He squinted through the canopy at the glowing, heatless fires of interspace.
'Excuse me,' said Dom. 'But you don't look like a super race.'
Ig's paws were darting rapidly across the console of the matrix computer. He looked up and stared at Dom -
- Dom rubbed his eyes. 'I'm sorry,' he said. A few seconds later he tried to remember what he had seen during that moment of contact, but it had gone now, leaving only an impression of greatness and understanding.
'Thank you,' said Ig quietly. 'You see, people expect an advanced race to land in golden ships and say, "Throw away your weapons, cease fighting among yourselves, and join the great galactic brotherhood." It isn't like that. Young races do that.'
'What happens now?'
'Now?'
. . . we will meet you, came the thought. Together, perhaps, we will see the universe as it really is. And when we meet you, we will do so as equals. We are all mere sub-species of the one race of bright sun dwellers, after all. And the whole is infinitely greater than the sum of the parts. Now...
'Now,' said Ig, 'we will talk.'
The fleet hung against the shimmering bulk of Widdershins. Other ships were flashing into existence all through the system, as the followers homed in on the interspace shadow. The radio was a gabble of many tongues.
'They're going to fight it out!' moaned Joan. 'Oh my God, they're going to fight!'
The control deck of the Earth command ship was dominated by the big state-of-space circlescreen. They watched the incoming ships form a rough pattern. Their commanders had been doing some very rapid diplomacy.
Asman walked over from one of the control desks, shaking his head.
'I'm sorry,' he began. 'Widdershins eh? Are you Widdershines Jokers, then? You were only a small colony to begin with, it's not inconceivable . . . '
The ship trembled. Something was rising out of interspace, a great bulk with a voice that boomed through the pickup system.
'ho there! i will prosecute economic sanctions AGAINST THE FIRST RACE TO MAKE AN AGGRESSIVE ACT!'
The Bank took up a watchful orbit closer in towards See-Why.
Dom slid back the hatch of the small ship and stepped out into space.
He walked carefully, unsure of his footing, and stopped a dozen metres from the ship. The faintest of shimmers hung around him. He was holding something in his outstretched hands.
Ig stood up on his ridiculous hind pair of legs and spoke.
In the command ships lights dimmed, circuitry blew out and the walls trembled to the roar of the sound.
There was a short pause. Then the little Joker lowered his voice. The message was clearer then, but almost as devastating. It was: Land. We, the Jokers, the galaxy-striders, the star-shapers, ask it.
You have a great deal to teach us.
* * *
After a struggle Dom pacified the wild windshell and coaxed it around towards the shore.
Five miles away, by the joke that was the Joker's Tower, more ships were landing. Quietly, trying to avoid catching each other's visual apparatus, the fifty-two races were making their way into the swamp.
Dom had left Ig seated in the mud, the focus of a wide and growing ring of listeners. And other Igs were dog-paddling along the water lanes. Something new was going to happen to the universe. It would involve all the races. They were, after all, only aspects of the one great race of thinking creatures - the dwellers on the bright side of the sun. It would take time, but one day something would come back out of interest to Widdershins, in the dank swamp, and say: it began here.
But just for once - for twice - Dom was playing truant. Though there was still one duty to perform. Balancing on the rocking shell he removed the stopper from the small bottle and tipped its contents into the sea. Then carefully, to avoid the shell's stings, he stuck his head into the water to hear, far off and faint, the words Thank you in sea-noise.
He looked back to the distant beach. A figure had wandered down to the surf line, wrapped in a golden glow. She was watching him thoughtfully.
Dom urged the shell through the breakers. Now, he thought, we will listen.
THE END