Incandescence

«Of course I'm not sure,» Lahl conceded. «And even if I was embodied, the meteor itself could have been a carefully manufactured fake, or the instruments I was supplied with could have been contrived to mislead me. But I can't see the point in that kind of deception. Why spread misinformation about the DNA panspermia among people to whom you're largely indifferent?»

«Why spread valid information, either?» Rakesh mused. «I'm surprised they didn't just lob this out of the bulge, muttering about yet another incursion by those awful disk people.»

«Lob it where, though?» Csi replied. «And if the planet it came from really does lie in the bulge, this 'incursion' probably predates their own presence.»

Lahl regarded them both reprovingly, as if she considered these comments to be willfully obtuse. She said, «I believe they felt obliged to tell someone, to get the word out. In spite of their refusal to communicate with us on any other topic, I believe they considered it their duty to pass this information on to us, to make of it what we will.»

«As you considered it your own duty to hand the message on to a descendant of the appropriate replicator?» Rakesh suggested.

«Exactly.»

Rakesh was on the verge of pointing out that it was somewhat parochial of her to assume that the Aloof would share her sense of obligation, but then it struck him that, out of all the travelers who'd taken the short cut, the Aloof might have chosen Lahl precisely because she was the most likely to understand, and act upon, their intentions.

Whatever the original cues being translated, Lahl's face had taken on a subtly challenging aspect, as if she was waiting for Rakesh to make clear to her whether or not she'd been wasting her time.

Rakesh was still unsure of the verdict himself. Was this his calling? He had never thought of the bulge as a place of genuine mysteries. Many individual citizens of the Amalgam were every bit as private as the Aloof; he had no idea what went on inside their homes, but his ignorance hardly transformed those places into unexplored territory. The higher the gate, the more manicured the garden.

That was the wrong comparison to make, though. The fact that the Aloof fastidiously repelled any physical intrusion into the bulge was no proof that they'd transformed, visited, or even catalogued every last one of the millions of worlds within their domain. If their refusal to engage with the cultures of the disk had its origins in paranoia, they might have adopted a policy of hypervigilance, scrutinizing every last rock for signs of life lest some interloper arise in their midst. Equally, though, stumbling across the DNA-infested meteor might have been sheer bad luck, an unwelcome find imposing obligations that they would never have actively sought.

He said, «If I took this on, where would I pick up the thread? I can't cross the bulge and simply hope to be singled out to be shown what you were shown.»

«I have the habitat's address,» Lahl said. «The Aloof appended it to my transmission. When you reach the bridge to their network, you could simply name that as your destination.»

«With no guarantee that the request would be honored,» Csi said. He was staring at Rakesh as if his friend had lost his mind.

Rakesh said, «I haven't come to any decision yet.»

Now it was Parantham who was showing disbelief. She turned to Lahl. «If he won't take the address, give it to me! And none of this DNA bigotry. I can only trace my own ancestry back fourteen generations — to a de novo created by a rather hazily documented collaboration — so I can't promise you any mystical molecular affinity. But if the Aloof want someone to hunt down this lost world for them, I'll do it!»

«Hunt it down how?» Csi asked bluntly.

«They recorded the meteor's velocity when they captured it,» Lahl said. «And they provided me with detailed maps of the region. I couldn't literally wind all the dynamics back fifty million years; the region is so densely packed with stars that their motion becomes chaotic on that time scale. But it was possible to generate candidates for closer exploration.»

«How many?» Csi demanded.

«About six hundred.»

Csi groaned and leaned backward on the bench, as if to extract himself from the gathering. «This is insane!»

Rakesh could not deny that, but it was an increasingly enticing folly. Uncharted or not, the center of the galaxy was an exotic, bejewelled place, and if its self-appointed guardians really were inviting outsiders in for the first time ever, that alone was a remarkable opportunity. If the reason for the invitation turned out to be a wild goose chase, or even a complete misunderstanding, that need not render the voyage worthless; it was impossible to rule out danger and disappointment, but at the very least he'd be risking much less than the galaxy-hoppers. How many millennia might he while away before another prospect the equal of this came along?