Flinx's Folly (12 page)

It was a perfect afternoon on a perfect day: perfectly ordinary for Nur. With the organic cushioning of the tiny-flowered ground cover beneath the blanket, the occasional gentle breeze off the lake, and the sun slipping away benignly westward, she was completely at ease. She deliberately chose not to wonder whether that was an honest reaction to the events of the day or an emotional emanation from her companion projected to make her feel as good as possible about her present circumstances. Flinx had said he would not do something like that. She decided to take him at his word.

After all, she mused before she fell asleep, there was nothing she could do about it. If he was lying, it would take time for her to find out.

If he wasn’t lying about that, too, she realized, and intended to continue to fool her forever about what she was actually feeling and what was the result of his projecting emotions onto her. Thinking that way, she decided, might very well lead to madness. Or at the least, a knotty succession of thoughts in constant conflict with one another. At least he couldn’t read
those
.

She knew how she felt about him, she told herself firmly. That was
not
the result of some ethereal emotional projection. What she didn’t know was what she was going to do about it.

If he could project a persuasive answer to
that
, she decided, then Philip Lynx was far more talented than even he suspected.

CHAPTER

7

It was dark within the deep, and deep within the darkness. She didn’t know where she was, but it was very, very cold. Wrapping her arms around her upper body did not help. Nothing helped. It was the kind of cold that, instead of penetrating, seems to emerge from the core of one’s being and work its way outward to the skin. Not the kind of cold that freezes—the kind that numbs.

Lowering her arms, she touched herself. Even corpses feel like something, but her fingers conveyed nothing to her brain. Though she could sense herself, there was no communication between the nerve endings at the tips of her fingers and whatever part of her body they happened to encounter. Pushing inward against her dull, shadowed flesh generated no sense of pressure. Scraping with fingernails resulted in no pain. Blinking, she found she could not detect the squeezing sensation produced by the small muscles around her eyes. It was too cold.

She was not alone in the blackness.

There was another presence. At once nowhere and simultaneously all around her, she knew it was the source of the cold. It had no outline, no shape, no form. Its existence was defined by the fact that it pulsed. It might have been a waveform, a frigid flush of particles, or a heartbeat. At one stroke she felt that she had always known of it, and an instant later it embodied everything she had never experienced.

Without knowing that it was anything more than the source of the numbing cold, she felt instinctively that she would best be served by not moving and, if possible, not breathing. Her human curiosity extended only so far. At some point, primal common sense kicked in and instructed her to keep silent—not that she was capable of making any sounds—be still—not that she could move anything more than her arms and legs—and watch—not that she could see anything. Be alert, but unobtrusive. Be aware, but invisible. Be conscious, but try not to think too much.

She succeeded at everything except the latter.

She became aware of something moving toward her. It was infinitely small and intolerably vast. Trying not to move, conscious that she must
not
move, she began to shiver uncontrollably. It came nearer. It made contact. A part of it passed through her. She began to scream frenziedly. That no one could hear her and that she made no sound made it only that much worse.

She awoke and sat up sharply, gasping for air as if she had just crossed the finish line of a double marathon. Scrap was in her face, darting anxiously back and forth, his wings driving clean warm air into her nostrils, his tongue flicking out to caress her in a vain attempt to exorcise whatever it was that was tormenting her. She dragged one hand across her eyes, wiping away the residue of the tears she had sobbed in her sleep.

Because that was what she had been doing: dreaming something she desperately hoped never to dream again.

Hearing a moan as she brushed sweat-saturated hair from her forehead, she used both hands to comfort Scrap. Flinx lay where he had fallen asleep beside her, but he was not still. Pip was darting back and forth above him, occasionally making contact with wingtip or tongue, trying her best to comfort her clearly traumatized master.

He, too, was having a nightmare. Was it the same as hers? Wasn’t that impossible? People could share many things, but not nightmares. Years before, he had spoken to her about his dreams and his headaches. Surely they weren’t contagious?

There was one way to find out. Wake him up.

She started to turn toward him on hands and knees. Recognizing her as a friend, sensing the benevolence inherent in her feelings toward Flinx, Pip darted aside to give her room. That was when Clarity noticed their changed surroundings.

Around her arboreals ought to have been playing in the trees, fliers circling overhead, and small stingless arthropods should be hard at work pollinating the thousands of blossoms. That was the norm for Nur. That was as it should be.

But save for her companion’s moaning, all was silent. The inhabitants of the trees had gone. The sky was empty. The steady susurration of pollinating arthropods was absent. It was as if everything living except her, Flinx, and the two minidrags had fled. But from what?

Flinx moaned again, tossing his head from side to side, and the skies of paradise seemed to darken ever so slightly.

Life on the lakeshore had done more than gone away, she saw. Within a radius of half a dozen meters, not a flower remained attached to a branch. The ground was littered with petals, their tips curled, their bright colors already beginning to fade. A little closer, everything had died. Even the mosslike ground cover over which they had spread their blanket was black and shriveled. What she saw now worried her. It was one thing to project a nightmare and something else entirely to broadcast it strongly enough to kill living things in your vicinity.

Having previously experienced what Flinx could do—when he was awake or unconscious—she did not panic. But it was clear that whatever he was dreaming was far from benign. The likelihood that it could have had a serious effect on his surroundings seemed inescapable. She could think of only one way to put a stop to it.

Wake him up.

Moving closer, she reached for his shoulders. Then she hesitated. She had heard that it was dangerous to wake sleepwalkers or people in the throes of a nightmare. Abruptly awakened, they had been known to strike out and injure those attempting to revive them. Though she was not afraid of being struck by an open palm or fist, she wavered. This was Flinx she was dealing with. That he might strike out at her with something more lethal than clenched fingers was a possibility. She vacillated between grabbing and shaking him and waiting.

His moans were piteous like a little boy lost in an endless warren of menacing, unfriendly streets. Though no tears spilled from his eyes, she could see he was suffering as much as she had, if not more. His head arched back and his lips parted to emit a wordless cry for help. It decided her. She gripped his shoulders, closed her eyes, and shook.

“Wake up, Flinx! Come on, wake up!” The two minidrags fanned the air with blurring wings and looked on uneasily.

His moan cut off. He blinked, caught sight of her as she let go, and let his head slump against the blanket. The sun continued to shine, the lake to lap against the shore; her brain did not explode. Somewhere in the forest, a scarlet midrigel peeped querulously.

Staring upward, not meeting her eyes, he murmured, “I was dreaming, wasn’t I?”

“You were doing more than that, Flinx.” Her tone was grave. “A lot more than that, I think.” She gestured with one hand. “Take a look around.”

Levering himself up on his elbows, he saw the dead ground cover, the fallen petals. “You think I did that?”

“Who else? It’s only you and me here. Your dreams can kill things, Flinx. Like you told me before, you can—project.”

“I can, I know that—emotions, feelings. But something like this . . . I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“You said that your headaches are getting worse. I’m going to assume that your nightmares are also getting worse. Maybe you’re starting to project the feelings you get from them now—or at least some fractional essence of them.” She glanced meaningfully skyward. “If you do that on your ship there’s no one to notice and nothing to be affected except Pip. The effect doesn’t seem to extend very far.”

“Yet,” he muttered miserably. “At least if it
was
me that caused this, I didn’t hurt you.” When she did not reply, he closed his eyes as if in pain. “Please don’t tell me I hurt you.”

“Not physically, no. Can you describe your dream to me, Flinx?” Before he could reply, she added quickly, “No, let me describe my dream to you.”

“You were dreaming, too?” Sitting up now, he was staring at her intently.

“I don’t know that it was my dream. I suppose I must have been experiencing your dream.” She met his gaze unflinchingly. “You not only projected onto your surroundings, Flinx. You projected on me, too. Or into me.”

“Tell me about your dream, Clarity.”

When she had finished, he sat in silence for a long moment before replying. “It’s different from mine. But not so different that I don’t think your experience is related to what I go through.”

“Then you
were
projecting.” She remembered what it was like to be at once fascinated and frightened of this man. It was no less so now, even though six years had passed.

“Not intentionally.” His eyes held a mixture of pleading and concern. “I would never do that. But when I’m asleep I have no control.”

And maybe for not much longer when I’m awake, either, he thought as he considered what had taken place on Goldin IV. Clearly, he could no longer play with his talent, let it ebb and flow within his mind subject only to his whims and the circumstances of the moment. Now he was going to have to fight every hour to keep control of it lest he affect or injure others, however unintentionally.

But what could he do when he was asleep? How could he ensure that he would not harm those around him? Clarity had suffered some kind of dream episode that, although not as specific as his, apparently incorporated some of the same effects. He eyed the fallen flowers and dead ground cover. This time it had only been a few plants. This time.

What if next time instead of affecting her dreams, his distorted, errant abilities impinged on her as forcefully as it had on the local vegetation? What if, next time, he woke up next to a twisted, blackened body?

A runaway drive—that’s what I am, he berated himself. Or at least, that was what he was in danger of becoming. How many sentients would have to suffer until he gained control of himself? And if he never did gain control, if these involuntary projections continued to increase in intensity and become more widespread, would he at last have the courage to do something permanent about it? The only trouble with suicide, he reminded himself, was that there was no future in it.

“You wanted to talk to me about these dreams, Flinx.” He could feel the fear within her, but he remembered her as having courage. Over the intervening years that had not changed. He wondered if he would have had the guts to confront someone like himself.

“You say your dreams are different. Different how?” She peered attentively at him, anxious to learn, keen to understand.

He let his gaze, but not his mind, drift. “You said you had an overwhelming feeling of being in danger, of being threatened.” She nodded. “But you never saw anything specific?”

“That’s right. There was just an all-encompassing sense of doom. I don’t know if that’s a strong enough word. It was . . . foul. And when a part of it went through me . . .” Her words failed her, but her emotions did not. What he perceived within her then was far more evocative than any description she could have provided. “It’s not just a
feeling
of evil for you?” she continued. “You actually
see
something in these dreams?”

“Some of the time. When the dream begins I’m traveling past stars and systems, past what sometimes seems like everything, only I know it isn’t. Though the dream deals with vast spaces the distances involved seem finite.” He lowered his gaze from the blue sky. “That’s the sense I have of the evil I encounter—distant and vast but finite and drifting in the middle of a vast emptiness.”

“It didn’t seem very finite to me,” she muttered, “but, then, I didn’t experience the kind of specifics that you do.” A gnawing fear was growing in her. Though she’d heard this story before, she knew she had to pursue. “What’s it like—this evil?”

He shrugged. “It defines itself by what it is. I’m not trying to be solipsistic. I don’t know how else to put it into words.” He sighed heavily. “Sometimes I have a sense of it as a natural force, like gravity or a Bose-Einstein condensate. Sometimes I perceive it as a conscious entity. Sometimes as both at once—if that doesn’t sound too crazy.”

“Not any crazier than this.” She indicated the dead flowers, the blackened ground cover around them. A deeper fear shot through her that he sensed immediately. “You’re not by any chance channeling this malevolence, Flinx?”

“No!” he snapped back so sharply that she flinched and Pip rose momentarily. “I resist it at every turn. I’m not even sure it’s aware of me, in the way we think of awareness. The scale of physical, or maybe metaphysical, values is so different that I’m not sure this whatever it is is even capable of being conventionally aware of me.” His voice fell. “And then there are times when I think, when I’m convinced, that it’s looking directly at me.”

“Looking? It has eyes?”

“Some organ capable of perceiving with, anyway.” He regarded her helplessly. “I’m trying hard to find suitable referents for things I don’t understand, Clarity.”