The End of the Matter

by Alan Dean Foster

  “As for any story they may choose to relate concerning us, without proof no one would believe a tale telling of an Imperial war force penetrating this deeply into the Commonwealth simply to capture a device the Commonwealth government does not believe in anyway. Before anyone could arrive here to check their story, we shall be gone homeward.”

  “Home.” The word was breathed softly by the physicist on the Baron’s right. Personally, he was even less impressed than the noble by the Hur’rikku artifact. Instrument readings relayed to him via his suitcom indicated that the object floating before them was emitting not a doam of energy, was not composed of explosive materials, and was to all appearances as inert and harmless as the caps on his two front incisors. He was anxious to render his opinion. Then he could return to the hot, shifting sands of his own home.

  One by one the scientists present gave their opinions. All agreed that if the device before them had once been a weapon, the rot of ages had destroyed its viability. But by all means bring it back to Sectorcav. Its inscriptions and interior would interest the archeologists, at least.

  “Does that mean we can inspect it more closely?” the Baron inquired impatiently. He too was ready to go home.

  The chemist in charge felt confident enough to reply. “As long as one avoids the still-uninspected protrusions and depressions, I should think it would be quite safe, Honored One. We are monitoring for any change in the object’s status, but I personally anticipate none.”

  “Sure,” a physicist-metallurgist added, “if it was capable of functioning, the humanx would already have activated it.”

  “Logic and truth,” agreed another, with a positive twitch of his head.

  Propelled by gentle kicks off the curving wall and the encircling walkway, and trailing control cables, the group moved toward the device. A few tugs on the cables brought them to a drifting stop alongside it.

  “What are those black circles that appear to be solid on the surface of each plane?” the Baron, no neophyte scientist himself, asked the others.

  “They may not be solid, according to some readings, Honored One.” The scientist sounded puzzled. “They show properties of solid surfaces and of vacuum simultaneously. It is an interesting but not necessarily dangerous phenomenon . . .”

  Tse-Mallory’s face was an unreadable mask as he looked up from the screen. “Still no signs of their giving chase. I think they’ll be content with having stopped us. Resolution at this distance is difficult, but I believe they’ve taken the artifact on board the dreadnought.”

  Truzenzuzex’s usual placid demeanor broke for an instant, as a foothand slammed with surprising force against the metal beneath the bank of instruments. “Something should have happened by now, if the device was going to do anything. The machine Ab—”

  “Ab was no machine.” Flinx sounded bitter. Their foolish but charming ward had apparently quartered himself on a whim. “Ab was somebody.”

  “It is something humanxkind has long suspected.” Seeing how emotionally Flinx was reacting, the philosoph tried to comfort him by changing the subject a little. “For example, you humans used to anthropomorphize certain advanced machines long before it was learned that instincts were more accurate about such mechanicals than minds.”

  “I’m afraid it’s finished, ship-brother. We must try another legend. Otherwise it will all be over for the people of the three worlds.”

  Flinx turned his gaze away from the screen. Out the rear port of the observation blister he could still see clearly the twin suns RNGC 11,432—3. The AAnn warships were far too small to be detected by the naked eye.

  The position of the two spiraling trails of matter being drawn off the two suns had altered as the rogue traveled deeper through the system. While it was probably only his imagination, he thought that the circumference of both stars had shrunk noticeably. With a stomach-wrenching thought for the doomed people of Carmague-Collangatta and Twosky Bright, he turned back to his companions and discovered September eyeing him questioningly. The giant and Hasboga, having discovered that annihilation wasn’t imminent, had returned to the observation chamber.

  Truzenzuzex and Tse-Mallory’s hunt had reached an unsatisfactory conclusion. Now it was time to resolve his own.

  Eyes full of blue wisdom watched him, almost seemed to sense his question. “This ship is emergency-coded to respond in a dangerous situation only to my voice, September. I can let you and Hasboga off or keep you aboard until I get satisfaction. I want answers and I want them now.”

  Oddly, September seemed to approve of Flinx’s announced intentions rather than reacting angrily to them.

  “You never told me what you were doing on Moth trying to buy me. And you mentioned others, too. I want to know why you were at that auction.”

  “I like your ship. Keep me on it as long as you want.” Was the giant laughing?

  Flinx walked over, put hands on hips, and stared up at that graven visage. September towered over him. He weighed more than twice as much as the youth and could have broken his bones with one hand. Provided, however, that the small, alert shape coiled about Flinx’s right shoulder did not interfere. Many men had found that “however” to be a fatal one.

  Not that September intended to react belligerently.

  “ ‘Pon my soul, young feller-me-lad, if I don’t think you’re threatening old Skua.” He smiled petulantly.

  Flinx turned away, angry at himself now. “I’m sorry. I don’t like a universe where threats replace reason the way rock replaces bone in a fossil. I especially don’t like to threaten friends.”

  Eyebrows of white lichen lifted in surprise. “So you regard me as a friend?”

  Flinx spoke without looking at the giant. “I’d like to think of you as one.”

  There was an odd catch in September’s voice. “I’d like that, feller-me-lad. So . . . I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  Flinx whirled and immediately tried to stifle his excitement. He took a seat while September sat, lotuslike, opposite him. Hasboga turned her attention to the stars, a little miffed at being ignored.

  Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex remained glued to their respective instruments. Flinx knew neither would concede failure until it was irrevocably displayed for them. Creatures of theory, they were the most pragmatic and empirical of men.

  “A little less than twenty standard years ago,” September began, “I found myself devoid of credit and prospects. I’ve been poor several times in my life, lad. It’s not nice. I was depressed, my brain wasn’t functioning right . . . the reasons need not concern you. I took a job I probably shouldn’t have.

  “There was a firm, small, but associated with some very important persons, I later found out. Their motives were good. They believed they could, through the use of their combined abilities, improve humanity. Physically, not morally. For their theories to prove themselves, normal conditions were essential for the raising of their ‘improved’ children. They found an ideal launching device in couples desiring to have children in which the father was sterile. There are many organizations which supply viable sperm to such couples. It provided the firm with an ideal, inconspicuous cover.

  “Needless to say, the couples purchasing sperm were not told that it had been improved.” The giant looked away. “I didn’t find out what was going on, you must understand, until after.”

  Flinx forbore asking until after what.

  “The couples thought they were buying standard spermatozoa full of high-class genes. They had no way of knowing that those genes had been toyed with. I applied and was accepted as a sperm donor.” He allowed himself a slight grin. “I’m sure it was because of my size and strength, not my overwhelming brilliance. Remember, I had no idea what was going to be done to what I’d sold. There were numerous other donors besides myself, of course.

  “How many or how often they donated I don’t know. I donated several times. Donated, hell—sold. And now you can see why I can’t say if I’m your father or not, Flinx. It could have be
en my sperm that was implanted in your mother, or it could have been any one of many others. Even a chromosome match now couldn’t tell us, because of the alterations made in certain genes by the firm’s technicians.”

  “How did you eventually find all this out?” Flinx found himself bizarrely fascinated by the tale. Alteration of genes . . . improvement of humanity—he was not so sure he was an improvement, but the explanation went a long way toward explaining the source of his erratic, peculiar talents.

  “Most of the first group of altered offspring were born on Terra or on worlds close to it. Most of them were born normal, but there were some, perhaps a fifth, who were born malformed or genetically damaged. Sometimes the damage was pretty gruesome.

  “The firm’s organizers, remember, were essentially decent beings, men and women, human and thranx. They were properly horrified, broke up the firm and disbanded. The government got involved. There was a lot of talk of criminal proceedings, but the government couldn’t find anyone to prosecute, because they had, and still have, no idea that the children were damaged as the result of prenatal manipulation.

  “To protect themselves as much as possible, the firm’s organizers set about a program of what you might call building up a case for the future defense. They employed a network to recover as many of the healthy children they’d produced, or to learn their whereabouts and identities, as they could. Unfortunate malfunctions they had destroyed.” September’s voice was flat.

  “In order to preserve secrecy, this network used as many former employees as possible. They explained that just by donating, I could be considered an accomplice by a vengeful government. So I took the job.”

  Flinx didn’t inquire if September had tracked down any unsuccessful children.

  “I was about to buy you at the auction on Moth, to bring you back to Terra. They’re raising several other healthy but abandoned or orphaned altered kids in a special school back there. Meanwhile, the government was beginning to learn things. They knew nothing of the children, but several members involved with the firm had been arrested. They would recognize me. So when a lot of local police showed up at the auction, I had to leave in a hurry. I intended to come back later and repurchase you from whoever finally bought you.”

  “Why didn’t you, Skua?”

  “Because shortly afterward the network collapsed, some employees talked in exchange for immunity, and most of the founders of the original firm were arrested. Judging from the hysterical stories in the tridee faxcasts, I thought it would be a good idea to quietly drop my association with the network and with the firm. I managed to lose myself for a while.”

  “What happened to the founders?” Flinx’s excitement was beginning to return. Father or not, September might not be the end of his trail. “What about their records?”

  “Sorry, feller-me-lad, I don’t know for a fact—but I do have big ears.” He wiggled them for emphasis. “From what I heard, the firm’s records were destroyed in a fire.”

  “Well, the experimenters then.” Flinx tried to remain hopeful.

  “Public revulsion forced some unusually stiff penalties. Most of those involved were sentenced to selective neurosurgery.” Flinx slumped. He knew what that meant. “That part of their memories dealing with the firm and its activities was erased. Their personalities and most of their knowledge remain, but nothing about the firm or its activities.”

  “I thought that was against Church doctrine.”

  September nodded. “It is, but public outcry was pretty violent, feller-me-lad. The Anti-Science League had a field day, as you can imagine. Sometimes Church opinion prevails. In this case the Inner Chancellors and the Last Resort probably thought it prudent not to insist. A rift in Church-government relations wouldn’t have benefited anyone.”

  “But . . . you could be my father.”

  “I don’t deny it, lad. Can’t.” He stretched his legs out, winced. One had gone to sleep. “From what I know of you, I’d be proud to be, but,” he was forced to add, “it could have been one of several dozen other donors.”

  “What if I’d been one of the malformed ones?”

  “Young feller,” September said seriously, “most of those poor predamned souls never knew it when they were killed. Some of them were born without senses, some with new ones. Without arms, or legs, or both. With extra limbs or two heads or no head. And there was lots worse. Remember, most of the altered children turned out healthy—if anything, they were a bit stronger, a touch smarter than the average. I’m not defending the firm now, understand. Just telling you fact, and the fact is that that one initial batch didn’t turn out too bad.”

  First batch, Flinx thought. An icy fury built within him. Pip moved nervously. He was an ingredient in a scientific stew. He was . . .

  Something September said came back to him. “Some were born without senses,” he’d said, “and some with new ones.” If his awkward abilities were the results of that misguided genetic manipulation, then there might be others possessed of similar confusion and talents, uncertain, terrified, unsure of their own unpredictable abilities.

  And what of September? What went on beneath that granite forehead, behind luminous azure eyes? Maybe-son stared up at possible-father. Neither said a word.

  “What could their function be?” Baron Lisso PN questioned his science staff as he used a guideline to maneuver himself over to the nearest black circle on the Hur’rikku artifact. One physicist pulled herself over next to him. She held a boxy affair in both hands. It looked like a small dumbbell, with a bright red plastic square pierced by the handle. A cluster of buttons and switches and other controls adapted for manipulation by a clawed hand studded the box’s surface. Several small disks fronted it and were directed at the mysterious black circle.

  “Instrument readings remain inconclusive, Honored One,” she declared. “We cannot penetrate the black areas. Until we are more certain of their nature, I hesitate to subject the artifact to any form of particulate inspection. Contact with energy or matter might set the weapon off.”

  “Bah,” said the Baron. “We have already determined that if it was once a weapon, it is presently dysfunctional.”

  Under the withering stares of the other homesick scientists, the single remaining protester found herself backing down.

  “Honored One,” she managed to finish worriedly, “no precipitate action to take.”

  “It puts out no energy, takes in no energy. It is dead, millions of time units dead. Yet you do not wish us to proceed with examination. The inscriptions, for example,” and he gestured at the engraved script covering the artifact’s flanks, “will provide much information once they are deciphered. Perhaps some will aid in our mission to obliterate those warm-skinned humans and stiff-jointed thranx who infest so much of our present portion of this galaxy.”

  Reaching out, he traced one long character with a gloved hand. The moment he contacted the artifact, the single querulous scientist unwillingly sucked in her breath. Nothing happened. Turning, the Baron eyed her condescendingly. Her suit tag indicated she was called Di-Vuoyyi LMMVCT. The suit hid most of her shape, but not all of it. Her hips were wide. Perhaps later, after her unnecessary caution had been lost, he would endeavor to show his ability to be forgiving and compassionate to mistake-makers. In his quarters, on the blue dune.

  With the hand he tapped the peculiar, as-yet-unidentified substance. “Dead, inert, harmless, as anyone can see.” He drew back his hand, compensated for the movement in zero g, and smacked the surface hard. “Why do you not trust your own knowledge, lya-nye? Why do you doubt your own evident wisdom?” He moved until be was directly opposite the edge of one of the dark gaps in the artifact’s surface.

  “We cannot see into this space, yet there must be a space there. In the presence of instrumental indecision, we AAnn have always reacted efficiently.” So saying, he reached out a hand, fingers spread, and shoved against the darkness. His hand passed through the black surface and vanished; and for a length of time just t
his side of instantaneous, he became the first and only one of his kind to touch Elsewhere.

  Matter in Elsewhere triggered the device. Of course, the device was not actually there, within the AAnn Warship. It was somewhere half a million years back in space, where the system of Cannachanna had once been. It was connected to its present manifestation by an unimaginably vast buildup of FCI energy. When Baron Lisso PN triggered it, that energy and the actual device slipped, avalanched through a different state of space.

  It all came together inside the AAnn warship. There was no explosion as a result, however. The accumulated energy simply gave the slingshotted artifact a little shove. The Hur’rikku device was a needle. What it did was punch a tiny hole in the fabric of the universe.

  Into the other universe.

  Elsewhere waterfalled into Here. The Baron vanished. The scientists around him vanished. Everything in the immediate spatial vicinity, which consisted of eleven armed vessels of various sizes and their crews, vanished. They disappeared in tiny flashes of supernal brilliance, going out of existence like moths in a firestorm.

  Only an electronic angel on board the Teacher saved Flinx and his companions. The computer detected the danger and threw the ship into space-plus just in time to save it from annihilation. Since that annihilation was racing toward them only at near light-speed, the Teacher didn’t have to accelerate enormously. Only rapidly.

  When they started picking themselves off the deck, it was the resilient, armored Truzenzuzex who was first on his feet and back at the consoles. Long-range scanners were activated, and the scene forming behind them came into view. There was no need to increase their velocity. They needed only to travel a little above light-speed to outspace the pursuing destruction.