Resurgence

“I told you, talk about anything at all. It needs samples.” Darya took a step forward and recited in a monotone, “In this life stage a Ditron is solitary, energetic, and antisocial. Attempts to export S-2 stage Ditrons to other worlds have all failed, not because the organism dies but because it never ceases to feed voraciously, to attack its captors at every opportunity, and to try to escape. A confined S-2 will solve within minutes a maze that will hold most humans or Cecropians for an hour or more.

“The S-2 life cycle stage lasts for fourteen years, during all of which time the Ditron grows constantly. At the end of this period it masses twelve tons and is fifteen meters long. . . . ”

Hans realized that she was quoting the Ditron entry from the Universal Species Catalog, which she apparently knew by heart. He had to hope that Darya was right, that it made no difference what you chose as a sample of human speech—because the Ditrons when fully grown to their S-3 stage were brainless bipeds, sometimes kept by Cecropians as pets. It was hard to imagine that anything in the Sag Arm cared to learn about their life cycle.

Darya paused, and the rumblings from the sphere rose in pitch. Meaningless grunts shaped themselves, added sibilants, and interrupted those with what sounded like a series of pure vowel sounds.

“Eeeee—ooooo—aaaaa—”

Darya said urgently, “Hans, come on. Help me out. We need variety here. It has to hear other voices and other words.”

Variety? Well, Hans could hardly do worse than a lecture on Ditrons.

“The inhabitants of the worlds that comprise the Phemus Circle are by far the poorest of all the clades. Part of the reason for that is natural. The planets tend to be metal-poor and near the edge of habitable life zones for their parent stars. But another part of the reason for their poverty has nothing to do with nature. It is a consequence of a repressive central government, which provides itself with many luxuries while finding it to its own advantage to make sure that most worlds remain marginally habitable. The residents of these oppressed planets endure shortened and impoverished lives—”

“Hans, I didn’t ask you for a revolutionary manifesto. You nearly got yourself killed trying to change the Phemus Circle government.”

“You told me to speak. You didn’t tell me it had to be on a subject that you personally find acceptable.”

The sphere muttered, “Septable. Septable. Ax-sept-able.”

Ben said, “I can’t believe this. It’s actually working. That thing is trying to make speaking noises.”

“Eaking—eaking—speaking.”

“Come on, Ben. It needs to hear as many different voices as possible. Just talk, it doesn’t matter what about. Whatever is on your mind.”

“On my mind? Nothing’s on my mind. Or my body’s on my mind, and not much else. I’ve been doing what Captain Rebka told me to do, and trying to assess my own condition. I’m not in great pain, but I’m in rotten shape. I count five ribs gone, and I feel the ends grating against each other whenever I move. Talking is all very well, but if we ever get to ask questions, I have a few. Professor Lang, you know more about this than anybody. Can it do something to help us? I don’t mean just talk to us, I mean get us out of this place.”

The sphere said, abruptly and quite clearly, “Get us out of this place. Who are you?”

Rebka muttered, “One hell of a question, that. Answering it could take days.”

Darya waved to him to keep quiet. “We are humans, from a place far from here, in the Orion Arm of this galaxy. One of us is badly hurt and needs help. Who are you? Are you a Builder construct?”

The quicksilver surface rippled. “We are—Builder construct. You are—humans. How you come?”

“From the surface of this artificial world. Through the surface. You must have noticed when it happened.”

“Not notice. We were not—active. We became active because of a presence here. Your presence. No one—no thing—nothing—came for much time.”

“How much time?”

“We do not know your measures. Since one galactic revolution, divided by one hundred.”

Hans said, “The galactic rotation period at the distance of the Sagittarius Arm from the galactic center is two hundred and fifty million years. Two and a half million years, since anything was here!”

The pentagonal head on its long neck nodded. “For long, long. Nothing. Since the outside of world changed, nothing came.”

Darya asked, “No Builders? Where are the Builders?”

“We do not know. It is possible that they reside by the great singularity at the galactic center. The Builders designed us to work with beings where time travels fast—beings like you.”

Darya nodded. The theory that the Builders hovered near the event horizon of a black hole was not at all new, but she did not accept it. However, the idea that this construct—perhaps all constructs—had been developed because humans and others like them simply lived too fast to permit direct Builder interaction—that was new, and suggestive.