Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [140]
Whether it would function effectively remained to be seen.
Clarity had moved to stand next to Flinx. As she talked softly, Pip and Scrap engaged in a feint fight from their perches on their respective masters' shoulders. Iridescent triangular heads darted sharply forward only to withdraw from each counterthrust as pointed tongues flicked harmlessly.
“The Tar-Aiym Krang.” As befitted the surroundings, Clarity's tone was suitably subdued. “As many times as you've mentioned it to me, as often as you've tried to describe it, I don't think anything even you could have said, Flinx, could prepare someone for the reality.”
Staring at the familiar tilted platform that beckoned from beneath the twin transparent domes, he nodded thoughtfully. “Images wouldn't have helped much, either. There's just too much of everything.”
“And the weapons platform constructed by the same race, the one Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex want you to try and find again,” she went on, “is the size of a small planet and has dozens of such devices?”
“Maybe hundreds,” he muttered. “I didn't have time to take the full measure of it, Clarity. When I was on it I was—preoccupied.”
She considered before replying. “How can something like this—building—do battle against the menace you've shown me?”
“It can't, by itself. But I'm hoping”—he nodded toward where Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex were conversing with Syl—“that the artificial intelligence in control of it can make contact with the corresponding AI that controls the weapons platform and obtain its coordinates and course.” He indicated the resting place beneath the dome. “That's where the operator, or performer, lies. I've occupied that place myself, and another one very much like it on board the weapons platform.” He looked down at her. “We're here so I can try to make contact again.”
Her eyes met his. “What happens if you fail, Flinx? What if the intelligence that directs the Krang is no longer functional?”
“I believe it will still be functional, Clar. It survived lying dormant for half a million years. I don't think it will have stopped working in the past ten. It can't have changed that much in so short a period of time.” He looked back toward the empty, beckoning platform. “On the other hand, I have.”
“For the better,” she insisted, putting a hand on his arm.
“Maybe.” A sharper stab of pain shot through the back of his head. The throbbing that had commenced outside the entrance to the Krang had returned, with fervor. “We're likely to find out.”
As she leaned close against him her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “Don't lie to me, Flinx. Don't try to make things easy, or mollify me with evasions, or patronize me out of love. How dangerous is this?”
Preempted by her directness, he could do nothing but resort to irony. “I'm going to try and make mental contact with a half-million-year-old alien war machine built by a battle-loving species that, when activated, is capable of projecting a Schwarzchild discontinuity strong enough to swallow starships and, for all I know, maybe entire planets.” Putting his left arm around her shoulders, he squeezed firmly. “No danger there.”
She smiled encouragingly. “Maybe you haven't changed as much as you think.”
While he and Clarity were immersed in each other, his old friends and frequent mentors had arrived to rejoin them. Sylzenzuzex stood beside her Eighth, ready to lend support to both Flinx and the expedition's other female.
“Well?” was all Bran Tse-Mallory said dryly.
That was what the bold, ebullient merchant Maxim Malaika had exclaimed on numerous occasions during Flinx's first visit to this place, so many years ago. Well, it was time to move on. He was going to the well to see what kind of water he could draw. Well he would