It had been Darya's intention to be early to the meeting and take a place as close to Julian Graves as possible. That way there could be no accusation that any new disruptions had anything to do with her.
Her plan changed abruptly when she came to the corridor leading to the chamber where they were due to meet. Someone—something—was ahead of her. She smelled an ammoniac odor, and saw a huge midnight-blue form wide and tall enough to block the corridor.
A shiver passed through her body, at the same time as her mind told her to turn and run. Thirty meters ahead of her, standing more than four meters tall on its thick, splayed tentacles, was an adult Zardalu. The bulbous head was twice the width of a human body. The creature was—thank Heaven—facing away from Darya, but she knew that the front of the head bore two great lidded eyes of cerulean blue, each as big across as her stretched hand. Beneath the eyes was a cruel hooked beak, more than big enough to grasp within it a human body.
The Zardalu had been the bogeymen of a dozen different species and a thousand worlds, monstrous land-cephalopods believed extinct for eleven thousand years but still the living nightmare of myths and legends. Darya knew that the Zardalu were again a presence in the local arm—she had been on their homeworld of Genizee, and considered herself lucky to escape—but she had never expected to encounter an adult Zardalu here. No Zardalu should be free to move without watchful guards ready to annihilate it at the first sign of trouble.
Darya took a couple of steps backward—and was grasped firmly from behind.
Her heart froze in her chest, until she realized that those were human arms encircling her. Louis Nenda, pawing her again! She felt a little guilty at refusing to go to dinner with him, but didn't the man ever learn? Terror changed to anger, and she spun around ready to give him the hardest slap he had ever felt.
Her hand was already raised and moving when she saw who was behind her.
"Hans!"
"Who else has hugging rights on you?" He was smiling.
"Hans, I had no idea that you were coming to Miranda Port. Where have you been? I've sent message after message for two months, and never had one word of answer."
"None of them got to me. I wasn't where I could be reached." He was holding her at arms' length. "Darya, you're looking really good."
"I wish I could say the same for you. Hans, what have you been doing to yourself? You look like hell."
"If you think this is bad, you should have seen me a week ago. Darya, I didn't get your messages because I couldn't. I was in jail on Candela."
"Why?"
"I'll tell you about it later. Just now, I want to know why I'm at Upside Miranda Port. Being called here probably saved my life. Let's get to the meeting room."
"Hans, there's a Zardalu in this corridor." Darya stared ahead. "Or there was. Where did it go?"
"The only place it could possibly have gone—into the meeting chamber." He was moving forward.
"Hans, slow down. I'm telling you, it's a Zardalu."
"All right, so it's a Zardalu. I feel sure it's sedated, or brain-dead, or some form of simulacrum. Otherwise nobody would let it loose."
He had reached the entrance to the chamber, where he paused. Darya followed and moved cautiously to where she could see what was happening inside.
Her idea of getting to the meeting early had occurred to plenty of others. A fresh-faced, dark-haired human male whom she did not recognize was already seated where she wanted to be, right at the front. Behind him was the Cecropian, Atvar H'sial, flanked by the little Hymenopt, Kallik, and the Lo'tfian, J'merlia. And behind them, in the chamber's biggest open space, stood Louis Nenda.
She owed him an apology, but this wasn't the time for it. Because in front of Nenda, sprawling its great length along the floor, was the Zardalu. It was making a series of clicking and snorting sounds.
Nenda snorted right back at it. He said, "Yeah, yeah. Don't gimme that," and made his own set of clicks. After a few seconds of hesitation, a thick meter-long tongue of royal purple emerged from the Zardalu's head.
Louis Nenda said, "I should think so. That's a damn sight better." He stepped forward and placed his right boot on the outstretched tongue.
Darya gasped in horror, expecting to see Nenda picked up in thigh-thick tentacles and dismembered. He heard the gasp, glanced her way, and nodded a greeting. "Morning. Archie here has been gettin' above himself while he was down on Miranda. I had to use Zardalu slave lingo to remind him who's boss an' who brought him here in the first place."
He lifted his foot from the Zardalu's tongue. "Now, Archie, you get over to the back of the room. You're too big and ugly to sit in front with the rest of us." He produced another set of clicks, and the Zardalu rose, bowed its great head, and slithered away to the rear of the chamber.
Nenda turned back toward Darya and seemed to notice Hans Rebka for the first time. "I'd say that little and ugly ought to sit in the back, too."
"Don't let me stop you, then. Go there if you feel you ought to." Rebka calmly made his way toward the front row of seats.
Louis Nenda growled and was heading for Rebka when Atvar H'sial placed her great body between them. She raised her forelimbs, one over Nenda's head and another above Rebka, and hissed menacingly.
"All right, all right." Nenda stepped around the Cecropian so that he could see Hans Rebka. "Just so you don't get the wrong idea about why I'm layin' off now, it's because Atvar H'sial says that the meeting's ready to start—she can smell Julian Graves in the corridor. If we try to fight she says she'll hold us upside down an' shake sense into us. She can do it, too. You don't understand pheromone talk, but J'merlia will confirm her words if you have any doubts."
"I'll believe Atvar H'sial." Rebka continued to the front row of seats, followed by Darya Lang. "As for you, we can take this up some other time."
"The pleasure will be mine." Nenda squeezed into the last place up front, next to Darya, just as Julian Graves entered the room.
If the councilor felt surprise at finding an audience already in place—it was well before the official start time of the meeting—he did not choose to reveal it. He nodded his bald, domed head at Hans Rebka, said, "I heard of your arrival. Good," and turned to face the whole group.
"Since everyone is here, and since you all know each other, I'll get down at once to business."
Darya glanced past Hans Rebka at the dark-haired man on her left. The Zardalu at the back of the room—Archie, an incongruous name for such a giant beast—must be the one that Louis Nenda had dragged along, trussed and wriggling, when they all escaped from Labyrinth. But who was the strange human?
She decided not to ask. Julian Graves already blamed her for interrupting yesterday's meeting.
The councilor went on, "Perhaps the composition of this group has allowed some of you to guess why we are assembled here today. But let me be specific.
"We, like everyone else, grew up with the knowledge that there were Builder artifacts scattered around the local arm. The artifacts had been present for millions of years, and we assumed that they would always be there. Some of us devoted a large part of our lives to studying the Builder artifacts and seeking to understand them."
Darya felt it was safe to nod. She certainly fell into that category.
"However," Julian Graves continued, "two years ago, an astonishing thing happened. Following the event known as Summertide, in the Dobelle system, the artifacts started to change. I have heard half a dozen proposed explanations as to the cause of those changes, but one fact cannot be denied: one by one, the artifacts vanished. We saw the appearance of a single new artifact, Labyrinth. And shortly after that, Labyrinth disappeared along with every other artifact. All of you were present during that climactic event. Since then, we have seen no signs of an artifact anywhere in our local arm of the galaxy. For the past two years, all has been quiet."
Perfectly true, and well-known to any five-year-old. So why are we having this meeting? But Darya remained silent.
Graves said, "At least, we assumed that all was quiet. Then, two months ago, a ship carrying a Chism Polypheme arrived at Upside Miranda Port. The Polyphemes are a species rarely seen in our local arm, since their home world is somewhere in the Sag Arm. The Polyphemes are famously reluctant to give accurate information on its whereabouts."
Louis Nenda, next to Darya, sniffed loudly. "Why don't you tell it like it is, Councilor? Any Polypheme would rather lie than tell the truth. They're the most crooked, unreliable, deceitful species in the galaxy. If you believe anything that the one who came here said, you're a fool."
"You may be right, although the Chism Polyphemes accord the doubtful honor of maximum duplicity to humans. However, in this case it was not necessary to take the Chism Polypheme's word for anything, since it could speak not a word. The ship finished the journey on automatic pilot. The Polypheme was dead on arrival."
Darya felt a spasm of movement on either side of her. Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda were hard to shock, but they were shocked now. So was she. The Sag Arm was thousands of lightyears away. Only a vastly long-lived species, like the Polyphemes, would face the prospect of a Gulf crossing from one spiral arm to the next. As for one dying, she had never heard of such a thing. By human standards, a Chism Polypheme was immortal.
Julian Graves went on, "Normally, the interior of a ship arriving at Miranda Port is considered private property and off-limits. However, in this case there were exceptional circumstances. The port authority felt a need to know what event, be it natural or unnatural, had killed the Polypheme. To ensure that suitable procedures and propriety were observed, they called in a member of the Ethical Council to be present when the ship was entered. Upon an initial investigation she was unable to determine the cause of death. The body appeared quite intact, although a closer examination revealed that almost every cell within it had been ruptured and burst by some unknown agent. Soon afterwards, the councilor called for my assistance. She had, as a move to determine if there might be some danger of contamination, examined the ship's log. And what she found was almost beyond belief. The Chism Polyphemes, astonishing as it may seem, have perhaps been lying to the species of our spiral arm—and for thousands of years."
Louis Nenda said, "It's like I told you—"
"There is therefore no need to tell me again. The ship's log contained a complete listing of Bose transition points visited. The coordinates of the most recent transition nodes were in the Gulf."
Darya felt the tingle all the way up her spine. No one in the Fourth Alliance, or in the Cecropia Federation whose boundary lay much closer to the Gulf, knew that those Bose nodes were there. Did it mean . . . ?
It did. Julian Graves was continuing, "A chain of Bose nodes exists, forming a link between this spiral arm and the Sag Arm. The Chism Polyphemes certainly did not create such a chain, but obviously they have been making use of it for millennia. The notion that the Polyphemes endured enormously long crossings of the Gulf is a myth of their own devising. The Polypheme's ship log showed that it had crossed the Gulf using exactly eleven Bose nodes. The total travel time to Miranda was a matter of weeks."
Julian Graves made a gesture with his right hand, and the display of the principal clades and neighboring Gulf that Darya had seen the day before appeared. "As you see, the Bose nodes begin at a location easily reached from here, and they continue to points deep within the Sag Arm. A new and easy path exists from this arm to the neighboring one.
"That, however, was not the main reason why the councilor called me, nor the reason why I called this meeting. The ship contained other information within its data banks. The councilor concluded—and I agree with her conclusion—that there is evidence of Builder artifacts in the Sagittarius Arm."
It was Darya's turn to jerk upright in her seat. A suggestion of existing Builder artifacts—even from such a known unreliable source as the Chism Polyphemes . . .
Graves went on, "Furthermore—"
He was interrupted by a quiet voice from Darya's left. "May I speak?"
With those words came instant recognition. Darya said to the dark-haired man sitting next to Hans Rebka, "Why, you're Tally! But you are in a different body."
"Yes, indeed. I am E. Crimson Tally." The embodied computer grinned horribly at Darya. "I perceive that you did not know me until I spoke. That is because, one month ago, it was necessary to place me within a new setting. For some reason, the bodies into which I have been placed suffer an abnormally high failure rate."
Darya could imagine—the embodied computer had a disregard for danger that only a being with a totally replaceable body could match. And the installers still hadn't managed to get that ghastly smile right.
E.C. Tally said again to Julian Graves, "Councilor, may I speak?"
"I have in the past found no way to prevent you. Go ahead."
"I merely wish to point out that the evidence of Builder artifacts in the Sag Arm is not new. Extra capabilities were added to my newly embodied brain, plus improved data access channels to my body. Last night I downloaded everything in the general data banks. Information there about the Sagittarius Arm indicates the presence of Builder artifacts."
"That is true. Do you know where that information came from?"
"No sources were quoted. The information has perhaps been in the data banks for thousands of years. I do not know its derivation."
"But we do." J'merlia raised a stick-thin limb. "Atvar H'sial offers apologies for this interruption, but the matter is important. She says, long ago, members of the Cecropia Federation interested in Builder artifacts did a complete survey of all knowledge of the Sag Arm relating to possible Builder activity there. The conclusion was that everything originated in statements made by Chism Polyphemes."
"Which means it's all a load of crappo." Louis Nenda swiveled in his seat and looked along the row to Tally. "E.C., didn't you spend time with Dulcimer?"
"Indeed I did."
"Well, Dulcimer was a Chism Polypheme, an' didn't he give you all that garbage about Polytope, an' how it was a world built by the free-space Manticore?"
"Garbage? I thought it was all true."
Julian Graves said firmly, "E.C. Tally, what a Chism Polypheme tells you is almost certainly not true. More important, I will not have this meeting turned into an irrelevant series of digressions."
"May I speak?"
"You may speak as much as you like—after I have finished. The facts are these: we have no absolute proof that there are Builder artifacts in the Sagittarius Arm. However, a strong possibility exists that there are. This alone would be enough to encourage some investigators to make a trip to the inward arm. However, there are other and more compelling reasons for an interest in the Sag Arm. When the ship of the Chism Polypheme was thoroughly explored, a group of other alien beings was discovered within their own sealed living quarters. There were eighteen of them. They were of a species unknown to us—and every one was dead. Like the Chism Polypheme, their bodies were outwardly undamaged. But like the Polypheme, all their body cells had been burst open by some unknown force."
Graves waited for the murmur to die down before he continued, "With considerable difficulty, we have been able to decipher their records. They came here to seek our advice and our assistance, although there is no suggestion that they ever thought the trip would prove fatal to them. They call themselves by a name which our translation machines offer as Marglotta. Their home world is in the Sag Arm, and it translates as Marglot. It is somewhere in here."
Graves again gestured, and the Gulf with its pattern of Bose nodes vanished. It was replaced in the 3-D display by a long, twisting volume of space, dotted with the beacons of supergiant stars and great obscuring clouds of dust and gas.
"The Sag Arm, in detail. Here"—a blinking point of blue appeared—"is our best estimate for the location of the Marglot system. Either we are misunderstanding their records, or the Marglotta come from a strange world indeed. There seem to be four poles, defined as North, South, Hot, and Cold. No explanation is offered for this. The Marglotta apparently did not feel it necessary to keep in their files descriptive details of their own home world. However, you will have plenty of time to puzzle out the significance of the four planetary poles later."
Later? But if no one else asked the question, Darya was not about to interrupt. The councilor's big, domed head, with its powerful mnemonic twin memory and misty blue eyes, still had the power to intimidate her.
Graves went on, "Now for a question which you may already have asked yourselves. Why was I, a member of the inter-clade Ethical Council, called in? I have perhaps had more contact than other councilors with Builder artifacts, but I am by no means an expert on the subject. How are ethics involved? I can give you a simple answer. We may be dealing with attempted genocide. The Marglotta say that their world is changing. Some great destructive force is at work in the Sag Arm. It has spread steadily for many millennia, possibly for millions of years. The Marglotta suspect the influence of the Builders. I cannot speak as to the truth of that conjecture, but we have made our own observations of the Sag Arm. We find a region utterly lacking in light and life. Observe."
The chamber dimmed. The new 3-D display seemed to grin back at Darya. It was as though something had taken a bite out of the spiral arm and left a small sphere of black nothing where stars should be.
"Scary picture." Louis Nenda spoke softly, as much to himself as to Darya. "And hard luck on Marglotta and friends."
She whispered back, "Scary, and strange. Anything on that scale has to be Builder activity. But no Builder artifact in our arm ever destroyed whole stellar systems."
Julian Graves was staring at them. Louis Nenda said, more loudly, "Somethin's doing a number on the Sag Arm. But Councilor, it's a zillion lightyears away. We're safe enough."
"I do not share your confidence on the latter point." Julian Graves's deep voice filled the hall. "Our own clades—all our own clades—could be in danger. We went back to observations of the Sag Arm made millennia ago. The dark sphere is growing, and as it spreads, its outer boundary will come closer to an edge of the Sag Arm—to the place, in fact, where nodes of the Bose network stretch across the Gulf toward our own spiral arm."
Darya could sense Hans Rebka moving restlessly at her side. He said, "I see what you're getting at. But what are we talking about here? We sure don't need to worry about next week, or next year. How long do we have?"
"Precisely?" The lights came on, and Graves was frowning. "I do not know. E. Crimson Tally? An estimate?"
"From the data available, the affected area could reach the far edge of the Gulf somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty-two thousand years from now."
Graves nodded. "There's your answer, Captain Rebka. But I wonder why you ask."
Rebka stood up restlessly, although squeezed between Darya and E.C. Tally he had no place to go. "Because of who I am, and what I've done all my life. I can see why Darya might get excited when there are signs that the Builders are busy in the next arm over. I can see why you are involved, because the immediate danger to the Marglotta is an ethical question. But me, I'm strictly short-term. Get in a fix today, maybe I can get you out of it by tomorrow. At least I'll try. But when you talk thousands and tens of thousands of years, I'm as much use as feathers on a fish."
"Which goes doubled for At an' me." Louis Nenda stood up, too, leaving Darya sitting sandwiched tightly between him and Rebka. "An' our slaves, J'merlia an' Kallik—"
"They are not your slaves, Mr. Nenda. I object strongly to the use of that word. They are free beings."
"Try tellin' that to them, Councilor—maybe you'll have more luck than I've had. But don't get me off the point. Me an' At don't specialize in ethics."
"I am not unaware of that point. In fact, I am relying upon it."
"Eh? What kind of crack is that? Anyway, not only ethics. I've been mixed up with Builder stuff ever since Summertide, but nobody in their right mind would call me an expert on them."
"This also is a fact well-known to me."
"So why am I here? Why is At here? Why is that—" Nenda seemed ready to use something insulting, but finally he just jerked a thumb toward Hans Rebka "—why is he here? Hell, why is any one of us here? We were forced to come, you know—we didn't want to."
Graves nodded. "That also is no surprise. Mr. Nenda, and Captain Rebka also, I am afraid that one element of this whole affair has apparently escaped you. I should have been clearer at the outset. You were not brought to Miranda Port simply to be provided with information concerning the new Bose nodes that lead to the Sag Arm. You were not brought here to learn about the Marglotta, or the destructive force at work in the Sagittarius Arm. Nor were you brought here to offer your advice, valuable as that may be. You were brought here because you, and I, and everyone present in this chamber, have a more active role to perform."
"Like what?"
"Like, Mr. Nenda, to discover what threatens to destroy Marglot, and what one day may destroy us." Graves bowed his head, so that light gleamed on his bald dome with its pattern of radiation scars that for some reason he had never bothered to have removed. "Miranda Port represents no more than a point of embarkation. As soon as possible, we will all be on our way to the Sagittarius Arm."