"Make you. Not make you."
Keith keyed the mike off. "'Make you. Not make you,'" he repeated, shrugging helplessly. "Anybody?"
Lianne lifted her hands, palms up. Jag moved all four of his shoulders.
Rhombus's web was dark.
Keith reactivated the mike. "We want to be friends again."
The response time was getting shorter as Starplex's parabolic course brought the ship closer to Cat's Eye. "We want to be friends again, too," said the darmat., Keith thought for a moment, then: "You say we injured you somehow. We did not intend any injury. So that we don't do it again, will you tell us what we did wrong?"
The delay time was nerve-racking. Finally: "Attacking each other."
"You were bothered by the battle?" asked Keith.
"Yes."
"Worried that explosions would hurt you?"
"No."
"But then why did you fling those ships into the star?"
"Afraid."
"Of what?"
"That your activities would destroy . . . destroy . . .
point that is not a point."
"The shortcut? You were afraid that we would destroy the shortcut?"
"Yes."
"No explosion could damage the shortcut. It's not fragile."
"Did not know."
Jag barked softly. "Ask him why he cares."
Keith nodded. "Why do you care about the shortcut, anyway? Do you use it yourselves?"
"Use? No. Not use."
"Then why?"
"Spawn."
"They're important to your spawning practices?"
"No, one of our spawn," said the voice from the speaker.
It was frustrating--and probably as much so for the darmat as it was for Keith. Cat's Eye was used to being part of a community whose members had been talking among themselves for millennia. They understood the context of each other's remarks, the history.
Explicating a thought in detail was not normal for themeand possibly even rude.
"One of your spawn," Keith said again, helpfully.
"Yes. Touched the point that is not a point."
Oh, my God. "You mean one of your youngsters went through the shortcut?"
"Yes. Lost."
"Christ," said Thor, turning around. "That's what activated this shortcut--a darmat baby going through!"
Keith leaned back in his chair. "And if our fighting had accidentally destroyed the shortcut, your child would never have been able to find its way home again, right?"
"Rightness abounds. When you first arrived, we thought you had come to bring our spawn home."
"You never asked us about that."
"Wrong to ask."
"Darmat bad manners," said Rissa, eyebrows raised.
Keith spread his arms. "We didn't know about your child.
How long ago did it go through the shortcut?"
"Time since you first arrived, doubled."
Keith turned to his left, looking at Jag. "The child couldn't have gone far from the exit point, then. Any way of knowing which shortcut it would have come out from?"" "Well," said Jag, "the child must have emerged through an already active exit. But, as we found when we went careening through this shortcut ourselves, there are more active exits than we were aware of--possibly trillions more, if they permeate intergalactic space and other galaxies.
And, since the shortcuts rotate, without knowing to the second what time the child went through, even duplicating the approach angle wouldn't help us. The thing could be anywhere."
"But if we could find the child and bring it safely home," said Keith,
"well, not only would that be the right thing to do, it would also help cement our relationships with the darmats." He looked around the bridge. "Anyone disagree?"
He turned the mike back on. "Does the child have a name?
A unique identifying word?"
"Yes. It is"--PHANTOM's own voice replaced the synthesized one coming through the speaker--"untranslated term."
Keith gestured at PHANTOM's eyes. "Call it--call it Junior," he said.
"Acknowledged."
Keith looked over at Rhombus, who could see Keith clearly, of course, even though his backside was to him.
"Rhombus, what do You think?"
"It could be a very steep slope that ends in a cliff," he said--a wild-goose chase. "But, as you have said, establishing friendly relationships is what Starplex is all about. I say we at least try."
"Should we ask one of them to come with us?" asked Lianne.
"There is no way we could go through the shortcut together," said Thor, turning to face her. "Remember, even the smallest of those beings masses as much as Jupiter. And without precisely controlling its entrance angle, the darmat might end up coming out of a different shortcut, meaning we'd have two lost darmats, instead of one."
Keith reactivated the mike. "We will look for your child," he said.
"Would you please call out to it? We will record that, and play it back at each possible place it might be. Call out to it, and ask it to come with us. Tell it that we will not hurt it, and that we only want to guide it home."
"Record?"
"Like an oral history; we will repeat it."
"Doing," said the voice from the speaker. Keith let the entreaties spill into PHANTOM's memory.
"We have it," said Keith, once Cat's Eye stopped transmitting.
"Find our child," said Cat's Eye. "I--words unavailable."
The translation exercises hadn't covered this topic. But Keith understood across species lines--across matter lines.
He nodded.
Chapter XXII
Keith was in his office, going over proposals for finding the darmat baby. It was the first of the month; the holo on his desk of Rissa had automatically changed to a pose of her in shorts and tank top, taken during a hike through the Grand Canyon. The Emily Carr painting had switched to an A. Y.
Jackson view of Lake Superior.
"Jag Kandaro em-Pelsh is here," announced PHANTOM.
Keith spoke without looking up from the datapad he was reading. "Let him in."
Jag entered and helped himself to a chair. He had all four arms crossed in front of his massive chest. "I want to go get the darmat child," he barked.
Keith leaned back in his chair and looked at the Waldahud.
"You?"
Jag's dental plates clicked together defiantly. "I."
Keith breathed out slowly, using the time it took to complete the exhalation to gather his thoughts. "This is a delicate mission."
"And you do not trust me anymore," said Jag. He moved his upper shoulders. "I realize that. But the attack on Starplex was not authorized by Queen Trath. And the attack on Tau Ceti that Rissa has told us about was repulsed.
Matters are at an end rightnow--unless you humans wish to prolong them.
Where do we go from here, Lansing? Is it over? Or do we go on fighting? I am prepared to act as if--"
"As if nothing had happened?"
"The alternative is war. I do not want that, and I had believed you did not want it, either."
"But--"
Jag's barks were sharp. "The choice is yours. I have volunteered a peaceful coexistence. If you want your--what is the human metaphor?--your pound of flesh, I refuse to grant it. But finding the child and getting it home will require the utmost skill in shortcut mechanics. Magnor is good at such matters, but I am better. Indeed, there is no one better in all the Commonwealth. You know this to be true;
if it were not, I would not be assigned to this ship."
"Thor is trustworthy," said Keith simply.
The Waldahud's two right eyes were already locked on Lansing, and a moment later the two left ones converged on him as well. "The choice is yours. You have my report." He gestured at the datapad Keith was still holding. "I have suggested we send a probeship to find the child. I should be on that ship."
"All you want," said Keith, "is access to the darmats for your people.
Br
inging home their child would earn you much gratitude."
Jag moved his lower shoulders. "You do me a disservice, Lansing.
Indeed, the darmats do not yet know that there are a thousand entities aboard this ship, let alone that they represent a quarter-sixteen of races."
Keith thought for a moment. Damn, he hated being pushed. But the bloody pi--but Jag was right. "Okay," he said. "Okay--you and Longbottle, if he's up to it. Is the Rum Runner in any condition for another mission?"
"Dr. Cervantes and Longbottle had it serviced at Grand Central," said the Waldahud. "Rhombus has confirmed that it is spaceworthy."
Keith looked up. "Intercom: Keith to Thor."
A hologram of Thoraid Magnor's head appeared floating above Keith's desk. "Yes, boss?"
"How are we for travel through the shortcut?"
"No problems," said Thor. "The green star is far enough from it now to allow just about any entrance angle. You want me to program a run?"
Keith shook his head. "Not for the whole ship. Just for the Rum Runner and a one-person travel pod. I'm going to have to return to Grand Central for a meeting with Premier Kenyatta." He looked back at the Waldahud. "Despite what you just said, Jag, there's going to be hell to pay."
It was the ultimate grand tour: around the galaxy in twenty shortcuts--a quick survey of all the active exit points. The Rum Runner, with Jag and Longbottle aboard, zoomed away from Starplex's docks and, after Longbottle's requisite joyride, headed for the shortcut.
As always, the exit point expanded as the ship touched it.
The purple discontinuity moved from bow to stern, and then the ship was zooming through a different sector of space.
There were no spectacular sights to be seen at this first exit: just stars, somewhat less densely packed than they had been on the other side.
Jag was intent on his instruments. He was doing a hyperspace scan, looking for any large mass within a light-day of the exit. Finding the darmat child would be hard. Dark matter, by its very nature, was very difficult to detect--all but invisible, and the radio signals it put out were very weak indeed. But even a baby darmat was going to mass 1037
kilograms. It would make a dent in local spacetime that should be detectable in hyperspace.
"Anything?" asked Longbottle.
Jag moved his lower shoulders.
Longbottle arched in his tank, and the Rum Runner' curved back toward the shortcut.
"Again we go," said the dolphin. The ship dived toward the point---and popped out near a beautiful binary star system, streamers of gas flowing from a bloated, oblate red giant toward a tiny blue companion.
Jag consulted his instruments. Nothing. The Rum Runner did a loop-the-loop and came down upon the shortcut from above, diving through, a burst of Soderstrom radiation washing over the ship, the spectacle of the binary pair being replaced by a new starscape, with a great yellow-and-pink nebula covering half the sky, a pulsar at its heart cycling dim and bright over a period of a few seconds.
"Nothing," said Jag.
Longbottle arched again, and plunged toward the shortcut.
An expanding point.
A ring of purple.
Mismatched starfields.
Another sector of space.
A sector dominated by another green star pulling away from the shortcut.
Longbottle maneuvered furiously to avoid it.
Jag's scan took longer; the nearby star overwhelmed the hyperspace scanner. But, finally, he determined the darmat child was not there.
Longbottle rotated in his tank, and the Rum Runner did a corkscrew flight back into the shortcut. When they popped out this time, it was through Shortcut Prime, near the galactic core, the initial shortcut that had presumably been activated by the shortcut makers themselves.
The sky blazed with the light of countless tightly packed red suns.
Longbottle nosed a control, and the ship's shields increased to maximum.
They were close enough to the heart of the galaxy to see the comscating edge of the violet accretion disk surrounding the central black hole.
"Not here," said Jag.
Longbottle maneuvered the ship back to the shortcut in a simple straight line. They hadn't been close enough to be caught by the singularity's ravenous gravity, but he was taking no chances.
They next exited into another seemingly empty region of space, but Jag's hyperspace scanners indicated the presence of substantial concealed mass.
"Suppose not do you?" asked Longbottle.
Jag shrugged all four shoulders. "It couldn't hurt to check," he said, adjusting the shipboard radio to search near the twenty-one-centimeter band.
"Ninety-three separate frequencies currently in use," said Jag.
"Another community of darmats."
They were tens of thousands of light-years from the first darmats they had encountered, but, then again, the darmat race was billions of years old. It was possible that they all spoke the same language. Jag scanned the cacophony, found the topmost frequency group, and, since there were no vacancies, transmitted just above it. "We are looking for one called Junior"--the ship's computer substituted the baby's real name.
There was silence for a lot longer than round-trip message time would require, but then, finally, a reply did come through.
"No one here by that name. Who are you?"
"No time to chat--but we'll be back," said Jag, and Longbottle turned the ship back toward the shortcut.
"Bet surprised them that did," said the dolphin as they passed through the gateway.
This time they emerged near a planet about the size of Mars, and just as dry, but yellow rather than red. Its sun, a blue-white star, was visible in the distance, about twice the apparent diameter of Sol as seen from Earth. "Nothing here," said Jag.
Longbottle allowed himself the luxury of moving the Rum Runner in such a way that the bulk of the yellow planet precisely eclipsed the star.
The corona--mixing purple and navy and white--was gorgeous, and covered much more of the sky than the dolphin had expected. He and Jag basked in the sight for a moment, then they dived back through the shortcut.
This exit point had also recently had a star emerge from it, but it wasn't green. Rather, as at Tau Ceti, this one was a red dwarf, small and cool.
Jag consulted his scanners. "Nothing."
They dived through again, the shortcut opening like a purple-lipsticked mouth to accommodate them.
Pure blackness--no stars at all
"A dust cloud," said Jag, his fur dancing in surprise.
"Interesting--it wasn't here the last time anyone went through to this exit. Carbon grains mostly, although there are some complex molecules, too, including formaldehyde and even some ammo acids, and--Cervantes will want to return here, I think. I'm picking up DNA."
"In the cloud?" asked Longbottle, incredulous.
"In the cloud," said Jag. "Self-replicating molecules floating free in space."
"But no darmat, correct?"
"Correct," said Jag.
"A wonder for another time," said Longbottle, and he spun the ship around, fired retros, and headed back through the shortcut.
A new sector of space--another one that had recently had a star erupt from it. This time the intruder was a blue type-O, with more purple sunspots than a fair-haired human had freckles in summer. The Rum Runner had emerged right on the edge of one of the Milky Way's spiral arms. To one side, the sky was thick with bright young stars; to the other, they were sparse. Overhead, a globular cluster was visible, a million ancient red suns packed together into a ball. And-- "Bingo,"
said Jag--or, at least, he barked something that would be translated as that in English. "There it is!"
"See do I," agreed Longbottle. "But . . ."
"Parched land!" swore Jag. "It's trapped."
"Agree--caught in the net."
And indeed it was. The baby darmat had obviously stumbled out of the shortcut only a few days before this blue star had arrived, and the
star had been expelled from the exit in approximately the same direction as the darmat. As they'd all discovered to their shock, a darmat could move with surprising agility for a free-floating world, but the gravity of a star was enormous. The baby was only forty million kilometers from its surface--less than Mercury's distance from Sol.
"There is no way it can manage escape velocity," said Jag. "I'm not even sure it's managed to settle into orbit; it may be spiraling in.
Either way, though, that darmat is not going anywhere."
"Will signal," said Longbottle--and he set the ship's transmitter to broadcast the prerecorded message on all the frequencies that the members of the darmat community had used.
They were about three hundred million kilometers from the star; the signals took over fifteen minutes to reach the darmat, and the quickest any reply could be received would be another fifteen minutes after that.
They waited, Jag fidgeting, Longbottle amusing himself by painting a sonar caricature of Jag as he fidgeted. But no reply was received.
"Well," said the Waldahud, "there's so much radio noise coming from the star, we might not be able to pick up the darmat's transmission. Or it might not be able to hear us."
"Or," said Longbottle, "darmat may be dead."
Jag made a noise like bubble wrap being burst, his snout vibrating as he did so. That was the one possibility he didn't want to consider.
But the heat that close to the star would be incredible. The side of the darmat facing it might be. over 350 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt lead. Neither Jag nor Delacorte had yet worked out all the particulars of luster-quark meta-chemistry, but many normal complex molecules broke down when heated that high.
Another thought occurred to Jag. What, if any, funereal customs would the darmats have? Would they want this world-sized corpse brought home?
He glanced at Longbottle.
Dolphins just let the body float away when one of their own died. Jag hoped the darmats would be equally sensible.
"Let's head back," said Jag. "There's nothing we can do on our own."
The Rum Runner zoomed toward the shortcut in one of Longbottle's patented sweeping curves, hitting the point at the precise angle required to exit where they'd started all those jumps ago. Starplex was there, floating against the night, tinged green by the light of the fourth-generation star.