Outside, Cherpa walked alongside Ruslan as they made their way toward the portion of the residential quarters that had been allotted to them. “What do you think, Bogo? Can anything stop the settlers from making Earth a colony of Vriza? Can we?” She looked outward, toward the silent abandoned city. “Can our offspring?”
Lost in thought, Ruslan didn’t reply immediately. Pondering her queries, he realized he did not know the answers. But one thing he did know. For some time now he had grown bored with existence. His mind was tired, his body was worn, his spirit was exhausted. Now, here on Earth, he felt rejuvenated. For that he had the Vrizan to thank. They had offered him a continent but they had given him something far more vital.
A cause.
18
Notwithstanding the Vrizan’s promise not to intervene in any efforts Ruslan made to establish a revived human presence on Earth, he and Cherpa as well as the administering Myssari were convinced that the long-headed claimants to humankind’s homeworld continued to monitor their every move at the growing outpost. While far smaller than the Vrizan settlement Ruslan had been “encouraged” to visit, the new Myssari base grew steadily as the Combine government contributed increasing resources to its expansion.
Whether Vrizan monitoring instrumentation was sensitive enough to detect the presence of human children at the outpost was the subject of some debate among Myssari scientists. If so, no comment was forthcoming. While every effort was made to keep the youthful human arrivals from Myssar under cover, Cherpa was unwilling to restrict them to what would have amounted to a closed environment. Earth was their homeworld, too, and they deserved to be allowed to experience its surface, sights, and sounds.
The presence of a dozen or so humans of any size was unlikely to cause the Vrizan much concern. Not when balanced against the presence of several thousand of their own already established colonists. Once placed in orbit, high-resolution Myssari scanners had soon confirmed the presence of half a dozen other Vrizan settlement sites in various stages of construction. By the time the Myssari human reproduction program succeeded in producing a hundred adult humans, the Vrizan and their claim to Earth would be far too deeply established to contest. They would own the place by right of development. Half a world away, an agricultural footprint had already been established in a second northern continent. Low-level industrial development was sure to follow. Though a vanished humankind had done its best, it still had only managed to make use of the most accessible of the planet’s resources. Much remained for a high-tech civilization like the Vrizan to exploit.
Ruslan knew they had to contest the Vrizan claim. If it was too late for him and Cherpa, there had to be a way for their engineered offspring to reclaim ownership of the homeworld. He never missed an opportunity to push the Myssari to take a firmer stand against the wide-headed interlopers. But while the scientists and researchers who came and went at the outpost were of similar mind, the government of the Combine was forced to consider issues of far greater import. Certainly Earth was a pleasant world and the reestablishment of its dominant sentient species a matter of great scientific interest. Determining its ownership, however, was not something for which the Myssari were willing to go to war.
The situation was made more difficult because the General Science Sectionary absolutely refused to send every young human to join the outpost. Having invested so much in starting to resurrect the human species, its members were not about to risk everything they had worked for by exposing all the offspring to potential hostile action on the part of the Vrizan. So some were sent to Earth while others remained on Myssar. Occasionally the children were allowed to exchange places. But the spatial dichotomy remained.
While not as large as some settled oxygen-atmosphere planets, Earth was more than expansive enough to allow both Vrizan and Myssari scientific teams to explore at their leisure without ever encountering each other. At once frustrated and energized by the course events were taking, Ruslan tried to divert his thoughts by joining the Myssari researchers whenever they chose to explore another new corner of the globe.
Such excursions were inevitably satisfactory without being revelatory. The empty, decaying cities were always interesting to explore, especially those that predated the era of stellar expansions. Orbital surveys revealed the most interesting sites. Of course, the Vrizan had access to equivalent search technology. Though he’d had no personal contact with humankind’s lost civilizations other than what he had acquired since his arrival, the thought of the Vrizan picking through the vestiges of human society and carrying off whatever they liked for study elsewhere created a permanent discomfort he was unable to shake off. That their Myssari counterparts were equally avaricious when it came to the possessive study of human relics was no consolation.
When accompanying these expeditions, he took the opportunity to examine any newly unearthed artifacts himself. Cherpa was less interested. She often chose to remain behind with the children, devoting more and more of her time to them. It was gratifying to see that her new domestic avocation had in no way muted her individuality, though working with the children did succeed in filing off the sharp edges of her personality that had once been defined as madness.
When Jih’hune caught up with Ruslan near the outpost perimeter, there was no reason to think that the assistant outpost commander brought with him anything other than ordinary news. Watching rainbow-hued fish describing lazy arcs within the crystal-clear stream that marked the outpost’s northern boundary while soaking up the warmth of the original Sol, Ruslan was not really in the mood to go out on yet another expedition to help excited Myssari researchers plow through the fascinating but frequently repetitive detritus of human civilization.
What Jih’hune told him soon changed his mind.
“We have come across an interesting anomaly.”
With a sigh of resignation Ruslan turned away from the dancing fish. A small component of humankind had made a terrible mistake in concocting and releasing the Aura Malignance. Their only saving grace was that it affected only humans. We all swim in our own little universe, he thought. He wrenched his attention back to reality.
“I suppose I’m as interested as anyone in anomalies. What does this particular one involve?”
“As is normal when exploring a new world—or in the case of your Earth, a new old world—as many scanning instruments as possible are put into orbit subsequent to the initial landing. These have been sending back data ever since our first days on the surface. Enough are in place so that our researchers can begin to pick out the most interesting sites for investigation. One such location appears to exist far to the northwest of here, on the edge of the main continental mass. In itself it is unexceptional. However, it appears to be the locus of a series of weak, intermittent electronic emissions.”
“Emissions?” The last dreams of chromatic swimmers faded from Ruslan’s thoughts. “What kind of emissions? Automated, certainly.”
“Of course. That much is immediately apparent. The high variability of their intermittency suggests the broadcast source is running out of power, or perhaps is failing due to lack of maintenance. That they emanate from this one otherwise undistinguished location is intriguing. Enough so that Bac’cul will be given charge of the on-site scouting party himself. There is no evidence that the Vrizan, who have tended to focus their development and exploration efforts on prime agricultural land or major urban sites, have been active in the indicated area. As near as our orbiters can tell, it is so far unvisited. Of course, there may be a good reason for that. There may simply be nothing of interest there to see.” Small intense eyes met those of the human.