Transvergence (7 page)

She stared around at five silent and expressionless faces. "Any comment?"

"Go on," Rebka said. "No quarrels so far. Where do you go from here?"

"I know the locations of all the Builder artifacts. Three hundred and seventy-seven of them lie within the Zardalu Communion territory. A hundred and forty-nine of those lie in fairly remote territory, where a Zardalu appearance might not be spotted at once. More than that, if you go along with my assumption that the Zardalu had to land someplace close to one of those artifacts, then I can narrow the field a lot further. You see, for many artifacts there's just no planet within many light-years where an air-breathing life-form can survive. Throw in that requirement, and you have my final list."

She turned to the console and touched three keys. "And here it is, along with my calculations."

"Sixty-one planets, around thirty-three different stars." Louis Nenda was frowning. "I can rule out a couple of those—I know 'em. Don't forget Kallik and me are from the Communion. But it's still too many. Hold on a minute, while I pass your list to At."

The others waited impatiently during the transfer. Nenda was still in silent dialogue with the Cecropian when Julian Graves and J'merlia arrived in the control room. Rebka gestured to Darya's list, still on the screen. "Candidate places we might find Zardalu. Too many."

"And while I have no wish to complicate matters"—Kallik was busy at the console—"here are the results of my analysis, quite independently evolved although with a similar guiding logic."

Another substantial list was appearing on the screen, next to Darya's. "Seventy-two planets," Kallik said apologetically, "around forty-one different stars. And only twenty-three planets in common with Professor Lang."

"And it's getting worse," Nenda said. "Atvar H'sial did
her
own analysis, with a logic similar to Darya's. But she didn't prepare it for visual output. She's doing that now."

The Cecropian was back at her console. Within a few seconds, a third long list and a series of equations began to appear on the displays. Julian Graves groaned as it went on and on. "Worse and worse."

"Eighty-four planets," E.C. Tally said. "Around forty-five stars." The embodied computer's internal processing unit, with a clock rate of eighteen attoseconds, could query the ship's data bank through the attached neural cable and perform a full statistical analysis while the humans were still trying to read the list. "Twenty-nine planets," he went on, "in common with Professor Lang, thirty in common with Kallik, and eleven planets common to all three. There is a sixty-two percent probability that the planet sought is one of the eleven, and a fifteen percent chance that it is not any one of the one hundred and forty-six in the combined list."

"Which says you got too many places, and lousy odds." Nenda turned to Hans Rebka. "So I guess it's our turn in the barrel. You want to tell it? People tend to get sort of excited when I say things."

Rebka shrugged. He moved to sit closer to Darya. "Nenda and I did our own talking when we were in the engine room. What you three did was interesting, a nice,
abstract
analysis; but we think you're missing a basic point.

"You said, hey, nobody reported Zardalu in the Fourth Alliance or the Cecropia Federation or the Phemus Circle, so that means they can't be there. But you know the Zardalu as well as we do. Don't you think it's more likely that they didn't get reported because there was nobody
left
to report them? If you want to find Zardalu, you look for evidence of
violence
. Better yet, you look for evidence of
disappearances
somewhere close to a Builder artifact. If the Zardalu arrived in the spiral arm and took a ship to get them back to their home planet, they'd have made sure there were no survivors to talk about it. Nenda and I took a look at recent shipping records for spiral arm travel, close to Builder artifacts, to see how many interstellar ships just
vanished
and never showed up again. We found two hundred and forty of them, all in the past year. Forty-three of them look like real mysteries—no unusual space conditions at time of disappearance, no debris, no distress messages. Here they are."

He pulled a listing from his pocket and handed it to E.C. Tally, who said at once, "Not much correlation with the earlier tabulations.
And
scattered all over the spiral arm."

"Sure. Given a ship, the Zardalu could have gone to a world a long way from the artifact where they first arrived."

"Except that if they went through many Bose Transitions, they
would
have been observed." Darya stood up, heard her voice rising, and knew she was doing what she insisted that a scientist should never do: allowing passion and the defense of personal theories to interfere with logical analysis. She sat down sharply. "Perhaps you're right, Hans. But don't you think they
have
to be within one or two transitions of where they first arrived in the spiral arm?"

"I'd like to think so. But I still favor our analysis over yours. What you said was reasonable, in a reasonable world, but violence plays a bigger part in the universe than reason—especially when it comes to the Zardalu."

"And psychology and fixed behavior patterns play a larger part than either." It was Julian Graves, who had so far remained a silent observer. "They are factors which have so far been omitted from consideration, but I am convinced they are central to the solution of our problem."

"Psychology!" Nenda spat out the word like an oath. "Don't gimme any of that stuff. If you're gonna question our search logic, you better have something a lot better than
psychology
to support it."

"Psychology
and
behavior patterns. What do you think it is that decides what you, or a Zardalu, or any other intelligent being, will do, if it is
not
psychology? J'merlia and I discussed this problem, after you and Captain Rebka left, and we were able to take our ideas quite a long way. On one point, we agree with you completely: the Zardalu would
not
be content to stay near an artifact, although they probably arrived there. They would leave quickly, if for no other reason than their own safety. There is too much activity around the artifacts. They would seek a planet, preferably a planet where they would be safe from discovery and able to hide away and breed freely. So where do you think that they would go?"

Nenda glowered. "Hell, don't ask me. There could be a thousand places—a million."

"If you ignore psychology, there could be. But put yourself in their position. The Zardalu will do just what you would do. If
you
wanted to hide away, where would you go?"

"Me? I'd go to Karelia, or someplace near it. But I'm damned sure the
Zardalu
wouldn't go there."

"Of course not. Because they are not
Karelians
. But the analogy still holds. The Zardalu will do just what you would do—they would try to go
home
. That means they would head for Genizee, the homeworld of the Zardalu clade."

"But the location of Genizee has never been determined," Darya protested. "It has been lost since the time of the Great Rising."

"It has." Graves sighed. "Lost
to us
. But assuredly not lost to the Zardalu. And although they do not know it, it is the safest of all possible places for them—a world that, in eleven thousand years of searching, none of the vengeful subject races enslaved by the Zardalu has ever succeeded in finding. The ultimate, perfect hiding place."

"Perfect, except for one little detail," Rebka said. "It's ideal
for them
, but it's sure as hell not perfect for
us
. We have to find them! I don't agree with the approach that Darya Lang and Atvar H'sial and Kallik propose, but even if it's wrong it at least tells us what places to
look
. So does the approach that Louis Nenda and I favor, and I'm convinced that it's the right approach. But you and J'merlia are telling us to go look for a place that
no one has ever found
, in eleven millennia of trying. And you have no suggestions as to how we ought to start looking. Aren't you just telling us that the job is
hopeless
?"

"No." Julian Graves was rubbing at his bulging skull in a perplexed fashion. "I am telling you something much worse than that. I am saying that although the task
appears
hopeless and the problem insoluble, we absolutely
must
solve it. Or the Zardalu will breed back to strength. And our failure will place in jeopardy the whole spiral arm."

The tension in the great control chamber had been rising, minute by minute. Individuals were listening to the arguments presented by others, at the same time as they prepared to defend their own theories, regardless of merit.

Darya had seen it happen a hundred times in Institute faculty meetings, and much as she hated and despised the process, she was not immune to it. You proposed a theory. Even in your own mind, it began as no more than tentative. Then it was questioned, or criticized—and as soon as it was attacked, emotion took over. You prepared to defend it to the death.

It had needed those ominous words of Julian Graves, calmly delivered, to make her and the others forget their pet theories. The emotional heat in the chamber suddenly dropped fifty degrees.

This isn't a stupid argument over tenure or publication precedence or budgets, thought Darya. This is
important
. What's at stake here is the
future
, of every species in this region of the galaxy.

An uncomfortable silence blanketed the chamber, suggesting that others were sharing her revelation. It was broken at last by E.C. Tally. The embodied computer was still wearing the neural cable plugged into the base of his skull. Like a gigantic shiny pigtail, it ran twenty yards back to the information-center attachment.

"May I speak?"

For once in E.C. Tally's life, no one objected as he went on: "We have heard three distinct theories regarding the present location of the Zardalu. At least one of those theories exists in three different variants. Might I, with all due respect, advance the notion that all the theories are wrong in part?"

"Wonderful." Julian Graves stared gloomily at the embodied computer. "Is that your only message, that none of us knows what we're talking about?"

"No. My message, if I had only one message, would be to suggest the power of synthesis, after many minds work separately on a problem. I could never have
originated
the thinking that you provided, but I can
analyze
what you jointly produce. I said you are all wrong in part, but more important, you are all
correct
in part. And your thoughts provide the prescription that points us to the location of the Zardalu.

"There are components on which you all agree: the Zardalu, no matter where they
first arrived
in the spiral arm, would seek to return to familiar territory. Councilor Graves and J'merlia take that a little further, by suggesting the most familiar territory of all—the Zardalu homeworld of Genizee, the origin of the Zardalu clade. Let us accept the plausibility of that added proposal.

"Now, Professor Lang, Atvar H'sial, and Kallik point out that each of
us
was returned from Serenity close to the place from which we started."

There was a snort from Louis Nenda. "Don't try that on At and me. We were dumped off in the middle of
nowhere
."

"With respect: you are
from
the middle of nowhere. You speak with disdain of the planet Peppermill, where you and Atvar H'sial arrived after transit through the Builder transportation system. But the planet of Peppermill is, galactically speaking, no more than a stone's throw from your own homeworld of Karelia." E.C. Tally paused. "Karelia, which could certainly be said to be in the middle of nowhere—and to which, oddly enough, you did not seek to go although it was close-by."

"Let's not get into that. I got reasons."

"I will not ask them. I will continue. It seems reasonable to assume that the Zardalu, too, were returned close to the point of their origin, which would place them in the territories of the Zardalu Communion, rather than within the Alliance, Cecropia Federation, or Phemus Circle regions. Let us accept that they arrived close to an
artifact
in Communion territory. As Professor Lang and others have pointed out,
we
all arrived close to artifacts. It seems unlikely, however, that the Zardalu would have arrived
exactly
where they wished to be. So let us also accept the validity of Captain Rebka and Louis Nenda's logic, that the Zardalu would have found it necessary to
acquire a ship
, and destroy all evidence of such acquisition.

"Let us agree with Professor Lang, that if such a ship were required to make more than one or two jumps through the Bose Network, that would have been noticed.

"Finally, let us agree that Genizee, wherever it is, cannot be in a location that is fully explored, and settled, and familiar. Preferably, the location ought to be difficult to reach, or even dangerous. Otherwise, the Zardalu homeworld would have been discovered long ago.

"Put all this information together, and we are left with a well-defined problem. We want a place satisfying these criteria:

"One: it should be a planet within the territories of the Zardalu Communion.

"Two: it should occupy a blank spot on the galactic map, little-explored and preferably hard to reach.

"Three: it should be within one or two Bose Transitions of a Builder artifact.

"Four: the only Builder artifacts that need to be considered are ones where an unexplained ship disappearance has taken place since the return of the Zardalu to the spiral arm.

"That leaves a substantial computational problem, but each of you already performed part of the work. And fortunately, I was designed to tackle just such combinatorial and search problems. Look."

The lights in the chamber dimmed, and as they did so the figures of the Zardalu simulation vanished from the central display region. In their place was total darkness. Gradually, a faint orange glow filled an irregular three-dimensional volume. Within it twinkled a thousand blue points of light.