"I should have known something was a bit funny when I read the agreement, because the penalties for nondelivery included my arms and my scanning eye. But I've shipped water-ice a thousand times, with never a problem. So we shook tongues on it like civilized beings, and I headed the Indulgence for Polytope.
"Only thing is, they hadn't mentioned to me that Polytope is a world that the Tristan free-space Manticore dreamed on one of its off days. On Polytope, you see, water decreases in volume as it turns to ice instead of expanding as it does everywhere else. And it was a cold world, too, below freezing point most of the year. So the oceans never froze over, but when the water at the top got cold enough to turn to ice, that ice just sank down to the bottom and stayed there.
"There was certainly plenty of water-ice on Polytope, and a shipment of it would sure be valuable—but it was all down under five kilometers of water. I checked the land surface. Polytope had plenty of that, too, but no water-ice on it. I needed a submersible. But the nearest world where I could rent one big enough was so far away, I'd have blown my contract deadline before I could get there and back. What to do, Mr. Tally. What to do?"
"Well,"—Tally's pause for thought was imperceptible in human terms—"If I were placed in such a position—"
"I know you have no idea, sir, so I'll tell you. There was a mining world less than a day's jump away. I flew there, rented land-mining equipment, flew back, and put the Indulgence down by the side of the ocean. I dug a slanting tunnel, thirty kilometers long—very scary, I was worried all the way about the roof collapsing on me—down under the ocean bed. And then I dug upward until I reached the water-ice sitting on the seabed. I mined it from the bottom, you see, then pulled it along the tunnel to my ship. I took off, and got back to Rumbleside with the shipment and with two minutes to spare before my deadline. You should have seen the disappointed faces of those scad merchants when I arrived! They were already sharpening their knives for me." Dulcimer leaned back expansively in his chair. "Now, tell me true, sir, did you ever have an experience to match that?"
E.C. Tally considered experiences and matching algorithms. "Not exactly equivalent. But perhaps comparable. Involving the Zardalu."
"Zardalu! You met Zardalu, did you? Oh yes." Dulcimer put on the facial expression that to a thousand worlds in the spiral arm indicated a Chism Polypheme at its most sneering and insulting. To E.C. Tally it suggested that Dulcimer was suffering badly from stomach gas.
"Zardalu. Well, Mr. Tally." The Polypheme inclined to indulgence, as the name of his ship pointed out. He nodded. "Since we've nothing better to do, sir, I suppose you may as well tell me about it. Go ahead."
Dulcimer lolled back in his chair, prepared to be thoroughly skeptical and bored.
The Indulgence had negotiated the final annular singularity. They were inside, and Darya could see the planet of Genizee, surely no more than half-a-million kilometers away. She did a quick scan of the surface for the seedship beacon, whose signal should have been easily detected from this distance.
There was no sign of it. She was not worried. There was no chance that the beacon could have been destroyed, no matter how fast the atmospheric entry or how hard the impact with the surface. The beacon was meant to withstand temperatures of thousands of degrees, and decelerations of many hundreds of gravities.
The seedship must be on the other side of the planet, with its signal shielded by Genizee's bulk. The planet was amazingly close. Darya decided that Dulcimer had done an outstanding job. Who had said that the Polypheme was only a good pilot when he was radiation-hot? Well, they were quite wrong.
She headed from the observation bubble of the Indulgence to the control room, intending to congratulate Dulcimer. He was sitting in the pilot's chair, but his corkscrew body was coiled so tightly that he was no more than three feet long. His scanning eye was withdrawn, his master eye focused on infinity. E.C. Tally was sitting next to him.
"We've arrived, E.C. That planet outside is Genizee." She bent to peer at Dulcimer. "What's wrong with him? He hasn't been soaking up hard radiation again, has he?"
"Not one photon." Tally moved his shoulders in the accepted human gesture of puzzlement. "I have no idea what has happened to him. All we have done is talk."
"Just talk?" Darya noticed that Tally had a neural cable attached to the back of his skull. "Are you sure?"
"Talk—and show a few visuals. Dulcimer told me of one of his numerous dangerous experiences. Nothing comparable has ever happened to me, but I in return explained our encounter with the Zardalu, back on Serenity. I fed some of my recollections into the display system of the Indulgence, though I chose to do so from the point of view of an uninvolved third party, rather than from my own perspective."
"Oh, my lord. Louis Nenda warned us—Dulcimer is easily excited. Run it again, E.C. Let me see what you showed him."
"Very little, really."
The three-dimensional display in the center of the control room came alive. The chamber filled with a dozen hulking Zardalu, advancing on a small group of humans who were vainly trying to hold them off with flashburn weapons that did little more than sting them. In the center of the group, noticeably less nimble than the others, stood E.C. Tally. He hopped clumsily from side to side, then closed with one of the Zardalu to provide a maximum-intensity burn. He was too slow jumping clear. Four tentacled arms, as thick as human thighs, seized and lifted him.
"Tally! Stop it there."
"I explained to Dulcimer," E.C. Tally said defensively. "I told him that although I am sensitive to my body's condition, I do not feel pain in any human or Polypheme sense. It is curious, but I have the impression that when I began to talk he did not really believe that we had encountered the Zardalu. Certainly his manner suggested skepticism. I think it was at this point that he became convinced."
The display was still running. The Zardalu, filled with rage and bloodlust, had started to pull E.C. Tally apart. Both arms were plucked free, then the legs, one by one. Finally the bloody stump of the torso was hurled away, to smash against a wall. The top of Tally's skull was ripped loose. It flew free and was cracked like an eggshell by a questing Zardalu tentacle.
"Tally, will you for God's sake stop it!" Darya reached for the arm of the embodied computer, just as the display flickered and vanished.
"That is exactly where I did stop it." Tally reached behind his head and unplugged the neural connect cable. "And when I looked again at Dulcimer, he was already in this condition. Is he unconscious?"
"He might as well be." Darya moved her hand up and down in front of the Polypheme's eye. It did not move. "He's petrified."
"But I do not understand it. Polyphemes thrive on danger. Dulcimer enjoys it—he told me so himself."
"Well, he seems to have enjoyed more of it than he can stand." Darya leaned down and grabbed the Polypheme by the tail. "Come on, E.C., give me a hand. We need him in working order if we're going to orbit Genizee and locate Captain Rebka and his party."
"What are you going to do with him?"
"Take him down to the reactor. It's the only thing that might bring him out of this in a hurry. We'll let him have some of his favorite radiation." Darya began to lift the Polypheme, then paused. "That's very strange. Did Dulcimer program an approach orbit before you scared him half to death?"
"He did no programming of any kind. We came in through the singularities on autopilot."
"Well, we're in a capture orbit now. Look." The display screen above the control board in front of Darya showed Genizee, much closer than when they had emerged from the innermost spherical singularity.
Tally shook his head. The embodied computer could do his own trajectory computations almost instantaneously. "That is not a capture orbit."
"Are you sure? It certainly looks like one."
"But it is not." Tally released his hold on Dulcimer and straightened up. "With respect, Professor Lang, I suggest that there may be more urgent matters than providing Dulcimer with radiation. Or with anything else
." He nodded at the display of Genizee, growing fast on the screen. "What we are flying is not a capture orbit. It is an impact orbit. If we do not change our velocity vector, the Indulgence will intersect the surface of Genizee. Hard. In seventeen minutes."
Chapter Twelve
Like most rational beings in the spiral arm given any opportunity to do so, J'merlia had read the description of his own species in the Universal Species Catalog (Subclass: Sapients). And like most rational beings, he had found his species' entry most puzzling.
The physical description of an adult male Lo'tfian was not a matter of dispute. J'merlia could look at himself in a mirror, and agree with it point by point: pipestem body, eight articulated legs, lidless yellow compound eyes. Fine. No argument about that. Great gift for languages. No doubt about it. What he found mystifying was the description of male Lo'tfian mental processes: "Confronted by a Lo'tfian female, the reasoning ability of a male Lo'tfian apparently switches off. The same mechanism is believed to be at work to a lesser extent when a Lo'tfian male encounters Cecropians or other intelligences."
Could it be true? J'merlia had felt no evidence of it—but if it was true, would he even know it? Was it possible that his own intelligence changed according to his company? When he was in the presence of Atvar H'sial, what could be more right and natural than that he should subdue his own thought processes and desires in favor of hers? She was his very own dominatrix! And had been, since he was first postlarval.
Yet what he could not deny was the change in his level of activity when he was left alone, without instructions from anyone. He became nervous and worried, his body moved in jerks, his thoughts jumped and skittered in a dozen random directions, his mind was ten times as active as comfort permitted.
Like now.
He was dead. He had to be dead. No one could fly smack into the middle of an unstructured singularity and live. And yet he couldn't be dead. His mind was still working, chasing a hundred thoughts at once. Where was he, why was he, what had happened to the seedship? Would the others survive? Would they ever learn what had happened to him? How could any mind pursue so many thoughts in parallel? Could even a dead mind do that, operating in limbo?
It was an academic question. He was certainly in free-fall, but certainly not in limbo. For one thing, he was breathing. For another, he hurt. He had been pulled apart, and now he could feel his body re-forming, settling back into place atom by atom. His sight was returning, too. As the whirlpool of rainbow colors around him subsided, J'merlia found himself hovering in the middle of an empty enclosure. He was surrounded by a million points of sparkling orange, randomly scattered in space. He stared in every direction and found nothing to provide a sense of scale. The glittering points could be feet away, or miles—or light-years. He moved his head from side to side, trying for parallax. Nothing. The lights were all at the same distance, or they were all very remote.
So he would hang there in the middle of nothing, until he starved to death.
J'merlia pulled his limbs in close to his body, retracted his eyestalks, and slowly rotated in space. As he did so he noticed a just-perceptible change in his surroundings. A small part of the orange glitter had been obscured by a tiny circle of more uniform orange light. Staring, he watched the occulting disk grow steadily in size.
It was coming toward him. And it was not small. As it came closer he realized that it must be many times as big as he was. By the time it stopped, it was obscuring a third of the field of orange spangles. Its surface was a uniform silver, a soft burnished matte that diffused the light of the orange sparkles falling on it.
There was a sighing whistle, like a gentle escape of steam. Undulations grew on the surface of the sphere, ripples on a great ball of quicksilver. It changed shape, to become a distorted ellipsoid. As J'merlia watched he saw a frond of silver grow upward from the top, slowly developing into a five-petaled flower that turned to face him. Open pentagonal disks extruded from the front of the ball, and a long, thin tail grew downward. In a couple of minutes the featureless sphere had become a horned and tailed devil, with a flowerlike head that looked directly at J'merlia.
He felt a sense of relief for the first time since the seedship had flown into the heart of the singularity. He might not know where he was, or how he had come here, or what would happen to him. But he knew the nature of the entity that had just arrived, and he had a pretty good idea what to do next.
He was facing a sentient Builder construct, similar to The-One-Who-Waits, on Glister, or Speaker-Between, on Serenity. It might take a while to communicate with it—the other two had been out of action for three million years, and a little rusty—but given time they had both understood speech. They had just needed a few samples, to get the ball rolling. J'merlia's concentration and will had weakened when the other being had first approached. Now, as he realized that he was dealing with no more than an intelligent machine, his own intelligence seemed to rise to a higher level.
"My name is J'merlia." He spoke in standard human. He could have used Lo'tfian or Hymenopt, or a pheromonal language, but human had worked well with the Builder constructs before.
There was a soft hissing, like a kettle coming to the boil. The flower-head quivered. It seemed to be waiting for more.
"I came to this system with a group of my fellow beings, from far away in the spiral arm." Was that even true? J'merlia was not sure what "this system" was—for all he knew he had been thrown ten million light-years, or into a completely different universe. Except that the air around him was certainly breathable, and his body was unchanged. The being in front of him still seemed to be waiting. "My ship encountered a singularity. I do not understand why that event did not kill me. But I am alive and well. Where am I? Who are you?"
"Amm-m-m I . . . am-m I . . . am I," a wheezing voice said. "Where am I? Who am I?"
J'merlia waited. The sentient Builder constructs took a while to warm up. Some long-dormant language-analysis capability had to be retrieved and used.
"J'merlia?" the hoarse voice said at last.
"I am he. My name is J'merlia, and I am a Lo'tfian, from the planet Lo'tfi."
"A Lo'tfian. Is that a . . . a live intelligence? Are you a . . . sentient organic form?"
"Yes."
"Then that is the reason for your preservation. The singularity that sought you out and captured you is part of the system under my care. It functions automatically, but it was not designed to kill organic intelligence. To confine, yes, but not to kill. It therefore transferred you here, to Hollow-World."
Language contained so many subtleties. Just when J'merlia was convinced that they had established clear communication, the other came up with something baffling. To confine, but not to kill. Was Hollow-World the artificial moon of Genizee?
"How big is the system under your care? Does it include the planet from which I just came?"
"It does. True-Home is in my care. Had you not entered the singularity, you would have been returned there, as all ships bearing organic intelligence and seeking to leave this region are returned to True-Home. That is part of my responsibility. You ask, who am I? I tell you, I am Guardian."
"Guardian—of what?"
"Of True-Home, the world within the singularities. The closed world that will—one day—become the true home of my designers and makers; the home of the Builders.
J'merlia felt dizzy, and not only because of the wrenchings of his passage to Hollow-World. According to Guardian, Genizee was to become the home of the Builders. But Serenity, the great artifact thirty thousand light-years out of the galactic plane, was also destined to become the home of the Builders, if Speaker-Between could be believed. And even little Quake, back in the Mandel system, was supposed to be the home of the Builders, too—despite the fact that Darya Lang, who knew more about the Builders than anyone J'merlia had ever met, insisted that they must have developed on a gas-giant planet like Gargantua and would live only there or in free-space.
"I sense an anomaly," Guardian conti
nued, while quicksilver ripples crisscrossed its body. "You say that you are from the planet Lo'tfi. Are you telling me that you did not originate on True-Home? That you came from elsewhere?
"I did—we did, my whole party. I told you, we are from outside the Anfract, from far away in another part of the spiral arm."
"Tell me more. I sense a possible misunderstanding, although I am not persuaded without more direct evidence. Tell me all that has happened."
It was a direct command, but one that J'merlia felt poorly equipped to obey. Where was he supposed to begin? With his own birth, with his assignment to Atvar H'sial as his dominatrix, with their trip to Quake? Whatever he told Guardian, would the other being really understand him? Like the other sentient Builder constructs, Guardian must have been in standby mode for millions of years.
J'merlia sighed and began to talk. He told of the original home planet of each member of the party; of their convergence on the twin worlds of Opal and Quake, for Summertide Maximum; of their move to the gas-giant Gargantua and their passage through the Eye of Gargantua and a Builder transportation system to Serenity; of their successful fight with the surviving Zardalu, who had been set free from stasis fields by the Builder construct Speaker-Between; and then of how the Zardalu had returned to the spiral arm and to the planet Genizee—True-Home, as it was known to Guardian.
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