“But you have survived. In my time, for a while at least, we were afraid mankind might not. It follows that you must have cured the problems which worried us. I find I’m fascinated by the idea of seeing a far-distant future civilisation, even though I may find many aspects of it incomprehensible. If I seem dull-witted, bear with me. Evolution must have taken place on the mental as well as the physical plane.”
“Yes, that is true,” Horad confirmed. “Still, the fact that we have been able to establish communication argues that there is continuity between humans of your age and of this. I have thought of a way of expressing how much time has elapsed since your original existence. We are approximately as distant from you as you were from the creatures who spoke in grunts, shaped animal-horns and branches into tools, but were still terrified of fire and ate their food uncooked. Yet there are few differences in form between you and me: somewhat less hair—for instance I judge you were capable of growing a beard although you did not do so, whereas I am not—and longer limbs and smaller torsos and marginally greater cranial capacity. We mature later, sexually speaking; we have lost the ability to metabolise certain essential compounds from their chemical precursors, or in other words we require two more vitamins than you did. And there are other petty differences. Nonetheless we are equipped to communicate with you, while you could not have conversed with your correspondingly remote ancestor.”
“Because I’m not myself even though I imagine that I am. In fact I’m only your collective percept.” The statement was hurtful to utter, but Lodovico felt obliged.
“True. Remember, though, you are as exact a percept as we, with millennia of knowledge and skill you’re unaware of, have been able to contrive,” said Genua. “In your day, if what data have endured may be relied on, reconstructions of extinct primitive organisms had been attempted by combining fossil relics with guidelines based on species still surviving that had changed little over aeons. Not much later, some of the great reptiles were actually bred again from modified cousins or descendants. You are the result of a corresponding technique applied to consciousness instead of physical shape.”
“Why me?” Lodovico demanded.
“Chance brought us sufficient data to derive you. I regret to say”—this from Orlalee with a wry smile—“it is not because you became famous through the millennia!”
“No, I meant: why do it at all? Am I the first, or is this something you nowadays do routinely?”
“You are the very first,” Horad said. “As for the underlying reason . . .” He shrugged; it was curious to see how the gesture had endured, and disturbing to see how differently the muscles moved on that bird-light body . . . and most disturbing of all not to see, because he couldn’t bear to look, the matching movement of the whatever-it-wasn’t that Horad “wore.”
“So I am an experiment,” said Lodovico.
“That is so.”
“You plan to study me? Interrogate me?”
“Naturally.”
“And”—with boldness that surprised him—“is there any bargain between us?”
“Yes, of course,” Orlalee said. “Even before we commence studying you, we wish you to agree that the trouble you are being put to is justified. First, therefore, we must show you our world. If, after inspecting it, you decide you would prefer not to assist us, you may cease. Obviously we shall make another attempt, but we shall be resigned to the same outcome—and so on and on, if necessary for many generations.”
“It is unbefitting,” said Genua, “to run counter to another’s will.”
“All by itself that promise makes me like your world,” said Lodovico. “Show it to me.”
Struck by a sudden thought, he added, “By the way . . . is it still Earth?”
Visions of other solar systems blazed and faded in his mind in a fraction of a heartbeat.
“Yes,” Horad said. “After all this time, it is still Earth.”
* * *
But an Earth its inhabitants had learned to love, with all its ulcers healed. It still had mountains and oceans and rivers, valleys and forests and plains, blue sky and white clouds that sometimes darkened and uttered the ancient bark of thunder. Almost at once, however, he began to notice changes. There were trees he could not put a name to. Friendly fish of no species he recognised came ambling up beaches on stubby leg-cww-fin limbs, and often as he was passing a flowered vine it would reach out in his direction and breathe a gust of perfume over him, then fall back quivering as though with unheard private laughter.
Essentially, though, the planet remained as recognisable as its people, and in all respects bar one the latter delighted him. He found the children charming, while young parents behaved to their offspring with such a natural, unpremeditated blend of firmness and tenderness that they might have been animals uncomplicated by theory and dogma.
This much was a fulfilment of his fondest dreams.
But the older folk! They frightened him! They were all sort-of-clad, and what they “wore” was the finished version of the thing (?) that made Horad hard to look at.
Certain of these old ones, Lodovico could not even turn his head towards.
“It is because in your former existence, although you possessed the sense by which you now perceive them, there was nothing for you to use that sense on.” This by way of explanation from Orlalee. It left him more confused than ever, and she tried to amplify her statement.
“You think you are seeing them,” she offered. “This is not so. You are detecting them by their act in perceiving you.”
“You mean I am a percept to them, as well? To—to a bunch of garments?” He understood well, now, why a
