Transvergence by Charles Sheffield Page A

Rebka flopped down into the chair where Darya had been sitting.

    "Damn right." But Nenda was turning to face the crouched figure of Atvar H'sial. "Hold on a minute, At's sending to me. She's been working the computer. I'll be back."

    If Nenda and Rebka agreed on anything, that was a first. It seemed to Darya that they had been snarling at each other since the moment when the Erebus picked up Darya and Hans Rebka and made its subluminal departure from Sentinel Gate. It did not help to be told by Julian Graves that Darya herself was the hidden reason for the argument.

    She watched as Nenda moved to crouch below the carapace of the Cecropian, where pheromonal messages were most easily sent and received, and remained there in silence for half a minute.

    "I don't see how Atvar H'sial can interface with the computer at all," Darya said. "The screen is blank, and even if it weren't, she couldn't get anything from it."

    "She does not employ the screen." Kallik pointed one wiry limb to where Atvar H'sial was now rising to her full height. "She obtains information feedback aurally. She has reprogrammed the oscillators to give audible responses at high frequencies. I hear only the lower end of the range. J'merlia would catch the whole thing, but all of it is too high for human ears."

    Nenda returned, followed by Atvar H'sial. He was frowning.

    "So now we got three ideas," he said. He stared at Darya and Kallik. "I hope that neither of you two think you know where the Zardalu are."

    "I do," Darya said.

    "Then we got problems. So does At."

    "And I also have suggestions." Kallik spoke softly and diffidently. Since they had been reunited, Darya had noticed a strange change in the relationship between Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial, and their former—or was it current?—slaves. Kallik and J'merlia had greeted their sometime owners with huge and unconcealed joy, and those owners were clearly delighted to see them. But no one was sure how to behave. The Lo'tfian and the Hymenopt were ready and eager to take orders, but the Cecropian and the Karelian human were not giving them. Nenda in particular was on his absolute best behavior—which was not very good, in terms of social graces. If Darya had been forced to introduce him to the research staff of the Institute, Professor Merada would have had a fit. But Glenna Omar, with her appetite for anything rough and male, would more likely have been all over him.

    She pushed away that last thought as unworthy as Nenda scratched thoughtfully at his backside, sniffed, and dropped into a chair next to Hans Rebka.

    "We gotta sort all this out quick," he said. "We sit here jerking ourselves off, while new little Zardalu must be poppin' out of the pouches every five minutes."

    "We must proceed," Rebka said. He and Nenda were having their usual silent tussle as to who was in charge, something they did whenever Julian Graves was not around. "We can't afford to wait for the other two to show up. It seems that we all have ideas, so who wants to go first?"

    Darya realized that Kallik was glancing deferentially in their direction.

    "I guess that I do," she said. "What I have to say won't take long. I'll start with two facts: First, when the Builder transportation system returned us from Serenity, it landed us in different parts of the spiral arm. But in every case, we came out on or next door to the location of a Builder artifact. Second, no one has reported the sighting of any live Zardalu—and you can bet that would make news everywhere. So I deduce two things. First, the Zardalu would almost certainly have arrived close to an artifact, too. And second, that artifact cannot be in Fourth Alliance territory, or in the Cecropia Federation, or even in the Phemus Circle. It has to be where you might expect Zardalu to be sent—to a location somewhere in the territories of the Zardalu Communion. That makes sense for two reasons: the Zardalu were originally picked up there; and the Communion still has a