It was impossible to say how long the pain lasted, but it ended abruptly. Rebka opened his eyes and stared around him, relieved to see that the ship and its contents were unaffected by the crippling forces that he had felt. Maddy and her sisters were bulging-eyed and gasping, but that was just psychological after-effects. The Builder transport systems, if they delivered you at all, did so leaving you physically intact and unharmed.
But delivered you
where
? It could be in the Anfract, or inside some other distant Builder artifact, or even in Serenity, thirty thousand light-years outside the plane of the galaxy.
Rebka peered at the screen in front of him. There was not much information to be gained from that. He was seeing a pattern of near-parallel lines like an optical illusion, a streaming glow of white on a dense black background.
"Tally?" The embodied computer was the best bet, with every major feature of the spiral arm stored away in his head. "Do you know where we are?"
"Unfortunately, I do not." E.C. Tally sounded very cheerful. Rebka recalled, with some envy, that pain in Tally's case offered warning signals without discomfort. "However, it is almost certain that we are no longer within Paradox."
"I can tell that much. What about the other artifacts? Do any of them look like that, on the inside?" Rebka gestured at the screen.
"Not remotely like that. The pattern we are observing would be considered striking enough to have been reported, even if images of it were unobtainable. Might I suggest that you record it on the imaging equipment of this ship?"
"Never mind the scenery." Maddy Treel had her breath back. "You can study that any time. What about the whosit out there? I want to know if it's dangerous."
Rebka and E.C. Tally turned. Maddy was staring at a different screen, one that showed a view to the rear of the
Misanthrope
. The pattern of lines was there too, no longer parallel but curving away and apparently slightly converging. But in front of those, much closer to the ship and rapidly approaching it, was something else. A black, spindly figure, its body twisted a little to one side.
Rebka stared in disbelief. He opened his mouth to speak, but E.C. Tally was well ahead of him. The embodied computer had done a rapid comparison of every feature of the dark figure, from number of legs to suit design to antennas and probable frequencies.
"If you will permit." He turned, reached across Lissie—still stunned to silence by the transition through the Builder vortex—and flipped four switches. "Our general communication channel is now open. This is E. Crimson Tally. Do you wish to come aboard?"
The speaker system of the
Misanthrope
clicked and whistled. "With respect, I would like that very much. I recently suffered a most unpleasant impact, and I wish to perform certain repairs."
"You can't let that thing onto our ship!" Maddy Treel grabbed E.C. Tally's right arm as he reached forward to activate the airlock. "You're crazy! That's an alien out there. I don't care if it is hurt—it could kill us all if it got inside."
"Oh, no." E.C. Tally leaned forward, and with his left hand pressed the lock control. "You do not have to worry. He is an alien, true enough, but he would never hurt anybody. You see, it is only J'merlia."
Experience makes everything easier. Darya had struggled hard to interpret the first series of images that she and Kallik had obtained from the wall of the hexagonal chamber. Now, as she examined the second series, she wondered what she had found so difficult.
Blue supergiant stars served as references, fixing the scale and overall geometry of the spiral arm. Their movement in space also made them into celestial clocks, measuring how far before or after the present a particular image was set. Without knowing stellar velocities, the time scale was relative rather than absolute, but it was enough to judge the progress in spiral arm colonization.
The second image set proved similar to the first, except that this time the orange markers of Zardalu control spread across the arm, engulfed the worlds of the earlier green clade, and then suddenly vanished.
That matched Darya's understanding of history. Instead of going on to dominate the spiral arm, the Zardalu had themselves been annihilated in the Great Rising.
After a dozen images with no colonized worlds at all, a dull red spark appeared at Sol's location. The red markers spread, and were joined by the yellow of another clade. Darya noted the location. Cecropians. The two clades grew until their boundaries met. After that the boundary line remained steady, while both clades grew rapidly in other directions.
Darya nodded to herself. This was the past shown by Quintus Bloom. And presumably the future, also.
Darya waited. Suddenly yellow points of light began to surround the region of red ones. Finally, when englobement was complete, the yellow markers spread inward. Red points of light flickered out one by one, and yellow took their place. Finally yellow lights alone were visible through the spiral arm. Cecropians ruled the spiral arm. And then, far enough in the future that the supergiant reference stars had moved to noticeably different positions, there was a final change. The yellow lights began to blink out, one by one, until almost all were gone. For a long period the spiral arm showed just one yellow point, close to the original clade world of the Cecropians. Then it too winked out. The arm had lost all evidence of intelligent life.
This was
not
the future displayed by Quintus Bloom—far from it. In this series of images, as in the last set that Kallik had displayed, the final sequence showed an end point for the spiral arm with no inhabited worlds.
Darya puzzled over the display for a long time, running and rerunning the image sequences. They were false pasts and futures for the spiral arm. Could she be seeing an
entertainment
, a fictional presentation? The Builders were so remote, so enigmatic, it was difficult to accept them as having recreations of any kind. But maybe all thinking beings needed a break now and again.
Finally she nodded to Kallik to move to an image sequence drawn from a different wall.
The now-familiar first scenes came into view. Blue supergiant marker stars, no colonized worlds. The orange sparks of the Zardalu came, and at last went. Humans appeared in a lurid red, Cecropians in yellow. They existed side by side, spreading outward for a long, long time, until a clade of glittering cyan appeared from close to the inner edge of the spiral arm.
Darya stared at the location, and could think of no species at all in that part of the spiral arm. Human exploration vessels had been there, but had found nothing. She glanced at the supergiant markers. The scene was far in the future.
The cyan clade worlds grew until they met humans. Cyan then at once began to disappear. Humans were taking over the worlds of the new clade, as glowing red swallowed up cyan. That went on until the new color had vanished completely. And then, as though a process had been started that could not be stopped, red began to consume yellow. The Cecropian worlds dwindled in number, not steadily but in sudden spasms of contraction. The clade shrank back toward the original home world of the Cecropians. A final spark of yellow gleamed there, until it was replaced at last by a gleam of red.
Humans, and humans alone, ruled the spiral arm. The millennia rolled on, the supergiant marker stars crept like tiny blue snails across the face of the galaxy. Finally, red points began to flicker out of existence. Not in a systematic pattern this time, but randomly, one by one. A handful, widely scattered across the spiral arm, hung on as dots of ruddy light. At last they began to vanish. Darya was finally staring at a spiral arm where again only the marker stars could be seen.
"Excuse me if I interrupt your thoughts, but do you wish to see the next sequence?" Kallik was standing by her side. Darya had no idea how long she had been waiting there.
She shook her head. Since her findings made no sense, additional data were more likely to confuse than to clarify.
Darya realized how tired she was. How long since she had slept? How long since they had entered Labyrinth, how long since they arrived in this chamber? She couldn't even guess.
Still there was no sign of J'merlia. She and Kallik should have gone searching long since. The fascination of the polyglyphs had held her.
The worst of it was, she wouldn't be able to sleep now no matter how she tried. And it was not because of worry over J'merlia. Darya knew her own weaknesses. She might close her eyes, but the image sequences were going to keep running, running, running, visible to an inner eye that could not be closed. They would remain until something in her brain over which she had no control permitted them to vanish. Then she would rest.
"Kallik, do you mind if I talk to you?" Hymenopts, unlike mere humans, never seemed to become weary. "I'd like to share some thoughts, think out loud at you."
"I would be honored."
"Did you watch all three sequences with me?"
"Yes, indeed."
"But you didn't see Quintus Bloom's presentation, when he was on Sentinel Gate?"
"That was not my good fortune."
"Pity. Did you, by any chance, examine the recording of the presentation in Bloom's data files on the
Myosotis
?"
It occurred to Darya that for someone who had asked to share her thoughts, she was doing rather poorly. So far everything had been a question. But Kallik did not object.
"I examined the records on the
Myosotis
, and I found them fascinating."
"Good. So you saw what Bloom says he found in Labyrinth, and we've both seen what we found here."
"
Some
of what we found here. With respect, three image sequences remain to be displayed."
"That's all right. We'll get to them. We need to think, frame a hypothesis, then use the other image sequences to test it."
"That is a procedure fully consistent with the scientific method."
"Let's try to keep it that way. First, Bloom's image sequence. It was consistent with our past, and what we know of the past of the other clades. It showed a future with all clades present, and it showed a spiral arm full of colonized worlds. Now for a question: Was that the
only
image sequence that Bloom found?"
"We lack the data to provide an answer." Kallik stared all around her with her rings of eyes. "However, we do know that Quintus Bloom came to a hexagonal chamber like this one, even if it was in a different interior."
"Which is very probable. But you mean, he must have wondered what was on the other five walls, wherever he was? I agree. He seems a thorough research worker. He must have examined all six walls. But now let's talk about what
we
found. Three different histories of spiral arm colonization. The past in two of them was plausible, but in every case the far future was different. Agreed?"
"Certainly. Different from each other, and also different from what Quintus Bloom reported."
"Good. Now I've got my own ideas, so I don't want to lead you on this. What do you see as the single biggest difference between what Bloom reported, and what we have been finding?"
Kallik's exoskeleton did not permit her to frown, but her perplexity showed in the delay before she responded. "With respect, I see two major differences."
That remark was not one that Darya had been expecting. "
Two
differences?"
"Yes indeed. First, we find that the spiral arm in the far future is
empty
. There are no populated and colonized worlds. Quintus Bloom found the opposite, an arm where some clade occupied every world."
"That's the difference that hit me. So what's the other one?"
"The image sequence displayed by Quintus Bloom showed Builder artifacts. The sequences that we have seen so far offer no evidence of such artifacts. In fact, they show no sign whatsoever of the existence of the Builders, now or in the past. But this"—Kallik waved a jointed forelimb around her—"is certainly a Builder artifact. It is proof that the Builders, whether or not they exist today, certainly existed at one time." Kallik stared unhappily at Darya. "With respect, Professor Lang. It appears to me that our very presence here, in an artifact,
proves
that Quintus Bloom's claim must be correct. Only a spiral arm containing artifacts can be the
real
spiral arm."
During her scientific career, Darya had developed immense respect for experimental data. One little fact was enough to destroy any theory ever constructed, no matter how beautiful and appealing it might seem.
Now she was facing one ugly and very big fact: Builder artifacts appeared in Bloom's images, as Kallik had pointed out, but not in the ones that they had seen. There was no way of arguing around that, no way of dismissing it as irrelevant or unimportant.
The smart action at this point was also the simple one: accept that Quintus Bloom's images represented reality, while the new ones, whatever they might be, did not. With that full acceptance, Darya would at last be able to relax and get some sleep.
She might have to do that—but not quite yet. One of her ancestors must have passed along to her a good slug of stubbornness. She was almost ready to quit, but first she had to see the other three image sequences.
Kallik, at her direction, patiently prepared to run them. During the setup period, Darya's tired brain took off on a new line of thought.
Labyrinth was a new artifact. On that, she and Quintus Bloom agreed one hundred percent. Not only did it look new, with none of the long-deserted appearance of every other artifact that Darya had ever encountered, it was also too close to the populated planet of Jerome's World to have escaped detection through thousands of years of exploration and observation.
There was more. Not only was Labyrinth new, it was not in any way hidden. Whoever built it,
intended
it to be found. Darya felt sure of that, although her thinking was now far indeed from the testable, provable world of hard evidence.
Don't stop yet. If Labyrinth were found, it would also be explored. The designers of Labyrinth expected that at some time, an intelligent being—human or alien—would reach this very chamber. Someone would stand here, as Darya was standing, and stare at the milky, streaky walls. They would puzzle over their meaning and significance. Once you accepted that such discovery and exploration were inevitable, then the idea that the sequences Darya and Kallik had seen so far were no more than Builder fantasies became ridiculous. The three sets of images—the spiral arm past, present, and future—were solid, important data, as real and meaningful as what Bloom had discovered. Whoever found the inner chamber of Labyrinth was supposed to deduce what it all meant.