"Perfect." He beckoned to Darya. "Come, if you please, Professor Lang, and we will proceed together. With respect, it is better if I control the moment when we turn the suits' power on and off."
Darya was in a daze as she floated by J'merlia's side and allowed him to control her movements as well as his own. However, she did not lose her instinct as an observer. As they moved through the fourth chamber she examined the orange particles closest to her helmet, and saw that each one was like a tiny blunt dart, a miniature rocket pointed at the forward end and fluted into a four-part tail at the other. Just before they reached the tunnel at the far end of the chamber, the orange darts disappeared. They did not hit anything, but simply seemed to vanish. Darya and J'merlia went coasting on in darkness, toward the gleam of Kallik's suit lights.
Darya paused as the three met, and she took a long, deep breath. Could anything be more unpleasant than what they'd just been through?
Maybe. By the look of it, the fifth chamber was a candidate.
The space ahead was filled with transportation entry points, hundreds and hundreds of them. The ominous black vortices did not remain at rest, but skated through and past each other, rebounding from the chamber walls in a complicated and unpredictable dance. Darya did not even try to count them, but she shuddered at the prospect of weaving a way through. Hovering at the entrance, she watched in disbelief as Kallik and J'merlia set off to run the gauntlet.
Didn't
anything
scare the two aliens? Sometimes she wondered if humans were the only beings in the universe with a sense of cowardice (be charitable, and call it an instinct for self-preservation).
The swirling vortices blocked a view of the other end. It was impossible to tell if Kallik and J'merlia had made it through the chamber. It was also impossible for Darya to remain forever where she was, poised nervously at the entrance.
She took a long last breath, waited until she could see a space which for at least a moment was clear of the dark whirlpools, and plunged forward. In what felt like milliseconds the open space ahead had gone and vortices came crowding in on her. Darya envied Kallik, with her rings of eyes that could see in all directions. She jigged to the right, waited another moment, shot forward, waited again for a heartbeat, then did a quick combined up-and-left maneuver. A vortex zooming up from behind was almost on top of her before she knew it. She could feel the sideways drag of its vorticity as she spurted away, down and to the left again.
The biggest danger of all would be to be trapped close to the chamber wall, with her freedom to move automatically halved. She had been moving mostly to the left, so the wall might be near. She glanced that way, just in time to see a monster vortex bouncing straight at her. She had no choice but a maximum thrust, forward and to the right. She dived that way, then gritted her teeth when she saw yet another dark shape immediately ahead.
It was too late to change direction. The new vortex was going to get her. When it seemed just inches away she was grabbed by both her arms and a violent jerk pulled her clear. There was another dizzying moment, a spinning out of control. Then in front of her she saw a dark opening.
It was the exit to the chamber. Kallik and J'merlia floated on each side of her, holding her as she sagged against the safe and solid tunnel wall of the next chamber.
"A unique experience," said a thoughtful voice. "And an exhilarating one."
It was not clear whether Kallik was talking to her or to J'merlia, but Darya made no attempt to respond. Her own unvoiced comment,
This had better be the last damned chamber
, no longer seemed appropriate. She could already see that this
was
the last room. Instead of a sphere she was facing into a hexagonal pyramid. It narrowed at the far end to a closed wedge, and Darya saw no other exit. Looking at it positively, they had made it unharmed all the way to their destination. Their suits would support them for many days. Looked at otherwise, the only way out of this place would be to go back through the terrors they had just left. The orange hail of the fourth chamber, if nothing else, would make a return doubly difficult.
The other two were moving forward. Kallik, Darya noticed, was even cracking open her suit.
"Breathable air," she said, before Darya could protest. The Hymenopt gestured to her suit monitors.
Darya glanced at her own and saw that Kallik was correct. The final room held breathable gases, at acceptable pressure—in spite of the fact that the five previous chambers had shown on the monitor as hard vacuum, and there was no sign of any sealing barrier between them and this. Well, there had also been no sign of a barrier that could stop or absorb the sleet of orange darts, but they had vanished just the same.
Darya opened her own suit, with just two thoughts in her head. The first was that Builder technology would be forever beyond her. The second was that she was
not
cut out to be a bold and brave explorer. If she escaped from this alive, she would go back to doing what she did best: analysis and interpretation of
other people's
wild leaps into the unknown.
She wished, not for the first time, that she had not been so quick to leave Hans Rebka on Sentinel Gate. He thrived on this sort of madness. If he were beside her now, her pulse might be coming down from its two-a-second thumping.
And then all those thoughts vanished. She was able, for the first time, to take a good look at the six flat walls of the hexagonal room. She stared and stared. The walls were
wrong
. Each was covered with multicolored, milky patterns, interspersed with diffuse streaks and smears in pale pastel shades.
Not a beautiful series of time-sequenced images of the spiral arm, as Quintus Bloom had reported. Not a single comprehensive image of the region, as Darya had been half expecting. Not, in fact, a recognizable picture of any kind; just a hazy, confused blur, something that the eye had trouble looking at.
The walls could certainly be considered
pretty
, as an abstract design might be pretty. They were just not
meaningful
.
Darya had been hoping, though with no real basis for hope, that although the outer chambers might be different in each of the thirty-seven interiors, everything would at last converge to a single space. Now she knew her wishful thinking for what it was: desperate delusion. They had reached a sixth and final room, just as she had hoped—and it was the wrong room!
Her pulse rate started to rise again. If she wanted to learn the secrets of Labyrinth, she had no choice. She would
have
to head back, far enough to transfer to one of the other interiors—a different interior, probably with its own new and unique dangers—and explore
that
to its end.
Kallik and J'merlia might want to try. Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda would certainly have done it. But it was beyond Darya. Before another interior was reached, she suspected that her own courage and stamina would have long since given out.
Louis Nenda had seen more than his share of horrors (he had been responsible for some of them himself). He was a hard man to shock.
But he could still be surprised.
Quintus Bloom had produced a ship, superior in performance to the
Indulgence,
to explore the Anfract.
How? Simple. Lacking funds himself, he had arranged through Professor Merada for a meeting with the Board of Governors of the institute.
He needed, he explained, the use of a ship.
Very good. And what did he offer in return?
A whole new artifact, one larger and more complex than anything currently known. He would prove that the whole region of space known as the Torvil Anfract, in far Communion territory, had been constructed by the Builders.
No mention, by either Bloom or Merada, of Darya Lang, although
she
had been the one who first suggested that the Anfract was a Builder artifact. Quintus Bloom was the man of the hour, and Darya was not around to defend her claim to priority.
The Governors, with Merada's strong endorsement, had been unanimous: Quintus Bloom, representing both the Artifact Institute and the planet of Sentinel Gate, would have his ship. Like the explorers of old, he would travel with official sponsorship, and his triumphant return would bring glory on himself and on all those who had backed him.
Nenda heard of the meeting second-hand. It had not surprised him that Darya's name was never mentioned. He found it in no way odd that the Governors were supporting Bloom, in return for their share of the credit.
No. What gave Louis his surprise of the day, wandering through the interior of the
Gravitas
, was the amazing opulence of the ship's fittings. He realized a profound truth:
there is no one so generous as a bureaucrat spending other people's money
.
Sentinel Gate was one of the arm's richest worlds. Even so, someone had given Quintus Bloom
carte blanche
on equipment and supplies.
And, presumably, on personnel. Nenda ran his forefinger along a gnarled but polished rail, hand-carved from rare Styx blackwood, and decided that he had been far too modest in his own request for pay. The
Gravitas
reeked of newness and wealth in every aspect, from the massive engines, barely broken in, at the rear of the ship, to the half-dozen passenger compartments in the bow. The passenger suite that he was now inspecting had its own bedroom, parlor, entertainment center, hydroponic garden, hot tub, kitchen, autochef, medicator, robot massager, drug chest, and wine cabinet.
Nenda paused in his exploration, reached into the temperature-stabilized wine cooler, and pulled out a bottle. He examined the label.
Trockenbeerenauslese Persephone Special Reserve.
Whatever that mouthful was supposed to mean. He opened the bottle and took a swig. Not bad. He glanced at the price on the side of the bottle and was still staring at it, pop-eyed, when Atvar H'sial wandered in to join him.
"Louis, I have disturbing news."
"So do I. We could have asked ten times what we'll make from this trip, and still been down in the petty cash. I just drank half our pay."
"Ah, yes. I see you have been examining the fixtures on the
Gravitas
." The Cecropian settled comfortably at his side. "I agree, our reimbursement will be modest. Compared with the value of the ship itself, I mean, which to any lucky owners, now or in the future . . . " Atvar H'sial allowed the rest of her comment to fade away into pheromonal ambiguity. "But that is not my news. As you know, the loss of my slave and interpreter, J'merlia, has been a great inconvenience."
"You can always talk through me, or anybody else with an augment."
"Of which there appears to be no other within a hundred light-years. And you are not always available. I have therefore been seeking methods for more direct communication with others."
Atvar H'sial paused for thought. "An extraordinarily primitive and restrictive tool, human speech. That the same organ should have to serve a central role in eating, breathing, sex, and speaking . . . but I digress. I have employed a human assistant. As part of my interaction with that assistant, we have been receiving and examining together the news reports that arrive at the institute from different worlds of the Fourth Alliance. One came in recently from the planet Miranda. It was to Miranda that the infant Zardalu captured by Darya Lang"—the pheromones carried a snide hint of suspicion and disapproval along with the name—"was sent for study."
"I know. Better there than anywhere near me."
"Indeed. They were to monitor its ferocity as it grew larger, under close guard. The cunning and cruelty of the Zardalu has been a legend for eleven thousand years, since the time when they controlled most of the spiral arm."
"Yeah. I'm from Zardalu Communion territory, remember? I've heard that sort of talk all my life."
"Then you will be suitably surprised if someone suggests to you that it is nonsense. Yet that is what the report from Miranda indicates. The young Zardalu is powerful. It is endlessly, voraciously, hungry. But it is neither remarkably vicious nor unusually dangerous. Less so, the Miranda team suggests, than half-a-dozen other species in the arm—including yours and mine."
Nenda sat down on one of the plush settees of the passenger suite and took an absent-minded gulp from the bottle. The news was another surprise, his second of the day. But was it a shock?
He sniffed. "I've wondered myself how we did it. We tangled with the Zardalu on Serenity, and then twice on Genizee. And every time they came off second best when they ought to have creamed us. You could say once was dumb luck, but three times in a row—"
"—suggests that other factors may be at work. My own conclusion exactly. Our experiences suggest that the surviving strain of Zardalu are but a feeble shadow of their ancestors, the old race who spread terror across the galaxy. The testing team on Miranda lacks our data, but they also are much perplexed. They wonder if the benign environment in which the Zardalu has been raised since infancy has had a profound effect upon its nature. To provide a possible answer to that question, they offer a reward—a most substantial reward—to anyone able to deliver, for their study, one adult Zardalu that has been reared in its natural environment. That raises a question. We are following Darya Lang to the Anfract. Suppose we find that her trail leads within the Anfract, and points directly to Genizee? What would you propose to tell Quintus Bloom, should he ask you to guide him there?"
"I'd have a sudden and terrible loss of memory. I
wouldn't be able to figure out any way to get us to
Genizee—and you better not either. I don't want him grabbing a Zardalu for himself an' bagging all the money."
"Agreed. However, if you had reason to believe that at an appropriate future time, Quintus Bloom for some reason would not be present on board the
Gravitas
. . ."
"I might find I could remember again, all of a sudden. You know what a mystery the human mind can be."