And I found it. It came rising up toward me out of a part of his brain where history and myth lay sleeping.
Intermingled with it was a strange bleak image: charred debris, bits of burned rope, twisted fragments of what looked like hammocks, rising out of a sea of ashes. I looked closer. I felt dry hot winds. I saw a great swollen red sun in the sky.
Closer. Deeper. The ashes rose and became an eerie city made of woven reeds. Buildings, streets, bridges—everything light, delicate, insubstantial. Somber-faced people walked in silence through its narrow, interlacing lanes. Sometimes it was night, and a string of shining moons was hung across the sky. Then came day, and that gigantic menacing sun.
The people had the look of the people of Athilan: dark hair and eyes, dark complexions, stocky bodies, broad shoulders. I thought I saw Ram in those streets, and his father.
The sun grew larger. The air grew hotter. There was terror-in the eyes of the people who walked in the streets. Their world was coming to an end. Soon fire would sweep through the sky; soon this delicate city of woven reeds would become the sea of ashes that I had been shown before.
I saw ships lifting off into space. Maybe a dozen or more of them, carrying the lucky few, chosen by lot, who would escape the explosion of the red sun.
And the rest—the rest—oh, Lora, I knew what would happen-to them, and my heart ached for them! A whole world destroyed. Romany Star sending spears of flame across the gulf of space, and everything perishing, everything except what was aboard those twelve or sixteen starships.
The moment of devastation came. Terrible light, like the fury of a thousand nuclear bombs at once, burst overhead. But the starships were on their way, up and out, heading into the vast darkness that lay beyond the blazing sky.
Do you understand what I’m saying, Lora?
Lora, these Athilantans are aliens. Humanoid aliens, so much like humans that it’s just about impossible to tell the difference. They came here aboard those starships, refugees from some other world lightyears away that died when its sun went nova.
No wonder they’re head and shoulders above the real natives of the Paleolithic world. Maybe a thousand years before the era that you and I are visiting now, maybe three thousand, they dropped down suddenly out of space, bringing to a world that didn’t yet know the use of metals a culture that could build spaceships capable of traveling between the stars. That is, a culture that’s advanced even beyond our own.
To the Cro-Magnons and their contemporaries, they must have seemed like gods. In a way they were gods. And they built a mighty city in the midst of Earth’s frostbound Stone Age darkness.
Their descendants here in Athilan still look back in sorrow-and anguish to their old lost home, which they call Romany Star. On a certain night each year they turn their eyes to the stars, and they chant the prayer for the dead, in remembrance of all that had been theirs before the red sun swelled in the sky, before their unstable home star flared up and destroyed their world.
Now I understand why the people of Athilan gave thanks for Ram’s return to the human realm when he came back to the city from the mainland, and why they refer to the mainlanders as the Dirt People.
I suppose they could have found some more complimentary term for them than that, but the fact remains that the Athilantans see themselves as the only true humans, and the mainlanders, the natives of Earth, as some sort of inferior alien beings. It isn’t really the sort of racism that used to be so common in our modern world. That involved one branch of the human species telling itself that it was superior to the other branches of the human race. There wasn’t any justification for those feelings of superiority. All the different races of modern Earth are just minor variations of the same species, Homo sapiens. But these people really are superior. And they aren’t simply a special branch of Homosapiens. They aren’t Homo sapiens at all, even though they look just like us, or nearly so. They’re a different species entirely. I’m not saying it’s admirable or pretty in any way for them to have such contempt for the mainlanders. But at least I can understand why they feel that way. And also I think that when we translate their words into ours the terms they use may come out sounding a little more contemptuous than the Athilantans actually intend.
Doesn’t it all sound completely crazy? Refugees from the stars, traveling here on spaceborne arks, founding a glorious city on this balmy isle in the eastern Atlantic, and setting up a far-flung Paleolithic empire? But it’s true. I’ve located Ram’s memories of the historical chronicles that he studied when he was a boy. You can probably find the same stuff in Sippurilayl’s mind if you look for it.
And now we know why these people are so improbably far ahead of everyone else who existed on Earth in prehistoric times. They had a tremendous head start.
The present-day Athilantan civilization isn’t nearly as advanced as the one that died with Romany Star. They’ve lost a lot of their old technological knowledge over the centuries, perhaps through neglect, or maybe simply because they weren’t able to reconstruct it on this new world. But they’re still inconceivably superior in abilities and attainments to the primitive hunting folk over whom they rule.
It does sound too fantastic to be true. A myth, a legend, a poem, anything but the actual truth.
Well, it is the actual truth. I absolutely believe that. I’ve discussed it with Ram and he vehemently insists that it isn’t any myth—that it all really happened, the solar flare that destroyed their world, the migration to Earth, the building of Athilan on an uninhabited island in the warmest part of the planet. They have detailed and reliable chronicles describing the whole thing. Every child studies the history of the calamity the way we study Christopher Columbus and George Washington.
Go check out Provincial Governor Sippurilayl’s memories of his childhood history lessons. You’ll find it all there. I know that you will.
And what a tremendous story it is, isn’t it?
—Roy
10.
Day 4, Month of Golden Days, Year of Great River.
I hope you haven’t been worried about me during my long silence. Everything’s fine here. I just haven’t felt much like writing letters.
The truth is I’ve been a little embarrassed about my last two letters, the one in which I confess that I’ve revealed my presence to Ram, and the one in which I tell you about my discovery of the extraterrestrial origin of the Athilantans. (Have you received that second one yet? You’ll be awfully confused by what I’ve just said if you haven’t.) I was afraid that one or the other of those letters would convince you that I’d gone loony—that you’d write back to me full of fury about my breaking of the time-travel rules, or that you’d tell me that the business about the Athilantans coming from a different solar system was the craziest nonsense you had ever heard. So I couldn’t bring myself to send you any more letters until I saw what your reaction to those two was.
Well, now your reply to my I’ve-told-Ram-everything letter has come in. I’m immensely relieved that you aren’t angry with me, Lora. It makes me realize all over again what a wonderful person you are. And why I love you so much.
No question, as you say, that I’m going to be in very hot water when I get back to Home Era. But you do recognize, as I hoped you would, that letting Ram know the truth was my only honorable course. I simply couldn’t let the heir to the throne go on thinking he was possessed by a demon, and calling in all sorts of witch-doctors to exorcise him.