Donald Moffitt: Second Genesis

“Yes, yes,” Bram said quickly. “I’m sure you took the right approach.”

The assistant cleared his throat and glanced at his boss before speaking. “And at the same time, there’s the problem of blue light tropisms at the opposite side of the tree. Where the band of up-shifted light is. Yggie’s hormones are working overtime to cope. And you can imagine what that does to his biorhythms.”

“I can understand why your department was so concerned,” Bram told them in his best sober manner.

They both beamed at him.

“So we added a healthy dose of vitamin A to the tranquilizer to damp down beta-carotene activity,” the assistant finished triumphantly.

“Fine,” Bram said with a judicious nod. He looked around for a way to make his escape. “Well, that seems to take care of it, so I’ll—”

“Of course, you’ll want to review our total hormone strategy while you’re here, Captain,” Jao’s granddaughter said. “Shall we start with the tree-turning maneuver?”

Bram gave in to the inevitable and let her lead him over to the far end of the hollow, where a battery of young technicians, wearing the leaf tabards that seemed to be the working costume of the new generation, busily tended the array of giant fermentation tanks where hormone synthesis started.

A half hour later, his eyes slightly glazed, Bram found himself blessedly alone in the brilliant corridor that ran through the trunk’s heartwood. Alcoves branched off on either side, each with its neatly painted street sign. Here, forty miles beneath Yggdrasil’s bark, a lot of specialized work went on—plastics manufacturing using leaf sugars as feedstock, the Message broadcasting facility whose vital work could not be interrupted by yearly bough migrations, the central observatory.

There was also a recreation complex with guest suites, increasingly popular with the younger set and the advanced retroyouth crowd, with facilities for sports, swimming, and small-craft sailing. After Yggdrasil left the galaxy and acceleration ceased, it would be a center for such weightless pursuits as flying, flat-trajectory handball, three-dimensional ballet, and, Bram didn’t doubt, free-fall sex.

Bram paused to look at the bulletin board. Some members of the trunk staff were choosing up sides for a game of teamball in what would eventually be the flydome. Bram was tempted to join them. But he knew that he’d be invited only through courtesy and deference to his position. At his present chronological age, he’d only be a liability to whatever team was willing to suffer him; better stick to playing with his peers on the occasional Tenday.

Feeling pleasurably sorry for himself—refraining from reminding himself that he was not as old as he had been twenty years ago—he gave the bulletin board a regretful last glance and set off down the long arcade toward the observatory.

At least that was one treat he could give himself.

Jun Davd looked up from his work and smiled at Bram with a third set of teeth that were as white and flawless as they had been when he had grown them a quarter century ago.

“Nice of you to play truant just so’s you can come visit an old man,” he said.

“The captain never plays truant,” Bram said, smiling back. “Everything I do is always in the line of duty.”

He raised both hands, and they touched palms in the old gesture.

Jun Davd chuckled. “So your duty brought you up to Yggdrasil’s attic to rummage through the stars.”

He was bent, frail, attenuated, but in remarkably good shape. Bram guessed that his biological age was down to about eighty. There were even traces of gray in the cap of white curls. Flesh was returning to the dark, mummified face, filling in the wrinkles. They had gotten to Jun Davd just in time.

“Is that what they look like now?” Bram asked, gesturing at the extrapolated display Jun Davd had been studying when he came in. The screen showed a splendid panorama of multicolored stars, glowing clouds, and luminous streamers swimming past in relative motion. Quite a few of the stars had disks.

“More or less,” Jun Davd said. “The computer’s having a hard time keeping up. That nice orange star you see coming toward you has been reconstructed from gamma rays in the ten-to-the-minus-six-nanometer range. The light that kills. The rear view’s even more of a challenge. We’re seeing those stars by ultralong radio waves—past the hundred-kilometer range. We’ve got almost a thousand miles of wire with a weight on the end trailing behind us for a dipole antenna, and I really could use a couple of thousand miles more except that I haven’t been able to figure a way to keep the drive from melting it, and I’ve got I don’t know how many thousands of stiff wires making pincushions out of Yggdrasil’s crown and root ball, but you can appreciate that definition’s still a problem. I’m afraid the computer’s taking a lot of artistic liberties.”

“Stop complaining. You’re living in an astronomer’s paradise.”

He grinned, young teeth white in the ancient face. “Don’t I know it. On my way to the galactic core to make direct observations of whatever the dust clouds are hiding. The old director, Pfaf-tlk-pfaf, would’ve given one of his fingertips for the chance!”

“I wonder what he’s doing now,” Bram started to say before he remembered.

It was strange to think that the old Nar, Pfaf-tlf-pfaf, had been dead for almost fifty thousand years. And that the immortal humans whom Yggdrasil had left behind were, presumably, still alive—unless the Father World had been hit by a wandering planetoid.

A wave of nostalgia washed over Bram as he remembered how kind the old director had been to a little boy who wanted to learn about the stars and how patient a human astronomy apprentice named Jun Davd had been in explaining all the wonders of the stellar universe.

“Sometimes I wish I’d followed my instincts back then and chosen astronomy as my career,” Bram said.

“I’m awfully glad you didn’t,” Jun Davd said tartly. “Where would I be now?”

It was a sobering thought. The two of them contemplated it in respectful silence for a moment, then Jun Davd went on more equably.

“It’s not too late, you know. You can have an infinity of careers if you wish. Why don’t we take up our lessons where we left off? In five hundred years you might make a pretty fair astronomer.”

“Are you offering me a job, Jun Davd?”

The dark face creased in mirth. “I’m going to need a good assistant. We’d better learn all we can about the Milky Way before we arrive there—including how to use its H-II regions and the hypermass at its core to match our impetus and bring us to a nice safe stop.” His voice was rich with enthusiasm. “Imagine being able to study a galaxy from the outside before making it your home! What an incomparable opportunity!”

Jun Davd had retired, still a junior apprentice, before the immortality project had borne fruit. He had hung on longer than most, and the Nar compassionately had looked the other way, but the day finally had come when he’d had to admit to himself how feeble he had become. He had been miserable in retirement. When Bram, with immortality finally in his pocket, had sought him out, he had jumped at the chance to join the expedition as chief astronomer, with the chance to run things to suit himself. In one swoop he had gone farther than he had in an entire lifetime on the Father World, and he had unlimited vistas before him. Bram sometimes thought that it was this, as much as the immortality treatment itself, that had rejuvenated Jun Davd.

It would be different now for humans on the Father World. Now it was the Nar who were the mayflies.