I was beginning to think that I was going to need a lot more time than just a day.
Jenny's people, she'd striven to remind me, were a responsible people. For instance, they still had that doomesday device that would have killed everyone and obviously they hadn't used that. The Ulix had even given them technology to understand everyone else so that the Last Great Race would come to their senses. Why would a race unwilling to allow genocide at one point suddenly not care if the universe was ripped asunder? Give the Resonator over to her people, and they would keep it safe.
When I suggested that the doomesday device would have killed the Ulix too, and they were just acting out of self-preservation, I received a few choice angry words. I wasn't an intelligent enough man to give up the argument there, though. I pointed out that my species alone had developed a dozen different ways to detect Yotia events in progress, and the tribunal probably had twice that on each of their mission ships. Sann had remained unfound because he'd hidden out a day's illegal-but-fast travel from an already remote outpost. While the Birthplace of the Last Great Race was not a heavily trafficed area, it had enough custom that a mission ship was bound to come by sometime. Like, for instance, the one that had come looking for her.
Jenny still was not going to be convinced easily, and I began to think that she might not become convinced at all. If I hadn't just blown it to smithereens, I would have had her touch the sphere and talk to Sann. Then again, he might not convince her either. Her whole race was fixated on the Ulix as ones who'd done them an enormous favor and therefore could do no wrong. Granted, I was just as glad as the next guy that my species hadn't been wiped out thousands of years ago, but still. I was beginning to think that the Ulix didn't care one way or another what happened to the universe so long as they were okay. Their tone in the dream or message or whatever it was seemed to be one of increased frustration, so they might not have much time left. To them, 'not much time' could be a century or more, but it was little enough that they wanted to have a solution by the time things got bad. Given the way I'd seen anomalies bleeding into one another in the Minefield, there didn't seem to be any adverse effects on the constructions themselves. If I were to guess, and really at this point that's all I was doing, I'd say that the Ulix colony ship would be utterly unharmed by a Resonator type weapon. So they'd get a new Resonator, whoever worked with them would get a weapon of unparallelled destructive power to which the Ulix themselves were immune, and to hell with everyone else. It made sense if you were a cynic, so naturally it seemed like quite the plot to me.
Idiot that I was, I tried to reason with Jenny using this line of argument. I even turned the translator down to third-level again to make sure that I wasn't missing anything on her part. I wasn't, just unadulterated denial that such a thing would take place. The Ulix were a good people, she maintained, and everything I thought up was just speculation. I couldn't really argue with the latter point, as I felt that I was getting too paranoid by even my standards, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it made sense. The point that the Ulix were a good people, though, I found debatable. Why would they have given us a technology which only they could use properly, but which would in all likelihood kill us? She couldn't argue that point, she'd seen the minefield as much as I had. That had been the work of one man's research, imagine what an entire species could do with such weaponry?
Finally, a jump or two away from Reil, she seemed to see that I wasn't budging.
"(1) You're not going to give this up, are you? Fine, just bring me along. I want to be witness to it one last time before it's gone. (3) Such a waste of research, such an opportunity squandered! (3) If only he would listen to reason. However, it must be done."
I knew how she felt about my choice, but I was surprised she wanted to come along. She seemed resigned to what I intended. I agreed to have her with me, it was the least I could do.
I found myself plotting a course along various lanes which would take me back to Exile, whereupon I'd hit the random button and hope that my dream had not, in fact, been a dream. I suppose if it had, we'd end up at some other trading hub and then go our separate ways, safe in the knowledge that the original Resonator was behind the barrier that nobody would get through for the moment. If it wasn't a dream, however, if I ended up at the crossroads despite the fact that it was no longer listed in my new and updated maps, well, that's when I would know that things were as I thought them to be.
"Alan Ledford, Jnenyfnnr kworennta, Sann Treleance, you are bound by law to stand down!"
We'd entered the vicinity of Reil via hyper, and the Resiliant was nearly right on top of where we'd appeared. The scanners, in all their automated cursory glory, revealed that of all the ships to flee the sector in a panic days ago when we'd left, only mine and the one specifically devoted to finding me had returned. Reil station itself seemed to have shut down. I got the feeling that the panic Sann's initial lightshow had created had been swiftly clamped down upon by the tribunal. If there had been any sort of transmission or feed getting through to my ship, no doubt I'd find that rumors were running rampant, but official channels had been shut down tight. Resiliant was jamming me fairly well, though, so all I had to go on was hope.
I took a big breath. Here's where I'd find out exactly how much of my paranoia was real and how much existed entirely within my mind.
I pressed the random button.
<!--Our team was on Resiliant at this point, and while I was not able to witness this event firsthand, I saw data from it. Ledford's vessel had been equipped with an illegal hyperdrive, and our mission vessel had more than enough technology to both trace where he had gone and jam him from moving any farther.
The first part had been working just fine. We knew that they'd been skipping along far out of charted space, but we also knew they'd be heading back. Ledford wasn't one to simply abandon society. We could see the traces far enough out to know when he was returning, as well. We prepared all our disabling weaponry, all our offensive jamming ability. He'd be stuck in realspace when he emerged, and the madness would finally end.
It did not. Ledford's hyperdrive is something beyond our understanding. Though he should not have been able to aquire even the Reil station's navigational beacon through our efforts, he managed to jump out. Our trace, which still worked somehow, indicated that he had not only left the area, but he'd left this sector of space altogether. He'd gone to the center of the Ulix anomaly. No hyperdrive of our manufacture was powerful enough to make a leap of such magnitude.
We began our pursuit.
-->