Resurgence

“This"—Tally pointed to the gutted beetleback at his side—"is a secondary product, the creation of a creation. Marglot was once a special world, a nexus to many worlds established by the Builders. Had we not arrived there, the whole Marglot system would also have become the domain of the Masters of Cold. They had already taken the first steps, with the extinction of life on Marglot and the draining of energy from M-2. Halting the fusion reaction within the parent star would come next. That order of processes appears different from what we observed in the system where we first arrived in the Sag Arm. It is a disturbing thought, but I conjecture that the Masters of Cold are still learning the fastest and most effective ways of accomplishing their changes.”

“So who brought us here?” Julian Graves asked. “Here, all the way from the Orion Arm.”

“I am forced to assume that it was the Builders, since a variety of paths constructed by them all led to Marglot.”

“Wrong question,” Hans Rebka said. “Forget who. Why?

Why were we brought here?”

“Again, I am obliged to conjecture. We were brought here so that we could be warned of danger, far in the future, to our own spiral arm.”

“No, no, no.” Claudius was sitting as far away from Archimedes as he could get. The Have-It-All had been stripped of spare reactor capacity, along with everything else, but somewhere on the ship the Chism Polypheme had managed to find a source of enough hard radiation to turn his corkscrew body a pleasant pale green. “No, no, no,” his croaking voice repeated, while his single slate-gray eye rolled to survey everyone in the room. “That’s not the way the real world wags. I don’t know about the Orion Arm, but in the Sagittarius Arm you don’t bring people a long way to warn them. You bring them a long way only if they

can help you.”

Louis, about to agree vigorously, decided it was wiser to keep quiet. Let Claudius be blamed for a suggestion that anybody in his right mind would think reasonable.

As the storm of criticism of Claudius’s skepticism arose—with Hans Rebka, Louis noticed, abstaining—Julian Graves interrupted.

“We can debate reasons later. Regardless of motive, the fact remains that we were

brought to the Sag Arm. We have been warned of tremendous danger. This expedition is going home with more information—and worse news—than I thought possible. I knew before we left that a second visit might be inevitable, but I did not dream that it would have such urgency. Tally, do you have more warnings to offer?”

“Not yet. May I speak? If I may be allowed to continue with the description of beetleback physiology—”

“You may not. You may listen. Immediately upon our arrival at the Orion Arm, a much larger and better-equipped party must be formed. With what we have seen and learned and now conjecture, inter-clade council approval and funding can be guaranteed. Our prompt return to the Sag Arm, and to those parts of it in particular affected by—infested by—the Masters of Cold, cannot be delayed for a moment.”

This time the wisdom of silence could not compete with the sense of outrage. Louis said, “The hell with that. Councilor, you’re forgettin’ a bunch of stuff. First, we were damn near killed, every one of us. We escaped because Ben Blesh risked his skin, an’ he nearly lost it. Look at him! You could use his face for wallpaper patterns. An we’re crawlin’ home in a ship—my

ship, let me remind you—that’s been gutted an’ bashed an’ beaten ’til it’s hardly fit to be sold for scrap. An’ now you up an’ tell us we’re goin’ right back to the place that did all this.”

“My apologies. My terminology was confusing. When I spoke of our return to the Sag Arm, I was referring to the combined clades of the Orion Arm. I did not intend to imply that all those here would be included in a second expedition. In fact, I myself will not be going.”

Darya said, “But some of us will.”

“That is a true statement.” Julian Graves coughed. “I must confess that I have been less than totally forthcoming with all of you. But it was not from choice. My actions were forced on me by the instructions by the inter-clade council.” He surveyed the grimy and weary group, examining each one in turn. “We jointly possess, without a doubt, more knowledge and experience of the Builders than any similar-sized assembly of humans and aliens drawn from the whole Orion Arm. And yet we also, without a doubt, form a curiously ill-matched team. For instance, my own presence in the Dobelle system, where I first met most of you, was pure coincidence. My task at that time had nothing to do with the Builders. The next expedition to the Sag Arm will be different. It will be designed from the outset to provide complementary skills and experience.”

Darya Lang said, “But I will be going, right? I mean, this is the Builders. I’ve spend my whole life studying them.”

“You have indeed. Developments in the Sag Arm, however, seem to involve less the Builders than the Builders’ own creations.”