Transvergence Page 6

  He pulled a listing from his pocket and handed it to E.C. Tally, who said at once, "Not much correlation with the earlier tabulations. And scattered all over the spiral arm."

  "Sure. Given a ship, the Zardalu could have gone to a world a long way from the artifact where they first arrived."

  "Except that if they went through many Bose Transitions, they would have been observed." Darya stood up, heard her voice rising, and knew she was doing what she insisted that a scientist should never do: allowing passion and the defense of personal theories to interfere with logical analysis. She sat down sharply. "Perhaps you're right, Hans. But don't you think they have to be within one or two transitions of where they first arrived in the spiral arm?"

  "I'd like to think so. But I still favor our analysis over yours. What you said was reasonable, in a reasonable world, but violence plays a bigger part in the universe than reason—especially when it comes to the Zardalu."

  "And psychology and fixed behavior patterns play a larger part than either." It was Julian Graves, who had so far remained a silent observer. "They are factors which have so far been omitted from consideration, but I am convinced they are central to the solution of our problem."

  "Psychology!" Nenda spat out the word like an oath. "Don't gimme any of that stuff. If you're gonna question our search logic, you better have something a lot better than psychology to support it."

  "Psychology and behavior patterns. What do you think it is that decides what you, or a Zardalu, or any other intelligent being, will do, if it is not psychology? J'merlia and I discussed this problem, after you and Captain Rebka left, and we were able to take our ideas quite a long way. On one point, we agree with you completely: the Zardalu would not be content to stay near an artifact, although they probably arrived there. They would leave quickly, if for no other reason than their own safety. There is too much activity around the artifacts. They would seek a planet, preferably a planet where they would be safe from discovery and able to hide away and breed freely. So where do you think that they would go?"

  Nenda glowered. "Hell, don't ask me. There could be a thousand places—a million."

  "If you ignore psychology, there could be. But put yourself in their position. The Zardalu will do just what you would do. If you wanted to hide away, where would you go?"

  "Me? I'd go to Karelia, or someplace near it. But I'm damned sure the Zardalu wouldn't go there."

  "Of course not. Because they are not Karelians. But the analogy still holds. The Zardalu will do just what you would do—they would try to go home. That means they would head for Genizee, the homeworld of the Zardalu clade."

  "But the location of Genizee has never been determined," Darya protested. "It has been lost since the time of the Great Rising."

  "It has." Graves sighed. "Lost to us. But assuredly not lost to the Zardalu. And although they do not know it, it is the safest of all possible places for them—a world that, in eleven thousand years of searching, none of the vengeful subject races enslaved by the Zardalu has ever succeeded in finding. The ultimate, perfect hiding place."

  "Perfect, except for one little detail," Rebka said. "It's ideal for them, but it's sure as hell not perfect for us. We have to find them! I don't agree with the approach that Darya Lang and Atvar H'sial and Kallik propose, but even if it's wrong it at least tells us what places to look. So does the approach that Louis Nenda and I favor, and I'm convinced that it's the right approach. But you and J'merlia are telling us to go look for a place that no one has ever found, in eleven millennia of trying. And you have no suggestions as to how we ought to start looking. Aren't you just telling us that the job is hopeless?"

  "No." Julian Graves was rubbing at his bulging skull in a perplexed fashion. "I am telling you something much worse than that. I am saying that although the task appears hopeless and the problem insoluble, we absolutely must solve it. Or the Zardalu will breed back to strength. And our failure will place in jeopardy the whole spiral arm."

  The tension in the great control chamber had been rising, minute by minute. Individuals were listening to the arguments presented by others, at the same time as they prepared to defend their own theories, regardless of merit.

  Darya had seen it happen a hundred times in Institute faculty meetings, and much as she hated and despised the process, she was not immune to it. You proposed a theory. Even in your own mind, it began as no more than tentative. Then it was questioned, or criticized—and as soon as it was attacked, emotion took over. You prepared to defend it to the death.

  It had needed those ominous words of Julian Graves, calmly delivered, to make her and the others forget their pet theories. The emotional heat in the chamber suddenly dropped fifty degrees.

  This isn't a stupid argument over tenure or publication precedence or budgets, thought Darya. This is important. What's at stake here is the future, of every species in this region of the galaxy.

  An uncomfortable silence blanketed the chamber, suggesting that others were sharing her revelation. It was broken at last by E.C. Tally. The embodied computer was still wearing the neural cable plugged into the base of his skull. Like a gigantic shiny pigtail, it ran twenty yards back to the information-center attachment.

  "May I speak?"

  For once in E.C. Tally's life, no one objected as he went on: "We have heard three distinct theories regarding the present location of the Zardalu. At least one of those theories exists in three different variants. Might I, with all due respect, advance the notion that all the theories are wrong in part?"

  "Wonderful." Julian Graves stared gloomily at the embodied computer. "Is that your only message, that none of us knows what we're talking about?"

  "No. My message, if I had only one message, would be to suggest the power of synthesis, after many minds work separately on a problem. I could never have originated the thinking that you provided, but I can analyze what you jointly produce. I said you are all wrong in part, but more important, you are all correct in part. And your thoughts provide the prescription that points us to the location of the Zardalu.

  "There are components on which you all agree: the Zardalu, no matter where they first arrived in the spiral arm, would seek to return to familiar territory. Councilor Graves and J'merlia take that a little further, by suggesting the most familiar territory of all—the Zardalu homeworld of Genizee, the origin of the Zardalu clade. Let us accept the plausibility of that added proposal.

  "Now, Professor Lang, Atvar H'sial, and Kallik point out that each of us was returned from Serenity close to the place from which we started."

  There was a snort from Louis Nenda. "Don't try that on At and me. We were dumped off in the middle of nowhere."

  "With respect: you are from the middle of nowhere. You speak with disdain of the planet Peppermill, where you and Atvar H'sial arrived after transit through the Builder transportation system. But the planet of Peppermill is, galactically speaking, no more than a stone's throw from your own homeworld of Karelia." E.C. Tally paused. "Karelia, which could certainly be said to be in the middle of nowhere—and to which, oddly enough, you did not seek to go although it was close-by."

  "Let's not get into that. I got reasons."

  "I will not ask them. I will continue. It seems reasonable to assume that the Zardalu, too, were returned close to the point of their origin, which would place them in the territories of the Zardalu Communion, rather than within the Alliance, Cecropia Federation, or Phemus Circle regions. Let us accept that they arrived close to an artifact in Communion territory. As Professor Lang and others have pointed out, we all arrived close to artifacts. It seems unlikely, however, that the Zardalu would have arrived exactly where they wished to be. So let us also accept the validity of Captain Rebka and Louis Nenda's logic, that the Zardalu would have found it necessary to acquire a ship, and destroy all evidence of such acquisition.

  "Let us agree with Professor Lang, that if such a ship were required to make more than one or two jumps through the Bose Network, that would
have been noticed.

  "Finally, let us agree that Genizee, wherever it is, cannot be in a location that is fully explored, and settled, and familiar. Preferably, the location ought to be difficult to reach, or even dangerous. Otherwise, the Zardalu homeworld would have been discovered long ago.

  "Put all this information together, and we are left with a well-defined problem. We want a place satisfying these criteria:

  "One: it should be a planet within the territories of the Zardalu Communion.

  "Two: it should occupy a blank spot on the galactic map, little-explored and preferably hard to reach.

  "Three: it should be within one or two Bose Transitions of a Builder artifact.

  "Four: the only Builder artifacts that need to be considered are ones where an unexplained ship disappearance has taken place since the return of the Zardalu to the spiral arm.

  "That leaves a substantial computational problem, but each of you already performed part of the work. And fortunately, I was designed to tackle just such combinatorial and search problems. Look."

  The lights in the chamber dimmed, and as they did so the figures of the Zardalu simulation vanished from the central display region. In their place was total darkness. Gradually, a faint orange glow filled an irregular three-dimensional volume. Within it twinkled a thousand blue points of light.

  "The region of the Zardalu Communion," E.C. Tally said, "and the Builder artifacts that lie within it. And now, the Bose access nodes."

  A set of yellow lights appeared, scattered among the blue points.

  "Eliminating the artifacts where there were no unexplained ship disappearances"—two-thirds of the blue lights vanished—"and considering only little-explored regions within two Bose Transitions, we find this."

  The single orange region began to shrink and divide, finally leaving a score of isolated glowing islands.

  "These remain as candidate regions for consideration. There are too many. However, the display does not show what I could also compute: the probability associated with each of the remaining regions. When that is included, only one serious contender remains. Here it is. It satisfies all our requirements, at the ninety-eight-percent probability level."

  All but one of the lights blinked out, leaving a shape like a twisted orange hand glowing off to one side of the display.

  "Reference stars!" It was Julian Graves's voice. "Give us reference stars—we need the location."

  A dozen supergiants, the standard beacon stars for the Zardalu Communion portion of the spiral arm, blinked on within the display volume. Darya, trying to orient herself in an unfamiliar stellar region, heard the surprised grunt of Louis Nenda and the hiss of Kallik. They must have been three steps ahead of her.

  "I have the location." E.C. Tally's voice was quiet. "That was no problem. But what the ship's data banks do not contain, surprisingly, is navigational information. I have also not yet found image data of this region. However, it has a name. It is known as—"

  "It's the Torvil Anfract." That was Nenda's flat growl in the darkness. "And you'll never get image data, not if you wait till I grow feathers and fly."

  "You know the region already?" E.C. Tally asked. "That is excellent news. Perhaps you have even been there, and can provide our navigation?"

  "I know the place—but only by its reputation." There was a tone in Nenda's voice that Darya Lang had never heard before. "An' if you're talking about me takin' you into the Torvil Anfract, forget it. You can have my ticket, even if it's free. As my old daddy used to say, I ain't never been there, and I ain't never ever going back."

  THE TORVIL ANFRACT

  I wish that I understood Time, with a capital T. It's no consolation to realize that no one else does, either. Every book you ever read talks about the "Arrow of Time," the thing that points from the past into the future. They all say that the arrow's arranged so things never run backward.

  I'm not convinced. How do we know that there was never a connection that ran the other way? Or maybe sometimes Time runs crosswise, and cause and effect have nothing to do with each other.

  The thing that got me going this way was thinking again about the Torvil Anfract, and about Medusa. You remember Medusa? She was the lady with the fatal face—one eyeful of her and you turned to stone. Miggie Wang-Ho, who ran the Cheapside Bar on the Upside edge of Tucker's Tooth, was a bit like that. One mention of credit, and she froze you solid, and what she did to Blister Gans doesn't bear thinking about. But I guess that's a story for someplace else, because right now I want to talk about the Anfract.

  The spiral arm is full of strange sights, but most of them you can creep up on. What I mean is, the big jumps are all made through the Bose Network, and after that you're subluminal, plodding along at less than light-speed. So if there's a big spectacle, well, you see it first from far off, and then gradually you get closer. And while you're doing that, you have a chance to get used to it, so it never hits you all of a piece.

  Except for the Anfract. You approach that subluminal, but for a long time you don't see it at all. There's just nothing, no distortion of the star field, no peculiar optical effects like you get near Lens. Nothing.

  And then, all of a sudden, this great thingie comes blazing out at you, a twisting, writhing bundle of filaments ranging across half the sky.

  The Torvil Anfract. The first time I saw it, I couldn't have moved a muscle to save my ship. See, I knew very well that it was all a natural phenomenon, a place where creation happened to take space-time and whop it with a two-by-four until it got so chaotic and multiply-connected that it didn't know which way was up. That didn't make any difference. I was frozen, stuck to the spot like a Sproatley smart oyster, and about as capable of intelligent decision-making.

  Now, do you think it's possible that somebody else saw that wriggling snake's nest of tendrils, and was frozen to the spot like me? And they gave the Anfract a different name—like, maybe, Medusa. And then they went backward ten thousand years, and because they couldn't get it out of their mind, they talked about what they'd seen to the folks in a little Earth bar on the tideless shore of the wine-dark Aegean?

  That's theory, or if you prefer it, daydreaming. It's fair to ask, what's fact about the Anfract?

  Surprisingly little. All the texts tell you is that ships avoid the area, because the local space-time structure possesses "dangerous natural dislocations and multiple connectivity." What they never mention is that even the size of the region is undefined. Ask how much mass is contained within the region, and no one can tell you. Every measurement gives a different answer. Measure the dimension by light-speed crossing, and it's half a light-year. Fly all around it, a light-year out, and it's a little over a six-light-year trip, which is fine, but fly around it half a light-year out, and it's only a one-light-year journey. That would suggest that near the Anfract, π = 1 (which doesn't appeal too much to the mathematicians).

  I didn't make any measurements, and I hardly know how to spell multiple connectivity. All I can tell is what I saw when I got close to the Anfract, flew around it, and tried to stare inside it.

  I say tried. The Anfract won't let you look at anything directly. There's planets inside there—you can sometimes see them, because now and again there's a magnifying-lens effect in space that brings you in so close you can watch the clouds move downside and on a clear day you can count the mountains on the surface. Then that same planet, while you're watching, will dwindle to a little circle of light, and then split, so you find that you're looking at a dozen or a hundred of them, swimming in space in regular formation.

  You'll read about that in most books. But there's another effect, too, one that you don't often see and never read about. After you've encountered it, it burns in your mind for the rest of your life and tells you to return to the Anfract again, for one more look.

  I call it God's Necklace.

  You stare at the Anfract long enough, and a black spot begins to form in the center, a spot so dark that your eyes want to reject its existence
. It grows as you watch, like a black cloud over the face of the Anfract (except that you know it must be inside, and part of the structure). Finally it obscures two-thirds and more of the whole area, leaving just a thin annulus of bright tendrils outside it.

  And then the first bead of the Necklace appears in that dark circle. It's a planet, just as it would appear from a few planetary radii out; and it's a spectacularly beautiful world, misty and glowing. At first you think it must be one of the planets inside the Anfract—except that as the image sharpens and moves you in closer, you realize that it's familiar, a world you've seen before somewhere on your travels. You once lived there, and loved it. But before you can quite identify the place it begins to move off sideways, and another world is being pulled in, a second bead on the Necklace. You stare at that, and it's just as familiar, and even more beautiful than the first one; a luscious, fertile world whose fragrant air you'd swear you can smell from way outside its atmosphere.