Darya glanced across to the main control console, where Louis Nenda was all set to take them into their second jump. They were just one Bose Transition away from the region of the Torvil Anfract; one jump would leave them with comfortably enough power for the return journey.
Except that they were not going to make the jump! Louis Nenda had been adamant.
“Not with me on board, you don’t.” He glared around the circle. “Sure, we been through a lot together, and sure, we always muddle through. That don’t mean we take chances with this one. This is the Anfract. It’s dangerous, not some rinky-dink ratbag planet like Quake or Opal.”
Which came close to killing all of us, Darya thought. But she did not speak, because Julian Graves was slapping his hands on his knees in frustration.
“But we have to go into the Anfract. You heard E.C. Tally’s analysis, and I thought you were in agreement with it. There is an excellent chance that the Zardalu cladeworld is hidden within the Torvil Anfract, with living Zardalu upon it.”
“I know all that. All I’m saying is we don’t go charging in. People have been pokin’ around the Anfract for thousands of years — an’ most who went in never came out. We need help.”
“What sort of help?”
“We need an expert. A pilot. Somebody who’s been around this part of the arm for a long time and knows it like the back of his chelicera.”
“Do you have a candidate?”
“Sure I got one. Why’d you think I’m talking? His name’s Dulcimer — an’ I’m warning you now, he’s a Chism Polypheme. But he knows the arm cold, and he probably needs work. If we want him, we have to go looking. One thing for sure, you won’t find him around the Anfract.”
“Where will we find him?” Darya had not understood Nenda’s warning about Chism Polyphemes, but figured they’d better take one problem at a time.
“Unless he’s changed, he’ll be sittin’ around and soaking up the hot stuff in the Sun Bar on Bridle Gap.”
“Can you take us there?”
“Sure.” Louis Nenda moved to the main control console. “Bridle Gap, no sweat. Only one jump. If Dulcimer still hangs around in the same place, and if he’s broke enough to need work, and if he still has a brain left in his pop-eyed head after he’s been frying it for more years than I like to think — well, we should be able to hire him. And then we can all go off together an’ get wiped out in the Anfract.”
Chism Polypheme.
As soon as the Bose jump was complete and the Erebus had embarked on its subluminal flight to Bridal Gap, Darya consulted the Universal Species Catalog (Subclass: Sapients) in the ship’s data banks.
And found nothing.
She went to see Louis Nenda, lounging in the ship’s auxiliary engine room. He was watching Atvar H’sial as she ran a dozen supply lines to a glossy chestnut-brown ellipsoid about three feet long.
“It don’t surprise me,” Nenda said in answer to Darya’s question. “Lot more things in the spiral arm than there is in the data banks — an’ half of what’s in there is wrong. That’s why E.C. Tally’s so screwed up — he only knows what the data banks dumped into him. You won’t find the Polyphemes in the Species Catalog, because they’re not local. Their homeworld’s way outside the Periphery, some godawful place in the Sagittarius arm on the other side of the Gap. What you want to know about Dulcimer?”
“Why did you say ‘I’m warning you now, he’s a Chism Polypheme’?”
“Because he’s a Chism Polypheme. That means he’s sly, and servile, and conceited, and unreliable, an’ he tells lies as his first preference. He tells the truth when there’s no other option. Like they say, ‘There’s liars, and damn liars, and Chism Polyphemes.’ There’s another reason the Polyphemes aren’t in your data bank — no one could get the same story from ’em twice running, to find out what they are.”
“So why are you willing to deal with him, if he’s such an awful person?”
Nenda gave her the all-admiring, half-pitying glance that so annoyed Hans Rebka, and stroked her upper arm. “First, sweetie, because you know where you stand with a guaranteed liar. An’ second, because we got no option. Who else would be crazy enough to fly into the Anfract? And be good enough to get us there. You only use a Polypheme when you’re desperate, but they’re mebbe the galaxy’s best pilots, and Dulcimer’s top of the lot. He usually needs work, too, ’cause he has this little problem that needs feedin’. Last of all, we want Dulcimer because he’s a survivor. He claims he’s fifteen thousand years old. I think he’s lying — that would mean he was around before the Great Rising, when the Zardalu ruled the Communion — but the records on Bridle Gap show he’s been droppin’ into the Sun Bar there for over three thousand years. That’s a survivor. I like to go with survivors.”
Because you are one, yourself, Darya thought. And you’re a liar, too — and you’re self-serving. So why do I like you? And speaking of lying…
“Louis, when you told us how you and Atvar H’sial left Serenity, you said something I don’t understand.”
“We didn’t just leave — we were thrown out, by that dumb Builder construct, Speaker-Between.”
“I know that. But you said something else about Speaker-Between. You said that you thought it was lying about the Builders themselves.”
“I never said it was lying. I said I thought it was wrong. Big difference. Speaker-Between believes what it told us. It’s been sittin’ on Serenity for four or five million years, convinced that the Builders are just waitin’ in stasis until Speaker-Between and The-One-Who-Waits an’ who knows how many other constructs have selected the right species to help the Builders. An’ then the Builders will pop back out of stasis, and everything will be fine, and Speaker-Between and his lot will live happy ever after.
“Except that’s all bunk. Speaker-Between’s dodderin’ along, doing what it thinks it was told to do. But I don’t believe that’s what it was really told by the Builders. You can get things screwed up pretty bad in five million years. Atvar H’sial agrees with me — the constructs are conscientious, an’ real impressive when you first meet ’em. An’ they got lots of power, too. But they’re not very smart.”
“If that’s true, where are the Builders? And what do they really want the constructs to do?”
“Beats me. That’s more your line than mine. An’ right now I don’t much care. We got other worries.” Nenda turned, to where Atvar H’sial had finished connecting the supply lines. “Like how we land on Bridle Gap. We’ll be there in two days. The Erebus can’t go down, because J’merlia and Kallik were dumb enough to buy us a Flying Dutchman. An’ we don’t have credit to rent a downside shuttle. So you better cross your fingers.”
Atvar H’sial was turning spigots, and the pipes leading to the brown ovoid were filling with cloudy liquid. Darya followed Louis Nenda and bent to stare at the shiny surface of the egg.
“What is it?”
“That’s the question of the moment. This is the gizmo that Julian Graves found when he was pokin’ around the other day. No one could identify it, but yesterday At took a peek at its inside with ultrasonics. She thinks it might be a ship-seed. The Erebus is a Tantalus orbital fort, so it never expected to land anywhere. But there would be times when people on board needed to escape. There were a dozen of these eggs, stacked away close to the main hatch. In a few hours we’ll know what we’ve got. ’Scuse me. At says I hafta get busy.”