Transvergence (70 page)

Bloom turned and began to move toward the vortex. It dwarfed him to insignificance. Darya could not take her eyes away as the tiny figure headed for the dark swirl of its center. He seemed to hover for one moment, right at the edge of the maelstrom. One arm waved a farewell; she was sure it was to her. In her mind she saw the driven little boy again, determined to be Number One. And then, without warning, the vortex took him.

Where was Quintus Bloom now? Somewhere far in the future, a million years up the stream of time, looking back on today as an event so distant that it merged into human history with cave dwellings or the first flight into space. Or dispersed to component atoms by the shearing forces of a vortex meant to remove from the spiral arm every evidence of the artifact. Or, as Darya preferred to believe, removed to another plane of existence entirely, where the Builders could examine at their leisure whatever their collecting jar of Labyrinth had brought from the final hours of artifact operation.

There would be a time to ponder those questions. But it was not now. E.C. Tally was pulling urgently at her arm. The remaining contents of Labyrinth were streaming toward the vortex, moving under the influence of that invisible tide. The outer wall was just ahead. The others had already passed through and were heading for the
Salvation
.

Darya felt no more than a slight ripple through her body as she met the wall. It was all that remained of the structure that had once seemed so indestructible and impenetrable. Would the ships themselves keep a permanent form, long enough to be useful? She hurried after E.C. Tally. The hatches of
Salvation
were open; the others were already on board. Louis Nenda reached out as she approached, swung Darya effortlessly inside, and slammed the hatch closed with one sweep of a brawny arm. Hans Rebka was in the pilot's seat, reviewing the unfamiliar controls. He turned to glance over his shoulder at the lock, and saw that Darya had at last arrived. The worried expression left his face and he returned his attention to the power sequence. Five more seconds, and the ship's engines came to life.

Not before time. Labyrinth itself was going.
Salvation
's screens showed it changing shape, elongating, stretching toward the mouth of the vortex. The walls had begun to glow with internal light, reacting to the stresses on them. The structure was rotating madly, faster and faster.

"Hold on." Rebka was engaging the drive. "This could get rough."

The force from the vortex was reaching out to the ship. As it engulfed Labyrinth it was still growing. Darya felt a painful new force on her body, adding to the thrust of
Salvation
's own drive.

Combined accelerations increased. A moment stretched on and on. Labyrinth was rolling—twisting—writhing. It distorted until it was a long, thin spiral, pulling out like a strand of melted glass. Beyond it, the vortex pulsed with energy. Bloated and quivering, it was snatching at the ship at the same time as it consumed Labyrinth. The shear forces on Darya's body strengthened, shifted, changed direction.

And then, in an instant, the pain vanished.
Salvation
went bounding forward, free, into open space. Behind it the vortex began to dwindle and die. Stars were visible, shining dimly through it. Shining brighter. Shining bright. Shining clear. Suddenly there was nothing but space between the stars and the racing ship.

"Now comes the real test." Rebka had opened his helmet and was taking deep breaths of ship's air. He knew how nervous he had been, even if no one else did. "But what the devil is
this
?"

He was querying the ship's data base for instructions to take it superluminal, and an unrequested message had appeared on the display.

Whoever you are, you can have this one to keep. Me and Chinadoll have decided to try something different. She tells me that her name, Pas-farda, means the day-after-tomorrow in the old Earth Persian language, and that's where we're going. We hope. May the Great Galactic Trade Wind be always at your back.

—Captain Alonzo Wilberforce Sloane (Retired)

"Two old mysteries explained—after a fashion." Hans was racing through the superluminal protocol. "You might want to pray on this one, Darya. I'm going to take us superluminal and hope I can hit a Bose point. If it works, we'll be on the way home."

Darya leaned back and closed her eyes. And if it doesn't? Suppose the Bose Network has gone, too?

It
had
to work. It would be just too ironic to go through all this, only to discover that you were restricted to subluminal travel and were going to spend the rest of your life in open space, or on Jerome's World.

If they did make it home safely, though, Darya swore to return to Jerome's World. She would personally make sure that a statue was erected there, in honor of the planet's most famous scientist. Quintus Bloom had certainly earned it—even if future generations might not quite know for what.

But they
would
know for what. It was Darya's responsibility to make sure that they did. She must write the whole history of the Builders, from the discovery of the first artifact, Cocoon, to the vanishing of the last one, Labyrinth, along with its enigmatic displays and their implied warning. She would present every theory that had ever been proposed concerning the nature of the Builders—including her own ideas, and certainly Quintus Bloom's. She would document what the Builders, wherever they might be now, had left behind as their heritage to the rest of the universe.

And if, a thousand years or five thousand years in the future, people thought of that heritage as no more than a work of epic fiction, that would be acceptable. Myths and legends endure when bare facts are forgotten. Think of Homer, his works remembered when no one today knew the names of any king or queen of the times. King Canute tried to hold back the tide, but who recalled who ruled before him, or after him?

The legend of the Builders.

Darya smiled to herself, as the cabin air glowed blue.
Salvation
was going superluminal.

The atmosphere on board the
Salvation
was somewhere between numbed satisfaction and manic glee. Hans Rebka, sitting in the pilot's chair, knew the cause. Nothing in life produces a more powerful joy than a near miss by the Angel of Death. Their lives had been threatened in the days before Labyrinth vanished, to the point where Rebka would have taken no odds on survival. Yet here they were, alive and on the way home (except for Quintus Bloom, whose present location was anyone's guess but no one's worry).

Hans felt that he was the odd man out, the single exception to the general cheer. He ought to be enjoying the moment, even if in his case it would be no more than a brief interval of peace before the next task. That task would be the most difficult one of his life, if he was any judge, but he could not avoid it—because this time he was assigning it to himself.

The final minutes on Labyrinth had taught him something of profound importance. He had not just
endured
their troubles, he had
enjoyed
wrestling with and beating them. He was a professional trouble-shooter. That was a fancy name for an idiot. Trouble was always dangerous. But it was addictive and stimulating, thrilling and energizing, the ultimate roller-coaster, more exciting than anything else in life. And he was the best damned trouble-shooter he had ever met.

That formed the root of his current problem. He could do this job. Maybe no one else could. But how was he going to break the news to Darya? He could produce plausible but bogus reasons: that he would never be able to stand her sedentary lifestyle; that she could never bear to live in the Phemus Circle. But the two of them had been too close for too long to permit lies and half-truths. So he was going to make her miserable.

Hans realized that, unusual for him, he was procrastinating. At the moment Darya certainly didn't sound miserable. She was standing behind him, humming tunelessly to herself and massaging his neck and shoulders. She probed stiff-fingered into his trapezius muscles, hard enough to hurt. It felt great.

"Relax, Hans," she said. "You're too tense. What has you so knotted up?"

"I was thinking that we fit really well together."

"Mm." The grip on his shoulders tightened. "The men from Phemus Circle. One-track minds. I don't believe you, you know."

"You don't think we fit well?"

"Sure we do. But I don't believe that's what you were thinking about when I asked you."

Which only proved that he had been right. He couldn't fob Darya off with false reasons. It had to be the bald truth.

"I'm going back to the Phemus Circle, Darya. I have to."

Her fingers froze on his back. "You've received orders?"

"No. Worse." He turned to face her. "I made the decision for myself."

Her hand came up again to touch his cheek. "Can you tell me why?"

He could hear her uncertainty. "I want to explain, Darya, but I don't know if you'll understand. Maybe no one can understand who isn't from the Phemus Circle."

"Try me."

"You think you know the Phemus Circle, because you've visited it. But you don't
really
know the Circle at all. Maybe you have to be born there. When I was stuck inside Paradox, I started thinking about my childhood on Teufel in a different way. Half my friends died before they were ten years old, from predators and drought and malnutrition, or while we were on water and food duty. It seemed inevitable at the time. I've finally realized it's anything but. It doesn't
have
to be that way—on Teufel, or anywhere else. Since I became an adult I've been sent to one world after another, wherever and whenever a bad problem appeared. I study the situation, and I solve the problem—every time. The infant deaths on Styx, the encephalo-parasite on Subito, the runaway biosphere on Pelican's Wake, infertility on Scaldworld, the crop die-off on Besthome, the universal sleep on Mirawand, the black wave on Nemesis—there isn't one that has beaten me. It's a great feeling, shipping home and thinking:
that's another one in the bag
.

"I had to leave the Phemus Circle completely before I could recognize a different truth. I haven't been
solving
problems, you see, not in any final sense. I've been plastering over them. The real difficulty lies higher, in the government that runs the Phemus Circle. There are excellent ways of modifying planetary biospheres, small changes that don't cost a fortune and don't harm native stock, but translate into enormous lifestyle improvements for human colonists. Hell, I've
done
terraforming, myself, on loan in Alliance territory. We've known the techniques for thousands of years. But I've never once applied those methods in the Phemus Circle. Teufel remains as it was the day I left it. So do all the other god-forsaken Circle worlds."

"Why?"

"That's the big question. That's what I have to find out. It's as though the people who control the central government of the Phemus Circle
want
people to live short, stunted lives. They have more control that way. But I'm going to change things."

"How?"

"You keep asking questions I wish I could answer. I have no idea
how
. But I'll do it, or I'll die trying. I'm sorry, Darya. Will you forgive me?"

"Forgive you? For what? For being responsible, and brave? There's nothing to forgive. I'm
proud
of you, Hans."

"But it means that we won't—"

She silenced him by leaning forward and kissing him gently on the lips. "There. We're going to see a lot of each other whenever we have a chance, but we are going to have separate jobs and separate lives. Right?"

"That's one reason I feel so bad. To talk to you this way, just when your work has been destroyed."

"Destroyed?" Her laugh was not at all the laugh of a broken-hearted woman. "Hans, I've got the best and fattest job ahead of me that a research worker could ever have. Before all this started, I was happy to study beings whom I thought had left the spiral arm at least three million years ago. Now I have all that old knowledge, plus more new information than I ever hoped for. And with Quintus Bloom gone I'm the
only
person, the only one in the whole arm, with all the information. Don't you see it's my
duty
to produce a final, definitive study of the Builders? I'll even include Bloom's theory, though I know it can't be right."

"How can you be sure of that?"

"You'll be sure, too, if you think about it. Because you know Quintus. If he is in the future, and they have time travel, he would make one action his top priority. What would it be?"

Hans frowned. "He'd send a message back. To prove to everybody that his theories are right."

"Exactly. And he would do it in a way we couldn't possibly overlook. No cryptic polyglyphs for
him
, no hiding in the middle of an artifact. So he
can't
be right. But he'll be in my reports anyway, along with every other speculation about the Builders. Can you see what a huge job I have ahead of me? It will take years and years of labor, and I'm going to need all the library support and computer power and research facilities that Sentinel Gate can produce. This is work I can't do on the road. But I'll still have to travel—the Phemus Circle had artifacts, and it's at the intersection of two of the other major clades. I'll visit you, sure I will, wherever you happen to be. And you can visit me whenever you get the chance, and stay as long as you like."

"I will. No shared home, though. My job will be dangerous. The powers-that-be in the Phemus Circle won't like what I'm planning to do."

"They can't touch me here on Sentinel Gate."

"Darya, they might. If I'm successful, we don't know how desperate they may get."

"I'll take that chance. I'm not afraid of risks, not any more. One day, when I've finished my work, I'll come to the Phemus Circle. We'll share the dangers."

"But no children."

"Hey! I didn't agree to that. They won't live in the Phemus Circle, of course, they'll grow up on Sentinel Gate."