Cargha let out a breath that she could have sworn was a sigh. “If necessary.”
“Oh, it is most definitely necessary.”
Jill spent hours poring over the computer records of the machine. Fortunately, the translator had an easier time with the information, probably because the concepts were not far off from concepts she knew and understood. And someone from that ancient time had very carefully laid out their theories on what had happened, the way a responsible pharmacist will denote the dangers of a medication. There were detailed constructs using her equation—a fifty-fifty equation; Cargha’s ancestors had been from their own universe—that showed a hidden danger that she had never suspected. Cargha’s ancestors hadn’t suspected it, either, until it was too late.
When she was done, she sat for a long time, thinking. Her fingers rattled on her collarbone while, across the room at his monitor, Cargha’s hands danced in front of the monitor in a silent aria. She finally got up and approached him, pulling up one of those banana-split chairs.
“Cargha, I need you to listen to me.”
“I am listening,” he said, neither looking at her nor stopping in his work.
“No, look at me and listen.”
His fingers faltered, then stopped. He turned to face her, his blank face giving her the impression that she might as well talk to a wall.
“Nate and I have to get back to Earth. We have to warn my people about that machine, because if we don’t, what happened to you is very likely going to happen to us.”
Cargha blinked at her blandly.
“Now I realize that your space program is shut down, but there has to be another way. We came here through some kind of microscopic black hole. There’s got to be a way to reverse it.”
“Perhaps.” He turned back to his screen, fingers dancing. “There are three million pages on black holes and their function, but that is not my area of expertise.”
Jill sighed, picturing herself and Nate going through 3 million pages. “Mine either, pal. But we’re going to make it our area of expertise.”
“I will assist you in locating the relevant data. However, I must continue with my own work.”
“If I understand you correctly, you have another three hundred years to do your work. You have time to help us. I’m not sure we can do it without you.”
“It is true, I do have a margin of error in my schedule. However, one cannot anticipate all contingencies. For example, I have just realized a need to modify the sentry program.”
Something about that rang a bell. Jill sat up straighter. “Are those the round things at the City gate?”
“The sentries function all along the City perimeter. Their function is to prevent the zerdots from entering the City and dismantling the legacy.”
“Zerdots? You mean the big antlike insects out in the desert?”
Cargha considered her vocabulary. “Yes. They are native to this planet. They are sentient, but not a technological species. We have never had a cooperative relationship.”
Jill frowned, remembering that morning when they’d arrived at the City, the way the metal sphere had “sensed” her and Nate. “The sentries kill zerdots?”
“Yes.”
“Do they kill only zerdots?”
“That is the anomaly that just came to my attention.”
Jill’s palms began to sweat. “Could you be a little more specific?”
Cargha blinked his gooey double eyelids at her. “Yes. I was examining the sentry program when you interrupted me. For the legacy we took into account the potentiality that the zerdots might mutate. The sentries respond to a DNA profile that deviates from our own by greater than one percent and a subject height under four feet.”
“But… that’s so broad! What if the recipients you’re expecting are under four feet?”
“The sentries only operate on the borders of the City, where zerdots are to be found. The recipients would not come from outside the City. We have a beacon at the spaceport. Also, there is nothing of interest on this planet besides ourselves.”
Jill stared at him in amazement. Could his species really be so out of touch with their environment that they couldn’t even conceive of a spaceship landing anywhere but in their precious City?
“But we’re not in any danger, right? Nate and I? Because we’re over four feet tall.”
Cargha turned back to his screen and ruffled his fingers, examining the sentry code. “That is the anomaly that only now came to my attention. The height check is spatial, not structural. Curious.”
“Oh god.”
“If a subject over four feet tall were to bend over, or sit down, as you are doing—”
“And how did that come to your attention, just now?” Jill asked, her voice sounding slightly hysterical.
“I received a transmission. One of the sentries shot the male.”
20.4. Forty-Sixty Calder Farris
The apartment door was easy. Pol’s monitor key worked without a hitch. The hall lights were blaring in the corridor, but it was well before dawn and there was no one awake to see him as he slipped inside.
The apartment was dark and quiet. Pol stood for a moment, listening to hear if he’d wakened the residents. He heard nothing. He turned on a torch.
The apartment was tiny but more dignified than either Marcus’s abode or the little box that had belonged to the Bronze with the banned books. It was an older building and had some substance to it—tall ceilings, moldings. A kitchenette was visible off the living/dining room, and there was a short hallway and an open door beyond. Pol entered the bedroom, silent as a snake, and shone the torch on the figure in the bed. The man was asleep, a light wheeze issuing from his throat. He was a singularly unattractive Bronze, Mestido 1123. Pol stepped closer, trained the torchlight on his face, leaned in to look.
No eyebrows, not the slightest hint of stubble. No stubble on the face anywhere, just the rough, flat-nosed, ruddy face of a Bronze. His breath stank of orin, a pungent meat. The wheezing in his throat sounded like a leaky pipe.
Pol let him sleep. He wanted confirmation. He searched the kitchenette and found a can of black construction paint and an industrial-sized paintbrush under the sink. He sank back on his heels and looked at it. Gyde would have been so pleased.
Back inside the bedroom, Pol placed a plain chair at the side of the bed and withdrew his gun. He covered Mestido’s mouth with his hand. The brown eyes flew open.
“Don’t move,” Pol said, bringing the eye of the gun into view. “You have a book, Heavenly Mysteries.”
Mestido’s head moved under Pol’s hand in a negative. The feeling was most unpleasant, that fleshy mouth. Pol removed his hand slowly, prepared to put it back if Mestido screamed. He didn’t.
Pol wiped his hand on his wool uniform trousers. “Yes, you do. Don’t lie.”
“I’ve read it, but I don’t have it.”
Pol waited. The Bronze was a nervous talker and he was petrified. He pushed himself to sitting.
“In Madamar, when I worked at the Department of Surveys. A Bronze I worked with had it. I can give you his name.”
“Are you an alien?”
“Me? No! No, of course not!”
“But you’ve met aliens?”
Mestido looked around, craning his head to peer into the hall. From the fear and bafflement on his face it was clear he didn’t know what to think. Pol was obviously a monitor, but was he alone? How much did he know? Pol could feel him working through it in his mind.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mestido answered innocently.
Pol sent a fist crashing into his face. The blow, coming from behind the torchlight, struck the Bronze without warning, battering his nose. Blood sprang out, blood that was too dark and too runny. It flowed onto Mestido’s sour underclothes. Mestido gasped with shock and inhaled it, choking.