Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

again to the Nar assembly, hands on hips. In the first hundred yards or so, tufted humps rose and fell like wavelets as individual Nar rose up to get a good look at him through their own eyes.
    “Listen to me, you lords of creation,” Jao roared at them. “Eighty thousand years from now—if your precious robot probe ever reaches the center of this galaxy and you start getting radio signals from your artificial children to tell you that it worked—just remember that we humans were a part of getting it there. Maybe you’ll have canceled us out by then. But by the Allfather, you’ll owe us! Because the hadronic photon drive that’s going to make your messenger possible was born in the human imagination. Not yours.”
    A soft rustle of uneasy movement spread through the expanse of Nar. Presumably those who knew the details of the probe program were explaining the hadronic photon drive to those who didn’t, and it was diffusing gradually through the whole audience of laity.
    Jao waited it out, his expression fierce. When he resumed, it was in a more pensive tone.
    “Bram, here, told you his dream. The biggest dream that any of us had. To go home again. When I first heard it, I put it down for a kid’s fantasy that he never outgrew. But I didn’t know he was on the track of immortality. If human immortality is possible, then all of a sudden the long trip home becomes more possible, too.”
    He raised his eyes to the crowded sky and stared a long time at where the bridge of stars led to the Bonfire.
    “Oh, not now,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do first. As Smeth told Bram, ramscoop robots are not for living things. And there’s not much hydrogen in the void between galaxies for a ramscoop to gulp. But who cares?” His negligent shrug was probably wasted on the front-row decapods. “Those are mere details! Hell, I can think of a couple of possible ways around the problem right now. Give us time and we’ll find a way to make that jump.” Jao made a gesture that included the people who were crowding excitedly around. “We’ve got the motivation now. You see, Bram’s given us all his dream. It can never be bottled up again. And, damnation, it’s a better dream than any of the ones we’ve had so far. Better than the Ascendists, better than the Resurgists, and especially better than the Penserites!”
    A low murmur of assent came from the human crowd.
    “Bram gave you half the solution to your little dilemma, and I’m handing you the other half,” Jao boomed at the Nar. “Turn your probe over to us. We’ll do your work for you. We’ll do it better than machines could. And when we’re finished, we’ll take the damn vehicle for our pay! We’ll leave the galaxy and go where you won’t have to worry about us. We’ll go home!”
    He turned to go, then checked himself. “Think about it,” he said with another bold grin. “It’d be a good way of getting rid of us.”
    He shouldered his way through the human crowd, ignoring the attempts to ask him questions. His brows were knit in concentration, as if he were doing mathematical problems in his head. Bram could hear him muttering to himself.
    After several minutes, Tha-tha spoke sadly. “It is true, then, Brambram? All your life you concealed a dream of going to your human home? You were not happy in your life; you felt you had no place here?”
    “Yes,” Bram said. “I’m no different from the others.”
    “Voth would have grieved for you.”
    “Voth understood my dream, I think. When I was small, he tried to spare me pain by discouraging it.”
    “It is too late for that now.”
    “Yes, it is.”
     
    Tha-tha held him through the long night. Bram was glad of the warmth of the velvety mantle. The lesser sun cast enough light to read by—if you didn’t mind straining your eyes—but no heat.
    The loudspeakers stayed off. There was no way to translate what was happening into words. Even the Nar could not have said what was starting to result from the vast exchange that was taking place now, any more than a human being could have predicted what patterns a handful of straws would make when it was cast to the ground. The individual straws might be there, fixed and immutable, but the way they would fall out after a shuffle was the sum of too many variables.
    Bram felt the shifting patterns in the velvet pile, caught scraps of emotion from Tha-tha, and waited in silence.
    An equally silent semicircle of waiting humans stood nearby,