“And her! She’s the one mentioned in Message Fifty-seven.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Sure it is. Look at him.”
“After all this time?”
“He’s been inside this twisted space-time.”
“Don’t forget the Long Sleep.”
“Still, it’s incredible that—”
“It’s Walmsley.”
Nigel gazed up into their faces and felt woozy. They all started speaking and Nikka beamed down at him—she seemed to understand what was going on—and they talked so fast he could barely get the idea.
One of them played a recording then and Nigel heard his own voice, reedy and precise.
“Hello? Data follows on the molecular cloud we’re passing through. Still on course, apparently.”
A blur of data, then: “This is humanity’s expedition. On high boost, flying inward.”
Static. A sizzling hiss, like fat frying. “Hello? We’re still here. Are you?”
The Earthers stood silently, long after the recording finished.
“We got your messages every few centuries,” Akran said. “You know about the first assault, mechs dumping alien life into your seas? We received your first transmission just as we were getting the upper hand over those.”
Nigel frowned. “So you really didn’t need help from us—”
“Oh no! That was just the first. The second time, they tried to pound us with asteroids. Lots of them. Nearly got us, that time.”
Nigel shook his head to clear it. “We sent you some mech gear, data—”
“We got them. Helped a lot. That was at the worst of the third assault, the Ferret Time. That lasted five centuries.”
“My God,” Nikka said. “The mechs had that strong a force?”
“Of course,” Akran said. “Then the smart ones arrived. Tried to fool us. We lost a big piece of Earth to them. That took a thousand years.”
Nigel said, “And you kept getting my messages?”
Akron nodded eagerly. “We put up big antennas. First in orbit, then all around the solar system. Mechs kept finding them, smashing them.”
Nigel thought of the centuries of struggle and sighed. The world revolved with a serene grace, people and dirt starting to spin left to right—
“Is he tired?” Akran said with alarm. “We can talk later, let him sleep—”
“Go on,” Nikka said. Nigel could only nod.
“We did miss some of the messages, when the mechs came at us with positron weapons. But we got antennas back up on the moon after about four hundred years. That was after the poles melted and we lost most of the continents.”
“Good grief,” Nigel managed to wheeze out.
“But we got all the rest. Nobody wanted the next one to find an empty Earth. So we pulled ourselves up. Searched the whole damn solar system for the last mech outposts. They were pretty well hidden, some down in Jupiter’s clouds. And we got every one.”
Nigel blinked. The world had stopped revolving and he was beginning to understand. “And came . . .”
“Here. To find out what had happened to you. And what’s this whole thing all about.”
Hello? We’re still here. Are you?
He saw in the faces something like awe. To them he and Nikka and the others were antique historical pieces, incredibly ancient.
Immensely capable, these Earthers were. The mechs would fear them.
Nigel blinked, smiled. “We’re still here. Still here.” It seemed very amusing and he could not talk anymore for the lump in his throat.
TWELVE
Sobering Perspectives
That was the high point. Of course it was fine and wonderful to meet his own kind again, humans from dear beloved Earth.
But in time, his first fuzzy perceptions as he lay there wounded, of the Earthers as bright chimps, made more and more ironic sense. They were human, true. Smart chimps. But far more. Changed.
The mech onslaughts against Earth had forced human evolution—both through biotech enhancements and natural selection. The Earthers had implants that gave them sensoria—complex electromagnetic shells, useful for both war and work. Their spines rode better, on thick lumbar disks. They carried no pesky appendix to fester and erupt. Their bodies had intricate neurological meshes, better metabolism, rugged cartilage, sturdier bones.
