Donald Moffitt - Second Genesis

“Oh, look, I think it’s begging for food,” Mim exclaimed. “Do you have anything with you?”

“Afraid not. I had half a cornwich in one of my seal-pockets, left over from the shuttle snack bin, but I threw it away when we helmeted up.”

The big-eyed little furball, its coat fluffed out for vacuum, was balancing itself on one foot and its tail, holding out its right paw and right foot in tandem, like a pair of tiny human hands. It held the pose for a long moment, decided that Bram and Mim weren’t worth bothering with, and scooted off to find a better prospect.

“Oh!” Mim said, disappointed. “What are they, Bram? Were they brought here by Original Man?”

“Ame doesn’t think so. They’re too recent. She’s found the bones of what seems to be a transitional form they may have evolved from—and that only goes back about twenty million years. Before that, there’s a gap. All we know so far is that they have terrestrial DNA.”

The avenue they were walking along was one of the spokes of the great circular plaza that centered on the moon ladder—the initial dig had started here, and so far about a square mile of the surrounding city had been dug up. Now, as Bram and Mim emerged into the open spaces of the plaza, they both looked up.

A climber was coming down from the moon, an angular leggy shape that was silhouetted against the eerie red glow of the rising disk. As they watched, the artificial creature detoured around the stalled moon car, stepping carefully over the smooth surface and finding a foothold on the rope below. The climber was wearing a transparent ten-legged space suit that had been designed by, of all people, Marg; it included an extra tuck of material that fit over the passenger cup and billowed out to provide a habitable bubble for the five-hour climb.

“They’ve found Cuddlies on the moon, too,” Bram said. “Whole colonies of them. They’ve been established there for millions of years—and apparently they still travel back and forth. We’ve found fresh footprints around the rope. How they do it is a mystery. Even with a stop at the turnover station. Young Jorv thinks they have some way of taking extra air along, but that seems farfetched, clever little beasts though they are.” He gave a wide grin. “Of course, now they’re spoiled—they hitch rides with us in the climbers.”

“Are they digging up there, too?”

“Yes. We’ve found the remains of some tremendous engineering structures—extrusion devices on a scale that can hardly be imagined. Evidently, the original engineers played out the supporting filament from both ends when they were manufacturing this world.”

“So Ang told me. Jao can hardly contain himself now that his theory of suspension construction’s been vindicated.”

“We’re trying to verify it at this end, too. We’ve sunk several shafts at a slant and found that the moonrope extends as far down as we’re able to reach. We’ve gone past the crust now—it’s easy with digging machines in this low gravity—and penetrated through to the foamed understructure. We have to proceed carefully, though, to avoid disturbing the Cuddly burrows. They’re thick in the vicinity of the rope—it seems to be a main travel route downward. When the excavators started, they burst some of the bubbles and let the air out.”

“Oh, Bram, did they—”

“Relax. You can’t kill a Cuddly by taking away its air—they had plenty of time to squeeze through their little tunnels to the adjoining cavities. We messed up their gardens, though, No wonder the little rascals are such beggars.”

“Gardens?”

“Yes, we’ve uncovered a whole ecology down there. Jorv thinks that the ancestors of the Cuddlies carried seeds back from their surface foraging expeditions to the old granaries and warehouses of Original Man. Buried the seeds in their dens or excreted them—and some were still viable enough to sprout. Millions of years of evolution would have done the rest. And they would have carried bacteria, fungus spores—even algae—too. There’s insect life down there as well, marvelously adapted to the environment.”

“How can things grow in the dark?”

“There’s no visible light, true, except for bioluminescence. But the whole interior of the diskworld is suffused with infrared because of its energy-trapping structure, and the plant life’s learned to use it. For that matter, the Cuddlies themselves see quite well in the far red. Jorv suspects that the Cuddlies may even take a hand in cultivating some of the edible plants. That’s not unheard of in the animal kingdom. Something called an ant once did it—grew a fungus crop in its nest. Planted it, fertilized it, even chewed leaves to mulch it.”

“Could the Cuddlies be that smart?”

“It would be instinctual behavior. A survival characteristic developed through the ages. Mim, we’re finding out so much about terrestrial life from the books and microrecords in the libraries we’ve unearthed and from studying the organisms in the Cuddly burrows. Earth must have been a wonderful place! There were flying things that wove nests, rodents that built dams! Animal societies that cared for their young cooperatively! And we’re a part of that richness and diversity!”

She reached for his gloved hand and gave it a clumsy squeeze. “I know. Life will never be the same again.” She darted a a mischievous glance at him. “The food, for one thing. Marg’s been experimenting with some of those frozen seeds that were found in storage. She says we’ll soon be eating something called an artichoke.”

Bram laughed. “She’ll have us eating King James’s forbidden fruit next.”

“We already are,” Mim said quite seriously. “Wasn’t that the fruit of the tree of knowledge?”

Bram sobered. “More knowledge than we can absorb during our stay here. We’ll have to come back someday, Mim, after we find our world and get settled.” He took her by the arm. “Come on, we’d better find Ame and find out what she has to tell us.”

The archaeologists had chosen the big sports arena as their headquarters. It was the only place large enough to reassemble some of their finds. Most of it was still underground, a tall interior space that the diggers had gained access to after excavating only a couple of layers.

Bram and Mim followed the vehicle ramp downward to a domed receiving area where several of the monstrous Nar digging machines were parked awaiting service and a number of heavy-duty walkers were being carefully unloaded under supervision. A driver going off duty let them in through one of the small prefabricated personnel locks that had been ferried down from the tree and installed here.

The living quarters were a careless jumble of plastic cubicles around the perimeter of the dig. Bram and Mim gratefully accepted an offer of showers and fresh tunics before going on through to the huge cylindrical cavity proper; several hours in a space suit doesn’t do much to make a person presentable.

Banks of powerful lamps had been mounted far overhead as work lights. In their harsh glare, the cavernous interior took on a stark pattern of bright surfaces outlined by black shadow. Small groups of people in smocks or tabards were scattered across the immense broken floor, working at some of the hundreds of long tables where fragments of artifacts were being sorted and cataloged. More treasures were on display along the tiers of former spectator balconies in arrangements that made sense to the various specialists.

The larger reconstructions, some of them fairly complete, rose at intervals from the floor. Bram saw an articulated eight-wheeled surface vehicle taking shape—a series of portholed balls connected by flexible access tubes—and a towering plinth with the legs of a colossal metal statue still attached to it. Elsewhere, a section of wall with an engraved gate was being put together from a pile of stone blocks.