Intelligentsor

The holographic image was that of a man, one who would have been tall and hefty even divested of the containment-suit which muffled him whole. A space-helmet with a one-way mirrored visor likewise hid his features, but Joe noted that for Flashtease there was no hiding the nostalgic pride that fairly beamed from him the minute this masked titan muscled into view.

“He was still around when I was at entry-level,” Flashtease told Joe. “It’s Intelligentsor, the man who ended the First and Final War. Every so often he’d come here to give us talks about it. Only in his own way, of course. There were things Intelligentsor went through that he promised us he’d never reveal. And he never mentioned the whens or wheres, which just didn’t seem important to him anymore. Not that it was for little Mini-Flashes to say what should be important to someone who’d lived as long and seen as much as Intelligentsor. But we knew that he was wise, and strong, and noble, and even kind too, in a way. Although, obviously…” and Flashtease let his voice tail off, as if expecting Joe to understand the conditions that necessarily applied to this last.

Our hero however felt that perhaps he already did. A note of caution had to be sounded whenever he presumed to read this galaxy through the lens of his own, but Joe could picture some bluff old retired sergeant-major visiting schools to deliver occasional lectures to the children there. A storyteller of compendious supply with a different inspiring yarn each time, but one who never failed to observe a stern soldierly silence on those chapters of his experience which were not for the ears of the very young. Joe suspected he knew what kindness it was Flashtease perceived in this Intelligentsor, who doubtless had extended to him and his fellow Mini-Flashes all the patience and indulgence of the distinguished gentleman he was, but who also required them in their innocence to stay ever one side of his boundary. The senior Flashtease who stood by Joe now took up the tale.

Intelligentsor’s phenomenal lifespan was one of the wonders of the quadrant, for even in the days of the First and Final War he had already been established as a leading scientist of enormous repute. It was he who at last made the breakthrough on which the fate of the galaxy depended, after sleepless unstinting toil in laboratories whose operation by the end relied on oil-lamps and open flames. Intelligentsor determined beyond all question that the Vernderernders and Verandas stemmed from a common ancestor, and that this variable was somehow the cause of their hostilities blighting every other creature in the galaxy.

But how to convey this to the ones who must so urgently be informed? Correspondence between Intelligentsor’s homeworld and the far-off frozen battle-site was a forlorn dream, and any starship new enough to be capable of hyperspeed had long ago succumbed to corrupting techno-viruses. Intelligentsor might have drawn close to despair as he stood in the perpetual twilight of a planet dwindling towards doom, lone custodian of the knowledge that might save all, and stared up at one or two visible stars which sparsely studded an infinity of unattainable black.

There was only one way it might be done. A solid-fuel ship. No computers, no electro-cognitive arrays, and no faster-than-light drive for them to govern. No food-machines or recreational suites or entertainments or amenities. Just a stokehold and a room full of rations, such as ships had been when the very concept of stellar sailing was new. Intelligentsor’s journey would be lengthier and wearier than any astronaut had contemplated for a hundred generations. Nor was that the worst of it. Though his inanimate craft would be immune to the disease, he himself was not. Only through some miracle had he lasted this long. Out there in the gulfs, where pestilence held sway, there was no hope his health might endure. Intelligentsor knew that even if he completed this voyage at all, it could not be without terrible cost.

Yet he had to go. If he did not, there was no-one else.

So Intelligentsor went.

What it had been, to crawl along deserted space-lanes that had once teemed with streamlined freight, to measure each excruciating mile which now-useless technology might have skipped over in an instant, and to chart this unfriendly universe of emptiness and dark by nothing but the engines’ ever-demanding burn, were among those secrets Intelligentsor had elected to bear eternally with him. All that was certain was that one day, subsequent to a stretch of time now beyond reckoning in this or any galaxy, the tiny dot of an antiquated travel-worn space-vessel appeared amid the ice-system’s exhausted skies. Intelligentsor had arrived. He had made it.

And he had been right, as ever, about the price he would have to pay.

For at the outset of his long lonely odyssey Intelligentsor had been a man like any other, whose skin and hair and eyes and smile were known to the many worlds. But when the hatch of his hulk creaked open at last and he first set foot down upon alien glaciers, he did so clad in containment-suit and the helmet with the mirrored mask. And throughout all the ages stretching between that day and the recent present, Intelligentsor was never seen without his protective clothing again.

“Well, they listened,” finished Flashtease. “Vernderernders don’t actually mind a conference-table, just like Neetra found out, and Verandas positively pride themselves on their peacemaking skills. Anyway, Intelligentsor made them see. He proved to them what they were to each other, and said they were free to stay enemies even despite that, but there mustn’t be any more wars between them. Toothfire and the Verandas didn’t really have much choice but to agree, not unless they wanted to rule a dead quadrant when they were done. So they set off back to their separate stamping-grounds where they’ve kept apart ever since, and the First and Final War was over. Gradually the galaxy began to come back to life. You can probably imagine how happy everyone was.”

That much, Joe could indeed. Between the creation of Nottingham, the beating-back of three attacks by Dimension Borg, the peaceful withdrawal of Martian colonizers and the end of the Solidity War, our hero was no stranger to that genus of joy attendant on a time of sorrow coming to its close. He had cried quietly for sheer gladness on each of these instances, and even having lived the First and Final War at one remove he felt like doing so again now. For a long while Joe was content to stand before Intelligentsor’s image and join Flashtease in remembering the strange scientist sergeant-major for whose deeds millions more across the brightening constellations had surely shed identical tears.

“This wonderful man, Flashtease,” Joe resumed at last. “This hero, if ever one lived. On what world do they show his tomb?”

“His memorial,” corrected the Mini-Flash. “Because he didn’t exactly die, not quite. That’s a whole other story. But anyway, have a look…”

Taking up the data-unit Flashtease flicked to a large star-chart on which the planet popularly held to have been Intelligentsor’s home was highlighted. Joe scanned the cosmology outspread before him in search of the twin planets he had had his eye on since soon after beginning business at the archive, and these located, swiftly calculated the distance between them and the former.

It was not impossible. Incredible, to be sure, for anyone today to so much as consider undertaking the trek in a ship bereft of hyperdrive. But it was at least narrowly this side of the divide between achievable fact and outrageous fantasy that Intelligentsor might have covered such ground under the conditions described by Flashtease.

Our hero took a deep breath, and pointed.

“There, my friend,” said he. “Those are the twin planets Nereynis and Drenthis. And the system in which they circle is where the First and Final War was waged.”

Contrary to Joe’s concerns, the racer was waiting faithfully above the surface of the mud when he and Flashtease traipsed back from the archive to clamber inside. The foot-spaces were going to need a thorough scrubbing, but the day had been more than worth it.

“Well, I’m convinced,” declared Flashtease. “I thought I’d heard it all, but that explanation was your best yet. I’m really looking forward to telling the others!”

“And let us hope my deductive reasoning impresses them as much as it has you,” added Joe. He turned to take one last look at the old Flash Club archive, its deceptively plain oblong exterior standing somewhat askew but firmly enough amidst the trappings of Flashtease’s halcyon days. It was still here for now, even though there were no guarantees it would always be so.

“Are you wondering if it’s going to sink?” Flashtease asked with a little smile.

“Earlier, I was,” Joe confessed. “But now it seems to me that if this should come to pass, then perhaps that is the way it must be. History ever recedes, Flashtease. We cannot remain in what is already done. Your friend Intelligentsor, even when subject to the cruel twists of all that had gone before, chose not to languish. Instead, he acted. It is time for us to follow his example.”

Our hero fired up the motor for the road ahead, whose scheduled stops included Drenthis and Nereynis, reunion with Neetra and the rescue of the farns. It just went to show, Joe reflected, that the past truly was the greatest teacher. Today he had learned from it everything he wished to know, and much else besides. Now however, as he said, the time had come for himself and Flashtease to leave the past behind.

After all, it wasn’t as if the future could wait.