“Of course Oola and I will come.”
His gaze narrowed slightly in surprise. “What about the children? You’re not worried about them?” If they both went, who would look after the crèche? He found himself hesitating, torn between old desire and new responsibility.
The Myssari, he told himself, had taken good care of him. Their specialists knew more about human children than either he or Cherpa. He persuaded himself that all would be well enough until the two adult humans returned.
She promptly confirmed his conclusions. “Why should they concern me? Each one can call on a dozen affectionate and respectful minders. To them I am only a bigger child. And I like it that way.”
“All right then.” He looked back at Kel’les. “Inform the Sectionary that their two adult specimens would be pleased to join the next mission to visit Earth. While there we’ll be happy to impart our observations.” He paused. “Though I can’t predict what my reaction, at least, is likely to be.”
“Your excitement,” Kel’les replied, “may arise from a different place, but rest assured it is shared. I will be coming as well, of course.” Peering past Ruslan, the intermet addressed the other human in the room. “It has been remarked upon that ever since arriving here from Daribb years ago, you have never requested a minder of your own. Considering where we are about to go, it was suggested that you might wish to have one assigned to you now. It need not be an intermet. You may request any gender.”
“I never asked for one,” she responded, “because I always had one.” She put an arm around Ruslan’s shoulders and smiled. “Even if he’s short a couple of limbs.”
Feeling the weight of her arm on him, Ruslan reflected that his life had finally come full circle: from refugee to relic to occupying the place in another human’s life of a Myssari technician. It was a strange feeling—one of many he had experienced over the last several decades.
He wondered how it would compare to his first sight of Earth.
Cherpa, of course, had nothing with which to compare the reality of the discovery, so Ruslan was relieved to see that the actual third planet from the modest star looked exactly like the images he had dreamed over while wandering in the wilderness that had overtaken Seraboth.
Just like in all the old recordings, there were the blue oceans, extensive and gemstone bright. The white clouds, highlighted by a massive storm rotating over the largest body of water. The fabled continents with their splotches of lowland brown and forest green and desert beige. The mountain ranges whose names he had memorized from the ancient records, and the winding rivers, and the unpretentious ice fields that streaked the highly developed southern continent. All achingly familiar. As the ship slowed toward orbit he resolved that he would not cry.
He had no trouble keeping the resolution. Earth was beautiful, yes, but it was just another human-suitable world. Seraboth was beautiful, too, and there were many others. His kind had settled few that looked like Daribb. Rearrange the land masses and the seas below and he might be looking at any of a hundred habitable worlds, all of which had at least one thing in common.
None presently supported human life.
The landing party touched down in a mild temperate zone to the south of a massive upraised plateau bordered by the highest range of mountains. Despite their sky-scraping height only the topmost peaks flashed ragged caps of snow. On the ground the disintegrating detritus of a lost civilization was everywhere, and not just in the nearby deserted cities.
“As well to set down here as in open country.” Disembarking from the lander, a cautious Bac’cul sniffed the breathable but thick alien atmosphere. His air intake clenched at the strange odors but his lungs did not reject them. “This is as intensively developed a region as any that was observed from orbit. Were there to be any survivors, calculations suggest this would be as good a place to seek them as any.”
Having walked a short distance away from the landing craft, Ruslan crouched and dug his right hand into soil moist from a recent rain. Holding it up to his nose, he inhaled deeply. Earth of Earth. It smelled… right. Rising, he wiped the dark crumbles from his palm. Smelling the homeworld was sufficient. He was not about to taste it. Nearby, Myssari technicians were already at work erecting the inflatable and pourable components that were to be the foundations of the new scientific station. Life-support facilities would go up first so that the landing team would not have to go back and forth to the supply starship in orbit. The site had been selected following distillation of thousands of factors. There was permanent water, interesting topography, flora and fauna in plenty, and a vast spray of ruins easily accessible for study.
“What would you like to do now?” Cor’rin had joined Kel’les and the two humans. “The technical and construction teams have their work to do, and the other researchers are already unpacking their field gear. I have arranged for a small driftec to be put at our disposal.”
“ ‘Do’?” Just as on Myssar when Kel’les had first told him that the human homeworld had been found, Ruslan once more found himself at a loss for a ready response. “I don’t know. Believe it or not, I hadn’t thought about it.” He gestured at the surrounding greenery. “I always thought that just coming here would be enough.”
“It can be, if you think it so.” Cherpa danced away from them, spinning and leaping and flinging her hands in the air, her long hair flying in imitation of the fast-moving cirrus clouds overhead. “You can join me, Bogo, or just sit and stare there at the air and glare.” Coming to a halt, she pointed toward the sharp outline of distant mountains. “We should go there, too!” She resumed her joyous pirouetting.
Watching her, he mused that there was a time when he might have joined in her carefree prancing. That time had passed. Thanks to the ongoing efforts of the best Myssari biotechs, his body was still in excellent condition. But while they might have been geniuses, they were not wizards. They could repair the exigencies of time but they could not reverse it. He felt like exploring, but leaping and frolicking for the pure pleasure of it was now beyond him. Of the human-studies specialists on the starship, there were at least one or two who would join the camp, but this was not Myssar and this was no place to break an aging ankle.
The extensive skeletal remains of the city beckoned, as did nearby temples and castles that were far older still. The Myssari who had decided on the landing site had chosen well. While Cherpa twirled happily through the landscape, he stayed where he was and contemplated that which he had dreamed of: the earth, the sky, the vegetation, the mountains, a nearby stream flamboyant with a skirt of overhanging verdure. He stood quietly and soaked it all up: sights, sounds, smells. He was content.
By nightfall he found, to his considerable shock, that he missed Myssar.
This Earth, this third planet from its warm yellow sun, was the human homeworld for true—but it was not his home. It fulfilled that purpose only in memory. Seraboth was his homeworld and Myssar his home. The realization shocked him; his acceptance of it stunned him. Much as he felt privileged to stand where he stood, he longed for his comfortable, familiar abode in Pe’leoek, with its on-demand entertainment and food and instant access to beaches and the entire breadth of knowledge of the Myssari. If the ruined city spread out before the landing party had been intact and swarming with members of his species, he might have felt differently. But neither was so. It was a beautiful place but an empty one: void of company, conversation, and convenience. They would study it and make recordings and then he and Cherpa and the Myssari who had brought them all this way would go… home. He would finish out his existence on Myssar among the aliens with whom, socially at least, he had become one.