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.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."Now, my first thought was the simplest one.We were examining not alternative histories that were rooted in reality, but some kind of fiction.It seemed unlikely, but who knows? Perhaps the Builders had their own idea of entertainment.Fiction seemed more probable than the alternative: that what Kallik and I were looking at was in some sense real.""Which it clearly was not." The supercilious sneer was back."I examined the other image sequences, of course I did.However, I saw no point in burdening my audience or my argument with palpable fantasies.Alternative contrived histories, or fictitious imagined futures, have no relevance or interest to serious researchers.""If the image sequences contained nothing else, I would probably agree with you." Darya could feel her own competitive juices bubbling."But there was something else, something that you either did not notice or did not want to mention.One past and future of the spiral arm portrayed our past, and perhaps our present and future.That one, alone of all pasts and futures, shows the growth and continued presence of multiple clades.Many species, not just one, share the future of the arm [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]