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  “For God’s sake, At, I wish you wouldn’t come crawling in quiet like that.” Nenda swung his boots to the deck, stood, and turned. “You give a man the creeps. It shouldn’t be too hard to let me know you’re on the way.”

  “I did exactly that.” Atvar H’sial’s message wafted across to Nenda as a complex interplay of pheromonal molecules. They carried more subtle information than any human language ever could—mild irritation, admonition, amusement, and a hint of something else. “You were too busy daydreaming and gloating to take notice.”

  What was that other message? A touch of alarm, maybe? Nenda concentrated. The Karelian augment on his chest was a dark array of pits and nodules, sufficient to permit him to understand and to speak the Cecropian language natural to Atvar H’sial. However, no augment could ever provide the fine distinctions of meaning available to Cecropians, or to their Lo’tfian slaves and interpreters.

  “What’s up, At? We got trouble?” He spoke both pheromonally and using human speech.

  “Not on Xerarchos. Everything here is quiet, and payments to us were made this morning. But this came to the ship’s message center a few minutes ago.”

  Atvar H’sial held a brown flimsy in one bristled paw. The fine pattern on it was designed for ultrasonic scan by a Cecropian reader.

  “You know I can’t read that stuff, At. What’s it say?”

  “It is the highest level of command from the Cecropia Federation’s Central Council, an order I cannot disobey. I am told to report to Miranda, in the Fourth Alliance, with all possible speed.”

  Nenda took the output and stared at it. “You sure you’re reading this right? I thought all charges against us were dropped after the Builder artifacts disappeared, and we helped everybody get out of Labyrinth.”

  “They were dropped. This is not an accusation of criminal actions. It appears to involve some entirely new matter.”

  “And you feel you have to go?”

  “I must, for reasons I will not specify. More than that, Louis Nenda, I suspect that there may be similar orders waiting for you. When this directive arrived, a separate message came to the ship’s communications center in human output format. At the time, Glenna Omar was giving me another lesson in human speech, which she interrupted in order to take the message. She read it, gasped, and hurried off aft. She carried the message with her, and I suspect that she was seeking you.”

  “Heading in the wrong direction. Why didn’t you tell her?”

  “I did. I told her exactly where you could be found. However, I continued to employ human speech, which may have been a mistake. I spoke this.” The Cecropian folded its proboscis into the pleated region on its chin and inflated the thin tube. After a wheezing like a leaky bellows, sounds emerged: “ ’lusnnda ’sn ’sfrd k-kbn.’ ”

  “ ‘Louis Nenda is in the forward cabin’? Yeah, that’s very good, At. But with all due respect, those sounds could just as well have come out of either end of you. I better go see what’s happening.”

  Nenda marched off along the corridor. Somehow he felt more resigned than surprised. Things had been going far too well for far too long. Just when you thought you had the universe by the tail, it turned round and bit you on the ass.

  He came on Glenna drifting back in his direction. If he hadn’t known that Atvar H’sial was female, and that the Cecropian found all humans repulsive in appearance, he might have wondered what kind of lessons Glenna had been providing. It was not yet midday, but her makeup was perfect. Her pale blue negligee showed off her long, graceful neck and upswept blond hair. As usual, the very sight of her made him gulp.

  They were by the entrance to one of the Have-It-All’s comfortable observation lounges. Glenna moved into it and sank onto a long, soft bench. She gave Nenda a worried smile and waved the paper that she was holding. “This came for you, sweetheart, from somebody called Julian Graves. He says he’s a Council member for the Fourth Alliance.”

  “I know him. He’s part of the Ethical Council.”

  “But just look at this.” She pointed to the sheet. “He says he’s ordering you to travel as quickly as possible to Miranda. He can’t make you do that, can he?”

  “I don’t think so. Let me take a look.”

  Nenda ran his eye down the sheet. A group of words close to the bottom of the page sprang out at him. . . . to reach Miranda in at most twelve days. Otherwise, I will re-open the old investigation into the plundering of a medical-supply capsule en route to Lascia Four. . . .

  “Julian Graves can. Order me, I mean. The son of a bitch. I’ll have to go.”

  “But what does he want you for?”

  “I’ve no idea. Nothing pleasant, you can bet on that. Something dangerous and dirty and desperate. We’d better get on our way as soon as we can.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah. Atvar H’sial got the same sort of message, though she didn’t give details. And of course, J’merlia and Kallik wouldn’t let us go without them, even if we wanted to.”

  “But J’merlia and Kallik are your slaves. They’re supposed to do whatever you tell them to.”

  “I know. It never seems to work out that way. So I guess we’ll all be going to Miranda.”

  Glenna motioned to Nenda and patted the bench at her side. Her negligee had opened at the bottom, to reveal an inordinate length of smooth white leg.

  “Louis, you don’t mean all, do you? You know I’m no good at dangerous things. I’d just get in the way.”

  “You mean you’d rather stay on Xerarchos?”

  She patted his arm. “Silly man. Of course I won’t stay here. This is an awful place.”

  “I’ve seen worse.”

  “Not with me you haven’t. Now, you say you must go to Miranda. And Miranda is just one Bose transition away from Sentinel Gate. You can drop me off on the way.”

  “But what will you do on Sentinel Gate?”

  “I’ll take my old job. I was a Senior Information Specialist.”

  “You told me you hated it.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t all that bad, just a bit boring. It will only be until you come back, you know. And there was the occasional diversion.”

  Occasional diversion. A male visitor to Sentinel Gate, where Glenna’s challenge was to hustle the stranger into bed before he left the planet. Apparently it didn’t matter what he looked like, or how badly he behaved, provided that he was an off-worlder.

  Nenda knew all this. Glenna had once explained it to him, and anyway, he could be thought of as a beneficiary of her policy.

  He nodded. He didn’t resent the proposal that she should not go with him to Miranda. A woman with real nerve was something to be admired.

  He thought of asking, “We’ll wait for each other, won’t we?” then changed his mind. There were some things so stupid, you ought not even to think them. Instead he said, “That’s it, then. Sentinel Gate for you, and the two of us will have a good time on the way. An’ after that, At and me will see what Miranda has to offer.”

  “Maybe fame and fortune, Louis. When I was growing up, my house-uncle always told me that every trouble could be thought of as an opportunity.”

  An opportunity, in Nenda’s experience, to find even more trouble. But negative thinking never got you far.

  He slipped his arm through Glenna’s and they stood up together. Miranda was well-known as one of the richest worlds in the spiral arm. Maybe he and Atvar H’sial would find a chance to skim a little off the top.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Miranda and MirandaPort

  As always, travel through the Bose Network induced a faint sense of hallucination. There was something unnatural about an instantaneous jump of a hundred or a thousand lightyears, and even the best human brain apparently needed a few seconds to orient itself to its body’s new circumstances.

  Darya Lang stood with her eyes closed. Five seconds ago she had stood at the Bose transition point closest to Sentinel Gate, near the outer limit of Fourth Alliance territory. When she opened her eyes,
the sight that met them would be of Miranda and Miranda Port , six hundred and twenty lightyears away.

  All right. You’ve had enough time to adjust. Now—do it!

  A blink. And there it was, although the sight failed to do justice to the reality. The Shroud hanging by the disk of the planet was too far away for Darya to make out details, but the countless flyspecks within the gauzy web must be spacecraft: starships of all sizes and types, more than a million of them netted and warehoused in the Shroud: the biggest collection in the spiral arm, everything from Primavera body form-fits to the monstrous Tantalus orbital forts.

  She was to be allowed little time for sightseeing. Already a hand clutched at her arm.

  “Professor Darya Lang?”

  She turned. “That’s me.”

  “Finally, you are here. I am an assistant to Councilor Graves.” The man was polite and nondescript, but he did not release his hold on Darya’s arm. “If you would come with me. Today’s meeting is already in progress and may be close to its conclusion.”

  A meeting here, out by the Bose transition point and at Upside Miranda Port , rather than down on the surface of the planet? But as Darya allowed herself to be led away from the glittering splendor of the Shroud, she said nothing. There were bigger questions to be asked and answered.

  * * *

  The puzzles had started in Darya’s study at the Artifact Research Institute on Sentinel Gate. Twilight was approaching, and the first nightsingers could be heard through the open window when Professor Merada ambled in.

  His visit was not expected, but it was also not surprising. Merada was a stickler for accuracy and formality in every element of analysis and reporting, but he felt that research work done under his auspices thrived best in an informal atmosphere. Putting it another way, he felt free to butt in wherever and whenever he liked.

  Darya lifted her head from her notes. She had been collating reports of the final days of the Builder artifact known as Maelstrom, but now she was down to the hearsay and rumors, and this was a logical stopping-point to ease off for the day.

  One glance at Merada’s face was enough to ruin her relaxation. She thought, “Uh-oh. What have I done now?”

  She knew he had always disapproved of her galloping off to inspect Builder artifacts at first hand, but the last of those journeys was years in the past. Since then she had settled down in her office at the Institute to write the definitive history of the Builders, including every scrap of information on the more than twelve hundred Builder artifacts that had once been scattered around the spiral arm.

  The only sin she could think of was a possible excessive use of Institute communication privileges. She had sent dozens of messages to a planet of the Phemus Circle in the past two months, although not one of them had been answered.

  Was that it? Merada was waving a sheet at her and scowling.

  “This is inexplicable,” he said, in his thin, penetrating tenor. “It is also, to be honest, somewhat insulting. If there is to be an important meeting concerning the Builders, anywhere in the spiral arm, it would seem like common courtesy to address such an invitation to me, as Director of the Institute. But this document requests—more than requests, insists—upon the presence of you, of all people.” He peered down at Darya, vaguely aware that he might have said something less than tactful. “Not that I am in any way criticizing your credentials, my dear. You are, after all, the editor of the past two editions of the Universal Artifact Catalog.”

  The Lang Universal Artifact Catalog. But Darya said that only under her breath.

  “May I see?”

  More than a certain irritation, she felt puzzled. Why would anyone choose to hold any meeting at all about the Builders, except here at the Artifact Research Institute where Builder history was a major interest? Odder yet, how could a meeting be described as an important meeting concerning the Builders, when the Builders had vanished three million years ago, and every last trace of Builder artifacts had disappeared more than two years ago?

  The sheet was not very informative. In fact, it added to the mystery. First, it insisted, with the full force of the inter-clade council, that Professor Darya Lang be present “in person.” No virtual presence through the Bose communications network would be accepted. Second, the meeting would take place on Miranda, a planet which formed the major power center of the Fourth Alliance. Third—Darya stared at the date. Somebody in the Institute had been sitting on this message for a long time. She would barely get to the meeting in time even if she left at once.

  * * *

  Which she had done. And here she was, still dizzy from the Bose transition, walking unsteadily alongside the man who had greeted her.

  She had traveled six hundred and twenty lightyears in a handful of days. She was late, late, late. And she had not the slightest idea why she had been summoned.

  * * *

  The chamber that Darya entered was almost totally dark, but she had an impression of an echoing, cavernous vastness. The man who had led her there slipped unobtrusively away, leaving Darya to fumble her way forward to a seat. As her eyes began to adjust she realized that the great room was lavishly equipped, even by the high standards of a rich world like Sentinel Gate. Directly in front of her was a personal privacy shield and Bose link connection. Did each seat have one? If so, any bewildered participant could call home, and (with luck) receive a reply soon enough for it to be useful.

  A sudden flash of light right in front of her eyes ended any opportunity to see more of the room. Her seat was also provided with a large 3-D display, which had just filled with an image. The principal clade territories of the spiral arm were delineated in their characteristic colors. Within them, scattered like sown handfuls of fiery sparks, Builder artifacts stood out as brighter points of light.

  There was the dull orange of the Zardalu Communion, a region that thinned out as the distance from the galactic center increased. At its outermost edge, Darya recognized the outpost of the Needle. That was an artifact she had longed to visit, but now never would. The eye of the Needle had provided an acceleration-free boost in speed to any ship that traversed it. Now it, like all the rest, was gone.

  To the right of the fifteen-hundred-lightyear sprawl of the Zardalu Communion sat the dark void of the Empty Quarter , a region where stars were plentiful but artifacts were almost unknown. Darya’s catalog showed just two of them, Lens and Flambeau. Neither she nor anyone else had ever offered an explanation for the Empty Quarter .

  Below the Empty Quarter showed the pale green of Darya’s own clade territory, the Fourth Alliance, where the sentient species were largely humans. Her home world of Sentinel Gate sat far off to the right, close to the artifact of Sentinel. Below and to the left of Fourth Alliance territory, stretching off toward the galactic center, the clade worlds of the Cecropia Federation showed in electric blue—a color which the Cecropians, who “saw” using sound waves and echolocation, could never experience.

  Darya looked for the Phemus Circle , and found that little cluster of twenty-three suns and sixty-two habitable planets limned in muddy brown, at the point where the overlapping boundaries of the three dominant clades converged. The color seemed appropriate. The worlds of the Phemus Circle were desperately poor and primitive. “Dingy, dirty, dismal and dangerous.” “Remote, impoverished, brutish, backward, and barbaric.” It was no coincidence that the three major clades had never fought for possession of the Phemus Circle .

  The stylized map was infinitely familiar to someone who had spent a lifetime studying Builder artifacts. Darya could have drawn the whole thing herself. But then the display began to shift and shrink, revealing a larger region of the galaxy. The bottom of the display no longer ended in the usual place, at the lower boundary of the Cecropia Federation. As the volume shown increased in size, more of the galaxy became visible. First the Gulf came into view, a void many hundreds of lightyears across that sat at the inner edge of the local spiral arm. Only the thinnest sprinkling of stars and solitary plane
ts drifted there. Beyond the Gulf, the Sagittarius Arm gradually appeared. The Sag Arm was another branch of the whole spiral, the next one in from the local arm and closer to the galactic center.

  Darya had never studied the Sagittarius Arm in detail and knew no one who had, although it was a region as big and star-filled as the local arm. The Gulf provided a formidable barrier. Only the most long-lived of species would invest the centuries needed for a crossing. Humans did not belong in that select company.

  So why was someone bothering to show a large part of the Sag Arm? And who was that someone?

  Darya realized that staring at the bright display actually hindered her eyes from adjusting to the dim light. She was aware of a crouched figure in the seat next to her, of inhumanly odd proportions, but she could see no details. A perfume—not unpleasant, an odd mixture of cinnamon and peppermint—diffused toward her. She heard a scuffling sound, like a struggle going on to her left. Then a hand patted her thigh, and she squeaked in surprise.

  A hoarse voice said, “Professor Lang! It is you. I thought At was giving me the runaround.”

  “Where are—who are—” Darya saw the dark figure by her feet at the same time as she pushed the hand away from her leg.

  “It’s me—Louis Nenda. I had no idea you would be here.”

  Darya’s rush of warm feeling surprised her. “Nor did I, until four days ago. Louis, why are we—”