"I thought that if Necrom woke up, it'd be the end of everything, that he'd eat us alive."
Windemere shrugged. "That's more fortune-telling."
"So what will happen?"
"Damned if I know. It could be that Necrom will usher in a whole new golden age, although, having lived through the sixties, I'm not sure we'd recognize a golden age if it jumped up and bit us. The only real hope I can see is that we survived the last one and maybe we'll survive again this time round."
"Survived the last what?"
"The last influx of superbeings."
Gibson blinked. "When did that happen? Did I miss something?"
"This planet was occupied for about ten thousand years by Necrom and his kind."
Every time Gibson thought that he was starting to get a handle on the events that had been thrust at him from the moment that Casillas had come knocking on his door, someone or something came along and kicked all previous logic out from under him.
He took a deep, cleansing breath and then spoke slowly and carefully. "There were superbeings actually living on Earth?"
"Right."
"Right here on Earth."
"Right."
"For ten thousand years."
"That's correct."
"When was this?"
"From about 25,000 to 15,000 B.C."
"How come we never heard about any of this?"
"It's just another of those little things that metallic science doesn't like to think about and therefore refuses to believe ever happened. The evidence is there if we care to look."
"Where?"
Windemere picked up a small rope of worry beads from his desk and twisted them between his fingers.
"It's actually the lack of evidence that's the most overwhelming factor. For the whole of this period, there are no conventional human archeological remains. That's a hell of a period just to misplace. And we know that man was around during that time. It wasn't that he hadn't appeared on the scene yet. Jesus, the Leakeys have found bones in Africa that go back five million years. It's just that we appear to vanish for about ten millennia."
"Are you going to tell me about it?"
Windemere applied a lighter to the pipe. "Don't have much else to do."
"So what happened?"
"Really I don't know that much. Just bits and pieces that I've gleaned along the way. Otherzoners can become amazingly tight-lipped when it comes to telling us stuff that we don't already know."
Gibson nodded. "I've noticed that."
"Anyway, for what it's worth, it seems that round about twenty-seven thousand years ago a bunch of superbeings showed up and colonized this planet in this particular temporal reality."
"Huh?"
"This dimension, if you like. A bunch of parallel dimensions, too, for that matter. Superbeings don't do that kind of stuff by half."
"What did they want here?"
"Who the hell knows? Why does anyone go out and colonize anywhere? Why did Columbus risk sailing off the edge of the world? To prove a point? Maybe all sentient beings are possessed of insatiable curiosity."
"And what did they do?"
"Usual colonial power stuff. Dragged us monkeys out of our caves and forced their idea of civilization on us. Used the place as a playground and probably as a staging point for their inexplicable adventures elsewhere."
"How is it that no trace remains of them?"
Windemere grinned. He was warming to his subject.
"That's the point, there are traces. It's just that we either don't recognize them or we make excuses for them. The whole planet is covered with improbable objects, roads, pyramids, giant structures that may have been constructed according to some big superaesthetic: the Great Pyramid, the Black Stone at Mecca, Easter Island. We're up to our ass in superbeing stuff."
"Superbeing art?"
"Why not?"
"No reason, I guess."
"Artifacts aside, by far the greatest traces of this occupation remain in our own minds."
"They do?"
"Sure. Our gods, ancient and modern, are certainly nothing more than a handed-down memory of Necrom and his kind, although saying so, up until comparatively recently, could get you burned at the stake."
"You don't believe in any kind of religion?"
Windemere looked almost angry.
"I don't believe in gods, full stop. We have quite enough troubles of our own without inventing more. I used to agree with Einstein that the need to create gods was an aberration of our species, maybe a by-product of being at the top of the food chain-how did he put it, 'fear or ridiculous egotism'? Now I suspect that it's all the result of trauma. The arrival of the superbeings left us with a dent in our ego that we still haven't worked out. Our collective consciousness took a terrible hammering. First these superior entities show up and we have to admit that we're no longer number one with a bullet, and then, to add insult to injury, after ten thousand years, just as we're getting used to the idea of being the pets of giants, they dump us and fuck off. We've never recovered. We still keep watching the skies, straining to get up there, promising ourselves that we'll go there when we die. The later pyramids, the spires of cathedrals, Stonehenge, the lines at Nazca, are all appeals to the gods to return. Daddy come home. The truth is, we're a bunch of bloody cargo cultists."
"But how come there are no human remains left for that period? There were plenty of us running around, right?"
"I'm not sure that we were running around. I have a feeling that we were rather more doing what the superbeings wanted. We may have been in reservations or zoos or we may really have been pets inside the residences of the gods. They may not have approved of wild humans, violent and inquisitive, and generally an all-round fucking nuisance. I'm also pretty sure that they left the place as they'd hope to find it, underpopulated and primitive, and they did one hell of a job clearing up, too. They must have practically leveled everything. The catalogue of disaster in legends would seem to confirm it. All the floods, the earthquakes, the nuking of Sodom, they're all likely memories of the superbeings wiping the place clean. The few survivors crawled off to lick their wounds, A few may have struggled for a while, trying to hang on to a little of what they learned, but the majority were too dispirited by the whole business to do anything but head back to their caves and start over."
"You're saying they almost wiped out humanity."
Windemere raised an eyebrow. "Plus all surface trace of their having been here. Does it surprise you?"
Gibson shook his head.
"Not really. It must have been something of a task, though."
"Not for Necrom's bunch, believe me."
"Just how super are they?"
"It's inconceivable. It's like a poodle contemplating Bertrand Russell. Don't let it get you down, though. The point is that we did survive. A pack of angry poodles can bring down a single philosopher if they have a mind to. Don't forget that. Of course, why they should have a mind to and the ethical questions contained therein are a whole other can of worms. That's maybe another reason I didn't join the Nine."
There was a quiet knock on the door. Windemere looked up.
"Yeah, come on in."
The woman who came in was in her mid-twenties and moved with a grace that immediately appealed to Gibson, who automatically rose from his chair. Windemere made the introductions.
"Joe, this is Christobelle Lacey. Christobelle, this is Joe Gibson."
Gibson turned on the charm. "Christobelle is a lovely name."