The chair swiveled. Louis found himself looking down at a slightly-built, large-headed man whose hands and feet seemed a bit too big for his body.
He dropped the flower to the carpeted floor. "You!" he said. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Even before his question was answered, Louis could see some irony in the situation. Back in the Mandel system, he had carefully explained to Atvar H'sial that he was not interested in Darya Lang, or she in him. She already had a man, Hans Rebka, the trouble-shooting specialist from the Phemus Circle. He had been with Darya the last time that Louis had seen her. It ought to be no surprise that he was with her now.
But it was. The only good news was that Atvar H'sial would be pleased when she found out.
"What are you doing here?" Louis repeated. "And where is she?"
Rebka, after the initial moment of shock, was scowling. "I hoped I'd seen the last of you."
"Mutual. Where is she, Rebka? What you doing in her office?"
The scowl was replaced by a different expression. Guilt, if Louis was any judge.
"She's not here." Hans Rebka stood up. "But thanks for the flower. It's nice to know you care."
"She's not at the Institute?"
"Not here, not on Sentinel Gate."
"Then where is she?"
Again, that shifty look on Rebka's face. Louis wished that Atvar H'sial was present. This was a case for some high-class reading of pheromonal messages.
"I don't know where she is."
"You think I'll swallow that? Come off it, Rebka, you went muff-sniffing after her the minute you first met her. You chased her all over Opal and Serenity and Genizee. Damn it, you were sitting in her own chair when I came in." Nenda pointed at the name plate on the desk, and had a sudden suspicion. The window overlooked the path. Darya Lang might have seen him. She could have watched his approach to the building, even his picking of the flower. "Did
she
tell you to get rid of me?"
"She hasn't mentioned your name once since you and your bug friend left us." That at least sounded true—Hans Rebka acted too pleased for it to be a lie.
Louis took a step closer. "Well, I'm not leaving this place until I find out where she went. What have you done with her? This is important."
Rebka took his own step forward. The scowl came back. All the signs for a fight were there, and in spite of Rebka's tough-guy reputation Louis was looking forward to it.
But then, unpredictably, Hans Rebka's mood shifted. Instead of raising the testosterone level further, he shook his head and sighed.
"You want to know what's happening with Darya? All right, I'll tell you. But let's go to the dining-room."
"Why not do it here?"
"Because we'll need a drink and somewhere comfortable to sit. This is going to take a while."
Nenda's own sense of time suddenly cut in. "How long?"
"Depends how many stupid questions you keep interrupting me with. What's it matter how long it takes?"
"Give me two minutes, and it won't matter." Louis Nenda headed for the door. "I'll be right back. There's someone else has to hear this."
The introduction of an adult Cecropian into the small faculty dining-room at the Artifact Research Institute had one desirable effect. A little group of loungers, seated snacking at a couple of tables and chatting about their work, took one look at Atvar H'sial and hurried out.
Score one for Karelia, Louis Nenda thought with some satisfaction, as he arranged chairs to make room for the Cecropian. You'd never have separated inhabitants of his home world from their food that easily. They'd have stayed, and fought Atvar H'sial or a dozen other monsters for their meal if they had to.
Hans Rebka hadn't been overjoyed at the sight of her, either, although he knew her well.
"I didn't say anything about including your partner-in-crime in this conversation," he had said, when Louis appeared with Atvar H'sial in tow.
"She's no more a criminal than I am." Louis saw Rebka's reaction to that, and hurried on before it could start another argument. "Soon as we get settled in, I'll summarize At's thinking for you. Then you'll know just why we're here on Sentinel Gate."
But that explanation, when Nenda hung his muscular arms over the back of a dining-room chair and talked to Hans Rebka, sounded thin and feeble. Builder constructions inside Genizee fading and vanishing before your eyes. Builder artifacts, stable for millions of years, suddenly gone. Massive and inexplicable changes to the geometry of the spiral arm. Suspicions that the Bose Network itself, the keystone of galactic travel and commerce, might be affected. It was none too persuasive, not when all around Nenda the serene world of the Artifact Research Institute—the very place where such changes ought to have drawn most attention—went quietly about its usual business.
"Pretty far-out, eh?" Nenda said defensively, as he came to his final comment, of the need to consult with Darya Lang. Then he saw Hans Rebka's face. The other man was not looking skeptical, far from it. He was watching and listening open-mouthed.
Had Louis said something he shouldn't have? If so, he couldn't think what. He straightened up, gripping the back of the chair in his muscular hands. "Anyway, that's why we're here. So now, tell us what's goin' on at your end."
Rebka shook his head. "I told you it would take a while to explain. But after what you've said . . ."
"It gets shorter? You've been hearing the same things?"
"No. It gets
longer
. Make yourselves comfortable, and sit tight. I'm going to have to start in on this from the very beginning."
The high that Darya experienced on her return to Sentinel Gate had to end. She knew that. She just hadn't expected to come down so far and so fast.
It was not that she was hoping for a big parade, or cheering crowds at the spaceport. What she had accomplished was hot stuff, but only to the scattered specialists for whom the
Lang Universal Artifact Catalog
(Fourth Edition) had become a kind of bible.
What
had
she done? Well, she had confirmed all new
Catalog
references, and verified their sources. With the fifth edition ready to go to press, Professor Merada should be ecstatic.
Her group had also returned from Genizee with an infant Zardalu in their possession, proving to the whole spiral arm that the old menace was back and breeding. That
was
important, but she claimed little credit for it—less than she gave to Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda. They had done all the work. And the little Zardalu would never come to Sentinel Gate. It had been taken to Miranda, for careful inspection.
Her personal ego-boost would come at the institute, and only at the institute. But there, at least, she was bursting to tell her story; and they should be bursting to hear it.
"Calm down, Darya." That was Hans, sitting by her side on the final leg of the journey. "Relax, or you'll blow a circuit."
Sound words. It wouldn't be good to let Professor Merada or Carmina Gold or any of the other institute heavies know how excited she felt. They prized calm, cool logic—or claimed to. You would never know it by listening to the screaming arguments at faculty meetings.
Darya did her best to follow Hans Rebka's advice. E. Crimson Tally, the embodied computer sitting in front of her, had turned questioningly at Rebka's final words. She smiled at him reassuringly. " 'Blow a circuit' is just a figure of speech, E.C. I don't have circuits to blow—a blood vessel, maybe. But really, I'm fine."
And she was—or would be, as soon as she was inside and had Merada's ear. Darya jumped out of the hovercraft before it stopped moving. She hurried into the building, up a flight of stairs, and along the corridor to the Administrator's office.
Something odd about the corridor itself? She was too full of ideas and suppressed excitement to pay attention.
Professor Merada was not in his office. Nor was Carmina Gold, two doors farther down, in hers. Nor—now Darya knew what was wrong with the corridor—was
anyone
, although at this time of the morning the whole faculty would normally be present.
Darya ran the length of the corridor, and back downstairs. No one on the first floor, either. The building was deserted. She hurried outside, in time to catch sight of Hans Rebka vanishing around the corner of another building. A tall blond woman in a white silk dress swayed at his side.
"Hans!" But he was gone. Darya turned to E. Crimson Tally, still standing patiently by the side of the hovercraft. "E.C., the place is empty. Where is everybody?"
"They are presumably in the main lecture hall." Tally pointed to the notice board at the entrance to the building. "As you will see, it is described as a two-day event."
Darya stared at the board. The announcement was certainly big enough. You could only miss it if you were obsessed by something else.
Special two-day seminar:
Quintus Bloom will present full details
of his new and revolutionary theory:
The Nature and Origin of the Builders
.
" 'The nature and origin of the Builders.' E.C., I've devoted my whole damned life to that subject. But I've never heard of Quintus Bloom. Who is he? And where did Hans go?"
"I do not know. But if you are aware of the location of the main institute lecture hall, it should be easy to find an answer to your first question."
Tally pointed again at the board. Darya read the rest of the announcement. In the main lecture hall—the way Hans Rebka had been heading. And it had started yesterday.
Darya ran, without another word to E.C. Tally. She had missed day one. Unless she moved fast she would miss most of day two.
Darya knew every research member of the institute. Quintus Bloom was not one of them. So who the devil was he?
Her first impression of the man was indirect—the lecture hall was packed as she had never seen it, to the doors and beyond. As she tried to eel her way inside she heard a roar of audience laughter.
She grasped the loose vest of a man who was leaving. "Jaime, what's going on in there?"
He paused, and frowned in recognition. "Darya? I didn't know you were back."
"Just got here. What's happening?"
"More of the same." And, at her blank expression, "Yesterday, he went over the physical properties of all the Builder artifacts. Today he's supposed to present his general theory of the Builders. But yesterday he didn't quite get through, so he's wrapping up the rest of the artifacts this morning. I've got something back at my office that just has to go out today—wish it didn't—but I'll be around for the main event.
If
I can just get out of here."
He was pulling Darya, impatient to be on his way. She held on.
"But who
is
he?"
"He's Quintus Bloom. Came here from the Marglom Center on Jerome's World, to present his new theory."
"What's the theory about?"
"I don't know. No one knows. The only one who has heard it so far is Professor Merada." Jaime pulled again, freeing his vest from Darya's grip. "Word is out, though, that it's something special."
He pushed away her reaching hand, slipped past a couple standing in the entrance, and was gone.
It was no time for hesitation. Darya ducked her head and pushed her way forward, ignoring the grunts of protest and outrage. She kept her head low. It was like swimming underwater, through a sea of grey and black jackets.
Darya kept going until she saw light in front of her. She surfaced and found she had reached the front row of standing-room-only. The stage was below her and directly ahead. Professor Merada sat in an upright chair on the left side of a big holograph screen. He was looking straight at Darya, probably wondering about the disturbance created by her shoving to the front. He did not respond to her nod and little wave. By Merada's side, spurning the use of the lectern to the right of the stage, stood a tall and skinny man dressed in a white robe.
It had to be Bloom. His forehead was flat and sloped slightly backwards, his nose was beaky, and his teeth were prominent and unnaturally white. He seemed to smile all the time, even when he was speaking. Darya studied him, and was sure that she had never seen him before. She had never heard of the Marglom Center on Jerome's World. Yet she believed she knew every significant human worker in the field of Builder research, and every center where artifact analysis was being conducted.
"Which disposes of one more artifact," Bloom was saying. "
Elephant
bites the dust. There are two hundred and seventeen more to go. You will be pleased to know, however, that we will not have to work through them, one by one, as we did yesterday. We got all the detail work out of the way then. With the taxonomy that I established, we will find that we can put all the artifacts very rapidly into one of my six overall categories. So. Let's do it."
The display behind him began to show artifacts, rapidly, one after another. Bloom, without seeming to look at them, offered one-sentence summaries of their salient features, and assigned each to some previously-defined group.
Darya, in spite of herself, was impressed. She knew every artifact by heart. So, apparently, did Bloom. He spoke easily, fluently, without notes. His summaries were spare and exact. The audience laughter—and there was much of it—came from wry, humorous comments that illuminated what he was saying. Darya had heard many speakers use humor as a distraction, to cover ignorance or some weak point in their argument. Not so Quintus Bloom. His wit arose naturally, spontaneously, from the text of his speech.
"Which brings us," he said at last, "to the relief I am sure of everyone, to the end of Part One. We have finished the artifacts."
Darya realized that she had been in the lecture hall for more than an hour. No one had moved. She glanced quickly around, and saw Hans Rebka, far off to her right. He was standing next to Glenna Omar, who wore a dazzling flaunt-it-all dress. So that's who it had been, walking beside Hans as he vanished from sight. It certainly hadn't taken them long to make contact. Glenna seemed able to
smell
any man who came from off-planet. Couldn't Hans see her for what she was—Miss Flavor-of-the-Month?