was not nearly as high as it was wide. Like the majority of thranx construction, it was situated beneath the hot, humid planetary surface. Coved corners and reduced but adequate indirect lighting softened the otherwise utilitarian design that was at once ultramodern and thoughtfully reflective of ancient tastes. The top of her head just did clear the low ceiling, allowing the minidrag Scrap to cling to her neck and left shoulder without having to constantly shift his position. In contrast, the taller Tse-Mallory had to bend frequently to avoid bumping into the occasional protruding conduit or other overhead fixture. The grizzled scientist did not seem to mind the physical limitations imposed by their present surroundings. It was as if he had spent as much time on thranx-dominated worlds as on those populated principally by his own kind.
Thankfully, she had never been subject to claustrophobia. For anyone who had been forced to spend day after anxious day wandering in total darkness on the primitive world of Longtunnel, the constrictions of thranx construction barely qualified as inconvenient. Several of the passageways she and her companions had been obliged to traverse in order to access the current larger one had been sufficiently narrow that if she had extended both arms out to the side, she would have been able to touch both walls simultaneously.
In deference to the human members of the party, both Kesedbarmek and Truzenzuzex forbore from speaking in High or Low Thranx. Instead, they employed the well-established Commonwealth lingua franca known as symbospeech. Like any educated Commonwealth citizen, Clarity was reasonably fluent in that hybrid patois, though she did not know all the appropriate hand gestures that corresponded to the expressive movements of thranx truhands and foothands. So while she could make herself understood without any problems, her efforts at interspecies communication lacked polish. Neither of the two thranx seemed to mind, and no one made fun of her occasionally clumsy attempts at visible punctuation.
For several minutes now they had not encountered anyone else. Turning a sharp corner, the quartet of humans and thranx entered a short, slightly narrower corridor at the end of which was a large door deeply embossed with a ribbed design she did not recognize. This was not surprising, since the insignia of certain special branches of Commonwealth Science Central were not widely disseminated. More disconcerting was the presence, this deep into a typical subterranean complex on the highly civilized and largely pacific thranx homeworld, of an armed guard. The single eight-limbed figure stood as tall as he was able, though the valentine-shaped head did not reach as high as her own and did not even come up to Tse-Mallory’s shoulders. Truhands and foothands worked together to handle a rifle-like weapon that for all its svelte design looked more than passably intimidating. The lethal device would have been useless in human hands, Homo sapiens being two limbs short of the complement necessary to manage it.
Sticking her head into the metallic, reflective half sphere that protruded from the wall to the right of the portal, Kesedbarmek waited briefly while the security device read the unique pattern of her compound eyes and matched it to the distinctive pattern of her brain waves. As she drew back, the single door rose upward into an accommodating ceiling recess and the guard stepped aside to let them pass. The armed male did not glance in Clarity’s direction, nor at Tse-Mallory, suggesting that the two of them were not the first humans to pass this way. As she strode past, Scrap flicked his pointed tongue in the guard’s direction and let out a sharp hiss.
“Why all the security?” she murmured to Tse-Mallory as they entered a chamber larger than any they had encountered since leaving the arrival lounge at Yalwez shuttleport.
“There are some things better kept from the general public,” he explained, leaning down to whisper to her. Eyes of obsidian black gazed into her own. “Unfortunately, panic is a condition that seems to be common to all sentient species. Certain bits of knowledge are best held in trust by those mentally and emotionally trained to cope with them on a rational basis. I think you know of what I speak.”
Though neither of her guardians had spoken directly of the reason for the journey to Hivehom, she was very much afraid that she did.
The far side of the room was marked by a number of study stations: banks of refractive electronics fronting the kind of longitudinal resting platforms that served thranx as both chairs and beds. Two were occupied. Taking note of the newcomers, their operators looked up only briefly before returning to the work at hand.
Halting in the center of the chamber, which for a change was high-ceilinged enough to allow even Tse-Mallory to stand erect without bending, Kesedbarmek moved to a single tapering post that protruded from the floor and addressed it in High Thranx. Clarity caught the meaning of a few phrases, but for the most part the elaborate, if sharply defined, mix of whistles, words, and clicks was beyond her limited store of linguistic knowledge. Flinx was fluent in both thranx dialects, she knew. But Flinx wasn’t here. There were only the two thranx and the always affable but sometimes distant Tse-Mallory. The chamber darkened in response to their host’s commands. Despite the heat and high humidity favored by the thranx, she found herself shivering.
The chamber transformed into a cartographic habitat. She’d stood in similar rooms before, but this time many of the clouds of stars and nebulae that filled the domed open space to surround her and her companions were unfamiliar to her. It took her a moment to realize why. Instead of the usual map of the Commonwealth or even a greater galographic, she realized that she was standing in the midst of a number of whole galaxies. At Kesedbarmek’s command, the view contracted somewhat. One large spiral galaxy was highlighted, tinted a distinguishing green. It was the color the thranx always utilized whenever they wished to indicate the presence of life, whereas humans were as likely to employ blue. Nearby, Tse-Mallory shifted his stance slightly and leaned toward her.
“You are here,” he murmured softly.
“Yes, that is our home,” Kesedbarmek confirmed. “We are there. And it has now advanced to here.” Making her way through the t
hree-dimensional representation, the thranx scientist reached out to push one of the four opposing digits on her left truhand into the edge of another galaxy. It immediately glowed red. That, however, was not what drew Clarity’s interest. Lacking though her education might be in the finer nuances of higher astronomics, she knew enough to tell that there was something seriously wrong with the cluster that had been singled out.
It was another spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way, but with at least one significant visible difference: at least a third of it was missing. The globular core seemed unusually dim, and the surviving spiral arms were ragged and irregular, as if they had been pulled and distorted by inconceivable forces. Behind it, on the side that appeared to have gone missing, was a vast dark area that extended all the way to the far boundaries of the room. At first she assumed the distorted galaxy was simply located at the edge of the dimensional map, but, looking around, she saw that multiple galaxies extended much farther into the distance off to either side of the partial cluster that had been highlighted. The emptiness behind it took the shape of an enormous extended cone, with its apex penetrating the distorted galaxy like the stinger of some unimaginable predatory insect.
She sensed immediately what it must represent. Monitoring her emotions, Scrap stirred uneasily on her shoulder. She had been present when Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex had discussed the phenomenon with Flinx on New Riviera.
The Great Emptiness. The Great Void, as the thranx referred to it. According to Flinx, there was something dreadful behind or within it that was blocked from direct observation by a huge gravitational lens of dark matter. Something horrific that howled and writhed and roared through empty space within an area that was three hundred million light-years across and one hundred million megaparsecs in volume.
Something that was coming this way.
“It’s gotten worse.” Staring at the image that hovered between himself and the two thranx, Tse-Mallory was not whispering now. “And in measurable time.”
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