Flinx's Folly

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Sadly,” Tse-Mallory explained, “we were unable to do any of those things, since by all reliable estimates the Mutable had lain dead and frozen in the ice for at least a hundred years. Or so we were told. As Tru stated, we were able only to view the remains. They were very, very ancient. According to the official report, great care was taken when removing the creature from its icy tomb in order that a proper autopsy might be run on it. In spite of the team from Hivehom taking every precaution, the remains swiftly disintegrated. The researchers assigned to the task never were able to decide if it had been a living creature or some kind of organic appliance that had been constructed from basic molecules on up.”

  Truzenzuzex continued, “The system itself employs subspace wave communications and is at once much more powerful and yet simpler in design and execution than anything known to Commonwealth science. Not only is it monitoring two areas simultaneously, but the most recent report on the device claims that it also occasionally emits a spurt of modulated wave indications via a still-not-understood variant of space-minus toward a location different from those it is monitoring. The scientific team on site hasn’t been able to find out how the device is doing this, far less where it is sending to or what might be on the receiving end. Work on these enigmas continues even as we speak.”

  So the Xunca device could send as well as receive, Flinx thought. Could it still be trying to carry out its original function of warning its builders of a threat? And if that was the case, would the unknown, enigmatic, ancient Xunca be in a position to receive it?

  “You said that the system is monitoring two different locations in space.” He eyed Truzenzuzex absorbedly. “I’m only aware of one.”

  “Yes, the one you spoke of to Padre Bateleur,” the Philosoph noted. “The site of perceived evil that you visit in your dreams, or whatever peculiar state of mind you enter into when performing such observations.”

  Flinx nodded. “Whatever it is, I have a feeling it must be what the system centered on Horseye was designed to warn the Xunca about.”

  This time Truzenzuzex gestured with both truhands. “Except there are no more Xunca to interpret the readings or receive a warning or anything else.”

  “No,” Tse-Mallory added somberly. “There is only us.” He peered steadily at Flinx. “The phenomenon we are discussing lies behind the Great Emptiness, a region of space called by the thranx the Great Void, in the direction of the constellation Boötes as seen from Earth. It is some three hundred million light-years across, encompassing a volume of approximately one hundred million cubic megaparsecs, and appears to be moving in the general direction of our galaxy. What this something is or might consist of is blocked by a vast gravitational lens composed of dark matter that prevents anyone from seeing behind it or into it. Through means we do not yet fully understand, the Xunca system centered on Horseye can peer beyond the distorting effects of the lens. While we do not yet understand the physics involved, we have been able to decipher some of the data.” Clasping his hands behind his back, he strolled over to the window to gaze thoughtfully down at the busy street outside.

  “One thing is clear. Where this unidentified something passes, everything else vanishes. Virtually nothing is left behind, only a little free hydrogen gas, not even the dark matter composed largely of CHAMPS particles. Incredibly, the phenomenon may even violate the law of the conservation of energy by neither converting energy into mass or mass into energy, but by utterly eliminating both.” He looked to Truzenzuzex to continue.

  “Calculation of the eventual consequences to us is not particularly complex,” the thranx informed them. “One day in an undetermined future, depending on an as-yet-unspecified rate of acceleration, this phenomenon will reach the Milky Way. And possibly consume it.”

  It was quiet in the room. Outside, the happy and contented citizens of the accommodating world of New Riviera went about their daily concerns, unaware that in an ordinary hotel room not far from where they were walking and talking, a most unusual quartet was calmly discussing Armageddon.

  “What about the other place?” a subdued Clarity finally thought to ask. “The other phenomenon this Xunca device is monitoring? Is it anything like the—like what you just described?”

  “On the contrary, it is everything the Great Void is not,” Truzenzuzex informed her. “The other area of the cosmos that the system on Horseye is monitoring is known to your kind as the Great Attractor. This is a region of space that all the galaxies in the local group are moving toward. Whatever it is—and both your astrophysicists and ours have been studying it for hundreds of years—it possesses the energy of ten thousand trillion suns. Current cosmological theory still can’t explain it.” He turned from Clarity back to Flinx, who looked surprised.

  “Well, don’t look at me, Tru—I certainly can’t explain it.”

  The thranx chittered softly. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you could, Flinx. No one can.”

  “If the Xunca system is monitoring both what’s behind the Great Emptiness and this Great Attractor,” Flinx hypothesized, “then it follows that there may be a correlation of some kind between the two phenomena.” Visions of swirling galaxies filled his head, among which he and his friends and the Commonwealth entire were so insignificant as to constitute little but nihility.

  “So one would suppose,” the Philosoph commented. “To make such a connection one would almost have to be intoxicated with physics. Or with metaphysics.”

  “Go ahead and tell them, Tru,” Tse-Mallory urged his friend.

  Truzenzuzex tried to wave his companion off. “It’s too absurd, Bran. Too fantastic to share. I feel a complete fool for wasting the thought-time even to do the envisioning.”

  “Tell us, Tru.” Flinx was as encouraging as a former acolyte could be. “Nothing you could imagine could be more fantastic than what I’ve already experienced and encountered in my dreams.”

  “You think not?” The thranx cocked his head. “Contemplate this, then: imagine a sentient species, perhaps our mysterious Xunca, who have advanced so far beyond contemporary intellect and science that they can conceive of trying to save not merely themselves but an entire galaxy from a threat of the magnitude posed by whatever lies behind the Great Void—by moving it out of harm’s way. How to accomplish such an impossible feat? By somehow creating something like the Great Attractor. Something with sufficient gravitational strength to draw an entire galaxy out of the path of the oncoming Great Emptiness.”

  From his position near the door, Bran murmured tersely, “Just call Galaxy Movers, Inc.”

  Truzenzuzex nodded somberly, effortlessly employing the human gesture of which his kind had become quite fond. “We are speaking here of technologies beyond imagination. But if that’s the case, if there’s any truth to the outrageous hypothesis, it doesn’t matter. Because it’s not working. The Great Emptiness and whatever it hides has begun to accelerate even faster toward the Milky Way. Whether this is a coincidental phenomenon or a direct—I hesitate to say conscious—reaction to the pulling of our galaxy out of its path and toward the Great Attractor we have no way of knowing.”

  Clarity swallowed hard. “So—how much time do we, do the peoples of the Commonwealth—have?”

  Tse-Mallory eyed her compassionately. “We are still talking sometime in the far future before the first congruency occurs. But when it does, unless some kind of solution can be found, it will mean the end of everything. Not just of humanxkind, the AAnn, and every other sentient race but of planets and stars and nebulae and—everything. With nothing left behind to re-form or re-create what has gone before.”

  “Apparently,” Truzenzuzex added, “other solutions to the threat have been pondered, though not by us.”

  “What other solutions?” Remembering his few but always terrifying mental encounters with whatever lay beyond the Great Emptiness, Flinx was hardly sanguine. “If moving the whole galaxy doesn’t have a chance of working, what else possibly could?” He did not mention that he had come to fe
el that he himself might somehow be a part of, be one of the keys, to such a solution.

  Vast, shimmering golden eyes regarded him thoughtfully. “Flinx, have you ever heard of a world called Comagrave?”

  CHAPTER

  15

  Flinx and Clarity exchanged a glance before admitting that neither of them was familiar with that world.

  “No need to be self-conscious of your mutual ignorance,” the Philosoph assured them. “It’s a minor Class Eight colony world located in a distant reach of the Commonwealth, in the general direction of the AAnn empire. The nearest settled world of any consequence is Burley. That alone tells you how far the place is from the centers of civilization. Though inhabitable, the surface is mostly desert to semidesert. Needless to say, it is not high on the list of places where I, or any other thranx, would choose to spend time, though humans seem to find it agreeable enough.”

  “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.”

  “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.