After several days the exploration team decided on Contact Prime—the town where first contact would be made with the people of Earth. It stood beside the old Danube ship canal, a short distance from the Black Sea. Single-masted ships lay in its harbor. Though not the largest of the new towns—it was four kilometers across—it seemed clearly the most advanced. Most towns looked like something from the Middle Ages: haphazard, ugly, and surrounded by hostile stone bastions. This town, by contrast, was rigorously geometrical, with a harmonious kind of severe beauty, an angular regularity that demonstrated the existence there of mathematicians and planners. And unfortified. Its stadium would accommodate tens of thousands, Matthew thought. A tall black tower rose from a palace with terraced roof gardens, the most impressive structure they had seen either here or at home.
Whatever had happened to mankind on Earth, Matthew thought to himself, it was rising with a new civilization. He felt cautiously eager to visit Contact Prime, to begin learning what had happened, and what was happening now.
II
Something was making the cattle restless. Their normal foraging movements had stopped, their heads raised to stare southward. It had started a moment earlier with some old cows at the south edge of the herd, and spread. He stood in his stirrups, old calves sinewy, strong bare toes supporting his wiry weight, to scan the irregular sea of grass in that direction. Perhaps wolves were moving down the draw from the forested ridge a kilometer away, hoping to take a new calf from the fringe of the herd.
Casually he took his short bow from its boot and strung it. There was no cause for concern. Last year’s grass had been broken and flattened by winter snows, and the new grass was still young spears not long enough to conceal a hare. They could not move out of the draw without becoming targets for himself and the others.
It did not occur to him to think beyond wolves. But it was men who rode out of the pines, and he sat back, watching them. Horse barbarians, he thought, predatory and wild, but constrained by their fealty to the Master from attacking his herds or his herdsmen. Horse barbarians. They were of different tribes and tongues, from as near as the Southern Desert and as far as the Great Eastern Mountains, wherever those might be. But he hadn’t seen any like these before. His keen eyes took in details. These were large men, some with yellow hair, and they carried no lances.
They separated, moving casually as if to encircle or half encircle the herd, and he started toward them to warn them away. They began to shout, to drive the cattle, and he called angrily at them, shaking his bow. One of the nearest raised his own bow and the herdsman stared for a shocked moment before slumping to the ground, his callused toes losing their grip on the stirrups.
The other herdsmen fled, and the intruders made no effort to stop them. They simply drove the herd across the arm of prairie toward the mountains rising to the northwest.
III
Space is deep and beautiful, ruthless but predictable,
Inhuman.
The men of Earth are only some of these.
From EARTH, by Chandra Queiros
Han var Ahmed, son t’ Ahmed, han var såd a Kassis spihunn i Kyng Janos hov på Pestad.
Svarthud var han likså faren, långsynt åsa som d’ älren, slug å kail i pann som faren.
Laste ikke tankar tväätom, såg han aj i själ som faren, fäsen tävelte om makten i d’ sajkarl hövdingringen.
Ikke fegling som d’ älren, dolte aj i prysi jömme, kjämpe han, jääv liks å vasam, hövding han blann orkahodern.
Hätte rival, luden Drekå, han som gläde sej i törtyr, sjalson t’ d’ aset Kassi.
[Ahmed was he, son of Ahmed, was the seed of Kazi’s spy-dog in the Magyar court of Janos.
Black-skinned was he like his father, patient also like the elder, ruthless, cunning, as his sire was.
Was no telepath however, read not minds as had his father, though he strove to rule the psi men.
Was no coward like his father skulking in a velvet covert, was a warrior hard and wary, was a chieftain in the orc horde.