Long afterward, there came to Alpha Centauri the news of what had happened on Earth and around Sol. How that news came, breaking the silence that had been laid upon it, is another story. At the time, few dwellers on Demeter gave it much heed, disturbing though it was. They were in the course of departure from the world their forebears had made home, for in less than a hundred years it must perish. However, one among them was a philosopher.
His young son found him deep in thought and asked why. Because he would not lie to a child, he explained that word lately received from the Mother Star troubled him. “But don’t be afraid,” he added. “This is nothing that will touch us for a very long while, if it ever does.”
“What is it?” inquired the boy.
“I’m sorry, I can’t quite tell you,” said the philosopher. “Not because it’s a secret any longer, but because it goes too far back,” and because ultimately it was too subtle.
“Can’t you tell me anyway?” urged his son.
With an effort, the father put disquiet aside. Truly, four and a third light-years distant, they need have no immediate fears about the matter, or so he supposed. He smiled. “First you must know some history, and you have barely begun to study that.”
“It jumbles together in my head,” the boy complained.
“Yes, a big load for a small head to take in,” the philosopher agreed. He reached a decision. His child wanted to be with him. Furthermore, if he took this chance to describe certain key factors, a realization of their importance might dawn for the boy, and that might someday make a difference. “Well, sit down beside me and we’ll talk,” he invited. “We’ll look at the beginnings of what you’re wondering about. Would you like that?
“We could start anywhere and anywhen. Creatures not yet human, taming fire. The first machines, the first scientists, the early explorers—or spaceships, genetics, cybernetics, nanotechnology—But we’ll start with Anson Guthrie.”
The boy’s eyes widened.
“Always remember, he was just another man,” the philosopher said. “Never imagine him as anything else. He’d hate that. You see, he loves freedom, and freedom means having no masters except our own consciences and common sense.
“He did do more than most of us. You remember how it was his Fireball Enterprises that opened up space for everybody. Many governments didn’t like having a private company that powerful, nearly a nation itself. But he didn’t interfere much with them; he didn’t want their sort of power. It was enough that his followers were loyal to him and he to them.
“This might have changed after he died. Luckily, before then he’d been downloaded. The pattern of his mind, memories, style of thinking, were mapped into a neural network. And so his personality went on, in machine bodies, as the chief of Fireball.”
“Aw, it’s not like that,” the boy protested.
“I’m sorry,” his father apologized. “Often I’m vague about how much of your education you’ve quite grasped, as young as you are. You’re right, the truth is endlessly more complicated. I don’t pretend to know everything about it. I don’t believe anybody does.
“But let’s go on. Of course you have learned how the Lunarians came to be. Human genes needed changing, if human beings were to live, really live and have children, on Earth’s Moon. What you may not have heard much about is the other metamorphs, the other life forms that got changed too, many different new kinds of plants and animals and even people. You may not have heard anything about the Keiki Moana.”
The boy frowned, searching memory. “They—they helped Anson Guthrie once—they swam?”
“Yes. Intelligent seals,” his father said. The boy had encountered full-sensory recordings of the ordinary species. “They lived with a few humans like dear friends, or more than friends.” The philosopher paused. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. That community wasn’t founded until after the exodus.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, you haven’t met the word? Doubtless it is rather archaic. In this case, ‘exodus’ means when Guthrie led our ancestors to Demeter.”
The boy nodded eagerly. “An’ the an—ancestors of the Lunarians who live in our asteroids. They all had logo.”