Resurgence

Graves smiled. “My dear, I see that you are not only with my argument, you are ahead of it. As you say, except. Except that we find ourselves in a situation for which the laws of logic do not appear to apply. Before we embarked on this journey we were provided—you might say, spoon-fed—a set of Bose transition coordinates to carry us across the Gulf. Our end point was to be the Marglotta home world. We crossed the Gulf successfully. But rather than finding the Marglotta, instead we find this.” He waved an arm. “This, a barren system where the central star suffered some unnatural fate, where there is no sign of life, and where one planet is impossibly cold. The general answer was to blame the perfidious Polypheme. As a habitual liar, it had deliberately directed us to this system in order to keep secret the whereabouts of our real destination. Everyone agreed, we should not be here. Everyone was eager to be on their way immediately, to find and proceed to Marglot.

“You may argue that I could have said no. I could have insisted that we do additional analysis. I am, after all, the official leader of this expedition. But as you will one day discover, a leader is not a leader because of the way that he or she behaves. He is a leader only because of the way that he is treated by others. On this expedition there are individuals with far more experience than I of unknown territories and hidden danger. Unlike you, they lack respect for authority. Had I attempted to propose analysis rather than action, I would have faced open rebellion. Uncomfortable as I was with my own decision, I therefore permitted them to go. I would, however, remain here. I did not reject the need for action. I merely postponed it, until I could prove a conjecture. And I would keep with me the most competent members of the survival team.”

Torran nodded and smiled. Teri did not smile, and she felt embarrassed. She wondered why the councilor was taking such care to lavish compliments. He wanted something from them, but what could it be?

Graves went on, “Let me tell you my difficulty, and see how you react. I have been puzzled since the moment we arrived here by three observations which are either facts, or at least strong conjectures. First, everyone has emphasized that the Chism Polypheme was dead when it arrived at Miranda. Polyphemes enjoy enormously long life spans. Surely this means that the Polypheme never expected to die in transit. It thought that it would bring the Marglotta to Miranda, and return with them—and us—to the Sag Arm. Second, the death of the Marglotta on the Polypheme’s ship was also not anticipated. They, too, must have expected to reach us and tell us of their problems. They hoped we would go with them to their home world of Marglot. So the fact that Polyphemes are traditional liars is not relevant, unless the Marglotta are also liars. Not one persistently lying species, but two? As I told Professor Lang on another subject, I do not like to concatenate implausibilities. And now for my third observation: there were many Marglotta on the ship—eighteen of them. There was a single Chism Polypheme, and the Polyphemes are justly famous as navigators. If you agree with all this, what conclusions would you draw?”

Teri and Torran turned to glance at each other. He gave a little wave of his index finger. You first

.

She grimaced. Thanks a lot. Let me be wrong. And to Julian Graves, “It was the Marglotta’s idea to come to the Orion Arm. They were in charge, and the Polypheme was just a hired hand.”

“Precisely. Which means?”

Teri nudged Torran’s leg under the table. Your turn.

He grunted, and said, “There would be no point at all in the Polypheme trying to keep the final destination secret. The Marglotta would have been right there to answer our questions.”

“And therefore?”

“We didn’t blunder into this system by accident. It was intended that our ship would arrive, just where we did—and it must be possible to reach Marglot through a Bose transition point located right here.”

“Exactly. Which leaves a single question, but one with huge potential consequences: we can reenter the same node by which we came here. It is sitting a few minutes away. But what transition sequence from here might take us to Marglotta?”

Teri and Torran glanced across at one of the displays, where a faint circle of opalescence indicated the presence of the nearby Bose node.