'Anyway, all the motherworms did have fins, and these evolved into limbs. And–'
'But,' Hal had said, 'evolution can't work that way! Your scientists have made a serious, a grievous, error. After all, your paleontology is just beginning; it's only about a hundred years old.'
'Ah!' Fobo had said. 'You're too terrocentric. Hidebound. You have an anemic imagination. Your thought arteries are hardened. Consider the possibility that there might be billions of habitable planets in this universe and that on each evolution may have taken slightly, or even vastly, different paths. The Great Goddess is an experimenter. She'd get bored reproducing the same thing over and over. Wouldn't you?'
Hal was sure that the wogs were mistaken. Unfortunately, they weren't going to live long enough to be illuminated by the superior and much older science of the Haijac.
Now Fobo had removed his skullcap with its two imitation antennae, the symbols of the Grasshopper clan. But, even though this removal lessened his resemblance to Professor Wogglebug, his bald forepate and the stiff blond corkscrew fuzz on his backpate reasserted it. And the bridgeless, comically long nose shooting straight out from his face doubly strengthened it. Concealed in its cartilaginous length were two antennae, his organs of smell.
The Terran who first saw the Ozagenians would have been justified in his remark, if he had made it. But it was doubtful if he had. In the first place, the local tongue used the word Ozagen for Mother Earth. In the second place, even if the man on the first expedition had thought this, he would not have uttered it. The Oz books were forbidden in the Haijac Union; he could not have read the term unless he had taken a chance on buying it from a booklegger. It was possible he had. In fact, that was the only explanation. Otherwise, how could the spaceman who told Hal the story have come by the word? The originator of the story may not have cared if the authorities found out he was reading condemned books. Spacemen were famous, or infamous, for their disregard of danger and lax conduct in following the precepts of the Sturch when not on Earth.
Hal became aware that Fobo was talking to him.
'. . . this joat that Monsieur Pornsen called you when he was so angry and furious. What does that mean?'
'It means,' he said, 'a person who is not a specialist in any of the sciences but who knows much about all of them. Actually, I am a liaison officer between various scientists and government officials. It is my business to summarize and integrate current scientific reports and then present them to the hierarchy.'
He glanced at the statue.
The woman was not in sight.
'Science,' he continued, 'has become so specialized that intelligible communication even among scientists in the same field is very difficult. Each scientist has a deep vertical knowledge of his own little area but not much horizontal knowledge. The more he knows about his own subject, the less aware he is of what others in allied subjects are doing. He just does not have the time to read even a fraction of the overwhelming mass of articles. It is so bad that of two doctors who specialize in nose dysfunctions, one will treat the left nostril and the other will treat the right.'
Fobo threw up his hands in horror.
'But science would come to a standstill! Surely you exaggerate!'
'About doctors, yes,' said Hal, managing to grin a little. 'But I do not exaggerate much. And it is true that science is not advancing in geometric progression as it once did. There is a lack of time for the scientist and too little communication. He cannot be aided in his own research by a discovery in another field because he just will not hear of it.'
Hal saw a head stick out from the base of the statue and then withdraw. He began to sweat.
Fobo questioned Hal about the religion of the Forerunner. Hal was as taciturn as possible and completely ignored some questions, though he felt embarrassed by doing so. The wog was nothing if not logical, and logic was a light that Hal had never turned upon what he had been taught by the Urielites.
Finally, he said, 'All I can say to you is that it is absolutely true that most men can travel subjectively in time but that the Forerunner, his evil disciple, the Backrunner, and the Backrunner's wife are the only people who can travel objectively in time. I know it is true because the Forerunner predicted what would happen in the future, and his every prediction was fulfilled. And–'
'Every prediction?'
'Well, all but one. But that turned out to be an unreal forecast, a pseudofuture somehow inserted by the Backrunner into The Western Talmud.'
'How do you know those predictions which haven't been fulfilled aren't also false insertions?'
'Well... we don't. The only way to tell is to wait until the time for them to happen arrives. Then...'
Fobo smiled and said, 'Then you know that that particular prediction was written and inserted by the Backrunner.'
'Of course. But the Urielites have been working for some years now on a method which they say will prove, by internal evidence, whether the future events are real futures or false. When we left Earth, we expected to hear at any time that an infallible method had been discovered. Now, of course, we won't know until we return to Earth.'
'I feel that this conversation is making you nervous,' said Fobo. 'Perhaps, we can pursue it some other time. Tell me, what do you think of the ruins?'
'Very interesting. Of course, I take an almost personal interest in this vanished people because they were mammals, so much like us Terrans. What I cannot imagine is how they could almost die out. If they were like us, and they seem to have been, they would have thrived.'
'They were a very decadent, quarrelsome, greedy, bloody, pernicious breed,' Fobo said. 'Though, no doubt, there were many fine people among them. I doubt that they all killed each other off, except for a few dozen or so. I doubt also that a plague killed almost all their kind. Maybe someday we'll find out. Bight now, I'm tired, so I'm going to bed.'
'I'm restless. If you don't mind, I'll poke around. These ruins are so beautiful in this bright moonlight.'
'Reminds me of a poem by our great bard Shamero. If I could remember it and could translate it effectively enough into American, I'd recite it to you.'
Fobo's V-in-V lips yawned.
'I shall go to bed, retire, wrap the arms of Morpheus around me. However, first, do you have any weapons, firearms, with which to defend yourself against the things that prowl the night?'
'I am allowed to carry a knife in my bootsheath,' said Hal.
Fobo reached under his cloak and brought out a pistol. He handed it to Hal and said, 'Here! I hope you won't have to use it, but you never know. We live in a savage, predatory world, my friend. Especially out here in the country.'
Hal looked curiously at the weapon, similar to those he had seen in Siddo. It was crude compared to the small automatics in the Gabriel, but it had all the aura and fascination of an alien weapon. Plus the fact that it resembled very much the early steel pistols of Earth. Its hexagonal barrel was not quite three decimeters long; the caliber looked to be about ten millimeters. A revolving chamber contained five brass cartridges; these were loaded with black gunpowder, lead bullets, and percussion caps containing, he guessed, fulminate of mercury. Strangely, the pistol had no trigger; a strong spring pulled the hammer down against the cartridge when the finger released the hammer.
Hal would have liked to see the mechanism that turned the revolving cartridge chamber when the hammer was pulled back. But he did not want to keep Fobo around any longer than he could help.
Nevertheless, he could not refrain from asking him why the Siddo did not use a trigger. Fobo was surprised at the question. When he had heard Hal's explanation, he blinked his large round eyes (a weird and at first unnerving sight because the lower eyelid made the motion), and he said, 'I have never thought of it! It does seem to be more efficient and less tiring on the handler of the gun, does it not?'
'Obvious to me,' said Hal. 'But then, I am an Earthman and think like one. I have noticed the not unsurprising fact that you Ozagens do not always think as we do.'
He handed the gun back to Fobo, and he said, 'I am sorry I can't take it. But I am forbidden to carry firearms.'
Fobo looked puzzled, but evidently he did not think it politic to inquire why not. Or else he was too tired.
He said, 'Very well. Shalom, aloha, good dreaming, Sigmen visit you.'
'Shalom to you, too,' said Hal. He watched the broad back of the wog disappear into the shadows, and he felt a strange warmth for the creature. Despite his utterly alien and unhuman appearance, Fobo appealed to Hal.
Hal turned and walked toward the statue of the Great Mother. When he got to the shadows at its base, he saw the woman slipping into the darkness cast by a three-story heap of rubble. He followed her to the rubble only to see her several stone-throws ahead, leaning against a monolith. Beyond was the lake, silvery and black in the moonlight.
Hal walked toward her and was about five meters from her when she spoke in a low and throaty voice. 'Baw sfa, soo Yarrow.'
'Baw sfa,' he echoed, knowing that it must be a greeting in her language.
'Baw sfa,' she repeated, and then, obviously translating the phrase for his benefit, she said, in Siddo, 'Abhu'umaigeitsi'i.'
Which meant, very roughly, 'Good evening.'
He gasped.
Of course! Now he knew why the words had sound vaguely familiar and the rhythm of her speech remind him so strongly of a not too unrecent experience. Som thing about it stirred up a memory of his research in tiny community of the last of the French speakers in Hudson Bay Preserve.
Baw sfa. Baw sfa was bon soir.
Even though her speech was, linguistically speaking, very decayed form, it could not disguise its ancestry. Baw sfa. And those other words he had heard through the window. Wuhfvayfvoo. That would be levez-vous, French for 'get up.'