Revulsion and anger allowed him to generate the single response.
“I am not sure what we will do if Hans Rebka or Darya Lang’s parties find Zardalu on Genizee. But I can tell you, J’merlia, what we will definitely not do: we will not contemplate deliberate mass destruction of any species that does not threaten our species — yours, or mine, or anyone else’s — with extinction. I cannot make that point clearly enough.”
He did not know how J’merlia would react. This was not the docile, obedient J’merlia that they were all used to. This was an action-oriented, clear-thinking, decisive Lo’tfian. Graves almost expected an argument, and doubted that he was clear-headed enough to manage his end of it.
But J’merlia was leaning back in the chair, his pale eyes staring intently at Graves. “You can make that point clear enough, Councilor,” he said. “And you have made the point clear enough. You will not pursue, permit, or condone the extermination of intelligence. I hear you speak.”
As though evaluating the final summing-up of some lengthy argument, J’merlia sat nodding to himself for a few moments. Then he was away, off his seat and scurrying out of the control room. Julian Graves remained to stare after him, to review his perplexed — and oddly multiple — impressions of the past few minutes, and to wonder if he had finally become deranged enough to have imagined the whole encounter.
Except that the Erebus, beyond all argument and imaginings, was entering the region of annular singularities, the region that guarded the most famous lost world of all Lost Worlds: Genizee, home of the Zardalu.
LOST WORLDS
It’s no secret that a damned fool can ask more questions than the smartest being in the arm can answer. And yes, I am talking about Downsiders. And yes, I am talking about the Lost Worlds. They seem to have an obsession with them.
Captain Sloane — that’s how they always start, polite as could be — you claim to have traveled a lot (but there’s a little skepticism, you see, right there). Where is Genizee, the Lost World of the Zardalu?
I don’t know, I say.
Well, how about Petra, or the treasure world of Jesteen, or Skyfall or Primrose or Paladin? They know damn well that my answer has to be the same, because every one of those worlds — if they were ever real places — has been lost, all traces of their locations vanished into time.
Of course, the Downsiders would never dream of going out and looking themselves. Much better to huddle down in the mud and wonder, then pester people who have been out and seen it all, or as much of it as a body can see.
People like me.
So they say, Captain (and now they’re getting ruder), you’re full as an egg with talk, and you waffle on to anybody who’ll listen to you. But what happened to Midas, where it rains molten gold, or Rainbow Reef, where the dawn is green and the nightfall blazing scarlet and midday’s all purple? Hey? What happened to them? Or to Shamble and Grisel and Merryman’s Woe? They were once there, and now they’re not. Where did they go? You can’t answer that one? Shame on you.
I don’t let myself get mad (though it’s not easy). I burn slow, and I say, Ah, but you’re forgetting the wind.
The wind? That always gets them.
That’s right, I say, you’re forgetting the Great Galactic Trade Wind. The wind that blows through the whole galaxy, taking worlds that were once close together and pushing them gradually farther and farther apart.
They look down their noses at me, if they have noses, and say, We’ve never heard of this wind of yours.
Ah, well, I say, maybe there’s a lot you never heard of. Some people don’t call it the Galactic Trade Wind. They call it Differential Galactic Rotation.
At that point, whoever I’m talking to usually says “Huh?” or something just as bright. And I have to explain.
The whole Galaxy is like every spiral galaxy, a great big wheel, a hundred thousand light-years across, turning in space. Most of the people I talk to at least know that much. But it’s not like a Downsider wheel, with rigid spokes. It’s a wheel where the spiral arms closer to the galactic center, and all the stars in them, turn at a faster rate than the ones farther out. So you take a star — for example, Sol. And you take another well-known object — say, the Crab Nebula in Taurus, six thousand light-years farther out toward the galactic rim. You find that Sol is moving around the galactic center about thirty-five kilometers a second faster than the Crab. They’re separating, slow but sure, both moving under the influence of the Galactic Trade Wind. (And the wind can work both ways. If you drop behind, because you’re farther out from the center, all you have to do is fly yourself in closer to the center, and wait. You’ll start to catch up, because now you’re moving faster.)
But what about the Crab Nebula?, ask some of my Downsider friends, the ones who have understood what I’m talking about. It’s a natural object; you can’t fly it around like a ship. Will it ever come back to the vicinity of Sol?
Sure it will come back, I say. But it’ll take a while. The Crab will be close to Sol in another couple of billion years.
And then their eyes pop, assuming they have eyes, and they say, Two billion! None of us will be around then.
And I tell them, That’s all right, I’m not sure I will be, either. In fact, some nights I’m not sure I’ll be around next morning.
But what I think is, you Downsiders — as usual — are asking the wrong question. What I’d like to know about isn’t the Lost Worlds, it’s the Lost Explorers. What happened to Aghal H’seyrin, the crippled Cecropian who flew the disrupt loop through the eye of the Needle Singularity? We had one message from her — we know she survived the passage — but she never came back. Or where did Inigo M’tumbe go, after his last planetfall on Llandiver? He sent a message, too, about a “bright braided collar” that he was on his way to explore. No one has ever seen it or him. And what do you make of the last signal from Chinadoll Pas-farda, rolling up the black-side edge of the Coal Sack on a continuous one-gee acceleration, bound, as she sa
Commentator’s Note: Shortly after completing this passage, the last in his published work, Captain Sloane embarked on a voyage to the Salinas Gulf, following the path of the legendary Inigo M’tumbe. He never returned. His final message told of a mysterious serpentine structure, fusion-bright against the stellar backdrop, gradually approaching his ship. Nothing has been heard from him since.
It is perhaps ironic that Captain Sloane himself has now become the most famous and most sought after of all Lost Explorers.
Chapter Fifteen
The Indulgence arrowed at the surface of the planet in a suicide trajectory, held in the grip of a beam of startling yellow that controlled its movement absolutely. Nothing that Darya Lang did with the drive made a scrap of difference.
Her two companions were worse than useless. Tally reported their position and computed impact velocity every few seconds, in a loud, confident voice that made her want to scream, while Dulcimer, the “Master Pilot of the spiral arm” who claimed to thrive on danger, had screwed himself down tight into a moaning lump of shivering green. “I’m going to die,” he said, over and over. “I’m going to die. Oh, no, I don’t want to die.”