Charles Sheffield: Resurgence

That stopped everyone, even Louis, who had divided his attention between watching the reactions of others and listening to E.C. Tally’s explanation as closely as he listened to anything that was no more than a theory. For thousands of years everyone had assumed that the Builders were super-beings who could do anything they liked. That something could challenge or defy Builder technology—people just didn’t think that way.

But E.C. was not people. He was an embodied computer, following the implications of the given data by strictly logical processes to wherever it might lead.

Tally continued, “Professor Lang, you yourself proposed the presence in the Sag Arm of two different kinds of superior forms, adversarial to each other. Others here objected strongly to your suggestion, on probabilistic grounds. What are the odds, they said, of two such forms arising? However, those objections disappear at once if one superior form is the creation of the other .

“This"—Tally pointed to the gutted beetleback at his side—"is a secondary product, the creation of a creation. Marglot was once a special world, a nexus to many worlds established by the Builders. Had we not arrived there, the whole Marglot system would also have become the domain of the Masters of Cold. They had already taken the first steps, with the extinction of life on Marglot and the draining of energy from M-2. Halting the fusion reaction within the parent star would come next. That order of processes appears different from what we observed in the system where we first arrived in the Sag Arm. It is a disturbing thought, but I conjecture that the Masters of Cold are still learning the fastest and most effective ways of accomplishing their changes.”

“So who brought us here?” Julian Graves asked. “Here, all the way from the Orion Arm.”

“I am forced to assume that it was the Builders, since a variety of paths constructed by them all led to Marglot.”

“Wrong question,” Hans Rebka said. “Forget who. Why? Why were we brought here?”

“Again, I am obliged to conjecture. We were brought here so that we could be warned of danger, far in the future, to our own spiral arm.”

“No, no, no.” Claudius was sitting as far away from Archimedes as he could get. The Have-It-All had been stripped of spare reactor capacity, along with everything else, but somewhere on the ship the Chism Polypheme had managed to find a source of enough hard radiation to turn his corkscrew body a pleasant pale green. “No, no, no,” his croaking voice repeated, while his single slate-gray eye rolled to survey everyone in the room. “That’s not the way the real world wags. I don’t know about the Orion Arm, but in the Sagittarius Arm you don’t bring people a long way to warn them . You bring them a long way only if they can help you .”

Louis, about to agree vigorously, decided it was wiser to keep quiet. Let Claudius be blamed for a suggestion that anybody in his right mind would think reasonable.

As the storm of criticism of Claudius’s skepticism arose—with Hans Rebka, Louis noticed, abstaining—Julian Graves interrupted.

“We can debate reasons later. Regardless of motive, the fact remains that we were brought to the Sag Arm. We have been warned of tremendous danger. This expedition is going home with more information—and worse news—than I thought possible. I knew before we left that a second visit might be inevitable, but I did not dream that it would have such urgency. Tally, do you have more warnings to offer?”

“Not yet. May I speak? If I may be allowed to continue with the description of beetleback physiology—”

“You may not. You may listen. Immediately upon our arrival at the Orion Arm, a much larger and better-equipped party must be formed. With what we have seen and learned and now conjecture, inter-clade council approval and funding can be guaranteed. Our prompt return to the Sag Arm, and to those parts of it in particular affected by—infested by—the Masters of Cold, cannot be delayed for a moment.”

This time the wisdom of silence could not compete with the sense of outrage. Louis said, “The hell with that. Councilor, you’re forgettin’ a bunch of stuff. First, we were damn near killed, every one of us. We escaped because Ben Blesh risked his skin, an’ he nearly lost it. Look at him! You could use his face for wallpaper patterns. An we’re crawlin’ home in a ship— my ship, let me remind you—that’s been gutted an’ bashed an’ beaten ’til it’s hardly fit to be sold for scrap. An’ now you up an’ tell us we’re goin’ right back to the place that did all this.”

“My apologies. My terminology was confusing. When I spoke of our return to the Sag Arm, I was referring to the combined clades of the Orion Arm. I did not intend to imply that all those here would be included in a second expedition. In fact, I myself will not be going.”

Darya said, “But some of us will.”

“That is a true statement.” Julian Graves coughed. “I must confess that I have been less than totally forthcoming with all of you. But it was not from choice. My actions were forced on me by the instructions by the inter-clade council.” He surveyed the grimy and weary group, examining each one in turn. “We jointly possess, without a doubt, more knowledge and experience of the Builders than any similar-sized assembly of humans and aliens drawn from the whole Orion Arm. And yet we also, without a doubt, form a curiously ill-matched team. For instance, my own presence in the Dobelle system, where I first met most of you, was pure coincidence. My task at that time had nothing to do with the Builders. The next expedition to the Sag Arm will be different. It will be designed from the outset to provide complementary skills and experience.”

Darya Lang said, “But I will be going, right? I mean, this is the Builders . I’ve spend my whole life studying them.”

“You have indeed. Developments in the Sag Arm, however, seem to involve less the Builders than the Builders’ own creations.”

“But you said experience ,” Darya persisted. “We have experience in the Sag Arm. Nobody else does, in any of the clades.”

“That also is a true statement. Professor Lang, perhaps you may have misinterpreted my earlier words. I said that not all this group would return to the Sag Arm. That was a perfectly accurate statement. I did not, however, assert that no members of this group would be on the second expedition.”

“If not me, then who?” Darya watched in apparent disbelief as Julian Graves nodded his head toward the end of the room, where the four survival specialists sat like a row of zombies. “You can’t mean them .”

“I am sorry, my dear professor, but that is exactly what I mean. The inter-clade council made the decision before ever we set out, that new blood might be needed. That is exactly why the initial expedition included young survival specialists. You, Captain Rebka, Atvar H’sial, Louis Nenda . . . ” Julian Graves’s wave of the hand took in most of those present in the chamber. “Yes, and me, too. We are, in the council’s view, too fixed in our perceptions. New problems, they argue, call for new ways of thought.”

It was the best news to come Louis’s way for a long time—the best news, in fact, since that long-ago moment when he and Atvar H’sial had arrived on Xerarchos and discovered how easy it was to milk the natives. But apparently Darya did not agree.

“The inter-clade council members are imbeciles.”

“Professor Lang, many of the council are friends of mine.”

“That doesn’t surprise me one bit. You tell them, if they want information about anything that happened on this expedition, they’ll have to be ready to negotiate .” Darya stood up and stared around at the others in the room. “We have to be united about this. No second expedition for us, no cooperation from us.”