Transvergence

by Charles Sheffield

  "I'll tell you why we've been confused, Hans. The Builder constructs have terrific physical powers, we know that by direct experience. And it's tempting to think that anything with that much power has to know what it's doing. But I don't believe it anymore. For one thing, they all have different ideas as to their purpose. How come? There's only one plausible answer: They contradict each other, because each construct had to develop its ideas for itself.

  "Our assumption that the machines have been following a well-defined Builder program is nonsense. There's no such program—or if there is, the constructs don't know it.

  "I'll tell you what I think happened. Five million years ago, the Builders upped and vanished. The machines were left behind. Like the other artifacts, they're relics left by the Builders. But there's one big difference: the constructs are intelligent. They sat and waited for the promised return—real or imaginary—of their creators; and while they waited, they invented agendas to justify their own existence. And each construct made up a Builder Grand Design in which it played the central role. Sound familiar?—just like humans?

  "It wasn't the Builders who decided Genizee was a special place that one day they'd settle down in. They evolved on a gas-giant planet, for God's sake—what would they want with a funny little world like Genizee? It was Guardian who decided that its planet was special and set up a weird quarantine system to keep space around it free of anyone who failed the test of ethical behavior. Apparently we passed, and the Zardalu failed. Pretty weird, you might say, but the other constructs are just as bad. The-One-Who-Waits thought that Quake was uniquely special, and Speaker-Between knew that Serenity was the only important place."

  Rebka was shaking his head. "I think you're wrong. I think the Builders are still around, but they don't want us looking for them. I think they tried to confine the Zardalu to Genizee, but the Zardalu escaped, and got out of control. The Great Rising took care of the Zardalu, they were no problem anymore. But now the Builders are worried about us. Maybe we'll get out of control, too. I think the Builders are scared of us."

  Darya frowned at him. He did not seem to realize that one was not supposed to interrupt the logical flow of a presented paper.

  "Hans, you're as bad as the constructs! You're trying to make us important. You want the Builders to like us, or be afraid of us, or even hate us, but you can't accept the idea that they don't care about us or know we exist because on their scale of things we are insignificant."

  She paused for breath, and he squeezed in his question: "Well, if you're so smart and so sure you know what's going on, tell me this: Where are the Builders now?"

  "I don't know. They could be anywhere—at the galactic center, out in free-space a billion light-years away, on a whole new plane of existence that we don't know about. It makes no difference to my argument."

  "All right, suppose they are gone. What role do we play in their affairs."

  "I already told you." Darya grabbed his arm. One did not do that in a written paper, either, but no matter. "None. Not a thing. We're of no importance to the Builders whatsoever. They don't care what we do. They created their constructs, and they left. They have no interest in the artifacts, either—they're big deals to us, but just throwaway items to them, left-behind boxes in an empty house.

  "The Builders have no interest in humans, Cecropians, or anyone else in the spiral arm. No interest in you. No interest in me. That's the hardest bit to swallow, the one that some people will never accept. The Builders are not our enemies. They are not our friends. We are not their children, or their feared successors; we are not being groomed to join them. The Builders are indifferent to us. They don't care if we chase after them or not."

  "Darya, you don't mean that. If you don't chase after them you'll be giving up everything—abandoning your lifework."

  "Hey, I didn't say I wouldn't chase them—only that they don't care if I do or I don't. Of course I'll chase them! Wherever the Builders went, their constructs couldn't go. But maybe we can go. We're not the types to wait for an invitation. Humans and Cecropians, even Zardalu, we're a pushy lot. Every year we learn a little bit more about one of the artifacts, or find a path that takes us farther into the interior of another. In time we'll understand it all. Then we'll find where the Builders went, and in time we'll go after them. They don't care what we do now, or what we are. But maybe they won't be indifferent to what we will be, when we learn to find and follow them."

  As she spoke, Darya was running the sanity checks on her own ideas. Publishable as a provocative think piece? Probably—her reputation would help with that. Credible? No way. For people like Professor Merada there had to be supporting evidence. Proof. Documentation. References. Without them, her paper would be viewed as evidence that Darya Lang had gone over the edge. She would become one of the Institute's crackpots, banished to that outer darkness of the lunatic fringe from which there was no return.

  Unless she did her homework.

  And such homework.

  She could summarize current progress in penetrating and understanding Builder artifacts. That was easy; she could have managed it without leaving Sentinel Gate. She could describe the Torvil Anfract, too, and offer persuasive evidence that it was an artifact of unprecedented size and complexity. She could and would organize another expedition to it. But for the rest . . .

  She began to speak again, outlining the program to Hans Rebka. They would need more contact with Builder sentient constructs. On Glister, certainly, and on Serenity, too, once they found a way to make that jump thirty thousand light-years out of the galactic plane. Naturally they would have to return to the Anfract, and understand the mixed-quantum-state being, Guardian/World-Keeper. The use of macroscopic quantum states offered so much potential, it too could not be ignored. And of course they would have to hunt down other constructs, with help from Guardian, and interact with them long enough to detail their functions. Perhaps humans and Cecropians and the other organic intelligences would have to become new leaders for the constructs, defining a new agenda for them, one that corresponded to the reality of the Builders' departure. And they must return to Genizee, too, and learn how to handle the Zardalu. Julian Graves would insist on it, no matter what anyone else wanted.

  Hans Rebka listened. After a while he took a deep breath. Darya did not seem to realize what she was proposing. She imagined that she was describing a research effort. It was nothing like that. It was a long-term development program for the whole spiral arm. It would involve all organic and inorganic intelligences in decades of work—centuries of work, lifetimes of work. Even if she was wrong about the Builders (Hans believed that she was) she was describing a monstrous project.

  That did not faze her at all. He studied her intent face. She was looking forward to it.

  Could it be done? He did not know. He knew it would not go as smoothly as Darya seemed to imagine—nothing in the real world ever did. But he knew he would never talk her out of trying. And she would need all the help that she could get.

  Which left him—where?

  Hans Rebka leaned forward and took Darya's hands in his. She did not seem to notice. She was till talking, shaping, formulating.

  He sighed. He had been wrong. Trouble was not ending as the Erebus wound its leisurely and peaceful way out of the Torvil Anfract. Trouble was just beginning.

  EPILOGUE

  "—and here they come."

  Louis Nenda squinted gloomily across the open plain, a flat barren landscape broken in one place by a twisted thicket of the moss plants sprouted beyond gigantism. It was almost nightfall, and the Indulgence, in spite of all his efforts, had skidded to a halt within the elongated shadow of those same jutting sandstone towers where he had first run from the Zardalu.

  "The weapons are ready." Either Atvar H'sial was totally calm, or she had a control of her pheromonal output that Nenda would never achieve. "However, the partial exposure of the target group makes complete success doubtful. With your concurrence I will withhold our fire until
they pursue their usual strategy of a mass attack. At that time a more significant number of them will be within range."

  "Okay—unless they try another one of their damn botany tricks. First sign of that you blast 'em—and don't wait to talk it over with me."

  The side ports of the Indulgence had been opened to permit Atvar H'sial a direct omnidirectional viewing of the area around the scoutship. Her vision unaffected by fading light, she sat at the weapons console. Louis Nenda was by her side in the pilot's chair. He had modified one of the displays to look directly down. At the first sign of sprouting life beneath them he would propel the Indulgence laterally across the surface. They might not be able to leave the surface of Genizee, but they could certainly try to skim around on it.

  The Zardalu were rising from the sea, floating upward one by one to stand a few meters offshore with only their heads showing. Louis Nenda watched thirty of them emerge before he stopped counting. Numbers were not important. One would be more than enough if it reached the ship.

  Evening sunlight glittered off bulbous heads of midnight blue. Judging from those same heads, the Zardalu included four of the biggest specimens that Nenda had ever seen. They were twice the size of the still-growing forms who had pursued them into the interior of Genizee. They must be part of the original fourteen, the Zardalu who had been held in stasis on Serenity. Nenda had fought them once and knew how tough they were.

  "Get ready." The first one was wading ashore to stand spraddle-tentacled on the beach. It was close enough for Nenda to see the steady peristalsis of land-breathing in the thick body.

  "I am ready, Louis. But I prefer a mass of them as target. One is not enough. And in addition . . . ????"

  The pheromones trailed off into a prolonged question mark. Louis Nenda needed no explanation. An adult Zardalu in upright posture could glide the forty meters between shore and ship in a few seconds. But this Zardalu was not standing. While the rest stood motionless in the water, it had slumped forward like a flattened starfish, tentacles stretched wide and horizontal, head facing the ship. After a few seconds it drew its flexible limbs together into a tight group facing the sea and began to push itself slowly forward toward the Indulgence. The head was lifted just far enough for the huge cerulean eyes to stare at the ship.

  "Twelve meters." Atvar H'sial was touching the button. "I think it is time."

  "Hold just another tick." Louis Nenda leaned forward to stare out the sea-facing port. "If that's what I think it is . . ."

  The Zardalu had stopped moving. The long vertical slit below the beak had opened, to produce an odd series of sighs and clicking whistles.

  "We request to speak." The language sounded like a clumsy attempt at Hymenopt. "We request that you listen."

  "What is it saying, Louis?" Atvar H'sial could detect the sonic stream, but she could not interpret it. "I am ready to fire."

  "Not yet. Keep your paw on the button, but hold it there till I say. Mebbe we're not dead yet. I think it wants to parley." Nenda switched to simple Hymenopt. "I hear you, Zardalu. What you wanna tell me? And keep it short an' simple."

  "I speak for all Zardalu, new-born and old-born." Thick tentacles writhed to slap the mossy ground, while the main torso held its recumbent posture. "It is difficult to say . . . to say what must be said, and we beg your patience. But since we returned here, we have learned that before our reawakening we few survivors were held dormant for many millennia. While we slept, much changed. In times past, we in our travels around the spiral arm had little contact with humans, or with their great slaves." The blue eyes turned to regard Atvar H'sial.

  Nenda had been giving the Cecropian a simultaneous pheromonal translation, but he kept the last phrase to himself. He did not want the envoy gone in a puff of steam.

  The prone Zardalu inched closer. "But now we have met your kind in four separate encounters: one on Serenity, and three on this world. Each time, you seemed helpless. We were sure—we knew—that you could not escape death or slavery. Each time, you won free without effort, leaving us damaged. More than that, since our return to this world we have been unable to leave it. Yet you come and go from here as you choose."

  "Damn right." Don't I wish! he added to himself. "We do anythin' we like, here or anywhere."

  "Louis, what is it saying?" One more gram of pressure from Atvar H'sial's paw, and the Zardalu would go up in smoke. "It is moving still closer. Should I fire?"

  "Relax, At. I think I'm startin' to enjoy this. Lookatit. It's gettin' ready to grovel."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I'm sure. It's not talkin' regular Hymenopt, see, it's talking Zardalu Communion slave-talk. Anyway, I've done enough grovelin' myself in my time to recognize the signs. Look at that tongue!"

  A long, thick organ of royal purple had emerged from the slit in the Zardalu's head and stretched four feet along the beach. Nenda took three paces forward, but he paused a few inches short of the tongue. He glared down into the wide blue eyes. "All right. You lot are finally learnin' what we knew all along. You're a pack of incompetent slimebags, an' we got you beat any day of the week. We know all that. But what are you proposin'?"

  The tongue slid back in. "A—a truce?"

  "Forget it."

  "Then—a surrender. On any terms that you demand. Provided only that you will guide us, and teach us the way that you think and function. And help us to leave this planet when we wish to do so. And in return, we are willing to give you—"

  "Don't worry your head about that. We'll decide what you'll give us in return. We got some ideas already." The slimy tongue had come out again. Nenda placed his right boot firmly on top of it. "If we decide to go along with your proposal."

  "We?" with a tongue that could not move, the Zardalu garbled the word.

  "Yeah. We. Naturally, I gotta consult my partner on a big decision like this." Nenda gestured to Atvar H'sial, and read the look of horror in the bulging cerulean eyes of the Zardalu. The great body wriggled, while a gargling sound of apology came from the mouth slit.

  Nenda did not lift his foot a millimeter, but he nodded thoughtfully.

  "I know. She may be so mad at bein' called a slave that she'll just decide to blast you all to vapor, and that'll be that."

  "Master—"

  "But I'm a nice guy." Louis Nenda removed his foot from the Zardalu's tongue, turned, and headed casually back to the Indulgence.

  "You stay right there, while I try to put in a good word for you," he said over his shoulder. "If you're real lucky, mebbe we can work somethin' out."

  Convergence

  Book IV of the

  Heritage Universe

  Chapter One

  It was a sobering thought: to contemplate a whole world, with all its diverse environments and its swarming life-forms. And then to reflect that you were apparently the only one of those myriad forms who sweated—or needed to.

  Louis Nenda wiped his forehead with a fuzzy piece of cloth, and as a second thought mopped his bare chest and his dripping armpits. Although it wasn't yet noon in Genizee's forty-two-hour day, the temperature had to be around a hundred. Humid, hot, and horrible, like the inside of a steam boiler. Nenda looked up, seeking the disk of Genizee's orange-yellow sun. He couldn't see it. The annular singularities that shielded the planet were strong today. Louis saw nothing more than a swirl of colors, shifting in patterns that defeated the eye's attempt to track them.

  A whistling grunt brought his attention back to more mundane concerns. Half-a-dozen Zardalu were dragging a ten-meter cylinder along the flat sandy shore for his inspection. No sign of discomfort in them. The midnight-blue bodies of the land-cephalopods, protected by their waxy outer leather, seemed impervious to either heat or cold.

  The Zardalu paused respectfully, half-a-dozen paces from Louis Nenda, and bent to touch their broad heads to the beach.

  "The Great Silent One found this in one of the interior tunnels."

  Nenda stared down at the prone figures stretching their tentacles six meters and
more along the beach. The leading Zardalu was using the clicks and whistles of the old language, the ancient Zardalu Communion slave talk. It lacked a decent technical vocabulary, but Louis was willing to put up with that. The master-slave relationship was all that mattered.

  "She told you to bring it here?"

  "The Great Silent One indicated that to us. I am sorry, Master, but we are still unable to understand the Great Silent One's speech."

  "Atvar H'sial's not easy to understand. Maybe you'll catch on one day, when you get a bit smarter."

  Louis prayed, not for the first time, that this particular day would be a long time coming. If the Zardalu ever really caught on . . .

  "Do you think, Master, that this might be the missing component?"