The child is father to the man. Orval Freemont, Bloom’s first teacher long ago on Jerome’s World, had read the young John Jones/Quintus Bloom exactly.
Darya compared his expression again with all the others. They were in trouble, with danger and perhaps death awaiting them in the next few hours. Some people might say that Quintus was uniquely brave, because he was so cheerful and self-confident. The truth was quite different. Bloom felt no fear, because he had no sense of danger; he could not, because danger was irrelevant to him. All that mattered was the confirmation of his theories about the Builders.
Which, in Darya’s opinion, had one fatal problem: the theories were wrong. She might never persuade Bloom of that, but her own self-esteem insisted that he must at least be told that there were other ideas in the world. It was still the worst time and place for an argument. On the other hand, as Hans had pointed out, there might never be another chance.
Darya stepped closer, edging Lissie Treel out of her position right in front of Quintus Bloom. “The artifacts are changing, no one disputes that. I even agree that they seem to be disappearing. But those are observations. They do not provide an explanation of why things are happening.”
“My dear Professor Lang.” Bloom made the title into an insult. Incredibly, despite the chaos around them, he was deep into his condescending lecturer’s mode. “I can provide that explanation, even if no one else can. Everything forms part of one simple, logical sequence of events. As I told you once before, the Builder artifacts were all planted in the spiral arm from the future, by our own descendants. When their purpose has been served, the artifacts will vanish — as they are now vanishing. And what, you may ask, of Labyrinth itself? It is a new artifact. Why then was it created, and why have we been brought here? I will tell you. Our descendants have their own curiosity. They are not content to learn of our times as part of history. They wish to see things for themselves. Labyrinth is the final artifact, a transit terminus to which the interesting contents of all other, older artifacts are being transferred. I knew this, as soon as I saw my first live Zardalu. The only living Zardalu are on the planet Genizee, but I had seen mummified forms before — on Labyrinth. Those corpses must have originated in some other artifact, where they arrived at least eleven thousand years ago, before the Great Rising. The same process is at work in all the artifacts. And once the transfer process is complete — which will be very soon now — Labyrinth will return to the far future. Whoever and whatever is here on Labyrinth at that time will go with it. I intend to go with it. I will meet the Builders — our own distant descendants! Is that not the most thrilling prospect in the whole universe?”
It was thrilling. Darya could feel her own positive response. Standing next to her, Lissie Treel was nodding enthusiastically. Quintus Bloom was one hell of a salesman. He was dreadfully plausible.
He was also dead wrong.
Darya would never be as persuasive a speaker as Quintus Bloom, but her stay in Labyrinth had provided plenty of time to organize her thoughts.
“What you say sounds good, but it leaves too many questions.”
“Indeed? I challenge you to name even one of any relevance.” Bloom was still smiling, eyebrows arched and prominent white teeth flashing to show his over-long, pink tongue. But his attention was now all on Darya. In a cabin crowded with noisy people and aliens, the interaction had become an intensely personal one.
“Right.” Darya took a deep breath. “I’ll do just that. First question: Everyone admits that the Builder artifacts have been around for at least three million years. Some of them are much older than that. Humans and the other clade species have been in space for only a few thousand years. If the Builders are our descendants, what was the point of planting their artifacts so long ago? They had no relevance to humans for almost all of their lifetime.”
“There is no doubt—”
“It’s still my turn. Second question — and this is the big one. You found your way into the central chambers of Labyrinth, and you discovered how to read the polyglyphs. I give you all the credit in the world for that — it was a staggering accomplishment. I don’t know if Kallik and I would ever have figured out that we were seeing potential messages, without your lead. But knowing it could be done, we deciphered the walls ourselves. I didn’t say wall, you will notice, but walls. Every one of them portrayed a different series of images of the spiral arm, past, present, and future. Now, I suspect that you were not in the same central chamber as we were. But you still had a hexagonal room, and six walls. My bet is that five of them revealed a history different from the history that we know. So here’s my question, and it’s actually two of them: Why didn’t you show the alternate histories, along with the real one, in your presentations? And second, what is the point of those other histories? And while I’m at it, let me throw in a third question: Why did the Builders choose such a strange way to display information, building the image sequences into the walls in three dimensions?”
Darya paused for breath. Once the questions started it was difficult to cut them off. She noticed, with shameful satisfaction, that the smile had vanished from Quintus Bloom’s bony face. He was finally frowning.
“Additional research will of course be needed to answer those questions. Or, if we remain here, we will soon be in a position to ask questions directly — of the people who created artifacts, Labyrinth, and polyglyphs.”
Bloom gestured to the ship’s display screens, which Darya had for the past few minutes been ignoring. The interior structure of Labyrinth had broken down further. Walls were vanishing, windows between chambers enlarging. Darya could see through into half a dozen other chambers, as they collapsed into each other like a connected series of soap bubbles. Within each one was a confusing blur of activity. She saw three new swelling vortices, dozens of small dots that could be figures in suits, and a trio of ships of unfamiliar design.
“Do you doubt,” Bloom continued, “that Labyrinth itself is still changing? That it is preparing to return to the future?”
“It’s changing, yes. But Labyrinth is not from the future, or going there.” Now came the critical moment. “I can answer every one of my questions that you insist will need ‘additional research.’ And I can do it now. Because I understand the nature of the Builders.”
Suddenly, the intense personal dialogue had changed. Hans Rebka was listening hard, and so were Louis Nenda and Glenna Omar. Kallik and J’merlia had ended their conversation with Atvar H’sial, and were looking Darya’s way. J’merlia, crouched beneath the Cecropian’s carapace, was sure to be offering a pheromonal translation of everything. Darya became aware of her own doubts, as surely as she had felt Bloom’s overwhelming certainty. But it was not the time to back off.
“Let’s begin with the easy one. You did discover alternate histories of the spiral arm on the other walls of the inner chamber. You chose not to present them in your seminars, because they conflicted with the theory that you were offering. Do you want to deny that?”
Quintus Bloom’s stony stare was enough of an answer.
“So I’m sure you know the main point displayed in all those alternate histories,” Darya went on, “even though no one else does. I have half-a-dozen of the image sequences with me, if we ever get out of all this and anyone wants to see them. But I can summarize. In every alternate history, a clade or group of clades arises to colonize and populate the spiral arm. Sometimes the clade is one that we know well, sometimes one we have never encountered. Sometimes the development happened far in the past, long before humans came on the scene. But in every case, as we go on into the future, some single clade achieves dominance. And after that, no matter which clade rules, the colonization at last collapses. The spiral arm is left empty, with no populated and civilized worlds.