Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [155]
Just before the sphere vanished completely, the Teacher thought it detected a disruption in the continuum that was more nearly an effect of space-minus rather than space-plus. Communications and nothing else traveled through space-minus. No engineer of any intelligent species had ever been able to shunt anything more complex than a series of waveforms through space-minus. It was considered impossible, space-minus being a realm or dimension that was implacably hostile to anything solid.
It also appeared to be a transportation problem that the martial and endlessly creative Tar-Aiym had solved.
Once the weapons platform had gone, the Teacher was left to itself on the outskirts of Booster's system. It stayed there, isolated and alone, and settled down to wait for whatever eventuality should present itself. It was in no hurry and it did not lament its range of possible fates.
Unless specifically programmed to do so, artificial intelligences do not suffer from loneliness.
Flinx neither saw nor felt nor experienced any of the luminous pandemonium in which he, Pip, and the control platform on which they were lying were currently engulfed. It was as if he were peacefully asleep but in control of his dreams. The one containing him at the moment included a distinct point of light, which he immediately recognized as Pip. There was also another presence. It was stark, forthright, immense, and yet shallow. It was also familiar because he had encountered it once before, though without the present degree of transparency and precision.
CLASS-A MIND. He was informed in direct tones that bore no relationship to the reverberations of modulated air currents. WE REACH TOWARD THE DANGER THAT THREATENS ALL. A LESSER OF MYSELF HAS PROVIDED THE NECESSARY INFORMATION.
Flinx knew that the Krang on Booster had communicated with the colossal craft. That meant he would not have to explain anything. He began to wonder if it was necessary for him even to be aboard. Could he and his friends have remained behind on Booster while the weapons platform sallied forth to do battle with the oncoming Evil? Positing the question produced an immediate answer.
THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS I CAN DO WITHOUT DIRECTIONAL ORGANIC INPUT, the vessel explained. I CAN SEARCH. I CAN TRAVEL. I CAN HIDE AND DEFEND. I CANNOT ATTACK.
Trigger, Flinx remembered. That's me. I'm the key, the trigger. It was what he had been told in his dreams by the Krang and by at least two other concerned and involved entities. Evidently that was what he was going to do and why his presence was necessary on board this immense ship. And yet—and yet—something about that explanation did not feel quite right. Not quite—complete. He set his unease aside. The Tar-Aiym planetary platform, perhaps the ultimate weapon that ancient martial species had ever built, needed the involvement of a Class-A mind in order to engage in battle. As a kid growing up in Drallar, on Moth, he had played more than his share of the ancient Terran childhood game of tag.
Unambiguously, he was it.
Lying on the contact platform, asleep and yet aware, he had no notion of or feel for the passage of time. It might have been moments; it might have been years. It was conveyed to him that the ship was capable of covering far greater distances at a much higher velocity than anything powered by a mere KK-drive. Despite that, it would take far too long to physically impinge on the oncoming Great Evil. That force still lay far outside the Milky Way, separated from the Commonwealth by distances measurable in tens of thousands of parsecs.
But the planetary weapons platform could reach the Rim and utilize its weaponry to try