It was also a low-gravity world, well-suited to Atvar H'sial's physiology. While Rebka was still staring around, the Cecropian floated past him in a gliding leap that carried her to Louis Nenda's side. He had reached a long, low building built partly on the spaceport's rocky surface and partly in the black water beyond it. Together, the Cecropian and the Karelian human waded through shallow water to reach the entrance to the Sun Bar.
Hans Rebka took a quick glance back at the seedship. There was still no sign of E.C. Tally, but it would be a mistake to let Nenda and Atvar H'sial begin a meeting alone. Rebka had heard their explanation of what they had been doing on Serenity that led to their expulsion and return to the spiral arm. He did not believe a word of it.
He splashed forward, entered a dark doorway of solid obsidian, and took off his goggles to find himself confronted by a waist-high circle of bright black eyes.
The neurotoxic sting of a Hymenopt was deadly, and the chance that this one understood human speech was small. Rebka pointed to the backs of Nenda and Atvar H'sial, visible through another stone doorway, and walked steadily that way without speaking. He followed them through three more interior rooms, then set his goggles in position again as he emerged into a chamber that was open to the glaring sky, with a ledge of rock across its full width, ending at oily black water.
A dozen creatures of all shapes and sizes lay on the ledge, soaking in Cavesson's lethal rays. Louis Nenda advanced to speak to one of them. After a few seconds it rose to balance on its thick tail and came wriggling back into the covered part of the room.
"Hello there." The voice was a croaking growl. The blubbery green lips of a broad mouth pursed into an awful imitation of a human smile. "Honored to meet you, sirs. Excuse my bare condition, but I was just having myself a bit of a wallowbake. Dulcimer, Master Pilot, at your service."
Rebka had never met a Chism Polypheme, but he had seen too many aliens to consider this one as anything more than a variation on a theme, one who happened to lack both radial and bilateral symmetry. The alien was a nine-foot helical cylinder, a corkscrew of smooth muscle covered with rubbery green skin and topped by a head the same width as the body. A huge eye of slaty gray, shifty and bulging, leered out from under a scaly browridge. The lidded ocular was half as wide as the head itself. Between that and the pouting mouth, the tiny gold-rimmed pea of a scanning eye continuously flickered across the scene. As Rebka watched, five flexible three-fingered limbs, all on one side of the pliant body and each just long enough to reach across it, picked up a corsetlike pink garment from the ledge, wrapped it around the Polypheme's middle, and hooked it in place. The five arms poked through five holes, to lodge comfortably into broad lateral slings on the corset. The alien tightened its corkscrew body and crouched lower onto the massive, coiled tail to match Rebka's height.
"At your service," the croaking voice repeated. The scanning eye on its short eyestalk roved the room, then returned to stare uneasily at the towering blind form of Atvar H'sial, twice the size of the humans. "Cecropian, eh. Don't see too many of you in these parts. You're needing a top pilot, do you say?"
Atvar H'sial did not move a millimeter. "We are," Rebka said.
"Then you need look no farther." The main eye turned to Rebka. "I've guided ten thousand missions, every one a success. I know the galaxy better than any living being, probably better than any dead one, too. Though I say it myself, you couldn't have better luck than getting me as your pilot."
"That's what we've heard. You're the best." And the only one crazy enough to take the job, Rebka thought. But flattery cost nothing.
"I am, sir, the very best. No use denying it, Dulcimer is the finest there is. And your own name, sir, if I might ask it?"
"I am Captain Hans Rebka, from the Phemus Circle. This is Louis Nenda, a Karelian human, and our Cecropian friend is Atvar H'sial."
Dulcimer did not speak, but the great eye blinked.
A silent message passed from Atvar H'sial to Louis Nenda: This being seems unaware of his own pheromones. I can read him. He recognizes you, and Rebka was a fool to mention that you are in his party. This may cost us.
"And now, Captain," said Dulcimer, "might I be asking where it is that you want to be taken?"
"To the Torvil Anfract."
The great eye blinked again and rolled toward Louis Nenda. "The Anfract! Ah, sir, that's a bit different from what I was given to suppose. Now, if you'd told me at the first that you were wanting to visit the Anfract—"
"You don't know the region?" Rebka asked.
"Ah, and did I say that, Captain?" The scaly head nodded in reproof. "I've been there dozens of times, I know it like I know the end of my own tail. But it's a dangerous place, sir. Great walloping space anomalies, naked singularities, Planck's-constant changes, and warps and woofs that have space-time ringing like a bell, or twisted and running crossways . . ." The Polypheme shivered, with a spiraling ripple of muscle that ran from the tip of his tail up to the top of his head. "Why would you ever want to go to place like the Anfract, Captain?"
"We have to." Rebka glanced at Louis Nenda, who was standing with an unreadable expression. They had not discussed just how much the Polypheme would be told. "We have to go there because there are living Zardalu in the spiral arm. And we think they must be hiding deep within the Anfract."
"Zardalu!" The croak rose an octave. "Zardalu in the Anfract! If you'd excuse old Dulcimer, sirs, for just one minute, while I check something . . ."
The middle arm was reaching into the pink corset, pulling out a little octahedron and holding it up to the bulging gray eye. There was a long silence while the Polypheme peered into its depths, then he sighed and shivered again, this time from head to tail.
"I'm sorry, sirs, but I don't know as I can help. Not in the Anfract. Not if there might be Zardalu there. I see great danger—and there's death in the crystal."
He is lying, Atvar H'sial told Nenda silently. He shivers, but there is no emanation of fear.
Louis Nenda moved closer to the Cecropian. Rebka's telling him about the Zardalu, he replied.
Then Dulcimer does not believe it. He is convinced that the Zardalu are long-gone from the spiral arm.
"But see for yourself, in the Vision Crystal." The Polypheme was holding the green octahedron out to Hans Rebka. "Behold violence, sir, and death."
The inside of the crystal had turned from a uniform translucent green to a turbulent cloud of black. As it cleared, a scene grew within it. A tiny Dulcimer facsimile was struggling in the middle of a dozen looming attackers, each one too dark and rapidly-moving to reveal any details as to identities.
"Well, if you can't help us, I guess that's that." Rebka nodded causally, handed the octahedron back to the Polypheme, and began to turn away. "I'm afraid we'll have to look elsewhere for a pilot. It's a pity, because I'm sure you're the best. But when you can't get the best, you have to settle for second best."
"Now, just a second, Captain." The five little arms jerked out of their slings all at once, and the Polypheme bobbed taller on his coiled tail. "Don't misunderstand me. I didn't say as how I couldn't be your pilot, or even as I wouldn't be your pilot. All I'm saying is, I see exceptional danger in the Anfract. And danger calls for something different from your usual run-of-the-arm contract."
"What do you have in mind?" Rebka was still as casual as could be.
"Well, surely not just a flat fee, Captain. Not for something that shows danger . . . and destruction . . . and death." The great eye fixed unblinking on Rebka, but the tiny bead of the scanning eye below it flickered across to Louis Nenda and rapidly back. "So I was thinking, to make up for the danger, there should be something like a fee, plus a percentage. Something maybe like fifteen percent . . . of whatever our party gets in the Anfract."
"Fifteen percent of what we get in the Anfract." Rebka frowned at Louis Nenda, then looked back at the Polypheme. "I'll need to discuss this with my colleagues. If you'd wait here for a minute." He led the way back to an inner room and
removed his goggles. "What do you think?" He waited for Nenda to relay the question to Atvar H'sial.
"At and I think the same." Nenda did not hesitate. "Dulcimer recognized me and he knows my reputation—I'm pretty well known in this part of the Communion—so he assumes we're off on a treasure hunt. He's greedy, and he wants his cut. But since what we're likely to get in the Anfract is a cartload of trouble, and that's about all, so far as I'm concerned Dulcimer can have fifteen percent of my share of that any time he likes."
"So we take his offer?"
"Not straight on—he'll be suspicious. We go back in and tell him five percent, then let him haggle us up to ten." Louis Nenda stared at Rebka curiously. "Mind telling me something? I had At prompting me, 'cause she could read Dulcimer pretty good. But you saw through him without that. How'd you do it?"
"At first I didn't. He should never have brought out that dumb 'Vision Crystal.' Back in the Phemus Circle the con men used to peddle the same thing as the 'Eye of the Manticore,' and claim they had been stolen by explorers from the Tristan free-space Manticore. All nonsense, of course. They're nothing but preprogrammed piezoelectric crystals, responding to finger pressure. They let you look at maybe two hundred different scenes, depending where and how you squeeze. A kid's toy."
Atvar H'sial nodded as Rebka's words were translated for him. He is smart, your Captain Rebka, she said to Nenda. Too smart. Smart enough to endanger our own plans. We must be careful, Louis. And tell this to the captain: Although the Polypheme is sly and self-serving, his pretenses are not all false. My own instincts tell me that we will meet danger in the Anfract; and perhaps we will also meet death there.
The negotiations with Dulcimer took hours longer than expected. Hans Rebka, aware that the Erebus was huge and powerful but ungainly and restricted to a space environment, while the seedship though nimble was small and unarmed, insisted that the Chism Polypheme should include the use of his own armed scoutship, the Indulgence, as part of the deal. Dulcimer agreed, but only if his share of whatever was recovered from the Anfract was increased to twelve percent.
A binding contract was signed in the Sun Bar's offices, where half the space business on Bridle Gap was conducted. When Nenda, Rebka, and Atvar H'sial finally left they found E.C. Tally at the entrance. He was addressing in fluent Varnian the Hymenopt who guarded the door, politely requesting permission to enter.
The Hymenopt was unresponsive. To Hans Rebka's eyes, she seemed fast asleep.
E.C. Tally explained that it was the hundred and thirty-fifth spiral arm language that he had tried, without success. The embodied computer was pointing out that his chance of eventual communication was excellent, since he had a hundred and sixty-two more languages at his command, plus four hundred and ninety dialects, when the others dragged him away to the seedship.
Chapter Seven: The Torvil Anfract
Old habits did not just die hard. They refused to die at all.
Darya Lang, sitting alone in an observation bubble stuck like a glassy pimple on the dark bulk of the Erebus, gazed on the Torvil Anfract and felt vaguely unsatisfied. As soon as the seedship had left for Bridle Gap, she had started work.
Reluctantly. She would have much preferred to be down on the planet, sampling whatever strangeness it had to offer. But once she got going on her research—well, then it was another matter.
She did not stop. She could not stop.
Back in school on Sentinel Gate, some of her teachers had accused her of being "slow and dreamy." Darya knew that was unfair. Her mind was fast, and it was accurate. She took a long time to feel her way into a problem; but once she was immersed, she had the devil's own mental muscles. It took an act of God to pull her out. If she had been a runner, she would have specialized in supermarathons.
Even the return of the landing party from Bridle Gap and the arrival on board of the no-legged, five-armed oddity of the Chism Polypheme, bobbing and smirking and croaking while he was introduced to her, his scanning eye roaming over everyone and everything on the Erebus as if he were pricing them . . . all that had been unable to distract Darya for even a few minutes.
She had decided that the Anfract was more than interesting. It was unique, in a way that she could not yet express.
She had tried to explain its fascination to Hans Rebka when he first returned with the Polypheme.
"Darya, everything in the universe is unique." He cut her off in a moment, hardly listening. "But we're on our way. Dulcimer says he can have us there in two days. We'll need the most detailed data you can give us."
"It's not just the data that matters, it's the patterns—"
But he was heading for the cargo holds, and she was talking to herself.
And now the Anfract was shimmering beyond the observation port—and Darya was still plodding along on what to Hans Rebka was no more than unproductive analysis. Hard-copy output surrounded her and overflowed every flat surface of the observation bubble. There was no shortage of data about the Torvil Anfract. Hundreds of ships had scouted its outer regions. Fifty or more had gone deeper, and a quarter of those had returned to tell about it. But their data had never been combined and integrated. Reading the earlier reports and analyzing their measurements and observations made Darya feel that the Anfract was like a gigantic Rorschach test. All observers saw their own version of reality, rather than a physical object.
There was unanimity on maybe a half-a-dozen facts. The Anfract's location within Zardalu Communion territory was not in question. It lay completely within a region two light-years across, and it possessed thirty-seven major lobes. Each lobe had its own characteristic identity, but the components of any pair of lobes were likely to interchange, instantaneously and randomly. Ships that had traveled inside the Anfract confirmed that the interchange was real, not just an optical effect. Two vessels had even entered the Anfract at one point, become involved in a switch of two lobes, and emerged elsewhere. They agreed that the transition took no time and produced no noticeable changes in ship or crew. All researchers believed that this phenomenon showed the Anfract to possess macroscopic quantum states, of unprecedented size.
And there the agreements ended. Some ships reported that the subluminal approach to the Anfract from the nearest Bose access node, one light-year away, had taken five ship-years at relativistic speeds. Others found themselves at the edge of the Anfract after just two or three days' travel.
Darya had her own explanation for that anomaly. Massive space-time distortion was the rule, near and within the Anfract. Certain pathways would lengthen or shorten the distance between the same two points. "Fast" approach routes to the edge of the Anfract could be mapped, though no one had ever done it. The two-day approach route that the Erebus had followed was discovered empirically by an earlier ship, and others had followed it without understanding why it worked.
Darya had begun to map the external geometry of the Anfract. She began to have a better appreciation of why it had never been done before. The continuum of the region was enormously complex. It was a long, long job, but it did not require all her attention. While she was organizing the calculation, Darya felt a faint sense of uneasiness. There was something missing. She was overlooking some major factor, something basic and important.
She had learned not to ignore that vague itch in the base of her brain. The best way to bring it closer to the surface was to explain to someone else what she was doing, clarifying her thoughts for herself as she did so. She found Louis Nenda in the main control cabin and started to explain her work.
He interrupted her within thirty seconds. "Don't make no difference to me, sweetheart. I don't give squat about the structure of the Anfract. We still gotta go in there, find the Zardalu, an' get out in one piece. Get your head goin' on that." He had left her, still talking, and wandered off to the main hold to make sure that Dulcimer's ship, the Indulgence, was safely stowed and the seedship was again ready for use.
Barbarian, Darya thought.
He was no better than Hans Rebka. No
telling them that knowing was necessary, that knowledge was good for its own sake, that understanding mattered. That learning new things was important, and that it was only abstract knowledge, no matter what Nenda or Rebka or anyone else on board might say, that separated humans from animals.
She went angrily back to work on the Anfract's external geometry. Could other variations reported by earlier ships also be explained in geometric terms? All approaching observers agreed that the Anfract popped into being suddenly. One moment there was nothing to see, the next it was just there, close up. But to half the approaching ships, the Anfract was a glowing bundle of tendrils grouped into thirty-seven complex knots. Others saw thirty-seven spherical regions of light, like diffuse multicolored suns. Half-a-dozen observers reported that the only external evidence of the Anfract was holes in space, thirty-seven dark occlusions of the stellar background. And two Cecropian ships, their occupants blind to electromagnetic radiation and relying on instruments to render the Anfract visible in terms of sonic echolocation, "saw" the Anfract, too—as thirty-seven distorted balls of furry velvet.
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