by Ryk E. Spoor
‘‘How do you mean?’’ she said, defensively. ‘‘I wouldn’t ever do anything that stupid!’’
Carl grinned. ‘‘Oh, come on. Who started that bar brawl in Nuevo Aires because she couldn’t let that amazon fanplayer push herself on some poor tourist? Who was the one who missed a qualifier because she just had to stick her nose into the wrong alley and ended up having to testify at a realporn trial in Moscow? And then there was—’’
‘‘All right, all right, you’ve made your point, I sometimes get myself in over my head, but really, Carl, Steve, you can’t think I haven’t got a little idea that things are different here? Gabrielle, help me out here!’’
‘‘No, you’re right on that. You’ve settled into this captain role right nice, Arrie,’’ the gold-haired medic said with a smile.
‘‘So the impulse is in character, it’s just that she shouldn’t have acted on it,’’ DuQuesne summarized. ‘‘And Orphan said something . . . ‘perhaps I also owe a debt there, as well’ . . . while looking where that thing they called a Shadeweaver had been.’’
Momentary nausea washed over her. ‘‘You think that thing somehow . . . controlled me?’’
‘‘Not controlled exactly,’’ DuQuesne said, gazing speculatively into thin air as he spoke, ‘‘but . . . affected you. Perhaps suppressed your inhibitions just a tiny bit, causing you to act a little more on instinct. A number of drugs and other things can cause that. Of course, they can’t do that so indirectly and accurately on an alien species, I wouldn’t think, which makes the possibility rather more impressive and disturbing. But then, there’s an awful lot that’s disturbing about this place.’’
Gabrielle pursed her lips. ‘‘I wonder if these ‘Shadeweavers’ are maybe the people in charge here.’’
‘‘Might be,’’ Ariane said thoughtfully. ‘‘Sethrik and his pals sure seemed about to wipe us out until they saw the Shadeweaver was there, and then they bugged out.’’
‘‘It’s not much to go on, but I doubt it.’’ Simon stood and stretched. ‘‘If I assume—as seems fairly likely—that the translations we are getting are as accurate as they appear to be, then the actual reaction Sethrik showed did not sound to me like the reaction of someone to a boss or completely overwhelming force, but more the reaction of someone to a dangerously unknown quantity. It’s just a gut feeling,’’ he said with an apologetic grin, ‘‘but that’s the way it seemed to me.’’
‘‘I’d agree,’’ DuQuesne said.
Ariane was glad to see that he was—at least outwardly—fully recovered from his traumatic trip down memory lane. Until she’d noticed the dark face go pale, seen the haunted look in his eyes and heard the pain in his voice, Ariane simply hadn’t realized how very much she’d come to rely on the imperturbable and calmly confident DuQuesne as a sort of bedrock, a backstop of sanity in case she totally screwed up. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but in some ways I’m closer to these people than I’ve been to anyone. Amazing what desperate circumstances do to you.
‘‘In any case, it’s not critical to answer right now. The question is what we do next.’’
Tom Cussler looked up from the AIWish, where he’d been fiddling with some food templates. ‘‘Captain, I really don’t think we’ve any choices. The empty, mostly-dead part of this installation seems to go on for a large portion of the sphere, or maybe the whole sphere. We could spend a lifetime exploring it and still not find a source of power, even if there were a thousand open and available energy outlets. The interior area of just the tiny layer we’re in is greater than that of every body we’ve colonized put together, including Earth.
‘‘And this alien you’ve met has indicated there’re power resources to be had. He may be opportunistic, but I think self-interest is a good basis for at least a temporary relationship. Even though we’ve moved off the ship and, it seems, can at least save ourselves the energy of basic environmental maintenance, we’ve still got a limited time before we start running out of energy. A few months, half a year . . . once the AIWish runs out, we’re dead if we have no allies, or no way out.’’
‘‘We could explore the rest of this next area first,’’ Simon pointed out. ‘‘It had active lighting. Possibly energy sources, or another route to somewhere useful.’’
‘‘Doubt it,’’ DuQuesne said. ‘‘I think Orphan’s being honest most of the time, and there’d be no real reason for these ‘Powerbrokers’ he mentioned if people had high-level energy sources available elsewhere. Sure, we could be an exception . . . but I wouldn’t want to bet on it, or take months exploring to rule it out.’’
Ariane glanced around and saw no disagreeing faces. ‘‘So we have to go. While I know the arguments against, I think it should be Dr. DuQuesne, Dr. Sandrisson, and myself again.’’
‘‘Actually,’’ Carl said, ‘‘I’d agree. You’ve already made contact, Orphan respects you, and in this case the less they know about exactly how many of us there are, and what the rest of us can do, the better off we are. An unknown reserve will give some people more pause than a known one.’’
DuQuesne nodded approvingly. ‘‘I’d say you’re right. What you people might do, though—if the Captain agrees—is fabricate a bunch of solar panels. The next area seems pretty constantly lit, and if we cover a large part of a couple of the big rooms with panels . . . well, we’ll never recharge the main coils with it, but we might get enough power to keep us going a lot longer. I don’t like the idea of relying on outsiders just for survival.’’
‘‘Good idea,’’ Ariane said. ‘‘Like they say, ‘make it so.’’’ She thought for a moment. ‘‘We have no way of knowing exactly how long we’ll be gone, either—it may be a long trip, or we may have a lot of talking to do. So . . . everyone, help us make sure we take what we need with us. I have to assume Orphan won’t take us somewhere we can’t breathe, at least for too long, so our suits should be fine there, but we’ll need to bring food, at least. A water purifier? Something to condense water from the air, maybe? I sure don’t want to carry days worth of water. Weapons, definitely.’’
DuQuesne nodded. ‘‘But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, Captain. The first thing to do, before we go anywhere with our ally of convenience is to grill the hell out of him.’’ He frowned, black eyebrows furrowing over onyx eyes. ‘‘Arena; the name alone is a flare-lit tipoff, given how very very accurate the rest of the translations seem to be. Just the side comments he’s given, the assumptions made by Sethrik, that damn Shadeweaver character—there’s about a billion things we don’t know, and any one of them can get us killed.’’
‘‘But we can’t take all that long,’’ Carl pointed out. ‘‘Orphan may be tough and all—your description sure seems to imply it—but he’s got to eat and drink like anyone else, I’d bet, which means he can’t take days and days waiting. Or probably can’t, anyway.’’
Ariane frowned. ‘‘You’re right. We never even asked him that. I’m starting to feel like a real idiot, you know.’’
‘‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’’ said Sandrisson. ‘‘We’ve all spent the last few weeks at the edge of shock, and that completely unexpected encounter was bound to throw off any reasonable train of thought.’’
‘‘So we go out and have a long chat with Orphan about just where we are, what’s going on here, the pitfalls, the advantages, the people—everything we need to know to survive long enough to get home,’’ Ariane summarized. ‘‘But first we find out how long he can wait.’’
‘‘Indeed,’’ the physicist concurred. ‘‘It appears his biology is very similar to ours in some respects, but there’s no telling what may be different.’’
‘‘Something else you’d better be aware of, Captain,’’ Tom Cussler put in. ‘‘As you requested, Steve and I went over your network data records following your encounter, and something very disturbing cropped up. Something killed off all your remote nanos in that outer area; they didn’t spread, stopped working. We have nothing on your aliens exce
pt direct sensor reads from whatever you carried on you.’’
‘‘But our internal nanotech is functioning fine?’’ At Tom’s nod, she went on, ‘‘And the nanos we released here, in this old alien installation . . . ?’’
Steve nodded. ‘‘Yep, still functioning just fine. Makes no more sense than anything else, but I’m sure there’s some answer.’’
Ariane sighed. This place seems to be a determinedly perverse mixture of ludicrously helpful and impossibly obstructive. ‘‘Well, given all this, I think we’ve wasted enough time. The same logic of who goes still applies. Let’s take a couple days’ supplies and go out to question our alien friend.’’
As the others nodded and started assembling the food, water, and other essentials, she found herself already staring at the closed door, on the other side of which—perhaps only meters away—waited Orphan. Maybe we’ll finally get to the point of getting answers faster than new questions.
Chapter 22
The tall, green and black form of Orphan stood smoothly as the door opened, the clean, sharp lines of his coloration giving an almost formal air to his appearance, emphasized by the clockwork precision of his movements. The alien stood a good thirty meters from the doorway, clearly taking no chances on being thought of as a threat. ‘‘Ariane. Dr. Sandrisson. Dr. DuQuesne. I greet you again, and hope that we are in fact to work together.’’ An uneven ripple of the wingcases. ‘‘I trust you understand boredom as I do.’’
Ariane smiled. Trustworthy or not, Orphan had a sense of humor and—in translation, at least—of style that she found appealing. ‘‘So sitting in the corridor waiting was not to your taste?’’
‘‘No, I am afraid not. I did take some time to explore your outer area—in part to locate disposal areas for wastes, if you understand my meaning. I have found one of your Outer Gateways, though it is, of course, useless at the moment.’’
And already I’ve got another question. ‘‘Well, the fact that I don’t understand that pretty much brings us to the purpose of this meeting.’’
Orphan’s head moved slightly back and forth, like a bird surveying an unknown object. ‘‘Purpose? I had thought you would wish me to bring you to Nexus Arena, for I cannot leave safely without your cooperation, and you would be unwise to enter without a guide.’’
‘‘We’d be even more unwise to enter without knowing a hell of a lot more than you’ve told us, Orphan.’’ DuQuesne surveyed the alien narrowly, arms folded. ‘‘You’ve been part of this . . . Arena for a long time, I’d guess, and you can tell us the answers to a lot of questions.’’ He paused. ‘‘Unless there’s some reason you need to keep us completely in the dark before you drag us into this ‘Nexus Arena’ place.’’
Orphan’s wingcases scissored back and forth several times, left-right-left-right like a pendulum; the face, being somewhat flexible but still more chitin-like than fleshy, showed less expression than his body language. Suddenly he gave vent to the buzzing sound that was immediately translated as a hearty laugh. ‘‘A reason? Yes, but—I must confess—one purely personal, and perhaps one that you would not understand; it may seem trivial or nonsensical to you.’’
‘‘Try me,’’ DuQuesne responded.
Orphan seemed to understand immediately what was meant by that fairly opaque phrase. Either the translation’s even better than I imagined, Ariane thought, or Orphan’s awfully good at guessing. ‘‘Very well,’’ the alien said, hands giving that assenting tap, ‘‘I was looking forward to observing your reactions to each successive discovery and encounter; in all my lifetime I have seen no First Emergents, and likely never will again, and to see their first comprehension . . . do I make any sense to you at all?’’
‘‘Orphan,’’ said Simon in appreciative tones, ‘‘what you say makes perfect sense to us, and by it I think we now know you are more like us than we suspected.’’
‘‘You wanted to watch our faces—or body language—when we hit every revelation, because you’d vicariously experience the sense of wonder with us—and, maybe, because you’d have a completely irrational, but perfectly real, sense of pride over the Arena and its wonders.’’ Ariane laughed and shook her head. ‘‘Meaning absolutely no offense—indeed, intending this as a compliment—Orphan, that is an entirely human reaction.’’
Orphan responded with that bow-like motion of respect. ‘‘Then as a compliment I shall take it. It pleases me that we have such perceptions in common, for perhaps that will allow us to work together more smoothly.’’ He surveyed them, taking in the bags and equipment they carried. ‘‘So, I will have to forego that . . . dramatic pleasure, but perhaps I shall have a similar one in revealing all to you in a single discussion. Since you still would not wish to invite me in, and subject me to temptation once more, shall we move a bit farther along to one of the living areas?’’
It didn’t take long to get to the oval room with the strange support structures; DuQuesne and Simon set up a table Tom had fabricated to fit between two of the supports, while Ariane unfolded some chairs. Orphan spun one of them so the back faced the humans, and sat in it, leaning on the back with his arms. ‘‘My tail and wingcases are not accomodated by your sitting arrangement,’’ he said apologetically. ‘‘But it is superior to the floor, which has been my only choice until now.’’
‘‘Glad it’s at least of some use,’’ Ariane said. ‘‘Orphan, the first question actually is about you.’’ She glanced over the alien, noting the nearly camouflaged pouches and belts that were the only equivalent of clothing Orphan seemed to wear. ‘‘You obviously can’t be carrying too much on you in the way of food or water. Our time limit, obviously, is how long you can wait before you go back to some location you can get food. Water we can supply, of course.’’
‘‘It is even possible, Captain Austin, that you will be able to supply food eventually,’’ Orphan said. ‘‘Once we can establish methods to communicate replication patterns for food, and so on. But indeed my supplies are limited, and it has already been some time. I would appreciate very much some water now, in fact.’’ DuQuesne passed him a canteen; Orphan opened it, seemed to sniff at it, then extended a tubelike organ—tongue? and drained the entire container in moments. ‘‘Excellent. You appear to prefer fewer dissolved minerals than we do, but that was quite adequate. You filtered out microorganisms as well, of course.’’
‘‘Naturally,’’ Simon responded. ‘‘While it would seem very unlikely that you could catch one of our diseases, there are bacteria which have a rather wide spectrum. Of course, that doesn’t eliminate the potential risk from our current contact.’’
The wingcases snapped open and shut. ‘‘Such risks are not great. Though not zero, either. Many lifeforms are far more close in their biology than original speculation indicated—to the point that we can share both diseases and foodstuffs with various other species. This has, as one might imagine, been a source of glorious argument for the biologists of a thousand species.’’ Orphan stretched and sat down again; Ariane wasn’t sure, but his face seemed just a touch more rounded and glossy than it had been. ‘‘Ah, I feel much refreshed. To return to your question, then . . . I would feel uncomfortable about spending more than another day here. I did not flee with anything but a few travelbars, which are not very adequate nourishment.’’
‘‘Then we’d better not waste much time,’’ Ariane said. ‘‘Orphan, tell us about the Arena.’’
Chapter 23
DuQuesne studied Orphan as he hesitated. Despite the alien biology, the body language wasn’t all that hard to interpret. Not surprising, really; much of it’s going to have derived from social and instinctive reactions which are pretty fundamental. That bow is a sort of submissive posture, possibly rank or dominance derived. Now he’s unsure how to start and he’s shifting back and forth—like someone trying to choose from different routes, or trying to find a way out of a small box.
‘‘Such a simple question with so large a set of answers, Captain Austin,’’ Orphan said fi
nally. ‘‘How to begin? I am not being evasive, I assure you; I simply am at something of a loss as to the proper starting point.’’ He looked around at them. ‘‘You know how you came here. Perhaps the best starting point is to realize that all species come here in the precise same manner.’’
DuQuesne glanced at Ariane, then at Sandrisson. The reaction in Ariane’s eyes was surprise and curiosity. Sandrisson’s much more closely parallelled his own disbelief. ‘‘All?’’
‘‘Well, all those of which we currently know. Except, of course, whoever or whatever created the Arena in the first place.’’
‘‘How many species are there in the Arena?’’ Ariane asked.
‘‘None can be entirely sure, Captain Austin, but roughly five thousand separate species are known to have at least one Sphere.’’
‘‘A Sphere . . . that’s where we are right now, correct?’’ Ariane said. ‘‘And each race has at least one of these? Five thousand—maybe two, three times that many—Spheres, twenty thousand kilometers across?’’
Even before Orphan answered, DuQuesne shook his head. Not even close. Impossible, remember. Everything here is impossible.
‘‘I said all species, Captain Austin,’’ Orphan said. ‘‘Those that are, and have been, and will be.’’
Now he saw her start to grasp the implications. ‘‘So anyone in the galaxy who activates an FTL drive ends up inside their own sphere.’’
Orphan flicked his hands out, a gesture of negation. ‘‘No. Not in the galaxy.
‘‘In the universe.’’
Even DuQuesne found himself staring at Orphan, who seemed to be still searching for the right words. Finally the alien spoke, gesturing as though to encompass all things.
‘‘Step outside on your homeworld and look up. See, my friends, the thousands of stars that must blaze in your skies as they do in mine. See the dots of light that are galaxies, so far away that the racing rays of light they emit are old, old by the time they reach the eye. Try, if you can, to grasp these things, hold them all in your mind.