A Deepness in the Sky

"Hmmpf." Pham wasn't entirely pretending embarrassment. Except with Anne, he hadn't talked about this. Maybe it was because the scheme was grandiose even compared with his grandiose scheming of the past. "...Okay. You know why we came to Arachna: the mystery of the OnOff star and the existence of intelligent life here. We spent forty years with Tomas Nau's boot on our necks, but still we learned amazing things."

Ezr: "True. In one single place, Humankind has never found so many different kinds of wonderful things."

"We humans thought we knew what was impossible. Only a few nut cases still wondered otherwise, mainly astronomers watching far enigmas. Well, OnOff was the first of those that we've seen close up. And look at what we found: a stellar physics we still don't properly understand; cavorite, which we understand even less—"

Pham broke off, noticing the look in Qiwi's eyes. She was remembering something from a nightmare. She looked away, but Pham didn't continue, and after a moment she spoke very softly. "Tomas Nau used to talk like this. Tomas was an evil man, but—" But evil men, the most dangerous of them, often have sharp ideas. She swallowed, and continued more firmly, "I remember when the Focused ran DNA analysis on the ocean ice we had brought up. The variety—it was greater than a thousand worlds. The analysts thought it was caused by the variety of life niches on Arachna. Tomas...Tomas thought instead that there was so much variety because once, very long ago, Arachna had been a crossroads."

Ezr took Qiwi's hand. "Not just Tomas Nau. We've all wondered about these things. There's way too much crystal carbon around—the diamond forams, the rockpile. Somebody's computers? But the forams are too small, and our L1 mountains are too big...and they're all just dead stone now."

From across the table, Jau Xin said, "Maybe not quite. Thereis cavorite."

Belga Underville rasped something that did not sound impressed; Victory was buzzing laughter. After a moment, Zinmin's translation came. "So the Distorts of Khelm have a new believer, except that now our world is a junkyard and we Spiders are evolved from the gods' garbage-vermin. If this is true, where is the rest of the super-empire?"

"I...I don't know. Remember this was fifty to one hundred million years ago. Maybe they had a war. One of the easiest explanations for your solar system is that it was a war zone, with a sun destroyed, and all planets but one volatilized." And that one survivor protected by some great magic. "Or maybe the empire grew into something else, or is leaving us to develop at our own pace." Some of the possibilities sounded very foolish when he said them out loud.

Underville's eating hands spread in a gesture that Pham recognized as a doubting smile. "You do sound like Khelm! But see, your theory ‘explains' all sorts of things without helping to do anything, much less providing tests for itself."

Gonle Fong jabbed at the air with her hand, a Spiderish gesture unconsciously adopted. "So what's to disagree? ‘Arachna was a place where once all the Failed Dreams were true.' Fine. It's a simple, unifying assumption. At the same time, we live in the here and now, a few hundred light-years, a few thousand years. Whatever the explanation, there is a lifetime of profit to be made just playing with what we see on Arachna now!"

Pham nodded politely. "Yes. A good Qeng Ho attitude. But, Gonle—I was born in a civilization of castles and cannon. I've lived a long time—not counting coldsleep—and I've seen a lot. Since the Dawn Age, we humans have learned a little here, a little there—but mainly we've learned of limits. Planetary civilizations rise and fall. At the height they're wonderful things, but there is so much darkness." Castles and cannon, and worse. "And even the Qeng Ho—we survive and prosper, but we've found limits that we can only edge toward, like lightspeed itself. I broke myself on those limits at Brisgo Gap. When I learned about Focus, I thought it might be the way to end the darkness between civilizations. I was wrong." He looked into Anne's eyes. "So I gave up my dream, the dream of my whole life...and then I looked around. Here at Arachna, we've finally found something fromoutside all our limits. It's a tiny glimpse, shreds and dregs of brightest glory. Gonle, there are planning horizons and there are planning horizons....Ezr asked me what I was going to do after we bring down the Emergents, after we all meet again. Well, just this: I'm going whence Arachna came."