CHAPTER 1
Make the right moves.
Easy for an Ulru-Ujurrian to say, Flinx reflected as the
Teacher maintained its approach to the world that lay at the end of the decelerating KK-drive craft’s present course. Easy for an Ulru-Ujurrian to do. But then, everything was easy for an Ulru-Ujurrian to say and do. Unimaginably powerful, preposterously playful, and possessed of talents as yet unmeasured–and quite possibly unmeasurable–they went about their daily activities without a care in the world–short of keeping busy by way of the unfathomable playtime that involved moving their planet closer to its sun.
Even that bit of outrageous astrophysics seemed simpler to Flinx than unraveling the mystery of his origins.
He had been given a clue. For the first time in many seemingly interminable years, a tangible clue. And even more than that, he had been provided with a destination. It lay before him now, a world he had never considered before, lying the same distance from his present position as his homeworld of Moth or, in a different direction, New Riviera and Clarity Held.
Clarity, Clarity. Under the proficient ministrations and attentive guardianship of his old friends Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex, she would be recovering from the injuries she had sustained during the fight that had allowed him to successfully flee New Riviera, also known as Nur. While his love was healing physically, perhaps he could finally heal the open wound of his unknown origins. These chafed and burned within him as intensely as any cancer.
Gestalt.
A word bursting with meaning. Perhaps also a
world full of meaning, as it was the name of the globe his ship was rapidly approaching. An undistinguished colony world, H Class VIII, with a single large moon whose orbit the
Teacher was presently cutting. Home to a native species called the Tlel, as well as to a modest complement of human colonists. Rather eccentric human colonists, if the details contained within the galographic he had perused were to be believed. Not that he expected to interact very much with the general population. He was here to find something specific. Something for which he had been searching a long, long time, without any real hope of ever finding it. Now, for the first time in years, he had hope.
That is, he did if what he had been told was not a cynical dying man’s final provocation–a last lie intended to exact a final measure of revenge on the youth responsible for his death.
I know who your father is, Theon al-bar Cocarol had wheezed on Visaria just prior to dying. Self-proclaimed sole unmindwiped survivor of the renegade, edicted eugenicist Meliorare Society, he had dubbed Flinx
Experiment Twelve-A before gasping out
Gestalt! and then inconveniently expiring.
Experiments are not supposed to have knowledge of their biological progenitors, he had coldly insisted earlier.
To the Great Emptiness with that, Flinx had decided immediately. In his lifelong search for his origins he had pursued more than his share of dead ends. It would only be one more irony in a life filled to bursting with them if a lead supplied by a dying outlaw turned out to be the right one.
Equally important had been the expiring scientist’s choice of words.
I know who your father is, Cocarol had declaimed before gasping his last. Penultimate breath or not, Flinx had not confused the tense. Cocarol had clearly and unmistakably said “is.” Not
was, but
is. So small a word, so full of promise. Was it possible, Flinx had been unable to keep himself from musing ever since that critical, piercing moment, that he might not only finally learn the identity of his father, but actually find him alive? It was too much to hope for.
So he did not hope. He had been disappointed too often before. But he allowed himself, had to allow himself, space in which to wish.
Intent on the fate of the galaxy and every one of its inhabitants civilized or otherwise, his mentors Bran Tse-Mallory and the Eint Truzenzuzex would almost certainly not have sympathized with his present detour. Much as she loved him, Clarity might not have sympathized, either. But she would have understood. Even with the fate of so much and so many at stake, there were private demons that had to be put to rest before Flinx could fully focus on external threats, no matter how vast in extent they might be. Save the inner universe first, he kept telling himself, and you’re likely to be in better condition to make a stab at saving everything else.
Sprawled like a length of pink-and-green rope below the
Teacher’s foreport, Pip lifted her head to glance across at him. Epitomizing the empathetic bond that existed between them, the minidrag’s attitude reflected her friend and master’s anguish.
“Am I selfish?” he asked the ship, after explicating his disquiet aloud.
“Of course you are.” The
Teacher’s ship-mind had been programmed for many things. Subtlety was not to be counted among them. “The fate of a galaxy rests in your hands. Or rather, in lieu of a cheap analogy, in your mind.”
“Uh-huh. Assuming I exist in this hypothetical position to do anything at all about it, notwithstanding what Bran and Tru seem to think.”
“In the absence of an alternative specifically encouraging, they seek surcease in the exploration of remote possibilities. Of which you are, like it or not, ostensibly the most promising.”
Flinx nodded. Rising from the command chair, he strolled over to the manual console and absently ran his hand down the length of Pip’s back. The flying snake quivered with pleasure.
“What do
you think?” he asked softly. “
Am I the last hope? Am I the key to something bigger, something more powerful, that visits me in dreams? Or whatever you want to call that perversely altered state of consciousness in which I sometimes unwillingly find myself.”
“I do not know,” the
Teacher told him honestly. “I serve, without pretending to understand. I can take you wherever you wish to go, except to comprehension. That destination is not programmed into me.”
Mechanical soul, Flinx thought. Not designed to pronounce judgment. In lieu of the advice of a superior intellect, he would have to judge himself. With a sigh, he raised one hand and gestured toward the port. Soon they would need to announce themselves to planetary control with an eye toward taking up orbit.
“What about this change of course? What do you think of my putting aside the hunt for the Tar-Aiym weapons platform in order to search for my father here, based on what the dying Meliorare told me?”
Understanding of certain matters might not have been programmed into the
Teacher’s ship-mind, but contempt was. “An insupportable waste of time. I have run a number of calculations based on the facts and variables available to me. The results are less than promising. Consider: the human Cocarol may have simply been enjoying a final, embittered joke at your expense. Or he may not have known what he was talking about. If he did, circumstances may have changed since he was last conversant with the issue at hand. Since then, any knowledge he may have possessed concerning the identity or location of your male parent may have changed radically.
“Meanwhile, whatever lies behind the Great Emptiness continues this way. It is my opinion that your time would be better spent searching for the absent, ancient Tar-Aiym weapons platform that represents the only hope, thus far, of a device even theoretically powerful enough to counter the oncoming danger. A device with whom only you have had, and can initiate, mental contact.” The silken yet tart mechanical voice paused briefly. “Have I at least succeeded in instigating within you a modicum of guilt?”
“The attempt is redundant,” Flinx snapped. “No need to refresh that which never leaves me.”
“That realization, at least, is encouraging,” the ship replied. “Since logic and reason are having no effect, I search for that which
will work.”
In some respects chatting with the
Teacher was easier than engaging in conversation with a human. For example, the ship never raised its voice, and if Flinx so wished, he could terminate the discussion with a simple command. On the other hand, unlike with another person, he could not turn away from it. The ship-mind was everywhere around him.
“As soon as I’ve settled this question, I’ll resume the search. I promise.” Pip looked up at him quizzically.
The ship responded, “What makes you so certain that you will settle it here? This is a question the answer to which you have sought on many worlds. As I have commented repeatedly, the dying human could have perished with a falsehood on his lips. It would not be overmuch to expect of one who had so long lived a lie himself.”
“I know, I know.” A pensive Flinx raised his gaze once more to the cloud-swathed new world looming steadily larger in the foreport. As he stared, the port continuously adapted to the changing light outside the ship. Another new world in a long list of those that instead of answers had thus far provided him with only more questions. “But after all these years, it’s the most promising lie that I’ve been told.”
Though Gestalt’s human population numbered only in the millions, he was still surprised at the informality that infused the exchange of arrival formalities. According to the
Teacher, the orbiting station-based automatic electronic protocol...
