A furious head-shake. “But—where could wormholes come from? We know they’re impossible to build—”
“The Big Bang? We know it was chaotic. Maybe some survived that era. Got trapped into the galaxy when it formed up later. Goes coasting around, just as the stars do.”
He blinked, always a good sign. “So when a wormhole mouth gets near a group of stars …”
“Something comes through it. Someone—some thing—that found a wormhole mouth. Y’know, theory says wormholes aren’t simple one-way pipes. They can branch, like subways in space-time. So something comes through, attacks inhabited planets.”
The Prefect looked puzzled. Maybe this was coming too fast? Explain, girl. Go technical.
“We—well, I—saw it in the planets around dwarfs, because there are more of them. Better statistics, the pattern shows up.”
She let that sink in while the Prefect watched the galaxy grind into its past. More green dots swooped along their blithe paths, nearing each other, coasting on, apart … the waltz of eternity, Newton meets Mozart, on and on through thousands of millennia, down through the echoing halls of vast, lost time.
The Prefect was a quick study. His sharp, piercing eyes darted among the bee swarm stars, mouth now compressed, lips white with pressure. “What are the odds that there’s one near us?”
This she had not thought about. “Given the number of dwarfs nearby … Um. Pretty good.”
He smiled, an unusual event. “This is utterly new. When you found the ancient tragedies, I was impressed. If you were wondering, only one in several thousand Trainees catch on to that fact—that secret, I should say.”
“Really? And this—the clustering—how often has any Trainee turned that up?”
A quick shake of head. “Never. This is a new discovery.” “Really?” She had thought she would surprise him, get some reward, but … new?
“No one knows this. Wormholes! Maybe nearby? So—if there’s one nearby—where is it?”
This was going too fast for her. “I sure as hell don’t know. I’m not an astronomer! I want to be a Librarian.”
The Prefect nodded. “So you shall be, in time.” He paused, gazing at the slow, sure grind of the galaxy. “We have a saying, we Prefects. “Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it’s easy to thwart.” You have proven that we do occasionally let talent get through.”
She sat silent, not knowing where this was going.
“Also … Congratulations.”
“What?”
“You have found the unsaid. The essence of research.”
“What … ?”
“The Library is not a mere decoding society. We must use the full range of exploration, not just the messages. You saw that. You first ferreted out a truth we Prefects do not wish to make known—the deaths of whole worlds, the closing in of others. Your discovery now, the proximity of the stricken worlds—is a gift.”
“Gift?”
“Yes. Much we discover needs time to … digest. But we become calcified, mere decoders. To become a true Librarian, one must show innate curiosity, persistence, drive.”
“I, I just got interested. You leaned on me hard to keep up my studies, not fall behind the others—”
“It is they who have fallen behind. We cannot drill creativity into our Trainees. They must display it without being asked.”
She gaped at him, not following. “So …”
“You are now promoted. You shall not tell your fellow Trainees why. Let them bathe in mystery. Do not say a word of what you have learned.”
“But, but—”
For the first time ever, she saw the Prefect smile. “Welcome. I will see to getting you a private office now, as well.”
Outside, the night Earth seen through the vast dome was a glowing halo, sunlight forming a thin rainbow circle. She saw his point. Earth was always there, and so were the waiting stars.
And something dark hid in the yawning dark beyond, something even a Nought or a Prefect did not know. Something shadowy in the offing out there in the galaxy, waiting, patient and eternal.
Wormholes? Through which something horrible came? They were out there, hanging like dark doorways between the stars.
It came in a flash she would recall all her life.
Now she knew what she wanted to solve, an arrow to pierce the night beyond and find the doorways. To see across eternity and into the consuming dark above, that awaited all humanity.
Indrapramit Das (aka Indra Das) is an Indian author from Kolkata, West Bengal. His debut novel The Devourers (Del Rey / Penguin India) was the winner of the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ SF/F/Horror, and shortlisted for the 2015 Crawford Award. His short fiction has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award and has appeared in several publications and anthologies, including Clarkesworld, Tor.com, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. He is an Octavia E. Butler scholar and a grateful graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and received his M.F.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He has worn many hats, including editor, dog hotel night shift attendant, TV background performer, minor film critic, occasional illustrator, environmental news writer, pretend-patient for med school students, and video game tester.
THE WORLDLESS
Indrapramit Das
Every day NuTay watched the starship from their shack, selling satshine and sweet chai to wayfarers on their way to the stars. NuTay and their kin Satlyt baked an endless supply of clay cups using dirt from the vast plain of the port. NuTay and Satlyt, like all the hawkers in the shanties that surrounded the dirt road, were dunyshar, worldless—cursed to a single brown horizon, if one gently undulated by time to grace their eyes with dun hills. Cursed, also, to witness that starship in the distance, vessel of the night sky, as it set sail on the rippling waves of time and existence itself—so the wayfarers told them—year after year.
The starship. The sky. The dun hills. The port plain. They knew this, and this only.
Sometimes the starship looked like a great temple reaching to the sky. All of NuTay’s customers endless pilgrims lining up to enter its hallowed halls and carry them through the cloth that Gods made.
NuTay and Satlyt had never been inside a starship.
If NuTay gave them free chai, the
