Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

there talking to us.”
    Smeth didn’t have the good grace to be crestfallen. He grinned with delight. “You’re right. My study team’s been splashing the waves on the subject for a couple of days now. None of the ideas that came out of the brain sessions were as wild as Bram’s, though. I’m not supposed to say anything till the official announcement.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Our team’s been chosen to assist in a tremendous new multidiscipline Nar project. We’re going to be attached to one of their physics touch groups.”
    “Oh, Smeth, that’s a tremendous honor,” Mim said, her antagonism forgotten. “And you’re still ajunior. What’s it all about?”
    Smeth frowned. “We don’t know all the details yet. It has something to do with space travel. The Nar have decided to take the next big leap. The project’s going to take fifty thousand years or more to come to fruition, so some of the fellows think they’re planning to reach the center of the galaxy. For some purpose that’s terribly important to them as a race.” He lowered his voice. “About two Tendays ago, they had a world meeting. Millions and millions of them linked, petal to petal, with all the separate assemblies connected to other assemblies all over the planet by body-reader transmissions. All the other planets and moons in the system were linked too, with allowances made for the communications delay. I guess Juxt One won’t get the consensus for almost a year, by laser, and the other stellar settlements even later, but they’re going ahead with the first steps without waiting.”
    “Fifty thousand years!” Mim said. “Even the Nar don’t think that far ahead.”
    Smeth scratched his head. “Even the active phase of the project is going to take half a Nar lifetime. Hundreds of years. At least that’s what they figure.”
    Bram offered his hand to Smeth. “Congratulations,” he said stiffly.
    “Thanks, sprout,” Smeth said.
    “What about the project on the physics of brasses and woodwinds that your team was going to do next for the music department?” Min asked.
    “We won’t have time for silly stuff like that now. The music department’s on its own.”
    “Couldn’t the Nar project wait another year for you to join them? If it’s so long-range, your team’s little contribution couldn’t matter that much. Isn’t human culture more important?”
    Smeth didn’t care for the “little contribution” phrase. “You don’t say no to the Nar,” he said irritably. “Besides, they value human insights. They recognize the fact that we conceptualize differently than they do, and that’s important when you get to abstractions like quantum grav-itonics and supersymmetry.”
    “None of it’s going to make the slightest difference to anyone who’s alive now. Even our children won’t live to see any results.”
    “The same goes for some of the Nar who’re going to work on the project. The important thing is that we’re all going to play a part in a major purpose of this civilization.”
    “Which is?”
    Smeth was reduced to sputtering. “I told you! It has something to do with the diffusion of intelligent life throughout the galaxy! At the present rate, that could take thirty million years. That’s according to one computer model, anyway. But if this new Nar project is the signal of a basic commitment to such a goal, it could be done in as little as one or two million!”
    “And you say that Bram’s ideas are farfetched,” Mim said with a toss of her dark hair.
    Smeth recovered his infuriating composure. “Bram isn’t doing anything about his ideas, though, is he?” he said with a toothy smile. “You’re just pedaling water, aren’t you, sprout? You’re already a year past middle school and you haven’t even decided what floater you’re going to swim for, have you?”
    Smeth and Mim were both looking at him. A million wordless images churned round in Bram’s head, but the most satisfying one was the image of punching Smeth right in the middle of his toothy, condescending smile.
    The terrace doors flapped open, emitting a burst of light that contained a small party of humans. A woman was hanging on to a man’s arm and gushing, “Oh, you’re being much too modest, Jorby, darling. Everyone knows you’re the real brains behind the retrogenetics group. Willum may take credit for tomatoes if he wants to, but it’s you we’re all indebted to.” The party swept past, headed