"Better?"
"Differently."
"And they're completely lost?" Cley asked quietly, acutely aware of the shrouded masses of history.
"They are gone."
Seranis asked suspiciously, "Gone—or extinct?"
"From your perspective," Seeker said, "there is no difference."
"Seems to me extinction pretty much closes the book on you," Cley said lightly, hoping to dispel the tension which had somehow crept into the conversation.
"Just so," Seranis said evenly. "The stability of this biosphere depends on keeping many species alive. The greater their number, the more rugged Earthlife is, should further disasters befall the planet."
"As they shall," Seeker said, settling effortlessly into its position for walking, a signal that it would talk no more.
Damned animal! Seranis could not shield this thought from Cley, or else did not want to.
They left the Library of Humanity in a seething silence, Seranis deliberately blocking off her talent so that Cley could not catch the slightest prickly fragment of her thoughts.
23
That evening Alvin presided over a grand meal for three hundred with Cley as guest of honor. Robots had labored through the day, extruding a large, many-spired banquet hall which seemed to rise up groaning from the soil itself. Its walls were sand-colored but opalescent. Inside, a broad ceiling of overlapping arches looked down on tables that also grew directly from a granite floor. Spiral lines wrapped around the walls, glowing soft blue at the floor and shifting to red as they rose, circling the room, making an eerie effect like a sunset seen above an azure sea. Tricks of perspective led Cley into false corridors and sometimes there appeared to be thousands of other guests eating in the distance. At times holes would gape in the floor and robots would rise through them bearing food, a process she found so unsettling that thereafter she stayed in her seat. Despite the cold night air of the desert the room enjoyed a warm spring breeze scented like the pine forests she knew so well. Her gown scarcely seemed to have substance, caressing her like water, yet covered her from ankle to neck.
They ate grains and vegetables of primordial origin, many dating back to the dawn of humanity. These had already been spread through the emerging biosphere, and this meal was the boon of an ample harvest, brought here from crops throughout the globe. Cley savored the rich sauces and heady aromas but kept her wits about her in conversation with her hosts.
Often their talk went straight by her, arabesques of talent-meaning sliding among percussive verbal punctuations. The Supras of Lys tapered their rapid-fire signals to make them comprehensible to Cley. Those of Diaspar used only the subset of their language which she could follow. They tried to keep the din of layered cross-references simple in deference to her, but gusts of enthusiasm would sweep their ornate conversations into realms of mystifying complexity.
She felt their remorse and anger underlying a stern resolve to recover what they could. Yet Alvin made jokes, even quoting some ancient motto of a scholarly society from the dawn of science. ''Nullius in verba, " he said dryly, "or 'don't take anyone's word for it.' Makes libraries seem pointless, wouldn't you say?"
Cley shrugged. "I am no student."
"Exactly! Time to stop studying our history. We should reinvent it." Alvin took a long drink from a chalice.
"I'd like to just live my life, thanks," Cley said quietly.
"Ah," he said, "but the true trick is to treasure what we were and have done—without letting it smother us."
Alvin smiled with a dashing exuberance she had not seen among the other Supras. He waved happily as what appeared to be a flock of giant scaly birds flew through the hall, wheeled beautifully, and flew straight through the ceiling without leaving a mark.
Seranis was distracted by a flurry of talent-talk but displayed her skill by simultaneously saying to Cley, "He means that here at the end of a long corridor of time, we should ignore the echoes."
Cley frowned, wishing Seeker had come to this bewildering banquet, but the quiet beast had elected to rest. She was concerned. She could not in all honesty see why Seeker stayed with her when the Supras would probably have let it go. Its laconic replies had antagonized Seranis and that could be dangerous. While Supras had never harmed Ur-humans, she was not sure any such convention governed their relations with distant species. In any case, caution outweighed theory, as mice knew about elephants.
To not seem a complete dunce, she tried to get back into conversation. Alvin was the center of attention, but he looked quickly back at her when she asked, "How can you shrug off history?"
He eyed her closely, as if trying to read something inscrutable. "By studied neglect." He leaned forward, eyes intent and sharp with mirth. The day of dancing seemed to have released him from some burden she could not guess. "History is such detail! Emperors are like the dinosaurs. Their names and antics are unimportant. Only the dates of their appearance and passing can matter."
Someone called from down the table, "The Keeper of Records will scold you!"
Alvin answered, "No, he will not. He knows we hold aloft time's dread weight only by keeping a sense of balance. Otherwise it would crush us."
"We dance on time!" another voice called. ''It's under us.'"
Alvin chuckled. "True, in a way. The roll call of empires is dust beneath our feet . . . yet we cling to our old habits. Those last."
"We need some human continuity," Cley said reasonably. "My tribe—"
"Yes, a singular invention. When we recalled you all, it was apparent we could not let you resurrect the old imperial habits."
Cley frowned. "Imperial . . . ?"
"Of course," Seranis said. "You do not know." She inhaled a passing spice cloud and while her lungs savored it she sent. We took your genotype from the Age of Empire, when humanity plundered the solar system and nearly extinguished itself.
The talent-voice of Seranis carried both a sting of rebuke and the balm of forgiveness. This only irritated Cley, who struggled to hide it.
"My tribe made no . . . war." She had to pause and let her deep-based vocabulary call up the word, for she had never used it before. Comprehending the definition and import of the word took a long moment. With foreboding she permanently tagged it for ready future use.
"That was how we wanted it." Alvin smiled as though he were discussing the weather. "We reasoned that at most you might eventually expand for territory, rather than for pohtical gains and taxes, as in the imperial model."
"We did not realize we were so . . . planned." Cley gritted her teeth, hoping that this would not leak out through her talent. The nakedness of her thoughts was proving to be a nuisance.
"We did not interfere with your basic design, believe me," Ser-anis said kindly. She offered Cley a tart fruit but seemed unbothered at its refusal. "Your group loyalty is your species' most important way to find an identity. It fosters social warmth. Such patterns persist, from a children's playhouse to a transworld alliance."
"And how do you work together?"
Alvin said, "We do not struggle against each other, for such traits have been very nearly edited out of us. But most important, we have the blessing of a higher goal."
"What?" Cley demanded.
"Perhaps enemy is a better term than goal. Until now I would have said that history was our true foe, dragging at our heels as we attempted to escape from it. But now we have met an active enemy from out of history itself, and I must say I find myself filled with eagerness."
Alvin was clearly the youngest of these Supras, though Cley could not reliably read the age of any of these bland, perfect faces. "Enemies? Other Supras?"
"No no. You are recalling those people who supposedly fired at you, who killed your tribefellows, who destroyed the Library of Life?"
"Yes." Cley's mouth narrowed with the effort of concealing her hate. Primitive emotions would not go well here.
"They were illusions."
"I saw them!"
"They appeared here, too. I
closely examined our records and"— he snapped his fingers—"there they were. Just as you had seen. We were too busy to notice, and so we owe you a vote of thanks."
"They were real!"
"Extensive study of their spectral images show them to be artful refractions of heated air."
Cley looked blank. The sensation of being robbed of a clear enemy was like stepping off a stair in darkness and finding no next step. "Then . . . what . . ."
Alvin leaned back and cupped his hands behind his neck, elbows high. He gazed up at the clear night, seeming to take great joy in the broad sweep of stars. Many comets unfurled their filmy tails, so many they seemed like a flock of arrows aimed at the unseen sun, which had sheltered behind the curve of Earth.
Alvin said slowly, "What heats air? Lightning. But to do it so craftily?"
Seranis looked surprised. Cley saw that Alvin had told none of this to the others, for throughout the great hall the long tables fell silent.
Seranis said, "Electrical currents—that's all lightning is. But to make realistic images ..."
Cley asked, "All to trick us?"
Alvin clapped his hands together loudly with childlike glee, startling his hushed audience. "Exactly! Such ability!"
Seranis asked quietly, "Already?"
Alvin nodded. "The Mad Mind. It has returned."
A blizzard of talent-talk struck Cley like a blow. The Supras were on their feet, buzzing with speculation. Inside her head percussive waves seemed to amplify the torrent.
Again she felt the labyrinth of their minds, the kinesthetic thrust of ideas streaming past, features blurred beyond comprehension.
Whirlwinds.
A black sun roaring against ruby stars.
Purple geysers on an infinite plain.
The plain shrinking until it was a disk, the black sun at its center.
Stars shredded into phosphorescent tapestries.
For instants the black sun swam at the rim of the beeswarm gossamer galaxy. Next, it buzzed ominously at the very focus of the spiral arms.
She dropped away from darkening thunderheads, fleeing this storm. Tucked herself away. Waited.
Panting with the mental exertion, she wondered what the people of Lys were like when they were alone. Or if they ever were.
Supras, Ur-humans, Seeker—all from different eras in the eon-long explorations of evolution. This desert plain was like a baked-dry display table covered with historical curiosities. What vexed currents worked, when different ages sought to conspire! And she was pinned here, firmly spiked by the bland, all-powerful, condescending reasonableness of the Supras.
Cley pressed her palms to her ears. The din of talent-talk drummed on. As soon as they got through with their labyrinthian logic, they would notice her again.
And talk down to her. Reassure her. Treat her like a vaguely remembered pet.
No wonder they had not recalled the many varieties of dogs and cats, she thought bitterly. Ur-humans had served that purpose quite nicely.
Her people . . . They had labored for the Supras for centuries, tending the flowering biosphere. The Supras had known enough to let them form tribes, to work their own small will upon the forest. But drawn out of that fragile matrix, Cley gasped like an ancient beached fish.
She staggered away, anger clouding her vision. Conflicts that had been building in her burst forth, and she hoped the blizzard of talent-talk hid them. But she could avoid them no longer herself.
She was like a bug here, scuttling at the feet of these distracted supermen. They were kind enough in their cool, lopsided fashion, but their effort to damp their abilities down to her level was visible— and galling. Longing for her own kind brimmed in her.
Her only hope of seeing her kind again lay in these Supras. But a clammy fear clasped her when she tried to think what fresh Ur-humans would be like.
Bodies decanted from some chilly crucible. Her relatives, yes, clones of her. But strangers. Unmarked by life, unreared. They would be her people only in the narrow genetic sense.
Unless somewhere, some Ur-humans lived. They would know the tribal intimacies, the shared culture she longed for.
If they existed, she had to find them.
Yet every nuance of the Supras' talk suggested that they would not let her go.
They were not all-powerful—she had to keep reminding herself of that. They gave Seeker an edgy respect, clearly unsure of what it represented.
Their very attainments gave them vulnerabilities. Immortals were enormously cautious; accident could still destroy them. Caution could err. They could have missed some of her kind in the dense woods.
Nobody from the crystal elegances of Diaspar or Lys could be worth a damn at tracking in the wilderness.
Very well, then. She would escape.
24
Surprise and diversion are tactics best used swiftly. In Cley's case the surprise had to come at the perimeter the Supras had erected around the wrecked Library. Yet she had no idea how to do this.
She confessed her thoughts to Seeker. She was sure that it would not betray her. It seemed unsurprised by her news, or at least to Cley the beast showed no visible reaction, though its fur did stir with amber patterns. She had hoped for some laconic but practical advice. It simply nodded and disappeared into the night.
"Damn," she muttered. Now that she had decided to act, the hopelessness of her situation seemed comic. She was, after all, the least intelligent human here, surrounded by technology as strange to her as magic.
The party continued across the camp. Waves of talent-talk frothed in her mind, making it difficult to think clearly. She hoped this torrent would also provide cover for her plans.
A loud, groaning explosion rolled through the dark. Seeker was suddenly beside her. "Walk," it said.
Shouts, flashes of purple radiance, a chain of hollow pops. Luminescent panels flickered out.
They simply slipped away. Seeker had executed some trick to deflate the screens near the Library and instantly Supras and robots reacted. For all their mastery of science the Supras reacted in near-panic to the noisy folding of the screens. They truncated all standing robot orders and directed every effort toward erecting the defenses again.
Seeker watched warily as they walked unhurriedly across the camp to the side nearest the forest. "The moment was approaching," was all it would say.
"But the robots—"
"They will not expect this now. They never see the moment."
They moved silently out of the Supra camp, keeping to the shadows. Everywhere robots hurried to restore the bulwarks of the Library but took no notice of them.
They reached the forest beneath a moonless sky strung with a necklace of dense stars. Cley tweaked her eyesight to enhance the infrared and bring color forth from the pale glow of a million suns.
They ran steadily for the first hour and then slowed as the terrain steepened. Whatever Seeker had used to gain them freedom would not last for long. She had been restless under the lofty and distracted restrictions of the Supras and she could not for long conceal from them her feelings. She suspected that Seeker had sensed her restlessness and had prepared to get the two of them out, before Seranis could read Cley's intentions and tighten her hold.
After a while all this complication fell away from Cley and she gave herself over to the healing exuberance of the forest. She knew from Supra talk that her kind were not the true, original humans which had come out of the natural forces of far antiquity, but that mattered little. Though her genetic structure could be easily modified, as the inclusion of the thought-talent showed, the Supras had kept her kind true to their origins. The simple enfolding of forest could still reach deeply into her.
Seeker did not slow its rhythmic pace, four legs seeming to slide across the ground while its hands swept obstacles aside for the both of them. "They must be looking for us now," Cley said after a long time of silence.
"Yes. My effect will wear away."
"What was it?"
Se
eker looked at her, opened its slanted mouth, but said nothing.
"Is it something I shouldn't know?"
"A thing you cannot know."
"Oh." She was used to Supras making her feel stupid. Seeker, whose kind had come well over a hundred million years after Ur-humans, made nothing of its abilities, but this somehow made them seem more daunting.
"They can find us, though," she said. "Supras have so many tricks."
"We must seek concealment. Something more works in the sky."
She looked up and saw only a low fog. She puffed heavily with the effort of keeping up with Seeker as they plowed through dense thickets. "Why can't they see us right away?"
"We swim in the bath of life."
With each step the statement became more true. They moved deep into the embrace of a land bustling with transformation. Fungi and lichen coated every exposed rock. This thick, festering paint worked with visible energy, bubbling and fuming as it ate stone and belched digestive gases into a hovering mist. Where they had done their work webbed grasses already thrived.
Cley stepped gingerly through a barren area speckled with bile-green splotches, afraid one might attack her feet with its acidic eagerness. Not all the vapors that hung over the fevered landscape were mere bioproducts intended to salt the atmosphere with trace elements. Buzzing mites abruptly rose from a stand of moldyweed and swarmed around them. For a terrified moment she batted them off until Seeker said calmly, "Stand still. They are thirsty."
The cloud was opalescent, its members each like a tiny flying chip of ice that refracted pale starlight. Yet they seemed clever, buzzing with encased fervor and quick skill. They banked in elaborate turns around her. She realized she must seem like a mountain of chemical cropland. "What do they—"
"Do not speak. They will smell your stomach lining and plunge down your throat."
She shut up and closed her nostrils as well. The clasping cartilage in her nose had been useful in staving off water losses in the desert of an ancient Earth only dimly remembered by even the Keeper of Records. Now it kept out drumming mites as she held her breath for long, aching moments, wondering what the succulent scent of her digestive acids was. She squeezed her eyes shut, gritting her teeth. If she could only have the luxury of screaming, just once—