The Genesis Quest Read online

  “Well, then,” Bram said with five-year-old logic, “why don’t we go there to find out?”

  The feathery touch of another tentacle brushed his cheek. “People and things could never, ever travel so far,” Voth said. “If it takes light thirty-seven million years to get here from the human sun, it would take a full-grown spaceship seven times as long to go there. Can you figure out how long that is?”

  Bram screwed up his small features. “Two hundred and fifty-nine million,” he finally announced.

  “Very good, Bram.”

  “Well, then, why couldn’t we go in a rocket?”

  “It would take almost as long, and besides, a fusion-fission ship is too small to live on for any length of time. And if you could live two hundred million years, you’d forget who you were and why you went. No, it’s just not possible.”

  “Well,” Bram said, pouncing triumphantly, “how did human people get here, then?”

  There was a cautious circularity of cilia movement. “Didn’t one of your gene mothers ever discuss it with you?”

  Bram dropped his eyes and traced a geometric figure on the floor with his big toe. “I asked mama-mu Dlors about it once, and she said I’d understand when I got older.”

  “I see. I think you’re old enough to understand now, Bram. That was a very intelligent question. The answer is they didn’t.”

  Bram warmed to the praise. “But human stuff did, though? And then you grew people out of it, the way you grow potatoes and spaceships and things?”

  The old decapod’s crown quivered in a manner that was equivalent to a man’s shaking his head. “No. I told you that people and things can never travel so far. But information can — information in the form of radio waves, spreading outward at the speed of light. Before they vanished from the universe, human beings had achieved the power to tame whole suns and use their energy to shout across the space between galaxies. They told us many useful things. And one of the things their message contained was a — a sort of plan. A plan of how to make a human egg.”

  “They must have been very smart,” Bram said with a yawn.

  Voth squeezed Bram’s shoulder gently. The four star points that were not occupied stood straight up in the air and drooped symmetrically outward in a formal gesture of respect.

  “They were a very great people at the height of their powers,” Voth said. “We Nar were fortunate that during the years the human message was being broadcast, we were in the early stages of our own space age. We had already begun to colonize the worlds of the lesser sun, and we had sent our first primitive boron-drive ships to the nearest star outside our system, almost a whole light-year away. So we had a large enough radio ear already in place — a field of thousands of receivers covering a hemisphere of one of our smaller airless moons. We knew something of genetic engineering even then, but the human message was a revelation. As were the genetic building blocks the humans gave us — useful things like terrestrial starches and woody stems that made it possible for us to expand more quickly and cheaply into space. Within a single Nar lifetime, the whole direction of our civilization had changed. We had the beginnings of abundance. And then, half a Nar lifetime ago, we were ready to try to recreate man himself. I was fortunate to be a part of that new beginning, though I was but a small finger of the bioengineering touch group entrusted with the project. Yes, little one, we are very grateful for human beings.”

  Bram’s attention had wandered. He rubbed at a sleepy eye with one fist. “Voth, can I play with Tha-tha?”

  The tentacle whose tip rested on Bram’s shoulder uncreased all the way up and enfolded the boy in its comforting mantle. “First I think you had better have your nap.”

  “Tha-tha’s very nice. He’s my favorite touch brother.”

  “Yes, he is nice. He’ll grow into a fine person one day.”

  “Will he still be my friend when we grow up?”

  Again there was that sensation of sadness from the downy undersurface of Voth’s limb. “Touch brothers are always friends. For as long as they live.”

  “Will I be able to speak the Great Language to him then?”

  “Let’s not talk about that now. It’s a very complicated subject.”

  “Sometimes he forgets to talk the Small Language and he just hugs me and I can’t understand him.”

  “Don’t worry about that, little one. I’ll speak to Tha-tha. Young creatures are sometimes forgetful.”

  “Voth?”

  “What, child?”

  “Does Tha-tha have a gene mother too?”

  A startled ripple traveled down Voth’s tentacle. “Well, yes, of course. All Nar had mothers.”

  “I asked him, but he didn’t know.”

  “He wouldn’t remember. He was just a little swimming thing. After sentience, of course, he was raised by me and my touch brothers.” The edges of the fleshy mantle curled in a way that Bram had come to recognize as the usual grown-up reticence, like when he asked mama-mu Dlors where they grew babies.

  “Where do all the lady Nar go? You hardly ever see them, the way you see human ladies all the time, and then they’re all old. And you never see a little girl Nar.”

  “That’s enough for one day,” Voth said firmly. “Time for your nap.”

  Bram allowed himself to be guided past the toy box, past his own little desk with the styluses and reading screen, past the miniature star-shaped whole-body reader that his touch brothers stretched themselves out on for hours at a time, to the cot in the corner, which still had his baby touch objects and alphabet letters dangling over it.

  “Some day,” Bram said as Voth started to tuck him in, “I’m going to go back to the world that human people started out on and see what it’s like.”

  “Hush now, and go to sleep. I’ve told you it’s not possible.”

  “I’ll find a way to go anyhow,” Bram said.

  The old decapod gathered the boy compassionately in his petals. “Oh, Bram, you are a child!” he said. “You will understand when you are older!”

  Wrapped in the warm velvety cloak, Bram felt the waves of soft bristles caress him as Voth crooned to him in the Great Language. The meaning was muzzy but comforting, like a lullaby hummed without the actual words.

  “You’ll see,” said a sleepy little boy.

  Dlors was pouring a drink for her new friend, Arthe, when the door rattle made a diffident noise.

  “Stay where you are,” she said. “I’ll get it.”

  She rose from the low orange pouf she had been sitting on and set the pitcher of iced and flavored distillate down on the fragile wooden stand between them. Arthe had made the little five-legged table out of vacuum-poplar; he was handier with edged tools than Bram’s gene fathers had been.

  “If it’s Lan and Elaire, send them away,” Arthe groaned. “He’ll only want to drone on for hours about that mote drama he’s got himself a part in.” The thirtieth-century mote dramas of Jam Anders that were now being deciphered were the latest fad in the human community. Arthe’s tastes in theater were more conservative, running to the neo-Shakespeare movement.

  “Quiet, they’ll hear you,” Dlors said.

  She went to the door, a wooden oval set in the nacre of the curving wall, and opened it. The tall spindle shape of a Nar was there, its tentacles raised and clustered with their waxy sides out in a mode of nonpresumptive courtesy.

  “Oh … Voth-shr-voth,” she said. After a moment she remembered her manners and held up her hands, palms outward.

  The decapod unpeeled two of its limbs and touched her palms in formal greeting.

  “Good evening, Dlors Hsin-jen Jons,” the being said in mid-Inglex. “May I see Bram?”

  “Yes … of course. I’ll get him. I wasn’t expecting you at this hour.”

  “Forgive me for intruding on your Tenday.” The hidden baritone vibrations were a little muffled by the palisade of tentacles. “There is a place I must take him to this night if you do not mind giving up his presence for a short time.”


  “No … not at all. I mean, he was going to go to bed soon, anyhow. He’s a funny little boy. He can sit in his compartment for hours, playing by himself and making up games. He doesn’t have any near siblings, you know — not here, anyhow, though there’s a sixteenth-sister and some thirty-seconds elsewhere in the Compound.”

  “I will try to have him back in a few hours,” Voth said gravely. “Perhaps he might sleep a little later tomorrow.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Dlors said brightly. “Why doesn’t he just stay with you tonight. I mean, he’d be going in the morning anyway, and that way there wouldn’t be any problem.”

  The flat petals creased slightly at their midline. “His touch brothers will be pleased.”

  He followed her into the ribbed pearly chamber, mincing along on the stiffened tips of his lower points to match her gait. The Nar had no skeletons, but their hydrostatic support system enabled them to put a knee anywhere.

  “Arthe, this is Voth-shr-voth, little Bram’s mentor,” Dlors blurted. She looked hesitantly from one to the other. “I’ll get Bram,” she said, and hurried out.

  Arthe, sprawled in a fan-back seat, did not offer to rise. He took a sip of his drink as Voth started to unfold. Voth’s partially extended petals closed again, though staying politely flared at the tops.

  “I know of your work as an architect, Arthe Wulter Collin,” the decapod said. “It is of interest.”

  Arthe’s face flushed with pleasure, then tightened again. “It’s not very practical, though, is it?” he said. “Not when you can biosculpt large structures cheaper than you can knock them together out of materials. And can’t get enough of the materials, to boot. No, my real work’s at the ethanol plant. Architecture’s only a hobby.” He took another sip of his drink. “All us humans have hobbies.”

  “The creation of habitats is not merely practical,” Voth said. “We, too, see it as an art. And architecture is a human art. It is encouraged. Arthe Wulter Collin, you should go to your touch brothers and tell them of your need for materials.”

  “Haven’t seen ’em for years,” Arthe said. He changed the subject. “Come to take the kid someplace, have you?”

  “He has expressed an interest in stellar objects,” Voth said. “The lesser sun sets early at this season, and this will be a good night for viewing.”

  “Stargazing. Ah, well, I guess it’s a stage most kids go through. I went through it myself. But there’s not much use for human star travelers. Not when we wouldn’t live long enough to reach most of the places you’d go to.”

  “No, but there is work for human astronomers. And some day, human beings will be with us at our farthest extent, though it will take many stages, many lifetimes, both human and Nar.” The voice within grew more muffled. “We Nar have our limitations too.”

  “Ah, well, let the boy dream. When he grows up, he might want to settle on Juxt One — if he’s willing to spend ten years of his life getting there.”

  “You are fond of Bram?”

  “He’s a nice little kid. Quiet. No trouble.”

  Dlors came from an inner chamber, leading Bram by the hand. “I dressed him. It’s a little chilly,” she said. He was wearing a belted tunic of felted polymer with wide, elbow-length sleeves.

  Seen together, the two showed little resemblance, though Dlors was his principal gene mother and the woman who had borne him. Her round face, thick blond hair, and blue eyes with their epicanthic folds were at odds with his dark, serious eyes and fine-boned facial architecture, though there was a premonition of Bram in the shape of her chin and the long sensitive hands. Before her figure had grown a bit too comfortable, Dlors had been a dancer, part of a company that had attempted to reinvent ballet.

  “Voth!” Bram cried. He ran to the decapod, who swept him up in a nest of petals and gave him a hug.

  “How would you like to stay up late tonight, Bram?” his custodian asked.

  They were in a bubble car high over the coastal megacity. Bram twisted around in his seat to see the human compound, a pebbled polygon of dim chalky spherules and knobs interspersed with the queer new boxy shapes of the wood and stone buildings that the Reconstructionist architects, Arthe among them, were starting to put up. At this height and distance, the lightpoles at the squares and intersections were mere incandescent filaments. Bram tried to pick out his own home but could not.

  Below the speeding bubble car and stretching far into the distance, the coastal flats were cobbled with the tall calcified spirals of the Nar structures, connected by a lacework of fairy bridges and cambered roadways and beginning to glow with their own bioluminescence now that the sky was darkening. Glittering motes of light moved along the grid, and in the sky above, strings of illuminated bubble cars crawled along their invisible threads like translucent beads.

  The real sun had set long ago, and the lesser sun was low over the edge of a glassy black sea, a brilliant topaz point that made the coiled spires of the city cast ghostly shadows across the miles. The brighter stars were already twinkling in the deepening sky, and the enormous blob of light known by Nar and humans alike as the Bonfire, with its bridge of blue stars and starfog, was growing brighter, dominating the night sky.

  “Do you know what that is?” Voth said, sitting beside Bram with his lower limbs coiled into a ball that would fit in one of the cuplike seats.

  “Sure, that’s the Bonfire,” Bram said. He was perched with his knees drawn up in the center of a seat that was too big for him, his attention transferred to the other passengers in the bubble car. They were mostly Nar, though there were a few humans who were traveling alone. One of them, trying to preserve his dignity in the yielding bowl that left his sandaled feet dangling, was a bald middle-aged man with a self-important expression. He carried a transparent portfolio stuffed with body-reader holos that proclaimed him to be one of those fortunates chosen to be an intern in some Nar enterprise.

  “Can you guess what the Bonfire is made of?” Voth asked.

  Bram squinted at the bright fog with its central blaze of light. “It’s clouds,” he decided. He had an inspiration. “Of thousands and thousands of little biolights all coming together in the middle and getting squashed.”

  “It’s made of stars, Bram. It’s a collection of stars called a galaxy. And it’s very close, as galaxies go.”

  The little boy gazed at the sky’s other glory, the long luminous streamer with its embedded blue sparks that seemed to pour itself into the Bonfire.

  “I guess I can see that, sort of,” he said. “Where Sky-bridge comes out of it.”

  “Good guess, Bram,” Voth said with an encouraging pat of a tentacle. “But actually, Skybridge is an arm of our own galaxy, and those stars you see aren’t really in it. They’re closer to us than Skybridge or the Bonfire — close enough to see them as individuals. A long, long time ago, we think, the Bonfire brushed past our own galaxy and pulled it out of shape and tore millions of stars away from us. Millions more young stars were born because of that encounter, and that’s why Skybridge seems blue.”

  It was a marvelous idea. “Does our galaxy look like the Bonfire?” Bram said.

  There was a startled twitch from Voth. The tentacle that rested lightly on Bram’s forearm under the wide tunic sleeve generated a sensation of respect.

  “That was a very big leap of the imagination, Bram. No, our galaxy managed to keep its shape better than the Bonfire did. We think it’s a spiral — somewhat elongated and with sprung arms. But it must be a beautiful sight from outside.” He hesitated. “We know that because the humans, long ago, had a name for it. They called it M-51, the Whirlpool. It was prominent among the sky objects described by them in their great message, part of a sort of orientation chart to help the recipients of that message pinpoint the human galaxy.” He hesitated again. “You see, the message was not aimed directly at us. It was aimed at a great cluster of more than a thousand galaxies, to improve their odds. We happened to be in its path.”

  Bram hardl
y noticed the last part of what Voth had told him. A great rush of excitement had driven all thoughts but one from his head. He struggled with the new idea. “If — if they can see us, then we can see them!”

  “Not can see us, Bram,” Voth corrected. “Could see us. More than thirty-seven million years ago. And we can see them only as they were, thirty-seven million years ago. And not their suns or their worlds, only their galaxy — just as they, no matter how mighty their science, could not have seen any of the suns or worlds we now dwell on but only the object they called the Whirlpool. You remember what I told you about that before?”

  The tremendous thought swirled round in Bram’s head. “What does the human gal — galaxy look like?”

  “Very much like ours. It’s a spiral too.”

  Outside the crystal dome of the bubble car, full night had fallen. The lesser sun was finally below the horizon, and the three visible moons shed nowhere near as much light. The world had turned into a carpet of dappled silver overhung by a great black bowl pierced by stars.

  “You’re going to see it tonight, Bram,” Voth went on. “Now that we’re approaching the season when the lesser sun moves to the daytime sky, it’s possible to see man’s galaxy from a planet-based observatory. That’s where I’m taking you now.”

  They had reached the mountains. The bubble car slowed on its gossamer cable as it drew near to the thick, squat pylon anchored in the slopes. There was a rustle of movement as the passengers began to uncoil their limbs and flow toward the exits. The bald-headed human with the holo portfolio slid from his cupped pedestal and stood up, glancing around the car to see if anyone had noticed his brief lapse of dignity.

  Bram’s attention was elsewhere. He was still looking out at the stars. They held a new meaning for him now.

  The director hurried on arched legs toward them over the vast darkened expanse of the observatory floor, giving a welcoming hoot in the Small Language as he came.

  “It is good of you to have us here, Director,” Voth said aloud, for Bram’s benefit, as the two decapods touched tentacle tips. The amount of fleshy interface was small, just enough surface area for the social amenities.