“I’ll tell you why we’ve been confused, Hans. The Builder constructs have terrific physical powers, we know that by direct experience. And it’s tempting to think that anything with that much power has to know what it’s doing. But I don’t believe it anymore. For one thing, they all have different ideas as to their purpose. How come? There’s only one plausible answer: They contradict each other, because each construct had to develop its ideas for itself.
“Our assumption that the machines have been following a well-defined Builder program is nonsense. There’s no such program — or if there is, the constructs don’t know it.
“I’ll tell you what I think happened. Five million years ago, the Builders upped and vanished. The machines were left behind. Like the other artifacts, they’re relics left by the Builders. But there’s one big difference: the constructs are intelligent. They sat and waited for the promised return — real or imaginary — of their creators; and while they waited, they invented agendas to justify their own existence. And each construct made up a Builder Grand Design in which it played the central role. Sound familiar? — just like humans?
“It wasn’t the Builders who decided Genizee was a special place that one day they’d settle down in. They evolved on a gas-giant planet, for God’s sake — what would they want with a funny little world like Genizee? It was Guardian who decided that its planet was special and set up a weird quarantine system to keep space around it free of anyone who failed the test of ethical behavior. Apparently we passed, and the Zardalu failed. Pretty weird, you might say, but the other constructs are just as bad. The-One-Who-Waits thought that Quake was uniquely special, and Speaker-Between knew that Serenity was the only important place.”
Rebka was shaking his head. “I think you’re wrong. I think the Builders are still around, but they don’t want us looking for them. I think they tried to confine the Zardalu to Genizee, but the Zardalu escaped, and got out of control. The Great Rising took care of the Zardalu, they were no problem anymore. But now the Builders are worried about us. Maybe we’ll get out of control, too. I think the Builders are scared of us.”
Darya frowned at him. He did not seem to realize that one was not supposed to interrupt the logical flow of a presented paper.
“Hans, you’re as bad as the constructs! You’re trying to make us important. You want the Builders to like us, or be afraid of us, or even hate us, but you can’t accept the idea that they don’t care about us or know we exist because on their scale of things we are insignificant.”
She paused for breath, and he squeezed in his question: “Well, if you’re so smart and so sure you know what’s going on, tell me this: Where are the Builders now?”
“I don’t know. They could be anywhere — at the galactic center, out in free-space a billion light-years away, on a whole new plane of existence that we don’t know about. It makes no difference to my argument.”
“All right, suppose they are gone. What role do we play in their affairs.”
“I already told you.” Darya grabbed his arm. One did not do that in a written paper, either, but no matter. “None. Not a thing. We’re of no importance to the Builders whatsoever. They don’t care what we do. They created their constructs, and they left. They have no interest in the artifacts, either — they’re big deals to us, but just throwaway items to them, left-behind boxes in an empty house.
“The Builders have no interest in humans, Cecropians, or anyone else in the spiral arm. No interest in you. No interest in me. That’s the hardest bit to swallow, the one that some people will never accept. The Builders are not our enemies. They are not our friends. We are not their children, or their feared successors; we are not being groomed to join them. The Builders are indifferent to us. They don’t care if we chase after them or not.”
“Darya, you don’t mean that. If you don’t chase after them you’ll be giving up everything — abandoning your lifework.”
“Hey, I didn’t say I wouldn’t chase them — only that they don’t care if I do or I don’t. Of course I’ll chase them! Wherever the Builders went, their constructs couldn’t go. But maybe we can go. We’re not the types to wait for an invitation. Humans and Cecropians, even Zardalu, we’re a pushy lot. Every year we learn a little bit more about one of the artifacts, or find a path that takes us farther into the interior of another. In time we’ll understand it all. Then we’ll find where the Builders went, and in time we’ll go after them. They don’t care what we do now, or what we are. But maybe they won’t be indifferent to what we will be, when we learn to find and follow them.”
As she spoke, Darya was running the sanity checks on her own ideas. Publishable as a provocative think piece? Probably — her reputation would help with that. Credible? No way. For people like Professor Merada there had to be supporting evidence. Proof. Documentation. References. Without them, her paper would be viewed as evidence that Darya Lang had gone over the edge. She would become one of the Institute’s crackpots, banished to that outer darkness of the lunatic fringe from which there was no return.
Unless she did her homework.
And such homework.
She could summarize current progress in penetrating and understanding Builder artifacts. That was easy; she could have managed it without leaving Sentinel Gate. She could describe the Torvil Anfract, too, and offer persuasive evidence that it was an artifact of unprecedented size and complexity. She could and would organize another expedition to it. But for the rest…
She began to speak again, outlining the program to Hans Rebka. They would need more contact with Builder sentient constructs. On Glister, certainly, and on Serenity, too, once they found a way to make that jump thirty thousand light-years out of the galactic plane. Naturally they would have to return to the Anfract, and understand the mixed-quantum-state being, Guardian/World-Keeper. The use of macroscopic quantum states offered so much potential, it too could not be ignored. And of course they would have to hunt down other constructs, with help from Guardian, and interact with them long enough to detail their functions. Perhaps humans and Cecropians and the other organic intelligences would have to become new leaders for the constructs, defining a new agenda for them, one that corresponded to the reality of the Builders’ departure. And they must return to Genizee, too, and learn how to handle the Zardalu. Julian Graves would insist on it, no matter what anyone else wanted.
Hans Rebka listened. After a while he took a deep breath. Darya did not seem to realize what she was proposing. She imagined that she was describing a research effort. It was nothing like that. It was a long-term development program for the whole spiral arm. It would involve all organic and inorganic intelligences in decades of work — centuries of work, lifetimes of work. Even if she was wrong about the Builders (Hans believed that she was) she was describing a monstrous project.
That did not faze her at all. He studied her intent face. She was looking forward to it.
Could it be done? He did not know. He knew it would not go as smoothly as Darya seemed to imagine — nothing in the real world ever did. But he knew he would never talk her out of trying. And she would need all the help that she could get.
Which left him — where?