Row by row, tier by tier, room by gigantic room, each of them was opening.
Dimly, in the back of her simultaneously enthralled, terrified, awestruck mind, it occurred to her that this defining moment might make a worthwhile subject for formal observation. But despite her excellent training she was too paralyzed by the sight to pick up her communit or her recorder. No one would have blamed her.
Before her eyes, in their ritual gowns and ceremonial preservation attire, the Sauun of Comagrave, who for hundreds of thousands of years, out of collective racial fear of some unknown, irresistible peril had sealed themselves away far beneath the surface of their planet, were starting to wake up.
Donning survival suits, Tse-Mallory and Sylzenzuzex went out and brought Flinx and Pip back to the Teacher the instant the resplendent red sphere vanished. No explosion marked its passing and nothing remained in its luminescent wake to indicate that it had ever been. One moment it hovered in the exact center of the protective plasma bubble; the next it was gone, leaving behind only a lonely figure in an unscarred survival suit floating in white emptiness. Whatever had obliterated the vessel crewed by members of the Order of Null had not harmed Flinx.
Upon determining that his warped, crazed half sister Mahnahmi had lapsed into an infantile regressive coma from which she showed no sign of emerging, Truzenzuzex and Clarity had sedated her and secured her in an empty cabin. Performing the same service for the surviving but wounded members of the Order of Null, they then were able to join their companions in turning their full attention to Flinx.
Stripping him out of the survival suit, they carefully laid him out in the Teacher's tiny, infrequently used dispensary and waited while the ship's instrumentation examined him. A pile of brightly colored iridescent blue and pink coils on a nearby folded towel, a twitching Pip was slowly returning to awareness.
Snuffling uncontrollably, Clarity peered down at the motionless figure on the padded table. Perched on her left shoulder, Scrap stretched out to lick tears from her master's cheeks. Flinx's eyes remained shut and his chest did not move.
“Is—is he dead?” She had to struggle to get her voice above a whisper.
“No.” The Teacher responded calmly as attenuated probes and medical scanners mounted on the ends of flexible mechanical arms passed back and forth over the lean masculine shape.
Clarity sucked in air. “Then he's alive.”
“No,” the ship declared, repeating itself.
“Explain your diagnosis,” Tse-Mallory demanded smartly.
The Teacher responded in the same unvarying tone it had employed since it had begun the examination. “He is barely taking in oxygen. Despite what you may see, his heart continues to beat, but at a rate slowed to five percent of normal. His pulse is present, but barely. Yet his brain exhibits functionality that is not merely normal but considerably heightened. Cerebral regions customarily quiescent in all humans are presently active.”
“My head is killing me,” a voice unexpectedly mumbled from the table, “but that's nothing new.”
“Flinx!” Heedless of any effect it might have on him, Clarity threw herself at the table and did her best to wrap him in her arms.
Responding to the contact, his chest suddenly gave a great swell upward. His mammoth intake of breath could have been heard all the way to the front of the ship. As his lungs contracted, he coughed violently.
“As an aid to improved respiration,” a startled but joyful Sylzenzuzex suggested as she looked on, “you might begin by removing a present impediment to his breathing.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” Disengaging her mouth from Flinx's, an abashed Clarity stepped back. But she did not let go of his right hand, which continued to dangle over the side of the table. She wasn't sure she would ever let go of it again.
Placing a calloused palm beneath his young friend's back, Tse-Mallory helped Flinx to sit up. “How are you doing, m'boy?”
Flinx looked over at his mentor. “I'm not sure, but if my memory of recent events is valid, your ‘boy’ may just possibly have saved everything.” Searching his immediate surroundings, he located Pip. Leaning toward her, he used both hands to pick up the limp pile of coils. The minidrag's wings drooped with exhaustion, but when he placed her in his lap her head came up almost immediately. Slitted pupils met round ones. It was enough to reassure them both.
“Then it worked, zrin!!tt!”
Standing at the foot of the table where he had been monitoring Flinx's sluggish recovery, Truzenzuzex broke into a little dance. Though he had known his mentor for a very long time, Flinx mused that he had never witnessed anything like the philosoph's current physical expression of sheer joy. Looking on, he marveled at the elderly thranx's ability to execute intricate steps and twirls without getting all those legs tangled up.
“I think it did,” he affirmed. “I hope so. It felt—right. A great many things felt right.” Sudden thoughts of what was right and what was not caused him to look around sharply. Pip looked up in alarm.
“Mahnahmi,” Flinx said tightly.
Tse-Mallory met his concern as well as his gaze. “In a coma. Reverted to infancy, or a condition approximating it.” He stared hard at his young friend. “Your doing?”
Reaching up, Flinx felt gingerly of the back of his head. To his great relief, it was still there. “I can't say for sure, but I think it might be. There was a lot happening all at the same time. I'm not definite on all the details of what took place or how. One thing I do know for certain: it wasn't all me. I had help.”
Truzenzuzex eyed him quizzically. “Help? You were alone when we sent you out there. You were alone when we brought you back. Did someone or something come to you while you were locked inside the sphere?”
“Something like that,” Flinx told him. “Old acquaintances, of a kind. Of several kinds, actually. It was all a dreaming, of course.” He tapped his forehead with the middle and forefinger of his left hand. “All brought to fruition here. How it was realized I could not begin to tell you. That's how my life has been, Tru. Driven and governed and impelled forward by things I cannot begin to explain.”
Tse-Mallory grunted softly. “While Flinx's testimony is encouraging, we still need to validate the effectiveness of his efforts through other sources. We can't do that until we return to a developed world where we can make use of advanced astronomical facilities.” Reaching behind him, Tse-Mallory slipped his young friend's jumpsuit off a hanger and passed the bundle of fabric to its owner. “Until then, we will assume at least a modicum of success.” He eyed his companions. “To do otherwise would be to capitulate to wretchedness and despair.” A broad smile creased his deeply lined face as he turned back to Flinx.
“Now get dressed. Tru and I are anxious to hear in detail everything that happened to you while you were out of contact. Or at the very least, everything that you think happened to you.”
“And I will make it my responsibility to check on our guests.” Sylzenzuzex started out of the dispensary. “They will be very unhappy to learn that we believe that Flinx has, with the aid of the Xunca apparatus, eliminated the rationale for the continued existence of their disagreeable Order.”
When the others had departed, Clarity once again moved close to Flinx, looking on as he slowly continued dressing. Utterly fatigued, Pip remained sprawled on the now empty table. Spreading his wings, an energetic Scrap glided down to join her.
“Is there anything, Flinx, I can get you? Anything I can do for you?”
Sealing the front of the jumpsuit, he smiled tenderly down at her. What this woman had been through because of him no human being ought to have had to endure, he thought. That she had done so, had done all of it, of her own free will and out of love for him did not to any degree mitigate the sacrifices she had made on his behalf.
It was a good thing he kept such musings to himself, because had he voiced them aloud she would have told him he was being seriously silly.
Putting her arms around him, she placed her head against h
is chest and squeezed tight. He hugged her gently and rested his head lightly on hers.
“You may have saved civilization,” she murmured. “Time and time again you've risked your life to preserve it, and no one except those on board this ship will ever know what you've done.” Leaning back slightly, she looked up to meet his gaze. “You're fated to be the Commonwealth's illustrious but anonymous savior, Philip Lynx.”
He nodded slowly, thinking how utterly, supremely, incomparably beautiful she was.
“Clarity, that suits me just fine.”
The physicians and the secure medical shell at the advanced long-term care-and-repair facility on Earth to whose guardianship they commended Mahnahmi accepted the unique case without too many questions. Preliminary diagnostics hinted at severe long-term paralysis of selected neural connections. There was a significant chance, Flinx and his companions were told, that even if repairs could be effected to the damaged areas, full recovery of memory and other functions was unlikely. The patient would live—after a fashion, and with her capacity for higher cognition much reduced.
Without suffering so much as a twinge of irony, Flinx made arrangements to pay for her extended treatment and care.
The downcast surviving members of the Order of Null were repatriated to their respective homeworlds and set free to spread the word that the whole foundation for their continuation as an organized society had vanished. The same surreptitious monitoring of sophisticated Commonwealth astronomical instrumentation that had originally established that phenomenon as a reality now confirmed its disappearance. Having nothing left to work toward, the Order's chapters disbanded one by one.
Despite that, lingering die-hard elements that either did not receive the word or chose to disbelieve it continued to pose a potential threat. Bearing that possibility in mind, it was decided not to return to New Riviera/Nur. Having previously spent time on and caused a certain amount of trouble on Earth, Flinx felt that humankind's homeworld should also for the foreseeable future remain out of his purview. Booster was too remote and desolate to constitute a realistic refuge. Both he and Clarity had flawed memories of Longtunnel. Of the other worlds that he was familiar with, Jast was too unstable, Visaria downright unpleasant, Repler pregnant with discomfiture, Gestalt too cold and full of meaning, and Midworld—as much a part of him as it had become, it was still not the kind of place where one would want to spend a honeymoon.
Honeymoon? Wasn't he getting a little ahead of himself?
Then he noticed Pip and her son, Scrap, writhing and play-striking at one another on the folded towel and he knew he had his answer.
It was, to say the least, an uncommon ceremony.
As just one example, few couples could boast of a full thranx Eint as the Conductor of Services. Though he had never before presided over such a rite, much less one involving humans, Truzenzuzex was fully qualified and considered it a privilege to do so. Tse-Mallory was equally tickled to be asked to give away the bride. And no one could recall when a thranx, not to mention a full padre in the Security Services of the United Church, had been asked to serve as a bridesmaid at the peculiarly human ritual. Though uncertain as to her exact role, Sylzenzuzex was willing to be so conscripted.
Standing in a field of green surrounded by one of the many extensive stretches of rain forest on Alaspin, the early-morning wedding party was serenaded by a cacophonous assortment of indigenous life-forms that had not the slightest idea as to the nature of the strange exercise taking place in their midst. Tolerating occasional inspection from the occasional curious wild minidrag, Pip and Scrap looked on from a particularly well-sited tree.
It was left to the ring-bearer to fill out the multispecies character of the ceremony. Though its purpose was utterly unfamiliar to Kiijeem, Fourth-born of the Family AVM and present on Alaspin thanks to a special diplomatic dispensation arranged by Truzenzuzex and Tse-Mallory, the modus operandi was straightforward enough. Walk a few steps, maintain a serious mien, hand over a circlet of bright metal, and in the process try not to hit anyone with your tail. Having concluded this undertaking without inflicting any damage or outrage, the young AAnn noble was surprised at how relieved he felt when he was finally able to step clear of the others.
A few very close acquaintances of the group looked on from nearby. Among them was a short, gimlet-eyed, seriously antique woman who kept the integrated cooling setting on her clothing cranked as cold as possible while she waited impatiently for the seemingly interminable proceedings to end.
“Knew that boy would spend too much on frivolities. Damned unnecessary expensive get-together!” Brought from Moth, Mother Mastiff could hardly wait for it all to end so she could get back to Drallar. She did not trust the man she had left in charge of her shop. Though a lifelong friend, he would not have been offended by her assessment. Mother Mastiff trusted no one and nobody.
“At least,” she muttered to herself as she used a handkerchief to mop dribs of the omnipresent heat and humidity from her forehead, “it looks like he found himself a nice girl. Maybe she'll be able to keep him from wasting his life.”
An unpretentious reception followed the formal ceremony, after which the exceedingly dissimilar members of the party departed to diverse and sometimes distant regions of the Commonwealth and beyond. Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex to Hivehom, where closing studies of the Great Evil and its inexplicable disappearance were being hotly debated among those select scientists who had been aware of its existence. Kiijeem, Fourth-born of the Family AVM, having gained much status from his unprecedented excursion to and experience of a Commonwealth world previously unvisited by his kind, set out upon his long and carefully monitored journey homeward.
Sylzenzuzex returned to her work with United Church Security, vowing to stay in touch with her new friends as well as with her esteemed Eighth. At Alaspin's only large shuttleport, Mother Mastiff deigned to deposit a peck on Flinx's cheek and a slightly longer one on Clarity's prior to her departure for Moth.
“A strange boy, he is,” she grumbled as she prepared to take her leave. “Always was. But he has a good heart. I was never able to keep him out of trouble. Maybe you'll have better luck.” Before Clarity could offer a reply the old woman let out a disdainful snort and turned away, heading for the final boarding area as her last words lingered behind her. “But I doubt it.”
Looking for a safe place to relax at last, the new couple chose to settle on Cachalot. It proved the perfect choice. The small human population was too busy to have time to pry into the lives of new arrivals. Flinx and Clarity could spend the majority of their time on an automated sailing ship out of sight and out of contact with the rest of the civilization he had saved, and whenever they found themselves isolated or in need of company there always seemed to be a chatty cetacean escort ready to accompany their rented craft. The climate was semitropical, the alien sea idyllic, and for the first time in memory Flinx was untroubled by his persistent headaches.
So it was that after several weeks Clarity was surprised to find him sitting one morning on the prow of their craft, staring out to sea and looking uncertain and depressed. Pip lay coiled sound asleep around his right arm and shoulder, her iridescent scales shimmering in the sun.
“Flinx?”
He looked back at her and mustered a halfhearted smile. She could not have surprised him, she knew. You couldn't surprise Philip Lynx, who felt your feelings coming. She sat down beside him, letting her bare legs dangle off the front of the boat. White spume gurgled merrily beneath the bow. Gliding skalats, the sunlight shining through their quadruple membranous wings, hovered off the starboard side, riding the same breeze that drove the boat forward.
“Is everything all right?” Sudden alarm shot through her. “The thing that was coming this way, the Great Evil—it is gone, isn't it? All of it?”
He nodded. “It's gone, Clarity. All of it.”
“Then,” she inquired uncertainly, “what's wrong?”
Turning away from her so she would not have to
gaze upon his melancholy visage, he stared out to sea. The horizon was distant, flat, and calm. Only when after a while her hand came up to rest gently on his arm did he look back at her. Though she felt that by now she knew him as well as anyone possibly could, his expression at that moment was quite unreadable.
“Is it me?” she asked in a timid, apprehensive voice.
“No. Oh, no, Clarity!” The verve of his reaction reassured her, though it did nothing to reveal the source of his apparent discontent. “Nothing about you could ever disappoint me.”
“Well then,” she prodded him a little more forcefully, “what is it?”
He looked away again and it struck her then that he was not upset. It seemed, actually, that he might in fact be just a little embarrassed. He did not, could not, meet her eyes.
“I'm—bored.”
ALAN DEAN FOSTER has written more than a hundred books in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: The Approaching Storm and the popular Pip & Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of several films, including Transformers, Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and Alien Nation. His novel Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work ever to do so. Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners' brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects. For more about the author, go to www.alandeanfoster.com.
Flinx Transcendent is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Thranx, Inc.
All rights reserved.
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