Transcendence

Darya had her own explanation for that anomaly. Massive space-time distortion was the rule, near and within the Anfract. Certain pathways would lengthen or shorten the distance between the same two points. “Fast” approach routes to the edge of the Anfract could be mapped, though no one had ever done it. The two-day approach route that the Erebus had followed was discovered empirically by an earlier ship, and others had followed it without understanding why it worked.

Darya had begun to map the external geometry of the Anfract. She began to have a better appreciation of why it had never been done before. The continuum of the region was enormously complex. It was a long, long job, but it did not require all her attention. While she was organizing the calculation, Darya felt a faint sense of uneasiness. There was something missing. She was overlooking some major factor, something basic and important.

She had learned not to ignore that vague itch in the base of her brain. The best way to bring it closer to the surface was to explain to someone else what she was doing, clarifying her thoughts for herself as she did so. She found Louis Nenda in the main control cabin and started to explain her work.

He interrupted her within thirty seconds. “Don’t make no difference to me, sweetheart. I don’t give squat about the structure of the Anfract. We still gotta go in there, find the Zardalu, an’ get out in one piece. Get your head goin’ on that.” He had left her, still talking, and wandered off to the main hold to make sure that Dulcimer’s ship, the Indulgence, was safely stowed and the seedship was again ready for use.

Barbarian, Darya thought.

He was no better than Hans Rebka. No telling them that knowing was necessary, that knowledge was good for its own sake, that understanding mattered. That learning new things was important, and that it was only abstract knowledge, no matter what Nenda or Rebka or anyone else on board might say, that separated humans from animals.

She went angrily back to work on the Anfract’s external geometry. Could other variations reported by earlier ships also be explained in geometric terms? All approaching observers agreed that the Anfract popped into being suddenly. One moment there was nothing to see, the next it was just there, close up. But to half the approaching ships, the Anfract was a glowing bundle of tendrils grouped into thirty-seven complex knots. Others saw thirty-seven spherical regions of light, like diffuse multicolored suns. Half-a-dozen observers reported that the only external evidence of the Anfract was holes in space, thirty-seven dark occlusions of the stellar background. And two Cecropian ships, their occupants blind to electromagnetic radiation and relying on instruments to render the Anfract visible in terms of sonic echolocation, “saw” the Anfract, too — as thirty-seven distorted balls of furry velvet.

Darya believed that she could explain it all in terms of geometry. Space-time distortion in and around the Anfract affected more than approach distances. It changed the properties of emitted light bundles. Depending on the path taken, some were smoothed, others canceled by phase interference. She happened to be seeing the pattern of glowing white-worm tendrils, but if the Erebus had followed a different approach route, she would have seen something different. And her geometric mapping of the Anfract’s exterior could be continued to its interior, based on light-travel properties.

Darya set up the new calculations. While they were ru

A major mystery was hovering just beyond her mental horizon. She was sure of that. It was infuriating that she could not see it for herself, and just as maddening that the others would not let her explain the evidence to them. That was her favorite way of making things clear in her own mind. Meanwhile, the itch inside was getting worse.

The arrival of Kallik in the observation bubble was both an unwelcome interruption and a reminder to Darya that there were other formidable intelligences on board the Erebus.

The little Hymenopt came drifting in, to stand diffidently by Darya’s side. Darya raised her eyebrows.

“One has heard,” began Kallik. She had learned to interpret human gestures, far better than Darya had learned to read hers. “One has heard that you have been able to perform a systematic mapping of Anfract geometry.”

Darya nodded. “How do you know that?”

“Master Nenda said that you spoke of it to him.”

“Pearls before swine.”

“Indeed?” Kallik bobbed her black head politely. “But the statement is true, is it not? Because if so, a discovery of my own may have relevance.” She settled down on the floor next to Darya, eight legs splayed.

Darya stopped glooming. The unscratched itch in her brain started to fade, and she began to pay serious attention to Kallik. It was the Hymenopt, after all, who had — quite independently of Darya — solved the riddle of artifact spheres of change which had led them to Quake at Summertide.

“I, too, have been studying the Anfract,” Kallik went on. “Perhaps from a different perspective than yours. I decided that, although the geometric structure of the Anfract itself is interesting, our focus should be on planets within it. They, surely, are the only places where Zardalu could reasonably be living. It might seem well established from outside observation that there are many, many planets within the Anfract — the famous phenomenon known as the Beads, or String of Pearls, would seem to prove it: scores of beautiful planets, observed by scores of ships. Proved, except for this curious fact: the explorers who succeed in reaching the interior of the Anfract, and returning from it, report no planets around the handful of suns that they visited. They say that planets in the Anfract must certainly be a rarity, and perhaps even nonexistent. Who, then, is right?”

“The ones who went inside.” Darya did not hesitate. “Remote viewing is no substitute for direct approach.”

“My conclusion also. So the Beads, and the String of Pearls, must be illusions. They are the result of an odd lens effect that focuses planets from far away, perhaps outside the spiral arm or in another galaxy entirely, and makes them visible in the neighborhood of the Anfract. Very well. I therefore eliminated all the multiple planetary sightings of the Beads, and of String of Pearls. That left only a handful of isolated planet sightings within the Anfract. If our earlier analyses are correct, one of them will be Genizee. I have locations from which they were viewed, and their directions at the time. But I did not know how to propagate through the Anfract’s complex geometry to the interior—”

“I do!” Darya was cursing herself. She had worked alone because she usually worked alone, but it was clear now that she should have been collaborating with Kallik. “I needed to do those calculations so I could derive lightlike trajectories across the Anfract.”

“As I surmised and hoped.” Kallik moved to the terminal that tied the observation bubble to the central computer of the Erebus. “So if I provide you with my locations and directions, and you continue their vectors along Anfract geodesics—”

“ — we’ll have your planet locations.” The mental itch was almost gone. Darya felt a vague sense of loss, but action overrode it. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll crank out all your answers.”

Darya was tempted to call it a law of nature.

Lang’s Law: Everything always takes longer.

It was not a few minutes. It was six hours before she could collate her results and seek out Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda. She found them with Julian Graves in the main control room of the Erebus. Dulcimer was nowhere to be seen, but the three-dimensional displays of the Anfract, ported over from the Polypheme’s data banks on the Indulgence, filled the center of the room.