Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

the same mystic illusion of tactile speech.
    Understand, he willed them fiercely. Understand!
    The crescent of humans contracted more closely around him as he went on talking. Whispered accounts passed through the crowd to the outer fringes. Bram finished by confessing his scheme to assemble the immortality virus with the clandestine help of human specialists from the Compound if that became necessary. “I believed the knowledge was forbidden,” he said, “and that man would have to reach out with his own hand and pluck the gift of eternal life for himself.”
    He listened with his skin to the ghostly touch whispers filtered through Tha-tha, but he could not tell if he had swayed the Nar or made matters worse. He had gained their sharp attention—that he did know from the sudden stillness out across the narscape as billions of decapods forgot to breathe.
    After long minutes, Tha-tha let out a protracted sigh. “We did not know, Bram,” he said. “No one remembers this knowledge being shared. If Voth knew, he was the last one.”
    The living landscape sighed all at once. The strangeness of the moment passed.
    “It is a very great burden,” Tha-tha said distantly. Bram felt his touch brother’s attention slip away as Tha-tha submerged himself in the mass conference.
    Bram lifted his eyes above the living horizon and found the familiar constellation of the Boat. Using the point star as a reference, he located the patch of night sky that held Original Man’s invisible home.
    “When I was very small,” he said quietly, “I dreamed of returning to the place where humanity began. And I was told that the twin barriers of time and space made such a dream forever impossible. Now, at least, time can be conquered.”
    He returned his gaze to the tribunal. Several score mirror-eyes changed color as they returned his stare. They could not avoid hearing him, at least.
    “Whatever you decide to do about us, everything is changed now,” he said. “If you allow human beings to continue to exist at all, we can never go back to being exotic seasonal blooms in your perennial society. Not now that you know, and we know, that we need not be condemned to wither and die. But be warned! If you allow humankind to reach its full potential, one day we will stand beside you as equals.”
    He stood breathing in the moist night air, wondering if he had gone too far. Was that gigantic entity out there now reflecting anew on the dangers of human fecundity and human aspirations?
    He became aware of movement behind him and turned to see the red-maned Jao emerging from the waiting crowd. The ex-physicist was subdued, all his former ebullience drained out of him.
    “I’m sorry, Bram. For everything,” Jao said. “Do you understand me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Hard feelings?”
    Bram thought of Voth, lying in a puddle of violet dissolution. He blinked back the scalding tears.
    “No,” he said.
    Jao faced the expanse of close-packed forms and bellowed at it. “Did you hear him, damn you? He’s given you half of the solution, if you’ll only realize it! Immortality for humans! Now the question is, what do we do with it?”
    The carpet of Nar recoiled visibly at the violence of Jao’s outburst, then settled down again. Some of the people around Jao began edging away.
    Jao grinned through his beard. “I’m talking about your robot ramscoop that some of us ephemeral humans have been working on for you. The marvelous implement that’s supposed to seed the galaxy with replicas of yourself. That’s not so very different from what Original Man set out to do, is it? Life seeking to perpetuate itself when its time is ripe. Well, if it’s your imperative to exist, it’s ours, too. Remember that when you judge us. What happened on the tree was a terrible thing, and maybe the ones responsible deserve punishment. I was one of them, and I’m ready to take what I have coming. But don’t judge the entire human race by what a few of us did. Because what we did was only a perverted, misbegotten expression of the same impulse that’s driving you ten-limbed wonders to claim your own rightful place in the universe!”
    He broke off, breathing hard. “Sorry,” he said with a lopsided grin at Bram. “I never learned how to be diplomatic.”
    Bram, standing with the warm cloak of Nar flesh draped across his shoulders, said, “It’s all right. They took it. They just want to understand.”
    “So?” Jao said. “In that case …” He turned