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In consequence of barely perceiving the outermost edge of the onrushing Evil that lay behind the Great Emptiness, a host of silent, terrified screams momentarily filled a minuscule portion of the endless extragalactic desolation. Like saplings caught in a hurricane, individual specks of sanity began to fragment and splinter. It would do no good to confirm his thesis to a congregation of the hopelessly insane, Flinx realized. He began to pull away, to recoil. Away from a supraphysical malignancy too vast to be comprehended, too excessively loathsome to be understood.

Cognizance fled from that place of interstellar horror, the diversity of confused and confined nonhuman minds drawn and shepherded away by one that was more than human. Fled and retreated back to a region of welcoming warm stars, of planets swarming with life, of respiration and intimation and meditation. A hundred and two minds withdrew all the way back to just one of those star systems, to a single world as blissfully unknowing as all the others of the unspeakable fate awaiting it. Back to one moderately spacious chamber inside one building within the boundaries of one city. Not all of them, alas, returned whole.

It was a risk a reluctant Flinx had been forced to take.

Opening his eyes, he stopped swaying and once more took stock of his surroundings. His physical self was intact. He had not been shot. As near as he could determine, he had not been touched. The slight weight on his left shoulder was that of an Alaspinian minidrag. Glancing down, he saw that Pip was exhausted but otherwise unchanged by the experience they had just shared. Turning his attention to the milling throng of larger, more sentient reptilian shapes that surrounded him, he found himself confronting a far greater range of consequences.

Pandemonium reigned in the great chamber of The Eye of the Nye. To his right, the Emperor Navvur W was struggling to stand upright. In this he was aided by a frightened bevy of newly arrived technicians. Grim-faced medical personnel worked their way through the shocked, confused crowd, attending to the unconscious, the gibbering, the sobbing, and those whose thought-selves had returned only in part. Close to the naked human, a dazed but otherwise coherent Lord Eiipul stood staring fixedly in the direction of the Emperor.

“The venerable Navvur appearss to have ssurvived the encounter,” Flinx's host commented coolly. Sharp eyes turned to study the bewildered crowd. “Not sso all of my dissbelieving brethren.”

Observing the newly arrived medical forces at work, Flinx could only concur. “I meant to convey only the Emperor with me. Sometimes—no, make that many times—I don't know what my Talent is going to do or how it's going to react to the demands I place on it.” His mouth tightened. “I've damaged some of those here. I've damaged people before. I never mean to. Unless they're trying to hurt me, and even then I try to minimize the effects.”

Lord Eiipul turned sharply on the softskin. “‘Minimize the effectss’? What ‘effectss’? The effectss of what? Can you do more than jusst sshare thiss dreadful and dangeroussly enlightening experience, Flinx LLVVRXX? Iss there more to you and your capabilitiess than you have told?”

Turning quickly away, Flinx started toward where Navvur W was showing signs of rapid recovery. “Hadn't we better be sure we stay close to the Emperor lest some of his destabilized and more assertive bodyguards decide to resolve matters on their own initiative?” Keen to further change the subject, he indicated some of the less speedy-to-recover nobles receiving medical attention. “Assuming we're not killed, won't you benefit from the unintended damage that the experience has inflicted on some of your rivals?”

Distracted by the notion, Eiipul scrutinized the surrounding circle of badly battered AAnn nobility, then looked back up at the human. “Truly you comprehend our cusstomss in wayss I would never have thought possible for a ssoftsskin.”

Flinx shrugged, aware that the meaning