Lissa had experienced a multitude of situations in the course of—going on a hundred years, was it? she thought in sudden astonishment. That long? Already? She lifted her free hand and made a smile. “No offense, as you put it, Captain Hebo, nor to your honorable companion. Shall we say you’ve been remarkably discreet?”
The atmosphere eased. The man laughed once more. “We could spend the rest of this large economy-size day beating around the bush. I don’t want to, do you? Sure, Dzesi and I have been sneaky.”
Again he was likeable. In fact, Lissa admitted to herself, he had a good deal of raffish charm. “Would you care to explain? No, I don’t imagine I have any authority, but others do.”
“I’d argue about that. But put it aside for now.” Hebo leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and took a long swallow. “All right. To start with, I’m a free-lance entrepreneur, to give it a fancy name. I keep my senses and sensors open, and when I get [22] wind of a possible profit to be made, I go there.”
Lissa half gasped. “On your own?”
“Yep, my little spaceship is mine free and clear, along with the assorted gear and such, including enough capital to keep me solvent till the next success. More ventures don’t work out than do.”
“But, but what government licenses you?”
“Oh, this one or that one, depending. I’ve been at it a long while. When some fly-by-night nation goes under, I find me another.” He saw her frown. “Yes, I know a spacecraft mishandled can do as much damage as a crashing asteroid. Mine hasn’t done any yet; and I’ve been flitting a long while, I said. With several tribes, countries, sovereignties, globalities, what-have-you, I’m kind of grandfathered.” He leaned forward and patted her knee. “Don’t worry, brighteyes.”
She drew back, also in her spirit, but was nevertheless gripped. “Why are you on Jonna?”
He nodded toward the river. “What else but yonder?”
“Which is—”
“That’s what Dzesi and I would like to find out. So far, between our tests and my database—I keep a whopping database, if I do say so myself; and I do—we’ve established that it wasn’t made by any beings we know of, and includes technology none of them have ever heard of.”
A fresh shiver passed through Lissa. “Forerunners?”
“I suppose so, whoever they were. Or are.”
“Yes-s-s,” breathed the anthropard.
“Let us make certain we understand each other,” said Karl. He was right, Lissa admitted to herself. If you didn’t trudge through the obvious at the outset, you might learn the hard way that an alien—even a member of your own species, come from another world, another society—meant something quite different from what you did. Language was often too subtle, too mutable for the capabilities of a translator program.
“I assume we refer to those mysterious beings whose ancient [23] relics have infrequently been come upon,” the Gargantuan continued. “It is not known whether the creators are still extant, but certainly they are no longer present in such parts of the galaxy as any of today’s spacefaring societies have visited.”
Hebo nodded. “You’ve got it. Myself, I favor the notion that they weren’t interested in colonizing, for whatever reason, and just had a few scientific missions in these parts. But why they never came back for a later look—” He shrugged. “That’s another good question. They must know that geological time has gone by. If they’re alive yet.”
“One may well doubt that,” said Karl. “Surely, however few and fleeting have been the expeditions to remote parts of the galaxy, so mighty and long-established a civilization would indicate its existence somewhere in it—by radiation from power sources, for example, detectable across many parsecs.”
“But the galaxy’s so bloody goddamn big. Oh, yes, our ships can jump to anywhere in it, but what microfraction of the total volume have we even touched? Especially at much greater distances than our usual rounds go. Wouldn’t you at least expect that the Forerunners’ home region would show lingering signs of their influence? Instead, everyplace seems to be the same on average, a few planets where the sophonts have gotten into space themselves, and that’s it.”