"I told Darya Lang you'd blow the Zardalu away."
"That is, unfortunately, wishful thinking. I have knives, but too short to reach the Zardalu brain or heart. I also have three flash electrostatic devices. Not intended as weapons, but they will inflict a painful surface burn. On something the size and strength of a Zardalu, however, they would be no more than irritants."
"Forget it. You might as well try and tickle 'em to death. Is that all?"
"I have one device which was not seen as a weapon in the Bose Network. It could serve me well—but at your expense, as well as that of the Zardalu."
Atvar H'sial reached back under her wing cases and produced a small black ovoid. Nenda stared at it curiously.
"Doesn't look like much. What's it do?"
"It's known as a Starburst. I have two of them. They each produce an intense flash of light in the wavelength range from oh-point-four to one-point-two micrometers. Any creature which sees by means of such radiation will be temporarily or permanently blinded, depending on ocular sensitivity and directness of exposure. I believe that Zardalu eyes operate in that wavelength region. So, unfortunately, do humans', Lo'tfians', and Hymenopts'. I, of course, will be unaffected."
"Better tell me when to shut my eyes, then. It's nice, but it don't solve any problems. How and where could you ever use it? We gotta
think
, At."
"We do; and I am obliged to point out to you that we do not have a monopoly on that process. Distasteful as it will be to you, Louis, we must work with Captain Rebka and Professor Lang. At least until such time as the Zardalu are no longer a problem. After that . . ." The great blind head swung around, as though taking in the whole of the million kilometers of Serenity that surrounded them. "After that, and only after that, can we again begin to operate in rational terms. Which is to say,
commercial
terms; for which, I suggest, there is more than tempting potential here."
"You had the same impression as I did. If we could once get the run of this place, there's things that will have the whole spiral arm drooling."
"And there is far more than we have so far been permitted to see. Somewhere in this artifact lies the technology that
built
the being that Rebka and Lang identify as Speaker-Between, and created an inter
galactic
transportation system. If those secrets can be ours—"
The Cecropian paused. The great antennas on top of the blind head suddenly unfurled like sails, two meters long and a meter wide. They turned to face back toward the chamber where she and Louis Nenda had left Tally and Rebka.
Nenda turned with her. "What's wrong, At? More Zardalu?"
"No. But I am receiving faint new aromatics, like those from The-One-Who-Waits, diffusing in from far away. Unless I am gravely mistaken, the one known as Speaker-Between is entering the stasis-tank chamber containing Rebka, Lang, and Tally. It is, I suspect, a meeting that we would be wise to attend."
Free movement around the interior of Serenity might be denied to humans, but there were others for whom that restriction did not apply.
Darya had new proof of that when Speaker-Between appeared. The alien construct drifted up like a silver ghost through the impervious floor of the chamber. Halfway through he stopped and began decreasing steadily in size. When Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial came hurrying into the room and had their first sight of the Interlocutor, they were confronted by a bulging hemisphere apparently immovably embedded in the solid floor. Speaker-Between looked just like the upper half of The-One-Who-Waits.
The flower-shaped head craned forward briefly to face the new arrivals, then turned back to Rebka, Lang, and the newly awakened E. C. Tally. The embodied computer was pale and shaky, but fully alert.
"We've been waiting for you since the last meeting," Rebka said. "There are big problems. Do you know who the Zardalu are?"
"Of course." The flower head drooped and nodded. "Since their arrival they have been my responsibility. It was I who turned off the stasis tanks to permit their reanimation. What is the purpose of your question?"
"They are awake now."
"As they should be."
"And they are dangerous. They have harmed two of our group already, and they are threatening the rest of us. I'm sure you didn't bring our group all this way just to let the Zardalu destroy us."
Speaker-Between did not reply at once. He began to intone in a low mumble:
"Human, Cecropian, Zardalu . . . Human, Cecropian, Zardalu . . ."
Then, after a few moments of silence, he said, "All are present and available. That is as it should be. The process can begin—"
"Not if it involves any of us, it can't." Rebka stepped forward, close enough to touch the shining surface of Speaker-Between. "Until you listen to us, and we get answers to a few major questions, we don't do one thing."
"That cannot be. Your involvement is . . . required."
"Well, just you try to get it, without talking to us first. We won't do it. Not a human, or a Cecropian. There's a transportation-system entry point not far from here. We'll use it if we have to."
Rebka had taken a random shot, fishing for information. But Speaker-Between's answer confirmed Darya's guess.
"That would be most unwise," the Interlocutor said. "Without suitable keys prior to use, no safe endpoint of travel is guaranteed. A transition would surely be fatal."
"We'll risk that. We won't cooperate unless we have some answers from you."
"I say to you, cooperation is
required
." Speaker-Between was silent for a few seconds. "But I will listen, and talk if necessary, at least briefly."
"How briefly?"
"For no more than eight of your hours."
"We don't have that long anyway. Let me tell you about the Zardalu, and what they're doing."
"I am hearing." The flower head sighed. "Speak, if you must."
Speaker-Between had listened to Hans Rebka's explanation in total silence. The others interrupted only once, with Louis Nenda's mutter of rage when Rebka came to the Zardalu treatment of Kallik.
"Very good," the Interlocutor said when Rebka came at last to the Zardalu recent threats. "That is all very good. It has begun."
"What has?"
"The process of
selection
." Speaker-Between lifted himself through the floor, until the whole body and the horned tail were revealed to Nenda and Atvar H'sial for the first time. "The Zardalu, it seems, understand what is needed without explanation. But for the rest of you . . . listen carefully."
To the Builders, it was simply
The Problem
. Compared with that, everything from the transformation of planets to the creation of stars was trivial. And like all problems that demanded their full concentration, this one was purely abstract.
What is the long-term future of the universe?
And tagged onto that central question, as a disturbing corollary, came the other, more personal one:
What is the purpose of the Builders, and what role will they play in the evolution of the universe?
The Builders could not answer, but they were enormously long-lived and endlessly patient. They pondered those questions for two hundred million years and at last came up with a conclusion that was worse than a question: it was a
paradox
.
They concluded that chaotic elements made the long-term future of the universe
undecidable
, in the Gödelian sense of a question that could not be answered from within the framework of the universe itself; but at the same time, undecidable or not, the future of the universe
would happen
. Thus, with or without the Builders, the undecidable question would finally be answered.
Faced with paradox, the Builders made a typical Builder decision. They moved inward, burrowing deep into the nature of their own consciousness. They examined mental processes and thinking structures. They discovered individual quirks of thought and habit, but still they were unable to decide: Were those individual attributes basic to
The Problem
, or irrelevances to it?
Again, the Builders were at an impasse. Worse than that, their inability to deal with
The Problem
began to produce disastrous effects on the Builders themselves. Instead of the pattern of slow evolution and development that had marked hundreds of millions of years, a rapid process of Builder
devolution
began. Debased forms of Builder appeared: the Phages.
It was a way to escape from an intolerable mental problem. Mindless, forgetting their own individual history, ignorant of the accomplishments of their kind, the Phages were as long-lived as their intelligent brothers. Soon they became a nuisance through the whole of the spiral arm. Wherever Builders could live, so could the omnivorous Phages. With their lack of intelligence and their sluggish reflexes, they were rarely dangerous; but they became a great irritation to the equally slow-moving Builders.
Again, the Builders took refuge in their own approach to a new difficulty.
They were no closer to a solution of
The Problem
, but they did not have to hurry. They would
wait
, moving themselves into long-term stasis and leaving their servants and constructs behind to waken them when the right time came and circumstances changed. Then they would address
The Problem
again, in a different epoch.
There was logic in that decision to wait; for although the Builders had been unable to solve
The Problem
alone, in the future they knew they might have help.
In the course of their development of the spiral arm, the Builders had seen nothing remotely like themselves; but they had noted in passing the development of other life-forms, creatures of the "little worlds," high in heavy elements, whose genesis bore little resemblance to the Builders' own gas-giant origins. The new ones were different . . .
"Different
how
?" That was Louis Nenda, posing a question asked of him by Atvar H'sial. It was the first interruption to the slow words of Speaker-Between.
"Short-lived." Speaker-Between answered without a pause. "Incredibly ephemeral, yet filled with violence, irrational lusts, illogical hopes. Far from ready to be useful, and yet . . ."
The Builders had no difficulty with
short-te
rm projections of the future, up to ten or twenty million years. Their analytical tools were adequate to estimate rates of species development, and to predict with high accuracy that certain life-forms were on an evolutionary path leading inevitably to self-awareness, intelligence, and technology.
It was far harder to predict where such forms would arrive
philosophically
. Would they develop their own perspective on the purpose of the universe? Would they, one day, despite their strange origins, become suitable collaborators for the Builders themselves?
No forecasting techniques of the Builders could answer that question definitively. It was again related to
The Problem
, and on that question they had already broken the edge of their intelligence.
The Builders saw clearly the emergence of three particular little-world intelligences in the spiral arm. They predicted that each might have a major impact on the future. One of those species, surely, would add the new dimension to Builder thought necessary for a reexamination of
The Problem
. One species. But which one?
That question could not be answered until the species emergence was completed and their civilizations and philosophical underpinnings were established. Only one thing seemed clear: although all three species were very different from the Builders, the one most likely to be useful in adding new insight to
The Problem
would be
the one who differed most from the Builders themselves
.
"You still keep saying we're so
different
from the Builders," Darya said. "I can see that we have far shorter lives. And we are not yet anywhere near so advanced technologically. But those don't seem like
profound
differences—time could change both of them."
"It could, and it will." The silver flower head was nodding, gleaming with internal lights. "But time cannot change certain elements common to you, the Zardalu, the Cecropians. Common to the Lo'tfians and the Hymenopts also, it appears, although those species came later and their influence on the spiral arm has been less. The element possessed by all your species is difficult to capture in a single word. I will call it
prodigality
."
"You'd better call it something different if you want me to understand it," Louis Nenda said. "What do you mean,
prodigality
?"
"Fertility. Abundance.
Wastefulness.
" Speaker-Between hesitated, struggling with words. He had been doing a good job so far, despite a tendency to long, inscrutable pauses. Darya wondered how much was being subtly distorted by language difficulties. She itched to have her hands on one of the omnilingual translation units so common on far-off Sentinel Gate—and so rare on a poor world like Opal.
Far-off Sentinel Gate.
She realized that seen from Serenity, Opal and Sentinel Gate were next-door neighbors. Eight hundred light-years was nothing, when one was sitting thirty thousand light-years outside the Galaxy.
"Maybe it is best to offer an example," Speaker-Between went on at last. "I have functioned for many millions of years. It is likely that I will function for millions more. If I were to suffer injury. I would repair myself. If I need to do so, I can modify and improve my own operations and organization.
"I am a constructed entity, but the Builders themselves, my creators, developed naturally in the same way. They live forever, by your standards, and they are capable of
individual
self-improvement and transformation.
"Compare that with the beings of your worlds. You are short-lived, every one of you, knowing that each one of you will die, and die very soon, yet you are not obsessed by thoughts of death, or of a future without your presence. By the standards of the Builders, you are incredibly rapid breeders, and your species changes equally rapidly. Yet you are not capable of
self
-improvement, as individuals. That does not matter, for—most astonishing of all—
the survival of an individual is to you of no importance
."