Flinx's Folly (2 page)

As it boosted him outward, he felt the presence of other minds watching, observing, unable to participate directly but striving to learn from his experience. They were utterly different from the intelligence that was propelling him through space-time yet in many ways more sympathetic to his situation. Then there was still another type of mind; cold, calculating, observant, utterly indifferent to him yet not to his condition. In his dream he did not shy away from it, but neither could he embrace it, nor it him.

Outward, onward, past stars and through nebulae, the immenseness of space, the conflicting clash of civilizations and galaxies. Gravity washed over him in waves but had no effect on his progress. He was and yet he wasn’t. Devoid of control over what was conveying him, he could only go with the glow.

Abruptly, he was in a place of nothingness: no stars, no worlds, no blazing brightness of intelligence burning in the darkness of the void. All was silent and dead. Of burnt-out stars not even cinders were left, the last scraps of helium ash evanesced like table dust on a windy day. He was drifting in a place that defined winter itself: a region where nothing existed. It was as if matter and energy had never been.

What was worse, he had been here before.

In the absence of light and thought and substance there was only evil. From the standpoint of physics—high, low, or meta—it made no sense. In the absence of anything, there should be nothing. Yet
it
was present, and in a form so incalculable that even to begin to try to describe it would have taxed the efforts of theologian and physicist alike. Flinx did not need to quantify it: he
knew
of it, and that was enough. More than enough.

Why show it to him again, now? Was he doomed to dream of it more and more often? As before, he felt that it somehow fell to him to do something about it. But what? How could one tiny bit of short-lived organic matter like himself in any way affect something that could only begin to be measured on an astronomical scale? He was no nearer an answer to that question than he had been when first he had been projected into an encounter with this far-distant phenomenon that lay behind the Great Emptiness.

It was moving. No, that wasn’t it. It had always been moving. What was different this time was a sense of acceleration. Throughout the length and breadth of the entire dreadful phenomenon, he sensed a distinct increase in velocity. And something worse.

A palpable feeling of eagerness.

It was coming toward him. Toward his home, the Commonwealth, the entire Milky Way. It had been coming this way for some time but now he had the feeling that it was coming faster. What that translated into in intergalactic terms he did not know. Astrophysicists could tell him, but astrophysicists might not even notice the change. If any did, they would fall to debating fluctuations involving subatomic particles and dark matter and such. Flinx doubted they would attribute the acceleration of something behind the Great Emptiness to a manifestation of ultimate evil.

The phenomenon was expanding and accelerating because it
wanted
to. Could it continue to accelerate, or was its ultimate speed limited by unknown physical constraints? This was a very important question. If it would not threaten his part of the galaxy for ten thousand years, he could relax a little.

Or could he? Was responsibility temporally limited? Could he shrug off that which he had never asked to be burdened with but which he could not deny existed?

The vision of an utterly empty universe confronted him: blackness all around, not a star, not a spark, not a hint of light, life, or intelligence anywhere. Only evil triumphant—omnipresent and omniscient and all-encompassing.

Was the prevention of that his responsibility? The responsibility of someone who worried about whether his teeth were clean or if a pair of passing women happened to be giggling at him? He wanted none of it, wanted nothing to do with it. Yet it had come to him. Certainly others thought so. Other minds he could not entirely identify.

Go away! he thought wildly. Leave me alone! I don’t want to be a part of this.

You already are, the vast and somber voice that had boosted him outward informed him.

You already are,
a chorus of powerful but smaller and far more individual thoughts declaimed. Immense collective and powerful individual—they were all of one mind on the matter.

And they were all manifestly sympathetic.

An infinitesimal bit of the thing that was the phenomenon behind the Emptiness brushed him. It sent him headlong in retreat—falling, plunging, rushing mindlessly madly away from that unimaginably distant and horrible place. The mind that had thrust him outward fought to cushion his descent, while the other compassionate perceivers looked on empathetically. The third observer remained cold and aloof as always, though not disinterested.

He sat up with a shout. Alarmed, disturbed, and awakened, Pip burst out of his shirt collar to flutter nervously over his head. The young engineering tech finishing up his check of the scanning instruments let out a startled yelp, tripped over his feet, and landed hard on the self-sanitizing floor.

Flinx sensed the man’s fear, distress, and uncertainty, and he hastened to reassure him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you.” Reaching upward with one hand, he coaxed Pip into settling down on his shoulder.

Picking himself up off the floor, the tech strove to divide his attention between the unexpectedly conscious patient and his scaly, brightly colored pet. Warily, he resumed packing up his tools.

“Well, you failed.” He carefully tucked a sensitive calibrator back into its pouch. “What kind of animal is that?”

Flinx affectionately stroked the back of Pip’s head and neck with one finger. “She’s an Alaspinian minidrag, or flying snake.”

“Cute. Real cute. Me, I’ll stick to puppies.”

In response to the emotion underlying the tech’s reply, Pip thrust her pointed tongue several times in his direction. Then she twisted to eye her master concernedly as Flinx suddenly bent double, both hands holding the sides of his head.

The engineering tech was distressed. “Hey, friend—you all right?”

Little bolts of lightning were shooting through Flinx’s skull and invisible demons were squeezing his eyes in heavy wooden vises. He struggled to steady his breathing long enough to respond.

“No, I’m—I’m not.” Fighting the pain, he forced himself to look up and meet the other man’s gaze. “I’m subject to— I get terrible headaches. I never know when they’re going to hit.”

The tech made a sympathetic clucking sound. “That’s rough.” Flinx could sense his concern was genuine. “Migraines, hmm?”

“No, not migraines.” Though far from gone, the agonizing pain was starting to subside. “Something else. Nobody really knows what causes them. It’s been speculated that the cause of mine may be—inherited.”

The tech nodded. Reaching out, he grazed a contact with a fingertip. “I’ve notified your attending physician. Somebody should be here shortly.” He closed his toolkit. It promptly self-sealed, the security strip making a slight bulge around the case’s equator. “I hope you feel better. This place has a good reputation. Maybe they can come up with something to fix those headaches.” Then he left the room.

There is nothing that can be given for my headaches. Flinx fought back the tears the pain squeezed from his eyes. Maybe a few whacks with a scalpel
would
cure him. Maybe a complete lobotomy. And though thankfully no more frequent, the headaches had been increasing in intensity. He stopped rubbing his temples and let his hands fall to his sides. This last attack made his head feel as if it were going to explode. That it had been triggered by his dream he had no doubt.

A few more like this, he thought, and he wouldn’t have to worry about possible future courses of action. A nice, clean, quick cerebral hemorrhage would free him of all obligations, real or perceived.

Lifting her triangular, iridescent green head, a worried Pip began to flick her tongue against his cheek. As always, the slight tickling reminded him of better times, more innocent times. As a child on Drallar, living with the redoubtable Mother Mastiff, he had owned very little. Certainly he had never dreamed of having his own starship. But as a child he’d had freedom, of both body and mind. No longer. Any tincture of innocence had long since been washed away by the experiences of the past ten years.

The AAnn wanted the secrets of his ship. The Commonwealth government wanted to talk to him and perhaps study him. Any surviving remnants of the outlawed eugenicist Meliorare Society would want to make use of him. Several still unidentifiable, vaster somethings seemed to want him to confront a threat on a galactic scale. And all he wanted was to be left alone, to learn who his father was, and to explore a tiny bit of the cosmos in peace and quiet.

Peace and quiet. Two words, two conditions that had never applied to him. For Philip Lynx they remained little more than abstract philosophical concepts. His erratic ability to perceive, to read, and sometimes to influence the emotions of others—often against his will—assured him of that. When his head wasn’t full of pain, it was full of the emotions of those around him.

He could sense two of them now, advancing in his direction. They exuded concern mitigated by an underlying coolness. A professional empathy, he decided. Based on what he sensed, he knew Pip would react calmly to the arrival. But he kept a hand on the flying snake anyway, as much to reassure her as to ensure the safety of his visitors.

Seconds later, the opaqued doorway lightened to admit a middle-aged woman and a slightly older man. They smiled, but their emotions reflected a curiosity that went beyond the usual interest in a patient.

“How are you feeling, young man?” The woman’s smile widened. A wholly professional expression, Flinx knew. “I’d call you by your name, but your bracelet is locked and you had no other identification on or within you.”

“Arthur Davis,” Flinx replied without hesitation. “You are . . . ?”

“Your attending physician, Dr. Marinsky.” Shifting her illuminated work pad to the other arm, she indicated the white-coated man standing next to her. He was trying hard to keep his attention focused on Flinx and not on the coiled shape resting atop his shoulder. The three red stripes of rank on his right sleeve identified him as a senior surgeon. “This is Dr. Sherevoeu.”

Flinx nodded politely. “Where am I, and how did I come to be here?”

Her concern became more personal, less professional. “You don’t know? You don’t remember anything?” He shook his head. “You are in the postemergency ward of Reides City General Hospital. You are one of a group of twenty-two apparently unrelated and unconnected pedestrians who were in the main city shopping complex when you were knocked unconscious by an as-yet-unidentified agent.”

Flinx eyed her uncertainly. “Agent?”

She nodded somberly. “Witnesses report that all of you were going about your respective business. Then, suddenly and without warning, the lot of you collapsed to the floor. Every one of the afflicted, yourself included, was brought here in a comatose state from which you are only recently emerging. No one remembers anything.” Her attention shifted to the neurosurgeon. “His reaction is the same as that of the others. No difference,” she said to Dr. Sherevoeu. She looked back at the patient. “You don’t remember smelling anything, or feeling anything?”

“No, nothing.” What he did not tell her was that he had not been unconscious. Not in the medically accepted sense. His body had been stilled, but his mind had been active—elsewhere. “What about the other shoppers? Are they all right?”

“There was some general panic, as you can imagine.” Marinsky did her best to sound reassuring. “No one knew what was happening. When it became clear that only you and the other twenty-one were affected, those who had been running away came back to try and help. Some of the afflicted had struck their heads or antennae when they fell—bumps and bruises but nothing serious. There don’t appear to be any aftereffects, either. A number have already been discharged to the care of friends and relatives.”

He eyed her questioningly. “Then I can go, too?”

“Soon,” she assured him soothingly. “We’d just like to check one or two readouts first, maybe ask you a couple of questions. Dr. Sherevoeu is our chief neurologist.”

With skill born of long practice, Flinx concealed his initial reaction. He could not hide it from Pip, however. The flying snake stirred uneasily, and he stroked her to calm her.

“A neurologist?” Affecting innocence, he looked from one physician to the other. “Is something wrong? You said that when they fell, some people hit their heads.”

“There is no evidence of hematoma or any other immediate damage.” The neurosurgeon’s tone was meant to be casual and reassuring, but Flinx could clearly sense the eagerness underneath. The man was intensely curious about something, and Flinx didn’t think it was the color of his hair. “But in your case there are certain other—anomalies. Scans indicate they are well established and not of recent origin. Very curious, very.” He studied the screen of his own pad. Flinx badly wanted to have a look at it. “If even half these readouts are accurate, you ought to be worse than ill. You should be dead. Yet to all appearances you are as healthy as anyone in this building, myself and Dr. Marinsky included. According to your other readings healthier than most, I should say.”

“At first I thought some, if not all, of the readings in question might be due to equipment malfunction,” Marinsky explained, “but that possibility has been ruled out.”

Flinx remembered the engineering tech. Sitting on the gurney, he struggled to remember what had happened to him. He had been walking in the shopping complex, enjoying the displays, watching the other strollers while trying to mute the torrent of feelings that surged around him. Practice had given him some success at doing so.

Then the headache had come: a sharp, brutal pain. No buildup, no warning, as was sometimes the case. No time for him to use the medication he now always carried with him. The pain had put him down. Then the dream. Whether whatever was responsible for it had triggered the headache by making contact with him or whether the timing was coincidence he did not know. But he did know one thing with a fair degree of certainty. He knew what had happened to the twenty-one innocent and unaware fellow strollers who had gone comatose simultaneously with him.