Starplex

  Maddeningly, there was no way to tell.

  The space-flattening technique Was risky. Rather than use it themselves so that Longbottle could engage the Rum Runner's hyperdrive, they flew out to their rendezvous with the PDQ under thruster power.

  To fill the time, and to get his mind off of the fate of the baby, Jag spoke with Longbottle, who, to his credit, was piloting the ship in an absolutely straight line.

  "You dolphins," said Jag, "like the humans."

  "Mostly," said Longbottle in high-pitched Waldahudar.

  He let the piloting drones disengage from his fins, and put the ship on automatic.

  "Why?" barked Jag sharply. "I have read Earth history.

  They polluted the oceans you swam in, captured you and put you in tanks, caught you in fishing nets."

  "No one of them has done any of that to me," said Longbottle.

  "No, but--"

  "It is the difference: we generalize do not. Specific bad humans did specific bad things; those humans do we not like. But the rest of humanity we judge one by one."

  "But surely once they discovered you were intelligent, they should have treated you better."

  "Humans discovered intelligent we were before we discovered that they-were."

  "What?" said Jag. "But surely it was obvious. They had built cities and roads, and--"

  "Saw none of that."

  "No, I suppose not. But they sailed in boats, they built nets, they wore clothes."

  "None of those were meaningful to us. We had of such things no concept; nothing to compare them to. Mollusk grows a shell; humans have clothes of fabric. The mollusk's covering is stronger. Should judged we have the mollusk more intelligent? You say humans built things. We had no concept of building. We knew not they made the boats. We thought perhaps boats alive were, or had once been alive.

  Some tasted like driftwood, others ejected chemicals. into the water, just as living things do. An achievement, to ride on the back of boats?

  We thought humans were like remoras to the shark."

  "But--"

  They our intelligence did not see. They looked right at us and see it did not. And we looked at them and did not see theirs."

  "But after you discovered their intelligence, and they yours, you must have realized they had been mistreating you."

  "Yes, some in the past mistreated us. Humans do generalize, they blamed themselves. Learned have I since that concept of ancestral guilt--original sin--is to many of their beliefs central. There were cases in human court to determine compensation due to dolphins. This made to us no sense."

  "But you get along with humans now, which is something my people are having trouble managing. How do you do it?"

  Longbottle barked, "Accept their weaknesses, welcome their strengths."

  Jag was silent.

  Finally, the Rum Runner reached its destination, 1.3 billion kilometers from the star, and a billion kilometers past the shortcut. Jag and Melondent consulted by radio about the exact trajectory they wanted to launch the darmat child on, then the gravitational buoys were activated again, pushing and pulling the world-sized being, which, as planned, started to fall in toward the star, sliding back down the gravity well it had earlier been whisked out of. But this time, the shortcut point was in between the darmat and the star; this time, if all went well, the Child would touch the shortcut, its approach to it speeded somewhat by the attraction of the star's gravity beyond.

  Even at full thrusters, it took more than a day for the buoys to bring the darmat back in to the vicinity of the shortcut. Melondent popped a watson through to Starplex, warning them that, if all went well, the baby was about to reemerge on their side.

  When they did get close to the shortcut, the buoys fought to slow down the baby's speed so that it would pass slowly through the portal. The whole-rescue effort would be for naught if the darmat ended up whipping in toward the green star near Starplex. Once it had been braked to a reasonable speed, they adjusted the baby's trajectory so that it would pass through the tachyon sphere on the precise course required.

  First to pass through the shortcut were some Of the gravity buoys, then, at last, the baby itself touched it. The point began to swell, widening, enveloping the darmat, lips of purple lightning surrounding, then engulfing, the giant black sphere. Jag wondered what was going through the darmat's mind during the passage, assuming it was still alive.

  And if it was alive, and did at some point regain whatever passed for consciousness, then, Jag wondered, what if it panicked? What if it was unable to make sense out of being partly in one sector of space and partly in another? It might grind its own passage to a halt. If the beast were to expire there, halfway through the shortcut, there might be no way to dislodge it. The shortcut opening formed a tight seal around the passing body, so no coordination of the use of gravity generators on both sides would be possible. And that would mean that the Rum Runner and the PDQ might be trapped forever here, out on the edge of the Perseus arm, tens of thousands of light-years from any of the home-worlds.

  The darmat was deforming a bit as it moved through the opening, the shortcut's periphery clamping down on it. Such clamping was normal, and the effect on rigid spaceships was negligible, but the darmat was mostly gas--exotic, luster-quark gas to be sure, but still gas. Jag feared the baby would be cleaved in two--similar to the normal birthing process, but possibly fatal when done unexpectedly. But it seemed the creamre's core was sufficiently solid to prevent the shortcut from pinching all the way through.

  At .last, the darmat completed its passage. The shortcut collapsed down to its normal dimensionless existence. Jag wanted Longbottle to immediately dive through the shortcut so that they could see the result of all their efforts. But they, and Melondent aboard the PDQ; had to wait for hours to be sure the darmat had moved far enough from the shortcut so that a collision--or just tidal stress from its enormous gravity--wouldn't destroy their ships when they popped through to the other side.

  At last, after a probe had indicated it was safe to go through, Longbottle programmed the computer to take them home. The Rum Runner moved forward. The shortcut swelled, and they passed through to the other side.

  It took Jag a few moments to take in all that he was seeing. The baby was there, all right. And so was Starplex.

  But Starplex was surrounded on all sides by darmats, and the ship itself looked dead, all the lights in its windows dark.

  Chapter XXIV

  The shortcut point began to expand, starting as a violet pinprick of Soderstrom radiation, and growing as an ever-expanding purple ring.

  First to pop through was one of Starplex's hastily constructed antigravity buoys, and then another and another. They zoomed across the sky like bullets. They'd been tugging the darmat baby, but since they came through the portal before it did, they were severed from its mass and so shot ahead. Soon, though, the bulk of the darmat baby began its passage, bulging out through the ring of purple in the sky.

  On Starplex's bridge Thoraid Magnor let loose a great cheer, and it was echoed by hundreds of others from all over the ship, as everyone watched the spectacle either through a window or on a viewscreen.

  Cat's Eye and a dozen other adult darmats moved closer to the shortcut, calling out to the baby. Over the bridge speakers, PHANTOM played a translation of what Cat's

  Eye was saying, but many of the words were missing; the leader of the darmats was not limiting his vocabulary to the few hundred words Rissa and Hek had learned. "Come forward... forward... toward.. you are...

  we...

  come... hurry... do not... forward... forward "

  Rhombus was using the deck-one array to monitor the emerging baby, but so far it hadn't transmitted a word of its own, at least not on any frequency even close to the twenty-one-centimeter band.

  Lianne Karendaughter was shaking her head. "It's not moving at all under its own volition," she said. "It must be dead."

  Keith ground his teeth together. If it was dead, all this wa
s for nothing-- "It's possible," he said, at last, trying as much to convince himself as Lianne, "that a single darmat can't move on its own. They may need to play off each other's gravity and repulsion. The baby may not yet be far enough out for that."

  "Forward," said Cat's Eye. "Forward . . come . . you . . .

  forward."

  Keith had never heard of anyone trying so slow a passage through a shortcut before--there was an unspoken sense that one should hurry through, that to tarry would be tempting fate, lest the magic of the thing fail.

  At last the baby completed its passage. The shortcut collapsed, although, moments later, it opened slightly several times as additional antigrav buoys popped through from the other side.

  The darmat child was moving away from the shortcut, but only under momentum. It had not yet-"Where...

  where..."

  Still a French-accented voice, but, in a stroke of rare creativity, PHANTOM had chosen a child's tones for this translation.

  "Home . . back . . ."

  Thor let loose another thunderous cheer. "It's alive!"

  Keith found his eyes misting over. Lianne was openly crying.

  "It's alive!" Thor shouted again.

  The darmat baby did, finally, begin to move, heading toward Cat's Eye and the others.

  The speakers changed back to the voice PHANTOM had assigned to Cat's Eye. "Cat's Eye to Starplex," it said.

  Keith keyed his mike. "Starplex responding," he said.

  Cat's Eye was quiet longer than the round-trip signal time would have required, as if he was searching for a way to express what he wanted to say using the limited vocabulary available. Finally, simply, he said,

  "We are friends."

  Keith felt himself grinning from ear to ear. "Yes," he said.

  "We are friends."

  "The child's vision is damaged," said Cat's Eye. "It will . . .

  become equal to one again, but time is required.

  Time, and absence of light. Green star is bright; not here when child left."

  Keith nodded. "We can build another shield, to protect the baby from the green star's light."

  "More," said Cat's Eye. "You."

  Keith was momentarily puzzled. "Oh--of course. Li-anne, kill all our running lights, and, after warning people, douse the lights in all rooms with windows. If people want to put their lights back on, tell them to draw the shades first."

  Lianne's beautiful face was split by a wide smile. "Doing SO."

  Starplex went dark, and the darmat community moved toward the great ship and their newly returned child.

  The Rum Runner popped through the shortcut, followed moments later by the PDQ. Radio communication soon assured their crews that Starplex was all right, and the ships curved in toward the docking bays. As soon as the Rum Runner was safely aboard, Jag headed for the bridge.

  Keith was still talking to Cat's Eye when Jag entered the bridge. The director turned to the Waldahud. 'qhank you, Jag. Thank you very much."

  Jag nodded his head, accepting the comment.

  The voice of Cat's Eye came over the speakers. "We to you an incorrect," he said.

  A wrong, thought Keith. They did us wrong.

  "You into point that is not a point had to move with high speed."

  "Oh, it wasn't so bad," said Keith, ever the diplomat, into the mike.

  "Because of that we got to see our group of hundreds of millions of stars."

  "We call such a group a"--PHANTOM translated the new signal--" galaxy."

  "You have a word for galaxy?" said Keith, surprised.

  "Correct. Many stars, isolated."

  "Right," said Keith. "Well, the shortcut put us six billion light-years from here. That meant we were seeing our galaxy as it looked six billion years ago."

  "Understand looking back."

  "You do?"

  "Do."

  Keith was impressed. "Well, it was fascinating. Six billion years ago, the Milky Way didn't have its current shape. Um, I guess you don't know this, but it's currently shaped like a spiral." A light flashed on Keith's console, PHANTOM notifying him that he'd just used a word for which there was as yet no darmat equivalent in the translation database.

  Keith nodded at PHANTOM's cameras. "A spiral," he said into the mike,

  "is . . . is . . . "He sought a metaphor that would be meaningful; terms such as "pinwheels" would convey no information m the darmat. "A spiral is . . ."

  PHANTOM provided a definition on one of Keith's monitor screens. He read it into the mike. "A spiral is the path made by an object rotating around a central point while also receding from that point at a constant speed."

  "Understand spiral."

  "Well, the Milky Way is a spiral, with four major"--he wanted to say

  "arms," but again that was a useless word--"parts."

  "Know this."

  "You do?"

  "Made."

  Keith looked at Jag, who moved his lower shoulders up and down in a shrug. What did the darmat mean? That he'd been made to learn this fact in some dark-matter equivalent of grammar school?

  "Made?" repeated Keith.

  "Once plain, now . . now . . . no word," said the darmat.

  Lianne spoke up. "Now pretty," she said. "That's the word he's looking for, I bet."

  "To look at it, one plus one greater than two?" asked Keith into the mike.

  "Greater than. More than sum of its parts. Spiral is . . ."

  "Is pretty," said Keith. "More than the sum of its parts, visually."

  "Yes," said Cat's Eye. "Pretty. Spiral. Pretty."

  Keith nodded. There was no doubt that spiral galaxies were more interesting to look at than elliptical ones. Keith was pleased that humans and darmats apparently shared some notion of aesthetics, too.

  Not too surprising, though, .given that many artistic principles were based on mathematics.

  "Yes," said Keith. "Spirals are very pretty."

  "That why we make them," said the synthesized voice from the speaker.

  Keith felt his heart jump, and he saw Jag do a reflexive splaying of all sixteen of his fingers, the Waldahud equivalent of a double take.

  "You make them?" said Keith.

  "Affirm. Move stars--small tugs, takes long time. Move stars into new patterns, work to hold them there."

  "You turned our galaxy into a spiral?"

  "Who else?"

  Who else indeed . . .

  "That's incredible," said Keith softly.

  Jag was rising from his chair. "No, that makes sense," the Waldahud said. "By all the gods, that makes sense. I said there was no good theory for explaining why galaxies acquired or maintained spiral shapes.

  Being deliberately held in place by conscious dark matter--it's mind-boggling, but it does make sense."

  Keith keyed off the mike. "But--but what about all the other galaxies?

  You said three quarters of all galaxies are spirals."

  Jag did a four-armed Waldahud shrug. "Ask it."

  "Did you make many galaxies into spirals?"

  "Not us. Others."

  "I mean, did others of your kind make many galaxies into spirals?"

  "Yes."

  "But why?"

  "Have to look at them. Make pretty. Make--make--a thing for expressions not mathematic."

  "Art," said Keith.

  "Art, yes," said Cat's Eye.

  Having left his chair, Jag now dropped down to all fours, the first time Keith had ever seen him do that. "Gods," he barked, his voice subdued.

  "Gods."

  "Well, it certainly fills that theoretical hole you were talking about,"

  said Keith. "It even explains that bit you mentioned about ancient galaxies seeming to rotate faster than theory suggests they should. They were being made to rotate, in order to spin out spiral arms."

  "No, no, no," barked Jag. "No, don't you understand?

  Don't you see? It's not just an esoteric point of galaxy formation that's been explained. We owe them everything--everyt
hing!"

  The Waldahud took hold of one of the metal legs supporting Keith's console and hauled himself back onto two feet again. "I told you earlier: Stable genetic molecules would have an almost impossible time existing in a densely packed mass of stars, because of the radiation levels. It's only because our homeworlds exist far from the core, out in the spiral arms, that life was able to arise on them at all. We exist--all the life made out of what we arrogantly refer to as 'regular matter'--all of it exists simply because the dark-matter creatures were playing with stars, swirling them into pretty patterns."

  Thor had turned around to face Jag. "But--but the biggest galaxies in the universe are ellipticals, not spirals."

  Jag lifted his upper shoulders. "True. But maybe shaping them is too much work, or too time-consuming. Even with faster-than-light communications--with 'radio-two'-it would still take tens of thousands of years for signals to pass from one side of a truly giant elliptical to the other. Maybe that's too much for a group effort. But for mid-sized galaxies like ours and Andromeda--well, every artist has a preferred scale, no? A favorite canvas size, or an affinity for either short stories or novels. Mid-sized galaxies are the medium . . .

  and . . . and we are the message."

  Thor was nodding. "Jesus, he's right." He looked at Keith. "Remember what Cat's Eye said when you asked it why it tried to kill us? 'Make you. Not make you." My father used to say that, too, when he was angry: 'I brought you into this world, boy, and I can take you out of it." They know--the darmats know that their activity is what has made our kind of life possible."

  Jag was losing his balance again. He finally gave up, and dropped back to his four hind legs, making him look like a chubby centaur. ''Talk about an ego blow," he said.

  "This one is the biggest of them all. Early on, each of the Commonwealth races had thought its homeworld was the center of the universe. But, of course, they weren't. Then we reasoned that dark matter must exist--and, in a way, that was even more humbling. It meant. that not only were we not the center of the universe, we're not even made out of what most of the universe is made from! We are like the scum on a pond's surface daring to think that we are more important than all the vast bulk of water that makes up the pond.