Eesyan had a sudden, jolting premonition of where this might be going. He licked his lips and glanced at Showm again. She nodded as if reading his thoughts. "And it was the lead we got from Terrans that put us on the right track, even now," she reminded him.
Calazar became expansive. "I'm not talking about sending probes and prying eyes, and sitting back here like gawkers at some awful Terran movie, passively watching the Lunarians marching toward their fate. I'm talking about going there, to the time before the war ever happened, and doing something to change it!"
Eesyan reached for one of the kessaya and unwrapped it shakily. Just for the moment, his mental faculties seemed to have seized up.
"Think of it, Porthik!" Showm urged. "The full, true potential of humans and Thuriens in combination, that should have been realized-just as the potential for Minerva should have been realized. A whole new reality that was meant to exist. It still can. We can create it!"
For a brief moment the sweet, smooth taste of the candy distracted Eesyan from the turmoil of his thoughts. Minutes ago, Calazar and Showm had agreed that the current program had gone beyond the bounds set by prudence and needed tighter control. Yet what they were proposing instead exceeded it in boldness and audacity on a scale that took his breath away. Objections poured into his mind reflexively.
They wouldn't be "creating" anything; the physics of quantum reality said that everything that could possibly exist did exist… But no. He checked himself. That was according to the old way of assuming things, arrived at from a literal interpretation of the mathematical formalism. Danchekker had produced some good reasons for supposing that the intervention of consciousness was able to change that, making some futures by no means automatic. Rebellious Terran thinking again. It had started a furious debate among the Thurien philosophers. Perhaps it was possible to bring about whole new futures through an effort of volition, that otherwise wouldn't have existed. At their present stage of knowledge, there were no grounds to exclude it.
"It's… it's…" Eesyan gestured weakly and looked from one to another. "Do you realize the immensity of what you're saying?… We've just agreed that even the present project is in drastic need of complete overhaul. What we're talking about here is on a totally different scale of-"
"We've agreed that we need to stop what we're doing and get back to a program of sound, professionally managed research and solid engineering," Calazar cut in. "Perfect. That means we can begin from the basics, observing all the right principles."
Eesyan extended his hands pleadingly. "It's not just a question of technicalities. You're talking about sending people… Thuriens, Terrans, both; I don't know… not just robots. The whole underlying philosophy changes. They'd need autonomy to be able to adapt to whatever local conditions they encounter-to provide for their own safety, or even survival. So they'd have to go in some kind of ship. But they wouldn't even be able to move around. Ships draw on the h-grid for power. There was no h-grid at Minerva fifty thousand years ago."
Showm seemed to have been expecting it. "You're forgetting one ship that doesn't need the h-grid," she said. Eesyan looked at her blankly, his mind in too much of a whirl to make the connection. "The Shapieron. Right now, at Jevlen. An old Ganymean starship with independent onboard drives, everything self-contained."
"But even if we did what you say… the totality of the Multiverse is so vast. They would be so few. Could it make any difference that matters?"
"What are you saying, Eesyan?" Showm chided. "That sounds like some kind of petty profit-and-loss accounting that you would expect from Earth. Do you not feed a hungry child because you cannot feed all of them? Do you let a sick person die because there are other sick people in the world that you can't help? Our very concept of civilization lies the principle of caring, compassion, and love being extended outward from the primitive family to embrace a progressively wider community: town and village, then nation, planet, until today we feel kinship across many worlds. Isn't this the next step that whatever power brought all this into being is calling us to? Imagine, a community of universes that were isolated, just as the stars were once isolated. Where it will lead, or what will one day come out of it, nobody can say. We will be true pioneers and discoverers again. That is why we have no choice."
Objections started welling up inside Eesyan again, but then he met Frenua's eyes. They were bright, inspired, shining with a light that he hadn't seen anywhere for a long time. He could sense the same intensity of feeling radiating from Calazar. Something inside Eesyan the scientist was responding to it. And as it grew and swelled deep down inside his being, the negative fixations that had gripped him seemed to shrink to dimensions fitting to the business of a jobbing-shop clerk.
Visions were stirring in his own mind now, of the Ganymeans long ago who had cast out from the havens of their warm, familiar-sun systems into the daunting voids between, who had dared to dream of constructions the size of moons and taming the power of exploding stars. Were the unknowns and the challenges that they had faced any less than of the prospect that was beckoning now? Could the things they stood to gain and to learn have been any greater?
"Yes!" he heard himself whisper. It was involuntary-not he speaking, but the spirit that was motivating him inside; yet even as he the word, he knew that it was right. Calazar turned away, fidgeting with his hands, seemingly having difficulty keeping his feelings under control. Showm was on her feet, looking as if she were fighting back an impulse to throw her arms around Eesyan and hug him. "Yes!" Eesyan said again, louder this time. "We will do it! Our race has lived in security and complacency for long enough. It is time for us to rekindle the flame and know again the adventure of true discovery. You are right, Frenua. Minerva will live again, and become what it should have been-maybe even in a new reality that we will create! This was surely meant to be."
PART TWO: Mission to Minerva
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"Kles! Look! Bears!" Laisha shouted excitedly above the noise of the engine and the rotors. They were riding with the supply flight that went up to Ezangen two or three times a month. Klesimur turned his attention away from the mountains ahead above the pilot's shoulder, crowning the skyline like white fangs, and looked below where she was pointing. Disturbed by the sound and seemingly being pursued by the spinwing's shadow, two adult bears were herding four cubs away from the river bank and up a slope showing streaks of snow toward the cover of some rocks and fallen trees, probably where their lair was.
"Brown tundras," Kles confirmed. "You'll see plenty more when we get to the camp. Don't try getting too near them, even if they do look cute. They can be nasty. But they stay away from people in groups. So no straying off on your own up there." He looked up at her. At twelve, only two years younger than himself, she still had many of what seemed the ways of a child. But her family had moved to the town when she was at an early age, and she still spent most of her time there. And she learned fast. Her face was bright and eager, a little pink in the cabin's heat with her heavy hooded jacket, happy at the thought of being away and free for a couple of weeks. Kles grinned reassuringly. "But we'll take good care of you. Haven't I always?"
The crackle of a radio coming to life came from somewhere forward, followed by, "Ezangen camp calling. You reading, Jud?"
The pilot acknowledged. "Hi, Urg. This is Jud."
"How's it going up there? We may have some weather coming in."
"We're just approaching the bottom end of the lake now. Should be, aw… another ten, fifteen minutes."
"That should get you here ahead of it just fine. Kids okay?"
"Sure. I'll let 'em tell ya." Jud turned and passed back a hand mike on a stretch cord. "Hey, Kles, wanna say hi to your uncle?"
"Thanks… Hello? Uncle Urgran?"
"Right here, buddy. It's been a while. Everyone's looking forward to seeing you back around the camp again. We've got some interesting new things to show you."
"Giants' things?" As was true of many young people, Kles had alw
ays had a particular fascination for the lost race that had lived on Minerva long ago. There was a scientific name for them that meant "long-headed sapient bipedal vertebrates," but for most people they were simply the "Giants."
"You bet. More bones-three complete skeletons, at least. Parts of some buildings."
"Fantastic!"
"And pieces of machines… but all pretty flaky and corroded. We're not sure what most of them are."
"Maybe Laisha will know. She's the one who wants to be an engineer, like her dad. Can she say hi too?"
"Sure."
Kles held the mike toward her and nodded. Laisha took it. "Mr. Fyme?"
"Well, that's nice, but it's generally Urg to everyone around here. So you're going to be our guest for a couple of weeks, eh? Know much about archeology?"
"Not a lot, to be honest. As Kles just said, I'm more into science and technical stuff. But it sounds really interesting, and I can't wait to get there. Thanks so much for inviting me!"
"Well, I'm warning you, two weeks of the air up here and food the way the Iskois cook it, and you might not wanna go back. But one thing at a time, huh?"
"One of the people my dad works with showed me a piece of Giants' supermass once," Laisha said. "It was only the size of a fingernail, but you couldn't lift it. That was really weird."
"I've seen some of that too in my time," Urgran answered. "Well, we'll see you soon."
"Okay. 'Bye."
Kles passed the mike and its cord back to Jud. "You never told be about that supermass before," he said to Laisha.
"Yes, well, er… it wasn't really me," she confessed, coloring. "But I heard my dad talk about it."
Kles shook his head. "Don't ever say anything to Uncle Urgran that isn't absolutely straight," he said. "He's got this way of sounding easygoing and all that, but underneath he's real sharp. He'll catch you out. And once he does, he'll never quite rate you the same again."
"I'll remember," Laisha promised.
***
The archeologists' camp was set up near a settlement of a local tribe called the Iskois, who built their houses over excavated pits from cemented rocks and bricks of frozen soil. They did domestic chores for the scientists in return for tools, clothing, and supplies from the equatorial-zone cities, and made good housekeepers. That evening, after a supper of venison stew and a savory mash called lanakil, made from some kind of tuber and herbs, Urgran took Kles and Laisha across from the cabin that served as the general mess area, where they had eaten, to the lab shack, which also housed the generator. The night was cold and clear, with the hills and scattered clumps of scrub-trees looking white and ghostly in the light of a thin crescent of moon. Earth was just rising, low in the sky to one side of it.
"The place we're digging at the moment is about six miles north," he told them as he opened the outer door of the threshold, turned on the lights, and ushered them through. "Seems to have been some kind of heavy construction, maybe part of a spacecraft base. Laisha should be interested. We'll go up and have a look at it tomorrow. For now, I thought we'd show her some of the bones. I know you've seen this before, Kles." Laisha had seen all the usual things about Giants in books and mythical adventure movies, of course, and a few skeletons in museums, but it wasn't a subject she had ever gone into in much detail.
To Kles this was incomprehensible. He devoured every piece of new information on them to be published. His room at home was a miniature museum of Giants models and trophies, with most of one wall taken up by a map showing a reconstruction of Minerva in the vanished Age of the Giants. He and some of his like-minded friends had visited the excavated ruins of some of their cities, and gazed in awe at the massive foundations and bases of structures that experts said had towered above the landscape, sometimes for thousands of feet. They had built spacecraft powered by principles that Lunarian scientists, racing to develop the means for staging a mass migration to Earth before Minerva became uninhabitable, had still not uncovered. A legend read by some into the fragments of Giants' writings that had been recovered and interpreted told that they were not extinct as skeptics maintained, but had migrated from Minerva themselves to a new home at a distant star. The reason why was not clear. Some thought the climate might be cyclic, bringing about conditions before that had been similar to those threatening the Lunarian civilization today. According to the legend, the star was one located twenty light-years from the Solar System, that had come to be called the Giants' Star. It was not visible from the latitude of Ezangen, but Kles had stood gazing up at it for what must have added up to hours over the years, hoping that the legend was true and trying to picture the kind of world the Giants would be living in now.
The room held two large work tables with sinks, laboratory glassware, a couple of microscopes, and other scientific apparatus, with walls of closets, tool racks, and shelves of bottles and jars. Kles recognized specimens of Giant skeletons both on the work tops and in several containers of preservative to one side. Although there wasn't an example of one complete and assembled, a large wall chart showed the overall plan. The adults had stood eight to nine feet tall. Urgran moved over to it, at the same time picking up a plastic cast of an elongated skull.
"You have to have seen this before," he said, addressing Laisha. "No one could be around Kles more than five minutes without hearing about it. See, they didn't have receded chins and flat faces the way we do. They were kinda more horselike, with this down-pointing snout that gets wider at the top to give you a broad spacing for the eyes-which are more forward-looking than a horse's. Then on the back, instead of a round braincase like ours, you've got this protruding shape that counterbalances the weight… And the shoulders, completely different with these overlapping bone plates-almost like some kinda armor. Not just some spindly collar bone that wild kids like Kles are always breaking." Urgran gestured toward the far wall. "We've got some parts over there."
Laisha stepped forward to peer more closely at the center section of the figure shown on the chart. "It is true they had six… you know, arms, legs, whatever?"
"Hey, she's not so slow, Kles! Right… see there." Urgran pointed to two sets of bone structures set on either side of the thick hoop of bone braced by a forward-pointing strut, girding the bottom of the rib cage-the Giants didn't have a splayed pelvic dish in the way of humans; they were thought to have carried the internal abdominal organs more by suspension than by support from below. "Vestigial limb structures. You're right. Although these guys walked on two legs and used two arms the same as we do, the family of life that they're part of has a different body pattern based on three pairs. Original native Minervan life."
"The way you can still see in the fish," Kles put in, although Laisha was aware of it. The original Minervan land dwellers had been hexadic too, but predators were unknown among them, and they had been replaced by the the current types, which had appeared suddenly in the period immediately following the disappearance of the Giants. Nothing that anticipated the new population with its quadrupedal architecture existed in Minerva's earlier fossil record, and there was little doubt that it was descended from ancestors imported by the Giants. Most scientists believed Earth to have been their place of origin, although this had never been proved. Flyby probes had confirmed that it was teeming with life, but the first landers were still en route and not due to arrive for several months. But if it was true, it would add a whole new significance to the planned migration. For the imported population had included the ancestors of humans too. It meant that the Lunarians would be going home.
They were still talking about the plans for tomorrow, when they heard the outer door open and close. Moments later, Opril, the Iskois woman who took charge of domestic matters around the camp, knocked and entered to let them know that bunk spaces for the two arrivals were prepared. She nodded at Kles and smiled. "Welcome back. I suppose there will be mischief. And this is your friend?"
Kles introduced Laisha. "Anything you need or want done, Opril is the person," he said. "She knows ever
ything there is to know here. And how are Barkan and Quar, Opril?… Her sons," he explained to Laisha.
"Away hunting with their father and others from the village. They should be back late tomorrow. Then there will be full bellies and dancing for days."
"Good timing. Jud brought a couple of cases of good hooch," Urgran said.
"We'll show you how to handle a rangat before you go back," Kles told Laisha. "It's great fun, especially over the rapids."
"Watch those three. They'll have you drowned first, more likely," Opril said.
"Well…" Laisha stifled a yawn. "Oh, excuse me… So long as it isn't tonight." In his enthusiasm, Kles hadn't realized how tired she was looking.
"Come on. I'll show you where you'll be staying," Opril said. "I've put your things there already."
Urgran eyed Kles inquiringly. "I'm heading back to the parlor for a mug of something hot before I turn in. Want to join me?"
"Sure." Being treated like one of the men felt good. Urgran turned out the lights to leave just the generator drumming in the darkness at the rear, and they went back out into the cold. At the entrance to the mess cabin, Opril said goodnight and continued on with Laisha in the direction of the sleeping hut-part dugout, Iskois style. Kles and Urgar went into the cabin. The air was close and warm inside, with the stove throwing out heat. Jud was at the table, a glass in his hand, looking mellow and contented. A bottle stood amid the litter of used dishes. Another man was sprawled in an easy chair near the stove, large in girth, with red curly hair and several days of stubble, clad in a thick sweater, fur pants, and heavy boots. Kles hadn't met him before. Urgran introduced him as Rez and said he was a mining surveyor and geologist. Urgran checked a pot that was standing on the stove, added water from a jug by the sink, and put the pot back. Then he took another glass from the shelf above, rinsed it, and poured himself a shot from the bottle. "Gotta do something while the hot stuff's heating," he explained to Kles. "Care to try a nip?"
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