Divergence

Darya gestured at the screen in front of her. “I have the same sort of problem. Look at him! What are you gong to do?”

“Dump the lot on poor old Birdie. You know the worst thing about all this? Everything has changed, yet I’m supposed to take all this bureaucratic nonsense seriously.”

“No, it hasn’t.” Darya pointed at the screen again, where Professor Merada was still in full spate and shaking his finger out at her. “Hasn’t changed, I mean. Three months ago, that message would have had me weeping. I’d have been totally appalled at the idea that I was missing a publication date. Now?” She shrugged. “So I miss a deadline by a couple of weeks. I’ll get the work done, and we’ll still publish on time. You see things differently after you’ve traveled sixty thousand light-years and had a fight with the Zardalu. Everything hasn’t changed, Hans. Everything else is just the same — we’ve changed.”

“Well, everything will change, unless people start taking us more seriously.” Rebka slapped the sheaf of papers onto the low table in front of him. “Julius Graves sent a message straight to the Alliance Council from Midway Station, telling what happened to us and warning about the Zardalu. He just received a reply. Know what they did? Ordered him back to Miranda, for psychological examination. And he’s a councilor!”

“Is he going?”

“He is. He has to. But he’s madder than hell. He’s taking Tally’s brain to be reembodied, and I’m going with them. Between the three of us, maybe the Alliance will start to believe what we say.”

“The four of us. I know.” Darya held up her hand. “I told you I had to get back to Sentinel Gate and catch up on my work. But I’m going with you anyway. All that” — she jerked her thumb at the irate face of Professor Merada — “is like a shadow world. Studying the Builders was all right, when there was no alternative. But we’ve been beyond the shadows. The-One-Who-Waits and Speaker-Between are real. The Builders are real. The Zardalu are real. We have to make other people believe that. And then I have to go back to Glister — and try again.”

“Try again, and bring some proof. When you go to Glister, I go, too. The whole spiral arm has to know what we know.” Rebka shook his head in frustration. “All that effort, and we came back completely empty-handed. No Builder technology, no proof that we went anywhere, nothing but our word about the Zardalu — even the tip of one tentacle would have made all the difference. We went farther than anyone has ever been, and we came back with nothing.”

“That’s not true.” Darya stood up, moved behind him, and started to massage the tight muscles of his shoulders. “We came out of it with us. You and me.”

Rebka sighed and leaned back in his chair. “You’re right. We’re here. That’s the only good piece. You know, I remember looking across at you when the Zardalu came along the tu

“Most of us” Darya said quietly. “Not everyone.”

The mood changed. They both went silent.

It was dusk on Opal, and the clouds had briefly opened. Without speaking, the two of them turned in unison to look up. They knew the direction. Out that way, thirty thousand light-years distant, floated the invisible enormity of Serenity. And somewhere within that great structure, lonelier and farther from home than any human or Cecropian had ever been, Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial were locked in a final life-and-death struggle. No matter what happened, the logic of the Builders decreed that only one of them would win.

I can’t help hoping that the one is Louis, Darya said to herself. And I know that Hans would be outraged if he ever found out I feel this way, but I pray that someday Louis will find a way to return.

Do you hear me, Louis Nenda? She stared upward, projecting her thought beyond the stars, beyond the galaxy. Listen now. Come back. Come back safe.

She felt it so strongly — surely he would read her emotions. Unless… The idea crept in like a wave of cold: unless Louis was dead already.

But that suggestion was… intolerable.

Darya brought her eyes down to the screen, to lose herself in the comforting warmth of Professor Merada’s indignation.

EPILOGUE

“Tell me, Louis Nenda.” The pheromonal message was filled with quiet satisfaction. Outside the port, the convoluted structure of Serenity stretched away in endless arching spirals.

“Tell me this. Do humans have a word to describe the actions of two beings who are convinced that between them they can oppose and defeat an entire civilization, one that is hundreds of millions of years old and of huge technological powers?

“Sure. We wouldn’t be humans if we didn’t. In fact, we have lots of ’em, with all shades of meaning. Fancy words, like hubris, or plain ones like chutzpah and balls.”

“I am delighted to hear that. Cecropians are the same. We have more than one expression for what we are proposing to do, but the most commonly used is Fore-ordained by the Great Creator. Shall we proceed?”

“Just one second.” Nenda reached down to his feet. The infant Zardalu had bitten a chunk off the leather toe of his boot, spat it out, and was ready for another go. He pulled a lump of hard cheesy material from his pouch and placed it where the hard bill could bite into it. “There. Try that, little feller.”

The Zardalu began to eat. Nenda stood up again and stared out of the port at the alien abundance of the artifact.

“It’s not just a fortune out there, At. It’s the fortune. The biggest one ever. And there’s millions more cubic kilometers of stuff we can’t even see from here. Once we work it so the Builders and Speaker-Between do what we want them to do, an’ not the other way round, we’ll be sittin’ on the ultimate jackpot.”

“Indeed we will. And potentially, it is all ours.”

“Hell, you can drop that potentially.” Nenda glared at Atvar H’sial. “I don’t like to hear no negative thinking. I’m tellin’ you, we’re a ravin’ shoo-in certainty. Like Graves said when he left, it makes you proud to be a human or a Cecropian. You have to feel kind of sorry for The-One-who-Waits an’ Speaker-Between an’ all the rest of the Builders.”

“With reason. Against us, they do not stand a chance.”

“Not a prayer. They’ll never even know what hit ’em.”

Louis Nenda brushed his greasy hair away from his forehead, wiped his dirty hands on his pants, and stood tall.

“All right, let’s go get ’em. Poor devils. Supposed to be smart, been around five hundred million years — and still don’t know that guys like you and me always win.”