Relic

16

In addition to being accounted the last man alive, once back on Myssar Ruslan found himself embarking on the strangest fatherhood in human history.

Focusing on twenty of Cherpa’s carefully extracted eggs, Myssari scientists who had spent a good portion of their professional lives analyzing records relating to human reproduction succeeded in successfully fertilizing sixteen of them utilizing Ruslan’s sperm. Implanted into artificial wombs designed and built with as much care as any equivalent Myssari device, they rapidly developed into viable embryos. After endless years of collapse thanks to the now extinct Aura Malignance, the human race was once more on the road to regeneration.

Ruslan had mixed feelings. Not about restoring humankind: having been interminably exposed to Myssari determination, he had long since come to accept the project’s inevitability. No, his concern revolved around being an actual father. While other dedicated and highly trained Myssari would of necessity take on the responsibility of raising the hoped-for sixteen infants, there would come a time when his physical presence, not to mention his actual direction, would assume an unavoidable and important role in their development as humans. Cherpa would naturally assist as well, but considering that her upbringing had deviated far more from the norm than had Ruslan’s, it would fall largely upon him to help ensure that the children developed normally.

Healthy, active, and as intrigued by the world around them as any human infants had ever been, the sixteen had reached the uniform age of three when news arrived that jolted his world. Fittingly, it was not a scientist or administrator who delivered it but his old friend and minder, Kel’les. They had remained in contact even though Ruslan was so familiar with and integrated into Myssari culture that he no longer required an interlocutor. Instead of needing one himself, he had taken on the same duties with regard to Cherpa.

The two humans were leaving the crèche for the day when the intermet confronted them near the exit. So obviously excited was Kel’les that s’he was swaying on all three feet. Unlike a human who rocks from side to side or front to back, when a Myssari sways they make small circles around the axis of their central spine. A concerned Ruslan reached out a hand to steady his former mentor.

“Something’s wrong, Kel’les. Tell us.” He nodded back the way they had come. “Hopefully it doesn’t involve the children.” Knowing that a change of heart or direction within the Myssari General Sectionary could shut down the entire project was a fear he had carried with him since the birth of his multiple unexpected offspring.

“Nothing is wrong,” Kel’les told him. “On the contrary, everything is right.”

Taking a cue from her mentor, Cherpa relaxed. “Then what is it?”

Gazing intently at Ruslan, Kel’les blurted his response. “Your Earth. They have found your Earth. The human homeworld.”

So completely immersed had he become in the new experience of fatherhood that Ruslan had all but forgotten about the presumably failed search upon which he had originally made his full cooperation with the project contingent. To hear from Kel’les that it had not only not been forgotten but was now apparently successful served to upend his cosmos yet again. Every time he thought it stabilized, the universe smacked him in the face with some new and unexpected revelation. This time, for once, it was not unwelcome. He also found it hard to believe.

“This is a joke.” Yes, that had to be it. Though more restrained than humankind had been, the Myssari were not without humor of their own. Kel’les, perhaps with Cor’rin’s or Bac’cul’s connivance, was playing a joke on Cherpa and him.

The intermet’s reaction belied Ruslan’s suspicions. “The announcement is not made to provoke laughter, friend Ruslan. It is the truth, delivered direct from the Exploration Sectionary.”

Ruslan lapsed into a daze. Having no emotional involvement invested in the revelation, a curious Cherpa could only stand and observe the byplay between the two old friends.

“How—how can they be sure?” Was that his voice doing the questioning? Ruslan wondered. It was such an old voice, such a cynical voice. Although the children did not think so. Poking at sensitive spots, pulling on his nose and ears and hair while laughing at his discomfort, they were never less than delighted to be near to their papa Ruslan.

“You forget,” Kel’les told him. “There are records. From Seraboth, from Daribb, from a hundred other now empty human-settled worlds. In the absence of coordinates, we have thousands of detailed descriptions of the human homeworld. Thousands of descriptions and thousands of images. I am told there can be no mistake. Too many of those thousands are excellent matches.” S’he was joyous. “It is some considerable distance away, but nothing that cannot be negotiated.”

Ruslan had to sit down. He was joined by a concerned Cherpa. Though tending at times to the complicated, their relationship since the death of Pahksen had been wholly platonic, more father and daughter than father and mother. Theirs was surely a partnership passing strange, though no more so than the unique set of circumstances in which they found themselves.

“Earth.” When properly enunciated, the one word itself carried more significance than a hundred complete sentences. His gaze wandered before once again finding the intermet’s face. “What—what is it like?”

“Quite pleasant, according to the initial reports. Perfectly habitable, with no sign of any Malignance-related organisms. Deprived of hosts in which to live, that genetically engineered virulence died out more than a hundred years ago on Seraboth and far earlier than that on your homeworld. It is once more a safe place for humans to live. Is that what you would like to do now that it has been rediscovered, Ruslan? Live on your Earth?”

Never having expected to be offered such an option, he had nothing prepared in the way of a clear-cut response. “I… don’t know. I suppose the first thing is to go and have a look at the place. You said it was distant. Do you think a visit can be arranged?”

“Arranged?” Kel’les’s tone grew even more expansive. “They are all but straining to hold back the follow-up expedition in hopes that you would consent to participate.”

Ruslan nodded once and looked to his left. “Cherpa?”

“Of course Oola and I will come.”

His gaze narrowed slightly in surprise. “What about the children? You’re not worried about them?” If they both went, who would look after the crèche? He found himself hesitating, torn between old desire and new responsibility.

The Myssari, he told himself, had taken good care of him. Their specialists knew more about human children than either he or Cherpa. He persuaded himself that all would be well enough until the two adult humans returned.

She promptly confirmed his conclusions. “Why should they concern me? Each one can call on a dozen affectionate and respectful minders. To them I am only a bigger child. And I like it that way.”

“All right then.” He looked back at Kel’les. “Inform the Sectionary that their two adult specimens would be pleased to join the next mission to visit Earth. While there we’ll be happy to impart our observations.” He paused. “Though I can’t predict what my reaction, at least, is likely to be.”

“Your excitement,” Kel’les replied, “may arise from a different place, but rest assured it is shared. I will be coming as well, of course.” Peering past Ruslan, the intermet addressed the other human in the room. “It has been remarked upon that ever since arriving here from Daribb years ago, you have never requested a minder of your own. Considering where we are about to go, it was suggested that you might wish to have one assigned to you now. It need not be an intermet. You may request any gender.”

“I never asked for one,” she responded, “because I always had one.” She put an arm around Ruslan’s shoulders and smiled. “Even if he’s short a couple of limbs.”

Feeling the weight of her arm on him, Ruslan reflected that his life had finally come full circle: from refugee to relic to occupying the place in another human’s life of a Myssari technician. It was a strange feeling—one of many he had experienced over the last several decades.

He wondered how it would compare to his first sight of Earth.

Cherpa, of course, had nothing with which to compare the reality of the discovery, so Ruslan was relieved to see that the actual third planet from the modest star looked exactly like the images he had dreamed over while wandering in the wilderness that had overtaken Seraboth.

Just like in all the old recordings, there were the blue oceans, extensive and gemstone bright. The white clouds, highlighted by a massive storm rotating over the largest body of water. The fabled continents with their splotches of lowland brown and forest green and desert beige. The mountain ranges whose names he had memorized from the ancient records, and the winding rivers, and the unpretentious ice fields that streaked the highly developed southern continent. All achingly familiar. As the ship slowed toward orbit he resolved that he would not cry.

He had no trouble keeping the resolution. Earth was beautiful, yes, but it was just another human-suitable world. Seraboth was beautiful, too, and there were many others. His kind had settled few that looked like Daribb. Rearrange the land masses and the seas below and he might be looking at any of a hundred habitable worlds, all of which had at least one thing in common.

None presently supported human life.

The landing party touched down in a mild temperate zone to the south of a massive upraised plateau bordered by the highest range of mountains. Despite their sky-scraping height only the topmost peaks flashed ragged caps of snow. On the ground the disintegrating detritus of a lost civilization was everywhere, and not just in the nearby deserted cities.

“As well to set down here as in open country.” Disembarking from the lander, a cautious Bac’cul sniffed the breathable but thick alien atmosphere. His air intake clenched at the strange odors but his lungs did not reject them. “This is as intensively developed a region as any that was observed from orbit. Were there to be any survivors, calculations suggest this would be as good a place to seek them as any.”

Having walked a short distance away from the landing craft, Ruslan crouched and dug his right hand into soil moist from a recent rain. Holding it up to his nose, he inhaled deeply. Earth of Earth. It smelled… right. Rising, he wiped the dark crumbles from his palm. Smelling the homeworld was sufficient. He was not about to taste it. Nearby, Myssari technicians were already at work erecting the inflatable and pourable components that were to be the foundations of the new scientific station. Life-support facilities would go up first so that the landing team would not have to go back and forth to the supply starship in orbit. The site had been selected following distillation of thousands of factors. There was permanent water, interesting topography, flora and fauna in plenty, and a vast spray of ruins easily accessible for study.

“What would you like to do now?” Cor’rin had joined Kel’les and the two humans. “The technical and construction teams have their work to do, and the other researchers are already unpacking their field gear. I have arranged for a small driftec to be put at our disposal.”

“ ‘Do’?” Just as on Myssar when Kel’les had first told him that the human homeworld had been found, Ruslan once more found himself at a loss for a ready response. “I don’t know. Believe it or not, I hadn’t thought about it.” He gestured at the surrounding greenery. “I always thought that just coming here would be enough.”

“It can be, if you think it so.” Cherpa danced away from them, spinning and leaping and flinging her hands in the air, her long hair flying in imitation of the fast-moving cirrus clouds overhead. “You can join me, Bogo, or just sit and stare there at the air and glare.” Coming to a halt, she pointed toward the sharp outline of distant mountains. “We should go there, too!” She resumed her joyous pirouetting.

Watching her, he mused that there was a time when he might have joined in her carefree prancing. That time had passed. Thanks to the ongoing efforts of the best Myssari biotechs, his body was still in excellent condition. But while they might have been geniuses, they were not wizards. They could repair the exigencies of time but they could not reverse it. He felt like exploring, but leaping and frolicking for the pure pleasure of it was now beyond him. Of the human-studies specialists on the starship, there were at least one or two who would join the camp, but this was not Myssar and this was no place to break an aging ankle.

The extensive skeletal remains of the city beckoned, as did nearby temples and castles that were far older still. The Myssari who had decided on the landing site had chosen well. While Cherpa twirled happily through the landscape, he stayed where he was and contemplated that which he had dreamed of: the earth, the sky, the vegetation, the mountains, a nearby stream flamboyant with a skirt of overhanging verdure. He stood quietly and soaked it all up: sights, sounds, smells. He was content.

By nightfall he found, to his considerable shock, that he missed Myssar.

This Earth, this third planet from its warm yellow sun, was the human homeworld for true—but it was not his home. It fulfilled that purpose only in memory. Seraboth was his homeworld and Myssar his home. The realization shocked him; his acceptance of it stunned him. Much as he felt privileged to stand where he stood, he longed for his comfortable, familiar abode in Pe’leoek, with its on-demand entertainment and food and instant access to beaches and the entire breadth of knowledge of the Myssari. If the ruined city spread out before the landing party had been intact and swarming with members of his species, he might have felt differently. But neither was so. It was a beautiful place but an empty one: void of company, conversation, and convenience. They would study it and make recordings and then he and Cherpa and the Myssari who had brought them all this way would go… home. He would finish out his existence on Myssar among the aliens with whom, socially at least, he had become one.

But what of Cherpa? What did she want? And what would be best for their meticulously nurtured offspring? If the restoration program continued to prove successful, there would be more of them, with adequate genetic variation assured through expert Myssari scientific tinkering. At what point would the resurrection of humanity need to be relocated to a human world in order to fully validate the effort? Given his own feelings, would it not be better to transplant the program now to a world once populated by humans? Before the children, like himself, so habituated to Myssar that moving them offworld might prove culturally counterproductive? If so, why move them and the program to someplace like Seraboth when Earth itself awaited? Would it not make the most sense to first reestablish his species on the world that gave it birth?

Cherpa and the children were not yet wedded to Myssar. For him it was too late. Much as he might wish for it philosophically, he knew he could become an Earthman only under duress. He had been away from human company long enough for a crucial part of him to have faded away, to have become lost. Wishing that it were otherwise would not make it so.

The madness that had once afflicted and protected Cherpa on Daribb had given way to an unbridled joy in life. She would be a fine Earth mother for the children, someone they could look up to and admire. For whatever good the Myssari sociologists thought it would do, he would be content to make fatherly visits and declaim what pearls of wisdom he could conjure. But he would not, he could not, live here permanently.

Rising from where he had been sitting, he ascended the remainder of the low hill and turned to look back toward the main part of the enormous, empty city. The jagged spires of abandoned towers loomed over a sprawl of smaller buildings that reached to the horizon. It must have been a grand place once, he told himself, spilling over with energy and life. All gone now. Like the rest of humanity, as dead as the Aura Malignance that had wiped out the species. Or nearly wiped it out. It was too late for him to reclaim humankind’s birthplace. That was a task that would be left to the children and to the irrepressible Cherpa.

Closer, seemingly at his feet and reinforced by a steady stream of personnel and equipment arriving from the ship in orbit, the diligent Myssari were erecting the framework of what would become their preliminary outpost on Earth. Xenoarcheologists were hard at work gathering the first of thousands of artifacts that had been abandoned in the course of the great dying. Once these had been properly catalogued and classified, they would find their way into repositories scattered across the Combine. So it would be done, he told himself as he started back down the hill.

Overhead a flock of noisy unnamed birds was winging its way toward the high mountains. The surrounding underbrush was full of similarly vocal feathered songsters. It struck him that in none of the other places where he had spent time, from Seraboth to Myssar to Daribb, had he encountered so much airborne song. If humans had been the chorus of Earth, then its birds had been its trumpets.

Have to acquire some recordings from the Myssari xenologists, he told himself as he continued to pick his way down the slight slope. He might not be able to live full-time on Earth, but he could take its music with him.

The Myssari expedition had been on Earth for several sublime terrestrial weeks before the first discordant note declared itself.

While no restrictions were placed on Ruslan’s or Cherpa’s movements, the leader of the expedition insisted that they carry sidearms with them on the walks the two humans took frequently. Ruslan scheduled his forays for times when he was not aiding the archeologists in identifying the purpose or providing the names of recovered relics. Sometimes Cherpa went with him. On other occasions they hiked separately, since he preferred the morning hours, while she favored the evening.

Sidearms were necessary because in the absence of humans Earth’s fauna had recovered in numbers not seen on the planet since before the rise of humankind. Not all of these revived species were benign. In particular the expedition’s xenologists singled out in the vicinity of the landing area three examples of large carnivorous felines, any one of which could easily make a meal of an unarmed human or Myssari. Neither was the big cats’ normal prey. They knew nothing of Myssari, while humans had not been available for the taking for hundreds of years. Still, the way any large carnivore determines if something strange and new is good to eat is to taste it, and both the Myssari and the two humans preferred to avoid that possibility.

Between the weapon slung at his hip and the always-on locator/communicator that floated near his lips, Ruslan felt no compunction about wandering through the ruins and the forest that had taken over streets and buildings. Doing so made him feel as if he were a youth again back home on Seraboth, wandering aimlessly in search of sustenance and company, finding ample supplies of the former and none of the latter. Sometimes he went into the ruins with Cherpa, sometimes with a Myssari scientific team.

This morning he was alone. Packs of lesser primates scattered before him, chattering but not complaining at the way history had turned out. This world was theirs once again. Clearly they were happy it was so, despite the disappearance centuries ago of the last handouts. Enormous trees sent powerful aboveground roots searching and curling through the collapsing structures, co-conspirators with the wind and rain in the eternal process of decomposition. Ruslan clambered over and around them, through empty buildings with collapsed roofs, seeking revelation and finding only destruction.

Movement in front of him caused him to pause and put one hand on his weapon. Mindful of the warning about the surviving large native carnivores, he let his forefinger slip down to activate the gun. He did not want to kill anything on a world from which so much life had been taken, but if attacked he would have no hesitation in defending himself.

The predatory nature of the creature that rose before him might have been debatable. Its origin was not.

Gripping a sidearm of its own, the Vrizan approached deliberately. Several more appeared off to Ruslan’s right and left. Drawing his own weapon with his right hand, he murmured to his aural pickup.

“Ruslan speaking. There are Vrizan here. They are armed and closing in on me. I doubt I could outrun them, so I’m not going to try. I’ll attempt to stall them while waiting for pickup.”

“You are wasting your words, human.” The lead Vrizan lowered her (recent study allowed Ruslan to distinguish gender among the Myssari’s rivals) weapon. “Your communications device has been smothered since first we detected you.”

He held his ground. “I have only your word for that. And I still have my weapon.” He gestured with the sidearm.

“You are welcome to retain it.” She continued to advance. “Are you going to shoot me?” She indicated her companions, who now numbered more than a dozen. “What then if we shoot you in return?”

“You won’t shoot me.” He was outrageously confident. “I’m too valuable.”

That halted her. “To kill, yes, but we also have devices that will incapacitate without causing damage. Why make yourself uncomfortable? Killing me would only ensure that. As you surmise, the last thing we wish to do is harm you.”

“Then what do you wish to do?” The longer he could keep the conversation going, he knew, the more time it would give for the Myssari to reach him. Unless, of course, the Vrizan was telling the truth and his locator signal was being masked.

“Treat you as the unique individual you are. Provide for you for the remainder of your life. Show you things to which no Myssari has access. You refused our offer on Treth.”

His thoughts churned furiously. “So, you know about that?”

“Such unique information spreads rapidly and widely. The arrival here of your transporting vessel was noted immediately. It was decided that no action was to be taken and that any investigations its personnel wished to carry out would be allowed to proceed without interference. Then your presence and that of your fellow human was detected. Swift correlation was made with your earlier presence on Daribb. Records of that encounter were reviewed. As a consequence, two decisions were rendered. The first was that if an amenable situation presented itself, we were to try once again to convince you to come with us and aid the Integument in its studies and research into human history and culture.”

“Forget it.” Ruslan gripped his sidearm more tightly. “What’s the second decision?”

The Vrizan officer was staring at him intently. “To use force to compel you to comply if the first decision failed to produce the desired result.” At a gesture from one slender many-jointed arm, the other Vrizan resumed closing in around the specimen.

Ruslan realized he could delay them no longer. Nor could he run fast enough to escape. All he could do was fire. He had no doubt that would produce the kind of reaction the Vrizan had described, probably leaving him provisionally paralyzed. No matter how valuable they considered him, if he killed someone they would be less likely to treat him with the kind of deference they were showing now. But if he surrendered to the Vrizan, before long the Myssari would find his lack of verbal communication puzzling, then alarming. Even if his smothered locator still showed him wandering safely, a lack of response on his part would rouse them to come looking for him. He would have to rely on that.

Forming up into an escort, the Vrizan led him out through the back of the ruined building. He was a bit startled to discover that their leader had been telling the truth about allowing him to keep his sidearm. No one tried to take it from him. Then it occurred to him that if they could smother his locator and communicator, they might well have the technology to do the same to his weapon. He hoped he would not be forced to find out.

In contrast to a Myssari driftec, the flyer they placed him in was larger and more powerful, plainly designed to cover longer distances at higher speeds. Rising much higher into the atmosphere than a driftec could manage, it then accelerated westward. Given the rate of speed at which they were traveling, it was not long before he started worrying how the Myssari, when they did start searching, were ever going to find him.

Left alone, he took the first mental steps toward resigning himself to a new life, in a new captivity. In the decades he had lived among them, the Myssari had been pleasant, even deferential. What would life among the Vrizan be like? Having now encountered them several times, he knew them to be more brusque, more contentious than his current longtime hosts. Except where he was concerned. The alien society into which he would be placed would be different, but his treatment might well be similar. How he would respond remained to be seen.

He would miss Kel’les, and Bac’cul and Cor’rin, and even Yah’thol. Then he thought of Cherpa and the sixteen children and started to weep. The Vrizan leader, having positioned herself near her prize, regarded the display with unconcealed curiosity.

“You expel salt water from your eyes. This is a voluntary physical reaction to your situation?”

“Yes and no.” Using the back of his bare right arm, Ruslan wiped at his face. “It is an involuntary human expression of sorrow that I’m making no attempt to repress.”

“You have no reason to grieve,” the Vrizan assured him. “You will be treated with the utmost care and respect and will be given whatever you wish.”

“I ‘wish’ to return to my friends.”

“They are not your friends. They are your keepers. You mistake cold scientific calculation for sincere friendship.”

He stared back at her, having a hard time trying to decide on which of the widely spaced eyes to focus. “As opposed to the Vrizan?”

She surprised him again. “No. We are also operating under the aegis of cold scientific calculation. The difference is that I am admitting it to you.”