Dr. Lawrence made a strangled noise. “I—go on.”
“When I say they were amphibious, I don’t mean they were like frogs or toads or salamanders. But they were accustomed to living half in and half out of the water, on the littoral, and their culture had grown up in an aquatic environment. Their cities were always built where they would be bathed by the tides.
“When they came to earth, they found conditions very different from those on their home planet. It was plain they couldn’t reestablish the life they had been accustomed to. They could see that climatic changes—changes they couldn’t control—were coming to earth that would make it even more different from the world they knew. They knew they would have to decide whether they were to have an aquatic or a terrestrial mode of life from then on.
“There was a great deal of debate. It was clear that, if they opted for an aquatic life, they would have to surrender most of their material culture and become what we dolphins now are, the people of the word. On the other hand, dryland conditions on earth at that time were very rough indeed, and the Old On es thought it unlikely they would be able to keep their material culture intact.
“The debate lasted for years. Two parties sprang up, one that supported the claims of the dry land and one that favored life in the water. Neither could convince the other one.”
“Politics one million years ago,” Lawrence said wryly. “Well, what happened?”
“They decided to separate. The first Sosa suggested this. Each faction should do as it wished. But before they parted, they made the covenant.
“The water was to belong to those who chose the sea, the dry land to those who chose the earth. Each was to respect the other’s domain, each was to help the other if he needed assistance. And each was to remember the covenant.
“This did not happen all at once, of course. It took five or six generations for the separation between the land and water dwellers to be complete. Deliberate changes were made in the germ plasm, a little more with each generation, to fit each of the two groups for its new life.
“These generations were not an easy time for the Old Ones. The poem is full of the pain of separation, of seeing a gulf created between beings that had originally been alike. But at last the time came, the poem was completed, and we parted. But we parted as brothers, and in love.”
Lawrence drew a deep breath. “Well! I’ve a lot of questions to ask. But the first one I want to ask is this: are you really saying that, a million years ago, more or less, the earth was populated by intelligent, civilized mammals that looked a good deal the way human beings do now?”
” ‘Populated’ isn’t the right word,” I replied. “There were only a few of the Old Ones after the separation had been made. But the rest of what you said is substantially correct.”
Lawrence shook his head. “It’s impossible. All the evidence shows that Homo sapiens originated from a tailless ground ape about, oh, 400,000 years ago.”
“He reoriginated,” I said. “Pettrus, you talk for a while. My throat is getting tired.”
“All right,” Pettrus said. “Do you think it’s impossible, Dr. Lawrence, that there should have been intelligent, civilized mammals on earth about a million years ago?”
“Maybe not impossible,” the doctor said. “But look at the palaeological record. We can trace Homo sapiens’ ancestors back, getting more simian all the time, for about 400,000 years. I don’t see how these brilliant humanoids from Altair fit into it. For one thing, where are their bones?”
Madelaine said, “I know the answer to that. There were not many of them, and they practiced cremation of their dead. Then they threw the ashes into the sea. Isn’t that right, Pettrus?”
“Yes, that’s right. How did you know?”
“Oh, my dreams! I don’t know why they didn’t leave Other traces—buildings and so on—though.”
“They did leave traces, I think,” Pettrus answered. “One might still be able to find them, if one knew what to look for and where to look. But the Old Ones’ favorite building material was metal, and in a million years even a corrosion-resistant metal corrodes away. It’s not like baked brick.”
Lawrence shook his head. “I’m still not convinced. If their civilization lasted for even a thousand years, it ought to have left some traces.”
“There were never very many of the Old Ones,” Pettrus said patiently. “And their civilization began to go down hill almost immediately after the covenant was finally made. It lasted a lot less than a thousand years.”
“How do you know what happened after your forebears took to the water?” Lawrence asked.
“Because we were in telepathic communication with the first generations of dryland colonists. But after only a few generations the communication began to fail, and with every new generation it grew feebler. We knew that not only their culture but they themselves, as rational beings, had begun to deteriorate.
“The original stock had been slow-breeding and long lived. When they began to decline, they bred faster and their numbers increased. But by then we could hardly talk to them any more.”
“What made them go downhill so rapidly?” Lawrence asked.
“We don’t really know,” I answered. “Conditions were rough for them, climatically speaking, and it must have been hard for them to maintain their material culture. But probably the real reason for their decline was that the genetic changes they had made in themselves to make them fit for dryland life were unstable. The adaptation had been too fast. The original Altairan stock had really been more suited to aquatic life.”
“They didn’t die out, though?” Lawrence asked.
“No. Their biological dete rioration was the prelude to a slow adaptation to permanent dryland life on earth.”
“How do you know they didn’t die out? You weren’t in touch with them any more.”
“We have two reasons for thinking they didn’t die out,” I said. “One is that, about 500,000 years ago, we began to be aware that something like intelligent life was arising on earth. We couldn’t read their thoughts—they were not really thoughts. But the new life was a little more than merely animal.”
“Couldn’t this new life, new intelligent life, have been native to earth?” the doctor asked.
“Yes, it could. And we do think that there is a possibility that you Splits are the result of breeding between the deteriorated Altairan stock and native proto-simians. But we are sure that the stock of the Old Ones persisted because, about 200,000 years ago, we renewed the covenant with their descendants, the hominids, the proto-men.”
“Wait a minute,” the doctor protested. “All through this you’ve been talking as if you dolphins were always the same. Didn’t you change any in 800,000 years?”
“Of course we did,” I answered. “We have changed very much since we first went into the water. We are larger and heavier, and very much faster swimmers. Our brains are larger, our verbal ability is greater, and our eyes far better. We have evolved senses unlike any the Old Ones had. But through all the changes, we never lost the memory of the covenant.”
Dr. Lawrence sighed. “The past is opening up,” he said, “and—it’s difficult to believe. How do you know the hominids were the descendants of the Old Ones?”
“Because they remembered the covenant.”
There was a silence. Madelaine said, “Tell him, Amtor, how the memory was passed on.”
“It wasn’t transmitted verbally,” I said. “The memory was an impression made on the germ cells, and it was handed on genetically.”