A check of a chronometer showed that several hours remained until evening. That was when the transportation Anayabi had earlier unwittingly engaged to take his then as-yet-unidentified house guest back to Tlossene was due to arrive. Flinx would go out to meet the transporter as soon as it appeared. It would be more circumspect to do that than to allow potentially querulous visitors a look at the building’s violently altered interior.
While he was treating Pip, yet another unwelcome thought presented itself. Were the Meliorares the only ones who knew the truth of his origins? Could there be others who had been monitoring his progress, his life, his activities, all along? Had the Eint Truzenzuzex and Bran Tse-Mallory really just casually made his acquaintance in Drallar one day all those many years ago? For a moment, feverish suspicion and acute paranoia threatened to overwhelm all other thoughts.
Then his reflections turned to Mother Mastiff. There had been no guile in that gruff old woman, he was certain. If any of the deeply held sentiment she felt toward him was made up, he would long since have perceived its speciousness.
Take one step at a time, she had often told him, wagging a finger warningly in his face as she did so. Even if it’s a small step.
Very well. That was what he would do. Care for Pip, make his way back to Tlossene, board his shuttle, and rejoin the Teacher. Once more back in familiar, secure surroundings, he could then decide how to proceed. With the task Tse-Mallory and Tru had placed on him. With his life. If he decided the first was worth completing. If he decided the second was worth pursuing.
Lost within himself and just plain lost, he also lost track of the time. It seemed that mere minutes had passed since he had finished treating Pip when he heard the sound of the approaching transport. Setting and sealing her wounded wing as best he could, he wrapped her loosely in the same blanket that had warmed him earlier and carried her outside.
While he waited in the open alcove that fronted the residence, isolated flakes of pink snow swirled around him, perishing against the warmth of his face or lingering longer on his clothes. What thoughts he succeeding in mustering were focused elsewhere, on matters and people and worlds far from Gestalt. He had to decide whether to return to deal with them and if so, what questions to ask, what challenges to put forward. He had to decide not only how much he was willing to extend himself to help others survive, but also himself. It was going to be harder than ever to implement such tasks. Coming to Gestalt in hopes of expanding his own reality, he had been left instead with an empty shell.
The approaching skimmer did not bother to circle. Its confident pilot brought it down straight and true onto the small landing pad that fronted a large, nearby storage structure. Blinking away blowing snow, Flinx started jogging toward it, holding a squirming Pip as close to his chest as he could without risking further damage to her wounded wing. As he drew near, he automatically reached out with his Talent to perform a cursory scan of the craft’s interior. There was only the one male pilot, whose emotions were controlled, internally focused, and nonhostile.
As soon as the side portal opened he hurried on board, not wanting to delay, not wanting to give the pilot time to inquire as to the whereabouts of the person who had hired him. Once engaged in conversation, Flinx was sure he could talk his way around that absence. Like anyone operating in Gestalt’s wild and undisciplined backcountry, the skimmer’s pilot would be interested first and foremost in receiving payment for his services. As long as this was forthcoming, he was not likely to question the source of his recompense.
“Find yourself a seat, citizen,” a gruff, slightly irritated voice called back to Flinx from the vicinity of the forward console. “I’ll have you in Tlossene fast as weather permits.” As Flinx had hoped, the busy pilot did not even bother to inquire about Anayabi.
Once above treetop level, the skimmer pivoted cleanly and accelerated. Peering out a transparent portion of the canopy, Flinx watched as the dead Meliorare’s dwelling receded into the distance. The damage that had been inflicted by his mystifying, enigmatic defensive capability had never been visible from the craft.
“Don’t go wandering around unless you have to,” the pilot told him. “We might hit some chop, and I won’t be responsible if you go banging off the walls. Your passage has been prepaid, but I guess you already know that.”
Flinx had not, and was grateful to hear that was the case. It would allow him to settle back and enjoy the journey without having to worry about monetary negotiations.
Setting the skimmer on auto, the pilot swung his seat around to face the single passenger. “So tell me, how are things up in this part of the northlands? There’s talk that several NaTl-Seeker villages are going to combine their efforts to—”
His chatter halted abruptly. Preoccupied with Pip, Flinx had been paying only half a mind to the conversation. The other half now detected a pointed, unexpected spike in the pilot’s emotional state. Frowning, Flinx focused his perception. Indifference was replaced in the pilot first by uncertainty, then by excitement, and lastly by a briskly burgeoning antagonism. Without revealing that he was aware of any of these emotional developments, Flinx carefully set Pip and her blanket to one side. It wasn’t easy, because the flying snake was doing everything possible to free herself from the encumbrance of the blanket. Try as she might, however, she could not possibly rise on only one good wing.
By the time Flinx had placed Pip out of the way, the pilot had drawn his handgun and taken aim at his passenger. Flinx eyed him evenly.
“Have I done something wrong?”
“Hmm.” The pilot’s tone turned quietly mocking. “Let’s see. You almost destroyed my skimmer, forcing me to rely on this nondescript and thoroughly inadequate loaner until the very expensive repairs to mine can be completed. You did something to me that I still can’t figure out. If it feels like you’re trying to do it again, I won’t hesitate: I’ll shoot you before whatever it is can take effect. And you had the indecency not to die conclusively. That oversight can be fixed more cheaply than my skimmer.”
The account was detailed enough to tell Flinx whom he was dealing with. The more he perused the pilot’s emotions, the more the memory of his previous encounter with them strengthened, like a blurry picture slowly coming into focus.
“You’re the one who shot down the skimmer I hired to come up here,” he growled accusingly. “You’re the one responsible for Bleshmaa’s death.”
A blend of amusement and contempt filled Halvorsen’s face as well as his emotions. “You had a Tlel with you? Of course—an escort. Customary. Well, if it’s dead, then the planet’s a slightly cleaner place. It may be theirs by birthright, but frankly Gestalt is too good for the fetid little flat-heads.” The muzzle of the pistol did not shift. This man, Flinx saw as well as sensed, would not be easily distracted. He would have to proceed with great care.
He did not wonder why he had failed to detect the hunter’s true nature during the skimmer’s approach and touchdown, or immediately upon boarding. Unaware that the solo passenger he had contracted to pick up was the very one he had previously tried to kill, Halvorsen’s emotions had been devoid of aggression. Ironically, had he known that Flinx was his intended passenger, he would have been unable to mask his emotions and Flinx’s Talent would have provided advance warning. Halvorsen’s ignorance had proven his greatest advantage.
“I’ve had to keep busy lately and not hang around places like Tlossene,” the man behind the gun was saying. “My automatic monitoring software picked up a request for transport for one passenger. Take him from here back to the city. Since I was toiling up this way anyhow—looking for your body, as a matter of fact—I jumped on the offer. Chance to take a quick break and pick up some easy money. Just goes to show how being first in line can be good for business in ways you never expect.”
“Why were you still looking for me?” Flinx felt reasonably certain he already knew the answer, but anything that kept the man talking instead of shooting provided that much more time to conside
r how best to proceed.
“Certain people are willing to pay handsomely for your demise. Here on Gestalt my reputation would be enough to satisfy a client. They’re not from here, though, and they want incontestable physical proof that your life-force has been terminated. So I had to go to all the trouble and time and expense of trying to recover your remains.” When Halvorsen smiled, it made the deceased Anayabi’s crooked grin look positively jolly by comparison. “And here they are. The requisite remains-to-be.” The muzzle of the weapon lifted slightly, to focus squarely on Flinx’s forehead.
“This is even better. This skimmer’s internal recorder will not only show you dead, it will show me killing you, and will also include the record of this conversation. That ought to satisfy the smarmy tight-assed prigs.”
Why not just let him shoot and get it over with? a part of Flinx argued despondently. It would put an end to a life that had now become far emptier than it had ever been before. Terminate the anguish, end the despair—the worrying, the desolation, the responsibility. At least someone would benefit from his demise, even if it was only one miserable low-life slayer. Turning to take a final fond look at Pip, he heard himself mumbling, “Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”
Having previously found himself in similar situations on other equally mortal occasions, Halvorsen had been subjected to a wide-ranging assortment of Last Words. Usually they involved desperate pleading, or sometimes a flurry of furious, frantic curses. Despite his considerable experience, these were new to him. Curiosity made him hesitate.
“Stop me? You can’t stop me.”
Something flared within Flinx. It wasn’t particularly profound, but it was just enough to counteract, at least for the moment, for that particular moment, the utter feeling of futility that had temporarily overcome him.
“You shouldn’t kill me.”
Halvorsen blinked. It was clear to him now that the offworld Order of Null had contracted for the death of not only a dangerous man, but a crazy one. Still, he had always prided himself on his thoroughness. Having been surprised with an easy triumph, he was not one to overlook even the slightest chance that a greater one might possibly be lurking in the wings.
“Why not? If you’re going to offer me more money, forget it. I don’t know you, I don’t know anything about any resources you might be able to tap, and I don’t work that way. When I accept a contract, I stay with it until I can fulfill it. Sorry.” Both his smile and tone were tight. “However, there are exceptions to every policy and I’m always willing to be convinced otherwise. You have sixty seconds.”
An unblinking Flinx met the hunter’s gaze. “Something located behind an astronomical phenomenon known as the Great Emptiness is accelerating toward Commonwealth space. Where it passes, nothing remains. It eats galaxies. There is some tiny, infinitesimal chance that I might be the key to doing something about it. The only key.” He took a long, resigned breath. “I may be some kind of trigger.”
Halvorsen’s thin grin became a smirk. “You don’t look like any kind of triggerman to me.”
“Not triggerman,” Flinx corrected him. “Trigger.”
The hunter seated across from him laughed. “Trigger-chigger. You’re nothing but a tall, skinny offworlder who looks even younger than he is, and a deluded one at that. I’ve got to hand it to you, though: in all my years running down and terminating people whom other people wanted dead, that’s the wackiest deathbed plea I’ve ever heard. You’re no trigger, Philip Lynx—whatever you’re babbling about. You’re remains. You’re dead meat. You’re a meal ticket.”
“I only wish it was that basic.” A resigned, disconsolate Flinx was muttering as much to himself as to the edgy assassin. “I know I can’t convince you by talking. I wouldn’t be able to convince anyone just with words. So I’ll show you.” He closed his eyes. Wrapped tightly in the blanket, Pip looked up at him in alarm.
Remembering the inexplicable, overwhelming emotions that had overcome him in the course of their previous confrontation, Halvorsen did not wait any longer to see what might happen. The record of the confrontation that was now safely on the skimmer’s recorder was more than sufficient for his purposes. He started to fire, his finger convulsing on the trigger of his hand weapon.
Fire at what? He gaped openmouthed, jaw slack. His target had vanished. So had the skimmer. So, for that matter, had Gestalt. He was flying outward, traveling at incredible, impossible speed. Stars and nebulae and stellar phenomena for which he had no name and no experience flared and erupted around him. He was aware he was not alone. There was another presence with him, carrying him along. He could not see anything, but he could sense it. It was his quarry, unperturbed and in control.
I’m going to kill you now, he screamed, only to suffer another shock. Though he screamed, his voice made no sound. And how was he supposed to kill his victim when he could not even see him? Searching his stellar surroundings, he saw no other living thing. Glancing down, he found that he could not even see himself.
There was something ahead of him, coming nearer. Or he was approaching it. Whatever the explanation, the proper physical designation, it was clear the distance between him and it was shrinking. More than a darkness against the intergalactic vastness, it was a complete absence of light and life that redefined everything he thought he knew about emptiness. He started to make what he believed were kicking motions, flailing also with his arms, as if he could swim away from what was approaching. A sense of terrible disquiet began to waft over and through him, a palpable psychic poison. He knew only that he had to slow down, to stop, to reverse direction, to get away from…
Evil. A foulness on a scale unimaginable, of a kind beyond comprehension. He started screaming again, his voice low at first, then rising to a pitch his own throat had never before achieved, a shriek so high he would not have believed it possible for his lungs and larynx and lips to vomit it forth. He screamed and screamed, and heard nothing. The darkness was near. Soon it was proximate. Then it touched him.
Flinx had touched it, and survived. Inside the skimmer, a now completely mad Halvorsen clawed and scrabbled at the internal walls until he had torn the nails from his fingers. He slammed his head against the unyielding plexalloy dome until blood streamed from above his eyes. These had bulged outward until they were now halfway out of their sockets. Questing bloody fingers finally found their way to a portal control.
Halvorsen’s horrible screams did not cease until he hit the ground. By the time they did, the skimmer had traveled onward and out of hearing range, slicing smoothly through the falling flakes of pink snow.
Slowly, Flinx opened his eyes. When such episodes engaged his mind, there was always the fear that the part of him that had ventured outward would not come back. That it would remain out where his dreams and projections took him, condemned forever to drift in the vicinity of the galactic horror that was racing toward the Commonwealth, or be swallowed by it and destroyed. Small but strong emotions made him turn and look down. Pip was staring up at him.
If only you were sentient, he thought. If only we could connect on more than just the emotional level. What advice would you give me? What different perspectives on my condition could you vouch-safe? What suggestions on how to continue this miserable existence could you offer?
She could not do any of those things, of course. What she could do was comfort him, simply by her presence. Simply by being.
His head was throbbing. The effort of showing Halvorsen what no one deserved to be shown had triggered yet another of Flinx’s interminable headaches. What if for once he chose not to fight the affliction? What if he just allowed it to continue to build, to swell, to expand inside his skull? Would his head explode? Or would he finally and simply go mad, like the hunter?
The pounding intensified. It approached the limits of tolerability. Eyes squinched tight, teeth clenched, Flinx sat in the passenger seat as the skimmer cruised on through the darkening night. Having slithered to his side, Pip looked on helplessly. Through thei
r most intimate connection she could feel his pain without exactly sharing it. But she could not do anything to stop it.
Slumping in the chair, Flinx slid to the floor, unconscious.
They were all there. All three parts of the triangle he had come to know from previous events. Clearer and sharper and easier to perceive than ever before. He knew them well by now. The incredibly ancient yet still functioning alien device, interaction with which had been what had first allowed him to see. The rich, unbelievably fecund greenness, cogitating on a scale and in a fashion no creature of flesh and blood ought to have been able to comprehend, yet he did. Last of all was the all-enveloping warmth, smothering and reassuring and more intimately familiar than either of the other two.
Resignation is no escape, insisted the Krang mind. This is a fact well known. I know it. I exist it every moment.
For every tree there is a seed, declared the planetwide forest that was the consciousness of Midworld. For every seed there is something that sparks life. Water. Sunlight. Something. A trigger. A Flinx.
We will be there, proclaimed the third component of the triangle. We will be with you always, as we have always been even when your kind could not see that clearly.
You cannot die. So insisted the artificial intelligence of the ancient Tar-Aiym weapon.
You will not be allowed to die. Thus spake the green sentience that girdled and encompassed the entire globe known as Midworld.
You will know death as do all living things—but not yet. Therefore concluded the collective consciousness that dwelled on a world called Cachalot.
When he awoke, Flinx found himself lying on the skimmer’s deck. His head was still intact and securely attached to his neck. Extricating herself from the blanket, Pip had worked her way over to lie half on, half off his chest. Thanks to the advanced medications he had found in Anayabi’s abode, the injured wing he had treated already showed signs of knitting. He sat up, rubbing at the back of his head, then screwing his knuckles into his eyes. Visual purple flashed before his pupils, his own private aurora. Around him the skimmer hummed softly, doing its job, taking itself home on autopilot, back to Tlossene. Little could be seen through the plexalloy canopy. It was now night outside and dark, but not as devoid of light and substance as the darkness he was projected to confront.
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