Transvergence

by Charles Sheffield

  Two kilometers beneath the surface, Genizee was an intriguing world of interlocking caves and corridors; of airspaces spanned by silver domes and paved with crystal; of ceiling-high columns that ran every which way but straight; of stardust floors, twinkling with firefly-light generators.

  But five kilometers down, Genizee was more than intriguing. It was incomprehensible.

  No longer was it necessary to walk or climb from place to place or floor to floor. Sheets of liquid light flashed horizontally and vertically, or curved away in long rose-red arches through tubes and tunnels of unknown termini. Kallik, touching the tip of a claw to one ruby light-stream, reported propulsive force and resistance to pressure. When she dared to sit on one sheet she was carried, quickly and smoothly, for a few hundred yards before she could climb off. She returned chirping with satisfaction—and immediately took a second ride. After her third try, everyone began to use the sheets of light instead of walking.

  The usual laws for strength of materials had also been suspended inside Genizee. Papery, translucent tissues as thin and delicate as butterfly wings bore Atvar H'sial's full weight without giving a millimeter, while in other places J'merlia's puny mass pushed his thin legs deep into four-inch plates of solid metal. In one chamber the floor was covered by seven-sided tiles of a single shape that produced an aperiodic, never-repeating pattern. In another, webbed sheets of hexagonal filaments ran from ceiling to deep pools of still water. They continued on beneath the surface, but there the lattice became oddly twisted and the eye refused to follow its submarine progress.

  "But at least it's drinkable water," Louis Nenda said. He was bending with cupped hands by one of the still pools. After a few seconds of noisy gulping he straightened. "What color would you say that is?" He pointed to an object like an embossed circular shield hanging forty yards away.

  "It's yellow." Rebka was also stooping to drink.

  "Okay. Now peek at it sort of edgeways, with just your peripheral vision."

  "It looks different. It's blue."

  "That's what I'd say. How d'you like the idea of somethin' that turns a different color when you look at it?"

  "That's impossible. You don't affect an object when you look at it. Your eyes take in photons—they don't shoot them out."

  "I know that. But Kallik's always goin' on about how in quantum theory, the observer affects the observed system."

  "That's different—that's down at the level of atoms and electrons."

  "Maybe." Louis Nenda turned his head away from the shield, then as quickly turned back. "But I still see blue, an' then yellow. I guess if it's impossible, nobody told the shield. If I knew how that gadget worked I could name my own price at the Eyecatch Gallery on Scordato." He leaned over the pool again and filled his flask. "Wish we had something to go with this."

  With worries over water supply out of the way, the humans' concerns were turning more and more to food. Kallik would be all right—a Hymenopt could reduce her metabolism and survive for five months without food or water. J'merlia and Atvar H'sial could manage for a month or more. "Which just leaves me an' thee," Nenda said to Hans Rebka. "We have to stop gawping around and find a way out of here. You're the boss. Where do we go next? We could wander around forever."

  That thought had been on Hans Rebka's mind for the past four hours, since the last sign of the Zardalu had vanished. "I know what we have to do," he replied. "But I don't know how." He waved his arm to take in the whole chamber. "If we're going to get out, we need a road map for this place. And that means we need to find whoever built it. One thing's for sure, it wasn't the Zardalu. It's nothing like the surface buildings."

  "I do not know who built this, and I, too, do not know how to determine the present location of that entity." J'merlia had been quietly watching and listening, pale-yellow eyes blank and remote. "Also, we are dealing with a region of planetary dimensions—billions of cubic kilometers. However, I can suggest a procedure which may lead to a meeting with the beings who control and maintain this region."

  Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda stared at him. Neither could get used to the new, poised J'merlia. "I thought you just said you don't know how to find 'em," Nenda grumbled.

  "That is correct. I do not know where to go. Yet there are ways by which the controllers of the interior of Genizee may perhaps be persuaded to come to us. All we need to do, on a sufficiently large scale, is this."

  The Lo'tfian stepped across to where two spinning disks like giant glass cogwheels stood next to a set of long, dark prisms. He picked up one of the triangular cylinders and thrust it into the narrow gap where the wheels met. The walls of the whole chamber shuddered. There was a distant scream of superstrength materials stressed beyond their limits, and the disks jerked to a halt.

  "Destruction," J'merlia went on. "Wholesale destruction. Much of this equipment may be self-repairing, but for damage sufficiently massive, outside service must also be needed. There should be reporting systems and repair mechanisms. Stand well clear." He moved to stand by a river of liquid light and pushed a plate of support material to block its path. Sparks flew. The river screamed, and light splashed like molten gold. A dozen machines around the chamber began to smoke and glow bright red. "Very good." J'merlia turned to the others. "I suggest that you either assist—or please stay out of the way."

  Louis Nenda was already joining in, with a gusto and expertise that suggested much experience in violent demolition. He had found a straight bar of hardened metal and went along one wall, smashing transparent pipes filled with glowing fluid. Flashing liquid streams flew in all directions. Whatever they touched began to smoke and crumble. At the opposite wall, J'merlia jammed more locking bars into rotating machinery. Kallik and Atvar H'sial worked together in the center of the vault, tackling structural supports. They found a tilted and unsupported ramp and heaved on it in unison. The domino effect of its fall brought a whole chain of beams crashing down.

  Hans Rebka stood aloof and watched for unknown dangers. He marveled at the energies that the small group was calling into action. Devices in the interior of Genizee must have been designed for normal wear and tear, but not for deliberate sabotage. They employed great forces, finely balanced. And when that delicate balance was destroyed . . .

  "Look out behind!" Rebka cried. A rotating flywheel at the far end of the chamber, removed from all load, was spinning faster and faster. The whir of rotation rose to a scream, went hypersonic, and ended in a huge explosion as the wheel burst. Everyone ducked for cover until the flying debris had settled, then went back to work.

  Within ten minutes the chamber was a smoking ruin. The only movement was the shuddering of rigid cogwheels and the rising of steam.

  "Very good," J'merlia said calmly. "And now, we wait."

  And hope that whoever owns this place doesn't get too mad with hooligans, Hans Rebka thought. But he did not say anything. J'merlia's idea was wild, but who had a better one?

  For another quarter of an hour there was nothing to see or hear but the slow settling of broken equipment. The first sign that J'merlia's strategy might be working came from an unexpected direction. The ceiling of the chamber had been crumbling, releasing a snow of small gray flakes. That fall suddenly intensified. The ceiling began to bulge downward in the middle, right above where the group was standing. They scattered to all sides. But instead of dropping failing struts and broken beams, the bulge grew. The ceiling parted, to become the bottom of a silvery, rounded sphere.

  As the shape of the new arrival became visible, Hans Rebka felt surprise, relief, and disappointment. He had met sentient Builder constructs before, on Glister and on Serenity. He had not expected to find one in the interior of Genizee, but now he suspected that this meeting would not be useful. The constructs probably intended no harm to humans, but pursuit of their own perverse agendas often led to that result. Worst of all, they had been in stasis or working alone for millions of years, ever since the Builders had departed the spiral arm. Their performance was eccentric, ru
sty, too alien, or all three. Communication with them was a hit-or-miss affair, and Hans Rebka felt that he missed more than he hit. But better the devil one knows . . .

  "We are lost and we need help. Our party came here from far away." As soon as the construct was fully visible, Rebka began to describe who they were, and how they had come to Genizee. As he spoke, the object in front of them began the familiar metamorphosis from quivering quicksilver sphere to distorted ellipsoid. A silver frond grew from the top, developing into the usual five-petaled flower. Open pentagonal disks extruded from the front of the ball, and a long, thin tail grew downward. The flower-head looked directly at Rebka.

  He went on describing events, although he suspected that the sense of his words did not yet matter. Before communication could begin, the dormant translation system of the construct had to waken and be trained on a sufficient sample of human speech.

  Rebka talked for a couple of minutes, then paused. That should be more than enough. There was the usual annoying wait, and at last a gentle hissing sound followed by a volcanic belch.

  "On the boil!" Louis Nenda said. His arms and chest were covered with little blisters where droplets of corrosive fluid had spattered him. He ignored them. "But sluggish. Mebbe it needs a dose of salts—"

  "One at a time during speech analysis," Rebka interrupted. "You can all talk once it settles on human patterns."

  " . . . lost . . . and need help." The gurgling voice sounded as if someone were talking through a pipe filled with water. " . . . coming . . . coming from . . . far away . . ."

  The quivering of the surface continued in agitated ripples, as the petaled head scanned the smoking debris of the chamber. "Lost, but now here. Here, with the evil beings who committed this . . . this great destruction . . ."

  "Now we're in trouble," Nenda said, in pheromones so weak that Atvar H'sial alone could catch his words. "Time to change the subject." And then, loudly to the construct, "Who are you, and what is your name?"

  The quivering stopped. The open petals turned to face Nenda. "Name . . . name? I have no name. I need no name. I am keeper of the world."

  "This world?" Nenda asked.

  "The only world of consequence. This world, the future home of my creators."

  "The Builders?" Rebka thought the construct sounded angry. No, not angry. Peevish. It needed to be distracted from its shattered surroundings. "Your creators were the Builders?"

  "My creators need no name. They made me, as they made this world. My duties were to form this world to their needs, and then to preserve it against change until their return. I have done so perfectly, ever since their departure." The head turned again. "But now, the damage here—"

  "—is small," said Rebka. Think positive! "It can be repaired. Perhaps we can help you to do it. But before we work we will need nourishment."

  "Organic materials?"

  "Particular organic materials. Food."

  "There are no organics within this world. Perhaps on the surface . . ."

  "That would be perfect. Can you arrange it?"

  "I do not know. Follow me."

  The silver body turned and began to glide away across the floor of the chamber.

  "What you think?" said Nenda softly to Hans Rebka, as they hurried to keep up with the construct. "Future home of the Builders, here? Nuts."

  "I know. Darya Lang says the Builders were free-space or gas-giant dwellers. This place is nothing like either. But I'll believe one thing: World-Keeper, or however it wants to call itself, has slaved away for millions of years getting this place ready. It certainly thinks the Builders will be coming—just like The-One-Who-Waits is sure that Quake and Glister are the places where the Builders will show up again, and Speaker-Between knows it's going to be out on Serenity. I think they're all crazy as each other, and not one of them knows what the Builders want." He paused. "Uh-oh. Are we expected to try that?"

  The construct had reached one of the broad channels of flowing golden light. Without a word, World-Keeper drifted forward to settle in the center of the stream. There was a low, whirring sound and the construct zipped away on the shining ribbon, rapidly accelerating to disappear from sight along a curved tunnel.

  "Hurry up!" Rebka cried. "We're going to lose it." But he was the last to move. Kallik and J'merlia had already jumped, closely followed by Atvar H'sial and Nenda.

  Hans Rebka dived forward and fell flat onto a yielding golden surface. He thought for a moment that he was going to slide right across and off the other side, but then his body stuck fast and he was dragged along.

  This was no acceleration-free ride. He felt strong forces whipping him on, faster and faster, until whole chambers went flashing past in an eye-blink. Kilometers of straight corridor appeared and whizzed by before he could move a finger. Then the pathway curved upward, and centrifugal forces drained blood from his brain until he felt dizzy. His whole body was racked with many gravities. If he was thrown off the moving ribbon, or if it came to an end at a solid object . . .

  The ribbon vanished. Hans Rebka was suddenly in free-fall and in darkness. He gasped and dropped many meters, until he was caught by a velocity-dependent field that held and slowed him like a bath of warm molasses.

  He landed gently and on all fours, in a chamber that dwarfed anything he had seen so far on Genizee. The gleaming roof was kilometers high, the walls an hour's walk away. A bright silver pea halfway to the center of the cavern was presumably World-Keeper. Four moving dots, no bigger than flies, were scattered between Rebka and the Builder construct.

  He stood up and hurried in their direction, reflecting as he did so that since they had entered the Torvil Anfract nothing had gone according to plan. Julian Graves had changed from expedition leader and organizer to passive observer and nonparticipant. The seedship had been forced to land when no landing was planned. J'merlia, as though balancing Julian Graves, had suddenly become a leader instead of a follower.

  Even the forces of nature were different in the Anfract. In a region of cut-sheet space-time and granular continuum and macroscopic quantum effects, who knew what might happen next? He thought of Darya and hoped that she was all right. If only the group back on the Erebus had the sense to sit tight and wait, rather than trying to rush through the nested singularities on some ill-planned rescue mission . . .

  Atvar H'sial and Louis Nenda at least were still predictable. Unflappable, they were staring silently at their new surroundings as Rebka approached. He was sure from their postures that they were deep in pheromonal conversation.

  "Can we agree on something before we have another session with the construct? Unless we're already too late." Rebka gestured ahead, to where J'merlia and Kallik were already advancing to join World-Keeper. "Those two used to be your slaves. Can't you control them for a while, at least until we find a way out of here?"

  "Don't I wish!" growled Nenda. If he was faking the frustration on his face, he was a superb actor. "We just been talkin' about that, me an' At. We figger it's all your fault, you an' Graves. You took two perfectly good slaves, an' you filled their heads with all sorts of nonsense about freedom an' rights an' privileges, stuff what neither of 'em wanted anythin' to do with before you come along. An' look at 'em now! Ruined. Kallik's not all that bad, but At says she can't even talk to J'merlia any more. He's all over this place like he owns it. Watch him now! Want to guess what that pair's sayin' to each other?"

  The Lo'tfian was crouched by the Builder construct. Kallik suddenly turned and came racing to join Rebka and the other two.

  "Master Nenda!" The Hymenopt skidded to a halt in front of the Karelian human. "I think it would be a good idea if you and Atvar H'sial were to come quickly. J'merlia is in negotiation with World-Keeper. And the conversation does not strike me as rational!"

  "See!" Louis Nenda said. "Let's go." His glare at Rebka was vindication, accusation, and trepidation, in equal parts.

  "It is really very simple," J'merlia said. He was advancing quickly to meet the others, leaving World-K
eeper lagging behind. "The Zardalu have access to the whole surface of Genizee, land and sea, as they have since they first evolved as land-cephalopods and then as intelligent beings. But they are denied access to the interior. Did you know that World-Keeper was unaware of their spread into the spiral arm, and their subsequent near extinction from it, until I told him of it? We can be returned by World-Keeper to the surface, and to a location of our own choice. But it is clear that we will be at great risk from the Zardalu, facing death or enslavement.

  "However, that is not our only option. The terminal point for a Builder transportation system exists. Here, in the interior of the planet! Riding the light-sheets we could be there within the hour. In less than a day, says World-Keeper, we can be at a selected point in Alliance Territory, or the Cecropia Federation, or the Zardalu Communion." He dropped his voice lower, although there was minimal chance that anyone more than a few feet away could hear him. "I recommend that we take the opportunity now, before World-Keeper changes its mind. I detect in its thought patterns strong evidence of irrationality, not to say insanity. After our destructive work on the chamber, it wants rid of us. We will surely be sent somewhere by it, whether we want to go or not—to the surface, or through the Builder transportation system, but away from here. So let us fly to safety while we can."