Without Dido for lure, probably men would never have possessed Aeneas. It was so far from Terra, so poor and harsh—more habitable for them than its sister, but by no great margin. By the time that humans who lacked such incentive had filled more promising planets, no doubt the Ythrians would have occupied this one. It would have suited them far better than it did Homo sapiens.
How well had it suited the Builders, uncertain megayears in the past, when there were no Didonians and Aeneas had oceans—?
“Excuse me.” Desai realized he had gone off into a reverie. “My mind wandered. Yes, I’ve meditated on the— the Neighbors, don’t you call them?—quite a bit, in what odd moments fall to my lot. They must have influenced your society enormously, not just as an inexhaustible research objective, but by their, well, example.”
“Especially of late, when we think we may be reachin’ true communication in some few cases,” Tatiana replied. Ardor touched her tone. “Think: such way of existence, on hand for us to witness and . . . and meditate on, you said. Maybe you’re right, we do need transhumanness in our lives, here on this planet. But maybe, Commissioner, we’re right in feelin’ that need.” She swept her hand in an arc at the sky. “What are we? Sparks, cast up from a burnin’ universe whose creation was meanin’less accident? Or children of God? Or parts, masks of God? Or seed from which God will at last grow?” Quieter: “Most of us Cosmenosists think—yes, Didonians have inspired it, their strange unity, such little as we’ve learned of their beliefs, dedications, poetry, dreams—we think reality is always growin’ toward what is greater than itself, and first duty of those that stand highest is to help raise those lower—”
Her gaze went out the window, to the fragment of what had been … something, ages ago … and, in these latter centuries, had never really been lost in the wall which used it. “Like Builders,” she finished. “Or Elders, as Land-
folk call them, or—oh, they’ve many names. Those who came before us.”
Desai stirred. “I don’t want to be irreverent,” he said uncomfortably, “but, well, while apparently a starfaring civilization did exist in the distant past, leaving relics on a number of planets, I can’t quite, um-m, swallow this notion I’ve heard on Aeneas, that it went onto a more exalted plane—rather than simply dying out.”
“What would destroy it?” she challenged. “Don’t you suppose we, puny mankind, are already too widespread for extinction, this side of cosmos itself endin’—or, if we perish on some worlds, we won’t leave tools, carvin’s, synthetics, fossilized bones, traces enough to identify us for millions of years to come? Why not Builders, then?”
“Well,” he argued, “a brief period of expansion, perhaps scientific bases only, no true colonies, evacuated because of adverse developments at home—”
“You’re guessin’,” Tatiana said. “In fact, you’re whistlin’ past graveyard that isn’t there. I think, and I’m far from alone, Builders never needed to do more than they did. They were already beyond material gigantism, by time they reached here. I think they outgrew these last vestiges we see, and left them. And Didonian many-in-one gives us clue to what they became; yes, they may have started that very line of evolution themselves. And on their chosen day they will return, for all our sakes.”
“I have heard talk about these ideas, Prosser Thane, but—”
Her look burned at him. “You assume it’s crankery. Then consider this. Right on Aeneas are completest set of Builder ruins known: in Orcan region, on Mount Cronos. We’ve never investigated them as we should, at first because of other concerns, later because they’d become inhabited. But now… oh, rumors yet, nothin’ but the kind of rumors that’re forever driftin’ in on desert wind . . . still, they whisper of a forerunner—”
She saw she might have spoken too freely, broke off and snapped self-possession into place. “Please don’t label me fanatic,” she said. “Call it hope, daydream, what you will. I agree we have no proof, let alone divine revelation.” He could not be sure how much or how little malice dwelt in her smile. “Still, Commissioner, what if bein’s five or ten million years ahead of us should decide Terran Empire is in need of reconstruction?”