“Your ancestors reached farther than we have in so many ways,” the Delivery Man said. “Our debt to them is enormous. They safeguarded so many stars from an aggressive race, for which we are forever grateful.”
“You speak of the oneness which lives around two stars. It sought to devour all other life.”
“You know of them?”
“Our life path is separate from our great ancestors, for which we feel sorrow, but we rejoice in their achievements. They went on to become something other, something magnificent.”
“Yet you didn’t follow them. Why was that?”
“This planet created us. It should choose the nature of our final days.”
“Sounds like another goddamn religion to me,” Gore said over the secure link.
“More like our factions,” the Delivery Man countered. “Their version of the Accelerators went off and elevated, while the Natural Darwinists wanted to see what nature intended for them.”
More Anomine were coming down from their houses, jumping easily onto the ground from thin doorways several meters above the ground. Once they were on the ground, they moved surprisingly swiftly. Long legs carried them forward in a fast loping gait, with each stride almost a bounce. As they moved, they bobbed forward at a precarious angle.
Their balance was much better than a human’s, the Delivery Man decided, even though the motion sparked an inappropriate comparison to a pigeon walk.
A group of younger ones bounded over. He was soon surrounded by Anomine children who simply couldn’t keep still. They bopped up and down as they chattered loudly among themselves, discussing him, the strange creature with its odd body and clothes and weak-looking pincers and fur on top. The noise level was almost painful to his ears.
He heard Tyzak explaining what he was.
“Where do you come from?” one of the children asked. It was taller than its fellows, getting on toward the Delivery Man’s height, and its apricot skin was darkening to a light shade of green.
“A planet called Earth, which is light-years from here.”
“Why are you here?”
“I search out wisdom. Your ancestors knew so much.”
The children’s high-pitched calls increased. The translator caught it as a round of self-reinforcing: “Yes. Yes, they did.”
“I eat now,” Tyzak said. “Will you join me?”
“That would please me,” the Delivery Man assured him.
Tyzak stood swiftly, scattering several of the children, who bounded about in circles. He started walking toward one of the nearby houses, moving fast. His lower curving legs seemed almost to roll off the ground. The Delivery Man jogged alongside, keeping pace. “I should tell you, I may not be physically able to eat most of your food.”
“I understand. It is unlikely your biochemistry is compatible with our plants.”
“You understand the concept of biochemistry?”
“We are not ignorant, star traveler. We simply do not apply our knowledge as you do.”
“I understand.”
Tyzak reached his house and jumped up to a small platform outside the door. The Delivery Man took a fast look at the thick posts the house stood on and swarmed up the one below the platform.
“You are different,” Tyzak announced, and went inside.
The membrane windows allowed a lot of light to filter through. Now that he was inside, the Delivery Man could see oil-rainbow patterns on the taut surface, which he thought must be some kind of skin or bark that had been cured. Inside, Tyzak’s house was divided into three rooms. There wasn’t much furniture in the largest one where they entered. Some plain chests were lined up along an inner wall. There were three curious cradle contraptions that the Delivery Man guessed were chairs and five benches arranged in a central pentagon, all of which were covered by fat earthenware pots.
His first impression was that half of them were boiling their contents. Bubbles fizzed away in their open tops. And the air was so pungent, it made his eyes water. He recognized the scent of rotting or fermenting fruit, but so much stronger than he’d ever smelled before.
After a moment he realized there was no heater or fire in the room even though the air was a lot warmer than outside. The pots really were fermenting-vigorously. When he took a peek in one, the sticky mass it held reminded him of jam, but before the fruit was properly pulped.
Tyzak pulled one of the pots toward him and bent over it, opening his clam mouth wide enough to cover the top. The Delivery Man had a brief glimpse of hundreds of little tooth mandibles wiggling before the Anomine closed his mouth and sucked the contents down in a few quick gulps.
“Would you like to sample some of my ›no direct translation: cold-cook conserve/soup‹?” Tyzak asked. “I know the sharing of food ritual has significance to your kind. There must be one here harmless enough for you to ingest.”
“No, thank you. So you do remember members of my species visiting this world before?”
“We hold the stories dear.” Tyzak picked up another pot and closed his mouth around it.
“No one else seems interested in me except for the younger villagers.”
“I will tell the story of you at our gathering. The story will spread from village to village as we cogather. Within twenty years the world will know your story. From that moment on you will be told and retold to the new generations. You will never be lost to us, star traveler.”
“That is gratifying to know. You must know a lot of stories, Tyzak.”
“I do. I am old enough to have heard many. So many that they now begin to fade from me. This is why I tell them again and again, so they are not lost.”
“Stupid,” Gore observed. “They’re going to lose a lot of information like that. We know they used to have a culture of writing; you can’t develop technology without basic symbology, especially math. Why dump that? Their history is going to get badly distorted this way; that’s before it dies out altogether.”
“Don’t worry,” the Delivery Man told him. “What we need is too big to be lost forever; they’ve certainly still got that.”
“Yeah, sure; the suspense is killing me.”
“I would hear stories of your ancestors,” the Delivery Man said to Tyzak. “I would like to know how it was that they left this world, this universe.”
“All who visit us upon this world wish this story above everything else. I have many other stories to tell. There is one of Gazuk, whose bravery saved five youngsters from drowning when a bridge fell. I listened to Razul tell her own story of holding a flock of ›no direct translation: wolf-equivalent‹ at bay while her sisters birthed. Razul was old when I attended that cogathering, but his words remain true. There are stories of when Fozif flew from this world atop a machine of flame to walk upon Ithal, our neighboring planet, the first of our kind ever to do such a thing. That is our oldest story; from that grows all stories of our kind thereafter.”
“Which do you want to tell me?”
“Every story of our beautiful world. That is what we live for. So that everything may be known to all of us.”
“But isn’t that contrary to what you are? Knowledge lies in the other direction, the technology and science you have turned from.”
“That is the story of machines. That story has been told. It is finished. We tell the stories of ourselves now.”
“I think I understand. It is not what was achieved by your ancestors but the individuals who achieved it.”
“You grow close to our story, to living with us. To hear the story of what we are today, you must hear all our stories.”
“I regret that my time on your world is short. I would be grateful for any story you can tell me about your ancestors and the way they left this universe behind. Do you know where this great event took place?”
Tyzak gulped down another pot. He went over to the chests and opened the hinged lids. Small, bulging cloth sacks were taken out and carried over to the benches. “There is a story that tells of the great parting which will never fade from me. It is most important to us, for that is how our kind was split. Those who left and those who proclaimed their allegiance to our planet and the destiny it had birthed us for. To this time we regret the separation, for we will never now be rejoined.”