• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Once again, we are in agreement. Believe me, there are many times when I've doubted it myself. Even so, I find myself doing my best to honor the trust that those I know and respect have placed in me. It's about all I have left. That, and the knowledge, the surety, that this extragalactic threat to all of us is very real and not just a figment of a pained imagination. Of my imagination.”

“Granting for the moment and for the purpossess of disscussion the reality of what you sspeak—what can you do, Flinx? What could anyone do?”

“I am not anyone,” Flinx replied more sharply than he intended. “I would give everything I have and everything I own to be just ‘anyone.’ For the chance to live nothing more complex and burdensome than a normal softskin life. But I'm not. I'm different. Forces I don't understand and can't even identify agree with minds that sometimes make no sense that I am some kind of fulcrum, nexus, key, on which the sole slim chance of stopping this peril rests. It's not a responsibility I want. I didn't seek it and I'd do anything to be rid of it.”

A throbbing had begun at the back of his head, an all-too-familiar pounding: one of his headaches starting up. He had to bring this discussion to an end before it incapacitated him. Or worse, caused him to perhaps project involuntarily and dangerously onto his young AAnn friend.

“That's it,” he finished tersely. “That's why I have to be assured of safe passage off Blasusarr before I can risk trying to leave. That's why you have to help me make contact with someone powerful enough to ensure my safety. Because if I'm killed trying to depart, forces neither you nor I can comprehend believe that it will be the end of any chance or opportunity to save the galaxy in which we live. The catastrophe probably won't strike until long after we're both dead, but strike it will.”

“You assk me to accept a great deal, Flinx-friend.” Kiijeem made a gesture of first-degree uncertainty. “Thingss very highly educated adult nye would dissmiss as madness and delirium.”

“You haven't acquired their prejudices,” Flinx countered.

The youth contemplated his choices. “What if I sstill inssisst on ssharing thiss ‘experience’ of which you sspeak?”

Flinx closed his eyes, then opened them more slowly. “I told you that if you insisted, then we'd see. I can do what you request. I'm not sure you'd survive. Your mind is not fully developed and, more importantly, not like mine.” Nobody's mind is like mine, he knew, but there was nothing to be gained from further pursuing that line of reasoning with Kiijeem. “Your mind is—I don't want to say ‘immature.’ It's fragile. Susceptible. Your experience of this existence is limited, your knowledge of worlds beyond confined to academics. Though we're not so very dissimilar in chronological age, I've spent most of my life doing nothing but having experiences. Intellectually, emotionally, and in many other ways I've become calloused.” Leaning forward suddenly, he reached out and took Kiijeem's right hand in his own. The swiftness of the softskin's act took the young AAnn by surprise.

“I don't want to hurt you, Kiijeem. I need your help. I would sacrifice my tail to gain it, if I had one. But I don't want to see you broken. I've seen it happen to others who got—who got too close to me and to what I know.”

How would the youth respond to such a plea? Flinx wondered anxiously. Among his own kind such language could easily be interpreted as a sign of weakness, of a lack of resolve and determination. The appeal was a very human thing to do. At the same time Flinx was being coolly calculating. If he shared all that he could with the youngster and the experience left the young AAnn comatose or dead, he would also be of no further use.

Kiijeem remained dubious. On the other hand, the softskin had been, insofar as Kiijeem had been able to tell, truthful and forthright in all that they had discussed between them. If the human was lying, in the end it would be worse for him than it would be for