Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [195]
“It was about a year later that I sensed his existence anew. It shocked me, I can tell you. How could I have been so stupid? I should have known that my brother could not be guaranteed dead until I saw his body and verified its demise with my own eyes. As soon as I was able to do so, I went after him. I missed him at Repler, then at Visaria, and lastly at Gestalt. I lost him again when he disappeared with you into the Blight.” Now she did smile again. “But when you emerged I thought I was ready again. I and my friends of similar intent raced to the Senisran system only to have my intimation of Flinx's continued existence vanish. Nothing remained of him to be perceived.
“But in lieu of his presence there was a device. The sort of mechanism for which my brother demonstrates a remarkable and repeated affinity. We explored it, we entered it, and it brought us here.” She gestured toward the foreport and the intensely luminous sphere beyond. “The instant we emerged in this place I recognized this ship of his—and simultaneously perceived his presence.” Turning away from the two scientists, ignoring them as if they did not exist, she stared once more out the port in the direction of the resplendent red orb.
“Now it will end here. He will end here. And I will at last be free of the nuisance he represents. Of the last two Adepts propounded by the Meliorares, only one will survive.”
Tse-Mallory didn't hesitate. “If you've associated yourself with these people, then you know full well what they believe and support. You've said as much. If the abomination that's headed this way from outside our galaxy is allowed to proceed unchecked, it will annihilate everything. Every world, every sun, every civilization. The entire galactic disk will disappear into it, after which it will move on to devour others.”
Cocking her head slightly to her right, she studied the burly sociologist. Her tone was appallingly, unspeakably, indifferent. “I know. But by then I'll be dead. My life will have been a glorious one, replete with individual aggrandizement and the accumulation of personal power. Small payback for what the Meliorares made of me.” Her gaze narrowed sharply. “For what certain individuals did to me. I won't allow Flinx or anyone else to jeopardize my recompense. It is my due. I am owed.”
“What about civilization, the lives of hundreds of billions of other sentient individuals? What are they owed?”
She shrugged. “A one-way ticket to the hell of their choice, for all I care. Let them all perish. Let so-called civilization return to dust. Allow the Order's descendants to happily greet the apocalypse. It means nothing to me and I care nothing for any of it.”
She spoke so nonchalantly, Tse-Mallory thought. Having been compelled to contemplate destruction on a galactic scale, he now found himself confronting egocentricity of similar magnitude. It was scarce to be believed. But in discussing the ultimate horrors she so casually dismissed she was being absolutely truthful. He could hear it in her voice, see it in her eyes.
So badly hurt had she been, so deep and immutable was her personal fury, that she wanted the universe to go to perdition.
That was when Truzenzuzex, with the still formidable power of all six of his legs, launched himself.
Several of the Order members brought up their weapons. They were too late. Notwithstanding his advanced age the philosoph was astonishingly quick. But not, alas, quicker than the mind. Something came out of the woman Mahnahmi—something as poisonous as it was powerful. It caught Truzenzuzex and threw him across the control chamber to smash into the far wall. As he lay there twitching, alive but hurt, Tse-Mallory rushed to his side. He did not try to take advantage of his friend's attack to make a similar run at Flinx's half sister. The soldier-sociologist was brave, but not foolhardy. It would do no one any good, least of all an unaware Flinx, if he too