"No longer our past. Our
future,
and the future of the other clades of the arm." Bloom allowed the display to go on, spreading through the Arm and beyond, until at a gesture from him it suddenly vanished. He was left alone at the front of the stage.
"I know some of you had trouble with the idea, when I proposed a few minutes ago that the Builders are our own distant descendants." His voice was conversational, even casual. "That's all right. I had trouble myself, when it first occurred to me. But rather than trying to persuade you that I am right, I want to point something out to you, and let you make your own decision."
Darya had the feeling that he was speaking directly to her. Certainly he was looking her way.
"The scenes you have just seen showed the spiral arm as it was long ago," he went on, "and as it appears to be far in the future. Those images were taken from within Labyrinth itself. Now, is Labyrinth truly a
new
artifact, as I have suggested? Or is it merely one that we have managed to overlook for all these years? That is not beyond possibility, since it is small, and a free-space structure. Jerome's World is the closest inhabited planet, but we are still over half a light-year away.
"We then have two possibilities: Labyrinth is new, and recently appeared; or Labyrinth has, like the rest of the Builder artifacts, been present for millions of years.
"Which one is the more likely? I began equally happy with either. But then I asked a question. Was it plausible that, three million years or more in the past, the Builders had been able to make a prediction—a
precise
prediction—of the way in which the clades would move out into the spiral arm? I do not think so. Ask yourselves the same question, and see what conclusion you reach."
Behind Quintus Bloom, the moving tableau began again from the beginning. Earth was illuminated, then the neighboring stars. The Zardalu came and went; the Cecropians appeared. The audience could again follow that precise historical pattern of interstellar travel and development. The familiar expansion through space had a soothing, almost a hypnotic effect.
"If you believe that the Builders were, millions of years ago, able to make such devilishly accurate predictions, that's fine." Bloom was an invisible voice, lost within a sea of stars. "If not, take your thinking a little farther. Suppose that Labyrinth appeared recently—as recently as yesterday. Now, do you believe the development patterns we saw for the future? If you do, then we again face the same question: How can the Builders,
today
, know the precise pattern of expansion through the spiral arm as it will be hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of years in the future? It is the same problem, merely displaced through time."
The whole spiral arm was aflame with stars again. Earth had vanished, the Fourth Alliance was lost in an overwhelming sea of light.
"If you answer that the Builders had that magical power to predict the far future, then you assign to them talents that strain my belief past bearing. But if your answer is, the Builders are able to show such a pattern
because it forms a part of their own past
, then your thoughts agree with mine. The Builders are not three million years in the
past
; they are who-knows-how-many years in the
future
."
Darya listened to the applause that filled the lecture hall at the end of Quintus Bloom's seminar. She said not a word, in spite of the many heads turned in her direction. She knew what they wanted. Either a fight between her and Bloom, or agreement that his ideas explained what hers could not. She would not humor them. Science wasn't a show-business talent search, conducted in large halls and decided by audience applause. Her time would come later, when she had the opportunity to probe Bloom for details and ask the subtle questions denied in the thirty-second sound bite of a public forum.
That chance would not be long in coming. Professor Merada always hosted a private dinner for visiting scholars after a seminar. Darya would be invited, even though she had just arrived at the institute. Her mouth watered at the prospect—and not because of the food.
Darya arrived a few minutes early. Professor Merada was already there, sitting as usual at the head of the table, with Quintus Bloom on his right. Normally Carmina Gold would sit on Merada's immediate left. Tonight that had been changed. Darya circled the long table, seeking her own name card, and was surprised to find it right next to Merada, directly across from Quintus Bloom.
Bloom nodded to Darya, smiled at her reaction to the seating plan, and said, "At my request." He went on talking to Merada.
Darya sat down uncertainly. Already, in some vague way, she was on the defensive. She studied the man across the table.
Seen close up, Bloom was not the attractive figure he had seemed on the stage. His face and neck were marred by some kind of skin disease, with coin-sized red sores only partly concealed by ointment and powder. His tongue seemed far too long. Darya watched with a revolted fascination as the pink tip flicked out far past his white teeth at every pause for breath.
"Well, Professor Lang?" Merada was addressing her. "What do you think?"
I think I'm an idiot
. But Darya did not say it. She, who had mixed with Zardalu and a dozen other alien forms, had been so put off by minor human variations that she had not even been listening! For all she knew, everyone on Jerome's World looked like Quintus Bloom.
"I'm sorry. What was that again?"
Professor Merada, heavy and humorless, nodded as though confirming some private suspicion. "Our guest was suggesting that perhaps it is a mistake to issue the fifth edition of the Artifact Catalog. It might be out of date, even before it appears."
That was enough to grab Darya's attention—
all
her attention. The Lang Catalog—
her
catalog!—was the Institute's most respected publication. If Merada was considering withdrawing it, the influence of Quintus Bloom went far deeper than Darya had realized.
"It's certainly not out of date! The new theory is
wrong
." Darya noticed the change in the room as she spoke. Others had arrived while she was preoccupied with Quintus Bloom. She glanced along the table. Every face was familiar to her; even E. Crimson Tally's, although it was anyone's guess as to how the embodied robot had found his way in to what was supposed to be an invited dinner. And all those faces were turned in her direction, with every other conversation at the table abandoned.
Darya had had four hours between the end of the seminar and the start of the dinner. Not long, but enough to go back to her notes and review her own analyses.
"I say that the Builders are from the past, and existed millions of years ago. Whether they ceased to exist, or whether they now exist on some other plane that is beyond our senses, is not important. They were
here
, in the spiral arm. They made the artifacts. The Builders were certainly far different from us, in ways that we may never understand. They were masters of both space and time, and perhaps they could predict future events as we cannot. Furthermore, their artifacts call for a technology beyond our own, and possible changes to our understanding of the laws of physics. But that is all."
Darya glanced again along the table. She had everyone's attention. Quintus Bloom was smiling slightly, and Carmina Gold was nodding. E. Crimson Tally seemed slightly puzzled, as though what Darya had said was self-evident.
"Now compare that with what
you
are suggesting." Darya glared at Bloom. "The Builders, you say, are from the future. But that is not an
explanation
of the Builders, it is merely a source of paradox. Let me make my point simply, by asking: Which future? If you say that they are from, say, Future A, then by coming back and planting the artifacts they will have created a different future for the spiral arm, say, Future B. If you reply that they did
not
create a different future, then Future A must be unaffected by the appearance of the artifacts; if it is unaffected, then there was no
point
to introducing the artifacts. Time travel as an explanation always has this fatal flaw: it contains the seeds of its own logical destruction. My ideas may require changes to the laws of physics. Yours are inconsistent with the laws of
logic
, and that is a far more serious problem."
It was not coming out quite right. Somehow her clear thoughts were being twisted on the way from brain to lips.
Quintus Bloom was still smiling, and now he was shaking his head.
"But my dear Professor Lang, why are you so convinced that our present understanding of logic is any better than our understanding of physics? You asked us all a question. Let me now ask you a couple. First, does anything in your ideas explain the appearance of the new artifact, Labyrinth?"
"I don't know that it's new. I have had no chance to inspect it." That was a weak answer, and Darya knew it.
"But
I
have done so, in detail. However, since you have not seen Labyrinth, let us omit it from consideration. Will you admit that there are changes in other artifacts, profound changes, more than there have ever been before?"
"I agree that there have been some changes. I'm not sure how great they are."
"And do your theories explain
why
there have been changes?"
"Not yet. I came back to the institute to start a new investigation, precisely to explore those anomalies."
"Ah. A worthy objective. But I can explain them
now
, without that research program. You say there have been 'some' changes. Professor Lang, when did you last visit an artifact?"
"I came here directly from the Torvil Anfract. It is an artifact."
"Indeed?" Bloom's eyebrows raised, and he glanced along the table. "But it is not listed in the famous Lang Catalog, the volume which we all take as our final authority." He turned to Merada. "Unless someone with greater knowledge can correct my memory . . ."
"It's not in the Catalog," snapped Darya.
"Not even in the upcoming fifth edition? The
new
edition?"
"It is not in the Catalog," Merada said. "Distinguished guest—"
"Please. Call me Quintus."
"If you prefer it. Quintus, the Torvil Anfract had never been proposed as an artifact, until Professor Lang did so a moment ago. And it will never be listed as an artifact, without my personal review of the evidence." Merada glanced reproachfully at Darya.
Bloom was still smiling benignly. "Very well, let us leave the Anfract for the moment. I want to ask Professor Lang: When did you last visit any Builder artifact
other
than the Torvil Anfract? One that
is
in the famous Lang Catalog."
Darya thought back. Genizee, not in the Catalog. Serenity, not in the Catalog. The Eye of Gargantua, not in the Catalog. Glister, not in the Catalog.
"About half a year ago. The Umbilical, between Quake and Opal."
"But the greatest changes to the artifacts have taken place within that time! Half a year, in which you have not seen a single artifact. Half a year, in which—"
Bloom paused. He lost his smile, turned, and stared to his right along the table. The voice of a puzzled embodied computer was steadily becoming louder.
"If the Builders are not in the future, then they can't come back and change the present so that the Builders
are
in the future, because they are not there to do it." E. Crimson Tally was staring down at the table top. "But if they
are
in the future, then the present didn't need the artifacts to become that future, so then the future they make if they send the artifacts back is a different future—"
He paused and froze, his eyes blank and his mouth hanging open far enough to reveal his bottom teeth.
"There!" Darya pointed accusingly at Quintus Bloom. "Now you've done it. You've put E.C. into a loop. That'll be hell to fix. I told you it was a logical contradiction, the idea that the Builders might have come from the future."
She seemed to be the only one who cared. Half-a-dozen conversations were starting up along the table.
Professor Merada leaned over and patted her hand. "We are all good scientists here, Professor Lang, and it is as good scientists that we must behave. We all have our cherished theories, on which we have worked for many days and months and years. Although it is hard to abandon beloved ideas, if a new and better theory comes along it is our duty as good scientists to accept it. Even to
embrace
it."
Darya bristled. The man was trying to
soothe
her. And Carmina Gold was nodding agreement. So were half a dozen others at the table. Darya couldn't believe it. They had been here for less than a quarter of an hour. The first course of the meal was still to arrive, and she had said only a tenth of what she had to say—and badly, at that. But minds along the table were already closing. Darya had lost the argument. Quintus Bloom had won it.
Darya stood up and blundered towards the door. She was quite sure that she was right, but without evidence she would never convince anyone. Quintus Bloom was too confident, too smooth and charismatic, too well-armed with recent facts.
Well, there was only one way to deal with that. She had to find more facts of her own. And she would not do it sitting in an office on Sentinel Gate.
Darya would need facts, but at the moment she wanted something a good deal more personal.
She had not seen Hans Rebka since the beginning of the seminar. For all she knew he had left after the first few minutes, because she had been too preoccupied to notice. However, it was easy enough to find out which guest accommodation in the institute was assigned to any visitor. Darya checked the central listing. Hans had a single-story building to himself, a bungalow that lay in a wooded area behind the main complex of the institute.
Although it was raining outside and already dark, Darya didn't want to waste time going back for more clothing. The night was chilly, but she welcomed the brisk breeze as a force to blow away her worries. She walked slowly, face tilted up to catch the raindrops. It would be hard to know what to say to Hans without sounding like a whiner and a loser. Had he been there himself, to see and hear exactly what had happened? She didn't know.