“But Master Nenda, that is what we want! J’merlia and I, we followed you from Opal, only that we might be with you and serve you again.”

“I know. Don’t think we don’t appreciate that, me and At.” Nenda had tears in his eyes. “But it wouldn’t work out, Kallik. Not now. You’ve been deciding your own actions ever since we left you behind on Quake. You’ve been thinking for yourselves, doing for yourselves. You’ve tasted independence. You’ve earned independence.”

“But we do not want independence!” J’merlia’s voice rose to a mournful wail. “Even though Atvar H’sial agrees with you, this should not be. It must not be.”

“See? That makes my argument exactly.” Nenda reached out to pat J’merlia’s narrow thorax. “Listen to yourself! Atvar H’sial says what she wants you to do — an’ you start arguing with her. Would you have done that two months ago?”

“Never!” J’merlia held up a claw to cover his compound eyes, appalled at his own temerity. “Argue with Atvar H’sial? Never. Master Nenda, with my most humble apologies and sincere regrets—”

“Stow it, J’merlia. You’ve proved the point. You and Kallik go on back, and start helping to run the spiral arm. You’re as qualified as any species. I’ve known that for a long time.”

“But we don’t want to help to run the spiral arm!”

“Who does? That’s what humans call the Smart Bugs’ Burden. You gotta go back there and carry it, even though you don’t want to. Otherwise, it will be the Ditrons who’ll have to organize things.”

“Master Nenda, please say that you are joking! The Ditrons, why they have less brains than — than some of the—”

“Before you put your foot in it real bad, J’merlia, I’ll say yeah, I was joking. But not about the fact that you and Kallik have to go back. For one thing, Kallik’s the only intelligent being in the spiral arm who’s actually talked to Zardalu. That might be important.”

J’merlia crawled forward and placed his head close to Atvar H’sial’s hind limbs. “Master Nenda, I hear you. But I do not want to leave. Atvar H’sial is my dominatrix, and has been since I was first postlarval.”

“Don’t gimme that—”

“Allow me, Louis, if you will.” The pheromonal message from Atvar H’sial carried a glint of dry humor. “With all respect, violent action is your forte, not reasoned persuasion.” The towering Cecropian crouched low to the floor and brought her smooth blind head close to J’merlia. “Let us reason together, my J’merlia. Would you agree with me when I say that any intelligent being either is a slave, or is not a slave? That those two conditions are the only two logical possibilities?”

“Of course.” J’merlia, once the slave-translator for Atvar H’sial, caught every nuance of meaning in her chemical message. He shivered without knowing why, sensing already that his cause was lost.

“Now you and Kallik,” Atvar H’sial continued. “You are both intelligent beings, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“Therefore either you are slaves, or you are not slaves. Agreed?”

“That is true.”

“And if you are not slaves, then it is inappropriate for you to pretend that you are, by stating that you must remain here to serve me and Louis Nenda. You should go back to the spiral arm with the others and begin to live the life of free beings. A nonslave should not mimic a slave. True?”

“True.”

“But suppose now that you are slaves, both you and Kallik; then you have no choice but to obey the orders of your masters. And those orders are quite explicit: Louis Nenda and I order you to return to the spiral arm and assist in finding the Zardalu if they are still alive. Thus in either case, slave or nonslave, you cannot remain here with us.”

“Thanks, At.” Nenda stepped forward and nodded to the Cecropian. “Couldn’t have put it better myself.” He turned to J’merlia and Kallik. “So that’s the deal. We all go back in there now. You tell Speaker-Between and the others that you’re ready to go. Right?”

Kallik and J’merlia exchanged a brief flurry of clicks and whistles.

“Yes, Mas—” Kallik caught herself before the word was fully out. “Yes, Louis Nenda. We are ready. J’merlia and I agree that we must return to the spiral arm with the others. We have no choice. We want to add only one thing. If ever you and Atvar H’sial need us, then you have to send only one word, Come, and we will hasten to your side.”

The Hymenopt touched her black round head to the floor for a fraction of a second, then stood fully upright. She and J’merlia began to walk, without permission, from the chamber.

“And we will come joyfully,” she added.

“Joyfully,” J’merlia repeated. “A human or a Cecropian may find this hard to understand — but there is no pleasure in enforced freedom.”

CHAPTER 27

All set.

But Birdie Kelly was going mad with frustration.

Everything had been ready for hours. The descending ramp to a new transportation vortex sat waiting in the next chamber, close enough for the airflow around the spinning singularity to be felt on skin and exoskeletons. Speaker-Between had assured the group that the system was prepared to receive them, with an assured safe destination. It would transfer to Midway Station, halfway between the planets of Quake and Opal; a perfect location from Birdie’s point of view, since it was the last place in the spiral arm where the Zardalu were likely to have arrived.

But now, at the very last moment, everyone seemed to be having second thoughts about going at all.

“If I had one more opportunity to reason with Speaker-Between, I feel sure I could persuade him of the unsound basis for the Builders’ plan.” That was Steven Graves, talking with Hans Rebka. Julius, unable to handle the idea of leaving Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial to their uncertain fate, had abandoned the field to his interior mnemonic twin. Steven had been making the most of his opportunity.

“It stands to reason,” he went on, “that many races working cooperatively would have more chance of helping the Builders to solve The Problem than any species working alone. Humans and Cecropians should be engaged in a joint effort, not fighting each other to decide who will assist the Builders.”

“It stands to your reason,” Rebka countered. Like Birdie he was itching to be on his way, though for different reasons. He was still seeing nightmares in midnight blue returning to dominate the spiral arm. He wanted to follow the trail before it was too cold. “You know that the Builders have a completely different worldview from any species we have ever met. And Speaker-Between is a Builder construct. You could argue with him for a million years — he has that much time — and you’d never persuade him to abandon two hundred million years of Builder prejudice. Give up, Steven, and tackle a problem we may be able to solve. Ask yourself where the Zardalu went, and what they are doing.”

On that crucial question, Speaker-Between had been too vague for comfort. The best after-the-fact analysis showed that the Zardalu transition had been completed to an end point on a Builder artifact, probably in the old Zardalu Communion territories. It did not indicate which one, or offer any idea of what might have happened next.

Darya Lang was proving just as reluctant to leave.

“I know someone has to go back home and worry about the Zardalu.” She was examining a series of incomprehensible structures that lined the chamber, an array of fluted glass columns with turbulent green liquid running through them. “But if I leave, who is going to study things like this? I’ve spent my whole working life seeking the Builders. Now that I’ve run them down, it makes no sense to leave. Once I go I may never have an opportunity to come back.”