half-demon, if that was a legacy of Terra.
Well--man had changed; over the thousands of years, natural andcontrolled adaptation had fitted him to the worlds he had colonized, andmost of his many races could not now feel at home here. Jorun thought ofhis own party: round, amber-skinned Chuli from a tropic world,complaining bitterly about the cold and dryness; gay young Cluthe,gangling and bulge-chested; sophisticated Taliuvenna of the flowing darkhair and the lustrous eyes--no, to them Earth was only one more planet,out of thousands they had seen in their long lives.
_And I'm a sentimental fool._
2
He could have willed the vague regret out of his trained nervous system,but he didn't want to. This was the last time human eyes would ever lookon Earth, and somehow Jorun felt that it should be more to him than justanother psychotechnic job.
"Hello, good sir."
He turned at the voice and forced his tired lips into a friendly smile."Hello, Julith," he said. It was a wise policy to learn the names of thetownspeople, at least, and she was a great-great-granddaughter of theSpeaker.
She was some thirteen or fourteen years old, a freckle-faced child witha shy smile, and steady green eyes. There was a certain awkward graceabout her, and she seemed more imaginative than most of her stolid race.She curtsied quaintly for him, her bare foot reaching out under the longsmock which was daily female dress here.
"Are you busy, good sir?" she asked.
"Well, not too much," said Jorun. He was glad of a chance to talk; itsilenced his thoughts. "What can I do for you?"
"I wondered--" She hesitated, then, breathlessly: "I wonder if you couldgive me a lift down to the beach? Only for an hour or two. It's too farto walk there before I have to be home, and I can't borrow a car, oreven a horse. If it won't be any trouble, sir."
"Mmmm--shouldn't you be at home now? Isn't there milking and so on todo?"
"Oh, I don't live on a farm, good sir. My father is a baker."
"Yes, yes, so he is. I should have remembered." Jorun considered for aninstant. There was enough to do in town, and it wasn't fair for him toplay hooky while Zarek worked alone. "Why do you want to go to thebeach, Julith?"
"We'll be busy packing up," she said. "Starting tomorrow, I guess. Thisis my last chance to see it."
Jorun's mouth twisted a little. "All right," he said; "I'll take you."
"You are very kind, good sir," she said gravely.
He didn't reply, but held out his arm, and she clasped it with one handwhile her other arm gripped his waist. The generator inside his skullresponded to his will, reaching out and clawing itself to the fabric offorces and energies which was physical space. They rose quietly, andwent so slowly seaward that he didn't have to raise a wind-screen.
"Will we be able to fly like this when we get to the stars?" she asked.
"I'm afraid not, Julith," he said. "You see, the people of mycivilization are born this way. Thousands of years ago, men learned howto control the great basic forces of the cosmos with only a small bit ofenergy. Finally they used artificial mutation--that is, they changedthemselves, slowly, over many generations, until their brains grew a newpart that could generate this controlling force. We can now even, flybetween the stars, by this power. But your people don't have that brain,so we had to build spaceships to take you away."
"I see," she said.
"Your great-great-great-grandchildren can be like us, if your peoplewant to be changed thus," he said.
"They didn't want to change before," she answered. "I don't thinkthey'll do it now, even in their new home." Her voice held nobitterness; it was an acceptance.
Privately, Jorun doubted it. The psychic shock of this uprooting wouldbe bound to destroy the old traditions of the Terrans; it would not takemany centuries before they were culturally assimilated by Galacticcivilization.
Assimilated--nice euphemism. Why not just say--eaten?
* * * * *
They landed on the beach. It was broad and white, running in dunes fromthe thin, harsh, salt-streaked grass to the roar and tumble of surf. Thesun was low over the watery horizon, filling the damp, blowing air withgold. Jorun could almost look directly at its huge disc.
He sat down. The sand gritted tinily under him, and the wind rumpled hishair and filled his nostrils with its sharp wet smell. He picked up aconch and turned it over in his fingers, wondering at the intricatearchitecture of it.
"If you hold it to your ear," said Julith, "you can hear the sea." Herchildish voice was curiously tender around the rough syllables ofEarth's language.
He nodded and obeyed her hint. It was only the small pulse of bloodwithin him--you heard the same thing out in the great hollow silence ofspace--but it did sing of restless immensities, wind and foam, and thelong waves marching under the moon.
"I have two of them myself," said Julith. "I want them so I can alwaysremember this beach. And my children and their children will hold them,too, and hear our sea talking." She folded his fingers around the shell."You keep this one for yourself."
"Thank you," he said. "I will." The combers rolled in, booming andspouting against the land. The Terrans called them the horses of God. Athin cloud in the west was turning rose and gold.
"Are there oceans on our new planet?" asked Julith.
"Yes," he said. "It's the most Earth-like world we could find thatwasn't already inhabited. You'll be happy there."
_But the trees and grasses, the soil and the fruits thereof, the beastsof the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the watersbeneath, form and color, smell and sound, taste and texture, everythingis different. Is alien. The difference is small, subtle, but it is theabyss of two billion years of separate evolution, and no other world canever quite be Earth._
Julith looked straight at him with solemn eyes. "Are you folk afraid ofHulduvians?" she asked.
"Why, no," he said. "Of course not."
"Then why are you giving Earth to them?" It was a soft question, but ittrembled just a little.
"I thought all your people understood the reason by now," said Jorun."Civilization--the civilization of man and his nonhuman allies--hasmoved inward, toward the great star-clusters of Galactic center. Thispart of space means nothing to us any more; it's almost a desert. Youhaven't seen starlight till you've been by Sagittarius. Now theHulduvians are another civilization. They are not the least bit like us;they live on big, poisonous worlds like Jupiter and Saturn. I think theywould seem like pretty nice monsters if they weren't so alien to us thatneither side can really understand the other. They use the cosmicenergies too, but in a different way--and their way interferes with oursjust as ours interferes with theirs. Different brains, you see.
"Anyway, it was decided that the two civilizations would get along bestby just staying away from each other. If they divided up the Galaxybetween them, there would be no interference; it would be too far fromone civilization to the other. The Hulduvians were, really, very niceabout it. They're willing to take the outer rim, even if there are fewerstars, and let us have the center.
"So by the agreement, we've got to have all men and manlike beings outof their territory before they come to settle it, just as they'll moveout of ours. Their colonists won't be coming to Jupiter and Saturn forcenturies yet; but even so, we have to clear the Sirius Sector now,because there'll be a lot of work to do elsewhere. Fortunately, thereare only a few people living in this whole part of space. The SiriusSector has been an isolated, primi--ah--quiet region since the FirstEmpire fell, fifty thousand years ago."
Julith's voice rose a little. "But those people are _us_!"
"And the folk of Alpha Centauri and Procyon and Sirius and--oh, hundredsof other stars. Yet all of you together are only one tiny drop in thequadrillions of the Galaxy. Don't you see, Julith, you have to move forthe good of all of us?"
"Yes," she said. "Yes, I know all that."
She got up, shaking herself. "Let's go swimming."
Jorun smiled and shook his head. "No, I'll wait
for you if you want togo."
* * * * *
She nodded and ran off down the beach, sheltering behind a dune to puton a bathing-suit. The Terrans had a nudity taboo, in spite of the mildinterglacial climate; typical primitive irrationality. Jorun lay back,folding his arms behind his head, and looked up at the darkening sky.The evening star twinkled forth, low and white on the dusk-blue horizon.Venus--or was it Mercury? He wasn't sure. He wished he knew more aboutthe early history of the Solar System, the first men to ride theirthunderous rockets out to die on unknown