Sue-ling gazed at the image with renewed interest. The Turtle deity was always represented as a wide-winged female. It was the only female Turtle any of them had ever seen. Real Turtles—the male ones, anyway—never had wings, she thought. Why did they show her like that? And she was depicted as descending from the sun (but not at all Earth's sun— too dim and too reddish in color) to bring new life for them.
It was a pity, she thought with detached interest, that the Turtles were so unwilling to talk about their origins or their home planet—especially about their religion. If religion was what it was. . . .
But then, so much about the Turtles was still a mystery.
Sue-ling felt very strongly that the coming of the Turtles had been a blessing for the human race. Well, she usually felt that way—except when she had been listening to Sork Quintero. Sork was one of the few who doubted that.
When the Turtles first showed up, a hundred years earlier, the human race had been angry, belligerent, frightened— mostly frightened—at the sudden presence of these creatures with better science and unfathomable plans.
Yet the Turtles had seemed to know just how to quiet human fears. Sue-ling blinked as it came to her just how that had been possible: It was people like Francis Krake, captured and carried away for study, from whom the Turtles had learned what to do. Undoubtedly Krake had told the Turtles enough about humanity to pave their way. So when the Tur-des at last showed themselves to the human race they made their intentions clear at once. They came as traders, they proclaimed in their radio broadcasts from orbit. And trade they did. Wonderful trade, that benefited all of humanity. Without compulsion. Without threat. The Turtles carried their way simply by making humanity offers it could not refuse.
She looked around her curiously. No Turtles had appeared yet on the dais. Next to her, Sork was saying to his brother, "On the tape they were talking about something they call the 'anthropic principle,' Kiri—ever hear of it? I don't understand it very well, but it has something to do with the fact that our universe is exactly what we need to permit human life—and, I guess, Turtle life and Taur life, too."
"So? We're here in this universe, aren't we? Naturally it's just right for us."
Sork was shaking his head. "No, it's more complicated than that. See, the universe could have been quite different, they say."
"Shut up and sit down," his brother commanded. "The Turtles are getting ready to do something."
The aiodoi did not laugh, but they could be amused. As they heard the song of the Earth scientist who was almost an aiodos they might have smiled tenderly, for the burden of the song was so sweet, and so touching, and so childishly, basically wrong.
"Today we're going to take a little excursion into history. We're going to go pretty far back, in fact as far back as the beginning of our universe.
"To make it easier to comprehend, we're going to do it in three stages, in the same way that human history is handled. As you undoubtedly remember from your humanities classes, human history is divided into three parts—prehistory, ancient history, modern history—and we're going to make the same three divisions in the history of our entire universe.
"I have to caution you first that this does not square with the Hawking notion of imaginary time and endless universes popping up and dissolving. It doesn't contradict it, either. But for this session we will think only of the universe that we think of as beginning with the Big Bang.
"In this schema, what we will call modern universal history starts about fifteen billion years ago, which is to say, about one second after the Big Bang itself.
"By then everything is pretty well decided. Protons and electrons have already formed; the matter-antimatter mutual annihilation has taken place, leaving the excess of what we call normal matter that we observe when we look around us. All that happens after that first second is that nuclear processes begin to happen, plasmas condense into galaxies and stars, planets are formed and, after a while, living things begin to evolve—just routine stuff. The modern history of the universe isn't really that interesting. It's all cut and dried, you see; the time when all sorts of 'decisions' are up for grabs is before the end of that first second.
"So let's forget about those fifteen billion years of modern universal history, and get to the interesting stuff. We'll do that in our next session, because I've got plans for the rest of this one. Take out your pens and papers, please, because I'm throwing you a quiz."
And the aiodoi sang on, almost laughing at the sweet, sad, time bound creatures who believed in such a word as "history."
5
As soon as her mother was asleep Moon stole out of the house and moved silently toward the pen that held Thrayl.
He was alone there. Moon's father had taken him from the common pen with the cows as soon as the Taur's budding horns began to develop. The rest of the breeding herd were sighing and stirring in their own pen on the far side of the thornbush barrier, but Moon slipped past without waking them.
In the light of the full moon the girl could see the sleeping Taur. Thrayl was lying in a corner on a nest of redfruit branches, his great horned head pillowed on one arm. In sleep his broad face was as innocent as any baby's.
"Thrayl," she whispered.
At once the great eyes opened, fastening on her. He rose with that quick Taur grace, the crooked litde legs moving as smoothly as any dancer's. "Moon," he rumbled, almost purring affectionately—the Earth word came humming from his lips, like the mewing of a cat. She saw, with a poignant mixture of sadness and delight, that his horns were brighter in the moonlight, lovely with rainbow hues. The horns dipped as Thrayl bowed his huge head in greeting.
"Thrayl," she whispered again. Her voice was shaking, but determined all the same. "Thrayl, it's time for us to go now."
"Go." He mewed the English word softly. "Moon? Do you do well to do this?"
"Yes! I do very well, Thrayl, because I'm going to save you!" At least for a little while, she added bitterly to herself. She took one warm, solid arm to hurry him along, and he let her guide him, patiently agreeing. She unlocked the gate with her penlight and hurried him through the moonlit hedge. The air was cool and still, and Thrayl's warm odor filled her nostrils—a little like the aroma of new hay when it was cut for bedding in the stalls, a little like the scent of pines in the mountains. It was his very own, the good odor she remembered from the times she used to bathe him, when he was still a tiny calf.
Beyond the hedge they came into the redfruit grove where they used to play. Those trees were old now, gnarled and dying, weeds grown tall in the shadows under them. Thrayl's horns glowed brightly in the darkness under the trees, almost bright enough to show their way—or to betray them, Moon thought, if anyone in the house should wake and come looking for them. They walked more slowly there, close together but not touching. She was oddly shy of physical contact with him. Remembering how she used to pet him, she could hardly bear to touch him now.