The enigmatic record she had just seen tipped the scale. She would move the visit to Newholme forward in her itinerary. She would recruit some appropriate assistants and schedule the visit within the next cycle. And, when she was in the vicinity, she would stop at that far-out moonlet and see just what it was that had died there. Perhaps the Brotherhood of Interstellar Trade would offer her something for that information. Unless the BIT had been there before her!
Questioner sighed, a very human sigh. She had not moved or eaten or drunk for some time, and she was experiencing that slight disorientation and fuddlement that a human might notice as weariness and discomfort. A cracking sound made her look upward, to see her own ship settling toward the soggy arena of the shuttleport. In two real time days, she had seen a million years of planetary history. Remarkable.
Steam rose. Mud splattered. The landing was sloppy, which meant the captain had taken the helm. He was also a political appointee, one who had graduated eight hundred and ninety-fifth out of a class of nine hundred at the academy. If it weren’t for the professionals on board, most of them Gablians, the ship would never arrive anywhere. Dutifully, though in considerable annoyance, the Questioner rose and made her ponderous way toward the ship.
8—Native and Newcomer. A Conversation
At some point in time (later than the time Questioner had experienced) on that same world Questioner had watched, two creatures were engaged in conversation. In real time it happened, one could say, roughly simultaneously with protomankind on Old Earth learning to make stone tools and build a fire. Mankind, along with the rest of the universe, was unaware of the beings, the beings were unaware of mankind, and the conversants were strangers to one another. They used no names, for they had none to use, and they figured out one another’s language as they went along.
As was admitted by the native.
“I have a vision of you in my mind. If you turned out not to be like that, I should feel disappointment. It is dangerous to feel that I know you when I do not.”
“I don’t think others know our kind,” said the newcomer, sadly. “We tend to live very much alone.”
“We’ll get to know one another,” said the native, with enthusiasm. “You must have seen much of the universe.”
“This galaxy, yes,” said the newcomer, depressed.
“What is a galaxy?”
“This local group of stars. There are others, so far away only their light may be seen.”
“Galaxy. Well. What shape is it?”
“Flat, mostly. With long, twisting arms it pulls about itself as it turns.”
“A spiral, then. Galaxies are spiral?”
“Some. Only some.”
“Are there many in the galaxy like you?”
“Twice I met another like myself. Far had they come, far had they yet to go, for there are many stars and times to swim. I had not swum so far as they, nor will I, for I am done.”
“You are not done,” said the native in a firm, cheerful way. “Not yet. You’re still quite alive and getting better. Are you very old?”
There was a pause, as a mountain range eroded toward a plain.
“Old? No, I’m not old.” The newcomer hummed for a time, as a machine might hum, searching for information. “I could have lived the lifespan of a star. There is no limit to my life, unless I die like this.”
“I wish you would not speak of dying. I do not allow dying here. Is this usual? Do all your people end themselves this way?”
“Of the two I met, one was young, one old. The young one knew no more of life than I. The older one told me beware, beware the call. That one told me to deafen all my ears against the call. I wish I had believed.”
“Only two of your own kind? But, surely you began somewhere? Somehow?”
The newcomer searched memory. “I remember shell, close all around. I do remember kin along with me, warm turning close within each other’s wings. I would have lingered there, but kin cried out. Somewhere a great lamenting. Then the flame. Away kin burst, we burst, fire trailing us, then something broke the shell. Kin went swiftly away. I called. No answer, just space and distant stars. I went out, too, unfurling wrinkled wings to catch starwind. Behind me, falling far, the shell that held us, burning as it flew.”