Resurgence (25 page)

Darya waved to him to keep quiet. "We are humans, from a place far from here, in the Orion Arm of this galaxy. One of us is badly hurt and needs help. Who are you? Are you a Builder construct?"

The quicksilver surface rippled. "We are—Builder construct. You are—humans. How you come?"

"From the surface of this artificial world.
Through
the surface. You must have noticed when it happened."

"Not notice. We were not—active. We became active because of a presence here. Your presence. No one—no thing—nothing—came for much time."

"How much time?"

"We do not know your measures. Since one galactic revolution, divided by one hundred."

Hans said, "The galactic rotation period at the distance of the Sagittarius Arm from the galactic center is two hundred and fifty million years. Two and a half million years, since anything was here!"

The pentagonal head on its long neck nodded. "For long, long. Nothing. Since the outside of world changed, nothing came."

Darya asked, "No Builders? Where are the Builders?"

"We do not know. It is possible that they reside by the great singularity at the galactic center. The Builders designed us to work with beings where time travels fast—beings like you."

Darya nodded. The theory that the Builders hovered near the event horizon of a black hole was not at all new, but she did not accept it. However, the idea that this construct—perhaps all constructs—had been developed because humans and others like them simply lived
too fast
to permit direct Builder interaction—that was new, and suggestive.

She thought of the midges that made life a misery on worlds like Moldave. They were a nuisance, and each one lived only a day. But it was hard for something as "slow" as a human to get rid of them. They were too quick, in and away before you could do more than register their annoying presence. Were humans like that to the Builders?

She said, "Did the Builders change this world?"

"The Builders—change this world? No. Something else. Something not Builders."

"I told you!" Darya turned to Hans. "You didn't believe it, but there is another agent in the Sag Arm, as powerful as the Builders."

"If what we are hearing is true. After a few million years alone, an intelligent being could contrive its own version of reality. That happened to a construct on Serenity, and another one on Genizee." Hans addressed the sphere. "Do you have a name?"

"A name? We have an—an
essence of being
. This must be turned into your words. We are—we were—Guardian of Travel."

"No longer?"

"Not since long. When changes came, travel ended. No thing came, no thing went."

"Do you have other powers? One of us is hurt." Darya pointed to Ben Blesh. "He needs help."

"We cannot help. We are Guardian of Travel."

"Do you still have that power?"

"We do not know. Perhaps. No thing came, no thing went for long since."

"You must try to help us. If we stay here, we will all die."

"Die?"

"Cease to exist. Become inorganic. No longer possess sentience. If we stay here, we must die."

"In how long time?"

"Too soon to measure, on your scale of things. We need help
at once
."

"We cannot help. Perhaps we can send you. Perhaps not. But first we must know other information. Information that is important to us."

Hans murmured, more to himself than to the others, "You see, it's the same all over the galaxy. You never get something for nothing. It wants to trade us, information for help."

"We're not in a great bargaining position." Darya turned again to the sphere. "What do you want to know?"

"We seek to know what happened to this world. To this stellar system. It was not planned this way. This was to be a—a
connect point
. We, Guardian of Travel, were to serve as a center of passage, to and from many, many places. Instead, we have become Guardian of Not-Travel. The ways from here are few. They have gone from many to one. The outside of this world has changed from passage to non-passage. Can you explain?"

"I don't even understand the question. I'll tell you what we know, but it isn't much. Some other great force is at work in this arm of the galaxy. We know little about it, except that it seems separate from the Builders, and it works
against
the Builders. What they form, it destroys. What they build, it makes useless. This world is an example. It is possible to land here, but anything that does so will be, as we were, in danger of destruction. One member of our group already died. The rest of us were lucky to survive for as long as we have. Even if we knew a way to go out again to the surface of this world, we dare not do so. We would surely be killed."

The sphere was silent for so long that Darya said at last, "Do you not understand me? Do you not believe me?"

"Believe you? Not believe you? We cannot say. The right word is . . . we do not
comprehend
you. It is not possible for a force to arise within this galaxy that could match the Builders, or threaten their works."

"Until recently I would have agreed with you completely. Now I can only tell you how it seems to us. Will you help?"

"We can try to send you. That is all."

"To a place of our choice? We would like to return to our ship, which orbits the star of this system."

"That is not possible. We said already, the ways from here are gone from many to one. We can send you, but to only one place. One world."

"Which world?"

"We have no name for it. It is a world."

"Wait one moment." Darya turned to the other two. "Not much of a choice. Either we stay here, or we go to some place we've never heard of and never been."

"That's a no-brainer." Hans gestured at the bare walls surrounding them. "Stay here, and we die. Go somewhere else, anywhere else, maybe we live." He said to Guardian of Travel, "This place you would send us to. What is it like?"

"Like? It is not like here."

"That's wonderful, just what we needed to know. Where will we be if we go? Do we arrive at a ship in orbit, on a world, at the middle of a star, what?"

"You would wish to go to the middle of a star?"

"
No!
Look, what sort of place would you send us to?"

"A world. A planet. A special place, of unique importance to those who made me."

"Will we be able to breathe the air?" Darya turned to the other two. "The Principle of Convergence may not apply in the Sag Arm. We expect habitable planets to develop similar atmospheres, but suppose it isn't true here?"

The sphere trembled and said, "Unless you need different from what was made here, you will be able to breathe the air of the other world. Do you wish us to try to transport you?"

"Not yet. Is this world inhabited?"

"We do not know."

"Does it have life?"

"It did. But our information is old."

"We have to take a chance. It looks like our best option. Our
only
option." Darya looked to Hans and Ben for agreement, then said to the sphere, "Very well. If you can send us to this other world, do it."

"We will attempt. One question: do you wish to be on the surface, or in orbit around that world, or elsewhere?"

Hans said, "Darya, are you
sure
we're communicating with it?" And to the sphere, "The
surface
, of course. Why would we want to be in orbit?"

"We do not know. Your kind is alien to us. For the world where you are going, there are other choices. You could if you wish go to the world center, where a Builder super-vortex waits."

"And does what?"

"It waits. When it is used, it changes the rotation speed of the world. It makes it slower, or faster. It was used, but not for long."

"That's not something we need or want. Thanks, but no thanks. The surface will be fine."

"Then if you will prepare yourselves, we will seek to make necessary arrangement. One more question. Do you expect to return here?"

"We are not sure. Perhaps."

"In case you do, a transfer field will be maintained for your use on the world of your arrival. It will be opened at regular intervals. It will not move. You should mark its exact location in case you wish to enter it."

As the sphere sank slowly back into the floor, Darya said to Hans, "Why on earth did you tell Guardian of Travel we might return here? Do you think we will be coming back?"

"Not if I can help it. I wanted to keep all our options open."

"If we return here, it will be to die."

"I know. Maybe I felt kind of sorry for it. It sits here waiting for umpteen million years while nothing happens. Then we arrive, and after an hour of talk we're off again. And it sits another zillion years by itself."

"Hans, that's ridiculous. It was in stasis all that time. It as good as said so. You don't feel
sorry
for Builder constructs. If you're going to feel sorry for anybody, feel sorry for us. At least Guardian of Travel knows what's going to happen to it. We have no idea. Look at that."

That
was a funnel of blackness, rising at the center of the chamber.

Ben stared uneasily, and tried to back closer to the wall. "What is it? Are we going to die?"

Hans snorted. "Yes. Everybody does. But it won't happen to us
yet
. That's a Builder transport vortex, a fairly small one. We have to move into it if we want to escape from here. Don't worry, it feels strange when you are inside, as though you are being torn in a hundred directions at once. But you're not. You come out at the other end in one piece."

"Come out where?"

"Ah, that's the question of the year. Some world where we'll be able to breathe the air, some special planet with a Builder super-vortex at its center. And that's all we know. A place where we can find something to eat and drink would be nice. At the very least, I hope we find something like trees and sticks so we splint your arm." Hans looked at Darya. "Are we ready?"

"Might as well. Waiting won't do any good. I'll go first."

Darya stepped forward into the black funnel. A cloud like a spray of black oil rose to engulf her body, and she vanished.

"One down, two to go." Hans held out his hand. "Come on, Ben, let's get this over with. Otherwise, Guardian of Travel may decide it's so fond of our company it wants us to stay."

Ben clutched at the outstretched hand. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Together, he and Hans walked forward and were swallowed up by the roiling darkness.

E.C. Tally was not built to feel surprise; the sensation of novelty, yes. Also a certain feeling of satisfaction, coupled with a heightened need for self-preservation, whenever a truly different experience presented itself.

As it was presenting itself now.

Entry to a Builder transport vortex always offered an element of uncertainty. You might feel that you were there for a split second, a minute, or no time at all. And to E.C., even that split second was a long period of subjective consciousness. He had therefore done the logical thing and placed himself in intermediate stand-by mode a microsecond before his embodied form encountered the swirling darkness at the center of the planetoid.

Now he emerged and returned to normal cycle speed. The absence of acceleration on his body already told him that he was again in free-fall, but that was not enough to tell him
where
.

He looked about him. That "where" would surely have justified surprise, had he possessed the capacity for it.

He was in space. More than that, he was in orbit. Below him, filling the sky, floated a substantial planet, all grays and muted greens. And this was more than just any old orbit, it was a
low
orbit. His suited body was racing forward, fast enough that he could see the planetary surface skimming past. His instant mental calculation told him that his orbital period was no more than an hour and a half. The Builder transport vortex had dumped him close to grazing altitude, not far above the limit of the atmosphere. He knew that there must be an atmosphere, because the ground below was hazy in places. Even now he was passing over a clouded region.

E.C. looked in the opposite direction, above his head. Another great world hung there, almost as big in apparent size as the one that he orbited but much farther away. He could see banded patterns of green, white, and orange around its middle. The superb eyes of his embodiment detected a slight broadening at the planet's middle. The other world was in rapid rotation, and from its appearance it was almost certainly a gas-giant.

One hemisphere of that great world was in shadow. E.C. looked to his left, seeking the source of illumination for both that planet and the one he was close to. There it was, a shrunken but fiercely brilliant disk of greenish-yellow. His external sensors and internal geometric algorithms combined to tell him a few things almost instantly. That sun was too distant, with its tiny disk, to provide life-giving warmth to any planet. Yet the one around which he moved was clearly a living world, with the telltale evidence of green photosynthesis. The banded planet, farther off, was not merely warm. It was
hot
. He detected emitted radiation in the thermal infrared, consistent with a temperature close to eight hundred degrees. Therefore, although the sun formed the primary source of light for the whole system, the heat that warmed the world below came from the gas-giant's thermal radiation.

And did the world below possess more than vegetation? Might intelligence reside there?

Tally recalled Sue Harbeson Ando's last words to him as he completed his most recent embodiment. "You ruined two perfectly good and valuable bodies by rushing into things. Be
patient
, E. Crimson Tally. Learn to take things slow and easy."

Slow would be difficult. His orbit took him zipping across the surface of the planet at better than eight kilometers a second. But he could be patient, evaluating everything before he made his next move.

First, he would inspect his general environment in more detail. This system was well worthy of study. It was unlike any that he had ever seen or heard described. From the look of the general geometry, the gas-giant and its satellite world—the one around which he was orbiting—moved roughly in a plane about the parent star. Assuming that was the case, days and nights on the nearby planet would be of roughly equal length. There would be one oddity. Close to noon at the middle of the hemisphere facing the gas-giant, the light of the star would be cut off for a while, occulted by the body of the gas-giant. E.C. was approaching that position now. He stared down. The terrain here was hidden by a dense cloud layer, but it was the part that received continuous maximum heat from the gas-giant. Beneath the cloud you might expect to find a hot, damp world where plant and animal life luxuriated.