“No one,” said Gypsy Blossom. “The hierarchy. The government. The ideology. The sheer momentum of history. Thank goodness they could not destroy it all. Not even if they crushed every plaque and burned every paper copy and every book that used what the Gypsies taught you.”
Dotson nodded. “We can write it down again, can’t we? They didn’t kill us all. Enough of us remain. Surely we remember what we have learned. And then there is the honeysuckle.”
“Yes, there’s that,” said the bot. “I can read that information. And so will all those other bots as soon as they leave their beds. But there’s something even more valuable that you still have.”
Dotson said nothing, but when he looked at Edge-of-Tears and Senior Hightail and the other Racs nearby, he knew that he was not the only one who failed to understand.
“It’s a way of thinking,” said Gypsy Blossom. “Knowledge as a sacred goal. That’s something the Engineers could take away from you only by exterminating all your kind.”
There was silence. Of course, the bot was right. The Gypsies, the Remakers, had given all Rackind the pursuit of knowledge as a holy mission. And yes, if every library lay in ruins, every ceramic plaque in shards, every paper book in ashes, that would be enough to restore everything the humans had laid waste. And then to advance beyond that level, into space, even to wherever their gods had gone.
“What do you think they’ll do?”
No one thought Dotson meant the humans. He was staring too intently at the sky now, toward that spot where the Ajax would be a spark at night, where Sunglow and the other one-time prisoners of the humans debated the answer to just that question.
A long moment later, Edge-of-Tears said, “It will be years before we can get up there. There is just too much to rebuild. And they cannot last that long.”
“Too many to feed,” someone said.
“They should kill the humans,” said another. “They’re outnumbered. If they don’t, there’ll be a battle, a rebellion. They’ll all die, or the humans will escape and take their ship home and bring more humans back before we can possibly be ready for them.”
“But they need the humans,” said Senior Hightail. “They can’t maintain that ship without them. They simply don’t know how.”
“Then sabotage.”
“Could they survive long enough if they could run the ship?”
Edge-of-Tears shook his head. “Not without a miracle. If we could rebuild the engines of one of these …” He indicated the nearby Saladin. “But we mangled them all far too well.”
“I wish I could help,” said Hrecker. When someone snorted, he added, “That was my field, designing drives.”
“Then you can fix these?” The voice was eager.
He shook his head and pointed at the wreckage. “I wish I could, but … Once you get your industries working again, I can show you how to build a drive. Until then …” He shook his head again.
“And there’s one waiting for us right up there.” Edge-of-Tears pointed at the sky. “Intact.”
“It’ll still be there.”
“Waiting,” said Gypsy Blossom.
“There’s no hope,” said Dotson. “It’ll take years. I’ll never see her again.”
“Probably not,” said the bot.
He craned his neck to see the Saladin’s bulging top, which concealed its bridge and the com that was their only contact with the Ajax. “I wish she’d call again.”
“There’s a lot to say, isn’t there?” said Hrecker. “I never had the chance.”
The ensuing silence lasted until Dotson said, “How long? A year? Or ten years?” His tone said he knew the answer.
“Maybe twenty,” said Senior Hightail. “In which case I won’t see it. But you will. And then what? You’ll refurbish the ship and take off, but where? Will you go looking for the Gypsies?”
“I think,” said Gypsy Blossom. “That’s what they themselves hoped you would do someday.”
Dotson made a chuffing sound with his breath and turned around. “I’m going to call her.”
* * * *
But no matter how many times he tried, no one answered the Ajax’s com until the first Rac Q-ship boosted into orbit eight years later.
Dotson was not on that ship, but he was at the spaceport control center, waiting for the com to come alive once more, at last, and tell him what he had expected for so long that the pain of confirmation seemed no worse than the pain that still lingered in the hip of his injured leg.
Marcus Aurelius Hrecker was not with him. The human had helped the Racs build their Q-drive, and then he had retreated, isolating himself in a small house on the outskirts of the rebuilt Worldtree City. Dotson thought he must have found it difficult to face the inevitable antipathies of the many Racs who had lost everything they owned at human hands, but he never complained. Perhaps he thought he deserved whatever glares and taunts came his way. Perhaps he wished for a murderer or a lynch mob that would join him with his fellow Engineers. He never said.
Gypsy Blossom was supervising the education of the third generation of bots. Like their parents, many would be intermediaries between the Racs and the data stores held by the honeysuckle. Many more would, like the Racs, be builders and discoverers.
A bank of screens showed the Ajax’s exterior. Enlarged in one, the ship’s lock stood open as it had on the Rac ship’s first approach. Another showed the ship’s bridge, a withered body strapped into the captain’s seat, its blonde pelt identifying it unmistakably as Sunglow. The controls before her included an override on the ship’s main entrance.
The Ajax held no air, no living thing. Its storerooms still held all they needed for a one-way voyage to Earth. All but two of its dust tanks, still holding much of the reaction mass for that same trip, orbited not far away. Nuclear-tipped missiles lay ready for launch in its bays. Human bodies filled two locked rooms.
Other Racs lay where they had fallen when the airlock opened.
The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series
If you enjoyed this ebook, check out more volumes in Wildside Press’s great MEGAPACK® series…more than 300 in all!
THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION
1. Winston K. Marks
2. Mark Clifton
3. Poul Anderson
4. Clifford D. Simak
5. Lester del Rey (vol. 1)
6. Charles L. Fontenay
7. H.B. Fyfe (vol. 1)
8. Milton Lesser (Stephen Marlowe)
9. Dave Dryfoos
10. Carl Jacobi
11. F.L. Wallace
12. David H. Keller, M.D.
13. Lester del Rey (vol. 2)
14. Charles De Vet
15. H.B Fyfe (vol. 2)
16. William C. Gault
17. Alan E. Nourse
18. Jerome Bixby
19. Charles De Vet (Vo. 2)
20. Evelyn E. Smith
21. Edward Wellen
22. Robert Moore Williams
23. Richard Wilson
24. H.B. Fyfe (vol. 3)
25. Raymond Z. Gallun
26. Homer Eon Flint
27. Stanley G. Weinbaum
28. Edward Wellen
29. Katherine MacLean
30. Roger Dee
31. Sam Merwin
32. Frederik Pohl
33. Kris Neville
34. C.M. Kornbluth
35. Keith Laumer
36. George O. Smith
THE NOVELLA SERIES
1. The Adventure Novella MEGAPACK®
THE GOLDEN AGE OF WEIRD FICTION
1. Henry S. Whitehead
2. George T. Wetzel
3. Emil Petaja
4. Nictzin Dyalhi
s
5. David H. Keller
6. Clark Ashton Smith
7. Manly Banister
8. Frank Belknap Long (Vol. 1)
9. Frank Belknap Long (Vol. 2)
SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
The First Science Fiction NOVEL MEGAPACK®
>The First Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Second Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Third Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Fourth Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Fifth Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Sixth Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Seventh Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Eighth Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Ninth Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The 10th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The 12th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
The A. Merritt MEGAPACK®*
The A.R. Morlan MEGAPACK®
The Alien MEGAPACK®
The Avram Davidson Science Fiction & Fantasy MEGAPACK®
The King Arthur MEGAPACK®
The Andre Norton MEGAPACK®
The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK®
The Charles Dickens Christmas MEGAPACK®
The Darrell Schweitzer MEGAPACK®
The Dragon MEGAPACK®
The E. E. “Doc” Smith MEGAPACK®
The E. Nesbit MEGAPACK®
The Edgar Pangborn MEGAPACK®
The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK®
The Edward Bellamy MEGAPACK®
The First Reginald Bretnor MEGAPACK®
The First Theodore Cogswell MEGAPACK®
The First Kothar the Barbarian MEGAPACK®
>The Second Kothar the Barbarian MEGAPACK®
The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Second Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Third Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction Novel MEGAPACK®
The Fred M. White Disaster MEGAPACK®
The Fredric Brown MEGAPACK®
The Fritz Leiber MEGAPACK®
The Second Fritz Leiber MEGAPACK®
The Gismo Complete Series MEGAPACK®, by Keo Felker Lazarus
The H. Beam Piper MEGAPACK®
The Jack London Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
The Lloyd Biggle, Jr. MEGAPACK®
The Lost Worlds MEGAPACK®
The Mack Reynolds MEGAPACK®
The Mad Scientist MEGAPACK®
The Martian MEGAPACK®
The Milton A. Rothman Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
The Miss Pickerell MEGAPACK®
The First Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®
>The Second Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®
>The Third Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®
The Olaf Stapledon MEGAPACK®**
The Philip K. Dick MEGAPACK®
>The Second Philip K. Dick MEGAPACK®
The Plague, Pestilence, & Apocalypse MEGAPACK®
The Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK®
The Randall Garrett MEGAPACK®
>The Second Randall Garrett MEGAPACK®
The R.A. Lafferty Fantastic MEGAPACK®
The Ray Cummings MEGAPACK®
The First Richard Wilson MEGAPACK®
The Robert Sheckley MEGAPACK®
The Robert Silverberg MEGAPACK®
The Science-Fantasy MEGAPACK®
The Sydney J. Van Scyoc Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
The Space Opera MEGAPACK®
The Space Patrol MEGAPACK®, by Eando Binder
The Second Space Patrol MEGAPACK®, by Eando Binder
The Steampunk MEGAPACK®
The Stephen Vincent Benét MEGAPACK®
The Time Travel MEGAPACK®
>The Second Time Travel MEGAPACK®
>The Third Time Travel MEGAPACK®
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®
The Utopia MEGAPACK®
The Willam P. McGivern Fantasy MEGAPACK®
The First Willam P. McGivern Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
>The Second Willam P. McGivern Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
The William Hope Hodgson MEGAPACK®
The Wizard of Oz MEGAPACK®
The Zanthodon MEGAPACK®, by Lin Carter
WESTERN
The Andy Adams Western MEGAPACK®
The B.M. Bower MEGAPACK®
The Max Brand MEGAPACK®
The Buffalo Bill MEGAPACK®
The Burt Arthur Western MEGAPACK®
The Charles Alden Seltzer MEGAPACK®
The Cowboy MEGAPACKc
The Edgar Rice Burroughs Western MEGAPACK®*
The George W. Ogden Western MEGAPACK®
The Leslie Ernenwein Western MEGAPACK®
The Lon Williams Weird Western MEGAPACK® The Western MEGAPACK®
The Second Western MEGAPACK®
The Third Western MEGAPACK®
The Western Novel MEGAPACK®
The 2nd Western Novel MEGAPACK®
The 3rd Western Novel MEGAPACK®
The 4th Western Novel MEGAPACK®
The 5th Western Novel MEGAPACK®
The 6th Western Novel MEGAPACK®
The 7th Western Novel MEGAPACK®
The 8th Western Novel MEGAPACK®
The 9th Western Novel MEGAPACK®
The Western Romance MEGAPACK®
The Zane Grey MEGAPACK®
YOUNG ADULT
The Bobbsey Twins MEGAPACK®
The Boy Scouts MEGAPACK®
The Boy Detectives MEGAPACK®
The Boys’ Adventure MEGAPACK®
The Bryce Walton Boys’ Adventure MEGAPACK®
The Dan Carter, Cub Scout MEGAPACK®
The Dare Boys MEGAPACK®
The Dave Dawson War Adventure MEGAPACK®
The Doll Story MEGAPACK®
The G.A. Henty MEGAPACK®
The Girl Detectives MEGAPACK®
The Gismo Complete Series MEGAPACK®, by Keo Felker Lazarus
The Horatio Alger MEGAPACK®
The Miss Pickerell MEGAPACK®
The E. Nesbit MEGAPACK®
The Penny Parker MEGAPACK®
The Pinocchio MEGAPACK®
The Rover Boys MEGAPACK®
The Sandy Steele MEGAPACK®
The Second Carolyn Wells MEGAPACK®
The Sky Detectives MEGAPACK®
The Space Patrol MEGAPACK®
The Tahara, Boy Adventurer MEGAPACK ®
The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet MEGAPACK®
The Tom Swift MEGAPACK®
The Wizard of Oz MEGAPACK®
The Young Adult Award-Winners MEGAPACK®
The Young Adult Mystery MEGAPACK®
SINGLE-AUTHOR
The A. Merritt MEGAPACK®*
The A.R. Morlan MEGAPACK®
The Achmed Abdullah MEGAPACK®
The Algernon Blackwood MEGAPACK®
The Second Algernon Blackwood MEGAPACK®
The Anatole France MEGAPACK®
The Andre Norton MEGAPACK®
The Anna Katharine Green MEGAPACK®
The Arthur Conan Doyle MEGAPACK®: Beyond Sherlock Holmes
The Arthur Conan Doyle Early Novels MEGAPACK®
The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
The Arthur Machen MEGAPA
CK®**
The Avram Davidson Science Fiction & Fantasy MEGAPACK®
The B.M. Bower MEGAPACK®
The Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson MEGAPACK®
The Bram Stoker MEGAPACK®
The Burt Arthur Western MEGAPACK®
The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK®
The Charles Alden Seltzer MEGAPACK®
The Charles Dickens Christmas MEGAPACK®
The Darrell Schweitzer MEGAPACK®
The Dashiell Hammett MEGAPACK®
The E. Hoffmann Price Spicy Story MEGAPACK®
The E. Nesbit MEGAPACK®
The E.F. Benson MEGAPACK®
The Second E.F. Benson MEGAPACK®
The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK®
The Edgar Pangborn MEGAPACK®
The Edward Bellamy MEGAPACK®
The Erckmann-Chatrian MEGAPACK®
The F. Scott Fitzgerald MEGAPACK®
The First R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK®
The First Reginald Bretnor MEGAPACK®
The First William P. McGivern Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
The Fred M. White Disaster MEGAPACK®
The Frederick Douglass MEGAPACK®
The Fredric Brown MEGAPACK®
The Second Fredric Brown MEGAPACK®
The George Barr McCutcheon MEGAPACK®
The Guy de Maupassant MEGAPACK®
The H. Beam Piper MEGAPACK®
The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK®
The Harold Lamb MEGAPACK®
The Henri Bergson MEGAPACK®
The Jacques Futrelle MEGAPACK®
The Jane Austen MEGAPACK®
The Johnston McCulley Mystery MEGAPACK®
The Jonas Lie MEGAPACK®
The Katherine Mansfield MEGAPACK®
The Kenneth Grahame MEGAPACK®
The Lloyd Biggle, Jr. MEGAPACK®
The Lon Williams Weird Western MEGAPACK®
The M.R. James MEGAPACK®
The Mack Reynolds MEGAPACK®
The Mary Fortune Mystery & Suspense MEGAPACK®
The Max Brand MEGAPACK®
The Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®
The Second Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®
The Third Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®
The Second Murray Leinster MEGAPACK®***
The Philip K. Dick MEGAPACK®
The Rafael Sabatini MEGAPACK®
The Randall Garrett MEGAPACK®
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 153