Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

signal never has resumed.”
    He sighed. “We never found evidence of intelligent life in the universe again. Perhaps it’s an extremely rare event. There’s us and there were the humans, so far away, and now they’re gone.”
    Bram could tell the precise moment when he was seeing the human galaxy by secondhand light. There was a brief winkout and an almost imperceptible change in image brightness, and then the picture of that vortex of stars stood motionless and lifeless within the hoop as some computer downstairs compensated for the bobbing image and held the cheating replica steady in its frame. The director said something to one of the assistants with a brief clasp of tentacles, and the assistant went pinwheel-ing down the steps.
    “No,” Bram burst out. “We’re not gone, and someday we’re going to go back!”
    “Bram!” Voth said, shocked. “Don’t contradict Pfaf-tlk-pfaf.”
    “It’s all right, Voth-shr-voth,” the director said. “I understand.” To Bram he said kindly, “Didn’t Jun Davd explain about steller distances? In time, in millions of years if we last that long as a species, we might conceivably explore our galaxy. But we can never cross the gulf between galaxies.”
    “We can,” Bram said, starting to cry. “Yes, we can.”
    “He’s cranky,” Voth apologized. “It’s past his bedtime.” The warm petals caressed Bram. “You must give up these thoughts, little one,” came the soft whisper. “Be happy in your life here.”
    He picked the child up. “Say good-bye to Pfaf-tlk-pfaf,” he said.
    “Good-bye, Pfaf-tlk-pfaf,” Bram said obediently.
    “Good-bye, Bram,” the director said. “Come see us again.”
    As Voth was about to leave, the assistant whom the director had dispatched downstairs returned with a little horny flake smaller than Brain’s fingernail.
    “This is for you, Bram,” the director said. “We thought you might like to have it. It’s a little patch of the charge-coupled surface that was changed by light from the galaxy you saw. Perhaps, just perhaps, one of the photons that crossed that thirty-seven-million-year gulf came from the human sun.”
     
    CHAPTER 2
     
    The young man and the young woman hurried across the plaza to catch up to the stragglers who were still trickling into the great humped vault of the auditorium. It was a glorious summer evening, with the air so clear and pure that even the lesser sun could not drown out the brighter stars. The Bonfire was visible as a pale wash against the heavens, fed by the gauzy streamer that was Skybridge.
    “We’ll miss the beginning,” Mim said, hauling Bram energetically by the arm. She was a small vivid girl with a tiny waist and choppy black hair and a pale face that made her dark eyes more emphatic.
    “No, we won’t,” Bram said. “They’re still going in.”
    He had almost finished his growth that year; he had turned into a lean, long-boned youth with perhaps another inch or two of height to go. He had kept the slender hands and feet of his childhood and retained a tumble of brown hair that kept falling into his eyes because it was still too fine.
    “Anyway,” he finished, “I got here as soon as I could.”
    “Where were you? At that observatory again?” she asked, her eyes still fixed on the distant goal of the entrance. She gave his arm an impatient tug.
    “Yes,” he said.
    He left it at that. He was not ready to talk about it yet. He had a lot of thinking to do before he made his decision.
    They joined the fringe of the crowd that was climbing the broad spiral ramp. Bram glanced around at the throng. A lot of people had made a special effort to dress up for tonight’s event in bright, festive clothes—multicolored tunics, gaudy jerkins showing puffed sleeves, kirtles with scalloped hems or complicated flounces, slinky gowns beaded with lenticular eyes that winked on and off, and even a few togas inspired by the previous Tenday’s performance of Julius Caesar. Bram felt out of place in the old mono he had been wearing all day.
    Even some of the Nar who were sprinkled throughout the assemblage had made an attempt to dress in imitation of human styles. Bram saw iridescent kilts draped around decapod waists, belted just below the row of primary eyes, and five-holed ponchos that must have been uncomfortable around the tentacle roots and that certainly must have interfered with intimate conversation.
    “Just think of it!” Mim said, her face glowing. “The first