"And what was the new Great Problem?" Graves asked.
"That information was not considered useful to me." The weary voice sounded more tired than ever, as though it would welcome a rapid end to the conversation. "I, of course, was created by the Builders, long ago, so although my data sources here are large, they are limited to information judged necessary for my effective functioning. You will obtain more answers than I can give you when you reach Serenity—the main artifact, far from the main galactic plane."
"And we will find the Builders there?" Graves had become the official spokesman of the group.
"That information also is not available here." The-One-Who-Waits paused. "The present whereabouts of the Builders are unknown to me. But this I know, that you must work with Speaker-Between, the Interlocutor, one who wears my shape. When the Builders chose to move to Serenity, they also postponed certain other decisions until particular events occurred. Those events are now imminent, and involve Speaker-Between."
"When did the Builders leave the spiral arm?"
"I am not exactly sure." The-One-Who-Waits made a now-familiar soft bubbling noise, like water boiling over, and went on. "I myself waited for six million of your years, in the interior of that planet you call Quake. But of course, I was already old before that . . . I am not sure how old. Mmmm. Ten million of your years? Twelve?"
There was another substantial silence, during which Birdie wondered if Builder constructs could suffer from senility.
"I would be still waiting still," The-One-Who-Waits went on, "but a few weeks ago the signals were at last received. They indicated that every Builder structure in the spiral arm had finally been visited by a member of one of the chosen intelligent species.
"The plan could at last proceed. The tidal energies available at Quake during Summertide were harnessed to open the planet. They permitted me to be sent to the vicinity of Old-Home. I came to the gate of the transportation system, where we are now.
"Very soon you will enter that gate, at your own request. Unless you have a final question?
"If we may not meet the Builders, even on Serenity, can't you at least describe to us what they look like?" Graves said.
"It is not necessary for me to do so. You are already familiar with ones who wear the external appearance of the Builders: the Phages."
"There's a popular theory that says the Phages are artifacts," Steven Graves said. "Are you saying that the Phages were constructed by the Builders in their own image, to look like them?"
"No. The Phages are Builders—devolved forms, debased and degenerate. Their intelligence has been lost. They are able to propagate themselves, and to perform the most elementary acts of matter and energy absorption, and that is all. For all the time that I have known, they have been a nuisance to every free-space structure in the spiral arm. Planetary interiors, like the inside of Quake, are safe, and intense gravity fields discourage their presence."
"What happened, to turn Builders into Phages?" Graves asked.
"I cannot say." The-One-Who-Waits was stirring, lifting higher off the floor. "I know only that it was another consequence of the Great Problem, the one that led the Builders to leave the spiral arm and seek a long stasis in the Artifact.
"Now, no more questions. It is time for you to enter the gate."
Birdie looked all around him. All this talk about a gate. There was nothing in sight that resembled a gate, even vaguely.
"I don't know where your gate is," he began. "But about that safe passage that you promised us, back to our home planets—"
He was in midsentence when the floor evaporated beneath his feet. He heard a rushing sound all around him. Birdie took one look down. He was falling, dropping into nothingness.
He closed his eyes.
Looking back on what happened next, Birdie decided he must have kept his eyes squeezed tight shut until he felt firm ground again beneath his feet. Or then again, maybe he had just fainted. He was not willing to argue that point. He knew only two things for sure: First, when the others described the journey, he had no idea what they were talking about. He did not remember one thing about it.
Second, when he did finally open his eyes . . .
He was standing on a flat, endless plain, beneath a dull and featureless ceiling of glowing grayness.
And he was not alone. Surrounding him, looming over him, reaching out toward him with pale-blue tentacles, even before his eyes had finished opening, were—
—the stuff of nightmares.
He saw a dozen hulking bodies of midnight blue. They were closing in, sharp beaks gaping.
At that point Birdie felt more than ready to close his eyes and faint again.
ENTRY 16: ZARDALU.
Distribution: Like all information concerning the Zardalu, species-distribution data are based on fragmentary historical records and on incomplete race memory of other species. The great empire known as the Zardalu Communion is believed to have formed a roughly hemispherical region, over a thousand light-years across and centered on 1400 ly, 22 hours, 27° north (coordinates in galactic-plane angular measure, radial distances with respect to Sol; coordinate shifts to Cecropia reference frame are given in Appendix B). The face of the hemisphere comprising the Zardalu Communion is roughly tangent to the edge of Crawlspace (see HUMAN entry), and the lower part of the hemisphere itself overlaps the Cecropia Federation (see CECROPIA entry).
At its height, just before the Great Rising of approximately eleven thousand years ago, the Zardalu Communion ruled in excess of one thousand worlds. There is evidence that preliminary missions to worlds of the Fourth Alliance and of the Cecropia Federation took place just before the Rising, and that the Zardalu intended to expand into those regions.
Despite rumors today of hidden worlds inhabited by Zardalu—rumors that possess the force and persistence of multispecies legend—it should be noted that no Zardalu has been encountered since the Great Rising. It can be confidently stated that the Zardalu are extinct and have been extinct for eleven thousand years.
Physical Characteristics: No physical remains or pictures have been discovered. The Zardalu records were systematically destroyed, along with all evidence of Zardalu existence, at the time of the Great Rising. The following data represent a consensus derived from race memories, largely of the Hymenopts. They are undoubtedly subject to the distortion natural for a slave species remembering their former masters:
The Zardalu were land-cephalopods, possessing between six and twelve tentacles. Their size is not know with any precision, but it is certain that they were considerably larger than a Hymenopt (which seldom stands above one and a half meters, even with legs fully extended.) A suggested plausible height for a standing Zardalu would be three meters, although Hymenopt impressions record it as at least twice that.
Evidence suggests that the Zardalu possessed smooth, grease-coated skin ranging in color from pale powder-blue (tentacles) to deep blue-black (main torso). The head possessed large, lidded eyes, a formidable beak, and one main ingestion mouth.
Details of interior anatomy are not available. The existence of an endoskeleton, or the lack of one, is purely conjectural. Based upon their large size, and upon their ability to move and function well on land, it seems likely that the Zardalu possessed at least a rudimentary skeleton, or substantial interior sheaths and bands of semirigid cartilaginous material.
No information is available concerning Zardalu intelligence or culture level, and nothing is known about the Zardalu mating or family habits. They retain to this day the reputation of having been prodigious breeders, but that reputation is not based on scientific evidence.
History: Almost nothing can be said here with any authority, beyond this: Based on their wide distribution and integrated empire, the Zardalu must have developed space travel at least twenty thousand years before Cecropians or Humans, and possibly much longer ago than that.
The original homeworld of the Zardalu clade remains unknown, although its name, Genizee, is well establi
shed in legend. Quite likely it was one of the dozens of worlds cindered and sterilized in the bitter struggle of the Great Rising. Certainly any of the subject races able to find and annihilate the home of the Zardalu would have done so, without hesitation.
Culture: Five words summarize all recollections of Zardalu culture: imperialistic, powerful, determined, expansionist, and ruthless. It is a perverse testament to the Zardalu that they still evoke such strong images in the minds of intelligent beings everywhere, even though they have been gone for over ten millennia.
—From the Universal Species Catalog (Subclass: Sapients).
CHAPTER 21
Darya arrived back in the silent chamber a little bit early, before the other three. In the past four hours she had become convinced that the search was going nowhere. She was also tired, and becoming hungry again.
Even so, she could not sit down until she had taken a look inside each of the big tanks. Logically she knew that the coffins would be empty. It made no sense for the Zardalu to have gone back into stasis, even assuming that they knew how the tanks worked.
But logic had nothing to do with it. She had to see for herself and make sure.
Atvar H'sial crept quietly into the room a few minutes later, right on time. She and Darya nodded to each other. That was about as far as they could go without Louis Nenda as interpreter, but Darya was sure that the Cecropian had also found nothing useful. She could read that much from body language, just as Atvar H'sial must be able to read her.
Rebka and Nenda came in together. They looked angry and worried.
"Nothing?" Darya asked.
They shook their heads simultaneously.
"Washout," Nenda said. "No Builders, no Speaker-Between, no Zardalu. Bugger 'em all. From the look of it, we'd take ten thousand years searching this place properly. Screw it." Just as Darya had done, he and Rebka went compulsively across to the tanks and peered inside to make sure that they were empty.
"It's worse than I thought," Nenda said when he came back. "At says she didn't catch one whiff of them, nowhere. And she can smell a gnat's armpit at a hundred kilometers. Stinkers like them ought to be a cinch. They've vanished, every one of them. What do we do now, boys and girls?"
It was smell that had persuaded Nenda, not any argument offered by Darya or Hans Rebka. When Atvar H'sial had risen high, poked her big white head inside one of the big tanks, pulled forth on one claw a trace of fatty smear, and assured them all that nothing smelled remotely like that anywhere in the spiral arm, Nenda had become an instant believer. The Cecropian knew scents better than any human knew sights. Darya had put her own head into one of the tanks and caught the faintest whiff of ammonia and rancid grease.
Rebka was sitting on top of one of the coffins, his chin cupped in his hands. "What do we do?" he repeated. "Well, I guess that we keep looking. Speaker-Between said the action would start when all three species were present. We didn't know what he was talking about then, but now we do."
"We're all here," Nenda said. "Humans, Cecropians, and Zardalu. Great—except we can't find the Zardalu."
"We can't. But I'll bet that Speaker-Between can. This is his home ground."
"Yeah—and we can't find Speaker-Between." Nenda walked forward to stand in front of the tank and stare up insultingly at Rebka. "Great work, Captain. If you're so convinced Speaker-Between will find us, I don't know why we bothered looking."
Rebka did not move. "Because I'd like to tell him about the Zardalu before they tell him," he said quietly. "Just in case he doesn't know their reputation. Got any ideas, smart guy? I"m ready to be amazed."
"That shouldn't take much."
"All right." Darya stepped between them. "That will do. Or I'll set Atvar H'sial on both of you. I thought we agreed, we can't afford to bicker and fight until we're out of this mess.
"I said I'd cooperate. I never said I'd bow down in front of him, or that I'd agree with him when he said something really dumb—"
Nenda was interrupted by Atvar H'sial, who came gliding through the air to land by his side. She grabbed him by the arm with one clawed forepaw and pulled him backward so that his head was in contact with the front of her carapace.
"Hey, At," he said. "Whose side are you on? Now just stop that!"
He had been drawn close to the Cecropian and turned bodily to face the chamber entrances. "What!" His chest nodules were pulsing. "Are you sure?"
He twisted and called back to Darya. "Behind the tanks. Get a move on! You, too, Captain."
"What's happening?" Rebka eased off the top of the stasis tank, but he came forward instead of moving into hiding.
"At says she's getting a whiff of Zardalu. From out there." Nenda nodded toward the entrance. "She's hearing sounds, too, faint ones. Somethin's coming this way."
"Tell Atvar H'sial to get behind the tanks with Darya. You, too. I'll stay here."
"We playing heroes, Captain?" Nenda rubbed at his bare and pitted chest. "That's fine with me." He turned his body. "Come on, At, let go of me."
The Cecropian did not move. She was crouched forward, her long antennas unfurled and extended as far as they would go. She pulled Nenda closer to her lower carapace.
"Go on," Rebka said. "What are you both waiting for?"
But Nenda had stopped pushing at Atvar H'sial's encircling forelimbs and was peering at the entrance. "I changed my mind. I got to stay here."
"Why, man?" Rebka advanced to stand at his side. "We shouldn't all wait here if there's Zardalu on the way."
"Agreed. So you get back in there with the professor." Nenda turned his head and gave Rebka a curiously distant glance. "At says she smells Hymenopt. Not just any old Hymenopt, either—she smells Kallik. I stay."
The next minute was filled with tense inactivity. Nothing emerged from the chamber entrance. Atvar H'sial offered no further information or comment via Louis Nenda. No one else could hear, see, or smell anything unusual. Darya, feeling both foolish and cowardly, came from behind the tanks and moved forward to join the other three. Hans Rebka gave her a sharp look, but he did not suggest that she go back.
The smell came first, a faint and alien whiff that drifted in on the currents of air circulation. Darya did not recognize it. The sudden lump in her chest had to be pure nerves. But she craned forward, straining to see into the gloom beyond the tunnel's mouth, looking for something that loomed three times the height of a human.
"Almost here, according to At." Nenda's gruff voice was reduced to a whisper. "Coupla' seconds more. Hold your hats on."
A shape was moving out of the darkness, slowly, with an odd sideways motion. One moment it could hardly be seen, the next it was fully visible.
Darya heard a bark of laughter from Louis Nenda, standing to her left. She felt like echoing it. The menace had arrived. It was no seven-meter land-cephalopod, supporting itself on a massive sprawl of tentacled limbs. Instead she was looking at a human male, slightly below average height. He wore a bloody bandage around his head, and from his awkward movement he had something badly wrong with his legs or his central nervous system.
He shuffled forward to within a couple of paces of the group. "Some of you do not know me," he said. His voice was quite matter-of-fact. "But I know all of you. You are Darya Lang, Hans Rebka, Louis Nenda, and the Cecropian, Atvar H'sial. My name is E. C. Tally. I am here to deliver a message, and to ask a question. But first, tell me who is the leader of this group."
Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda glared at each other until Nenda shrugged. "Go ahead. Be my guest."
Rebka turned to E. C. Tally. "I am. What's your question?"
"First, I must make a statement. I am here only as a messenger. The rest of the group that came here with me consists of the humans Julius Graves and Birdie Kelly, the Lo'tfian, J'merlia, and the Hymenopt, Kallik. They are now prisoners of that species known in the spiral arm as Zardalu. The others will be executed at once should you seek to free them by violence. I should add that my cooperation was forced by their threat to execute C
ouncilor Graves on the spot if I did not function as requested. And now, the question. Are there members here of other intelligences of the spiral arm, or are you the only ones? Please give the answer loudly and clearly."
"I can't give a definite answer. All I can say is that we are the only ones here that we know of."
"Logic demands that no fuller answer can be justified. I am sure that will be satisfactory. In fact—"
Rebka and the others in the group were no longer listening. Moving out behind the embodied computer and overshadowing him completely came three huge forms. The one in the middle was carrying Kallik, holding her upside down with two tentacles wrapped firmly around the abdomen, so that the gleaming yellow sting could not be employed. That alone was enough to leave Rebka gasping. No organism in the spiral arm should have been able to restrain an adult Hymenopt, one-on-one. But Kallik was not struggling. Her eyes were open, and one of her hind limbs was twisted at a peculiar angle. The cruel blue beak hovered close to the back of Kallik's neck, ready to bite.
The other two Zardalu were carrying nothing but improvised clubs fashioned from the twisted exteriors of food containers. They were almost identical in appearance, except for the necklaces of round-mouthed pouches running around the body below the slitted mouths. In the Zardalu standing on the right, the pale-blue ovals within those pouches were far more prominent, bulging out far from the tight flesh.
The beak of the Zardalu in the center moved, to produce a high-pitched chittering sound. Kallik replied. There was another brief exchange of clicks and whistles.
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