Convergence

Chapter Fifteen

Louis Nenda had seen more than his share of horrors (he had been responsible for some of them himself). He was a hard man to shock.

But he could still be surprised.

Quintus Bloom had produced a ship, superior in performance to the Indulgence, to explore the Anfract.

How? Simple. Lacking funds himself, he had arranged through Professor Merada for a meeting with the Board of Governors of the institute.

He needed, he explained, the use of a ship.

Very good. And what did he offer in return?

A whole new artifact, one larger and more complex than anything currently known. He would prove that the whole region of space known as the Torvil Anfract, in far Communion territory, had been constructed by the Builders.

No mention, by either Bloom or Merada, of Darya Lang, although she had been the one who first suggested that the Anfract was a Builder artifact. Quintus Bloom was the man of the hour, and Darya was not around to defend her claim to priority.

The Governors, with Merada’s strong endorsement, had been unanimous: Quintus Bloom, representing both the Artifact Institute and the planet of Sentinel Gate, would have his ship. Like the explorers of old, he would travel with official sponsorship, and his triumphant return would bring glory on himself and on all those who had backed him.

Nenda heard of the meeting second-hand. It had not surprised him that Darya’s name was never mentioned. He found it in no way odd that the Governors were supporting Bloom, in return for their share of the credit.

No. What gave Louis his surprise of the day, wandering through the interior of the Gravitas, was the amazing opulence of the ship’s fittings. He realized a profound truth: there is no one so generous as a bureaucrat spending other people’s money.

Sentinel Gate was one of the arm’s richest worlds. Even so, someone had given Quintus Bloom carte blanche on equipment and supplies.

And, presumably, on personnel. Nenda ran his forefinger along a gnarled but polished rail, hand-carved from rare Styx blackwood, and decided that he had been far too modest in his own request for pay. The Gravitas reeked of newness and wealth in every aspect, from the massive engines, barely broken in, at the rear of the ship, to the half-dozen passenger compartments in the bow. The passenger suite that he was now inspecting had its own bedroom, parlor, entertainment center, hydroponic garden, hot tub, kitchen, autochef, medicator, robot massager, drug chest, and wine cabinet.

Nenda paused in his exploration, reached into the temperature-stabilized wine cooler, and pulled out a bottle. He examined the label.

Trockenbeerenauslese Persephone Special Reserve.

Whatever that mouthful was supposed to mean. He opened the bottle and took a swig. Not bad. He glanced at the price on the side of the bottle and was still staring at it, pop-eyed, when Atvar H’sial wandered in to join him.

“Louis, I have disturbing news.”

“So do I. We could have asked ten times what we’ll make from this trip, and still been down in the petty cash. I just drank half our pay.”

“Ah, yes. I see you have been examining the fixtures on the Gravitas.” The Cecropian settled comfortably at his side. “I agree, our reimbursement will be modest. Compared with the value of the ship itself, I mean, which to any lucky owners, now or in the future… ” Atvar H’sial allowed the rest of her comment to fade away into pheromonal ambiguity. “But that is not my news. As you know, the loss of my slave and interpreter, J’merlia, has been a great inconvenience.”

“You can always talk through me, or anybody else with an augment.”

“Of which there appears to be no other within a hundred light-years. And you are not always available. I have therefore been seeking methods for more direct communication with others.”

Atvar H’sial paused for thought. “An extraordinarily primitive and restrictive tool, human speech. That the same organ should have to serve a central role in eating, breathing, sex, and speaking… but I digress. I have employed a human assistant. As part of my interaction with that assistant, we have been receiving and examining together the news reports that arrive at the institute from different worlds of the Fourth Alliance. One came in recently from the planet Miranda. It was to Miranda that the infant Zardalu captured by Darya Lang” — the pheromones carried a snide hint of suspicion and disapproval along with the name — “was sent for study.”

“I know. Better there than anywhere near me.”

“Indeed. They were to monitor its ferocity as it grew larger, under close guard. The cunning and cruelty of the Zardalu has been a legend for eleven thousand years, since the time when they controlled most of the spiral arm.”

“Yeah. I’m from Zardalu Communion territory, remember? I’ve heard that sort of talk all my life.”

“Then you will be suitably surprised if someone suggests to you that it is nonsense. Yet that is what the report from Miranda indicates. The young Zardalu is powerful. It is endlessly, voraciously, hungry. But it is neither remarkably vicious nor unusually dangerous. Less so, the Miranda team suggests, than half-a-dozen other species in the arm — including yours and mine.”

Nenda sat down on one of the plush settees of the passenger suite and took an absent-minded gulp from the bottle. The news was another surprise, his second of the day. But was it a shock?

He sniffed. “I’ve wondered myself how we did it. We tangled with the Zardalu on Serenity, and then twice on Genizee. And every time they came off second best when they ought to have creamed us. You could say once was dumb luck, but three times in a row—”

“ — suggests that other factors may be at work. My own conclusion exactly. Our experiences suggest that the surviving strain of Zardalu are but a feeble shadow of their ancestors, the old race who spread terror across the galaxy. The testing team on Miranda lacks our data, but they also are much perplexed. They wonder if the benign environment in which the Zardalu has been raised since infancy has had a profound effect upon its nature. To provide a possible answer to that question, they offer a reward — a most substantial reward — to anyone able to deliver, for their study, one adult Zardalu that has been reared in its natural environment. That raises a question. We are following Darya Lang to the Anfract. Suppose we find that her trail leads within the Anfract, and points directly to Genizee? What would you propose to tell Quintus Bloom, should he ask you to guide him there?”

“I’d have a sudden and terrible loss of memory. I wouldn’t be able to figure out any way to get us to Genizee — and you better not either. I don’t want him grabbing a Zardalu for himself an’ bagging all the money.”

“Agreed. However, if you had reason to believe that at an appropriate future time, Quintus Bloom for some reason would not be present on board the Gravitas…”

“I might find I could remember again, all of a sudden. You know what a mystery the human mind can be.”

Atvar H’sial nodded. The pheromones had faded to nothing, but Nenda had the feeling that she was satisfied by his answer. She lifted up onto her four hind limbs and silently left the passenger suite.

Once she had left, Louis began to have second thoughts. The idea of the Zardalu as less than ultimate monsters was one that he needed time to evaluate, but he certainly did hate the idea of Darya Lang stranded among them on Genizee. Was she there now? Should he be looking for her? If so, how was he going to make Quintus Bloom and Atvar H’sial agree to that?

Louis followed Atvar H’sial out of the passenger suite and continued his inspection of the Gravitas. He was a man who believed in knowing as much as possible about any ship he was asked to fly. This one was certainly worth knowing. If the news from Miranda was a surprise, the ship itself was no less of one. It was big as well as richly furnished. The only thing missing, to Nenda’s knowledgeable but possibly biased eyes, was a decent weapons system.

Well, he had spotted a dozen places where that could be added, when the right time came. And for a hundredth of the value of the ship’s other fixtures.

He wandered into another self-contained passenger suite, this one over-furnished in an elaborate baroque style. The autochef offered unusually exotic and spicy dishes, more likely to excite than soothe the diner. All the floors were covered with deep, soft rugs, and the bedroom, when he came to it, was dominated by a huge circular bed with mirrors set above it. He walked across the thick pile of the carpet, intending to glance at the bathroom and see if this one too was furnished with its own hot tub.

As soon as the door opened and he could see inside, he jerked backwards.

The bathroom wasn’t just furnished. It was occupied. A woman was reclining in the tub, immersed so that only her head, bare shoulders, and legs from the knees down showed above the foam and the perfumed water. She turned her head at the sound of the opening door and gave Louis an unselfconscious nod of greeting.

“Hello there.” Glenna Omar’s smile was warm and welcoming. “Did Atvar H’sial tell you the news? I’m going to be her assistant! Isn’t it wonderful? I wondered how long it would be before you and I ran into each other again. And lo and behold — here we are.” She reached for the side of the tub and began to stand up. “Well, I think I’ve simmered enough for one day. Unless you’d like to… No? Well, if you would just hand me that towel…”

Louis had lived too long to think that closing your eyes in a crisis could help. He stared at Glenna’s foam-flecked pink and white form, reached for the long towel, and swore silent revenge on Atvar H’sial.

“You, me, and Quintus,” Glenna went on. She stepped forward into the held towel, and kept moving until her body was rubbing up against Nenda’s. “This is going to be an exciting trip.”

Apparently surprises, like so many other things in life, were apt to come in threes.

The Gravitas was one of the Fourth Alliance’s most advanced ships. For all its size, it handled like a dream and could be operated by a single pilot.

That certainly suited Louis Nenda. They were going to the Torvil Anfract, where inexperienced personnel would be something between a hindrance and a disaster; and after the job was over, the fewer extra hands on board, the better.

The ship had just cleared their sixth Bose Transition point, skipping in four days from the prosperous and well-settled Fourth Alliance to the outer limits of the Zardalu Communion. The travelers encountered at the transition points had changed along the way, from predominantly human merchants, tourists, and government bureaucrats, to beings whose species was sometimes almost as hard to determine as their occupation. Nenda had identified Cecropians, Hymenopts, Lo’tfians, Varnians, Scribes, Stage Three Ditrons, Decantil Myrmecons, what looked to Nenda like a pair of the supposedly-extinct Bercians, and one Chism Polypheme. That had given him a bad moment, because he and Atvar H’sial had stolen the Indulgence from a Chism Polypheme, back inside the Anfract. But this one was not Dulcimer, seeking revenge. It merely glared at Nenda with its great slate-gray single eye, reached out its five little arms, growled, “Keep your distance, sailor!” and wriggled the green corkscrew body past him.

For Nenda, the best thing about their outward progress was its effect on Glenna Omar. She was like Darya Lang when Louis had first met her, straight from the sheltered and innocent life of Sentinel Gate — although innocent might be the wrong word for Glenna. As the presence of aliens increased, together with evidence of poverty and barbarism, she became gradually more subdued. She would still rub her foot over Nenda’s or Bloom’s at dinner, or sit nudging knee to knee. But it was half-hearted, an automatic going-through-the-motions with the genuine spirit lacking.

That gave Nenda time to do what had to be done, and concentrate his mind on the Torvil Anfract. What he had told Quintus Bloom was perfectly true; he had been into the Anfract, and returned in one piece. Few beings could make that boast. What he had not told Bloom was that once he had escaped from the Anfract, he had said that he would never go back.

Sworn that he would never go back.

But here he was, piloting the Gravitas on its final subluminal leg. In just a few more minutes he would be taking another plunge into the depths of the spiral arm’s most notorious chunk of twisted space-time.

He knew what should be a safe route in, since the path they had followed on their previous entry had been recorded. It would be the identical path followed by Darya Lang, unless she had gone quite mad and added enormously to her risks (or not come to the Anfract at all).

The bad news, the thing he was afraid of, was recent changes to the structure of the Anfract. He and Atvar H’sial had seen signs of those, and evidence of variations in Builder artifacts. Suppose that the entry path now led straight into a chasm singularity, or a Croquemort time-well? Even a local field of a couple of hundred gees would be quite enough to wipe out the crew, although the Gravitas itself would survive.

Nenda stared at the image of the Anfract, filling the sky ahead. It was reassuringly normal — which was to say, reassuringly strange. He could see and count the individual lobes, and discern the exact point where the ship would make its entry. The Anfract was huge, sprawling out over a region almost two light-years across, but that was irrelevant. Normal measure and space-time metrics meant nothing once you were inside. Within that perplexing interior they could follow Darya all the way to Genizee, if that was necessary, in just a few minutes.

He became aware of Quintus Bloom, peering over his shoulder. Though he would never have expected it, during the journey Nenda had revised upward his opinion of the scientist from Jerome’s World. The two men had much in common. For one thing, it seemed to suit Bloom as well as Nenda that the Gravitas had a minimal crew.

Nenda could follow Bloom’s logic. Fewer people, fewer candidates to share the credit for discoveries. Nenda and Atvar H’sial would not count, one being considered mere crew and the other a bloated and blind horror of an alien. Glenna, the only other person aboard, was a known Quintus-worshipper whose main job would be to hang on to him and record his every sacred word for their return to glory.

Beyond that, though, Nenda sensed something else about Quintus Bloom. Bloom would do anything, literally anything, to get ahead in his world. That world happened to be a different one from Nenda’s, with different rewards, but Louis could recognize and appreciate single-minded, ruthless drive. Bloom saw him as a nothing, a bug that you could use or step on, just as the need arose. But that worked both ways. To Nenda, Quintus Bloom was a man you had to kill with the first shot, or not fire the gun. If Louis controlled the Gravitas when it emerged from the Anfract, one person not to look for on board would be the honorable Quintus Bloom.

With Bloom’s personal drive and ambition came any amount of nerve. He was leaning impatiently forward and staring at the image of the Torvil Anfract. “Can’t you speed us up? Why is it taking so long to enter?”

What he meant was, “Darya Lang may be in there, making my discoveries. Take risks if you have to, but get me in.”

Nenda shrugged. He was just about ready to proceed, anyway. You could stare at the image of the Anfract until your eyes started to bleed, but once you were inside all the outside observations didn’t mean a thing. The Anfract was huge and vastly complex. It could have changed in a million ways, and no external observer would ever know it.

“You might want to strap yourself in, and I’ll announce it to the others. The ride last time was pretty hairy.”

It was a way to stop Bloom from breathing down his neck. It was also a perfectly true statement. Nenda, whose own ambitions did not guarantee a matching supply of nerve, held his breath as the Gravitas started to move faster and faster toward the boundary of the Anfract. He was directing it down a dark, starless corridor of supposedly empty space. Any surprise would be a nasty one. As the ship began to vibrate, with small, choppy surges, he cut back their speed.

“Problems?” Bloom, from a seat next to Louis, was finally showing a little uneasiness.

Nenda shook his head. “It’s a change in Planck scale. We may get macroscopic quantum effects. I’ll keep my eyes open, but let me know if anything seems unusual.”

It had happened before, and after the first time the anomalous was no longer terrifying. When it came, Nenda welcomed the quantum graininess of their environment as familiar, and therefore right. He was not upset when the Gravitas next appeared to be plunging straight for the photosphere of a blazing blue-white star. He explained to Bloom exactly what was going to happen. They would dive down almost to the boiling gaseous surface of the star, then jump at the last moment into a dark void.

They did.

Next they would find themselves in free fall, and lose all light and power on the ship.

They did.

And in just ten seconds or so, the power and lights and gravity would return.

They didn’t.

Nenda and Bloom sat side by side in silence as the seconds wore on. And on.

Finally, Bloom’s voice came in the darkness: “How long did you say before we have power again?”

“Just a few more seconds. What we’ve hit is called a hiatus. It won’t last. Ah!” A faint glimmer of light was appearing in the control room. “Here we go.”

Power was creeping back. The screens were again flickering toward normal status. An image appeared on the main display, showing space outside the Gravitas.

Nenda stared no less eagerly than Quintus Bloom. He put the ship into steady rotation, so that they could examine all directions in turn. He had expected them to be surrounded by the overall multilobed Anfract, and closer to them should be the nested annular singularities that shielded Genizee. If the earlier disappearance of those singularities was permanent, the ship would have a distant view of Genizee. They would be far enough away that the Zardalu inhabitants could do no harm.

Nenda kept his eye on the screen as the turning ship scanned the outside. There was no sign of the characteristic shimmering lobes of the Torvil Anfract — of any Anfract lobe. No nested annular singularities appeared anywhere on the display. Nothing remotely resembling a planet could be seen.

All the lights suddenly went out again. The murmur of the ship’s engines faded to nothing.

“Another hiatus?” Bloom was more irritated than alarmed. This time the ship’s rotation provided enough artificial gravity to prevent physical discomfort. “How many of these things are there?”

“Damned if I know.” Louis was more alarmed than irritated. “I only expected one.”

They waited, sitting in absolute darkness. Seconds stretched to minutes.

“Look, I’m in a big hurry. I’d have thought you would know that by now.” Bloom’s face was not visible, but his voice said it all. “You’d better get us out of here, Nenda — and quickly.”

Louis sighed, closed his eyes, and opened them again. Nothing had changed. For all he knew, the hiatus might last forever. Nothing he did to the ship’s controls could make any difference.

“Did you hear me?” Bloom spoke again from the darkness. “I said, get us out. If not, you can forget your pay.”

“I’m forgetting it already.” But Nenda kept that thought to himself. He stared hard at lots of black nothing, and wished that Genizee would appear ahead and the ship would drop him back among the Zardalu. At least you knew where you were with Zardalu.

Loss of pay seemed the least of his worries.