Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

when hearing music.”
    Bram fidgeted through what remained of the exchange. His discomfort was somewhat offset by the fact that Mim was obviously impressed by the introduction to the great Chir-prl-chir, though it was secondhand through Bram’s childhood touch brother. Now, Bram thought fiercely, she’d have to take him more seriously.
    At last Tha-tha excused himself, with a promise to look Bram up soon, and Bram had Mim to himself. With great cunning and deviousness he found the two of them a quiet place to sit: an outdoor bench on one of the upper galleries that overlooked the ocean. Behind them, the rows of filigreed doors threw long oval splashes of light across the semidarkened veranda. A murmur of voices came from strolling groups below. The sky was huge and luminous in the half night, and the bright dot of the lesser sun cast complicated shadows across the rooftops of the human quarter. Beyond, the beach could be seen sloping in serrated planes to the silvered water.
    “They can’t really understand,” Mim said.
    Neither can we, Bram thought, but he kept it to himself. Instead, he searched awkwardly for something to say that would make him sound knowledgeable.
    She gave him the opening. “Isn’t it beautiful tonight?” she sighed. “I’ve never seen so many stars out during a half night. There must be dozens.”
    “See that bright one? Shield your eyes from the lesser sun. That’s the prow star of the Boat constellation. If you hold out your other hand at arm’s length, at just about one thumb width above it and a hair to the right, that little patch of sky is where the home of Original Man was. Ravel lived right where you’re looking. So did Bach and Beethoven and the rest of them.”
    “I don’t see anything.”
    “No, you can’t. But that’s the exact place. You can see the galaxy through a telescope. It’s a beautiful sight. A sort of pinwheel of stars. I’ve seen it lots of times.”
    “Is that why you go to the observatory all the time? To look at it?”
    He felt his face grow hot. “I don’t go there much anymore. I used to go there a lot when I was a little kid.”
    She didn’t make fun of him. “It’s a strange idea, Brambram. I never thought of it that way before. That it was a place. I mean, you know they must have been alive and walked around, but it’s always been a sort of, I don’t know, a myth.”
    Encouraged, he went on. “What if you could go there? I wonder what you’d find.”
    “Oh, Brambram, where do you get these ideas?”
    “No, I mean it. What if you went there, and some of the human worlds still existed, and you found …” He cast about for a clincher. “And you found some of that missing music you thought was gone from the universe! One shelf and you’d double what you have now! And what if there was just one picture book full of paintings for that artist fellow? And one more Shakespeare play or Milton poem or King James Bible? The whole lost heritage of the human race could be there waiting.”
    He had caught her imagination. “Yes!” she breathed. “What a thought!” Then she shook her head. “But it’s no good dwelling on daydreams. We’ve got to be satisfied with what we’ve got here. The god knows, we’ve got enough to keep us busy for lifetimes. And we’ll have our own Bachs, our own Miltons. Maybe some of them are inside at the party right now and we don’t know it yet.”
    Bram knew she was thinking about Olan Byr, and it was a dagger in his heart. “No, listen,” he said recklessly. “What if the whole human race just decided to pick itself up and go home?”
    “You’re a poet, Bram, and it’s a beautiful vision.” She touched his arm. “But once I saw an old woman who went to Juxt One as a girl and didn’t like it and came back—and her whole life was gone. I want to live, Bram, not just use up my life.”
    If Bram had been in a fit state to be analytical, he would have noticed that Mim had stopped using the babyish form of his name at the same moment he had confided his babyish dream to her. As it was, he was aware only of her nearness and warmth and the great dizzy expanse of sky with its smidgen of stars. He took her hand and found it responsive. “Mim,” he began.
    The doors behind them flew open, spilling light across the terrace. A lanky shadow fell across them, and Bram turned to see Smeth standing there, balancing a glass of punch and a plate of suncrisps and beanpuffs.
    “Hi there, Mim! What are you