"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-term 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, t
he 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."
Louis Nenda gave Darya a little nudge with his elbow. "Hear that? You could sure as hell have fooled me."
"Shhh!"
"The Builders found, on many of the little worlds, wonderfully designed organisms," Speaker-Between continued. "They were highly specialized to run, or fly, or hover in the air, or hunt other creatures with great skill. But the Builders found something even more amazing. Once an individual organism fell in any way from perfect functioning, because of age or minor injury, it was expendable. It was allowed to die. That wonderful mechanism was thrown away, while another just as exquisite was created to take its place. That approach to life, that prodigality, and the idea that it could ever lead to intelligent life—was so alien to the Builders as to be incomprehensible. For if intelligence is any one thing, it is surely the accumulation of experience.
"But, the Builders argued, in that incomprehensibility lay the possibility of progress with The Problem. They had exhausted the familiar. Therefore, strangeness was absolutely essential to any possible advance. The Builders did not know which of the emerging intelligent life-forms was likely to prove most different from them, but they knew this: The most alien was the one they would need. And so they took steps to set up the necessary selection procedure.
"And it was simple. When those three species were sufficiently developed technologically to reach out from the little-worlds and explore the Builder artifacts that populate the spiral arm, they would be ready. Individuals of the three species would be taken as the opportunity occurred. They would be brought here. And here they would meet for the selection process. Stasis might be needed, to assure that representatives were available at the same time, but that was not a problem. Stasis technology has been available for 150 million years. In any case, the Builders predicted emergence close to the same time for each species.
"What was never anticipated was that the individuals of two different species might arrive here together, as happened with you two." The flower head dipped toward Nenda and Atvar H'sial. "However, that presents no problem. In fact, it simplifies matters, since I do not need to repeat an explanation. Thus, no further wait is needed."
The Interlocutor's voice began to grow deeper and softer. The silvery shape drifted slowly downward. Soon the tail disappeared into the floor, and then the bulging round of the lower body.
"For now you are here, all three species, exactly as required," Speaker-Between said dreamily. "The conditions are met. My initial task has been carried out. The selection procedure can begin.
"In fact, the actions of the Zardalu show that it has already begun . . ."
"Wait" Darya cried. The flower head was all that remained above the smooth floor. "The Builders—tell us where are they located now."
The slow descent halted for a second. "I know many things." The torpor of the voice had been replaced by a curious agony. "But that, I do not know."
The blind head nodded. The silver pentagon drifted downward out of sight.
Hans Rebka, Louis Nenda, and Atvar H'sial had understood immediately. It was Darya Lang, the unworldly professor, and E. C. Tally, the even less worldly embodied computer, who had to have it explained to them—and still had difficulty believing the answers.
After Speaker-Between had left they asked the same questions over and over again of their companions.
"Darya, how many times do you need to be told?" Hans Rebka said at last. "Remember, we're dealing with alien thought processes. From their point of view, what they're doing is perfectly logical. They have convinced themselves that the beings who may be able to help them with their problem should have the maximum amount of what they think of as 'little world' characteristics—violence and energy and strangeness. The Builders don't want to work with more than one species at a time, so they're going to pick one out. Or rather, they'll let one species pick itself. The 'selection procedure' is designed with that in mind."
"May I speak?"
"No," Nenda said. "You may listen. I'll give it to you in words of one syllable, Tally. That's what the two of you seem to need. The Builders have set us up in a three-way knockout contest. Humans against Cecropians against Zardalu. Winner gets the big prize—survival, and a chance to work with the Builders. Losers get you-know-what."
"But that's absolutely—" Darya checked herself. She had been about to say inhuman, which was a ridiculous comment. Instead she changed it to, "That's absolutely barbaric. You—Louis Nenda. You wouldn't go into a fight to the death with your friend Atvar H'sial, would you?"
"Course not." Nenda stared across at the hulking Cecropian. "Least, not till I was sure I'd win. Look, Professor, what I'd choose to do and not do ain't the issue. We were just told the rules. We didn't pick 'em. I think there's only one way for us to operate—and At agrees with me, she's been trackin' our talk. First, we gotta take care of the Zardalu and bust their asses. After that we decide how we'll squabble between humans and Cecropians."
"There are fourteen of them," Tally said quietly. "And nine of us—four of whom are already Zardalu hostages."
Nenda snorted. "What do you want to do, go and explain arithmetic to Speaker-Between and say it's not fair? By the time he shows up again we could all be dead."
"Nenda's right, E.C." Rebka took over again. "It doesn't matter how we got into the position we're in, or how little we like it. We have to accept it and work out how we'll survive. If we sit here and wait for the Zardalu to come back, that takes us nowhere. They'll find out we didn't reach any deal with Speaker-Between for them, and they'll blame us."
"But what can we do?" Darya felt she was not getting her urgency across to Rebka. He was as cool and thoughtful as if they were having a round-table discussion of landing permits on Opal. "The Zardalu could be here any minute."
"Could, and probably will." Rebka glanced around, assessing each member of the group. "So let's find out what we've got between us, information and possessions."
"Right!" Nenda said. "Then we better do a little reconnoiter, see where they are and what they're doing. I've had experience i
n that, and so has At. Tally can tell us where to find 'em."
"But they're so big, and so strong . . ." Darya found it hard to say what she was really thinking, that the thought of the Zardalu gave her the shivers. And she did not like the look in Nenda's eyes, either, an odd blend of pleasure and anger.
"What can observing them do?" she continued. "It won't make them weaker, or us stronger."
"Wrong." Nenda glared at her. "Information is strength, sweetheart. We take a peek at 'em. Then we come back here, pool all we've got and all we know. And then we hit 'em, quick. Zardalu, here we come! I'll bet that's the last thing they're expecting."
It was the last thing that Darya was expecting, too. Pool what? They didn't have a thing—not even information. The Zardalu held all the cards: strength, numbers, ruthlessness, hostages.
But looking at the determination on the faces of Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda, Darya did not think her views were going to count for much.
CHAPTER 24
"Have you ever seen a human birth—a normal one, I mean, not in a tank or with an animal surrogate?" Birdie Kelly was speaking in a whisper.
Julius Graves avoided a spoken answer altogether, relying on his head shake being visible even in the low-level light.
"Well, I have," Birdie went on softly. "A dozen times, back on Opal. And let me tell you, it's a terrific effort for the mother, even when everything goes fine. You see it once, it makes you glad you're male. The women get pleasure out of it later, you see it on their faces when they hold their baby. But that don't make it less painful, or less hard work. But these critters . . ." He shook his head.
The two men were sitting in a corner of the room. J'merlia was a few meters away with Kallik. Occasionally they whistled and clicked gently to each other, but most of Kallik's attention was on the Zardalu.
The fourteen massive bodies lay sprawled between them and the only entrance. Now and again a great lidded eye would turn and blink toward Graves and Kelly; otherwise the land-cephalopods seemed scarcely aware of human presence. Certainly they were not worried that any of the group might escape.
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