Convergence

Chapter Twenty

The Builders had made things to last. The exteriors of their free-space structures might bear minor pitting from meteor collisions, and the interiors always collected dust, but the overall artifacts remained as hard and indestructible as the day they were fabricated.

Hans Rebka knew all this. So it was absolutely astonishing to tug open a wall cabinet as he was examining the chamber’s food supplies, and feel the cabinet itself move a fraction as he did so.

He braced himself, gripped the sides of the cabinet, and pulled harder. The whole cupboard ripped away from the wall. Hans went rolling away across the chamber, holding on to a cabinet without a back. Not only that — when he returned to look at the wall, he found that part of it contained a big crack.

That started a whole new train of thought. He could not travel outward, toward the surface of Paradox, because of the one-way field. He could not travel directly toward the center, because the inner wall of the chamber was smooth and impenetrable. But maybe he could break through a side wall, and so progress around the circumference of the torus. Even if he found no way to escape, at least he could look for E.C. Tally.

Smashing through walls might be possible, but it surely wouldn’t be easy. Before he began, Rebka went once more to the opening through which he had originally entered. A brief experiment told him that the one-way field was still in operation. Also, unless his suit’s instruments were not working correctly inside Paradox, the outer boundary of the artifact had moved much closer. For as long as humans had known of its existence, the radius of the artifact had always been measured as twenty-five kilometers; now the boundary was no more than five kilometers away. Paradox was shrinking. More evidence of profound artifact changes.

Rebka returned to the inside of the chamber. At the back of his mind he couldn’t help wondering how small Paradox might become — and what would happen to the central region and its contents if the outer boundary came all the way in to meet it.

Well, he’d either discover a way to escape, or find out the hard way the consequence of the final shrinkage. Meanwhile…

He went across to the wall and wondered about the best way to attack it. His suit tools contained fine needle drills, but nothing intended for major demolition work. One way might be to pull a massive cabinet free, and propel it with his suit thrustors at the weak point of the wall.

Rebka went across to the damaged section from which he had pulled the food cabinet and thumped it experimentally with his gloved fist. He was hoping to gauge its thickness. He was astonished when his fist went right in, the whole surface crumbling away to flakes under the blow.

He moved in close and examined the material. The wall was about four inches thick, but impossibly weak, so soft and friable that he could powder it between his thumb and forefinger. It had not been like this when he first entered the room. Just to be sure, he went back to the exact place where he had hit the side wall earlier. One punch now, and his hand went completely through.

He leaned forward and found that he could see into the next chamber. From a superficial inspection, it was no different from the one he was in. There was no sign of E.C. Tally.

Hans Rebka enlarged the hole until it was big enough for him to pass through it, and headed for the far side of the new room. This time he did not pause to select any special place. He drove feet-first at a space on the wall between two gas supply lines, and was not much surprised when it disintegrated under the impact.

He went through and stared around him. Another empty chamber. At this rate he was going to destroy every room in the torus looking for E.C. Tally. Unless the whole place crumbled to dust by itself, with no help from him. It seemed to be heading that way, weaker by the minute.

One more time. Rebka launched himself forward. Again the wall collapsed beneath his impact. Again he drove on through, and found himself in still another room.

But here, at last, was something different. Radically different. He emerged amid a cloud of powder and wall chips, and ran straight into something solid.

He heard a startled grunt, and felt a sudden grip on his arms. Right in front of his face and staring into his visor was a thin, fair-haired woman. She was not wearing a suit, and her face and hair were covered with chalky dust.

She sneezed violently, then glared at the wall behind him in disbelief. “I’ve bashed that wall a hundred times in the past week, and never made even a dent in it. Who are you, some kind of superman?”

“No, indeed.” A familiar voice spoke from behind Hans. “This is not a superman. Permit me to perform the introductions. This is Captain Hans Rebka, from the planet Teufel, and lately of Sentinel Gate.”

The three women were sisters, from the salt world of Darby’s Lick. Rebka had never been there, but he knew its reputation and location, in the no-man’s-zone of dwarf stars between the Phemus Circle and the Fourth Alliance.

“So you’re from Teufel,” said Maddy Treel, the oldest, shortest, and darkest of the three. “We’ve all heard of that. ‘What sins must a man commit, in how many past lives, to be born on Teufel?’ ”

Those words threw Hans back at once to his childhood. He was on water duty again, a terrified seven-year-old, waiting for the night predators to retreat to their caves; five and a half more minutes, and the Remouleur, the dreaded Grinder, would arrive. Margin of error on water duty: seven seconds. If you are caught outside when the Remouleur dawn wind hits, you are dead…

Maddy Treel went on, jerking Hans back to the present: “But I believe Darby’s Lick can give Teufel a run for its money, at least if you’re a woman. I guess I don’t have to tell you why we came to Paradox. We wanted a better choice than the ones women have, salt-mining or breeding. When they asked for volunteers, we jumped at it.”

They were sitting around the makeshift table. Hans Rebka had been persuaded to remove his suit, but only after he had been back to the hole through which he had entered and examined it. He remained mystified. There was an atmosphere on the other side, but it was pure helium. Something was able to keep gases contained within each chamber, even when the wall between them had been partly destroyed. Impossible. But no more impossible than the diamond-shaped entrance to the chamber, which somehow did the same thing. Air within did not escape to the vacuum outside.

“I’ve done a bit of salt-mining,” Rebka replied absently to Maddy. “On Teufel. It wasn’t all that bad.”

She snorted. “Uranium salts? The good news was, after a year of that no one talked about breeding any more.”

“I never had to handle uranium. Maybe Teufel’s not so bad after all. I couldn’t wait to get out, though. Nobody wanted to breed me, but a lot of things wanted to kill me. Anywhere else looked better. But I don’t know if I was right.” Rebka gestured around him. “The future here doesn’t seem too promising. Did you know that Paradox is shrinking?”

“You mean, the whole thing’s getting smaller?” Lissie Treel, the tall skinny blonde who had caught Rebka on his arrival, stared at him in disbelief. “How can it? It’s always been the same size.”

“Sure. And it’s always had a Lotus field inside, and it never stopped anything from getting out before.” Rebka shrugged. “Paradox is changing — fast. Don’t take my word for it. Go have a look for yourself.”

Lissie frowned at him, stood up, and headed across to the diamond-shaped entrance. She was back a few seconds later.

“Shrinking, and changing color. No reds any more. What’s going on?”

“It is not Paradox alone.” E.C. Tally was sitting cozily between Maddy and Katerina Treel. After he had explained to them who and what he was, the three sisters had assured him that they liked him a lot better than if he had been a real man. “According to a new theory back on Sentinel Gate, changes should be occurring in all the artifacts. It is evidence that the purpose of the Builders has at last been accomplished.”

“So what is the purpose?” Katerina asked.

E.C. Tally stared at her unhappily and blinked his bright blue eyes. It occurred to him that this was one feature of the Quintus Bloom theory which remained less than wholly satisfactory. “I have no idea.”

“It may not make much difference to us what the purpose is.” Lissie came back to sit across from Hans Rebka. “If Paradox keeps shrinking, we’ll get squished out of existence. Since it’s down to two kilometers, instead of twenty-five—”

“Two!” It was Rebka’s turn to jump up. “It can’t be. It was close to five less than an hour ago.”

“Don’t take my word, to quote you. Go see for yourself.”

Everyone rushed for the entrance, with E.C. Tally bringing up the rear.

Maddy Treel got there first. “It sure as hell looks closer.” She stood there, head tilted to one side. “Hard to judge distance when you can’t be sure the fringes haven’t changed.”

“They have not.” This, unlike the purpose of the Builders, was something about which E.C. Tally could be completely confident. “My eyes are unusually sensitive, enough to see reference stars within the rainbow fringes. Refraction has been changing their apparent positions. The outer boundary of Paradox is indeed shrinking. Assuming that the present rate of change is maintained, it will achieve zero radius in” — he paused, not for calculation but for effect. He had remained completely still to make his observations, and in the first millisecond after that he had performed all necessary data reduction — “in twelve minutes and seventeen seconds.”

“Achieve zero radius?” asked Katerina.

“That’s E.C.’s polite way of describing what Lissie called getting squished out of existence.” Rebka was on the point of asking Tally if the embodied robot was sure, until he realized that would be a total waste of what little time they had left. E.C. was always sure of everything. “We’ve got twelve minutes.”

“To do what?” Maddy had adjusted to the facts as rapidly as Hans Rebka.

“Four things. First, we all put suits on again. Second, we board your ships.” Rebka scanned the two small exploration vessels. “Just one of them, for preference. Might as well stick together. Which one has the stronger hull?”

“Katerina’s our engineering expert. Katie?”

“Not much in it. The Misanthrope’s a little bigger, and a little faster. My guess is it’s also a bit tougher.” Katerina turned to Rebka. “What are you planning on doing? Neither hull was built for strength.”

“That will be our third action.” Rebka was already half into his suit, but he paused and gestured at the inner wall of the chamber. “Once we’re aboard we send the ship full tilt at that.”

“No way. We’ll be flattened!”

“I don’t think so. Paradox isn’t just shrinking — it’s falling apart around us.”

“But suppose we do break through the inner wall?” Katerina was in her suit, and leading the way to one of the scout ships. “We’ll be just as badly off. We’ll still be inside Paradox.”

“Did you notice what was at the center of this torus of chambers when you came in?”

“You mean that black whirlpool thing?” They were inside the Misanthrope, and Lissie was already at the controls. She turned to Rebka. “We saw it all right — and we stayed well clear of it. We may be wild, but we’re not crazy. I hope your head’s not going the way I think it is.”

“Unless one of you has a better idea. I say we have no real choice. If we don’t go there under our own power, we’ll finish by being squeezed into it. I’d rather enter in this ship, with some say in how we fly.”

“He is crazy.” Katerina turned to Maddy for support. “Just like a man. All they want to do is order us around.”

“I am not a man,” E.C. Tally said quietly. “Yet I am obliged to concur with Captain Rebka. I also saw the center of Paradox as I entered, and I suspect that he and I have information unavailable to you. That vortex strongly resembles the entry point for a Builder transportation system.”

Lissie abandoned the controls and spun around in the pilot’s chair. The other two sisters moved alongside her.

“Go on,” Maddy said softly. “You can’t stop there. How would you know what a Builder transportation system looks like? So far as I know, there isn’t any such thing.”

“You pretend you know what you’re doing,” added Katerina, “but you did no better than us at steering clear of Paradox. Worse, because you told us you knew things were changing here.”

“We maybe weren’t too smart.” Rebka glanced at his suit’s clock, then toward the chamber entrance. “Four more minutes. The outer boundary of Paradox is squeezing in. Look, you’ve either got to believe us, or it will be too late to do anything. E.C. and I know what a Builder transport system looks like because we’ve been through a few of them.”

Lissie and Katerina turned to look at Maddy. She glanced at the shattered wall of the room, where Rebka had broken in. “What does a Builder transport system do to you? And where does it take you?”

“You survive, if you’re lucky, but you don’t enjoy it. As for where it takes you, I don’t know how to answer that.” Rebka shrugged. “Wherever it wants to.”

“No comfort there. I should have known better.” Maddy Treel tapped Lissie on the shoulder. “Make room, sis. Soon as we’re ready to fly, hand over to him.”

“You mean, let that man fly our ship!”

“I know how you feel. Have to do it, we’re up Drool Creek without a paddle.” Maddy glared at Rebka. “With who-knows-what for a guide. I hope you’re as good at getting out of trouble as you are at getting into it.”

“Strap in, everybody.” Rebka didn’t respond to Maddy, but he moved to the copilot’s chair next to Lissie. “It may not make a damn bit of difference, but I’ll feel better if we’re all secured. Ready?”

Lissie nodded. “Any time. Just don’t ruin my ship!”

“Not a chance.” Rebka threw the local drive to maximum and aimed directly for the chamber’s inner boundary.

With forty meters in which to accelerate, the Misanthrope took over a second to reach the wall. Plenty of time to visualize a ship with its drive set to maximum hitting an impenetrable barrier. The drive thrust would continue until everything ahead of the engines was a centimeter-thin compressed layer.

Rebka saw the final meters of approach as a blur on the forward screen. He felt a shock, but it was no more than a moderate jolt that threw him forward against his restraining belt. Then the screen was a chaos of flying fragments.

He cut the power in the same instant. The ship could not reverse its thrust, there was not time for that. They were flying on, with the same velocity as at impact. How fast? Forty meters, accelerating at five standard gravities. E.C. Tally would know, but there was no time to ask.

Too fast, at any rate. Much too fast for finesse. Rebka could see again; the cloud created by the disintegrating wall was dispersing. The ink-black swirl of the vortex was almost dead ahead. He had time for a lateral thrust, enough to aim them a little more squarely at the center. That was his last act before the vortex took control.

The sensation was familiar. It would never be pleasant. Hans felt the vortex close in on him, a tightening spiral that shrank until it felt no wider than his body. The torsion began, forces that racked his body in sections, twisting from head to neck to chest to hips to legs to feet. It increased steadily, shearing him until the pain was unbearable. Rebka had no breath left to scream. He squeezed his eyes shut. It was no comfort to imagine what Maddy, Katerina, and Lissie must be thinking about him at this moment.

It was impossible to say how long the pain lasted, but it ended abruptly. Rebka opened his eyes and stared around him, relieved to see that the ship and its contents were unaffected by the crippling forces that he had felt. Maddy and her sisters were bulging-eyed and gasping, but that was just psychological after-effects. The Builder transport systems, if they delivered you at all, did so leaving you physically intact and unharmed.

But delivered you where? It could be in the Anfract, or inside some other distant Builder artifact, or even in Serenity, thirty thousand light-years outside the plane of the galaxy.

Rebka peered at the screen in front of him. There was not much information to be gained from that. He was seeing a pattern of near-parallel lines like an optical illusion, a streaming glow of white on a dense black background.

“Tally?” The embodied computer was the best bet, with every major feature of the spiral arm stored away in his head. “Do you know where we are?”

“Unfortunately, I do not.” E.C. Tally sounded very cheerful. Rebka recalled, with some envy, that pain in Tally’s case offered warning signals without discomfort. “However, it is almost certain that we are no longer within Paradox.”

“I can tell that much. What about the other artifacts? Do any of them look like that, on the inside?” Rebka gestured at the screen.

“Not remotely like that. The pattern we are observing would be considered striking enough to have been reported, even if images of it were unobtainable. Might I suggest that you record it on the imaging equipment of this ship?”

“Never mind the scenery.” Maddy Treel had her breath back. “You can study that any time. What about the whosit out there? I want to know if it’s dangerous.”

Rebka and E.C. Tally turned. Maddy was staring at a different screen, one that showed a view to the rear of the Misanthrope. The pattern of lines was there too, no longer parallel but curving away and apparently slightly converging. But in front of those, much closer to the ship and rapidly approaching it, was something else. A black, spindly figure, its body twisted a little to one side.

Rebka stared in disbelief. He opened his mouth to speak, but E.C. Tally was well ahead of him. The embodied computer had done a rapid comparison of every feature of the dark figure, from number of legs to suit design to antennas and probable frequencies.

“If you will permit.” He turned, reached across Lissie — still stunned to silence by the transition through the Builder vortex — and flipped four switches. “Our general communication channel is now open. This is E. Crimson Tally. Do you wish to come aboard?”

The speaker system of the Misanthrope clicked and whistled. “With respect, I would like that very much. I recently suffered a most unpleasant impact, and I wish to perform certain repairs.”

“You can’t let that thing onto our ship!” Maddy Treel grabbed E.C. Tally’s right arm as he reached forward to activate the airlock. “You’re crazy! That’s an alien out there. I don’t care if it is hurt — it could kill us all if it got inside.”

“Oh, no.” E.C. Tally leaned forward, and with his left hand pressed the lock control. “You do not have to worry. He is an alien, true enough, but he would never hurt anybody. You see, it is only J’merlia.”