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No nestling greenness accompanied his outward reaching this time. The profound and reassuring deep warmth was also absent, as was the coldly calculating presence of a certain incredibly ancient weapon. He no longer needed their help. Having several times previously been boosted outward, he could now cast his inner self to that terrible, distant place without external assistance. Knowing where and what it was that he sought, he flung his awake-asleep consciousness toward it.

Each time he suffered to make the contact it became more familiar, the process of state-of-mind journeying more clear-cut. Each time it changed him a little, not only physically but mentally. An unavoidable corollary of his unique mind and extraordinary nervous system, he was certain. The Meliorares who had made him would no doubt have been pleased. He wished he could have met them all, known them all. So he could have killed them all. He wished, as he had on many occasions, that he had never been born. Of course, if that had been the case then it was likely that his mother would not have been paid. For her services.

The intergalactic abyss, Bran Tse-Mallory would have told him, was a poor place for a pity party. Whimper if you want, but save civilization first. Not because it's your duty, not because you'll be a hero, but because it's the right thing to do. In the abrogation of rightness only anarchy wins.

Blackness and stars he sensed rather than saw—and a presence. No, Flinx corrected himself. A multiplicity of presences. Navvur W, Emperor of all the AAnn, was there, just as Flinx had intended. So too was the small, affectionate, familiar mind-shape of Pip. What he had not intended and could not entirely account for was the presence of dozens of other nonhuman species. In projecting powerfully enough to drag the essence of the Emperor along with him, he had inadvertently also brought along a hundred of Navvur's closest advisers. Each time he used his Talent, he reflected bemusedly, it strengthened a little more. He could only hope it would not strengthen to the point of killing him.

The scene in The Eye, he mused, must be one of complete chaos. He could only hope that no one would panic and shoot down his physical body. Should that happen, his inner self might be lost forever in the frightful nether regions of interstellar space.

No time to ruminate on that now. His thoughts and those he had brought with him had been projected elsewhere. To the edge of the galaxy and beyond. Distance was not a state of mind: mind was a state of distance. At least it was to the intentionally garbled and cunningly reassembled DNA of Philip Lynx.

Dragging the minds of the Emperor and his advisers along with him, Flinx felt his thought-self burst through the space occupied by the obstructing gravitational lens. Explosive stars and radiant nebulae vanished. They had been swallowed up, consumed, obliterated by something so immense it could only be described as a series of dark equations. Where previously the gloom had been pierced by points and swaths of light, now there was only darkness. An utter absence of luminosity.

But not of presence.

As on previous occasions a thin tendril of hesitant perception reached out to scarcely skim the outermost reaches of the onrushing Evil. The feeblest touch, the slightest contact, was all that was necessary to convey the colossal malignancy of the force that was rushing toward the galaxy—and, he sensed, continuing to accelerate. Flinx knew it, recognized it, was far more familiar with it than he had ever wanted to become.

The incalculable foulness was new to the quintessence of the Emperor Navvur W, however. Equally, it was something never experienced and not imaginable by the essences of his hundred advisers. Among them all only one diminutive spark of consciousness proved able to cope with the assault on the senses. Flinx recognized the thought-self of Lord Eiipul. Along with everyone else who had been standing adjacent to the Emperor when Flinx had projected, he too had been wrenched