“Can’t you say more closely?” Wayfarer-Brannock appealed.
“No,” replied Alpha. “The uncertainties and imponderables are too many. Gaia,” mythic name for the node in the Solar System, “has responded to inquiries evasively when at all.”
“Have … we … really been this slow to think about Earth?”
“We had much else to think about and do, did we not? Gaia could at any time have requested special consideration. She never did. Thus, the matter did not appear to be of major importance. Human Earth is preserved in memory. What is posthuman Earth but a planet approaching the postbiological phase?
“True, the scarcity of spontaneously evolved biomes makes the case interesting. However, Gaia has presumably been observing and gathering the data, for the rest of us to examine whenever we wish. The Solar System has seldom had visitors. The last was two million years ago. Since then, Gaia has joined less and less in our fellowship; her communications have grown sparse and perfunctory. But such withdrawals are not unknown. A node may, for example, want to pursue a philosophical concept undisturbed, until it is ready for general contemplation. In short, nothing called Earth to our attention.”
“I would have remembered,” whispered Christian Brannock.
“What finally reminded us?” asked Wayfarer.
“The idea that Earth may be worth saving. Perhaps it holds more than Gaia knows of”—a pause—“or has told of. If nothing else, sentimental value.”
“Yes, I understand,” said Christian Brannock.
“Moreover, and potentially more consequential, we may well have experience to gain, a precedent to set. If awareness is to survive the mortality of the stars, it must make the universe over. That work of billions or trillions of years will begin with some small, experimental undertaking. Shall it be now,” the “now” of deathless beings already geologically old, “at Earth?”
“Not small,” murmured Wayfarer. Christian Brannock had been an engineer.
“No,” agreed Alpha. “Given the time constraint, only the resources of a few stars will be available. Nevertheless, we have various possibilities open to us, if we commence soon enough. The question is which would be the best—and, first, whether we should act.
“Will you go seek an answer?”
“Yes,” responded Wayfarer, and “Yes, oh, God damn, yes,” cried Christian Brannock.
2
A spaceship departed for Sol. A laser accelerated it close to the speed of light, energized by the sun and controlled by a network of interplanetary dimensions. If necessary, the ship could decelerate itself at journey’s end, travel freely about, and return unaided, albeit more slowly. Its cryomagnetics supported a good-sized ball of antimatter, and its total mass was slight. The material payload amounted simply to: a matrix, plus backup, for running the Wayfarer programs and containing a database deemed sufficient; assorted sensors and effectors; several bodies of different capabilities, into which he could download an essence of himself; miscellaneous equipment and power systems; a variety of instruments; and a thing ages forgotten, which Wayfarer had ordered molecules to make at the wish of Christian Brannock. He might somewhere find time and fingers for it.
A guitar.
II
There was a man called Kalava, a sea captain of Sirsu. His clan was the Samayoki. In youth he had fought well at Broken Mountain, where the armies of Ulonai met the barbarian invaders swarming north out of the desert and cast them back with fearsome losses. He then became a mariner. When the Ulonaian League fell apart and the alliances led by Sirsu and Irrulen raged across the land, year after year, seeking each other’s throats, Kalava sank enemy ships, burned enemy villages, bore treasure and captives off to market.
After the grudgingly made, unsatisfactory Peace of Tuopai, he went into trade. Besides going up and down the River Lonna and around the Gulf of Sirsu, he often sailed along the North Coast, bartering as he went, then out over the Windroad Sea to the colonies on the Ending Islands. At last, with three ships, he followed that coast east through distances hitherto unknown. Living off the waters and what hunting parties could bring from shore, dealing or fighting with the wild tribes they met, in the course of months he and his crews came to where the land bent south. A ways beyond that they found a port belonging to the fabled people of the Shining Fields. They abode for a year and returned carrying wares that at home made them rich.
From his clan Kalava got leasehold of a thorp and good farmland in the Lonna delta, about a day’s travel from Sirsu. He meant to settle down, honored and comfortable. But that was not in the thought of the gods nor in his nature. He was soon quarreling with all his neighbors, until his wife’s brother grossly insulted him and he killed the man. Thereupon she left him. At the clanmoot that composed the matter she received a third of the family wealth, in gold and moveables. Their daughters and the husbands of these sided with her.
Of Kalava’s three sons, the eldest had drowned in a storm at sea; the next died of the Black Blood; the third, faring as an apprentice on a merchant vessel far south to Zhir, fell while resisting robbers in sand-drifted streets under the time-gnawed colonnades of an abandoned city. They left no children, unless by slaves. Nor would Kalava, now; no free woman took his offers of marriage. What he had gathered through a hard lifetime would fall to kinfolk who hated him. Most folk in Sirsu shunned him too.
Long he
