Convergence hu-4

by Charles Sheffield

  The temptation was very great. Pop the hatch open for a second, and say the right word to the Zardalu. Then Nenda would have revenge for all Bloom’s put-downs and insults. Bloom would have his own put-down, one that went a long, long way. He would be returned to the surface all right — just as he had ordered.

  It was Glenna Omar who saved Bloom. But not by siding with him. She released her hold on Nenda and turned angrily.

  “How dare you talk to Louis like that! I’m sure he did what was best for us. He took off because he had to. Didn’t you see them? Hundreds of things like — like that thing” — she waved at the Zardalu, but averted her eyes from it — “waiting down there for us.”

  Louis was beyond confusion. In his experience — and he had plenty — no one had ever jumped forward to defend him, as Glenna was defending him. And Quintus Bloom seemed equally amazed. Glenna Omar had been allowed on the expedition specifically to admire and report back in glowing terms everything that Bloom did. But now she was criticizing him — and approving the unauthorized actions of some squat, swarthy barbarian from the middle of nowhere.

  It was at this tense, intense, and incomprehensible moment that the alarm system of the Gravitas sounded. The ship’s remaining sensors were warning of a major emergency.

  * * *

  Too many crises, all different, and one right after another. Louis was fairly sure that he was in the middle of a long sequence of alternating dreams and nightmares. He had reached another piece of the dark side. Close your eyes, relax. Unfortunately he dared not take the risk.

  The first information came from the viewing screens that showed what lay ahead of the ship. They once more displayed the pattern of singularities that had prevented escape from Genizee during Nenda and Atvar H’sial’s last visit. Now, however, the singularities looked a good deal more ominous, dark bands with sudden lightning flashes across them mixed in with the pale wash of a gently wavering aurora. There were other differences, too. No saffron beam of light was stabbing out from the artificial hollow moon of Genizee, ready to return the ship to the planet’s surface.

  Good news. Except that a beam of vivid purple from the same source had locked on to the Gravitas. It was pulling them directly toward the hollow moon, at a steadily accelerating pace.

  Nenda inventoried the ship’s interior. The big Zardalu was lying quietly on the floor, inspecting the ends of its two clipped tentacles.

  Fair enough. Louis couldn’t think of one useful thing to tell it to do in an emergency. No allowance had been made in the Gravitas’s design for strapping in a body that size. If it didn’t move, that was a blessing.

  Atvar H’sial, who couldn’t see the screens, presumably had no idea what was happening unless she could smell it from Louis’s natural pheromones — he had found no time to send a message to her, but he must stink of fear. Anyway, no help there.

  Quintus Bloom was turning accusingly toward Louis, but his mouth was still only half-open when the lights went out. All the screens turned dark. A moment later, Glenna’s arms went round Nenda from behind and ran like starved animals down his body. “Louis!” Her whisper was right in his ear. “It’s another hiatus!”

  It wasn’t, though. It was more serious than that, and Louis knew it even if no one else did. He jerked forward, away from Glenna’s embrace. As he did so the lights came back on and the screens flickered again to life.

  He reached for the controls, guessing that anything he did would make little difference. In the couple of seconds that the lights had been off, the hollow satellite of Genizee had vanished. In its place stood a spinning ball of darkness.

  Louis swore aloud. He knew exactly what that was, and he wanted nothing to do with it. The Gravitas was being drawn, willy-nilly, into the black tornado of a Builder transportation vortex. He had enough time to wonder where and if he was likely to emerge. But in the middle of that thought the vortex seemed to reach out, grip him, and mold its fierce embrace like a great animal constrictor around his whole long-suffering body.

  Louis probably screamed. He was not sure. A scream was certainly justified.

  Glenna all last night, then the Maw, and now the vortex. Hadn’t he been assigned more than his fair share of out-of-this-world squeezing?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Two more days, and still no sign of J’merlia. With or without him, Darya had to decide how she and Kallik proposed to escape from the interior of Labyrinth.

  It went beyond concern over suit supplies of air and food. Darya felt the breath of change, like an invisible wind all around her within the artifact. Hour after hour, the chamber moved. A haze in the air came and went. The walls themselves drifted and tilted to meet at slightly different inclinations. The effect was most noticeable at the wedge-shaped end. When Darya had first examined it the angle between the walls had been acute, no more than a few degrees. Now she could place her gloved hand down into the broad gap, far enough to touch the end with her fingertips.

  The final decision, like all major turning points in Darya’s life, seemed to make itself. One moment she was crouched near the end of the chamber, wondering what could have happened to J’merlia. The next, she was heading for the dark funnel of the entrance.

  “Come on, Kallik, we’ve learned all we’re going to learn in this place. Time to get out.”

  Don’t stop to wonder about the condition of the outer chambers, or of the ship that she had left behind there. Logic was good, but too much logical analysis inhibited action. Darya had heard it seriously suggested that the original human cladeworld, Earth, had degenerated to an ineffectual backwater of a planet because computer trade-off analysis had increasingly been used as the basis for decision making. On purely logical grounds, no one would ever explore, invent, rejoice, sing, strive, fall in love, or take physical and psychological risks of any kind. Better to stay in bed in the morning; it was much safer.

  If you were lucky enough to have a bed. Did the Builders sleep, eat, laugh, and cry? Did they feel hope and despair? Darya paused at the narrow exit from the innermost chamber. Follow the streaky white lines. The Myosotis, complete with beds and bunks and all the other niceties that she had not seen for days, lay in that direction.

  “With respect.” Kallik had come up close behind and was edging ahead of Darya. “My reactions are faster than yours. It is logical that I lead.”

  Logic again. But Darya found this point difficult to argue. With Hymenopt reaction times, Kallik could be fifty meters away while Darya was still wondering if there might be a danger.

  “Be careful. Things in here are changing.”

  As if Kallik needed to be told. Her senses were more acute than Darya’s, her reasoning powers in no way inferior. She was already away, shooting along the tunnel to the next chamber. Darya followed, expecting when she arrived to see Kallik far ahead and fighting her way through the moving maze of vortex singularities that they had faced on the way in. To Darya’s surprise she found that the Hymenopt had not progressed beyond the end of the tunnel. Kallik was floating with folded limbs, obviously waiting.

  “Too dangerous?” Darya approached the end of the tunnel. She expected to see the energetic vortices, zipping back and forth past the tunnel entrance. What she saw instead was one great pool of swirling black, as though a single vortex had taken up station at the chamber entrance and waited for them there.

  That impression faded as she moved to Kallik’s side. The usual circulation pattern was visible, sure enough, and it came from a bloated monster of a vortex. However, it did not fill the whole chamber. There was room for a human — or a Hymenopt — to squeeze past on either side. It might be safe enough, provided that the dark whirlpool did not increase again in size.

  “What’s the problem?”

  Kallik did not reply in words. Instead she pointed to the black heart of the pool. At first Darya saw nothing, a darkness so complete that instead of delivering illumination the vortex center seemed to draw light away from the eye. After a few moments a faint ghost
of an image rippled into that darkness, then just as quickly vanished. Darya was left with the subliminal impression of a distorted cylinder, a long ellipsoid with each end sheared off and replaced by flat planes.

  Before she could speak the spectral image came again, and again slipped away.

  Again. And again, lingering a moment longer.

  “Next time, I think.” But even before Kallik’s quiet comment, Darya knew what she was seeing. It was a Builder transportation system, in the very act of giving birth. Something or someone was being squeezed and corkscrewed through a narrow space-time canal — Darya would never forget the feeling — and any moment now would be delivered into the chamber ahead.

  The vortex trembled. Smooth blackness became in an instant a dazzling flash of blue and white. Darya’s suit visor cut out with photon overload. When the visor again admitted light, Darya saw that the chamber in front of her contained something more than the whirling singularity. A dull gray ship of unfamiliar design floated beside the dark whirlpool. And the vortex itself was changing. With delivery over, it was dwindling, tightening, shrinking back to normal size. After a few seconds it faded to gray. At last it became an insubstantial fog, a wraith through which the chamber beyond was visible. And then it was gone.

  Darya started forward. She halted when the ship in front of her began to change. Hull plates slid aside, and the smooth gray surface was broken by open dark circles. Darya froze. Even someone from the peaceful worlds of the Fourth Alliance knew enough to recognize weapons ports.

  “Ristu ’knu’ik. Utu’is’s gur’uiki.” A blare of warning came from the ship ahead, accompanied by supersonics that raised the skin on Darya’s arms to goose pimples. Something within the ship had recognized what Darya herself had forgotten — that the chamber was filled with air. Breathable or unbreathable, the gases would carry sound signals.

  “Can you understand that gobbledygook?” Darya spoke on the private suit channel.

  “No. But I think I recognize it.” Kallik was moving slowly to one side, studying the swollen cylinder ahead from different angles. “It is a language peculiar to the worlds of the Cecropian Fringe, where the Federation meets the Communion. I have heard it spoken, but regrettably I have had no prior opportunity for study. J’merlia would surely understand it.”

  Perfect. Come in, J’merlia, wherever you are. “Keep still, Kallik. Those are weapons ports.”

  “I know.” Kallik had stopped the sideways crabbing, but now she was moving forward. “Permit me to ask something. What is the nearest artifact to the Cecropian Fringe?”

  It was an odd time for such a question, but this particular one didn’t call for any thought. Information on all the Builder artifacts was so ingrained in Darya that the answer came as second nature. “It’s the Kruskal Extension — what most people call Enigma.”

  “Thank you. Are there inhabited worlds close to Enigma?”

  “Three of them. Humans call them Rosen, Lao, and Nordstrom, after the original human explorers of Enigma. But as I recall, there are no humans on any of the three. High mass, all of them, and I don’t think we could breathe the air on Lao.”

  “Which is one way of avoiding territorial conflict. But with thanks to you, we perhaps have what we need.” Kallik was still drifting forward, tracked by blunt nozzles protruding from the weapons ports. She switched to external suit broadcast and produced a piercing series of audible but near-supersonic howls. To Darya’s ears it was a painful scream of buzz-saws, nothing like the knotted speech pattern that had greeted them from the ship.

  There was a long silence, during which Darya waited to be dispersed to atoms. At last an answering set of screeches came from the ship.

  “Excellent. That is Tenthredic, or a variant of it in which I have at least rudimentary speech capability.” Kallik gestured to Darya to move forward with her. “The inhabitants of Lao are Tenthredans. They qualify, at least biologically, as remote cousins of mine.”

  “Cousins! But they’re all set to shoot at us.” The threatening nozzles had not moved from their targets, and Darya could see glowing cross-hairs within them. Another awful howl, to her ears like a final warning, came from the ship.

  “With respect, I think not. They are merely expressing their own sorrow, alarm, and confusion. I told them who we are, and where they are. That news is distressing to them. Less than half an hour ago, they and a sister ship were entering Enigma to explore it — six hundred light-years from here.” Kallik was heading directly for a hatch on the ship’s side. “A certain apprehension on their part is not perhaps too surprising.”

  * * *

  The stages of Kallik’s logic, as soon as she explained them to Darya, seemed absurdly simple:

  One: The original message was in a language used in the Cecropian Fringe.

  Two: Since the ship had emerged from a Builder transportation system, it must also have entered one.

  Three: Transportation system entry points are associated with Builder artifacts.

  Four: The Fringe itself does not contain any artifacts, but Enigma lies close to it.

  Therefore, the newcomers probably originated on a world close to the Fringe, and also close to Enigma.

  Which made the puzzle of Labyrinth, and the arrival of the ship, no less perplexing. In all recorded history there had been no evidence of Builder transit vortices — until one year ago. Now vortices were popping up everywhere, and making nonsense of all human rules for superluminal transportation.

  Added to that, Labyrinth itself was changing again, more and more obviously. Darya and Kallik, on board the Tenthredan ship, were supposed to guide them all back to open space. As far as Darya was concerned, the Tenthredans were more likely to escape by flying their ship straight at the walls than by listening to her. Nothing in Labyrinth was as it had been when they entered. And the changes continued.

  She nodded at the solid-bodied, blunt-headed creature poised over the control panel. The family resemblance to Hymenopts was obvious, but with their red eyes, hooked jaws, prominent stings, and banded abdomens of bright black and maroon stripes, the Tenthredans seemed far more obviously menacing than Kallik. There were five of them, and they were all watching her suspiciously with one ring of crimson eyes, while staring at Kallik with the other. The Hymenopt, gesturing to the far end of the chamber, seemed to be explaining some subtle point to the pilot. The Tenthredan was gesturing in turn, and apparently disagreeing violently.

  “What’s the problem?” Darya had to change her own role from that of useless supernumerary. “We know that’s the only way out. We have to go through the tunnel, even if it means blasting a way through with the weapons system. Tell her that.”

  “Him. At this stage of the life cycle a Tenthredan is male. I am doing my best, but we are communicating with great difficulty because of my inadequate language skills.”

  Kallik did not seem to be aware of the irony in her apologetic comment. Darya did. When she and Kallik first met, the Hymenopt had spoken no word of any human tongue. Now, less than one year later, Kallik was completely fluent in several human languages — and Darya neither understood nor could utter a single syllable of Hymenopt.

  “He agrees that the ship will not pass through the tunnel easily,” Kallik went on. “However, he remains reluctant to employ extreme force.”

  “Tell him we don’t care anymore how much he damages Labyrinth. We do whatever we have to, to get out.”

  Darya marveled at her own response — no one back on Sentinel Gate would ever believe that it came from the mouth of the compiler of the Lang Universal Artifact Catalog. She had always argued, vociferously, for the preservation of every element of every artifact. Even Kallik was shaking her head.

  “Don’t you see, Kallik? We must damage Labyrinth if we want to escape.”

  “Indeed, yes. But with respect, Professor Lang, that is not the point at issue. The pilot is reluctant to use weapons at this stage because of what his sensors suggest is in the next chamber.”

 
Darya peered at the black void of the tunnel as it showed on the screen. “He can’t possibly see anything.”

  “Not with visible signals. He is receiving a return sonic profile, indicating that the chamber beyond holds a ship. He argues, with reason, that no weapon should be used until more information is available. Suppose that in the chamber beyond lies the Tenthredan sister ship, transported like them, but to a slightly different location?”

  Something — at last! — to do, more meaningful than attempts to become an instant speaker and understander of Tenthredic howls and screams. Darya was on her way to the hatch almost before Kallik had finished speaking.

  “Tell him I’ll have a message back to you in just a few minutes. And would you also tell him that I’d feel a lot more relaxed if he’d point those weapons in a different direction while I’m out in front of the ship? I get the feeling this whole group is a bit trigger-happy.”

  “That may unfortunately be true, Professor Lang.” Kallik called after her when Darya was already in the lock. “With respect, I suggest that you proceed with extreme caution. The Tenthredan reputation is not for steady nerves. It is undesirable to excite them.”

  Just what Darya needed to hear. She went into the tunnel, very aware of the array of vaporizing weapons pointing at her back. Midway along the narrow corridor she paused. Suppose that what she found in the chamber ahead was dangerous, so much an immediate threat to Kallik and the Tenthredans that it had to be destroyed at once? What would she do? She was no cool hero like Hans Rebka, willing to direct fire onto his own position if it was required to save a larger group.

  But she could not remain in the middle of the tunnel forever. Even if she did nothing, the nervous Tenthredans might decide it was time to shoot. Darya sighed, and started forward.

  Whatever was in the chamber beyond, it was unlikely to be another ship — unless it was her ship. Quintus Bloom had discovered Labyrinth and talked of it on Sentinel Gate, but so far as Darya knew the artifact was otherwise unknown except on the backwater planet of Jerome’s World. No one there had shown interest in exploring it — or anything else, for that matter. Darya’s expedition to Labyrinth was presumably the second visit in its whole history. So if there was a ship in the next chamber…