Flinx Transcendent (58 page)

“It was about a year later that I sensed his existence anew. It shocked me, I can tell you. How could I have been so stupid? I should have known that my brother could not be guaranteed dead until I saw his body and verified its demise with my own eyes. As soon as I was able to do so, I went after him. I missed him at Repler, then at Visaria, and lastly at Gestalt. I lost him again when he disappeared with you into the Blight.” Now she did smile again. “But when you emerged I thought I was ready again. I and my friends of similar intent raced to the Senisran system only to have my intimation of Flinx's continued existence vanish. Nothing remained of him to be perceived.

“But in lieu of his presence there was a device. The sort of mechanism for which my brother demonstrates a remarkable and repeated affinity. We explored it, we entered it, and it brought us here.” She gestured toward the foreport and the intensely luminous sphere beyond. “The instant we emerged in this place I recognized this ship of his—and simultaneously perceived his presence.” Turning away from the two scientists, ignoring them as if they did not exist, she stared once more out the port in the direction of the resplendent red orb.

“Now it will end here.
He
will end here. And I will at last be free of the nuisance he represents. Of the last two Adepts propounded by the Meliorares, only one will survive.”

Tse-Mallory didn't hesitate. “If you've associated yourself with these people, then you know full well what they believe and support. You've said as much. If the abomination that's headed this way from outside our galaxy is allowed to proceed unchecked, it will annihilate everything. Every world, every sun, every civilization. The entire galactic disk will disappear into it, after which it will move on to devour others.”

Cocking her head slightly to her right, she studied the burly sociologist. Her tone was appallingly, unspeakably, indifferent. “I know. But by then I'll be dead. My life will have been a glorious one, replete with individual aggrandizement and the accumulation of personal power. Small payback for what the Meliorares made of me.” Her gaze narrowed sharply. “For what certain individuals did to me. I won't allow Flinx or anyone else to jeopardize my recompense. It is my due. I am owed.”

“What about civilization, the lives of hundreds of billions of other sentient individuals? What are they owed?”

She shrugged. “A one-way ticket to the hell of their choice, for all I care. Let them all perish. Let so-called civilization return to dust. Allow the Order's descendants to happily greet the apocalypse. It means nothing to me and I care nothing for any of it.”

She spoke so nonchalantly, Tse-Mallory thought. Having been compelled to contemplate destruction on a galactic scale, he now found himself confronting egocentricity of similar magnitude. It was scarce to be believed. But in discussing the ultimate horrors she so casually dismissed she was being absolutely truthful. He could hear it in her voice, see it in her eyes.

So badly hurt had she been, so deep and immutable was her personal fury, that she
wanted
the universe to go to perdition.

That was when Truzenzuzex, with the still formidable power of all six of his legs, launched himself.

Several of the Order members brought up their weapons. They were too late. Notwithstanding his advanced age the philosoph was astonishingly quick. But not, alas, quicker than the mind. Something came out of the woman Mahnahmi—something as poisonous as it was powerful. It caught Truzenzuzex and threw him across the control chamber to smash into the far wall. As he lay there twitching, alive but hurt, Tse-Mallory rushed to his side. He did not try to take advantage of his friend's attack to make a similar run at Flinx's half sister. The soldier-sociologist was brave, but not foolhardy. It would do no one any good, least of all an unaware Flinx, if he too was injured.

Truzenzuzex was whistling his pain, but nothing appeared to be seriously damaged. A human thus flung aside would probably have broken bones. A thranx's chitinous exoskeleton could take tougher punishment. Tse-Mallory looked back over his shoulder at the beautiful deformation that was the product of another of the Meliorares' many biological missteps.

“If your aim is Flinx's death, why bother to board this ship? If you know that he's inside the red orb, why didn't you just destroy it the instant you arrived?”

The tip of her tongue stroked first her upper lip, then the lower. “All
in good time, old man. A death delayed is a death magnified. A demise shared is a demise savored. I've worked a long time to reach this moment. Don't try to talk me out of my pleasure.” She indicated their surroundings. “I know those who built this vessel for him. I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to see what kind of friends he had made.” She locked eyes with the irate sociologist. Did she ever blink? he wondered.

“You will watch him die,” Mahnahmi murmured contentedly. “Then I will kill you both. After that I will try to make a prize of this ship. If not…” She shrugged again. “It will be enough to have made the attempt. As for this astonishing place, whatever it is, wherever it is, it will return to the obscurity from which my brother has only momentarily resuscitated it.”

Rising from the injured Truzenzuzex's side, Tse-Mallory favored her with a stare of wizened incredulity. “You don't realize the significance of these surroundings, do you? You followed Flinx's ship without having the slightest notion of where it might lead. As we stand here talking you still have no idea how far you've come or what wonderment surrounds you.”

“I don't know and I couldn't care less,” she shot back. “If I can't exploit it for my own ends, then as far as I'm concerned it's just another grandiose alien folly. Like most follies, one probably better off forgotten.”

She would have continued—except that the ongoing, rambling, half-mad declamation that preoccupied her and claimed her full attention was interrupted by a pair of unexpected arrivals. The newcomers to the conversation were not members of her entourage and did not subscribe to their beliefs or to their leader's objectives. Having carried out a necessarily hasty but nonetheless efficient reconnoiter of the state of affairs extant in the
Teacher's
control chamber, the newcomers proceeded to take steps to rectify them.

As a fully anointed padre in the Security Services of the United Church, Sylzenzuzex never traveled anywhere without the personal armaments that were part of her private kit. She would have felt naked without them. Opportunely, though each was designed to be manipulated by small, four-digited thranx hands, at least one of the weapons was sufficiently undemanding that Clarity could operate it.

With their ordnance tuned for in-ship combat, the two females used the entry portal for cover as they fired repeatedly into the control chamber. Their fully-charged shockers brought down several members of the Order of Null before the survivors managed to find some cover of their own and return fire. Adding to the confusion, Scrap had launched herself from Clarity's shoulder. Streaking around the bridge just below the ceiling, dodging the panicky shots of increasingly flustered Order members, the flying snake spat death at those attempting to conceal themselves.

Holding herself aloof from and ignoring the pandemonium swirling around her, Mahnahmi's eyes narrowed as she sought the source of the unexpected counterattack. But dominant as she was, she was no different from her brother in at least one respect: she could only concentrate on one threat at a time. As she prepared to squeeze Clarity's mind to a lump of enflamed meat incapable of conscious thought, a heavy male body slammed into her from behind. Though as an offensive strategy
the primitive assault harkened back to tactics that had been employed since dawn of humankind, it was still uncompromisingly effective. As chaos and death filled the ship's control chamber and raged around them, Tse-Mallory and Flinx's half sister went down in a heap.

His awareness that something was amiss having been stimulated by the arrival and subsequent actions of his half sister, Flinx had little by little grown dimly aware of the confrontation that had now given way to out-and-out combat onboard his ship. While a small part of him continued to agonize over the conflict that was physically out of his reach, the bulk of his concentration remained focused on sustaining the bonds that were beginning to stir the incomprehensibly vast forces swirling around him.

With Flinx and Pip at its core, the triangle of concentration held firm and continued to function.

On board the
Teacher
, an enraged Mahnahmi let loose the full fury that was herself. The uncontrolled ferocity picked up Tse-Mallory and tossed him aside as if he had been flicked away by a giant invisible hand. Reaching out with her misshapen mind, she came down hard on Sylzenzuzex with the mental equivalent of a blow from a hammer. Dropping her weapons, the padre fell to the deck unconscious. A force akin to that which had pitched first Truzenzuzex and then Tse-Mallory into the far wall slammed Scrap straight up into the ceiling. When it drew back, the minidrag fell to the floor insensible.

Surrounded by the dead and injured, Mahnahmi stepped over moaning or motionless bodies as she advanced on the entrance to the control room. Seeing her coming, Clarity swung the muzzle of her weapon around to fire at the malevolent, commanding figure. Before she could depress the trigger, something set fire to her optic nerves. Crying out, she dropped the thranx pistol and fell backward, clutching at her burning eyes. As she lay on the floor, sobbing and moaning from the pain, Mahnahmi halted between her and the comatose Sylzenzuzex.

“Two females.” Flinx's half sister sniffed contemptuously. “Two different species. Two fools. The only question remaining is, do I kill you slowly for the damage you've inflicted on my pitiful but still occasionally useful associates, or do I not waste the time and dispatch you
with alacrity?” Kneeling, she picked up the weapon the now helpless Clarity had dropped. Handling it as if it were a jewel-encrusted necklace, she turned it slowly in her fingers as she admired the typically fine thranx workmanship.

“A toy from Evoria. I like toys. Let's see what this one does.” Straightening, she aimed it at the back of Clarity's skull as her forefinger felt for the trigger.

Within the increasingly active sphere whose periphery was now blowing off scarlet sparks like a miniature red sun, Flinx found that he was gradually able to recognize more clearly what was happening on board the
Teacher
. He perceived Clarity's terror, fended off Mahnahmi's hatred, touched upon the pain of friend and foe alike whose bodies were scattered throughout the control chamber. They all needed his help, but Clarity's immediate situation took precedence over everything else.

Everything—except what he was doing. Everything except what he had come for. The future of civilization and the fate of the galaxy was at stake.

So—was—his—future.

STAY WITH YOURSELF, the cetacea of Cachalot counseled him uneasily.

BE WHAT YOU ARE, the Krang on Booster ordered him.

insisted the green pervasiveness of Midworld.

Clarity!
He felt himself drowning in anguish. What good to save everything and everyone else if he lost the only thing in the cosmos that really mattered to him?

STAY—BE—
!!!^
the tripartite power resounded inside his head.

Something was on the verge of igniting. Not igniting, he told himself restlessly. It was on the cusp of exploding. No, it would not be an explosion either, he realized. Something magnificent, something unprecedented, something on a scale so vast it could only be even faintly comprehended within the realm of mathematics humanxkind had yet to discover.

HOLD ON, the cetacea exhorted him as they embraced him tighter in the depths of their warmth.

HOLD ON, the Krang commanded with the cold authority of eons.

, somehow elucidated the Midworld world-mind.