“There is no abundance of them. There is no progression, Lord Desan. That is the key thing. There is nothing beyond these substances, these materials. This was not a star-faring civilization. They launched their slow, unmanned probes, with their cameras, their robot eyes—not for us. We always knew that. We were the recipients of flotsam. Mere wreckage on the beach.”
“It was purposeful!” Desan hissed, trembling, surrounded by them all, a lone credent among the quiet heresy in this room. “Dr. Gothon, your unique position—is a position of trust, of profound trust; I beg you to consider the effect you have—”
“Do you threaten me, Lord Desan? Are you here for that, to silence me?”
Desan looked desperately about him, at the sudden hush in the room. The minute tickings of probes and picks had stopped. Eyes stared. “Please.” He looked back. “I came here to gather data; I expected a simple meeting, a few staff meetings—to consider things at leisure—”
“I have distressed you. You wonder how it would be if the lords-magistrate fell at odds with me. I am aware of myself as an institution, Lord Desan. I remember Desan Das. I remember launch, the original five ships. I have waked to all but one of your incarnations. Not to mention the numerous incarnations of the lords-magistrate.”
“You cannot discount them! Even you—Let me plead with you, Dr. Gothon, be patient with us.”
“You do not need to teach me patience, Desan-Five.”
He shivered convulsively. Even when Gothon smiled that gentle, disarming smile. “You have to give me facts, doctor, not mystical communing with the landscape. The lords-magistrate accept that this is the world of origin. I assure you they never would have devoted so much time to creating a base here if that were not the case.”
“Come, lord, those power systems on the probe, so long dead—What was it truly for, but to probe something very close at hand? Even orthodoxy admits that. And what is close at hand but their own solar system? Come, I’ve seen the original artifact and the original tablet. Touched it with my hands. This was a primitive venture, designed to cross their own solar system—which they had not the capability to do.”
Desan blinked. “But the purpose—”
“Ah. The purpose.”
“You say that you stand in a landscape and you think in their mind. Well, doctor, use this skill you claim. What did the Ancients intend? Why did they send it out with a message?”
The old eyes flickered, deep and calm and pained. “An oracular message, Lord Desan. A message into the dark of their own future, unaimed, unfocused. Without answer. Without hope of answer. We know its voyage time. Eight million years. They spoke to the universe at large. This probe went out, and they fell silent shortly afterward—the depth of this dry lake of dust, Lord Desan, is eight and a quarter million years.”
“I will not believe that.”
“Eight and a quarter million years ago, Lord Desan. Calamity fell on them, calamity global and complete within a century, perhaps within a decade of the launch of that probe. Perhaps calamity fell from the skies; but demonstrably it was atomics and their own doing. They were at that precarious stage. And the destruction in the great centers is catastrophic and of one level. Destruction centered in places of heavy population. Trace elements. That is what those statistics say. Atomics, Lord Desan.”
“I cannot accept this!”
“Tell me, space-farer—do you understand the workings of weather? What those meteor strikes could do, the dust raised by atomics could do with equal efficiency. Never mind the radiation that alone would have killed millions—never mind the destruction of centers of government: We speak of global calamity, the dimming of the sun in dust, the living oceans and lakes choking in dying photosynthetes in a sunless winter, killing the food chain from the bottom up—”
“You have no proof!”
“The universality, the ruin of the population-centers. Arguably, they had the capacity to prevent meteor-impact. That may be a matter of debate. But beyond a doubt in my own mind, simultaneous destruction of the population centers indicates atomics. The statistics, the pots and the dry numbers, Lord Desan, doom us to that answer. The question is answered. There were no descendants, there was no escape from the world. They destroyed themselves before that meteor hit them.”
Desan rested his mouth against his joined hands. Stared helplessly at the doctor. “A lie. Is that what you’re saying? We pursued a lie?”
“Is it their fault that we needed them so much?”
Desan pushed himself to his feet and stood there by mortal effort. Gothon sat staring up at him with those terrible dark eyes.
“What will you do, lord-navigator? Silence me? The old woman’s grown difficult at last: wake my clone after, tell it—what the lords-magistrate select for it to be told?” Gothon waved a hand about the room, indicating the staff, the dozen sets of living eyes among the dead. “Bothogi too, those of us who have clones—But what of the rest of the staff? How much will it take to silence all of us?”
Desan stared about him, trembling. “Dr. Gothon—” He leaned his hands on the table to look at Gothon. “You mistake me. You utterly mistake me—The lords-magistrate may have the station, but I have the ships, I, I and my staff. I propose no such thing. I’ve come home—” The unaccustomed word caught in his throat; he considered it, weighed it, accepted it, at least in the emotional sense. “—home, Dr. Gothon, after a hundred years of search, to discover this argument and this dissension.”
“Charges of heresy—”
“They dare not make them against you.” A bitter laugh welled up. “Against you they have no argument and you well know it, Dr. Gothon.”
“Against their violence, lord-navigator, I have no defense.”
“But she has,” said Dr. Bothogi.
Desan turned, flicked a glance from the hardness in Bothogi’s green eyes to the even harder substance of the stone in Bothogi’s hand. He flung himself about again, hands on the table, abandoning the defense of his back. “Dr. Gothon! I appeal to you! I am your friend!”
“For myself,” said Dr. Gothon, “I would make no defense at all. But, as you say—they have no argument against me. So it must be a general catastrophe—the lords-magistrate have to silence everyone, don’t they? Nothing can be left on this base. Perhaps they’ve quietly dislodged an asteroid or two and put them on course. In the guise of mining, perhaps they will silence this poor old world forever—myself and the rest of the relics. Lost relics and the distant dead are always safer to venerate, aren’t they?”
“That’s absurd!”
“Or perhaps they’ve become more hasty now that your ships are here and their judgment is in question. They have atomics within their capability, lord-navigator. They can disable your shuttle with beam-fire. They can simply welcome you to the list of casualties—a charge of heresy. A thing taken out of context, who knows? After all—all lords are immediately duplicatable, the captains accustomed to obey the lords-magistrate—what few of them are awake—am I not right? If an institution like myself can be threatened—where is the fifth lord-navigator in their plans? And of a sudden those plans will be moving in haste.”
Desan blinked. “Dr. Gothon—I assure you—”
“If you are my friend, lord-navigator, I hope for your survival. The robots are theirs, do you understand? Their powerpacks are sufficient for transmission of information to the base AIs; and from the communications center it goes to satellites; and from satellites to the station and the lords-magistrate. This room is safe from their monitoring. We have seen to that. They cannot hear you.”