“And what did that tell you?” asked Asteague/Che. The formidable little Europan seemed privately amused, rather as a teacher might be when a student suddenly showed unexpected promise.

“It told me that these old-styles weren’t born to begin with,” said Orphu of Io. “They were decanted.”

“Virgin birth?” asked Cho Li, the Callistan’s odd voice dripping sarcasm.

“Of a sort,” said Orphu, his easy, rumbling tones suggesting that he’d taken no offense at the sarcasm. “I think the post-humans have and had a million or so human memories and personalities and data on bodies stored in those orbital memory devices—who knows? Perhaps one satellite per human being—and they restocked the herd. Which leads to the explanation of why the population appears to have peaked at one million every few centuries, dropped to a few thousand, then jumped back to a million as if by magic.”

“Why?” asked Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo. As with Mahnmut, the rockvec soldier sounded honestly curious.

“Minimum herd population,” said Orphu. “The post-humans seem to have allowed the old-styles to breed only to half of replacement numbers… that is, one baby per woman. And then only when there had been a death. And I’ve read the conjecture that the old-styles live exactly one Earth century and then disappear. Enough to keep the herd going given climate changes or whatever, not so many they could overbreed or wander off the reservation, but the population drops rapidly. Then, every thousand years or so, they restock the herd to its maximum size of one million old-styles. Because women have only one child, the population begins dropping until the next restocking.”

“Where did you read that old-style humans lived precisely a century?” asked Cho Li. He sounded shocked.

“In The Scientific Ganymedan,” said Orphu. “I’ve had a broadcast subscription for more than eight centuries.”

Prime Integrator Asteague/Che held up his very humanoid hand. “You’ll have to pardon me, Orphu of Io, but while I congratulate you on your deductions about the purpose of the orbital devices and about the precise longevity we’ve observed of the remaining hundred thousand old-style human beings—at least until recent months, during which time there’s been quite a drop-off in population due to these attacks by creatures unknown—you said that you could tell us why there are Greek gods on Mars, who the Voice is, how Mars was so miraculously terraformed, and what is causing the current quantum instability on both Earth and Mars.”

“I’m getting to that,” said Orphu. “Do you want me to condense it and put the whole Theory of Everything into a high-speed tightbeam squirt? That’d take less than a second.”

“No, no need for that,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che. “But perhaps speak more rapidly. We have less than three hours before we have to launch the dropship—or not—during the aerobraking maneuver.”

Orphu of Io rumbled on the subsonic levels in a way that Mahnmut had long interpreted as laughter.

“The old-style humans are clustered around some three hundred localized habitation centers on five continents of Earth, correct?” said the Ionian.

“Correct,” said Cho Li.

“And the populations around these nodes vary,” said Orphu, “yet our telescopes have never picked up any signs of transport—no major roads in use, no aircraft, no ships—not even quaint sailing ships like the one Mahnmut and I traveled the length of Mars’ Valles Marineris in—not even an occasional hot air balloon. So we assumed that the old-style humans were quantum teleporting, even though our moravec scientists could never perfect that mode of travel.”

“It was a reasonable assumption,” said Suma IV.

“Reasonable,” agreed Orphu of Io, “but wrong. We know now because of the quantum data left by the so-called Olympian gods on Mars and on the otherdimensional Earth where the battle for Troy is still being fought what real quantum teleportation looks like. We know its footprint, and what the old-style humans were doing to get from Point A to Point B ain’t it.”

“If the old-style humans aren’t quantum teleporting,” said Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo, “then how have they been moving instantaneously from one place to the other on Earth for more than fourteen hundred years?”

“The old-fashioned idea of teleportation,” said Orphu. “Storing all the data of a human being’s body and mind and personality in code, breaking down the matter into energy, beaming it, then reassembling it elsewhere, just as in the old TV broadcast series from the Lost Era—Star Truck.”

“Trek,” corrected General Beh bin Adee.

“Aha!” said Orphu of Io. “Another fan.”

The General clacked barbed killing claws in embarrassment or irritation.

“Our scientists long since determined that storing such incredible amounts of data would be impossible,” said Cho Li. “It would require more terabytes of storage space than there are atoms in the universe.”

“Evidently the post-humans found a way to build that memory storage,” said Orphu, “because the old-style humans have been teleporting their butts off for centuries. Not true quantum-level teleportation of the kind our friend Hockenberry or the Olympian gods carry off, but the crude mechanical ripping apart of molecules and reassembling of them somewhere else.”

“Why would they do that for the old-style humans?” asked Mahnmut. “Why such an incredible engineering project for a few hundred thousand people whom they treat almost like pets… like creatures in a zoo? We’ve seen no signs of new human engineering, city building, or creativity for more than that millennium and a half.”

“Maybe the teleportation itself has something to do with that cultural retardation,” said Orphu. “Maybe not. But I’m convinced that’s what we’re looking at down there. It’s a case of ‘Beam me up, Scooty.’ ”

“Scotty,” corrected Retrograde Sinopessen.

“Thank you,” said Orphu. To Mahnmut he tightbeamed, That makes four of us.

“You may well be correct that the old-style humans have been using a crude form of matter replication-transmission rather than true quantum teleportation,” said Asteague/Che, “but that doesn’t explain Mars or…”

“No, but the post-humans’ obsession with reaching another dimensional universe does,” said Orphu, not even noticing in his excitement and pleasure of the telling that he was interrupting the most important Prime Integrator in all the Five Moons Consortium.

“How do you know the posts were obsessed with getting to another dimensional universe?” asked General Beh bin Adee.

“Are you kidding?” said Orphu. Mahnmut had to think that the stern Asteroid Belt rockvec general had not been asked that question many times in his life or military career.

“Just look at the junk the post-humans left behind in orbit,” continued Orphu, oblivious to the military moravec’s taken-abackness. “They have wormhole accumulators, black hole accelerators—all early attempts at ripping through space and time, taking shortcuts out into this universe… or to another one.”

“Black holes and wormholes don’t work,” the Callistan Cho Li said flatly. “At least not as transport devices.”

“Yeah, we know that now and that’s what the post-humans found out more than fifteen hundred years ago,” agreed Orphu. “Then, when they had these incredible memory-storage satellites in orbit, plus the crude matter-replication teleportation portals for the old-style humans—who, I would wager, they were using as guinea pigs in all this experimentation—only then did the post-humans start messing around with Brane Holes and quantum teleportation.”

“Our scientists and engineers have been… messing around, as you put it… with quantum teleportation and the generation of Calabi-Yau universe Membrane Holes for many centuries,” said Retrograde Sinopessen. The Amalthean was so agitated that he was almost dancing on his long, spidery, silver legs. “With no luck,” he added.