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"We humans thought we knew what was impossible. Only a few nut cases still wondered otherwise, mainly astronomers watching far enigmas. Well, OnOff was the first of those that we've seen close up. And look at what we found: a stellar physics we still don't properly understand; cavorite, which we understand even less—"
Pham broke off, noticing the look in Qiwi's eyes. She was remembering something from a nightmare. She looked away, but Pham didn't continue, and after a moment she spoke very softly. "Tomas Nau used to talk like this. Tomas was an evil man, but—" But evil men, the most dangerous of them, often have sharp ideas. She swallowed, and continued more firmly, "I remember when the Focused ran DNA analysis on the ocean ice we had brought up. The variety—it was greater than a thousand worlds. The analysts thought it was caused by the variety of life niches on Arachna. Tomas...Tomas thought instead that there was so much variety because once, very long ago, Arachna had been a crossroads."
Ezr took Qiwi's hand. "Not just Tomas Nau. We've all wondered about these things. There's way too much crystal carbon around—the diamond forams, the rockpile. Somebody's computers? But the forams are too small, and our L1 mountains are too big...and they're all just dead stone now."
From across the table, Jau Xin said, "Maybe not quite. Thereis cavorite."
Belga Underville rasped something that did not sound impressed; Victory was buzzing laughter. After a moment, Zinmin's translation came. "So the Distorts of Khelm have a new believer, except that now our world is a junkyard and we Spiders are evolved from the gods' garbage-vermin. If this is true, where is the rest of the super-empire?"
"I...I don't know. Remember this was fifty to one hundred million years ago. Maybe they had a war. One of the easiest explanations for your solar system is that it was a war zone, with a sun destroyed, and all planets but one volatilized." And that one survivor protected by some great magic. "Or maybe the empire grew into something else, or is leaving us to develop at our own pace." Some of the possibilities sounded very foolish when he said them out loud.
Underville's eating hands spread in a gesture that Pham recognized as a doubting smile. "You do sound like Khelm! But see, your theory ‘explains' all sorts of things without helping to do anything, much less providing tests for itself."
Gonle Fong jabbed at the air with her hand, a Spiderish gesture unconsciously adopted. "So what's to disagree? ‘Arachna was a place where once all the Failed Dreams were true.' Fine. It's a simple, unifying assumption. At the same time, we live in the here and now, a few hundred light-years, a few thousand years. Whatever the explanation, there is a lifetime of profit to be made just playing with what we see on Arachna now!"
Pham nodded politely. "Yes. A good Qeng Ho attitude. But, Gonle—I was born in a civilization of castles and ca
Trixia's translation of his words rattled on a moment longer, and then there was absolute silence all around the table. Ezr sat transfixed. Pham had kept this between himself and A
"But what bearing will you take? And—"
"What bearing? That's the easy question, though we'll have a couple of centuries to think it over. But look, Humankind has been staring at the stars with high technology for thousands of years. At one time or another, almost every Customer civilization has mounted arrays of hundred-meter mirrors, and undertaken all the other clever ways to snoop on things far away. We see some far enigmas. Here and there across this galaxy we see ramscoops and ancient radio transmissions."
"So if there were anything more, we would have seen it," said Ezr, but he clearly knew what was coming. The arguments were ancient history.
"Only if it's a place we can look. But parts of the galactic core are plenty shrouded. If our supercivilization doesn't use radio, if they have something better than ramscoops...down by the core is the one place they might have escaped our detection." And OnOff's eccentric orbit had at least passed through those unseen depths.
"Okay, Pham. I agree, it all fits. But you're talking about thirty thousand light-years to the core, almost that far to the umbral clouds."
Gonle: "That's a hundred times farther than anything the Qeng Ho have tried. Without depot civilizations in between, your ramscoops will fail in less than a thousand years. We can dream of such a mission, but it's totally beyond our ability."
Pham gri
"That's what I said! It's always been beyond us."
But the light was begi
"Yes!"Pham leaned forward, wondering how many of them he could capture in this dream. "Do a little mind experiment. Put yourself back in the Dawn Age. Back then, for a few brief centuries, peopleexpected things to become radically improved in the future. With Arachna, you will bring a little bit of that spirit back. Maybe you don't believe it now. You don't see the civilization that you are building. Ezr and Qiwi, you're founding a Great Family that will outshine any in Qeng Ho history. Trixia and Victory and all the Spiders will be the greatest thing that ever happened to our business. And you're just begi
He looked at A
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