“Pine and young Cantrell and the fat one may be aliens too. Ever thought of that?”
“Solo couldn’t be the only one. They’re like snakes.”
“Even if they are aliens that live in a sewer and want to conquer the world, what the heck are they going to do with that saucer?”
“I haven’t a clue,” Harrison Douglas confessed.
Adam Solo felt a strange lassitude as he sat strapped to the pilot seat of a saucer, watching the earth spin slowly by underneath. The stars were there in the obsidian heavens, of course, hard and bright as they can only be when their light isn’t diffused by the atmosphere. Yet they were made trivial by the sun. The brilliant energy of the local star swept the saucer’s cockpit with every orbit of the planet. The sun rose over the horizon, climbed the sky and then descended, flooding the cockpit with light and heat. When it became too much, Solo merely rolled the saucer until the sun was below the belly.
“Why,” Egg asked, “isn’t intelligent life more common in the universe? Why aren’t we here on earth bombarded with alien radio broadcasts and television shows?”
Solo took his time replying. He had to focus on the question and think about it. “It takes billions of years for life to evolve. Most solid planets within the life zone, which means a significant percentage of the planet has a temperature below the boiling point of water and above the freezing point, are too unstable. Other planets pull them out of orbit, asteroids crash into them, some cosmic catastrophe wipes out budding life.”
“Why didn’t that happen on earth?”
“The presence of the moon helped enormously. Stabilized the planet’s orbit. And this is a quiet little corner of your galaxy.”
“We like it,” Egg admitted.
“You should. If it were busier, with a nearby nova or supernova, or a neighborhood black hole, or your solar system had a massive planet in an irregular orbit, or a star that was a little bit bigger or smaller, things would be much more exciting and higher life forms wouldn’t exist. Wouldn’t have had the time to evolve.”
“The moon,” Egg mused, looking at it.
“It was torn from the planet by an asteroid collision, when the solar system was very young. Reduced the size of the planet by one-seventh and stabilized the earth’s orbit, causing it to be more regular. Lucky for you.”
“Is this situation rare?”
“Oh, no. There are millions of solid planets with life on them. The universe is a big place, though. A really, really big place. The edges are expanding at a huge fraction of the speed of light. The edges are traveling away from each other at a combined speed that exceeds the speed of light, so light from one side of the universe never reaches the other.”
Egg hadn’t entirely swallowed Solo’s tale of his life and adventures, so he shot back, “We’re lucky? You are implying that intelligent life that realizes it is mortal is a good thing. Is it?”
A trace of a smile crossed Solo’s face, and he didn’t reply.
Egg pressed. “And you, Solo. Let’s talk about you. Perhaps everyone on your planet lives for a thousand of our years, but I doubt it. Evolution would slow to a crawl. So is your experience typical of your species?”
“No,” Solo said curtly.
Looking at the planet from this vantage point was an emotional experience that hit Solo hard. It had been over a millennium since he had seen this view. Since then he had lived through so many experiences and known so many people, almost all of whom were long dead, and he alone walked on into the unpredictable, unknowable future. A good thing? Wasn’t that Egg’s question?
Well, is life a good thing or a bad thing? A positive or a negative? Or just a wash?
He had had the good parts, and the bad. And those times when he was unsure if the pain was outweighed somehow by something more.
Like the time … oh, it was a winter day, he remembered that. Cold, the naked trees, the wind … The weather had been warm for a few days and the snow on the ground had melted, but spring was still a long way off.
The hut was one of a dozen or so near the river, among the big trees. He could never remember seeing trees so large, each over five feet in diameter, as if they had been growing since the earth was born.
Inside the hut was an old, old woman. She lay on a bed of skins and dry leaves that had been gathered earlier in the fall and only now spread to give the bed some softness, some cushioning. Her hair was white, her face lined, her breathing irregular. He sat beside her and held her hand … examined the blue veins and tendons that stood out clearly … looked at the work-cracked nails, the calluses on the fingers …
Said her name.
She opened her eyes. She didn’t recognize him, which was perhaps fortunate. The experience was one he wanted, and was for him. Not for her. She wouldn’t have understood. She would have been confused, frightened.
He studied her features. Yes, he could see something of her mother in her. Of course, her mother died young, murdered by Hurons. He had taken his vengeance, glutted it, a memory he now regretted. Vengeance does not bring back the dead, does not solace the empty place.
But he was younger then and he didn’t really think about it. Just did it. The others expected it of him, and he thought perhaps she would have expected it too. So he had given himself to revenge and blood and slaughter … and eventually the Hurons were no more. He and his warriors killed them all. All! Each and every one. Until not a drop of their blood flowed in the veins of any living creature. The arrow, the tomahawk, the knife … blood. Red blood, warm, flowing freely …
Their daughter knew none of that, of course. She had been an infant, nursed and loved and taught her words by her mother’s parents.
Now she was old. Very old. Eighty winters. Most of her teeth were gone, and her heartbeat was irregular — he could feel it in her wrist.
His wife was murdered … and eighty years later he sat watching their daughter die of old age.
He couldn’t stay, of course; that would have aroused suspicions. So he spent another hour with the old woman, said he had known her sons and grandsons, which was true, and then left long before the shadows turned to darkness.
It had snowed that night. Now, sitting in the saucer pilot’s seat, staring at the eternal blue Pacific and the clouds swirling over it, he remembered walking through the forest in the snow crying for his wife, Minnehaha, and their daughter … and for himself.
He had lived too long.
He knew it then.
He knew it now.
8
“A starship will arrive in orbit a week from now,” Adam Solo told his passengers, who were floating about the interior of the saucer.
“I didn’t hear you talking on a radio,” Charley objected. “Nor did I hear alien voices.”
Solo shrugged.
“So how does the comm gear work?”
It reads my thoughts and broadcasts them, emitting a much stronger signal. And it picks up theirs, too faint for me to receive, and rebroadcasts them to me.
With a start, Charley Pine realized that she had heard Solo, yet he hadn’t made a sound.
You can read minds? she asked, not voicing the words.
Yes.
“Holy damn,” she said aloud, looking at Rip and Egg. “He can read our thoughts.”
Egg looked thoughtful. So that’s how he learns languages so quickly, he thought.
Yes.
Rip wondered, How many languages does this guy know, anyway?
All of them, was Solo’s reply. This skill helped me stay alive. I knew what people I met were thinking when they were thinking it, regardless of the language they spoke, regardless of what they said.