Flinx Transcendent (28 page)

Barryn tensed but complied. He wasn't afraid of this stranger. His rival was taller but slimmer and younger. If the confrontation came to blows, the medtech was confident who would come out on top. Behind them, Clarity stood frowning and watching.

Flinx did not raise his hands, however. Nor did he raise his voice.

“I can't tell you the specifics of why I had to leave Clarity in the care of friends. I've had a difficult time since I've been gone.” The smile returned, confident and, oddly enough, almost sympathetic. “There have been others before you. Now that I'm back, this time there will never be any more.”

Barryn refused to be lulled by his challenger's easygoing manner or to be provoked by his quiet insistence. “And if I tell you that I plan on sticking around and that
I'm
not going anywhere … ?”

“You don't understand,” Flinx told him quietly. “I've—had—a—difficult—time.” His eyes peered directly into those of the other man.

He could have sought to project onto the medtech. He didn't have to. He certainly did not try to, at least not consciously. Whatever flowed outward from him to pass between them was for once unforced and involuntary.

Meeting that stare, Barryn found himself gazing upon a thousand years worth of sorrow and worry. There was pain there, and heartbreak. A sense of loss beyond anything he had ever encountered before. Knowledge, terrible knowledge, of matters beyond his imagining. Answers there for the taking to questions he shrank from asking. So much suffering, so much anguish, a wealth of bereavement. Failure, inadequacy, hopelessness, desperation.

An inescapable and palpable emptiness.

Swallowing hard, feeling a sudden dry tightness in his throat, Tambrogh Barryn retreated from that stare. “I—I didn't
know,”
was all he could mumble.

Flinx responded with the slightest of shrugs. “I didn't want you to have to know. The fewer who know, the better.” He glanced briefly to his left. “Clarity knows. More than that, she understands. Hardly anyone else understands even a little. I need that understanding. Without it, I'm afraid that inside myself I'll shrivel down to nothingness. If that happens, a great many more mortals than me will learn things they don't want to learn and would be better off not knowing.”

Barryn found himself nodding without thinking. “I'm sorry,” he heard himself whispering. “I'm so very, very sorry.”

Flinx's smile returned. “It's all right. I understand. You understand.”

“Yes.” With that, Tambrogh Barryn, who had never turned away from
a confrontation or a challenge in his life, pivoted sharply and walked away, striding upslope at a rapid pace toward the nearest building.

Approaching from behind, Clarity slipped her arm through Flinx's as they both watched the medtech take his leave. “What did you say to him?” Her expression narrowed slightly. “You didn't threaten him, did you? He's like so many men, at heart desperately in love with himself, but he means well.”

Turning back to her, Flinx let out a tired sigh. “I didn't say anything. I let him look into my soul a little bit. I know he's not a bad guy. If he was, he wouldn't have seen what he saw, or react to it the way he did. He understands.”

She blinked. “Understands what, Flinx?”

“This.”

Taking her in his arms, he used his mouth to forestall any more questions. Watching the two lovers, other patients and medical personnel smiled, or commented, or sniggered under their breath. None of it mattered to the young couple. It had been a long, long time, and they had a lot of catching up to do.

Out in the lake, a tree that had taken leave of its rooting was drifting unhurriedly southward. Something bright-winged and swift had coiled itself around one of its bare upper branches. The creature's iridescent emerald-green head tilted back to gaze upward as a slightly smaller version of itself dropped toward it from the increasingly cloud-filled sky. Rain began to fall as Pip loosened her grip on the branch, spread her wings, and took to the sky. At the last moment, the plummeting predator, which was one of her offspring, extended both wings to their maximum and braked dramatically in midair.

It was a festive reunion. Though the only sound that emanated from mother and son was the occasional joyous hiss, it was still noisier than the one that was taking place on shore.

There, conversation of any sort had ceased completely.

With its eight limbs, a thranx can put up a formidable defense against any attacker. Large compound eyes provide excellent peripheral vision and allow it to see potential threats approaching from angles that would be invisible to a human. Feathery antennae detect new smells and sudden changes in air pressure.

Though he was advanced in years and not as sensitive to his surroundings as he had once been, Truzenzuzex was in remarkable shape for a thranx his age. So he was startled when he was taken completely by surprise from behind. He had not sensed the approach of his assailant. Probably he had been too relaxed. The secure surroundings of the underground park had caused him to lower his customary guard. Age breeds a sense of security that metastasizes with indifference.

The weight on his back sent him tumbling forward on the hiking path. Whatever had struck him was bigger and heavier than any thranx. As it followed him to the ground he was already working to identify the shape. It could not be AAnn, not here on New Riviera. Judging from the mass and texture it was most likely a human. But why the assault? Truzenzuzex's lower legs were pinned beneath the human bulk and his foothands had little room in which to maneuver. His truhands were all that remained free. Fragile though they were, he did not hesitate to strike out with both.

“Ow!” The offending human promptly rolled off the combative philosoph and clutched at its face. A thin red streak appeared on one cheek.

As he reflexively reached with one hand toward the long but shallow scratch, Flinx had enough presence of mind to grab an aroused Pip by the tail just as she started toward the scuttling thranx.

Scrambling up onto all four trulegs, Truzenzuzex used one foot-hand to pick up the compact reader he had been perusing while walking, picked up his dropped drinking vessel with the other foothand, and extended both truhands out in front of him as he assumed a fighting posture. Only then did he get his first good look at the intruder. Projector and spiral-mouthed goblet were immediately set aside.

“Grub, you are bigger each time I see you, and just as lamentably impulsive.” With all four hands now free he was able to punctuate his observation with an elaborate and eloquent gesture of second-degree stupidity.

Hurrying up behind him, Clarity had arrived at Flinx's side and was examining the cut on his face. Having heard the commotion behind him, a grinning Bran Tse-Mallory had hurried back down the path to rejoin his friend. Standing behind Truzenzuzex, he carefully straightened a vestigial wing case that had been knocked askew in the course of the brief tussle.

“Whereas your reflexes aren't quite as slow as you, my friend,” Tse-Mallory reflected aloud.

“Young fool!” Reaching up with a truhand to meticulously groom one downy antenna, the philosoph stared over to where Flinx was regaining his footing. “I might have killed him,
crr!ltt!”

Flinx winced as Clarity touched the cut. Extending his upper body outward from his perch on her shoulder, Scrap let his tongue flick tentatively at the wound. Perceiving her master's composure, Pip ignored both. The graze was superficial and would heal quickly.

“Nice to see you again, too, Tru.” The bleeding from the warning strike, Flinx noted, had already stopped.

Tse-Mallory stepped back from his insectoid companion. “I believe that with his leap from the bushes our young friend wanted to surprise you.”

With great dignity the Eint Truzenzuzex straightened his legs beneath
him, lowering his thorax so his foothands rested on the fastidiously manicured, fungus-covered landscaping that paralleled the path down which he had been walking. Once again he stood sturdily on all six feet.

“I accept the explanation. Consider me surprised.” Ambling over to where Flinx stood, the philosoph leaned back on his four trulegs. Even in this altered, partially elevated posture, his head only came up to Flinx's chest. Antennae fluttered impatiently.

Bending at the waist, Flinx let the tips of both feathery appendages make contact with his forehead before he reached out to gently touch them with his fingertips. Informalities concluded, the thranx stepped back to scrutinize his friendly assailant.

“You have succeeded in startling me with your presence.” The chitinous valentine-shaped head inclined in Clarity's direction. “It's evident that you've also already made contact with and no doubt also surprised your charming and now fully-recovered lady. I presume it would be too much to expect that you also intend to surprise us with the knowledge that your journey was successful and you have reestablished contact with the ancient weapons platform of the Tar-Aiym?”

“It would.”
Strange
, Flinx thought. Despite all he had been through, everything he had experienced, and as much as he had matured, he still felt like a little kid in the daunting presence of Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex.

“You searched extensively, I imagine?” the thranx pressed him.

As always with compound eyes, it was difficult to tell precisely where they were focused. “Not as extensively as I could have, I'm afraid. I—I got distracted,” he added evasively.

A scowling Tse-Mallory was clearly not pleased. “The fate of all civilization, of the entire galaxy, is potentially at stake and you allowed yourself to be distracted?”

Clarity turned quickly protective. “Let him explain. He's under a lot of pressure.”

“No one here would deny that.” Truzenzuzex's tone was as dry as the deserts of Blasusarr. “However, the gravity of the situation is such that there is little time remaining in which to indulge personal eccentricities.” Aware that he might be sounding too harsh, he added, “What about your headaches? Have they been as debilitating as ever? As frequent?”

“They come and go,” Flinx acknowledged. “Sometimes they're incapacitating, sometimes no more than irritating. I can never tell at the beginning when one's going to be really bad and when it's just going to fade away.”

Tse-Mallory sat down gingerly on a nearby Otoidian fungus. The spongy brown and gray growth compressed beneath his weight but did not collapse. “You said you were distracted, Flinx. What distracted you?”

Sitting down on the stone path, Flinx crossed his legs and let his arms droop toward one another. Taking a seat, Clarity rested one hand possessively on his right thigh.

“At first it was just depression, a general malaise. The
Teacher
did its best to help me rise above it, but I found that the only solution was for me to immerse myself in civilization. In sentience. To learn some things about it, and about myself.”

“And what did you learn?” Tse-Mallory inquired thoughtfully.

A pair of silvery
etelel
whizzed past between young man and mentor, their brushlike wings rotating madly to keep them aloft. Though they were indigenous to the cultivated underground gardens of Nur/New Riviera, they reminded Truzenzuzex of the similarly evolved subterranean fliers of his native Hivehom.

“I learned that humankind, and humanxkind, is worth saving. That whatever its faults and immaturities, the spark of intelligence is worth fighting to preserve.” His gaze met that of the older man and locked. “Even if that intelligence is nonhumanx and hostile. I learned that sentience is essential to any kind of progressive evolution, irrespective of its origins. I learned”—he turned away from Tse-Mallory and back to Clarity—“I learned about myself.”

“And what did you learn about yourself?” Tse-Mallory asked again.

Flinx hesitated a moment. Then he smiled at Clarity and at his old friends. On his shoulder, Pip snuggled closer. “That I can be happy. Maybe. But that I have a responsibility that, much as I might like to disregard it, I can't just set aside in order to selfishly further that happiness. And that if I'm to have any hope of fulfilling the responsibility I've taken on, I'm going to need the help and support of others.”

Picking idly at a gaudy spray of spore-filled spheres growing near his feet, Tse-Mallory nodded understandingly. “It's a terrible burden you bear, Flinx. Tru and I worried and worried about how you would
cope when you had to flee New Riviera alone and leave the rest of us behind.” He looked up. “It's apparent from what you've just told us that you coped by avoiding. Well, from now on you won't have to do that. Tru and I will be with you at all times.”

“As will I.” Clarity's fingers tightened on Flinx's leg.

Hearing this, the terrible anxiety that was his constant companion did not vanish; Flinx knew it probably never would. But he felt better, more confident, than he had in months of wandering aimlessly around the Blight and then the sundry worlds of the Arm. The likelihood was that despite his best efforts he would never again make contact with the wandering Tar-Aiym weapons platform, and even if he did, any attempt to make use of it against the oncoming Evil would prove as futile as it seemed on paper. But at least now he would no longer have to carry on by himself, alone in the vastness of space-plus save for the faithful company of a considerate but soulless shipmind.