“On the boil!” Louis Nenda said. His arms and chest were covered with little blisters where droplets of corrosive fluid had spattered him. He ignored them. “But sluggish. Mebbe it needs a dose of salts—”
“One at a time during speech analysis,” Rebka interrupted. “You can all talk once it settles on human patterns.”
“… lost… and need help.” The gurgling voice sounded as if someone were talking through a pipe filled with water. ”… coming… coming from… far away…”
The quivering of the surface continued in agitated ripples, as the petaled head scanned the smoking debris of the chamber. “Lost, but now here. Here, with the evil beings who committed this… this great destruction…”
“Now we’re in trouble,” Nenda said, in pheromones so weak that Atvar H’sial alone could catch his words. “Time to change the subject.” And then, loudly to the construct, “Who are you, and what is your name?”
The quivering stopped. The open petals turned to face Nenda. “Name… name? I have no name. I need no name. I am keeper of the world.”
“This world?” Nenda asked.
“The only world of consequence. This world, the future home of my creators.”
“The Builders?” Rebka thought the construct sounded angry. No, not angry. Peevish. It needed to be distracted from its shattered surroundings. “Your creators were the Builders?”
“My creators need no name. They made me, as they made this world. My duties were to form this world to their needs, and then to preserve it against change until their return. I have done so perfectly, ever since their departure.” The head turned again. “But now, the damage here—”
“ — is small,” said Rebka. Think positive! “It can be repaired. Perhaps we can help you to do it. But before we work we will need nourishment.”
“Organic materials?”
“Particular organic materials. Food.”
“There are no organics within this world. Perhaps on the surface…”
“That would be perfect. Can you arrange it?”
“I do not know. Follow me.”
The silver body turned and began to glide away across the floor of the chamber.
“What you think?” said Nenda softly to Hans Rebka, as they hurried to keep up with the construct. “Future home of the Builders, here? Nuts.”
“I know. Darya Lang says the Builders were free-space or gas-giant dwellers. This place is nothing like either. But I’ll believe one thing: World-Keeper, or however it wants to call itself, has slaved away for millions of years getting this place ready. It certainly thinks the Builders will be coming — just like The-One-Who-Waits is sure that Quake and Glister are the places where the Builders will show up again, and Speaker-Between knows it’s going to be out on Serenity. I think they’re all crazy as each other, and not one of them knows what the Builders want.” He paused. “Uh-oh. Are we expected to try that?”
The construct had reached one of the broad channels of flowing golden light. Without a word, World-Keeper drifted forward to settle in the center of the stream. There was a low, whirring sound and the construct zipped away on the shining ribbon, rapidly accelerating to disappear from sight along a curved tunnel.
“Hurry up!” Rebka cried. “We’re going to lose it.” But he was the last to move. Kallik and J’merlia had already jumped, closely followed by Atvar H’sial and Nenda.
Hans Rebka dived forward and fell flat onto a yielding golden surface. He thought for a moment that he was going to slide right across and off the other side, but then his body stuck fast and he was dragged along.
This was no acceleration-free ride. He felt strong forces whipping him on, faster and faster, until whole chambers went flashing past in an eye-blink. Kilometers of straight corridor appeared and whizzed by before he could move a finger. Then the pathway curved upward, and centrifugal forces drained blood from his brain until he felt dizzy. His whole body was racked with many gravities. If he was thrown off the moving ribbon, or if it came to an end at a solid object…
The ribbon vanished. Hans Rebka was suddenly in free-fall and in darkness. He gasped and dropped many meters, until he was caught by a velocity-dependent field that held and slowed him like a bath of warm molasses.
He landed gently and on all fours, in a chamber that dwarfed anything he had seen so far on Genizee. The gleaming roof was kilometers high, the walls an hour’s walk away. A bright silver pea halfway to the center of the cavern was presumably World-Keeper. Four moving dots, no bigger than flies, were scattered between Rebka and the Builder construct.
He stood up and hurried in their direction, reflecting as he did so that since they had entered the Torvil Anfract nothing had gone according to plan. Julian Graves had changed from expedition leader and organizer to passive observer and nonparticipant. The seedship had been forced to land when no landing was planned. J’merlia, as though balancing Julian Graves, had suddenly become a leader instead of a follower.
Even the forces of nature were different in the Anfract. In a region of cut-sheet space-time and granular continuum and macroscopic quantum effects, who knew what might happen next? He thought of Darya and hoped that she was all right. If only the group back on the Erebus had the sense to sit tight and wait, rather than trying to rush through the nested singularities on some ill-planned rescue mission…
Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda at least were still predictable. Unflappable, they were staring silently at their new surroundings as Rebka approached. He was sure from their postures that they were deep in pheromonal conversation.
“Can we agree on something before we have another session with the construct? Unless we’re already too late.” Rebka gestured ahead, to where J’merlia and Kallik were already advancing to join World-Keeper. “Those two used to be your slaves. Can’t you control them for a while, at least until we find a way out of here?”
“Don’t I wish!” growled Nenda. If he was faking the frustration on his face, he was a superb actor. “We just been talkin’ about that, me an’ At. We figger it’s all your fault, you an’ Graves. You took two perfectly good slaves, an’ you filled their heads with all sorts of nonsense about freedom an’ rights an’ privileges, stuff what neither of ’em wanted anythin’ to do with before you come along. An’ look at ’em now! Ruined. Kallik’s not all that bad, but At says she can’t even talk to J’merlia any more. He’s all over this place like he owns it. Watch him now! Want to guess what that pair’s sayin’ to each other?”
The Lo’tfian was crouched by the Builder construct. Kallik suddenly turned and came racing to join Rebka and the other two.
“Master Nenda!” The Hymenopt skidded to a halt in front of the Karelian human. “I think it would be a good idea if you and Atvar H’sial were to come quickly. J’merlia is in negotiation with World-Keeper. And the conversation does not strike me as rational!”
“See!” Louis Nenda said. “Let’s go.” His glare at Rebka was vindication, accusation, and trepidation, in equal parts.
“It is really very simple,” J’merlia said. He was advancing quickly to meet the others, leaving World-Keeper lagging behind. “The Zardalu have access to the whole surface of Genizee, land and sea, as they have since they first evolved as land-cephalopods and then as intelligent beings. But they are denied access to the interior. Did you know that World-Keeper was unaware of their spread into the spiral arm, and their subsequent near extinction from it, until I told him of it? We can be returned by World-Keeper to the surface, and to a location of our own choice. But it is clear that we will be at great risk from the Zardalu, facing death or enslavement.
“However, that is not our only option. The terminal point for a Builder transportation system exists. Here, in the interior of the planet! Riding the light-sheets we could be there within the hour. In less than a day, says World-Keeper, we can be at a selected point in Alliance Territory, or the Cecropia Federation, or the Zardalu Communion.” He dropped his voice lower, although there was minimal chance that anyone more than a few feet away could hear him. “I recommend that we take the opportunity now, before World-Keeper changes its mind. I detect in its thought patterns strong evidence of irrationality, not to say insanity. After our destructive work on the chamber, it wants rid of us. We will surely be sent somewhere by it, whether we want to go or not — to the surface, or through the Builder transportation system, but away from here. So let us fly to safety while we can.”