Transvergence

by Charles Sheffield

  Nenda took a deep breath before he spoke. "I heard you're heading out. Leaving Sentinel Gate."

  "What of it? I'm a free agent."

  "If you're following Darya Lang, I want to propose a deal. Let us go with you. We have information that she'd like to have, and we want to know what she's thinking."

  "We?"

  "Me and Atvar H'sial."

  "I ought to have guessed that. Two crooks together, and both of you still trying to get Kallik and J'merlia back. Give it up, Nenda." Rebka stepped closer. "They're not your slaves anymore."

  The fight couldn't be today.

  It was the worst possible time.

  But perhaps it would be today, anyway.

  "You're not a good liar, Rebka." Nenda felt his nostrils flaring. "Yesterday you said you didn't know where any of them are."

  "And I don't. Can't you get that into your tiny pea-brain? I don't know where Darya Lang is, or Kallik, or J'merlia. Is that clear enough?" Rebka scowled, but there was more frustration than anger on his face. "Why the devil haven't they called me?"

  "Darya?"

  "No. She hates my guts. She wouldn't call me if I begged her to."

  "Good. I mean, that's bad, 'cause I have to find her."

  "I was talking about Kallik and J'merlia."

  "Did you tell 'em to call you?"

  "No. I told them to find Darya and go with her, but I didn't tell them to call."

  "Then you're even dumber than I thought. Whether you believe it or not, they still act like slaves. If you don't tell 'em, they won't do it. Wait a minute." Nenda glared pop-eyed. The other part of what Rebka had said was finally sinking in. "You told them to go? You ordered my slave, and Atvar H'sial's slave and interpreter, to go after Darya Lang?"

  The fists and teeth were showing. Knees to the groin were just seconds away. Both men had moved to an open space, dropping from a taller-than-you posture into a defensive crouch. But before the first punch could be thrown, a loud sneeze came from the middle of the lab.

  It was followed by a groan, a clearing of the throat, and a great belch. E.C. Tally was wriggling in his chair, tugging at the restraining tapes and peering squint-eyed around him in bafflement.

  "What happened to the dinner table? And the people?"

  Rebka hurried to his side. "Are you all right?"

  "Of course I'm all right. But where am I?"

  "In the engineering lab. I had to cold-start you. What's the last thing you remember?"

  "I was sitting at the dinner table, listening to Quintus Bloom and Darya Lang. And Professor Lang began to comment on the logical implications of Bloom's assertion that the Builders are time travelers, humans from the future." Tally's eyes began to roll upward in his head. "Which implies—"

  "You're going to screw him up all over again!" Nenda jumped forward and shook the embodied computer, cutting off his speech in mid-sentence.

  "God, you're right." Rebka held up his hand. "E.C., stop it there. I want you to steer clear of every thought to do with time travel until we hear from Miranda about a software fix for you."

  "But if the Builders are from the future—"

  "Stop that! Think about something else. Anything else. Think about—what, for God's sake? Come on, Nenda, help me. E.C., talk about space travel. Tell Nenda what you and I said we wanted to do, after we had been to Sentinel Gate."

  "You mean our plan to visit Paradox? Certainly. We will seek entry using some of my special capabilities, although as you all know, entry and successful return have never previously been accomplished. The artifact known as Paradox implies that the Builders—"

  "Don't talk about the Builders! Talk about Darya Lang. E.C., you were with Darya at dinner. Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Nenda thinks I know, but I don't."

  "I can speculate." E.C. Tally turned to face Louis Nenda. "I have considered the question of a next logical investigation, in great detail. Darya Lang is almost certainly exploring one of the artifacts, but which one? Before reaching Sentinel Gate I computed and stored for each artifact the probability of a fruitful new exploration. The results can be summarized as follows, in order of decreasing probability: Paradox, 0.0061; Torvil Anfract, 0.0045; Manticore, 0.0037; Reinhardt, 0.0035; Elephant, 0.0030; Flambeau, 0.0027; Cocoon, 0.0026; Lens, 0.0024; Umbilical, 0.0023; Magyar, 0.0022; Cusp, 0.0019 . . ."

  Nenda glared at Hans Rebka as E.C. Tally droned on. "Can't you stop him? He has twelve hundred to go."

  "Why bother? It's keeping him out of trouble." Rebka glared right back. "Still want to start something?"

  "Love to. But right now it's a luxury I can't afford." Nenda took four steps backward, out of distance for easy action. "I need to find Darya Lang, and you can't tell me where she is. So I'll have to work it out for myself. And wasting time fussin' with you won't help me. I'm going."

  At the door to the lab he turned for a final scowl. "Have fun on Paradox, you and the dumb dinglebrain. Who knows, maybe I'll see you both there. But I hope not."

  Rebka returned the snarl. "Go to hell."

  "Fambezux, 0.0015," intoned E.C. Tally.

  "And the same to you," growled Louis Nenda.

  Chapter Ten

  Less than one year ago, Darya Lang had been a quiet and dedicated research scientist at the Artifact Institute. She had never in her life left the solar system containing Sentinel and Sentinel Gate. The production of successive editions of the Lang Catalog was the high spot of her existence.

  Then came the trip to the Dobelle system. That had started her whole strange odyssey, to Quake, to Glister, to Serenity, on to the Torvil Anfract and Genizee, and at last back home.

  All that, in less than one year. Now it was hard for Darya, seeing herself as a hardened and sophisticated traveler through the farthest reaches of the spiral arm, to believe that the quiet research worker had ever existed.

  But sometimes she had direct proof that her new experience was very recent—and very limited.

  Darya studied the Bose Network and plotted out a series of transitions to take their ship, the Myosotis, from Sentinel to Labyrinth by way of Jerome's World. It took many hours of careful work, but she was rather proud of the result. As she was transferring the file to another data base from which the sequence could be executed, Kallik happened to see what she was doing.

  "With respect." The little Hymenopt bobbed her dark head. "Is this by any chance your first experience using the Bose Network?"

  "I've used it before, but this is my first opportunity to plan my own sequence of transitions."

  Kallik was studying the file closely. Darya waited, expecting words of appreciation. Instead Kallik hissed, whistled, and said, "Excuse me. But is it permitted that I examine the energy budget associated with one or two of these nodes?"

  "Of course."

  Kallik made a copy of the file and retreated to her own terminal, one more suited for a being with eight polydactyl limbs. After a few minutes she transferred another file to Darya's terminal. It came without a word of comment, but Darya saw at once that it was an alternative path through the Bose Network. She listed the transit time. It was less than half of hers.

  She displayed the energy budget. It was less than a quarter of hers.

  "Kallik. How did you do that?"

  The Hymenopt inclined her head. "With respect, Professor Lang, great intellectual power, even at the level that you possess it, is not always a substitute for humble practical experience. In service to Master Nenda, I employed the Bose Network many, many times."

  It was as close as Louis Nenda's former slave would ever get to telling a human that she was an ignoramus and had blown the whole Network computation. Darya took Kallik's travel plan and prepared to put it into effect.

  The journey would involve a peculiar mixture of subluminal and superluminal components. That, in turn, called for the Bose Drive and the standard drive to be used in sequence, sometimes with odd delays or advance power delivery.

  Darya pondered the first jump, her hands poised
above the keyboard. She was wondering where to set the subluminal break-point when she became aware of J'merlia hovering at her shoulder. The Lo'tfian's eyestalks were fully extended in different directions, so that he could monitor both keyboards and displays.

  "With respect." J'merlia reached around Darya with four sticklike limbs. Hard digits rattled against the keys, far too fast to follow. When they withdrew a few seconds later, Darya saw that ship commands had been provided for every stage of the journey of the Myosotis from Sentinel to Labyrinth.

  She didn't bother to ask how J'merlia had done it. She didn't want to hear again that the job called for no real talent, just a little experience. Instead she retreated to her cabin, aware that she had become a supernumerary on her own ship.

  Where next would her skills be found deficient? Darya did not know, but a voice in her ear kept reminding her that in all previous leaps into the unknown (like the coming exploration of Labyrinth) she had benefited from the skill and long-time trouble-shooting experience of Hans Rebka—Rebka, the rotten, faithless, lecherous, Phemus Circle swine.

  She went back to where J'merlia was sitting in the pilot's seat.

  "Can you set up a superluminal circuit with Sentinel Gate?"

  "Certainly. It will be expensive, because it must employ three Bose nodes."

  "Never mind that. I want to talk to Hans Rebka."

  "Very good." Instead of beginning his task, J'merlia hesitated.

  "What do you want?" Darya had dealt with him long enough to know that a pause like this usually meant a request that he was diffident in making.

  "When you talk to Captain Rebka, Kallik and I would appreciate it if you would ask him a question from us."

  "Of course."

  "Would you please ask him, just why did he instruct us to seek you out at the spaceport, and accompany you on this trip? We have pondered this question, but have been unable to answer it. We are of course supposed to protect you, but from what? We are uncomfortable when we are not sure that we are correctly interpreting a command."

  "I'll ask him." Protect her, that irritating word again! He must think she was too stupid and naive to look after herself. "You bet I'll ask him, the superior bastard. Get me that circuit!"

  The connection took a while to set up. Darya sat and seethed. Finally it came, and she found herself staring at the face of a near-stranger, a communications operator at the institute.

  "I wanted to talk to Hans Rebka."

  The head on the screen nodded. "I know. But we can't do it, that's why the call was passed through to me."

  "Has something happened to him?" Darya's anger was suddenly touched with worry.

  "Not so far as we know. He's all right. But he's gone. He left the institute this morning."

  "Damn that man. Did he say where he was going?"

  "Not to me. But an embodied computer, E. Crimson Tally, left with him. And Tally told me they were going to explore an artifact called Paradox. Are you feeling all right?" The operator had seen Darya's expression. "Can I connect you with someone else?"

  In a way, the disappearance of Hans Rebka made everything simpler. Darya was on her own.

  Hans had told her, more than once, "People talk about the game of life. But if it's a game, it's nothing like poker. In life you can't turn back cards you don't like and hope you'll be given better ones. You play the hand that's dealt, and you do your best to win with it."

  Hans hadn't mentioned the stakes, but in his own case it had often been his life, and the lives of everyone with him. Darya wasn't sure what the stakes were this time. At the most trivial level, it was her own self-esteem and reputation. Beyond that, it could be anything from the future of the Artifact Institute, up to the future of the spiral arm.

  High stakes, indeed.

  There was less question about Darya's hand. It was herself, with all she knew about Builders and artifacts, and two aliens. Smart aliens, no doubt of that, but aliens so used to being slaves that it was hard for them to take an initiative.

  There was one other thing, an asset which so far Darya had found no opportunity to evaluate. She had brought with her a complete copy of a file about Labyrinth, bestowed as a gift to the institute by Quintus Bloom. It had all his recent written work, data analysis and theory, and Darya would certainly study that; far more significant, however, were the raw data: the exact chronology of the discovery and exploration of the new artifact, all the physical measurements, and the images taken both outside and inside Labyrinth.

  Everything was stored in the computer onboard the Myosotis. The journey to Labyrinth, even with Kallik's superior travel strategy, would take days. And with J'merlia having quietly taken over all the piloting functions, Darya had nothing to do.

  Nothing except real work, the work she had trained for all her adult life. The cramped cabin of the ship lacked the pleasant surroundings of an office on Sentinel Gate, but when Darya was concentrating she never noticed her surroundings. As an opportunity to study, the trip out to Labyrinth could hardly be beat.

  She made herself a nook in the ship's cabin and settled in. First came Quintus Bloom's description and discussion of the "old" artifacts. Darya knew every one like an old friend. She expected to learn little new about them, but perhaps a good deal about the real Quintus Bloom, the man behind the affable, self-confident, seemingly omniscient authority onstage at the institute.

  Universal Artifact Catalog, Entry #1: Cocoon.

  Form: Cocoon is a system of forty-eight basal stalks. They connect a free-space structure of four hundred and thirty-two thousand filaments to the surface of the planet, Savalle . . .

  Bloom was following the order that Darya had established in her own catalog of the artifacts. She read through his description of Cocoon. There was nothing new, but she formed a grudging admiration of his writing style. It was spare and exact. The only thing that brought a frown to her face was his final sentence:

  Classification: Transportation system, for movement of materials to and from the surface of Savalle.

  It was quite a leap from the physical fact of Cocoon's form and structure, to that unequivocal statement of its intended purpose.

  Darya went to Calliope, the second artifact in the list. Then to the baffling singularities of Zirkelloch, the third, which Quintus Bloom classified as Anomalous—meaning that his classification system could not handle it! Then to Numen, the fourth, which had been worshipped by the Varnians long before humans came on the scene with their own ideas of divinity. Darya nodded. Who knows, maybe the Varnians saw something that humans didn't.

  The task was absorbing, almost soothing—a carry back in time to the days when research meant the study of objects remote in time and space, the analysis of places where Darya never expected to go. And it was time-consuming. Hunger at last drove her back to the outside world, to discover that most of a day had passed. She had ground her way through about half of the artifact descriptions. She also realized that an idea was sitting inside her head, without her being aware of how or when it had arrived.

  Darya peered out from the depths of her hideaway. J'merlia was at the ship's controls, while Kallik lay in an easy sprawl of legs at his side. The Hymenopt might be asleep, but just as likely she was bored. And a second opinion would be useful.

  "Kallik? Will you take a look at something?"

  Darya copied the file to a workstation convenient for Kallik's use and went down to the galley to find something to eat. Maybe Kallik would read what Darya had read, and draw a different conclusion. Maybe there was no conclusion to be made. Or maybe the second half of the description of the artifacts contradicted the impression that she had formed from the first half.

  That thought made Darya grab her food as soon as it was ready and hurry back to work. Lens, Scrimshaw, Paradox, Maelstrom, Godstooth . . . Whatever the Builders were, or would be, they had prized diversity. No two artifacts had more than a superficial resemblance. But Quintus Bloom had somehow grouped them all into six basic classes. Forced them in. No on
e else had ever produced a satisfactory taxonomy of the artifacts. Was this one satisfactory?

  Darya awoke from her own spell of concentration to find Kallik standing patiently at her side.

  "Finished already?" That would be amazing, even allowing for the speed and efficiency of a Hymenopt's central nervous system.

  Kallik blinked both rows of eyes. "No. I apologize for my slowness, but the list is long. I interrupt your important thoughts only to point out that J'merlia needs a flight option to be defined. Should he take us direct to Labyrinth, or should we go by way of Jerome's World?"