The End of the Matter

by Alan Dean Foster

  Truzenzuzex regarded the towering human seriously. “The legend says it can do something. We are here. We will remain or track the rogue until we learn whether it can or not. We have nothing to lose.”

  “Listen,” September argued softly, “the biggest bomb imaginable would only add to the rogue’s mass, right?”

  Truzenzuzex and Tse-Mallory did not reply.

  “Stubborn, I see. Well, it’s in a good cause. I wonder how much a miracle masses?” He guided Hasboga toward the door.

  “Where are we going, Skua?”

  “To the cabin. I’m wasting my time trying to argue with brain-cases. They may set that device off. It won’t stop the collapsar, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it destroys us. If I can’t talk them out of it, I want to die the best way I know how.”

  “How’s that?” she inquired mischievously. As they left the room he was leaning over and whispering in her ear.

  The philosoph watched them depart. “Fatalist.” He looked peeved.

  There was something other than a touch of reproval in Tse-Mallory’s voice. “True, Tru, but a fatalist with style.” More serious, he faced his friend. “He’s right, you know. We may accomplish nothing here other than our own destruction.”

  “Does that mean you believe we have a choice, ship-brother?”

  Tse-Mallory reacted almost angrily. “Of course not! Flinx, activate the engines and back us away.”

  Using minimal power, the Teacher left the mysterious Hur’rikku device once again floating freely in space. Or, Flinx reflected, if you believed Truzenzuzex’s theory, space shifted around the stationary device.

  Under the scientist’s instructions, he positioned the ship broadside to the device. It sat there in view of the starboard observation port, as innocuous-looking, enigmatic, and inert as it had been in the system of Cannachanna.

  Flinx had given himself over to the advice of two far wiser heads than his own. A request for new instructions produced a disconcerting reply from Tse-Mallory.

  “I don’t know what to do next, Flinx. I suspect the next logical step is for some of us to go outside and see what we can make of those protrusions and depressions on the artifact’s surface.”

  Truzenzuzex agreed. Both were preparing to don suits when an insistent, deceivingly gentle beeping from the main pilot’s console distracted Flinx’s attention. Leaving the two scientists to their discussion, he walked over and studied the active readout. It was one he hadn’t had occasion to use often before, but there was no mistaking that urgent call. He wanted to make certain before causing any alarm, so he switched to printout for confirmation.

  ship or ships approaching

  “Bran, Tru,” he called out, louder when they didn’t respond immediately. While he waited for a response, Flinx began activating other sensory instruments and demanding information. Both scientists came over, saw the brief readout, and moved rapidly to monitor other consoles.

  Lighting up the main screen provided them with a picture of eleven dots arranged on a grid. Other sensitive machines added distance, direction, and velocity. They were not seeing the ships, of course, only the energy manifestations of their respective drive fields.

  Compared to the other ten dots, the one traveling approximately in the center of the configuration was enormous. “That’s a dreadnought,” Tse-Mallory observed with frozen indifference. He glanced glumly at his companions. “Analysis of drive fields indicates they’re not humanx vessels. It’s a war sphere, all right.”

  “A battle formation, this deep in the Commonwealth?” Flinx couldn’t believe the AAnn would go to such extremes. But then, it would require a fleet a hundred times the size of the force nearing them to attack and possibly destroy three fortified worlds. Probably the AAnn were taking what appeared to be a reasonable gamble to insure that the rogue was not diverted from its predicted path.

  “This is a very sparsely explored, uninhabited region of Commonwealth-claimed territory, Flinx,” Truzenzuzex pointed out. “Anyone could slip in and out of here undetected with comparative ease and safety.”

  “How much time?” Tse-Mallory eyed his ship-brother hopefully.

  Truzenzuzex studied the instruments below faceted orbs. “A dreadnought, several cruisers, the rest destroyers or research vessels.” He glanced over at Bran Tse-Mallory. “They will drop into normal space in ten minutes.” Thranx did not perspire, but Flinx had the impression that the philosoph was trying to.

  “If we’re going to get away . . .” Flinx said, starting toward the pilot’s console. A strong hand caught his left arm in a gentle but unbreakable grip of restraint. Pip stirred nervously on Flinx’s other shoulder, and his master also sensed the seriousness in the tall scientist’s mind.

  “We cannot simply leave, Flinx. We must make an attempt to use the device. It may be that it is activated by what it eventually destroys. In this case, that would be the collapsar itself.”

  “How,” Flinx asked very slowly, “would we do that?”

  Tse-Mallory smiled like a Churchman. “In order to prevent the approaching ships from interfering, the artifact would have to be accelerated rapidly toward the rogue. We know of only one way to move it.”

  Flinx turned to a port, to where two distant stars were vanishing from existence, and he tried to imagine suffering the same fate. It was not pleasant to contemplate.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “We have no other option, Flinx.” Truzenzuzex sounded sad, but quite as unshakable as his human associate. “If we take it with us, the AAnn will surely pursue. We certainly cannot risk letting the weapon fall into their hands. This way, by destroying it—and, only incidentally, ourselves—we can at least insure that does not happen.”

  Flinx tried to calm Pip, who was hunting with slitted eyes and pointed tongue for whatever was causing so much turmoil within his master. But he did not fly at Truzenzuzex or Tse-Mallory, for their present thoughts where Flinx were concerned were ones of genuine sorrow and fondness.

  “We have a minute or two to search the artifact’s surface,” Tse-Mallory commented. “I’ll see if I can discover anything. If not, just leave me out there. At least, if driving the device into the rogue works, I’ll have a nanosecond to enjoy it.” He started for the nearby observation lock where the suits were kept, then paused. “There’s a light on here.” He turned a quizzical gaze toward Flinx. “A malfunction?”

  Flinx instantly began searching the ship with voice and instruments. Both registered two additional bodies: September and Hasboga.

  There was no sign of Ab.

  A sharp whistle sounded from both the console and the door leading toward the lock. Flinx knew that signal from every emergency drill he had ever been run through on a commercial ship.

  “He’s cycling the outer lock!” Truzenzuzex moved to press his mandibles to the curved edge of the starboard port, trying to see around it.

  Flinx fumbled with the controls on the nearest intercom: “No Ab! Don’t do it—wait!”

  “Let him, Flinx. Perhaps Ab knows what he’s doing.” Tse-Mallory sounded hopeful.

  “It’s not that, it’s not that,” Flinx explained wildly, gesturing at six tiny lights on the lock door. They formed a pretty pattern. “There isn’t a suit on board, for human or thranx, that will properly fit him!”

  Tse-Mallory scratched the back of his neck while he walked to stand by his ship-brother. “Maybe our friend Ab doesn’t need a suit. Maybe . . .” and then he was working hurriedly at a part of the computer that had not been employed for months.

  A sharp pop and whistle sounded over the intercom. Slowly Flinx turned it off. He spoke almost inaudibly. “It doesn’t matter now. He’s outside. There’s no air in the lock.” The innocent, stupid, but harmless alien had become his responsibility. There was no rhyming, no singing in the observation blister now, nor would there ever be again.

  It was Ab who had led them to the Hur’rikku device. Despite that, Flinx had forgotten him completely in the excitement and tension of the
past weeks. Not that that was a decent excuse.

  “Flinx, come here.” Truzenzuzex was beckoning with a truhand and foothand together. “I think you might be interested in what’s happening outside.”

  Flinx ran to stand beside the staring philosoph.

  Ab’s body was drifting slowly toward the long red-brown artifact. It appeared that all four eyes were open. All four arms were extended at right angles from the pear-shaped body and angled downward to meet the four extended legs. If the attitude the alien’s limbs had assumed was unintentional, it constituted the most regularized rigor mortis Flinx had ever imagined.

  A human would be twisted, contorted, and dead from the cold vacuum by now. Ab might be also, but something about the precise arrangement of those eight limbs led Flinx to think otherwise.

  “He’s definitely moving toward it,” Tse-Mallory observed, his voice tight.

  “What could be more natural?” Truzenzuzex was awed past astonishment. “He is curious and wishes a closer look. But I still do not understand. Why should he be curious? Bran, everything we have studied, everything we have surmised about the Hur’rikku, tells us that this Ab thing cannot possibly be a member of that race. Bran?”

  Tse-Mallory did not glance up from the readouts he was poring over, from the instrumentation he was manipulating. “Quiet, brother. I’m working.”

  Truzenzuzex knew Bran as well as he knew himself. He did not even trouble his brother with a reply.

  Flinx’s shock at what occurred next was so overpowering that a startled Pip flew off his shoulder and fluttered nervously around the domed ceiling of the room.

  Three meters from the artifact, the body of Abalamahalamatandra split into four equal parts. Each section held an eye, an arm, and a leg. Moving independently by some strange method of propulsion, each Ab-quarter positioned itself independently facing one of the artifact’s four sides approximately opposite its equator.

  Together, in a unison too precise to be accidental, they moved toward the rust-brown surface. About that time Flinx noticed the similarity between the configuration of each interior part of the Ab-quarters and several depressions and protrusions on the artifact. Only idly did he note that there was no blood or dangling organs visible where Ab’s insides should have been. Those interior surfaces were irregular but unbroken.

  They touched the artifact simultaneously. Four arms slid into four matching holes. Four legs did likewise, twisting and curving to fit. Four eyes contacted flat, stubby projections. Flinx could have sworn that, just before touching, the eye nearest the port winked at him.

  All four quarters of what formerly had been the creature called Ab had merged smoothly with the Hur’rikku artifact. You could hear breathing and little else in the observation blister of the Teacher.

  Tse-Mallory looked up, rubbed his eyes, and spoke. “He named himself well, or was well named.” Truzenzuzex and Flinx looked over at him. “I put our Ab vocabulary to work on something we ought to have worked on first—his name. Abalamahalamatandra. A composite from four different languages, two being derivatives from other languages, one derived from yet a third. Together they form a couplet in a language three hundred and fifty thousand years dead, which the computer then compressed according to the rhyme scheme Ab used when announcing his name. I got one word I’m pretty positive of out of the whole business.” He paused, then said anticlimactically: “Key.”

  “An informational key as well as a mechanical one,” Truzenzuzex mused as he turned his gemlike gaze back to the port. “Certainly it was willing enough to impart information. We simply didn’t know enough to understand the answers.”

  “Ab’s a machine.” Flinx too was staring back out the port. “The AAnn must at least have suspected what he is. No wonder they wanted him destroyed.”

  “Slow down, Flinx.” Tse-Mallory tried to caution him. “We know only that Ab’s a machine, some kind of key. We still don’t know if he’s the right kind.”

  “All that nonsense,” Flinx was muttering to himself. “All the years he must have wandered about aimlessly, taken in hand by different races and different masters. I wonder how many secrets, how much knowledge, he babbled to people who didn’t understand.”

  Behind them a readout buzzed for attention. It recorded information from several external sensors. Tse-Mallory, the closest, moved to read the information.

  “Something is, according to this, happening to the artifact. Also, we have three minutes to get away before the AAnn War sphere arrives.”

  A soft yellow glow appeared and enveloped the entire Hur’rikku device. “There!” Flinx pointed. Where the four parts of Ab had touched the device, four black circles suddenly appeared. Inside those dark holes nothing could be seen. Part of the interior of the artifact was apparently gone, yet they could not exactly see through it. When the black circles appeared, the yellow aura vanished.

  Within the artifact, something that was not normal space had been created. Flinx was so intrigued that he forgot to panic. Yet nothing more happened. There was no titanic explosion, no steady hum as from an activated machine, nothing. The artifact continued to sit in free space, unchanged save for four holes in its sides which met to form . . . nothing.

  “We can’t wait any longer if we’re going to get away,” Tse-Mallory announced, examining a readout. “But is it activated? Nothing’s happened, no change in energy flow according to our instruments. What else has to be done, dammit!”

  “Bran,” Truzenzuzex said slowly. “I just don’t know. But the Ab-thing has certainly done something. I think we’d best leave the device alone. It’s a chance, but humanx society has prospered because of the chances individuals within it have taken. Also because our survival drive is so strong. At the moment, my own is working overtime. Up the universe, ship-brother. Let us depart, and trust in the rhymes of the fool who was not.”

  Without another word, Tse-Mallory activated the KK drive. “I want to see whether we’re going to be remembered as prophets or fools. We’ll stay in normal space and see what happens, unless the AAnn come after us. I’m betting they’ll be more interested in the device.”

  As they moved out of the immediate vicinity of the Hur’rikku artifact, Pip returned to Flinx’s shoulder.

  Immediately thereafter the AAnn war sphere assumed a cluster position around the ancient remnant of that mysterious dead civilization. On board the Teacher, three anxious faces studied long-range detectors.

  “They’ve encapsulated it.” Tse-Mallory idly checked another screen. “No sign of pursuit.”

  “We are of no concern to them now,” Truzenzuzex pointed out. He was worried, terribly so. “We may not know for years, decades, or in our lifetimes if we have made a proper decision. The device may take that long to function, or the AAnn that long to learn how to operate it.” The philosoph noticed Flinx’s drawn expression, and chittered his concern.

  “It’s just that I’m only now starting to realize what Ab might be capable of doing,” Flinx explained, “and thinking about all the time I spent in his company. Or its company. I don’t know of many machines with personality. Ab had that.”

  Looking like a cluster of enormous metallic soap bubbles, the AAnn flagship had slowed to a stop along-side the artifact. From the honor chair aboard the dreadnought, Baron Lisso PN studied the dwarfed silver of metal-glass-plastic with great satisfaction.

  Messages of congratulations at that very moment were undergoing composition and would soon be broadcast via the deep-space beam which ran the entire length of the enormous vessel to secret bases within the Commonwealth. From there they would be relayed to the Empire.

  There would be joy in many burrows, the Baron reflected. After many long years of service to the Emperor and the Pack of Lords, he might hope to find himself raised to that status, or even to be made an adviser with a chance of succeeding the Emperor himself.

  The desperate humanx ploy, ineffectual as it would likely have been, had been stopped. Not only that, but the object of all their enterpri
se had been captured. It floated outside the warship. Now there remained only tests to be run before it could be brought safely aboard. Baron Lisso PN didn’t believe anything—much less the relatively tiny object outside—could interrupt the course of the collapsar. That was a myth. But myths often had some foundation, so it would be best to be cautious until the ancient artifact’s harmlessness had been assured.

  “Bring the object into the storage hold. Use the method described to us by our informants within the Commonwealth. Back us around it. Our tractors are far more powerful than anything the tiny humanx vessel could have mounted, but we will push it when we leave, if that is required.

  “But it is best to study under convenient conditions.”

  While the other ships of the war sphere watched alertly for the approach of any humanx or Commonwealth force, the massive dreadnought laboriously adjusted its attitude so that the rear of the main globe backed up to the Hur’rikku device. Doors slid aside, revealing a vast, airless, illuminated compartment within. Carefully it backed over the artifact, encapsulating it. The massive four-sided panels slid shut behind.

  Several leading archeologists and other scientists shunted over to the dreadnought from two fully equipped laboratory vessels, accompanied by members of the dreadnought’s military-sciences staff.

  They were greeted by the Baron and his executive officer in the zero-gravity vacuum of the cargo hold. The small group of suited AAnn drifted, studying the artifact visually while a huge battery of instruments examined it with senses no living creature possessed.

  “Honored One,” the executive officer said, “a message relayed from the periphery ship Analosaam. They report that the humanx vessel continues to flee in normal space and request orders to pursue and destroy.”

  “Request denied.” The Baron was unimpressed by their prize. It would not be much of a trophy to haul back to Sectorcav. “Having failed in their futile attempt with this relic, they may be trying to tempt one or more of our ships into following within detection range of a Commonwealth or Church outpost. That would precipitate a useless incident. Let our presence here remain undetected.