Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [172]
“I want to know, I need to know, where this signal is directed and if possible, the purpose behind it.”
The half-million-year-old machine that was at once an instrument of war and an instrument of art did not hesitate. Hesitation was a defect reserved for organic sentients.
SEARCHING NOW.
Flinx waited. Something remarkable happened.
Nothing happened.
It happened for a moment, then several moments. The several moments stretched into a period of time lasting longer than any comparable period of time he had spent on a Tar-Aiym operator's dais without anything happening.
Was it possible that just then and now, at that particular instant of time, the half-million-year-old mechanism had finally failed? It was a possibility he was allowed to ponder for barely an instant before a response was forthcoming. When it did, there was no indication on the part of the instrumentality in which he lay that anything unusual had transpired.
MUCH TO SEARCH. THEN HAD TO SIFT WHAT WAS SEARCHED.
“Did you learn—anything?” Muscles convulsed as Flinx arched his back against the unyielding composite material beneath him.
LEGEND. OF THOSE WHO WENT AWAY.
Flinx was patient. “Can you be more specific?”
ONE SIGNAL TO MONITOR THREAT. ONE SIGNAL TO MONITOR DEFENSE. ONE SIGNAL TO LINK THE TWO.
Was it possible? Was it even conceivable? Had the Xunca, before they “went away,” built something they believed might be capable of defending against the oncoming Great Evil? If that was the case, why hadn't this hypothetical weapon already unleashed its unknown potential on a threat that had now shifted nearer than ever? Flinx thought hard.
A menace looms. The threatened man raises a defensive weapon to protect himself. But he has a choice: he has time to flee. So instead of firing, he simply runs away. A safer option than standing and fighting when the outcome of the clash is unpredictable.
And in his haste to run away, he leaves his unused weapon behind. But the unfired weapon remains bound to the danger. Sporadically, if the Krang was to be believed.
Where was the weapon? What was the weapon? The Great Attractor? How did you fire, how did you pull the trigger, on a cosmic phenomenon that blazed with the energy of ten thousand trillion suns?
Very carefully, he decided. That was assuming the fantastic inferences he was making were in any way, shape, or fashion accurate, and he was not just wish-dreaming.
“The signal that intermittently reaches out from Horseye—it's not designed to activate the defense?”
NO.
“Why not?”
ASK THOSE WHO MADE IT.
Back to square one. “Do you know where this defense is?”
I CAN PROVIDE COORDINATES.
Flinx's spirits rose. Something solid, something tangible, at last!
“Please provide.”
Though the Teacher essentially flew and maintained itself, years of crisscrossing the Commonwealth and the AAnn Empire had given Flinx a certain amount of insight into the basics of interstellar navigation. When the Krang offered up a simplified set of stellar coordinates, Flinx quickly set them against what he knew. They made no sense. He projected his confusion.
I WILL SUPPLY VISUAL REFERENCE.
An image formed in Flinx's mind. It moved and shifted, changing size and perspective. Slowed, enhanced, enhanced again. Eyes shut tight, locked in communicative stasis, he inhaled sharply when it finally resolved.
“Useless,” he finally thought. “Impossibly far away. Of what conceivable use is something situated at such a distance?”
ASK THOSE WHO MADE IT.
Infuriating. If he did not know better he would have thought the machine was mocking him. It was doing nothing of the kind, of course.