Maybe Quintus Bloom was doing the right thing. No one could ever accuse him of not living up to his beliefs. If the artifacts went, and you had devoted your life to them, perhaps you should go with them.
Darya turned to look back. Bloom had not moved. He was staring after them. When he saw Darya looking he raised his arm to her in an ironic salute. She felt a strange sense of loss. The great debate would never continue. She would have no chance now to persuade Bloom that he was wrong, that the Builders were of the past and present, not of the future. She would never again hear that confident voice, with its hypnotically persuasive style of presentation, discoursing so knowledgeably on the artifacts. Despite all his faults, she and Quintus Bloom shared one thing that set them apart from most of the rest of humanity: they were fascinated by every aspect of the Builders.
Bloom turned and began to move toward the vortex. It dwarfed him to insignificance. Darya could not take her eyes away as the tiny figure headed for the dark swirl of its center. He seemed to hover for one moment, right at the edge of the maelstrom. One arm waved a farewell; she was sure it was to her. In her mind she saw the driven little boy again, determined to be Number One. And then, without warning, the vortex took him.
Where was Quintus Bloom now? Somewhere far in the future, a million years up the stream of time, looking back on today as an event so distant that it merged into human history with cave dwellings or the first flight into space. Or dispersed to component atoms by the shearing forces of a vortex meant to remove from the spiral arm every evidence of the artifact. Or, as Darya preferred to believe, removed to another plane of existence entirely, where the Builders could examine at their leisure whatever their collecting jar of Labyrinth had brought from the final hours of artifact operation.
There would be a time to ponder those questions. But it was not now. E.C. Tally was pulling urgently at her arm. The remaining contents of Labyrinth were streaming toward the vortex, moving under the influence of that invisible tide. The outer wall was just ahead. The others had already passed through and were heading for the Salvation.
Darya felt no more than a slight ripple through her body as she met the wall. It was all that remained of the structure that had once seemed so indestructible and impenetrable. Would the ships themselves keep a permanent form, long enough to be useful? She hurried after E.C. Tally. The hatches of Salvation were open; the others were already on board. Louis Nenda reached out as she approached, swung Darya effortlessly inside, and slammed the hatch closed with one sweep of a brawny arm. Hans Rebka was in the pilot’s seat, reviewing the unfamiliar controls. He turned to glance over his shoulder at the lock, and saw that Darya had at last arrived. The worried expression left his face and he returned his attention to the power sequence. Five more seconds, and the ship’s engines came to life.
Not before time. Labyrinth itself was going. Salvation’s screens showed it changing shape, elongating, stretching toward the mouth of the vortex. The walls had begun to glow with internal light, reacting to the stresses on them. The structure was rotating madly, faster and faster.
“Hold on.” Rebka was engaging the drive. “This could get rough.”
The force from the vortex was reaching out to the ship. As it engulfed Labyrinth it was still growing. Darya felt a painful new force on her body, adding to the thrust of Salvation’s own drive.
Combined accelerations increased. A moment stretched on and on. Labyrinth was rolling — twisting — writhing. It distorted until it was a long, thin spiral, pulling out like a strand of melted glass. Beyond it, the vortex pulsed with energy. Bloated and quivering, it was snatching at the ship at the same time as it consumed Labyrinth. The shear forces on Darya’s body strengthened, shifted, changed direction.
And then, in an instant, the pain vanished. Salvation went bounding forward, free, into open space. Behind it the vortex began to dwindle and die. Stars were visible, shining dimly through it. Shining brighter. Shining bright. Shining clear. Suddenly there was nothing but space between the stars and the racing ship.
“Now comes the real test.” Rebka had opened his helmet and was taking deep breaths of ship’s air. He knew how nervous he had been, even if no one else did. “But what the devil is this?”
He was querying the ship’s data base for instructions to take it superluminal, and an unrequested message had appeared on the display.
Whoever you are, you can have this one to keep. Me and Chinadoll have decided to try something different. She tells me that her name, Pas-farda, means the day-after-tomorrow in the old Earth Persian language, and that’s where we’re going. We hope. May the Great Galactic Trade Wind be always at your back.
“Two old mysteries explained — after a fashion.” Hans was racing through the superluminal protocol. “You might want to pray on this one, Darya. I’m going to take us superluminal and hope I can hit a Bose point. If it works, we’ll be on the way home.”
Darya leaned back and closed her eyes. And if it doesn’t? Suppose the Bose Network has gone, too?
It had to work. It would be just too ironic to go through all this, only to discover that you were restricted to subluminal travel and were going to spend the rest of your life in open space, or on Jerome’s World.
If they did make it home safely, though, Darya swore to return to Jerome’s World. She would personally make sure that a statue was erected there, in honor of the planet’s most famous scientist. Quintus Bloom had certainly earned it — even if future generations might not quite know for what.
But they would know for what. It was Darya’s responsibility to make sure that they did. She must write the whole history of the Builders, from the discovery of the first artifact, Cocoon, to the vanishing of the last one, Labyrinth, along with its enigmatic displays and their implied warning. She would present every theory that had ever been proposed concerning the nature of the Builders — including her own ideas, and certainly Quintus Bloom’s. She would document what the Builders, wherever they might be now, had left behind as their heritage to the rest of the universe.
And if, a thousand years or five thousand years in the future, people thought of that heritage as no more than a work of epic fiction, that would be acceptable. Myths and legends endure when bare facts are forgotten. Think of Homer, his works remembered when no one today knew the names of any king or queen of the times. King Canute tried to hold back the tide, but who recalled who ruled before him, or after him?
The legend of the Builders.
Darya smiled to herself, as the cabin air glowed blue. Salvation was going superluminal.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The atmosphere on board the Salvation was somewhere between numbed satisfaction and manic glee. Hans Rebka, sitting in the pilot’s chair, knew the cause. Nothing in life produces a more powerful joy than a near miss by the Angel of Death. Their lives had been threatened in the days before Labyrinth vanished, to the point where Rebka would have taken no odds on survival. Yet here they were, alive and on the way home (except for Quintus Bloom, whose present location was anyone’s guess but no one’s worry).