“Only.” It did not catch the sarcasm.
“By design, they selected Lanes for high probability that one or more of the three genetic carriers would be present.”
“How many dead?” Pointless, but automatic.
“Unknown but exceeding five million primates. The species number count is higher still.”
“Over five million species?”
“We are vast.”
“So the Ecstasy Codes are out.”
“They will soon spread. To avert catastrophe we must summon all help.”
“I’m not much use.”
“You have been effective in the past.”
“Ummm.” He had seen the original Codes, known in more recent eras as the Trigger Commands. Portions of them had been handed down in the Galactic Library. For backup, the ancient Naturals had stored them genetically. That had been the purpose, really, of the Natural expedition to Earth so long ago. The wreck in Marginis crater he had helped explore, preserved in vacuum on Earth’s moon, had been a casualty in the struggle between the mechs and the Naturals, a carnage steeped in huge history before humanity had ever evolved.
And, he recalled wistfully, he had met Nikka there. Drawn to the shadowy half-felt mystery, they had recognized something in each other that went deep and true.
He pulled himself back from the memories. Some stuck with him, no matter what. “Bit difficult to know just who to save in all this.”
“The mechanicals are working on the Grand Problem.”
“Ummm. So I saw.” He remembered his long expedition to the stuttering end of time, using the worm. His sons and daughter, Benjamin and Ito and Angelina, were long gone into the Lanes, hotly pursuing their own energetic destinies. Now and then he used the Library resources to locate them. They would have grand reunions, swear to keep in better touch, and then they all would move on.
“You are thinking what?”
“Impatient, aren’t you?”
“The mechanicals will perish.”
“So? Primates are dying right now.”
“We cannot take sides in the sense that a specific species can.”
It fidgeted on the branch it appeared to hold in razor-sharp talons. Alarming, perhaps, if they had not been a tenth of a millimeter deep.
“You’re not a single species?”
“We are of a Phylum in which such subsections are meaningless. Species are a human category.”
“I don’t follow.”
“That is why you are in your Phylum.”
“Um. Have I just been insulted?”
“Have you ever insulted an ant?”
“Now I know I have been.”
“We cannot be partial to primates, I remind you.”
“Think I’m just too caught up in species-specific behaviors, then?”
“You must come.”
The bird skittered back and forth on its limb, imitating the nervous behavior of a pigeon waiting for a crumb. Good copy-work; they were getting better at nonverbal signals.
He sighed. How many times had he rushed off in aid of the crisis of the moment? He truly did not know, could not know. In time, even intense memories get discarded if they are not essential. And much of what he had done, down through millennia, had added up to very little.
I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled.
The Bishops were another story. “I’ll get my boots.”
TWO
The Gathering Up
Killeen and Toby had to get repairs before they were workable again. The slippage through the esty walls had bruised and sprained them in odd places. They had fallen into a mass of greasy vegetation and ended up chopping their way out into a Lane neither of them had ever seen.
Toby bubbled with joy. Killeen watched him and his heart filled with memories of Toby’s mother, of all the hard times since. He had found his son again, after what seemed years—though in the esty, he would never know how long it had been—and they were on the move again. They covered ground without speaking much and that was just fine, too.
The shadowy figure who had spoken did not appear again. “Better things to do, prob’ly,” Killeen said wanly, nursing his right leg. His inboards said it had a lot of chem repairs to do and he should sit still. Or lie down. Neither was easy.
