So she had! It was hard to remember it that way now, but he had pinpointed her original motives for leaving Sentinel Gate. Whether she liked it or not, he was getting to know her, too, better than anyone had ever known her. The flow through the empathy pipe ran both ways. It had been open for only a year. How well would they know each other in a
century
?
"And now," he was continuing, "you're going home with-out a thing."
"Nonsense! I have a new artifact to think about. An amazing one. The Torvil Anfract is a Builder creation, the strangest we've ever seen."
"Maybe. But can I quote what a certain professor told me, back on Sentinel Gate? 'There
was
nothing more interesting in my life than Builder artifacts—so long as the Builders remained hidden. But once you meet the Builders' sentient constructs, and think you have a chance to find the Builders themselves, why, the past is irrelevant. artifacts can't compete.' Remember who said that?"
He was not expecting an answer. Darya had one, but she did not offer it. Instead she looked again out of the observation bubble. In the sky outside, the blackness was breaking to a scatter of faint light. A view of the spiral arm was coming into view; the
real
spiral arm, as it ought to look, undistorted by singularity sheets or quantum speckle or Torvil chimeras. They must be almost out of the Anfract.
"But you're no closer to the Builders now than you were a year ago," Hans went on. "Farther away, in some ways. When we were dealing with the Builder constructs on Glister and Serenity, you thought that The-One-Who-Waits and Speaker-Between held the key to the exact plans and intentions of the Builders. Now we find that Guardian and World-Keeper agree completely with each other—but they don't agree with the other constructs at all. It's a mess and it's a muddle, and you have to be disappointed and miserable."
Darya didn't feel the least bit miserable or disappointed. She had questions, scores of them, but that was what the world was all about.
She smiled fondly at Hans Rebka—or was she just smiling at the warm feeling inside her? Surely a bit of both. "Of course Guardian and World-Keeper agree with each other. You'd expect them to—because they are
the same entity
. They are one construct existing in a mixed quantum state, just the way J'merlia existed. But in their case, it's permanent." And then, while Hans jerked his head back and stared along his nose at her in astonishment, she went on. "Hans, I've learned more about Builders and constructs in the past year than anyone has
ever
known. And you know what? Every new piece of information has made things
more
puzzling. So here's the central question: If all the constructs are earnest and industrious and incapable of lying, and if they are all busy carrying out the agenda of their creators, then why is everything so confusing?"
She did not expect an answer. She would have been upset if Hans Rebka had tried to offer one. He was going to be the tryout audience for the paper she would write when she returned to Sentinel Gate. Their departure from the research institute had hardly been a triumph. She laughed to herself. Triumph? Their exit had been a
disaster
; Professor Merada, wringing his hands and moaning about the artifact catalog; Glenna Omar, her neck covered in burn ointment and bandages; Carmina Gold firing off outraged messages to the Alliance Council . . . The next paper that Darya produced had better be
really
good.
"I'll tell you why we've been confused, Hans. The Builder constructs have terrific physical powers, we know that by direct experience. And it's tempting to think that anything with that much power has to know what it's doing. But I don't believe it anymore. For one thing, they all have
different
ideas as to their purpose. How come? There's only one plausible answer: They contradict each other,
because each construct had to develop its ideas for itself
.
"Our assumption that the machines have been following a well-defined Builder program is nonsense. There's no such program—or if there is, the constructs don't know it.
"I'll tell you what I think happened. Five million years ago, the Builders upped and vanished. The machines were left behind. Like the other artifacts, they're
relics
left by the Builders. But there's one big difference: the constructs are
intelligent
. They sat and waited for the promised return—real or imaginary—of their creators; and while they waited, they invented agendas to justify their own existence. And each construct made up a Builder Grand Design in which it played the central role. Sound familiar?—just like humans?
"It wasn't the Builders who decided Genizee was a special place that one day they'd settle down in. They evolved on a
gas-giant
planet, for God's sake—what would they want with a funny little world like Genizee? It was
Guardian
who decided that its planet was special and set up a weird quarantine system to keep space around it free of anyone who failed the test of ethical behavior. Apparently we passed, and the Zardalu failed. Pretty weird, you might say, but the other constructs are just as bad. The-One-Who-Waits thought that Quake was uniquely special, and Speaker-Between knew that Serenity was the only important place."
Rebka was shaking his head. "I think you're wrong. I think the Builders are still around, but they don't want us
looking
for them. I think they tried to confine the Zardalu to Genizee, but the Zardalu escaped, and got out of control. The Great Rising took care of the Zardalu, they were no problem anymore. But now the Builders are worried about us. Maybe
we'll
get out of control, too. I think the Builders are
scared
of us."
Darya frowned at him. He did not seem to realize that one was not supposed to interrupt the logical flow of a presented paper.
"Hans, you're as bad as the constructs! You're trying to make us
important
. You want the Builders to like us, or be afraid of us, or even hate us, but you can't accept the idea that they don't care about us or know we exist because on their scale of things we are
insignificant
."
She paused for breath, and he squeezed in his question: "Well, if you're so smart and so sure you know what's going on, tell me this: Where are the Builders
now
?"
"I don't know. They could be anywhere—at the galactic center, out in free-space a billion light-years away, on a whole new plane of existence that we don't know about. It makes no difference to my argument."
"All right, suppose they are gone. What role
do
we play in their affairs."
"I already told you." Darya grabbed his arm. One did not do
that
in a written paper, either, but no matter. "
None.
Not a thing. We're of no importance to the Builders whatsoever. They don't care what we do. They created their constructs, and they left. They have no interest in the artifacts, either—they're big deals to us, but just throwaway items to them, left-behind boxes in an empty house.
"The Builders have no interest in humans, Cecropians, or anyone else in the spiral arm. No interest in you. No interest in me. That's the hardest bit to swallow, the one that some people will never accept. The Builders are not our enemies. They are not our friends. We are not their children, or their feared successors; we are not being groomed to join them. The Builders are
indifferent
to us. They don't care if we chase after them or not."
"Darya, you don't mean that. If you don't chase after them you'll be giving up everything—abandoning your lifework."
"Hey, I didn't say I wouldn't chase them—only that
they don't care
if I do or I don't. Of course I'll chase them! Wherever the Builders went, their constructs couldn't go. But maybe
we
can go. We're not the types to wait for an invitation. Humans and Cecropians, even Zardalu, we're a pushy lot. Every year we learn a little bit more about one of the artifacts, or find a path that takes us farther into the interior of another. In time we'll understand it all. Then we'll find where the Builders went, and in time we'll go after them. They don't care what we do now, or what we are. But maybe they won't be indifferent to what we
will
be, when we learn to find and follow them."
As she spoke, Darya was running the sanity checks on her own ideas. Publishable as a provocative think piece? Probably—her reputation would help with that. Credible? No way. For people like Professor Merada there had to be supporting evidence. Proof. Documentation. References. Without them, her paper would be viewed as evidence that Darya Lang had gone over the edge. She would become one of the Institute's crackpots, banished to that outer darkness of the lunatic fringe from which there was no return.
Unless she did her homework.
And such homework.
She could summarize current progress in penetrating and understanding Builder artifacts. That was easy; she could have managed it without leaving Sentinel Gate. She could describe the Torvil Anfract, too, and offer persuasive evidence that it was an artifact of unprecedented size and complexity. She could and would organize another expedition to it. But for the rest . . .
She began to speak again, outlining the program to Hans Rebka. They would need more contact with Builder sentient constructs. On Glister, certainly, and on Serenity, too, once they found a way to make that jump thirty thousand light-years out of the galactic plane. Naturally they would have to return to the Anfract, and understand the mixed-quantum-state being, Guardian/World-Keeper. The use of macroscopic quantum states offered so much potential, it too could not be ignored. And of course they would have to hunt down other constructs, with help from Guardian, and interact with them long enough to detail their functions. Perhaps humans and Cecropians and the other organic intelligences would have to become new leaders for the constructs, defining a new agenda for them, one that corresponded to the reality of the Builders' departure. And they must return to Genizee, too, and learn how to handle the Zardalu. Julian Graves would insist on it, no matter what anyone else wanted.
Hans Rebka listened. After a while he took a deep breath. Darya did not seem to realize what she was proposing. She imagined that she was describing a research effort. It was nothing like that. It was a long-term development program for the whole spiral arm. It would involve all organic and inorganic intelligences in decades of work—centuries of work,
lifetimes
of work. Even if she was wrong about the Builders (Hans believed that she was) she was describing a monstrous project.
That did not faze her at all. He studied her intent face. She was
looking forward
to it.
Could it be done? He did not know. He knew it would not go as smoothly as Darya seemed to imagine—nothing in the real world ever did. But he knew he would never talk her out of trying. And she would need all the help that she could get.
Which left
him
—where?
Hans Rebka leaned forward and took Darya's hands in his. She did not seem to notice. She was till talking, shaping, formulating.
He sighed. He had been wrong. Trouble was not ending as the
Erebus
wound its leisurely and peaceful way out of the Torvil Anfract. Trouble was just beginning.
"—and here they come."
Louis Nenda squinted gloomily across the open plain, a flat barren landscape broken in one place by a twisted thicket of the moss plants sprouted beyond gigantism. It was almost nightfall, and the
Indulgence
, in spite of all his efforts, had skidded to a halt within the elongated shadow of those same jutting sandstone towers where he had first run from the Zardalu.
"The weapons are ready." Either Atvar H'sial was totally calm, or she had a control of her pheromonal output that Nenda would never achieve. "However, the partial exposure of the target group makes complete success doubtful. With your concurrence I will withhold our fire until they pursue their usual strategy of a mass attack. At that time a more significant number of them will be within range."
"Okay—unless they try another one of their damn botany tricks. First sign of that you blast 'em—and don't wait to talk it over with me."
The side ports of the
Indulgence
had been opened to permit Atvar H'sial a direct omnidirectional viewing of the area around the scoutship. Her vision unaffected by fading light, she sat at the weapons console. Louis Nenda was by her side in the pilot's chair. He had modified one of the displays to look directly down. At the first sign of sprouting life beneath them he would propel the
Indulgence
laterally across the surface. They might not be able to leave the surface of Genizee, but they could certainly try to skim around on it.
The Zardalu were rising from the sea, floating upward one by one to stand a few meters offshore with only their heads showing. Louis Nenda watched thirty of them emerge before he stopped counting. Numbers were not important. One would be more than enough if it reached the ship.
Evening sunlight glittered off bulbous heads of midnight blue. Judging from those same heads, the Zardalu included four of the biggest specimens that Nenda had ever seen. They were twice the size of the still-growing forms who had pursued them into the interior of Genizee. They must be part of the original fourteen, the Zardalu who had been held in stasis on Serenity. Nenda had fought them once and knew how tough they were.
"Get ready." The first one was wading ashore to stand spraddle-tentacled on the beach. It was close enough for Nenda to see the steady peristalsis of land-breathing in the thick body.
"I am ready, Louis. But I prefer a mass of them as target. One is not enough. And in addition . . . ????"
The pheromones trailed off into a prolonged question mark. Louis Nenda needed no explanation. An adult Zardalu in upright posture could glide the forty meters between shore and ship in a few seconds. But this Zardalu was not standing. While the rest stood motionless in the water, it had slumped forward like a flattened starfish, tentacles stretched wide and horizontal, head facing the ship. After a few seconds it drew its flexible limbs together into a tight group facing the sea and began to push itself slowly forward toward the
Indulgence
. The head was lifted just far enough for the huge cerulean eyes to stare at the ship.