Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [116]
They did not know that he knew.
He snuck a furtive glance in Pip's direction. She was wholly preoccupied with trying to find a way into the toxin-resistant box in which Scrap was imprisoned. If he called to her or shouted an order she would likely respond, but he held back. There were too many guns in the room. Too many of the Order for her to take out at once.
Some of the small tools on his belt, like the cutter, could double as weapons. But they had taken that before allowing him inside. It seemed they had left nothing to chance. Except Flinx himself.
To provide cover for his furious planning he started to talk, giving a simplified depiction of his essence traveling through space, his mind-self covering immense cosmic distances in a direction that had only been made known to him years ago. They listened raptly but did not lower their weapons or their guard. While a part of him rambled on with no particular attention to detail or accuracy, the rest of him concentrated on projecting a single dominating, overpowering emotion. Trapped in dangerous surroundings he would typically have tried to project an overriding fear, or perhaps unbridled confusion. He was afraid that the fanatical members of the Order would not respond adequately to the first or wholeheartedly to the second.
So, since they worshipped death and annihilation, he projected life.
Feelings that underscored the beauty of existence, the fulfillment to be had from simply existing, the joy and wonder of continuing consciousness poured out of the tall redhead to inundate the chamber in an emotive flood of intense, all-consuming, ardent delight at the sheer ecstasy of being—each emotion carefully and consciously counterpointed with what the loss of life really meant.
They resisted—he could feel them resisting the projection—but his choice of emotions had taken them completely by surprise. Perhaps anticipating the same kind of emanations of hatred or fear, panic or alarm, that he had projected on their colleagues in the course of the fight at the shuttleport more than a year ago, they were not prepared for an emotional plea for life. As the emotive antithesis of everything the Order stood for, it hit them hard, each and every one. “One by one, they began to fall to the ground in ecstatic reverie.”
Only just conscious of what was happening as his colleagues began to slump to the ground, the speaker tried to aim his pistol at Flinx. Caught up in a surge of support for continued existence and happiness the likes of which he had never encountered or imagined, he failed to get off a shot. Instead, he fell to the floor like the rest of the acolytes and lay there, trembling with the thrill of knowing how good, how important, and how sheerly true the simple pleasure of being alive could be.
Of them all, the strongest resistance came from the Elder. More deeply indoctrinated in the philosophy of the Order than any of his presently helpless brethren, he stumbled forward and tried to swing his cane at the volatile foam encasing Clarity. Flinx had no trouble concentrating on and sustaining his life-affirming projection while knocking the old man's attempt aside. Thwarted in his effort, the Elder too finally succumbed to the tall young man's remorseless emanation of contentment.
Flinx surveyed the chamber with satisfaction. Wallowing in the joy he empathetically projected, every member of the Order now lay sprawled on the polished stone floor, each caught up and ensnared in a personal paroxysm of bliss that stemmed from the sheer joy of being. So powerful and focused was Flinx's projection that he felt confident the effects would persist for a good twenty or thirty minutes after he drew back into himself.
Though she had seen what he could do and knew what he was