Convergence

Chapter Twenty-One

Experience makes everything easier. Darya had struggled hard to interpret the first series of images that she and Kallik had obtained from the wall of the hexagonal chamber. Now, as she examined the second series, she wondered what she had found so difficult.

Blue supergiant stars served as references, fixing the scale and overall geometry of the spiral arm. Their movement in space also made them into celestial clocks, measuring how far before or after the present a particular image was set. Without knowing stellar velocities, the time scale was relative rather than absolute, but it was enough to judge the progress in spiral arm colonization.

The second image set proved similar to the first, except that this time the orange markers of Zardalu control spread across the arm, engulfed the worlds of the earlier green clade, and then suddenly vanished.

That matched Darya’s understanding of history. Instead of going on to dominate the spiral arm, the Zardalu had themselves been annihilated in the Great Rising.

After a dozen images with no colonized worlds at all, a dull red spark appeared at Sol’s location. The red markers spread, and were joined by the yellow of another clade. Darya noted the location. Cecropians. The two clades grew until their boundaries met. After that the boundary line remained steady, while both clades grew rapidly in other directions.

Darya nodded to herself. This was the past shown by Quintus Bloom. And presumably the future, also.

Darya waited. Suddenly yellow points of light began to surround the region of red ones. Finally, when englobement was complete, the yellow markers spread inward. Red points of light flickered out one by one, and yellow took their place. Finally yellow lights alone were visible through the spiral arm. Cecropians ruled the spiral arm. And then, far enough in the future that the supergiant reference stars had moved to noticeably different positions, there was a final change. The yellow lights began to blink out, one by one, until almost all were gone. For a long period the spiral arm showed just one yellow point, close to the original clade world of the Cecropians. Then it too winked out. The arm had lost all evidence of intelligent life.

This was not the future displayed by Quintus Bloom — far from it. In this series of images, as in the last set that Kallik had displayed, the final sequence showed an end point for the spiral arm with no inhabited worlds.

Darya puzzled over the display for a long time, running and rerunning the image sequences. They were false pasts and futures for the spiral arm. Could she be seeing an entertainment, a fictional presentation? The Builders were so remote, so enigmatic, it was difficult to accept them as having recreations of any kind. But maybe all thinking beings needed a break now and again.

Finally she nodded to Kallik to move to an image sequence drawn from a different wall.

The now-familiar first scenes came into view. Blue supergiant marker stars, no colonized worlds. The orange sparks of the Zardalu came, and at last went. Humans appeared in a lurid red, Cecropians in yellow. They existed side by side, spreading outward for a long, long time, until a clade of glittering cyan appeared from close to the inner edge of the spiral arm.

Darya stared at the location, and could think of no species at all in that part of the spiral arm. Human exploration vessels had been there, but had found nothing. She glanced at the supergiant markers. The scene was far in the future.

The cyan clade worlds grew until they met humans. Cyan then at once began to disappear. Humans were taking over the worlds of the new clade, as glowing red swallowed up cyan. That went on until the new color had vanished completely. And then, as though a process had been started that could not be stopped, red began to consume yellow. The Cecropian worlds dwindled in number, not steadily but in sudden spasms of contraction. The clade shrank back toward the original home world of the Cecropians. A final spark of yellow gleamed there, until it was replaced at last by a gleam of red.

Humans, and humans alone, ruled the spiral arm. The millennia rolled on, the supergiant marker stars crept like tiny blue snails across the face of the galaxy. Finally, red points began to flicker out of existence. Not in a systematic pattern this time, but randomly, one by one. A handful, widely scattered across the spiral arm, hung on as dots of ruddy light. At last they began to vanish. Darya was finally staring at a spiral arm where again only the marker stars could be seen.

“Excuse me if I interrupt your thoughts, but do you wish to see the next sequence?” Kallik was standing by her side. Darya had no idea how long she had been waiting there.

She shook her head. Since her findings made no sense, additional data were more likely to confuse than to clarify.

Darya realized how tired she was. How long since she had slept? How long since they had entered Labyrinth, how long since they arrived in this chamber? She couldn’t even guess.

Still there was no sign of J’merlia. She and Kallik should have gone searching long since. The fascination of the polyglyphs had held her.

The worst of it was, she wouldn’t be able to sleep now no matter how she tried. And it was not because of worry over J’merlia. Darya knew her own weaknesses. She might close her eyes, but the image sequences were going to keep running, running, running, visible to an inner eye that could not be closed. They would remain until something in her brain over which she had no control permitted them to vanish. Then she would rest.

“Kallik, do you mind if I talk to you?” Hymenopts, unlike mere humans, never seemed to become weary. “I’d like to share some thoughts, think out loud at you.”

“I would be honored.”

“Did you watch all three sequences with me?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“But you didn’t see Quintus Bloom’s presentation, when he was on Sentinel Gate?”

“That was not my good fortune.”

“Pity. Did you, by any chance, examine the recording of the presentation in Bloom’s data files on the Myosotis?”

It occurred to Darya that for someone who had asked to share her thoughts, she was doing rather poorly. So far everything had been a question. But Kallik did not object.

“I examined the records on the Myosotis, and I found them fascinating.”

“Good. So you saw what Bloom says he found in Labyrinth, and we’ve both seen what we found here.”

“Some of what we found here. With respect, three image sequences remain to be displayed.”

“That’s all right. We’ll get to them. We need to think, frame a hypothesis, then use the other image sequences to test it.”

“That is a procedure fully consistent with the scientific method.”

“Let’s try to keep it that way. First, Bloom’s image sequence. It was consistent with our past, and what we know of the past of the other clades. It showed a future with all clades present, and it showed a spiral arm full of colonized worlds. Now for a question: Was that the only image sequence that Bloom found?”

“We lack the data to provide an answer.” Kallik stared all around her with her rings of eyes. “However, we do know that Quintus Bloom came to a hexagonal chamber like this one, even if it was in a different interior.”

“Which is very probable. But you mean, he must have wondered what was on the other five walls, wherever he was? I agree. He seems a thorough research worker. He must have examined all six walls. But now let’s talk about what we found. Three different histories of spiral arm colonization. The past in two of them was plausible, but in every case the far future was different. Agreed?”

“Certainly. Different from each other, and also different from what Quintus Bloom reported.”

“Good. Now I’ve got my own ideas, so I don’t want to lead you on this. What do you see as the single biggest difference between what Bloom reported, and what we have been finding?”

Kallik’s exoskeleton did not permit her to frown, but her perplexity showed in the delay before she responded. “With respect, I see two major differences.”

That remark was not one that Darya had been expecting. “Two differences?”

“Yes indeed. First, we find that the spiral arm in the far future is empty. There are no populated and colonized worlds. Quintus Bloom found the opposite, an arm where some clade occupied every world.”

“That’s the difference that hit me. So what’s the other one?”

“The image sequence displayed by Quintus Bloom showed Builder artifacts. The sequences that we have seen so far offer no evidence of such artifacts. In fact, they show no sign whatsoever of the existence of the Builders, now or in the past. But this” — Kallik waved a jointed forelimb around her — “is certainly a Builder artifact. It is proof that the Builders, whether or not they exist today, certainly existed at one time.” Kallik stared unhappily at Darya. “With respect, Professor Lang. It appears to me that our very presence here, in an artifact, proves that Quintus Bloom’s claim must be correct. Only a spiral arm containing artifacts can be the real spiral arm.”

During her scientific career, Darya had developed immense respect for experimental data. One little fact was enough to destroy any theory ever constructed, no matter how beautiful and appealing it might seem.

Now she was facing one ugly and very big fact: Builder artifacts appeared in Bloom’s images, as Kallik had pointed out, but not in the ones that they had seen. There was no way of arguing around that, no way of dismissing it as irrelevant or unimportant.

The smart action at this point was also the simple one: accept that Quintus Bloom’s images represented reality, while the new ones, whatever they might be, did not. With that full acceptance, Darya would at last be able to relax and get some sleep.

She might have to do that — but not quite yet. One of her ancestors must have passed along to her a good slug of stubbornness. She was almost ready to quit, but first she had to see the other three image sequences.

Kallik, at her direction, patiently prepared to run them. During the setup period, Darya’s tired brain took off on a new line of thought.

Labyrinth was a new artifact. On that, she and Quintus Bloom agreed one hundred percent. Not only did it look new, with none of the long-deserted appearance of every other artifact that Darya had ever encountered, it was also too close to the populated planet of Jerome’s World to have escaped detection through thousands of years of exploration and observation.

There was more. Not only was Labyrinth new, it was not in any way hidden. Whoever built it, intended it to be found. Darya felt sure of that, although her thinking was now far indeed from the testable, provable world of hard evidence.

Don’t stop yet. If Labyrinth were found, it would also be explored. The designers of Labyrinth expected that at some time, an intelligent being — human or alien — would reach this very chamber. Someone would stand here, as Darya was standing, and stare at the milky, streaky walls. They would puzzle over their meaning and significance. Once you accepted that such discovery and exploration were inevitable, then the idea that the sequences Darya and Kallik had seen so far were no more than Builder fantasies became ridiculous. The three sets of images — the spiral arm past, present, and future — were solid, important data, as real and meaningful as what Bloom had discovered. Whoever found the inner chamber of Labyrinth was supposed to deduce what it all meant.

And then do what?

That was the point where Darya’s thinking stuck. She was supposed to stand just where she was, and conclude — what? It was like some sort of super-intelligence test, but one that she was failing.

She sighed, and came back to reality. Kallik had been ready long ago, patiently waiting.

“All right.” Darya nodded. “Let’s see what we’ve got in the other three.”

At first it seemed nothing but more mystery and disappointment. The fourth sequence showed a very simple progression. The green clade, the one that Darya had never managed to identify, arose far away in the spiral arm. The green tide spread, sun after sun, until the arm was ablaze with green. No other clade ever appeared. At a time not long after the present, the green points of light began to pop out of existence. Finally all were gone, and the spiral arm remained empty to the end of the display. No Zardalu, no humans, no Cecropians. And never a sign of the bright magenta that had marked the Builder artifacts in Bloom’s display.

Darya hardly had the heart to ask Kallik to continue. It felt like someone else who nodded, and said. “Let’s try the next one.”

The sequence began. And Darya moved suddenly, totally, into mental high gear. The display in her suit visor seemed to become twice as bright. Artifacts! Points of vivid magenta were scattered in among the supergiant reference stars.

And now the green clade was appearing, soon followed by the orange of the Zardalu. At last, here came the red of the human clade. Clades grew, met, intermingled, traded off regions among them. Finally the spiral arm was filled. It continued to be filled, thousand after endless thousands of stars. This was Quintus Bloom’s display. The only difference was that during his presentation he had focused the attention of the audience on the spread of the human clade. The earlier spread and collapse of the Zardalu, and its subsequent reappearance, had been deliberately ignored.

Why would Bloom have done such a thing?

Darya could answer that: he had ignored what he could not explain. At the time of his presentation he had no idea that the Zardalu were once more in the spiral arm, repopulating on their original clade-world of Genizee. Bloom wanted all his evidence to support his conclusions.

The sixth sequence started, but it no longer contained surprises. It was another “false history” of the spiral arm, where the Zardalu came and went; Cecropians and humans fought for star systems with the green clade, and finally conquered. Yellow then battled ruby-red, and finally won. The spiral arm filled with Cecropians; and, after a short period, began to empty. The yellow points of light blinked out. At last the arm again showed no sign of intelligent occupation. At no time was there any evidence of Builder artifacts.

Darya was sure that Bloom had reconstructed image sequences for all six walls. She had great respect for his intelligence and his thoroughness as an investigator. But having examined all of them, he had selected just one.

And who could blame him? Only one contained Builder artifacts, which certainly in the real world were scattered through the spiral arm. It was reasonable to reject the other five, as nothing more than a strange invention for an unknown purpose.

Reasonable, but Darya could not do it. Her inner voice told her that the other five histories of the spiral arm were all equally relevant. Their existence, and the way in which the two-dimensional images had been stored in three dimensions, provided a message for any visitor to Labyrinth. Understand the histories and the images, and you would understand a lot about the Builders. Or — invert the process, as before — if you fathomed the nature of the Builders, then the existence of multiple histories and the reason that the scenes were stored in such odd fashion would be explained.

It was a crucial moment, one that needed all her concentration. Instead, to her huge annoyance Darya found her thoughts drifting off. She could not rid her mind of Quintus Bloom’s face, with its half-disguised red sores, and his confident and persuasive voice as he said to his audience, “If you answer that the Builders had that magical power to predict the far future, then you assign to them talents that strain my belief past bearing.”

But it was not magical power. Not at all. It was a different physical nature, one which changed the definition of prediction. The idea came into her head again. A species able to see the future. Not predict, she thought dreamily, as Bloom would have it, but see.

The fact that she was falling asleep no longer upset her. She knew the way her mind worked. When it had a problem, sleep was impossible. She could not rest until the problem was solved.

So now…

Her thoughts as she faded into sleep carried a perverse comfort. She could stay awake no longer, therefore something deep inside her subconscious said that all necessary data were now in place. The problems of the Builders and of Labyrinth were solved.

Everything clarified to a pleasant simplicity. When she awoke, she would persuade her subconscious to behave honorably, and reveal to her its solution. Then they would find J’merlia, and return to the ship.

And then, at last, they could go home.