Charles Sheffield - Transcendence

Darya frowned at him. He did not seem to realize that one was not supposed to interrupt the logical flow of a presented paper.

“Hans, you’re as bad as the constructs! You’re trying to make us important . You want the Builders to like us, or be afraid of us, or even hate us, but you can’t accept the idea that they don’t care about us or know we exist because on their scale of things we are insignificant .”

She paused for breath, and he squeezed in his question: “Well, if you’re so smart and so sure you know what’s going on, tell me this: Where are the Builders now ?”

“I don’t know. They could be anywhere — at the galactic center, out in free-space a billion light-years away, on a whole new plane of existence that we don’t know about. It makes no difference to my argument.”

“All right, suppose they are gone. What role do we play in their affairs.”

“I already told you.” Darya grabbed his arm. One did not do that in a written paper, either, but no matter. “ None. Not a thing. We’re of no importance to the Builders whatsoever. They don’t care what we do. They created their constructs, and they left. They have no interest in the artifacts, either — they’re big deals to us, but just throwaway items to them, left-behind boxes in an empty house.

“The Builders have no interest in humans, Cecropians, or anyone else in the spiral arm. No interest in you. No interest in me. That’s the hardest bit to swallow, the one that some people will never accept. The Builders are not our enemies. They are not our friends. We are not their children, or their feared successors; we are not being groomed to join them. The Builders are indifferent to us. They don’t care if we chase after them or not.”

“Darya, you don’t mean that. If you don’t chase after them you’ll be giving up everything — abandoning your lifework.”

“Hey, I didn’t say I wouldn’t chase them — only that they don’t care if I do or I don’t. Of course I’ll chase them! Wherever the Builders went, their constructs couldn’t go. But maybe we can go. We’re not the types to wait for an invitation. Humans and Cecropians, even Zardalu, we’re a pushy lot. Every year we learn a little bit more about one of the artifacts, or find a path that takes us farther into the interior of another. In time we’ll understand it all. Then we’ll find where the Builders went, and in time we’ll go after them. They don’t care what we do now, or what we are. But maybe they won’t be indifferent to what we will be, when we learn to find and follow them.”

As she spoke, Darya was running the sanity checks on her own ideas. Publishable as a provocative think piece? Probably — her reputation would help with that. Credible? No way. For people like Professor Merada there had to be supporting evidence. Proof. Documentation. References. Without them, her paper would be viewed as evidence that Darya Lang had gone over the edge. She would become one of the Institute’s crackpots, banished to that outer darkness of the lunatic fringe from which there was no return.

Unless she did her homework.

And such homework.

She could summarize current progress in penetrating and understanding Builder artifacts. That was easy; she could have managed it without leaving Sentinel Gate. She could describe the Torvil Anfract, too, and offer persuasive evidence that it was an artifact of unprecedented size and complexity. She could and would organize another expedition to it. But for the rest…

She began to speak again, outlining the program to Hans Rebka. They would need more contact with Builder sentient constructs. On Glister, certainly, and on Serenity, too, once they found a way to make that jump thirty thousand light-years out of the galactic plane. Naturally they would have to return to the Anfract, and understand the mixed-quantum-state being, Guardian/World-Keeper. The use of macroscopic quantum states offered so much potential, it too could not be ignored. And of course they would have to hunt down other constructs, with help from Guardian, and interact with them long enough to detail their functions. Perhaps humans and Cecropians and the other organic intelligences would have to become new leaders for the constructs, defining a new agenda for them, one that corresponded to the reality of the Builders’ departure. And they must return to Genizee, too, and learn how to handle the Zardalu. Julian Graves would insist on it, no matter what anyone else wanted.

Hans Rebka listened. After a while he took a deep breath. Darya did not seem to realize what she was proposing. She imagined that she was describing a research effort. It was nothing like that. It was a long-term development program for the whole spiral arm. It would involve all organic and inorganic intelligences in decades of work — centuries of work, lifetimes of work. Even if she was wrong about the Builders (Hans believed that she was) she was describing a monstrous project.

That did not faze her at all. He studied her intent face. She was looking forward to it.

Could it be done? He did not know. He knew it would not go as smoothly as Darya seemed to imagine — nothing in the real world ever did. But he knew he would never talk her out of trying. And she would need all the help that she could get.

Which left him — where?

Hans Rebka leaned forward and took Darya’s hands in his. She did not seem to notice. She was till talking, shaping, formulating.

He sighed. He had been wrong. Trouble was not ending as the Erebus wound its leisurely and peaceful way out of the Torvil Anfract. Trouble was just beginning.

“ — and here they come.”

Louis Nenda squinted gloomily across the open plain, a flat barren landscape broken in one place by a twisted thicket of the moss plants sprouted beyond gigantism. It was almost nightfall, and the Indulgence , in spite of all his efforts, had skidded to a halt within the elongated shadow of those same jutting sandstone towers where he had first run from the Zardalu.

“The weapons are ready.” Either Atvar H’sial was totally calm, or she had a control of her pheromonal output that Nenda would never achieve. “However, the partial exposure of the target group makes complete success doubtful. With your concurrence I will withhold our fire until they pursue their usual strategy of a mass attack. At that time a more significant number of them will be within range.”

“Okay — unless they try another one of their damn botany tricks. First sign of that you blast ’em — and don’t wait to talk it over with me.”

The side ports of the Indulgence had been opened to permit Atvar H’sial a direct omnidirectional viewing of the area around the scoutship. Her vision unaffected by fading light, she sat at the weapons console. Louis Nenda was by her side in the pilot’s chair. He had modified one of the displays to look directly down. At the first sign of sprouting life beneath them he would propel the Indulgence laterally across the surface. They might not be able to leave the surface of Genizee, but they could certainly try to skim around on it.

The Zardalu were rising from the sea, floating upward one by one to stand a few meters offshore with only their heads showing. Louis Nenda watched thirty of them emerge before he stopped counting. Numbers were not important. One would be more than enough if it reached the ship.

Evening sunlight glittered off bulbous heads of midnight blue. Judging from those same heads, the Zardalu included four of the biggest specimens that Nenda had ever seen. They were twice the size of the still-growing forms who had pursued them into the interior of Genizee. They must be part of the original fourteen, the Zardalu who had been held in stasis on Serenity. Nenda had fought them once and knew how tough they were.