“My people are also divided into many types,” the Delivery Man said as he watched Tyzak open the sacks. Various fruits and roots were taken out and dropped into pots. Water from a large urn at the center of the benches was added. Finally, the alien sprinkled in some blue-white powder from a small sachet. The contents of the pots began to bubble.
“I will listen to your stories of division,” Tyzak said. “They connect to me.”
“Thank you. And the story of the place where your ancestors left? I would very much like to know it, to visit the site itself.”
“We will go there.”
That wasn’t quite the reply the Delivery Man was expecting. “That is good news. Shall I call for my ship? It can take us anywhere on this world.”
“I understand your offer is intended to be kindness. However, I do not wish to travel on your ship. I will walk to the place of separation.”
“Oh, crap,” Gore said. “This could take months, years. Just try and get the damn monster to tell you where it is. Tell him you’ll meet him there if necessary.”
“I regret I am not able to walk very far on your world,” the Delivery Man said. “I need my own kind of food. Perhaps we could meet at the place.”
“It is barely two days away,” Tyzak said. “Can you not travel that far?”
“Yes, I can travel that far.”
“Hot damn,” Gore was saying. “Your new friend must mean the city at the far end of the valley. There’s nowhere else it can be.”
The Delivery Man’s secondary routines were pulling files out of his lacuna and splashing them across his exovision. “We checked a building there four days ago, right next to a big plaza on the west side. You went in. There was an exotic matter formation, some kind of small wormhole stabilizer. Nonoperational. We assumed it was connected to an orbital station or something that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“That just shows you how stupid it is to assume anything about aliens,” Gore said. “We’ve found fifty-three exactly like it and dismissed them all.”
“They were all in different cities,” the Delivery Man said, reviewing a planetary map in his exovision. “Well distributed geographically. I suppose they could be an abandoned transport network like the old Trans-Earth-Loop.”
“Yeah, that was before your time, but I used it often enough. Whatever, I’m on my way to the city now. I’m going to scan and analyze that mother down to its last negative atom. I’ll find out what the hell it does before you’ve had lunch.”
Tyzak walked through into one of the back rooms. The Delivery Man considered it a minor miracle the old alien didn’t bash its antennae on the ceiling. But each movement was deft, and it ducked under the doorway without pausing.
“Lucky we picked a village close to the actual elevation mechanism,” the Delivery Man responded. He couldn’t believe it himself. Probability was stacked way too high against such a thing.
“About time we got a break,” Gore replied.
The Delivery Man knew damn well he didn’t believe it, either. Perhaps Tyzak is just going to use the wormhole to take us to the elevation mechanism. Maybe that’s what the transport mechanism is for. No, that’s stupid. If he won’t use a starship to fly to the city, he’s not going to use a wormhole. Damn!
The Anomine came back into the main room dressed in what resembled loops of thick cloth dyed in bright colors and embellished with stone beads. It was actually an elaborate garment, the Delivery Man acknowledged, covering the long tapering abdomen while allowing the legs and arms complete freedom of movement.
They set off straightaway, walking down the slope through the village, then crossing the river on an arched stone bridge that was old enough for the outer stone to be flaking away.
“How long has your village been here?” the Delivery Man asked.
“Seven hundred years.”
The fields and orchards on the other side of the water were neatly tended. Anomine adults moved along the rows of trees, reaching up to snip the fruit stems with their strong upper arm pincer claws. They were mostly the mothers, the Delivery Man guessed from their coloration. The Anomine life cycle followed a simple progression from neutral youngsters to adult female to elder male, with each stage lasting about twenty-five years. It was very unusual for an adult to live past eighty.
That he simply could not get his head around. He knew they’d had complete mastery of genetic manipulation in the past, giving them the ability to extend their lives. That, too, had been rejected and neutralized so that they could follow their original evolutionary path. There was no human faction that would ever follow such a tenet; even the Naturals went in for good old-fashioned rejuvenation every thirty years. The desire to cling to life was screwed into the human psyche deep beyond any psychoneural profiling to remove.
Like hope, he thought. I’m carrying on this ridiculous charade of Gore’s because it gives me hope. It’s the only way I know that might possibly deliver me back to Lizzie and the kids. Ozzie alone knows what madness Ilanthe has planned when she reaches the Void, but no one else has any idea how to stop her. If only this wasn’t so … frail. If only I could bring myself to believe in what I’m doing.
The Delivery Man raised his head. High above, the ancient orbital debris band shimmered faintly through breaks in the cloud, like a motionless strand of silver cirrus. He sighed at the sight. Signs and portents in the sky, that’s what I’m searching for now. How pathetic is that? And I think the Anomine are weak and strange because they reembrace their primitive life. A life that doesn’t threaten the galaxy. A life which doesn’t tear fathers from their families.
He opened the link to Gore. “What are you going to do after? If we win?”
“Get back out of this goddamn meat animal for a start, back into ANA, where I can think properly again.”
“But isn’t that the problem? Look what our evolutionary drive has pushed us to.”
“You think we’re suffering overreach, sonny? You think arrogance is the root of all this?”
“In a way, yes.”
“Ha, in a way: for fucking certain. That’s why we need to keep going, keep pushing the human development boundary. All of us need to boost our responsibility and rationality genes to the maximum. It’s the only way to survive peacefully in a galaxy as dangerous as this one.”
“That’s an old argument.”
“And completely valid. Maybe the one argument that has remained relevant for our entire history. Without education and understanding, the barbarians would have outnumbered us and swarmed the city gates a long time ago.”
“She’s making a pretty good go of it right now, isn’t she?”
“Ilanthe? Typical case, educated way, way beyond her IQ, with ambition stronger than ability. She’s just another cause fascist, son, and that’s the worst kind; they always know they’re right. Anyone who dissents for whatever reason is evil and an enemy, existing only to be crushed.”
He wouldn’t have believed it could happen, but the Delivery Man actually felt himself smile as he walked on through the alien groves and meadows. “So very different from your liberalism, huh?”
“You got it, sonny.”
Before long the cultivated fields gave way to the valley’s tangled grassland. Tyzak chose a small path that curved around to run parallel with the major river several miles away. That put the Delivery Man facing the giant empty city that straddled the mouth of the valley; its grandiose towers and arresting domes were barely visible through the late-morning haze.
That vision. The clean air. The bright sunlight. Walking to a definite goal. Whatever the reason, he actually began to feel a sense of purpose again. Not confidence exactly, but it would do for a start.
“I can go faster,” he told Tyzak.
The big alien started to lengthen its stride, bouncing along in an effortless rhythm. The Delivery Man matched it, relishing the urgency their speed brought. I’m doing it, he told Lizzie and the kids silently. I’m coming for you, I promise.