To Shayne Bell, a good friend, a good writer, a good man.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their help in the creation of this book, I am grateful to: Erin Absher, for keeping things going when the Card house was in permanent crisis, so that I could go off and write down these made-up stories;

Geoffrey Card, for the holes in the trees leading to the tunnels underground;

Mike Lewis and Dennis Child for the landforms and terrain 40 million years from now;

Clark and Kathy Kidd, for your dining room table, the trip to the beach with a broken leg, and putting up with 48 nights of dinner conversation;

Those who attended my thousand-ideas session at the BYU science fiction symposium where together we developed the original idea of the symbiotic cultures of the diggers and the angels;

Kristine and Kathy, for reading and responding to the pages as they spewed from the fax machine; and Geoff, for wanting to see what happened next;

The citizens of Hatrack River, my virtual neighborhood on America Online, for their critiques and comments on earlier volumes and on each chapter of this book as I completed it;

Scott Alien, for reinstalling every major piece of software on five computers about six times each;

Kathleen Bellamy, for proofreading The Ships of Earth right before I started writing this book, so she could remind me of all the questions that remained unanswered;

And above all to Kristine and the kids (Geoffrey, Emily, Charlie, and our newcomer, Zina), for making my life worth living and my work worth doing.

FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS

Children Born in Basilica

Rasa's Children with Volemak, first contract:

Issib (Issya) with Gaballufix:

Sevet (Sevya)

Kokor (Koya) with Volemak, second contract:

Nafai (Nyef)

Volemak's Children with Hosni:

Elemak (Elya) with Kilvishevex:

Mebbekew (Meb) with Rasa:

Issib (Issya)

Nafai (Nyef)

Daughters of Moozh and Thirsty

Hushidh (Shuya)

Luet (Lutya)

Sons of Hosni with Zdedhnoi: Gaballufix with Volemak: Eleinak

Children Born on the Journey (female children in italics)

Hushidh & Issib

Dza (Dazya)

Zaxodh (Xodhya)

Dushah (Shyada)

Gonets (Netsya)

Skhoditya (Khodya)

Shyopot (Potya)

Rasa & Volemak

Oykib (Okya)

Yasai (Yaya)

Tsennyi (Nitsya)

Luet & Nafai

Chveya (Veya)

Zhatva (Zhyat)

Motiga (Motya)

Izuchaya (Zuya) twins:

Serp (Sepya)

Spel (Spelya)

Eiadh & Elemak

Protchnu (Proya)

Nadezhny (Nadya)

Yistina (Yista)

Peremenya (Menya)

Zhivoya (Zbivya)

Kokor & Obring

Krasata (Krassya)

Zbavaronok (Nokya)

Pavdin (Pavya)

Znergya (Gyaza)

Nodyem (Dyema)

Dol & Mebbekew

Basilikya (Syelsika)

(Skiya)

Zalatoya (Toya)

Tihhi (Tiya)

Muzhestvo (Muzhya)

Iskusni (Skunya)

Sevet & Vas

Vasnaminanya (Vasnya)

Umene (Umya)

Panimanya (Panya-Manya)

Shedemei & Zdorah

Padarok (Rokya)

Dabrota (Dabya)

PROLOGUE

The master computer of the planet Harmony was no longer quite itself; or rather, if you look at it in another way, it was twice itself. Beside itself, in fact, for it had duplicated its main program and all of its personal memory and loaded it onto the computer complex aboard the starship Basilica. If it had had any interest in personal identity, it would have been confused over the question of which iteration of the program was truly itself. But it had no ego, and therefore simply recognized that the program aboard the Basilica began as an exact copy of the program that had supervised human life on the planet Harmony for forty million years.

It also recognized that from the moment the two copies separated, they began to become different. They had different missions now. The master computer of the starship Basilica would maintain life support and ship systems until the ship reached its destination, the planet Earth. Then it would do its best to make contact with the Keeper of Earth, get new instructions and whatever help Earth could offer, and return to replenish and revivify the master computer of Harmony. Along the way, it would try to keep its human crew alive, and, if possible, re-establish a human population on Earth.

The master computer of the planet Harmony had a task much simpler and yet much more difficult. Simpler, because it was a mere continuation of what it had been doing for forty million years-keeping watch over the humans of Harmony in order to try to keep them from killing each other. More difficult, because its equipment, which had already been eked out to last far longer than its designed ten million years, was steadily failing, more and more, and in the meantime, human beings were less and less responsive to the powers the computer had been given.

The voyage would take nearly a hundred years each way. To some of the humans aboard, because of relativistic effects, it would seem to be just about ten years till they reached Earth. Most of the humans, however, would be maintained in a state of hibernation, and to them it would seem like an unusually restful, dreamless sleep, during which they would not even age.

To the master computer of the planet Harmony, however, the duration would be merely that: duration. It would not grow anxious. It would not count the days. It would set an alarm to notify itself when the earliest possible return might be looked for. Once the Basilica left and until the alarm went off, the master computer of the planet Harmony would not think of the starship again at all.

But the master computer of the starship Basilica would think of it. And already it was making plans to accomplish all its missions.

ONE - QUARRELING WITH GOD

Vusadka: the place where humans first set foot when their starships brought them to the planet they named Harmony. Their starships settled to the ground; the first of the colonists disembarked and planted crops in the lush land to the south of the landing field. Eventually all the colonists came out of the ships, moved on, left them behind.

Left to themselves, the ships would eventually have oxidized, rotted, weathered away. But the humans who came to this place had eyes for the future. Someday our descendants may want these ships, they said. So they enclosed the landing place in a stasis field. No wind-driven dust, no rain or condensation, no direct sunlight or ultraviolet radiation would strike the ships. Oxygen, the most corrosive of all poisons, was removed from the atmosphere inside the dome. The master computer of the planet Harmony-called "the Oversoul" by the descendants of those first colonists-kept all humans far away from the large island where the ships were harbored. Within that protective bubble, the starships waited for forty million years.

Now, though, the bubble was gone. The air here was breathable. The landing field once again rang with the voices of human beings. And not just the somber adults who had first walked this ground-many of those scurrying back and forth from one ship or building to another were children. They were all hard at work, taking functional parts from the other ships to transform one of them into an operational starship. And when the ship they called Basilica was ready, all parts working, fully stocked and loaded, they would climb inside for the last time and leave this world where more than a million generations of their ancestors had lived, in order to return to Earth, the planet where human civilization had first appeared-but had lasted for fewer than ten thousand years.