THE QUIET WAS profound, in the place of darkness where the translator floated in its long journey back from annihilation. For a time, the translator was certain of almost nothing, including its own survival. The fire of Earth’s sun kept returning to its mind, blazing in its hellfire ferocity, burning everything in its presence, even the translator’s own failing protective shields. It burned away the remnant of the Adversary that had tried to devour them, and it burned to the bones the remaining skeleton of the spacecraft the translator had shielded. Did it burn the human who was the translator’s charge?
Fire and burn, matter to energy turn . . .
No. Julie Stone had survived—had emerged with it beyond the far reaches of the galaxy, borne on the ripples of space-time that the translator had triggered at the end of the sun passage. The translator had brought her here alive, not dead—and given her into the care of the beings of Shipworld. So the translator itself had survived, as well.
Burn, burn, fire and storm.
It had survived. How else was it thinking and wondering?
That realization more than any other pushed the translator finally into cognitive motion and enabled it to think once more with purpose—at least for brief interludes. There were still uncertainties: Where exactly was the translator now, in time and space? Shipworld, yes; but where in Shipworld, and how long since its harrowing escape?
Space and time, uncertainty of mind.
Space and time still existed. Yes. That was key.
Step back from annihilation.
***
During the translator’s healing, the movement of time was like a whispering air current, seeming at whim to speed up, and again to slow down, and then to billow around without making contact at all. Eons seemed to have passed since its journey through the sun-fire; and yet, the memories of the passage remained vivid and profound. Only the timeless healing spaces of Shipworld existed; all else was smoke and illusion.
Silence.
Rest.
Dark.
The dark of renewal.
Considerable regrowth was needed, as the translator bathed in a quiet stream of neutrinos and dark matter. The memories were still there, coiled around the n-dimensional layers of its core, but they needed the soaking bath of time and energy to be made whole again.
Eventually, it heard voices bringing new knowledge, images and news of Shipworld. The translator began once more to care.
***
There were others in Shipworld with whom the translator had connection. From time to time its thoughts circled back to these others, and it wondered where they were, and if they were still alive.
John Bandicut and the quarx.
Were they still together? At the thought of them, the translator trembled with a sense of responsibility, and fear. It wasn’t as if it had never manipulated anyone before Bandicut, or changed someone’s life course for them. There was a Fffff’tink who had been so traumatized by what it was asked to do that it had not survived the experience. Why didn’t that nag at the translator’s conscience, the way Bandicut did?
The thought made something in the translator quiver like a knife thrown into wood. It didn’t seem rational.
Think of others. Surely there were others on Shipworld whom the translator had once known. Or maybe not. It had been with the quarx for millions of years. But they had been away from Shipworld together. How the translator longed to speak with the quarx again!
What about Julie Stone?
Julie Stone.
Sometimes, and this was one such time, that name brought a stab of pain. More flashbacks, more memories of the passage. Just how badly had it been hurt?
Badly enough.
***
Later, the translator began to calm down and reflect on other concerns. When it had last been here on Shipworld, there had been other yaantel, like itself. What had become of them? Were they all out finding new kinds of life, new connections on other worlds? Were their descendants, or at least the things they had learned, available here on Shipworld?
Were they making things better?
Apparently so, at least according to a new voice that had begun penetrating the fog. It was the voice of a Shipworld librarian. This was someone new to the translator, someone who seemed interested in being helpful, and in sharing information, more so than some of the other voices the translator had to listen to. The librarian had tales to tell, and the translator listened to them—and in return, told some of its own stories. There were powers in Shipworld, powers that mattered, and they needed to be kept apprised of such things as the translator’s reports—though whether the powers were listening or not, the translator didn’t know. It told its stories to the librarian nonetheless.
Some were hard to remember in detail. Others burst forth like flowers opening.
So much time. So many lives.
The translator had been away for eons—not just while frozen in the ice of Triton, but long before that, while attempting to rescue the worlds of the Rohengen and the Fffff’tink, in their own distant star systems. Throughout those millions of years, its contact with Shipworld had been tenuous and intermittent. It had not really known what kind of Shipworld it would find at the end of that journey. But here it was, larger and more complex than the Shipworld the translator had left.
Although its fellow yaantel were not here now, an element of legend had grown around the memory of their work. But organics carrying their daughter-stones were here; all those yaantel, and others carrying their seed stones, had been at work out in the galaxy, finding candidates for service, candidates with stories not too unlike those of John Bandicut and Julie Stone.
Learning this gave the translator new hope.
***
The translator was only beginning to remember what it had felt like to be its old self, when the first indications of another crisis began to emerge. Voices came and spoke to it, voices identifying themselves as agents of the ruling circle of Shipworld. They wished to call upon the yaantel for advice, which was a surprise. Were they aware of the yaantel’s struggles with flashbacks and memory fragmentation? The surges of emotional turmoil? The profound feelings of isolation?
The voices, representing a contingent of the ruling circle, brought information about a temporal disturbance originating near the human-inhabited portion of the galaxy—and some extremely dangerous entities that might be carried forward out of the past. It was likely, the voices murmured, that the entities were related to the Adversary that had recently tried to destroy Earth, and had nearly destroyed the yaantel and Julie. Could they, the voices, offer to the yaantel some scenarios for dealing with this peril, and ask its opinion?
The first time the translator heard this, its thoughts turned to static—and it retreated back to its place of rest and isolation without answering. The memory of that passage was so traumatic that at first the translator could not contemplate even thinking about those things, much less becoming involved in another encounter with them.
The second time the voices came, the same thing happened. But it remembered a little more of what was said.
The third time, the translator stayed, and listened, and endured for a while the pain of remembering. It gave no immediate reply, but it didn’t flee, and the voices told it more.
In subsequent conversations, a picture slowly emerged—a situation that the translator could not ignore. This new threat was not just to a star system, or even to Shipworld, but to all of inhabited space.
It was some time before anything like a specific plan was mentioned. When it was, the translator found it hard to know what was best. The Shipworld masters wanted to send a team against the most malevolent intelligence in the universe. The two members they had in mind were both friends of John Bandicut’s. Both were veterans of encounters with similar adversaries. One was named Ik, who had once carried another yaantel’s voice-stones. The other was Julie Stone.
***
As they waited in the quaint alien library, Julie idly pulled some volumes off the shelves, and was surprised to find that many of them were, in fact, books printed on something like paper. The symbols were incomprehensible, though once or twice her wrist-stones stirred at the sight of something apparently familiar to them. Some of the volumes were solid blocks—perhaps some form of computer memory—while others were hollow. Ik rattled one of the hollow ones. “What’s that?” Julie asked, reshelving a slender volume consisting of a few thick pages.
“Hrrm,” Ik said, pondering. “A toy, perhaps?” He turned it in his long-fingered hand. “Or an information device? For a moment, I felt a strange sensation.”
“What kind of sensation?”
“In my mind. A glimmer of . . . something.” Ik tapped his forehead with his bony fingers. “I don’t know what exactly, but I felt it might have come from this.”
Julie frowned at the object.
Ik continued to turn it over in his hand. “I no longer feel it. But I find, achh, that I don’t want to put it down. As if it’s somehow meant for me. Does that seem odd?”
Julie shrugged. “I don’t know. This is a library, right? Maybe they’ll let you borrow it to play with.”
At a metallic sound, they both turned.
Rings-at-Need floated toward them. It was hard not to think of the Tintangle as a collection of sheet-metal disks, joined by wiry limbs. “As I said before, this is a library,” said the alien, waving his paddle-like hands. “And that piece you are holding is intended for you. I have just activated it, and that was why you felt what you did.”
“Ah. What is it, then?” asked Ik.
“It is a guide, to take you to the yaantel.”
Julie frowned. “Yaantel? What’s that?”
“I am sorry. That is our word for the kind of entity that you know as the translator.”
The way Rings phrased that made her furrow her brow. “The kind of entity? Do you mean that there is more than one trans—or, yaantel?”
Rings made a soft sound as of a gong fading to silence. “I have heard so. But the one with whom you came to Shipworld is the only one I have personal knowledge of.” He gave a little vibration. “Its arrival here was a matter of considerable excitement among the shadow-people and librarians, and even among some of the masters, I am told.”
“So then, my translator—my yaantel—is a very important person,” said Julie, thinking, Important enough that they could have let me know it was still alive?
“Oh, yes,” said Rings. “Much revered, and looked to for wisdom.”
Ik was still studying the small box. He held it up to Rings. “How will this lead us to the . . . yaantel?”
“Open it,” Rings-at-Need said.
Ik gave the strange creature a steely gaze, then turned the box over again, his fingers probing at its surface.
Julie watched him, wondering if it was a wooden-box puzzle. A thought occurred to her. “Ik—may I?” The Hraachee’an handed the box to her. She held it a moment, closing her eyes. She thought she felt a twinge from her translator-stones. She pressed her right wrist to it. The box vibrated in her hand, and the side she had touched to her wrist irised open like a camera lens. “Aha.”
Ik joined her in peering into the black interior. Several tiny lights sparkled inside, like pinprick stars in space. “What is it?” she breathed. “It’s beautiful.”
The box vibrated again.
“It is connecting,” Rings-at-Need said.
Connecting? She felt something new—a stronger link between the box and her stones. The box suddenly floated out of her hands as the black interior expanded before her.
Ik murmured in surprise. Together they peered into the blackness, where the tiny stars seemed to grow brighter—but also to move away, as though to invite them inward.
“I’ll wait here for you,” Rings-at-Need said, his voice fading behind them as the dark space expanded to swallow them.
***
Julie dared not turn her head in the darkness, for fear of becoming wholly disoriented. “Ik, are you still with me?”
“Hrah.” His voice came from her right, exactly where he had been before.
“Can you tell what’s happening?” Julie felt the darkness streaming around them, felt it on her skin, like moving water.
“I do not know. However, I believe we are not alone.”
“No?”
There was a heartbeat of silence. Then a whispered: *Indeed, you are not.*
The voice in Julie’s mind was no louder than a pencil scratching on paper. But she knew it, and her heart trembled. “Translator? Is that really you?” She felt the stones in her wrists responding with recognition—practically vibrating with joy. Could they feel joy?
*Why would we not?* her stones answered. *We feel again the presence of our source.*
That was about as close as they’d ever come to expressing sentiment. Their voice was stronger, more immediate than the translator’s, but the kinship was unmistakable.
“Did you hear it?” Julie murmured to Ik. “Did you hear the translator?” Although at times in the past the translator had spoken to all around it, mostly it had spoken to her alone.
“I felt—something. Something in my voice-stones. I assume it is—” His voice broke off with a rasp.
An object was emerging from the dark: a small, squirming ball, consisting of dozens of even smaller, spinning globes. The glowing balls churned among themselves, as though in Brownian motion. Julie felt a rush of excitement—and a pang of fear. The translator looked almost as small as when she’d last seen it, and its diminished size had scared her then. She recalled her first painful glimpse after they’d passed through the fire of the sun, after their victory over the terrifying Adversary. She had been shocked by how little was left of her spacecraft, and even more shocked by the state of the translator upon their arrival at Shipworld. The nearly omnipotent being she had begun her journey with had been reduced to something like a cinder, the size of a grapefruit.
What she saw now looked more energetic and alive—but still only about the size of a basketball. At the start of their journey, it had been as tall as she was.
“It’s so good to see you again!” Her voice cracked with emotion.
The translator’s voice was clear, but small, like a trickle of water in her mind. * . . . grateful to see you again, Julie Stone, and to greet your friend Ik, who also now bears our stones.*
“Hrah,” said Ik. He touched his temples. “If these voice-stones are from you, then I thank you.”
*We are certain you will use them well. We have heard of you.*
“Really,” said Ik. He sounded surprised.
*We are aware of your work.*
Ik bowed slightly, still looking surprised.
Julie cleared her throat. “There is so much . . .” She had a sudden thought. “Should we be calling you Translator—or Yaantel?”
The translator sounded amused. *Most in Shipworld call us Yaantel, or sometimes ‘the yaantel,’ when there is no other around. It is a name handed down over a very long time. But to your people—and to the quarx, if you know the quarx—we have always been the translator. Please call us whichever you like.*
Julie nodded, thinking she preferred the familiar. “Are you recovering all right from our passage here? You got hit pretty hard.” She gestured in the darkness.
From her stones she felt a strong sense that her simple question was causing the translator discomfort. She wondered if she should say something more, but it spoke first. *We suffered considerable loss on that passage. We are now in a place of . . . healing. And I am. We are. Healing.*
Julie had never heard the translator sound so tentative before.
*But you did not come just to visit. You have come with questions. Yes?*
“Yes,” Julie admitted. “We are confused about what is happening to us. We were trying to find our way to John Bandicut. You know John Bandicut.”
*Of course. We have been trying to contact him, but have not been able. Do you have information as to his location?*
“Hrrm, I was just with him,” Ik said in a dry rasp. “I was intending to return to him. To take Julie to him. But I could not.”
“We were told we couldn’t be taken to him,” said Julie. “Instead, we’ve been asked to do something else, something that sounds completely crazy. As crazy as what you asked me to do, back in my home system.” Julie felt her pulse race as the words stumbled out. She flashed back to when the translator first told her she needed to abandon all common sense and leave the safe human spaceship she was on, to pursue a deadly adversary across the solar system. That had definitely been crazy. Extreme. Terrifying. But compared to time travel? To the center of the galaxy?
“A trip,” murmured Ik. “In space and time.”
*We know of this request. To ride the thing called the starstream, to the center of the galaxy, and back more than a billion years as you know them. Is that what you want to ask us about?*
“Hrah,” said Ik.
*To find the ancient Mindaru and stop them from coming to the present.*
Julie whispered, “Yes.”
“Perhaps you know of it—but we are not prepared for this!” Ik cried. “What do we know of time travel? What do we know of its dangers? Nothing! And as for those who would send us, we know as little—”
*Those being representatives of Shipworld’s governing circle?*
“So it would seem,” Ik said. “I know nothing about these circles or their representatives. Much less whether we should trust them and what they ask us to do.”
The translator rumbled softly for a moment, but did not answer directly. Finally it said, *We have some knowledge of this proposed mission.*
“Yes?” Julie felt a surge of hope. “And what do you think?”
The translator’s voice became subdued. *There are significant uncertainties. Much we still hope to learn. But this mission . . . may be necessary. Your thoughts—what are they?*
“Well—” Julie struggled. “We’ve only just heard about it. We don’t know if it’s something we can do. Or if it’s even a smart thing to do.”
*Too little knowledge,* the translator echoed. *Including whom to trust?*
“Yes!”
The translator spun silently for a time. Did it still possess its previous powers of calculation and wisdom? Was it trying to decide whom to trust? When it finally spoke, it seemed to have difficulty. *You have both faced . . . something like these Mindaru before.* The translator spoke with a twinge in its voice, as though it were speaking of itself as much as them. *And you do not want to face them again. Ever.*
Julie shuddered violently. “God, no!”
The translator pulsed, expanding and contracting. *None of us wants to. But if they are . . . coming . . .*
Julie wanted to shout, Can’t someone else stop them this time?
*We/you do not want the galaxy—or Shipworld!—to have to face them. Do we? It is difficult . . . very difficult.*
“No one should have to face them!” Ik snapped in a stiff, precise voice. “But who are we to stop them? To even know how? To make the right choices?”
*Those who plan . . . believe they can trust you . . . to make some of these choices.*
Julie was trying hard not to hyperventilate. She threw up her hands. “That’s crazy! Don’t you think that’s crazy?”
*It may be. We do not yet have sufficient information.*
Julie’s heart sank. The translator was supposed to know everything. But if it had been away from Shipworld for a extremely long time, then maybe it was just learning, too. Or was it really so badly broken it was no longer the translator she had known? She could not bear the thought.
*But . . . Julie Stone and Ik . . . we can try to help you judge the merits of the plan. Will you accept that help?*
“Of course!” Julie whispered.
The translator began again to bob slowly up and down, as it whirled. *Then consider the plan . . . The need is urgent. But there are questions about the true nature . . . of a time travel mission, yes?* The translator seemed to regain some of its usual steadiness. *The questions surely include: If you travel in time, how will you locate the Mindaru in the past? And if you locate them . . . what will you do to stop them? And if you stop them, what effect might your actions have on our present as we know it?*
“Exactly!” Ik cried. “Exactly! We do not want to come back to a world where you—where our friends—never existed! Even if it’s possible to make this trip, should we?”
The translator spun faster, letting the question hang. Then: *We have, in fact, thoughts . . . on that. What is your understanding of . . . current models of time travel? Of the risks of changing the past?*
Julie shook her head numbly.
*Are you familiar with the distinctions . . . between modes of time travel?*
“Should we be?” she asked.
*Crucial differences!*
Did the translator seem annoyed that they had not been told these things? A tingle in her wrist-stones seemed to confirm this. A glance at Ik caught his uncomprehending gaze fixed on the translator. She leaned toward the translator with a feeling of urgency, even though the translator spoke in her mind.
*On an exploratory mission—and this is you!—you would travel by something called the ‘ghoststream.’ Put simply: You would ride an extremely powerful beam of . . . *
As the translator paused, perhaps searching for words, Julie’s imagination raced. A giant death ray?
*Quantum temporal entanglement, on an extreme scale,* it said at last. *You would travel as a virtual presence across both space and time.*
Julie felt her eyelids twitching as she tried to follow. Ik said, “Hrrm, do you mean an out-of-body projection?”
*A useful shorthand, perhaps. Here is another shorthand: Your senses would be linked, through a kind of lens of . . .* For a heartbeat, the translator again fell silent, searching. *A sensory lens, of energy not matter, to a distant time and place.*
“Wouldn’t that, brr-dang, require an enormous amount of power?”
*Yes. It has been done just a few times—with robotic probes.*
Julie winced. Not just a hazardous mission, but a chance to be guinea pigs with the technology? First living things in the beam?
*The ghoststream method is believed the safest, though not without hazard.* The translator’s voice faltered. *This is . . . a hard thing to ask of you! You have already taken great risks! Both of you!*
“But if this beam is virtual, how can it be . . .”
The translator’s voice steadied. *The description is inexact. It will hook deeply into your mind. As far as you are concerned, you will be in the past, and vulnerable to any harm that befalls the beam itself.*
“Hrahhh,” Ik rumbled gravely.
*It is highly unlikely that harm would befall you. Just as the risk of altering the past is . . .*
“Yeah, about that,” Julie began.
*According to theory, the risk of altering history is near zero.*
“Why?” asked Julie.
*The reasons are several. To begin, we do not expect interaction with the physical past.*
“We would just observe, then?” Ik asked. “Not touch? But does not the observer alter the thing it observes?”
Julie looked at Ik questioningly, and then thought: Of course—in quantum terms, yes.
The translator bobbed, moved forward and backward as though with nervous energy. *Different from quantum expressions you have known. The belief is, you will be invisible—or at most appear ghostly—to any living thing.*
“Huh,” Julie said, struggling to put her swirling thoughts into words. “How could we . . . I mean, I hear words like ‘the belief is,’ ‘likely,’ and I wonder—”
“Rrrm,” Ik said softly, agreeing.
The strain was apparent in the translator’s answer. Its chaotically moving balls separated visibly and then came back together. *There are uncertainties. But confidence in the models is high.* Julie’s stones tingled, and she wondered whether the translator was trying to persuade them, or just thinking out loud. *Other methods carry more risk, more intervention. But you are being asked to travel simply as observers in the ghoststream, to learn what is happening in the past.*
“So then you’re saying—”
*That you will not change the past.* The translator bobbed as though nodding with certainty. *That is correct. The strongest models predict that you cannot change the past in any significant way.*
“But if we—”
*The present is what it is—and nothing you do in the past can cause more than a localized eddy, a small eddy of change.*
Julie shook her open hands in the air. “How can you be so sure?”
The translator hummed and seemed sure of itself now. *Because anything you do has already become a part of the past. History is elastic, and even if disturbed, always tends to return to its previous condition. It is its own self-correcting mechanism.*
“That does not entirely reassure me,” Ik murmured.
*It is a difficult model to prove experimentally.*
“But you believe it is sound?” Julie asked.
The translator spun, rose slowly, and then descended again. Julie’s wrist-stones buzzed, as though with static. “Translator?” she asked. “Yaantel?”
Finally it answered: *Yes. Yes, I do.*
***
A few long moments passed, as they pondered the immensity of the challenge. Finally Julie spoke. “No matter how you put it, it seems like a big risk. Are they that afraid that the Mindaru will come forward in time?”
The translator seemed to quiver. *The Mindaru could be on their way now. I use the word “now” imprecisely, but I think you know what I mean. Julie Stone. Ik. We truly do not wish to endanger you again. But the Mindaru are an ancient terror. If the opportunity is open to them, the Mindaru will come forward in time. There are excellent reasons for fear of their coming into our time. My friend Julie—* the translator paused, flickering *—recall our battle with the one that nearly destroyed us both. Multiply that a thousand-fold, or a million-fold. Remember, we think it likely that that Adversary was a lesser descendant of the Mindaru.*
Julie’s stomach knotted. That Adversary had started as a sentient grain of sand in the outer solar system. By the time they had hurled it into the sun, it had grown into a spaceship-devouring monster, hell-bent on getting to Earth and devouring it.
“Then,” Ik murmured, “you believe we should go? To face down an even more terrible threat?”
The translator took a long time to answer, and Julie wondered if it was reliving that battle. Its voice seemed stretched thin as it said, *Rather, to prevent an even more terrible threat. John Bandicut and others will try to stop the timestream channel created at our end. They may succeed. But suspected Mindaru signs have been detected in the timestream, so time is short.*
“So it may already be too late,” Julie said.
*Perhaps not—if a way can be found to pinch off that timestream at the far end, to keep more Mindaru from entering it. Not to change the past, but to keep it in the past.*
“Even if, hrrm, we would not be able to touch anything?”
*Perhaps. The next step is uncertain. First, we must learn what is happening—back then. We believe it is a risk . . . worth taking.*
Ik began pacing in the dark place, muttering to himself. What were his demons from the Mindaru? Julie wondered. She took a breath. “If we were to say yes to the mission, would you consider coming with us?”
The translator flickered. She felt a sharp pain in her right wrist, then her left. She saw Ik wince and touch his temples, where his own stones glimmered.
She drew another breath. “Yaantel?”
The translator buzzed audibly. *We, I . . . cannot. We are sorry. We are not yet—*
Julie felt her heart pounding as she waited for it to complete its thought.
*We are not able,* the translator said, a great weight, possibly sorrow, in its voice. *We cannot . . . live outside this . . . place of healing, for now. We may never.*
Julie spoke against her own grief and disappointment. “I am so sorry.” Sorry for you, who saved my life and my world. And sorry for us.
*We . . . must go now.* The translator, pulsing erratically, began to pull back into the darkness. It hesitated long enough to say, *Please consider. Going, yes. But do not assume . . . that the planners, or others, are wiser than you.*
“What? Wait!” Julie started to say, but as she spoke the translator winked out of sight. She turned to face Ik in the darkness, lit only by the gemlike stars. “What the hell?” she whispered. Then the darkness peeled away, and they were again standing in the library of Rings-at-Need.
***
Burning, burning, can’t stop burning.
Afraid. Afraid.
The darkness was alive with the translator’s memories:
The spaceship disintegrating around it, the Adversary devouring it molecule by molecule, even as the growing sun weakened both of them.
Hot enough to destroy it? Maybe. But at what cost . . .
The sun looming enormous and hot, engine of creation and destruction.
Control the angle of the light.
Let the fire consume the Adversary, like vermin.
Rage bubbling, licking with hot fury at the thing that would harm them. Rage, rage with the growing light.
But how it hurt! The spillover of blazing radiation onto the ship and the translator itself, and worst of all, onto its human charge, bundled though she was in tight shielding.
Why did you not say yes? You should go with her.
Cannot hold . . . cannot.