The Cecropian was back at her console. Within a few seconds, a third long list and a series of equations began to appear on the displays. Julian Graves groaned as it went on and on. “Worse and worse.”
“Eighty-four planets,” E.C. Tally said. “Around forty-five stars.” The embodied computer’s internal processing unit, with a clock rate of eighteen attoseconds, could query the ship’s data bank through the attached neural cable and perform a full statistical analysis while the humans were still trying to read the list. “Twenty-nine planets,” he went on, “in common with Professor Lang, thirty in common with Kallik, and eleven planets common to all three. There is a sixty-two percent probability that the planet sought is one of the eleven, and a fifteen percent chance that it is not any one of the one hundred and forty-six in the combined list.”
“Which says you got too many places, and lousy odds.” Nenda turned to Hans Rebka. “So I guess it’s our turn in the barrel. You want to tell it? People tend to get sort of excited when I say things.”
Rebka shrugged. He moved to sit closer to Darya. “Nenda and I did our own talking when we were in the engine room. What you three did was interesting, a nice, abstract analysis; but we think you’re missing a basic point.
“You said, hey, nobody reported Zardalu in the Fourth Alliance or the Cecropia Federation or the Phemus Circle, so that means they can’t be there. But you know the Zardalu as well as we do. Don’t you think it’s more likely that they didn’t get reported because there was nobody left to report them? If you want to find Zardalu, you look for evidence of violence. Better yet, you look for evidence of disappearances somewhere close to a Builder artifact. If the Zardalu arrived in the spiral arm and took a ship to get them back to their home planet, they’d have made sure there were no survivors to talk about it. Nenda and I took a look at recent shipping records for spiral arm travel, close to Builder artifacts, to see how many interstellar ships just vanished and never showed up again. We found two hundred and forty of them, all in the past year. Forty-three of them look like real mysteries — no unusual space conditions at time of disappearance, no debris, no distress messages. Here they are.”
He pulled a listing from his pocket and handed it to E.C. Tally, who said at once, “Not much correlation with the earlier tabulations. And scattered all over the spiral arm.”
“Sure. Given a ship, the Zardalu could have gone to a world a long way from the artifact where they first arrived.”
“Except that if they went through many Bose Transitions, they would have been observed.” Darya stood up, heard her voice rising, and knew she was doing what she insisted that a scientist should never do: allowing passion and the defense of personal theories to interfere with logical analysis. She sat down sharply. “Perhaps you’re right, Hans. But don’t you think they have to be within one or two transitions of where they first arrived in the spiral arm?”
“I’d like to think so. But I still favor our analysis over yours. What you said was reasonable, in a reasonable world, but violence plays a bigger part in the universe than reason — especially when it comes to the Zardalu.”
“And psychology and fixed behavior patterns play a larger part than either.” It was Julian Graves, who had so far remained a silent observer. “They are factors which have so far been omitted from consideration, but I am convinced they are central to the solution of our problem.”
“Psychology!” Nenda spat out the word like an oath. “Don’t gimme any of that stuff. If you’re gonna question our search logic, you better have something a lot better than psychology to support it.”
“Psychology and behavior patterns. What do you think it is that decides what you, or a Zardalu, or any other intelligent being, will do, if it is not psychology? J’merlia and I discussed this problem, after you and Captain Rebka left, and we were able to take our ideas quite a long way. On one point, we agree with you completely: the Zardalu would not be content to stay near an artifact, although they probably arrived there. They would leave quickly, if for no other reason than their own safety. There is too much activity around the artifacts. They would seek a planet, preferably a planet where they would be safe from discovery and able to hide away and breed freely. So where do you think that they would go?”
Nenda glowered. “Hell, don’t ask me. There could be a thousand places — a million.”
“If you ignore psychology, there could be. But put yourself in their position. The Zardalu will do just what you would do. If you wanted to hide away, where would you go?”
“Me? I’d go to Karelia, or someplace near it. But I’m damned sure the Zardalu wouldn’t go there.”
“Of course not. Because they are not Karelians. But the analogy still holds. The Zardalu will do just what you would do — they would try to go home. That means they would head for Genizee, the homeworld of the Zardalu clade.”
“But the location of Genizee has never been determined,” Darya protested. “It has been lost since the time of the Great Rising.”
“It has.” Graves sighed. “Lost to us. But assuredly not lost to the Zardalu. And although they do not know it, it is the safest of all possible places for them — a world that, in eleven thousand years of searching, none of the vengeful subject races enslaved by the Zardalu has ever succeeded in finding. The ultimate, perfect hiding place.”
“Perfect, except for one little detail,” Rebka said. “It’s ideal for them, but it’s sure as hell not perfect for us. We have to find them! I don’t agree with the approach that Darya Lang and Atvar H’sial and Kallik propose, but even if it’s wrong it at least tells us what places to look. So does the approach that Louis Nenda and I favor, and I’m convinced that it’s the right approach. But you and J’merlia are telling us to go look for a place that no one has ever found, in eleven millennia of trying. And you have no suggestions as to how we ought to start looking. Aren’t you just telling us that the job is hopeless?”
“No.” Julian Graves was rubbing at his bulging skull in a perplexed fashion. “I am telling you something much worse than that. I am saying that although the task appears hopeless and the problem insoluble, we absolutely must solve it. Or the Zardalu will breed back to strength. And our failure will place in jeopardy the whole spiral arm.”
The tension in the great control chamber had been rising, minute by minute. Individuals were listening to the arguments presented by others, at the same time as they prepared to defend their own theories, regardless of merit.
Darya had seen it happen a hundred times in Institute faculty meetings, and much as she hated and despised the process, she was not immune to it. You proposed a theory. Even in your own mind, it began as no more than tentative. Then it was questioned, or criticized — and as soon as it was attacked, emotion took over. You prepared to defend it to the death.
It had needed those ominous words of Julian Graves, calmly delivered, to make her and the others forget their pet theories. The emotional heat in the chamber suddenly dropped fifty degrees.
This isn’t a stupid argument over tenure or publication precedence or budgets, thought Darya. This is important. What’s at stake here is the future, of every species in this region of the galaxy.