Resurgence

CHAPTER THREE Miranda and MirandaPort

As always, travel through the Bose Network induced a faint sense of hallucination. There was something unnatural about an instantaneous jump of a hundred or a thousand lightyears, and even the best human brain apparently needed a few seconds to orient itself to its body’s new circumstances.

Darya Lang stood with her eyes closed. Five seconds ago she had stood at the Bose transition point closest to Sentinel Gate, near the outer limit of Fourth Alliance territory. When she opened her eyes, the sight that met them would be of Miranda and Miranda Port , six hundred and twenty lightyears away.

All right. You’ve had enough time to adjust. Now—do it!

A blink. And there it was, although the sight failed to do justice to the reality. The Shroud hanging by the disk of the planet was too far away for Darya to make out details, but the countless flyspecks within the gauzy web must be spacecraft: starships of all sizes and types, more than a million of them netted and warehoused in the Shroud: the biggest collection in the spiral arm, everything from Primavera body form-fits to the monstrous Tantalus orbital forts.

She was to be allowed little time for sightseeing. Already a hand clutched at her arm.

“Professor Darya Lang?”

She turned. “That’s me.”

“Finally, you are here. I am an assistant to Councilor Graves.” The man was polite and nondescript, but he did not release his hold on Darya’s arm. “If you would come with me. Today’s meeting is already in progress and may be close to its conclusion.”

A meeting here, out by the Bose transition point and at Upside Miranda Port , rather than down on the surface of the planet? But as Darya allowed herself to be led away from the glittering splendor of the Shroud, she said nothing. There were bigger questions to be asked and answered.

The puzzles had started in Darya’s study at the Artifact Research Institute on Sentinel Gate. Twilight was approaching, and the first nightsingers could be heard through the open window when Professor Merada ambled in.

His visit was not expected, but it was also not surprising. Merada was a stickler for accuracy and formality in every element of analysis and reporting, but he felt that research work done under his auspices thrived best in an informal atmosphere. Putting it another way, he felt free to butt in wherever and whenever he liked.

Darya lifted her head from her notes. She had been collating reports of the final days of the Builder artifact known as Maelstrom, but now she was down to the hearsay and rumors, and this was a logical stopping-point to ease off for the day.

One glance at Merada’s face was enough to ruin her relaxation. She thought, “Uh-oh. What have I done now?”

She knew he had always disapproved of her galloping off to inspect Builder artifacts at first hand, but the last of those journeys was years in the past. Since then she had settled down in her office at the Institute to write the definitive history of the Builders, including every scrap of information on the more than twelve hundred Builder artifacts that had once been scattered around the spiral arm.

The only sin she could think of was a possible excessive use of Institute communication privileges. She had sent dozens of messages to a planet of the Phemus Circle in the past two months, although not one of them had been answered.

Was that it? Merada was waving a sheet at her and scowling.

“This is inexplicable,” he said, in his thin, penetrating tenor. “It is also, to be honest, somewhat insulting. If there is to be an important meeting concerning the Builders, anywhere in the spiral arm, it would seem like common courtesy to address such an invitation to me, as Director of the Institute. But this document requests—more than requests, insists—upon the presence of you, of all people.” He peered down at Darya, vaguely aware that he might have said something less than tactful. “Not that I am in any way criticizing your credentials, my dear. You are, after all, the editor of the past two editions of the Universal Artifact Catalog.”

The Lang Universal Artifact Catalog. But Darya said that only under her breath.

“May I see?”

More than a certain irritation, she felt puzzled. Why would anyone choose to hold any meeting at all about the Builders, except here at the Artifact Research Institute where Builder history was a major interest? Odder yet, how could a meeting be described as an important meeting concerning the Builders, when the Builders had vanished three million years ago, and every last trace of Builder artifacts had disappeared more than two years ago?

The sheet was not very informative. In fact, it added to the mystery. First, it insisted, with the full force of the inter-clade council, that Professor Darya Lang be present “in person.” No virtual presence through the Bose communications network would be accepted. Second, the meeting would take place on Miranda, a planet which formed the major power center of the Fourth Alliance. Third—Darya stared at the date. Somebody in the Institute had been sitting on this message for a long time. She would barely get to the meeting in time even if she left at once.

Which she had done. And here she was, still dizzy from the Bose transition, walking unsteadily alongside the man who had greeted her.

She had traveled six hundred and twenty lightyears in a handful of days. She was late, late, late. And she had not the slightest idea why she had been summoned.

The chamber that Darya entered was almost totally dark, but she had an impression of an echoing, cavernous vastness. The man who had led her there slipped unobtrusively away, leaving Darya to fumble her way forward to a seat. As her eyes began to adjust she realized that the great room was lavishly equipped, even by the high standards of a rich world like Sentinel Gate. Directly in front of her was a personal privacy shield and Bose link connection. Did each seat have one? If so, any bewildered participant could call home, and (with luck) receive a reply soon enough for it to be useful.

A sudden flash of light right in front of her eyes ended any opportunity to see more of the room. Her seat was also provided with a large 3-D display, which had just filled with an image. The principal clade territories of the spiral arm were delineated in their characteristic colors. Within them, scattered like sown handfuls of fiery sparks, Builder artifacts stood out as brighter points of light.

There was the dull orange of the Zardalu Communion, a region that thinned out as the distance from the galactic center increased. At its outermost edge, Darya recognized the outpost of the Needle. That was an artifact she had longed to visit, but now never would. The eye of the Needle had provided an acceleration-free boost in speed to any ship that traversed it. Now it, like all the rest, was gone.

To the right of the fifteen-hundred-lightyear sprawl of the Zardalu Communion sat the dark void of the Empty Quarter , a region where stars were plentiful but artifacts were almost unknown. Darya’s catalog showed just two of them, Lens and Flambeau. Neither she nor anyone else had ever offered an explanation for the Empty Quarter .

Below the Empty Quarter showed the pale green of Darya’s own clade territory, the Fourth Alliance, where the sentient species were largely humans. Her home world of Sentinel Gate sat far off to the right, close to the artifact of Sentinel. Below and to the left of Fourth Alliance territory, stretching off toward the galactic center, the clade worlds of the Cecropia Federation showed in electric blue—a color which the Cecropians, who “saw” using sound waves and echolocation, could never experience.

Darya looked for the Phemus Circle , and found that little cluster of twenty-three suns and sixty-two habitable planets limned in muddy brown, at the point where the overlapping boundaries of the three dominant clades converged. The color seemed appropriate. The worlds of the Phemus Circle were desperately poor and primitive. “Dingy, dirty, dismal and dangerous.” “Remote, impoverished, brutish, backward, and barbaric.” It was no coincidence that the three major clades had never fought for possession of the Phemus Circle .

The stylized map was infinitely familiar to someone who had spent a lifetime studying Builder artifacts. Darya could have drawn the whole thing herself. But then the display began to shift and shrink, revealing a larger region of the galaxy. The bottom of the display no longer ended in the usual place, at the lower boundary of the Cecropia Federation. As the volume shown increased in size, more of the galaxy became visible. First the Gulf came into view, a void many hundreds of lightyears across that sat at the inner edge of the local spiral arm. Only the thinnest sprinkling of stars and solitary planets drifted there. Beyond the Gulf, the Sagittarius Arm gradually appeared. The Sag Arm was another branch of the whole spiral, the next one in from the local arm and closer to the galactic center.

Darya had never studied the Sagittarius Arm in detail and knew no one who had, although it was a region as big and star-filled as the local arm. The Gulf provided a formidable barrier. Only the most long-lived of species would invest the centuries needed for a crossing. Humans did not belong in that select company.

So why was someone bothering to show a large part of the Sag Arm? And who was that someone?

Darya realized that staring at the bright display actually hindered her eyes from adjusting to the dim light. She was aware of a crouched figure in the seat next to her, of inhumanly odd proportions, but she could see no details. A perfume—not unpleasant, an odd mixture of cinnamon and peppermint—diffused toward her. She heard a scuffling sound, like a struggle going on to her left. Then a hand patted her thigh, and she squeaked in surprise.

A hoarse voice said, “Professor Lang! It is you. I thought At was giving me the runaround.”

“Where are—who are—” Darya saw the dark figure by her feet at the same time as she pushed the hand away from her leg.

“It’s me—Louis Nenda. I had no idea you would be here.”

Darya’s rush of warm feeling surprised her. “Nor did I, until four days ago. Louis, why are we—”

That was as far as she got when Nenda was hoisted suddenly into the air and whipped away to the left. The other figure next to Darya silently unfolded, to rear high above her. From its proportions it had to be a Cecropian. She heard a hissing sound and felt something else, thin and angular and with a hard and unyielding exoskeleton, push against her knees.

“With respect,” said a voice from close to the floor, “We do not think that this is the best time for the renewal of old acquaintance.”

“J’merlia?”

“This is J’merlia’s person, but I am of course speaking on behalf of my dominatrix, Atvar H’sial, who is seated next to you.”

More scuffling sounds from Darya’s left. A hiss, a series of clicks, a thump, and a guttural curse from Louis Nenda. The display in front of Darya vanished and bright lights filled the whole chamber.

“I had intended,” said a deep, hollow voice, “that we would end today’s meeting in silent study of the Orion and Sagittarius Arms, since that knowledge will prove essential to all of us. I did not anticipate that some of us would choose to indulge in private discussion and personal squabbling.”

Darya could see the speaker now. He stood at the front of the great chamber, a lanky man with a bald and bulging cranium. She should have expected him. Julian Graves was a native of Miranda, the only one on that world whom she in fact knew personally. The Ethical Councilor’s deep-set blue eyes were staring right at her and she nodded a greeting.

“Ah.” Graves nodded. “Professor Darya Lang. Of course. I should have anticipated this difficulty. A vortex of emotional disturbance surrounds you still, as ever. Welcome to this assembly. Better late than never, though in truth you are not the last. I am expecting one more participant, who will, I am informed, be arriving within the next half-day. Given that, and the present state of disruption, I feel it will be to everyone’s advantage if I postpone further discussion and explanation until then.” Julian Graves glanced—glared?—around the chamber. “Study the displays. I will leave you now. For the remainder of the day you are free to resume old acquaintances in any way that you choose.”

Julian Graves spoke as though Darya was somehow responsible for ruining his meeting. All she had done was come in and quietly sit down, at a point when the meeting was in any case almost over.

Darya stared around her. She had come here expecting to know almost no one, but to be surrounded mostly by humans. In fact, she thought she recognized every one of the half dozen beings in the room—and most of them were aliens.

Still crouched at her feet in an eight-legged sprawl of limbs was the stick-figure form of J’merlia, the Lo’tfian who interpreted the pheromonal speech of his Cecropian mistress, Atvar H’sial. J’merlia stared up at Darya, and in greeting rolled his lemon-colored compound eyes on their short eyestalks. Darya liked J’merlia, although she objected strongly to his insistence on voluntary servitude to Atvar H’sial. And she had grave suspicions about the honesty and intentions of the latter.

Which made her fondness for Louis Nenda even harder to explain. Nenda was Atvar H’sial’s business partner. He had told Darya, in so many words, that he was a man with an awful and criminal past. He was a native of Karelia , in the far-off reaches of the Zardalu Communion, and others had hinted to Darya of monstrous acts which meant he could never return there. He even possessed his own Hymenopt slave, Kallik, and unlike Atvar H’sial he could not offer the excuse that he needed an interpreter.

Kallik sat at Louis Nenda’s feet, on the other side of Atvar H’sial. The Hymenopt was short and barrel-shaped, her meter-long body covered with short black fur. With her small round head, set with a ring of bright black eye pairs, she looked mild and defenseless.

Darya knew better. Invisible was the yellow sting, retracted into the end of the rounded abdomen. That hollow needle could deliver squirts of neurotoxin with no known antidote. At will, Kallik could vary the composition from mild anesthetic to instant kill. Also invisible was the Hymenopt nervous system. It provided Kallik with a reaction speed ten times as fast as a human’s. The eight thin legs would carry her a hundred meters in two seconds, or let her leap fifteen meters into the air under a standard gravity.

The miracle was that Kallik regarded Louis Nenda as her absolute master and allowed herself to be led around with a collar and leash. Nenda bullied and blustered. Sometimes he even carried a whip. However, Darya had direct proof that the master/slave relationship was more complex than it seemed. She had been on board Nenda’s ship, the Have-It-All. Nenda’s private quarters were opulent, even by the standards of a rich world like Sentinel Gate. But Kallik’s were just as large, and just as well-furnished. The little Hymenopt even had her own additional private area, equipped with powerful computers and scientific instruments.

Kallik squeezed past Atvar H’sial, whose great body was blocking Louis Nenda, and came scuttling over to Darya. The Hymenopt and J’merlia exchanged a brief burst of clicks and whistles, then Kallik said, “Greetings. With your arrival we will perhaps begin to receive some explanation for our presence.”

It was an embarrassment to Darya that J’merlia and Kallik, whom she had thought mindless pets when she first met them, could pick up languages with such ease. In the time that it had taken Darya to comprehend a few basic Hymenopt clicks, Kallik had achieved fluency in half a dozen human languages.

Darya shook her head. “You won’t get explanations from me. I have no idea why I was summoned.”

“Master Nenda says that it is a meeting which involves the Builders, and Builder artifacts.”

“So I was told. But the Builders vanished from the spiral arm more than three million years ago, and now all their artifacts are gone, too.”

“You sure of that?” Louis Nenda must have done an end run on Atvar H’sial, moving round the back of the row of seats. He had appeared now on Darya’s right-hand side.

“Sure as anyone can be.” Darya quietly pushed his hand away from her shoulder. “The Artifact Research Institute is the clearinghouse for all activities or information concerning the Builders or Builder artifacts. I examine the data bases every day, personally. Absolutely nothing new has come in for the past few months—not for years, in fact.”

“But they put the heat on you to come here?”

“I suppose they did. I felt that I was given no choice.”

“Same for me, same for At. Makes no sense at all. I mean, she’s an expert on the Builders, and so is Kallik. So are you. But me, if you bet on what I know about the Builders, you’d lose your ass and hat.”

“You were involved in the disappearance of the artifacts, starting with Summertide on Dobelle and ending at Labyrinth, out by Jerome’s World.”

“Sure I was, but that’s all history. I don’t remember more than half of what happened, even though I was right in the middle of it. I’m tellin’ you, something big has to be brewing.”

“Based on a gut feeling, or do you have evidence?”

“Mostly gut. But when your guts have rumbled with danger as often as mine have, you get to trust ’em. And yeah, I do have one bit of evidence. When the word came to us, me an’ At an’ Kallik an’ J’merlia an’ . . . another person, we were on Xerarchos, in what you might call the Lesser Armpit of Zardalu Communion territory. It’s a long way from there to here, so I called Miranda and said we’d need financial help to pay for the cost of the Bose transitions.”

As usual, Louis Nenda’s clothes were crumpled and his eyes were bloodshot and his battered face needed a shave. And as usual, there was an intensity in the way he looked at Darya that both pleased and disturbed her.

She glanced away from him and said, “It was reasonable to ask for help if you were short of funds. I assume that they gave some to you?”

“Yeah. But that’s not the point. As it happens, me an’ Atvar have had a good year or two an’ we’re rolling in money. We sort of try to disguise that, of course, but you can’t hide everything. A simple credit check would have shown we didn’t need no help. And when I made my request, I deliberately sky-highed what I said we’d need. I do mean sky-highed, too, because I wanted to see if I could learn anything from their reply.”

Darya found she was looking back at him in spite of herself. “And?”

“Not a murmur. Instant approval of everything I asked for.”

“What do you think it all means?”

“Haven’t a clue. Except that somebody thinks this meeting is real super-important. But since we’re supposed to find out tomorrow from Julian Graves, I’m not goin’ to worry about it ’til then.” Nenda leaned closer to Darya, ignoring the angry hiss that came from the giant Cecropian on her other side. “Nothin’ else on the agenda for today. So how about you an’ me havin’ dinner an’ catchin’ up on things?”