Transvergence Read Free

really be that bad."

    "It's worse."

    "The most awful planet in the whole Phemus Circle?"

    "I never said that. Scaldworld is probably as bad, and people from Styx say that they go to Teufel for vacations."

    "Now I'm sure you're joking. If the whole Phemus Circle is as horrible as you say, no one would stay there. What job do you have, when you're back home?"

    "I guess you could call me a traveling troubleshooter. One thing the Phemus Circle is never short of, that's trouble. That's how Professor Lang"—he nodded to Darya—"and I met. We ran into a spot of bother together on Quake, one component of a double planet in the Mandel system."

    "And she brought you back here, to the Fourth Alliance? Wise Darya." But Glenna did not take her eyes off Rebka.

    "Not right away." Rebka paused, with an expression on his face that Darya recognized. He was about to take some major step. "We did a few other things first. We and a few others—humans and aliens, plus an Alliance councilor and an embodied computer—went to one of the Mandel system's gas-giant planets, Gargantua, where we found an artificial planetoid. We flew through a bunch of wild Phages to get there, and rescued some of us from a Lotus field. Then a sentient Builder construct put our party through a Builder transportation system, thirty thousand light-years out of the spiral arm, to a free-space extragalactic Builder facility called Serenity. When we arrived there, Professor Lang and I—"

    He was going to tell it all! Everything! All the facts that the whole party had agreed must remain dead secret until a high-level approval to discuss them had been granted. Darya tried to kick Rebka's leg under the table and hit nothing but empty air.

    "We found a small group of Zardalu—" He was grinding on.

    "You mean, you found people from the territory of the Zardalu Communion?" Glenna Omar was smiling with delight. Darya was sure that she thought Rebka was making up the whole thing for her benefit.

    "No. I mean what I said. We found Zardalu , the original land-cephalopods."

    "But they've been extinct for ten thousand years!"

    "Most have. But we found fourteen living ones—"

    "Eleven thousand years." Merada's high-pitched voice from the end of the table told Darya that everyone in the dining room was listening.

    Bang went a lifetime's reputation for serious and sober research work! Darya kicked again at Rebka's leg under the table, only to be rewarded with a pained and outraged cry from Glenna Omar.

    "Or rather more than eleven thousand," Merada went on. "As nearly as I can judge, it has been eleven thousand four hundred and—"

    "—Zardalu who had been held in a stasis field since the time of the Great Rising, when the rest of the species were killed off. But the ones we met were very much alive, and nasty —"

    "But this is disgraceful!" Carmina Gold had awakened from her dormouse trance and was scowling down the table at Darya. "You must know of the fearsome reputation of the Zardalu—"

    "Not just the reputation." Darya gave up the attempt to stay out of it. "I know them from personal experience . They're worse than their reputation."

    "—we managed to send them back to the spiral arm." Rebka had his hand on Glenna Omar's elbow and seemed to be ignoring the uproar rising from all parts of the long table. "And later we returned from Serenity ourselves, except for a Cecropian, Atvar H'sial, and an augmented Karelian human from the Zardalu Communion, Louis Nenda, who remained there to—"

    "—a dating based on admittedly incomplete, subjective, and unreliable reference sources," Merada said loudly, "such as Hymenopt race memories, and the files of—"

    "—living Zardalu should certainly have been reported to the Alliance Council!" Carmina Gold was standing up. "At once. I will do it now, even if you will not."

    "We already did that!" Darya stood up, too. Everyone seemed to be saying "Zardalu!" at once, and the group sounded like a swarm of angry bees. She