"I am told by other AAnn with whom I've spoken that the flavor lies somewhere between fresh ilathk ilathk and salted and salted cuurconn." cuurconn."

Finally gaining control of his troubled fingers, Kiijeem hastened to gesture second-degree bewilderment accentuated by third-degree curiosity. "I do not undersstand why you purssue thiss jarring line of quesstioning."

"I need to be sure of your mind-set regarding me before I tell you what I have to say next." Glancing out of the corner of his left eye he saw that the seriously overfed Pip was in no condition to come to his aid if the conversation should take an unpleasant turn. He had already lost the support of the Teacher Teacher for the time being. Now it appeared that the same was true of his childhood companion as well. However proceedings developed, he was going to have to deal with them on his own. for the time being. Now it appeared that the same was true of his childhood companion as well. However proceedings developed, he was going to have to deal with them on his own.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time.

"I'm going to have to remain here on Blasusarr and in Krra.s.sin for longer than I antic.i.p.ated."

Kiijeem relaxed visibly. Sinking lower into his crouch, his tail resumed its normal healthy side-to-side switching. "I feared you were going to ssay that you had to depart. I cannot tell you how deeply I have come to value thesse nocturnal exchangess. I feel that I learn more in a night here than in a teverravak'ss worth of formal daytime sstudiess."

Flinx was flattered, but that did not alter what he had to tell his enthusiastic and impressionable young host. "I'm glad I've been able to further your education." With a start he realized, not for the first time, the uncannily perceptive rationale that lay behind the name the Ulru-Ujurrians had given to the ship they had constructed for him.

"But I don't feel that I can stay in this spot much longer. I was almost discovered yesterday."

"Yess, you sspoke to me of the near encounter." With hand and tail Kiijeem gestured back through the night in the direction of the residence. "The incident wa.s.s atypical. Thiss iss not a favored part of the family compound for freeloping. It liess too far from the main buildingss."

"Nevertheless," Flinx went on, "I feel that I have to move. As I said and for reasons you don't need to know, I can't leave Blasusarr yet. Maybe not for a number of days. It's looking more and more like I might have more trouble than I originally antic.i.p.ated in departing without being detected." Rising from where he had been sitting, he walked over to his host and squatted before him. This lowered him to eye level with the crouching youth.

"You've been a good friend, Kiijeem. Twice-truly. But if I'm going to be certain of leaving your world without being captured or shot down in the attempt, I feel-I fear-that I'm going to need the a.s.sistance of someone with more status than yourself."

The young AAnn digested the softskin's words. A comparable, characteristically brash human youth might have taken offense at the implication underlying Flinx's words. An a.n.a.lytical young thranx would have readily agreed with the conclusion. A Largessian would not have cared one way or the other. Flinx was taking a risk describing his situation so candidly to his host. But if Kiijeem had not revealed the human's presence to the authorities by now, there was a good chance he would continue to keep it a secret despite his guest's just-confessed vulnerability.

Flinx ardently hoped he was reading the young nye's emotions correctly.

He was, but Kiijeem was not so ready to agree to the roundabout request that he give up exclusive access to his remarkable visitor.

"You have been forthright with me, Flinx-friend. Sso you will not take exception or raisse a challenge if I am likewisse with you."

Flinx sat back, stretching out his legs as he relaxed from the squat. "Go ahead. It's to be expected you'd have questions."

No less bold and direct for their youth, slitted pupils eyed him piercingly. "If you are going to leave, why sshould I not reveal your exisstence to the authoritiess and garner the sstatuss to be gained from ssuch a revelation?"

At this Pip raised her head and upper body to stare at the suddenly cool AAnn. At the moment, given her heavy burden of undigested food, it was all that she could do.

"I have become your friend." Flinx stared unblinkingly back. "You have said so on more than one occasion."

"There iss an old ssaying among my kind that you may know. 'Where sstatuss sstandss tall, friendsship fallss.'"

Flinx tensed. He still felt that, if necessary, he could kill this intelligent young predator with his bare hands. "Do you adhere to that saying?"

"Truly I do," Kiijeem replied candidly, "except-in thiss particular insstance. You are my friend. I have declared it to be sso. I will help you-but I would like to know why why I sshould do sso. I need to know thiss not for mysself. Friendsship iss rea.s.son enough to jusstify it on my part. But if I am to help you in ssecuring the a.s.sisstance of one greater than mysself, before doing sso that individual will demand a rationale ssuperior to jusst knowing that you are my friend." I sshould do sso. I need to know thiss not for mysself. Friendsship iss rea.s.son enough to jusstify it on my part. But if I am to help you in ssecuring the a.s.sisstance of one greater than mysself, before doing sso that individual will demand a rationale ssuperior to jusst knowing that you are my friend."

Though he was less than pleased with the AAnn's rejoinder, Flinx certainly understood it. He responded with a first-degree gesture of comprehension. "I appreciate the need you express, and I will provide such a rationale-to whomever you place me in contact with."

Kiijeem persisted. "I would sshare it."

His guest looked away. "With the best will in the world, Kiijeem, I say that such knowledge as I would share should not be for you."

The AAnn's tail tip arced straight up behind his back. "You think me lacking the capacity to comprehend?"

Unexpectedly, Flinx found himself torn. Why should he care whether he spared his youthful host the revelation he intended to reserve for an older, wiser AAnn mind? Ideally a Cla.s.s-A mind-except that he knew of only one such intellect. Himself. Was it just that he believed from experience that a more mature nye would be better able to deal with the revelations? No, there was no reason to spare the vulnerable, unworldly Kiijeem from the kernel of furtive knowledge that was so much a part of Flinx. No reason whatsoever-except that he was a friend and Flinx did not want to risk damaging him.

"It's not a matter of comprehension," he tried to explain. "It's a question of-maturity isn't the right term. All I can tell you is that in order to wholly persuade one of your kind with sufficiently high status to maintain my anonymity while helping me, they have to experience experience what I know." what I know."

The explanation caught Kiijeem off guard. "How can they do that?"

"The experiencing is part of the explanation." Uncomfortable at what he found himself confessing, Flinx found himself shifting his position edgily on the warm rock.

"I inssisst on knowing thiss rationale for mysself," a frustrated Kiijeem persisted. "I demand demand to know it!" Straightening out of his crouch, he raised both clawed hands defensively in front of him and took a step backward. "Tell me or otherwisse I will divulge your pressence here." to know it!" Straightening out of his crouch, he raised both clawed hands defensively in front of him and took a step backward. "Tell me or otherwisse I will divulge your pressence here."

Flinx sighed heavily. Over the course of the past several years it was debatable whether he had become a greater danger to his enemies or to his friends.

"Let's do this," he ventured hopefully. "I'll tell you the facts behind the rationale. If you still insist on the actual experience then-we'll see."

He was offering a compromise. Recognizing it, Kiijeem considered before replying. His tail tip relaxed and slumped groundward. "I am alwayss willing to lissten to the prologue that precedess the play."

"Good." In the hope that words alone would be enough to convince his youthful host, Flinx settled down to explain the looming peril that had become the driving force behind not only his life but that of his closest acquaintances. He knew all too well what sharing the full experience could do to a delicate mind. If Clarity Held had been with him, he suspected she could have explained the quandary far more effectively to the uncompromisingly curious young AAnn, and in such a way that he might drop his insistence on sharing it as hurriedly as he would a drop of Pip's poison. Because for better or worse, to both her enlightenment and detriment, Clarity had been obliged to share that experience.

Flinx settled himself a little closer to his alert, bright-eyed young host.

"You may very well not believe much of what I'm about to tell you...."

How many times over the past years had he been forced to relive the multiple terrifying encounters? The memories themselves were foul and fetid, the sour taste of something spoiled lingering on the brain. The information he was about to share with the young nye was infinitely more troubling. How should he proceed? How safely and rea.s.suringly to convey the certain information that extinction on a galactic scale was coming this way-without actually showing it to him?

"I have the ability to-sense certain things, Kiijeem. And what I can't sense, others have shown me." There, he thought. Even Maybeso could approve of wording that simple and straightforward. "Over the years I've been made aware of an impending threat. A threat that includes not only you and I, but both of our respective civilizations and, in fact, the entire galaxy. Not just cultures and species, but the planets they live on and the stars they circle."

Kiijeem looked properly staggered, started to fashion a gesture of fourth-degree incredulity, thought better of it, and kept still. His continued silence, Flinx decided, commended him.

"I said that there was much you wouldn't believe."

The young AAnn's tail was barely moving. "Continue, pssakk pssakk. If nothing elsse, you ssurely have my attention. Your verity I can pa.s.s judgment on later."

Flinx nodded, then shifted his attention deliberately skyward. "You don't need to know how I was made aware of this threat. It was first crystallized for me some ten Commonwealth years ago. I've had to live with the knowledge of what it is, and of what I am, ever since."

Kiijeem pondered the human's words. "What could be a threat to an entire galaxy, except perhapss a colliding galaxy? Unless my ssimple a.s.stronomical sstudiess have been sseverely remiss, that iss ssomething not in the offing."

"There is something else," Flinx informed him gravely. "Something more, much more. A something of which very, very few humans and thranx are aware. Though the effort seems futile they-we-are fumbling about trying to find some way, any way, that this threat might be confronted." He lowered his gaze back to his youthful host.

"I cannot describe it any other way other than to say that this menacing phenomenon is composed of pure evil. I realize such a depiction smacks more of philosophy than physics, but having tried on repeated occasions to describe it to others, that is the impression I am always left with subsequent to encountering it. It is coming this way, toward our galaxy, in the wake of a region human astronomers have for centuries called the Great Emptiness, and their thranx counterparts the Great Void. The object, the phenomenon, the deformation of standard physics-whatever you want to call it-is about three hundred million light-years wide and occupies a total volume of s.p.a.ce some hundred million megapa.r.s.ecs in extent."

Kiijeem had ceased moving as his gifted but adolescent mind struggled to grasp such impossible dimensions. Having been forced to deal with the inconceivable for so many years, Flinx could only sympathize with him. Trying to comprehend such scale was enough to give any sentient a headache.

"In place of this phenomenon, nothing else exists. Where it pa.s.ses, everything except a few streamers of free hydrogen disappears. I'm told it may violate the law of the conservation of energy. If it keeps coming this way, continues on its present path, it could conceivably obliterate the entire galaxy. Commonwealth, Empire-everything vanishes."

"What-jezzantt-what doess it look like?" Kiijeem's voice had grown even softer than usual. "You ssaid you are aware of it, that you have knowledge of what it iss."

"I don't know what it looks like. I can only describe the feeling I get when I am mentally in its vicinity." Flinx found himself remembering, and did not want to. "Its actual physical appearance, insofar as it has one, is blocked from our view by an immense gravitational lens of dark matter. Or maybe the lens is part of the phenomenon. The scientists with whom I have been sharing my knowledge are among the most accomplished to be found anywhere in the Commonwealth, but this is something beyond their ken. Beyond anyone's, they feel."

Kiijeem struggled to grasp the incomprehensible. "If they cannot undersstand it or desscribe thiss menace, how can they, or you, or anyone, envissage a meanss for combating it?"

"There are other sciences involved besides those of the Commonwealth." Leaning forward, Flinx traced the outline of a familiar alien pyramid in the dust that covered the sandstone. "Nontraditional physics and the discoveries of prehumanx species. An ancient but still functioning potential weapon." He sat back. "All of them little more than negligible hopes, to my way of thinking. But my friends are more optimistic, and they're more knowledgeable and more experienced than I am. And I've given my word that I'll try and help."

"You?" Though still undecided whether to believe any or all of the incredible story the softskin had just told him, Kiijeem found himself eyeing his guest in a new light. "You are but one human. An exceptionally bold and interessting example, truly, but one only. If I were to give credence to your tale, which iss more fanta.s.stical even than the ssemiliterate ravingss of the great talltale twirler Vuusskandd L himsself, the la.s.st thing I would imagine iss that a ssingle individual could have any influence at all on a threat of ssuch magnitude."

Flinx gazed back into the penetrating, forward-facing alien eyes. "Then we are in complete agreement. Because I think exactly the same thing. But there are those who believe otherwise. My friends and"-he dropped his gaze-"others. Some others I can identify, some who still remain a mystery to me. They come to me in dreams. Unbidden, and sometimes when I'm awake."

Kiijeem considered. "Iss it permitted to me to ssimultaneoussly believe your sstory and doubt your ssanity?"

"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 a.s.sured of safe pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sk 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." n.o.body's mind is like mine n.o.body'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 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. 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 Kiijeem himself. The human must know that. Therefore, everything he had just chronicled was either an elaborate suicidal lie or ...

Or he was telling the truth, preposterous as it seemed.

Kiijeem felt a tightening in his throat. The entire galaxy under threat of destruction. Perhaps not in time to imperil himself, but possibly his descendants, his extended family. The Imperial realm at risk. Or-nothing at all. Quite likely what he was hearing was little more than the imaginative ravings of a demented softskin.

There was one thing he could not bring himself to dispute. In the course of his life it was apparent that this Flinx had been compelled to make some difficult decisions. The human was brave or foolhardy or both. Which begged the question.

What then was Kiijeem AVMd?

One more time he allowed his eyes to meet the unnaturally round ones of his visitor. He thought he saw something there. Or perhaps his imagination was also far-reaching.

"I think I know jusst the nye who can help."

Kiijeem was not permitted to travel outside the family compound after a certain hour lest he find himself challenged by an older youth-or worse, an adult urgently in search of status. That meant they would have to cross part of the city in the daytime. The dense crowds among which they would find themselves would help to shield Flinx from the attention of security monitors, but the same concerns that had prevented him from trying to reach his desert touchdown site on his own still applied. Before they could go anywhere, they somehow had to change his appearance.

"The simsuit that allows me to pa.s.s as one of your kind is not malleable," Flinx explained the following day. He held up the sophisticated skin so that his young host could marvel at the detail. "It allows me to do many things: simulate tail movement, flex claws, even operate both eye membranes. But I can't alter its appearance."

"Truly, you have ssaid s...o...b..fore." Turning, Kiijeem reached back and dug around in the depths of the container that he used for hiding the rations that he had been smuggling out to his guest. "That iss why I have brought thiss."

Kiijeem unfolded a square of plain brown, gauzy material. The lower edge was hemmed with a strip of heavier, darker brown that was almost bronze in color. Eyeing it dubiously, Flinx was not impressed.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" he wondered aloud. "Put it over my head?"

"Exactly." Kiijeem held it out to the human. "It iss transslucent enough to ssee through, breathess well, and will completely ma.s.sk your featuress from patrolling ssecurity perssonnel as well as automatic sscannerss."

Taking the synthetic material, Flinx eyed it suspiciously. It weighed very little. "Won't I look silly walking around with this over my head?"

"Not ssilly." Kiijeem corrected him somberly. "Pathetic."

"Pathe ...?" Flinx set the material aside. Pip immediately commenced an investigation of the intriguing soft folds. "Why? What does the wearing of this signify? Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing it on any other nye."

"Not all who are allowed to wear the ijkk ijkk choosse to do sso," Kiijeem explained. "You ssee the metallic hem? The ijkk itsself ssignifiess a dessire for privacy. The color of the metal band indicatess that the wearer iss impotent." choosse to do sso," Kiijeem explained. "You ssee the metallic hem? The ijkk itsself ssignifiess a dessire for privacy. The color of the metal band indicatess that the wearer iss impotent."

Flinx nearly smiled. "I mean no offense, Kiijeem, but I didn't know you were mature enough to be familiar with the concept."

"Mature enough, ssoftsskin, to kill you if you continue to mock me."

"Truly." Flinx readily conceded the point even as he repressed a diffident smile. "Please accept my groveling contrition." For good measure he added a second-degree gesture of apology.

Kiijeem was appropriately mollified. "No one will challenge the wearer of an ijkk that iss thussly hemmed. Indeed, painss will be taken to avoid you. Obsscured within, you may draw more attention than you are accusstomed to receiving from my sspeciess, but it will only be of the sstaring kind. Unless we happen to encounter a physsician who happenss to sspecialize in the treatment of ssuch biological dissorderss, no one iss likely to sspeak to you. Nor will you be challenged. The sstatuss of anyone who dared to do sso would immediately be diminisshed, not enlarged."

On a human world a widow could obtain privacy by wearing a full head covering in black, Flinx knew. Here, the wearing of the brown, bronze-trimmed, veiling fabric signified a death of a different kind. No wonder Kiijeem had confidence in the simple disguise. To the ever-aggressive AAnn the loss of reproductive capability would be second only to death itself. Seeing one of their own so publicly garbed they would feel only pity and would go out of their way to respect the wretched nye's lamentable condition.

Turning away from where Pip was slinking through the depths of the lightweight accessory, Flinx leaned slightly to his right for a better view of the distant, sunken main residence. "How will you get free to escort me? I doubt I could find your friends on my own."

"Truly alsso, Flinx-friend. Additionally, a more perssonal introduction iss necessary if your appearance iss not to sspread panic and confussion. It iss important, I think, that I perssonally explain your pressence here lesst fright and alarm enssue. To address your concern: desspite my resstrictive sstudiess, I am permitted ssome sself-time. I have not in quite ssome time vissited in persson the friendss of whom I sspeak. We communicate electronically. Iss it not the ssame with my age counterpartss among your kind?"

"Depends on the individual. I never did much electronic communicating myself." Or communicating of any kind Or communicating of any kind, he added silently. "I'm more the listening than the talking type. I like to know how individuals-feel."

"You will feel confident, I think, once we are outsside my ressidence compound and back among ssmall packss of my people." Reaching down, he picked up the ijkk. As she slithered to one side, Pip raised her iridescent emerald-hued head and hissed at him. Kiijeem had no idea how fortunate he was that she did not perceive him as an enemy.

The young AAnn looked on in absorbed fascination as Flinx began the slow process of donning the simsuit. The interior lining was essentially one large spray-woven sensor. Picking up the slightest twitches of his muscles, ligaments, and tendons as well as the movements of his bones, millions of minuscule sensor points instantly transferred that information to the artificial counterparts that lined the interior of the suit. While Flinx moved like a human, the suit's interwoven computational system logics automatically transcribed the actions into the correspondingly appropriate movements for an adult nye. Fed to the suit's silent servos and other integrated systems, it allowed the wearer to simulate the physicality of an AAnn to a degree no actor could equal.

Slipping into her built-in internal pouch, Pip folded her wings tightly against her sides, curled up, and went to sleep against her master. While there was room for her to move around inside the simsuit without sacrificing its believability, unless something roiled Flinx's emotions she was quite content to rest and do as little as possible.

Only after the suit's ventral self-seal melded itself invisibly into its scaly milieu and the ocular pickups activated was the illusion complete. Turning to face his young host, Flinx spread his arms, at ease as the suit's sensors and servos were instructed by the integral woven computer to force his limbs into the AAnn gesture that best approximated his physical intent. The artifice was uncanny. Kiijeem's unmitigated astonishment at the comprehensiveness of the consequent masquerade did not surprise Flinx. He had been fooling far more perceptive and mature nye for many days now.

"Truly I ssee," the youth hissed softly, "and yet it iss sstill hard to accept. I know you are within. I ssaw you don the array mysself. Yet the russe iss sso complete that I think if I ssaw you on a city path I would not be able to ssingle you out from among the horde."

"I should hope not," Flinx told him. "If anyone does, then you won't have to worry about how your friends will react to me." Crouching down by the side of the pool, he settled into the conventional AAnn posture for drinking from an open body of water and proceeded to sip lightly. He was not particularly thirsty: his suit provided for such needs. But he was especially proud of the way the suit's faux tongue worked and wanted to show off, just a bit, for his young friend.

"Crssagg-amazing," Kiijeem murmured as he looked on. When Flinx finally straightened, the youth was holding his visitor's AAnn garb out to him-along with the ijkk. "Dress yoursself. Do not put on the ijkk until we are well outsside the ressidence. We do not want to attract attention from the housse."