Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [187]
Clarity was not convinced. “If they wanted to help, why didn't they leave a signal that would lead us to the same brane where they've taken refuge?”
Tse-Mallory chuckled softly, shaking his head. “It wouldn't have mattered if they had, m'dear. In order to get to an island, you first have to have a proper boat. Maybe a quantum boat. It's not just that humanxkind is still learning how to swim: we don't even know what the water is like.” He looked over at her. “What's the point of a signal you can't follow?”
“Oh, right,” she murmured in sudden realization.
Turning away from the statistical illogicality visible through the foreport, Truzenzuzex spoke without looking at any of them. “The ship's speculations offer explanation not only for the Xunca defense, but perhaps also how the destructive Evil that we must confront can exist in our brane. It is background independent.”
Flinx regarded the two scientists. “What does that mean? From a practical standpoint?”
Tse-Mallory explained. “It means that the oncoming menace flows through our brane without being a part of it, swallowing up matter and not acting like a normal part of our universe because it's not a part of it. It—leaked in. Or punched its way in. Or for all we know, deliberately gnawed its way in from some incredible, impossible, much larger 3-brane where such perversions of physics are an accepted and natural occurrence. As such, not being subject to the physical laws of this universe, it likely cannot be destroyed. Not in the sense that we understand destruction. Therefore the only way to stop it is by forcing it back out. Back into its own brane, or into another.”
Flinx slumped in the command chair. Clarity came up behind him while Pip's tongue flicked out from her perch on her master's shoulder to lightly caress his cheek.
“I don't,” he mumbled wearily, “feel much like a plumber.”
Tse-Mallory offered a hopeful, encouraging smile. “Try not to let yourself become overwhelmed by the scale involved.” Turning, he gazed out the foreport. “We've moved beyond that, anyway.”
Flinx looked at his old friend and mentor. “No worries there, Bran. How can I be overwhelmed by something that's beyond comprehension?” He murmured under his breath, “So I was right all along: certain kinds of evil are quantifiable.” Raising his gaze, he looked toward the nearest visual pickup.
“Ship, why haven't we been torn apart, crushed down to nothingness, or snapped out of this existence and into another one by the kind of forces that are at work here?”
“The unique bubble of energy that encloses this one small sphere of normal space shields us,” the Teacher informed him. “Otherwise we would no longer be. All here—you, your companions, myself—would be compacted down to a single subatomic particle. Or something less than a waveform. Or perhaps we would be kicked out of this universe and into another one. My own feeling is that by compressing our protective bubble, the energy of the solidity that surrounds it actually makes it stronger by forcing its bonds tighter together.”
Tse-Mallory was nodding to himself. “The Xunca not only knew how to fashion one hell of a transportation system, they knew how to build walls.”
“To keep the ‘water’ out,” Truzenzuzex added.
“Maybe they had to go elsewhere and didn't use this defense because—it doesn't work,” Clarity could not keep from wondering.
Tse-Mallory nodded. “That's possible. I believe, however, that in addition to everything else they abandoned, they also left behind the means by which we may find out.” Moving to the foreport, he leaned to his right and pointed.
No one had noticed the object before. Or maybe it had not been present until just then and it was their arrival that had caused it to appear. Or possibly, Flinx thought a little wildly, it had drifted out of this brane and into another and back again. If Bran, Tru, and the Teacher were to be believed, anything was possible here. They