It was the exit to the chamber. Kallik and J’merlia floated on each side of her, holding her as she sagged against the safe and solid tunnel wall of the next chamber.
“A unique experience,” said a thoughtful voice. “And an exhilarating one.”
It was not clear whether Kallik was talking to her or to J’merlia, but Darya made no attempt to respond. Her own unvoiced comment, This had better be the last damned chamber, no longer seemed appropriate. She could already see that this was the last room. Instead of a sphere she was facing into a hexagonal pyramid. It narrowed at the far end to a closed wedge, and Darya saw no other exit. Looking at it positively, they had made it unharmed all the way to their destination. Their suits would support them for many days. Looked at otherwise, the only way out of this place would be to go back through the terrors they had just left. The orange hail of the fourth chamber, if nothing else, would make a return doubly difficult.
The other two were moving forward. Kallik, Darya noticed, was even cracking open her suit.
“Breathable air,” she said, before Darya could protest. The Hymenopt gestured to her suit monitors.
Darya glanced at her own and saw that Kallik was correct. The final room held breathable gases, at acceptable pressure — in spite of the fact that the five previous chambers had shown on the monitor as hard vacuum, and there was no sign of any sealing barrier between them and this. Well, there had also been no sign of a barrier that could stop or absorb the sleet of orange darts, but they had vanished just the same.
Darya opened her own suit, with just two thoughts in her head. The first was that Builder technology would be forever beyond her. The second was that she was not cut out to be a bold and brave explorer. If she escaped from this alive, she would go back to doing what she did best: analysis and interpretation of other people’s wild leaps into the unknown.
She wished, not for the first time, that she had not been so quick to leave Hans Rebka on Sentinel Gate. He thrived on this sort of madness. If he were beside her now, her pulse might be coming down from its two-a-second thumping.
And then all those thoughts vanished. She was able, for the first time, to take a good look at the six flat walls of the hexagonal room. She stared and stared. The walls were wrong. Each was covered with multicolored, milky patterns, interspersed with diffuse streaks and smears in pale pastel shades.
Not a beautiful series of time-sequenced images of the spiral arm, as Quintus Bloom had reported. Not a single comprehensive image of the region, as Darya had been half expecting. Not, in fact, a recognizable picture of any kind; just a hazy, confused blur, something that the eye had trouble looking at.
The walls could certainly be considered pretty, as an abstract design might be pretty. They were just not meaningful.
Darya had been hoping, though with no real basis for hope, that although the outer chambers might be different in each of the thirty-seven interiors, everything would at last converge to a single space. Now she knew her wishful thinking for what it was: desperate delusion. They had reached a sixth and final room, just as she had hoped — and it was the wrong room!
Her pulse rate started to rise again. If she wanted to learn the secrets of Labyrinth, she had no choice. She would have to head back, far enough to transfer to one of the other interiors — a different interior, probably with its own new and unique dangers — and explore that to its end.
Kallik and J’merlia might want to try. Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda would certainly have done it. But it was beyond Darya. Before another interior was reached, she suspected that her own courage and stamina would have long since given out.
Chapter Fifteen
Louis Nenda had seen more than his share of horrors (he had been responsible for some of them himself). He was a hard man to shock.
But he could still be surprised.
Quintus Bloom had produced a ship, superior in performance to the Indulgence, to explore the Anfract.
How? Simple. Lacking funds himself, he had arranged through Professor Merada for a meeting with the Board of Governors of the institute.
He needed, he explained, the use of a ship.
Very good. And what did he offer in return?
A whole new artifact, one larger and more complex than anything currently known. He would prove that the whole region of space known as the Torvil Anfract, in far Communion territory, had been constructed by the Builders.
No mention, by either Bloom or Merada, of Darya Lang, although she had been the one who first suggested that the Anfract was a Builder artifact. Quintus Bloom was the man of the hour, and Darya was not around to defend her claim to priority.
The Governors, with Merada’s strong endorsement, had been unanimous: Quintus Bloom, representing both the Artifact Institute and the planet of Sentinel Gate, would have his ship. Like the explorers of old, he would travel with official sponsorship, and his triumphant return would bring glory on himself and on all those who had backed him.
Nenda heard of the meeting second-hand. It had not surprised him that Darya’s name was never mentioned. He found it in no way odd that the Governors were supporting Bloom, in return for their share of the credit.
No. What gave Louis his surprise of the day, wandering through the interior of the Gravitas, was the amazing opulence of the ship’s fittings. He realized a profound truth: there is no one so generous as a bureaucrat spending other people’s money.
Sentinel Gate was one of the arm’s richest worlds. Even so, someone had given Quintus Bloom carte blanche on equipment and supplies.
And, presumably, on personnel. Nenda ran his forefinger along a gnarled but polished rail, hand-carved from rare Styx blackwood, and decided that he had been far too modest in his own request for pay. The Gravitas reeked of newness and wealth in every aspect, from the massive engines, barely broken in, at the rear of the ship, to the half-dozen passenger compartments in the bow. The passenger suite that he was now inspecting had its own bedroom, parlor, entertainment center, hydroponic garden, hot tub, kitchen, autochef, medicator, robot massager, drug chest, and wine cabinet.
Nenda paused in his exploration, reached into the temperature-stabilized wine cooler, and pulled out a bottle. He examined the label.
Trockenbeerenauslese Persephone Special Reserve.
Whatever that mouthful was supposed to mean. He opened the bottle and took a swig. Not bad. He glanced at the price on the side of the bottle and was still staring at it, pop-eyed, when Atvar H’sial wandered in to join him.
“Louis, I have disturbing news.”
“So do I. We could have asked ten times what we’ll make from this trip, and still been down in the petty cash. I just drank half our pay.”
“Ah, yes. I see you have been examining the fixtures on the Gravitas.” The Cecropian settled comfortably at his side. “I agree, our reimbursement will be modest. Compared with the value of the ship itself, I mean, which to any lucky owners, now or in the future… ” Atvar H’sial allowed the rest of her comment to fade away into pheromonal ambiguity. “But that is not my news. As you know, the loss of my slave and interpreter, J’merlia, has been a great inconvenience.”
“You can always talk through me, or anybody else with an augment.”
“Of which there appears to be no other within a hundred light-years. And you are not always available. I have therefore been seeking methods for more direct communication with others.”
Atvar H’sial paused for thought. “An extraordinarily primitive and restrictive tool, human speech. That the same organ should have to serve a central role in eating, breathing, sex, and speaking… but I digress. I have employed a human assistant. As part of my interaction with that assistant, we have been receiving and examining together the news reports that arrive at the institute from different worlds of the Fourth Alliance. One came in recently from the planet Miranda. It was to Miranda that the infant Zardalu captured by Darya Lang” — the pheromones carried a snide hint of suspicion and disapproval along with the name — “was sent for study.”