Toby shot him an irked look. “You’ve had all this time here. Why haven’t you figured it out?”
“Data’s hard to get, and subtle when you do. Most of the cards aren’t on the table—if there even is a table. And . . . well, point is, my family and I—”
“Family Brit?”
“No, no, in my time we thought of the nearest relatives as family. Family Brit was, shall we say, a manner of speaking.”
“You kept Family so small? Why?”
Walmsley’s eyes rolled up theatrically. “Comes to that, I’d sooner explain science than culture. Nikka and I, well, we were attempting a bit of an experiment, really. Wanted to get three generations together, for genetic reasons. Turned out wrong, since most of humanity had already genetically drifted away from—”
“Genetic? I don’t—”
“I’m getting ahead of myself. See, my family and I—just a few of us, not the bloody United Kingdom, see?—had discovered some odd scientific matters. Let me show you how it was.”
“And those Earthers—”
“Let me tell it my way.”
ELEVEN
The Earthers
They were not what he expected.
“Hope you weren’t hurt,” the tall woman said. English, slightly accented with flat a’s and odd, hollow e’s. She was the first Earther he had seen.
“Jostled a bit, is all,” Nigel tried to say lightly.
He had barely survived a brush with some mechs who had appeared to ooze straight out of the walls, like an elaborate magic trick. Then the Earthers had appeared and made short work of the strangely liquid mechs.
Earthers. Nigel had seen their fleet approaching the Lair, knew they were here, but in its Labyrinth was unsure of how to find them. They found him, instead.
“Why are you still speaking English?” he asked slowly.
“Oh, we have this archaic dialect as an inboard. We heard you speaking it.”
“Um. Very thoughtful.”
“Your transmissions used it.”
They moved with swift, sure movements, these people two heads taller than Nigel, caring for the wounded. He had taken a knock in the ribs, a pulse that broke the skin by frying it to a crisp, like a Thanksgiving turkey. He lay back and let the woman put a patch on it. The wound felt cold, then hot, then numb, and then he did not notice it at all.
So these were the people who had built starships—better by far than the mech ship Nigel and Nikka had come here in—and made it their duty to reach Galactic Center. He tried to view them objectively, though by their earlier messages he knew they were from several thousand years after his time on Earth. He tried to imagine what time’s juggernaut could bring after the dear dead TwenCen and the sobering TwenOne.
He lay back and watched them with slitted gaze. They spoke softly, used minimal sentences.
Be objective, now, old fellow. See them as just another organic race. Just another large mammal.
Hominids, yet different. He was somewhat gladdened to note that they still resembled the common chimps and pygmy chimps, just bigger and with less hair, walking upright. The visible differences between humans and chimps were far less than, say, between Great Danes and Chihuahuas. Yet dogs interbred and the chimps did not; the genome kept its secrets well hidden from the eye. Humans differed from chimps by a single percent in DNA. These folk were still of the species.
These Earthers had killed mechs with obvious relish, too. Very human. Not strictly a hominid trait; genocide occurred in wolves and chimps alike. Animal murder was widespread. Ducks and orangutans raped. Ants had organized warfare and slave raids. Chimps in the wild, he recalled, had at least as good a chance of being murdered as did humans in cities.
Nigel lay back, head woozy. Of all the hallowed human hallmarks—speech, art, technology, and the rest—the one that came most obviously from animal ancestors was genocide. Human tribes may well have evolved as a group defense. That no doubt helped, in those millennia separating him from these big, bright hominids.
“Clubbiness against clubs,” he said aloud. A dry crack of a voice. Yes, he was skimming, mind light as shining dust.
These Earthers had oddly shaped ears, more muscular frames, curious large eyes. Their uniforms were anything but uniform—technicolor wraparounds that shifted to different scenes in apparently random fashion. As the woman came over to check him again her loose garment abruptly showed him a sunlit seashore, waves crashing. To soothe him?
Art adorned other Earthers’ close-fitting clothes—collages, abstracts, grainy expressionist vistas. Woozy, he puzzled over that. Art was certainly not useful in the narrow senses employed by the animal behaviorists or evolutionary biologists. Why did Cro-Magnon develop it? Bird songs were a different matter; they helped woo a mate, defend an area. Why did humans, the Earthers, still have their fragile arts? Bower birds built airy confections of leaves, lace, and fungi, all in the pursuit of love, or genes. He scarcely thought abstract expressionism could make such a claim. Could all the heights of human artistry be a display strategy, like a peacock’s plumage?
He laughed at that and sat up. His fried side did not even ache. His head was clearer. Nikka stood a short distance away, talking to a huge fellow. Nigel waved.
Nikka and the man came over. “I’m Akran,” the man said, staring down, blinking rapidly. “Are you . . . Walmsley?”
“I believe so.”
“My Lord! To find you!”
“Just in time, too. Thanks.”
“But you—you are—still alive!”
“Somewhat.”
Other Earthers came running, formed a knot around Nikka and Nigel.
“It’s him!”
