“I suppose you’re going to tell me that Glenna Omar was in your bedroom by accident. That nothing happened between the two of you.”
“No. That wouldn’t be true. I know I hurt you. But Glenna really doesn’t mean anything to me, and she never did. I never meant anything to her, either. I was just another man to add to her collection, another trophy for her bedroom wall.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“Darya, just look at her. Look at Louis Nenda. Can’t you see it? What do you think they’ve been doing?”
Nenda stood four or five steps away. He seemed exhausted, his swarthy face paler than usual and his eyes marked beneath by dark bruised smudges. Glenna Omar was standing very close to him, her shoulder rubbing against his. Glenna — Darya decided that the world must really be coming to an end — was wearing no makeup, and her long hair was pulled back and tied casually away from her face. She too seemed tired. But her whole body spoke of languid contentment.
The sight induced in Darya a strong feeling of irritation, not all directed toward Hans Rebka.
“We can’t talk now,” she said. “Maybe later.”
“If there is a later.” Hans took her hand in both of his. “If not, I want to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“There won’t be a later, unless we stop talking and do something.” But Darya did not pull her hand away. Instead she focused her attention on Quintus Bloom, who alone in the cabin seemed to be on a real energy high.
“You claim you predicted all this?” She interrupted Bloom’s stream of words to Lissie Treel. “I don’t remember that.”
“Then you were not paying attention.” The beaked nose turned aggressively in her direction. “And despite my explanation on Sentinel Gate, I suspect that you still do not accept the nature of the Builders. Why, otherwise, would you have come to Labyrinth uninvited?”
Uninvited. As though Bloom personally owned the artifact. But he was sweeping on.
“Recent events provide ample confirmation of what is happening. Consider the evidence. Fact: Paradox shrinks and vanishes, and Rebka and the rest of them are shipped to Labyrinth through a Builder vortex. Fact: The Torvil Anfract changes beyond recognition, and while that change is still occurring my party is sent here through another vortex.”
Darya studied Bloom’s gleaming smile and unnaturally bright eyes, and realized a great truth about herself. She and Quintus Bloom were both ambitious, both smart, both hard-working, and both dedicated. To most observers, they must appear very similar. But there was one difference, and it was the crucial one. Darya was on the right side of the line between great enthusiasm and total obsession. She would always have doubts about herself and the correctness of her ideas. Bloom, somewhere on the way from his childhood on Jerome’s World to his appearance on Sentinel Gate, had crossed the line. He was crazy. Nothing in his life was as important as being right. The idea that he might be wrong was impossible for him to accept psychologically.
The child is father to the man. Orval Freemont, Bloom’s first teacher long ago on Jerome’s World, had read the young John Jones/Quintus Bloom exactly.
Darya compared his expression again with all the others. They were in trouble, with danger and perhaps death awaiting them in the next few hours. Some people might say that Quintus was uniquely brave, because he was so cheerful and self-confident. The truth was quite different. Bloom felt no fear, because he had no sense of danger; he could not, because danger was irrelevant to him. All that mattered was the confirmation of his theories about the Builders.
Which, in Darya’s opinion, had one fatal problem: the theories were wrong. She might never persuade Bloom of that, but her own self-esteem insisted that he must at least be told that there were other ideas in the world. It was still the worst time and place for an argument. On the other hand, as Hans had pointed out, there might never be another chance.
Darya stepped closer, edging Lissie Treel out of her position right in front of Quintus Bloom. “The artifacts are changing, no one disputes that. I even agree that they seem to be disappearing. But those are observations. They do not provide an explanation of why things are happening.”
“My dear Professor Lang.” Bloom made the title into an insult. Incredibly, despite the chaos around them, he was deep into his condescending lecturer’s mode. “I can provide that explanation, even if no one else can. Everything forms part of one simple, logical sequence of events. As I told you once before, the Builder artifacts were all planted in the spiral arm from the future, by our own descendants. When their purpose has been served, the artifacts will vanish — as they are now vanishing. And what, you may ask, of Labyrinth itself? It is a new artifact. Why then was it created, and why have we been brought here? I will tell you. Our descendants have their own curiosity. They are not content to learn of our times as part of history. They wish to see things for themselves. Labyrinth is the final artifact, a transit terminus to which the interesting contents of all other, older artifacts are being transferred. I knew this, as soon as I saw my first live Zardalu. The only living Zardalu are on the planet Genizee, but I had seen mummified forms before — on Labyrinth. Those corpses must have originated in some other artifact, where they arrived at least eleven thousand years ago, before the Great Rising. The same process is at work in all the artifacts. And once the transfer process is complete — which will be very soon now — Labyrinth will return to the far future. Whoever and whatever is here on Labyrinth at that time will go with it. I intend to go with it. I will meet the Builders — our own distant descendants! Is that not the most thrilling prospect in the whole universe?”
It was thrilling. Darya could feel her own positive response. Standing next to her, Lissie Treel was nodding enthusiastically. Quintus Bloom was one hell of a salesman. He was dreadfully plausible.
He was also dead wrong.
Darya would never be as persuasive a speaker as Quintus Bloom, but her stay in Labyrinth had provided plenty of time to organize her thoughts.
“What you say sounds good, but it leaves too many questions.”
“Indeed? I challenge you to name even one of any relevance.” Bloom was still smiling, eyebrows arched and prominent white teeth flashing to show his over-long, pink tongue. But his attention was now all on Darya. In a cabin crowded with noisy people and aliens, the interaction had become an intensely personal one.
“Right.” Darya took a deep breath. “I’ll do just that. First question: Everyone admits that the Builder artifacts have been around for at least three million years. Some of them are much older than that. Humans and the other clade species have been in space for only a few thousand years. If the Builders are our descendants, what was the point of planting their artifacts so long ago? They had no relevance to humans for almost all of their lifetime.”
“There is no doubt—”
“It’s still my turn. Second question — and this is the big one. You found your way into the central chambers of Labyrinth, and you discovered how to read the polyglyphs. I give you all the credit in the world for that — it was a staggering accomplishment. I don’t know if Kallik and I would ever have figured out that we were seeing potential messages, without your lead. But knowing it could be done, we deciphered the walls ourselves. I didn’t say wall, you will notice, but walls. Every one of them portrayed a different series of images of the spiral arm, past, present, and future. Now, I suspect that you were not in the same central chamber as we were. But you still had a hexagonal room, and six walls. My bet is that five of them revealed a history different from the history that we know. So here’s my question, and it’s actually two of them: Why didn’t you show the alternate histories, along with the real one, in your presentations? And second, what is the point of those other histories? And while I’m at it, let me throw in a third question: Why did the Builders choose such a strange way to display information, building the image sequences into the walls in three dimensions?”