“Other interpretations show the Terralla as decadent, self-indulgent sensation seekers, playing among their palaces, tempting fate for the pleasure of it. Yet others show them as immeasurably wise ancestors from whose standards of perfection we have fallen. Others just use the time of the Terralla as a background for tales of fantastic romance and adventure.” Fiona smiled, seeing Campas nod, understanding well the matter of literary interpretation. “Personally,” she said, “I think all these approaches make fine literature, but all are off the mark as far as the truth about Terra is concerned. I suspect the Terralla were much as we, that their fall was not a measure of arrogant curiosity, or of their decadence, but a measure only of their human fallibility. They fell because even though they were wise they were still human, and did not understand enough about their universe. They fell from lack of knowledge, not from too much.”
Campas nodded. “I compliment you, Ambassador,” he said, his tone serious. “I didn’t realize you had this gift, truly I didn’t. You point your morals very elegantly. I shall have to look upon you as a rival, in future.”
Fiona looked down at her lap, strangely embarrassed by the compliment, and then shook her head. “Your gift is poetry,” she said. “Mine is storytelling. Yours is the greater.’’
“My compliment was sincere,” Campas said. “I don’t flatter in these matters.” Then he grinned. “I can write my poetry for a hundred years, and it won’t alter the world a bit — it’s still valueless, as far as my masters are concerned. My chief uses are secretarial, and my poetry is useful to Necias chiefly as a demonstration of his anildas. It enhances his esteem to have a court poet, and so he does.
“But your little stories, Ambassador —” His smile faded, replaced by sadness. He waved a gentle, admonishing finger at her. “You told one tale eight nights ago, and this old world hasn’t been the same since. And I’ve been angry at you for it.” He bowed. “Jealousy, I’m sorry to say. I apologize.”
So that’s what set him off, Fiona thought. He’s been trying to get his poetry through their dim minds for years, and now a little foreign woman has done in a night all he’s ever wanted to do.
“I haven’t invalidated your verse,” she said. “It’s still as accomplished as ever it was.”
“Just far less relevant.” Lightly, but still with bitterness. His eyes rose to hers. “But you were telling me about the Terralla. What’s become of them?”
“Gone, we think,” Fiona said. “Terra itself disappeared in the catastrophe. And the survivors, here and there on other planets, having lost everything — well, they started over. Much of their land would not support life, at least not at first. It was a terrible existence, and only gradually did it improve. They forgot Terra and all they had been, except perhaps as a land in a legend. Their own worlds were all they knew.
“Some recovered earlier,” she continued. “Their worlds had not been scarred as badly, and, when they had progressed enough to understand them, they had Terralla artifacts to help them. It was these who began to first move among the stars again, moving much more slowly this time, so as not to risk the holocaust caused by the Terralla.”
“Your people,” Campas said. “The Igaralla.”
Fiona shook her head, and she saw surprise in Campas’ eyes. “No, Campas,” she said. “These were other peoples altogether — two other planets rose, simultaneously, to that position; and they began to seek out the planets the Terralla had populated, first by signaling and then by sending ships.”
“There are others, then?” Campas asked. “Not just Demro and Igara, but others?”
“Eleven that we know of, counting your own,” Fiona said. “My own planet, Igara, had advanced enough to understand the signals when they came — ships weren’t sent to us. After that, Igara leagued with the other planets, and agreed to send out ships, as the others had done. Most of the ships found nothing — no planets at all, or worlds that were dead. My own ship was lucky.”
Fiona fell silent, seeing Campas trying to absorb the idea; there was a frown on his face, and he stared down at his boot-tip. Then his gaze rose. “It’s a lot to understand, all at once.” He shook his head. “The priests won’t like it — they have their own notions of how we got here.”
“I’m not telling the priests,” Fiona said.
“No,” he said, with a quiet smile. “You’re not.”
“I have yet to come to my moral,” Fiona reminded him. Campas gave a short laugh.
“I forgot,” he said. “Pray continue.”
“My point is that out of the all the descendants of the Terralla we’ve yet discovered, none have equaled the Terralla civilization. None as large, none as wise, none as brilliant. Whatever we’ve done, the Terralla have done before. Whatever discoveries we’ve made, the Terralla made them first. But we’ve found that it’s not a reason for despair!
“The discovery that a given idea was conceived of first by someone else does not mean that the idea is false, or the conceiver a lesser being than his predecessor. The fact that two other civilizations recovered from the Terralla holocaust and began to travel among the stars some hundreds of years before Igara did — this does not make Igara false. Nor does it make your own life less, or your work.”
She leaned back in triumph, straightening her shoulders, proclaiming now with a flourish, her hands waving. “My coming hasn’t invalidated your poetry, it’s just put it in a different perspective. Perhaps it was a perspective that was needed.”
Campas sat still for a moment, watching her with brooding eyes, and then he began to applaud, his handclaps echoing in the small room. Fiona, pleased with herself, gave him a flourishing stage bow, bending from the waist.
“Ambassador, I grovel before your eloquence,” he said. “Had I such a thing as a fat purse, I would throw it. In future, I shall make a point to write for a stellar audience.”
“Your servant,” said Fiona.
Campas drew in his long legs and stood. “Ambassador, this was most enlightening,” he said. His craggy face was serious, carefully appraising. “You’ve given me much to think about.”
“Must you go?”
“Alas, yes,” Campas said. He smiled and bowed, suddenly breezy. “Necias wants me to meet with Marshal Palastinas’ staff this afternoon, to discuss logistics.” His tone turned to one of dry mockery. “No doubt I shall learn a great deal about march rates, and bridging trains, and other matters of no interest whatever.’’
Fiona reached down to her waist to turn off her recorder — damn the ship anyway, this was none of their business — then uncoiled from her settee and rose. “Visit again, if you wish,” Fiona said. “Believe it or not, I’ve enjoyed this talk. And I appreciate your candor... and your discretion.’’
“The pleasure was mine, as was the enlightenment,” Campas said — typical Arrandalla speech, flowery and complimentary, but Fiona thought she detected a measure of sincerity. “Forgive my discourtesy, which you are so good as to call candor. I shall call again, if I can.”
“I am glad to have made a friend,” Fiona said. Campas seemed startled, looking at her sharply for an instant; then he said, “Ambassador, your servant,” opened the door behind him, and backed out.
Tibro was still tootling dutifully away, and Fiona, exhilaration filling her, stepped into the parlor, leaning her shoulder on the door jamb. She felt as if she had just passed a test... and almost certainly she just had. Campas’ objections to her presence had not been unanticipated; but the man had surprised her, coming to her so quickly. Campas was surprisingly acute.