Donald Moffitt - Second Genesis

“ Too sweet, I think,” Marg went blithely on. “Cloying, actually. I’m going to make wine from grapes, next. That’s what Original Man did, mostly. The secret is to allow most of the glucose to ferment out, evidently. Orris is cloning cells now from the samples we brought back. But it will take two years to grow the rootstocks.”

Orris’s shaggy head bobbed up and down in agreement.

The telescopic display caught Marg’s eye. Even she was sobered by it. She bit her lip. “I wonder what we missed,” she said. “I know it will take tens and tens of years to sort through what we’ve already got, but I can’t help thinking about what we might have missed. Do we have parsley, for example?” She fluttered her long eyelashes at Bram. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if we went back? The disks are identical, aren’t they? There must be other biological museums we could dig up before those horrid creatures get to them.” She pouted. “I can’t stand the thought of them swarming over it all!”

“We were just talking about that.” Bram floundered uncomfortably.

Mim came to his rescue. “You know what I can’t stand? The idea of the Cuddlies being hunted by those awful things.”

Orris nodded vigorously. “Yes, they may be the last survivors of the mammalian age on earth. They were safe here for eons. And now they’re just fodder for probably the most voracious life form that evolution ever produced.”

“I don’t know,” Trist protested. “They’re tenacious little animals. The rat-people couldn’t exterminate them. They’ve prospered for millions of years in an inimical environment. They’ll learn to keep out of the nymphs’ way. Life may get tougher for them. But I have a hunch they’ll be around for millions of years more.”

“In any case, they won’t become extinct now,” Bram said. “All the pets taken aboard Yggdrasil will see to that.”

That led to a rash of Cuddly stories. Cuddly owners could be terrible bores.

“Our little Mittens is such a scamp!” Marg gushed. “She’s into everything, but I haven’t the heart to scold her.”

“Our Loki, too,” Mim said. “He was determined that he was going to come to the party. We had to lock him up to keep him from following us.”

“I hear from Jao that you’ve adopted another one,” Trist said politely.

“Yes … Methuselah,” Bram said. “He’s pretty spry for an old fellow. Walked right in and took possession of the place. No nonsense about him. Right now, I think he’s in the process of showing Loki who’s the boss.”

“Loki’s an unusual color,” Orris said. “Almost the same shade as Jao’s beard. Say, you wouldn’t consider letting us mate him with Mittens, would you? We’ve always wanted a red—”

He was interrupted by the arrival of Edard. Edard was tired and dusty, still wearing coveralls with a treeguard armband; he hadn’t gone to his quarters first to change for the party.

“Creation, but I could use a drink!” he said. Bram handed him his glass, and he drained it. Marg signaled one of her assistants for refills.

“What happened?” Bram asked.

“We found one,” Edard said. “One of the patrols flushed it out of a tunnel in the sapwood. We lost two men, but we got it.” He looked around for another drink. “It was full of eggs.”

“Do you think there are any more?” Trist asked.

“I don’t know. I hope not. We’ll have to build up the treeguard with more volunteers, step up the patrols. I’m going on duty again tomorrow. We may have to keep this up for years if we want to be sure.”

“How horrible,” Mim said.

“Inside the tree, of course, they’re not at the disadvantage they are in space suits. Spears aren’t the whole answer. We need something smaller that can kill at a distance.”

“A dart of some kind, maybe?” Trist suggested.

“Could be. With something like a spring to hurl it.”

“Interesting idea. Maybe the physics department could come up with something.”

“I’ve thought of one thing,” Edard said. “A sort of bow, like a violin bow. With the string under lots of tension. It could throw a short shaft with a pointed end. Of course, it would take a lot of practice to learn how to aim a thing like that so you could hit something with it.”

“Oh, Edard, you sound so bloodthirsty,” Mim said.

“Sorry, Mother. But if you’d seen two men killed by one of those filthy creatures…”

“It’s only for self-defense, Mim,” Bram said. “When we’re sure this crisis is over … why, we’ll just disinvent this bow thing.”

Everybody’s eyes were drawn to the telescopic image hanging in the bolo backplate. “We should have burned them with the photon drive instead of being so finicky about where we aimed it,” Trist said.

“Now who’s being bloodthirsty?” Bram said. “It wouldn’t have made any difference. Their father ship’s dropped bubbles all around the rim, and even if we’d spent a year in orbit around the disk, there’d be other ships, now that they’ve found the way.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Trist said. “The dragonflies are now in possession of the diskworld transmission apparatus. What if some day it occurs to them to use it?”

It was a horrifying thought. “It would take thousands of years to get the disks into operating condition,” Bram said.

“The universe has got thousands of years,” Trist said.

“Before the dragonflies could seed the universe with their kind,” Mim said, “their transmissions would have to reach a race advanced enough to synthesize their DNA. And what race would be that naive?”

“The Nar created us , Mim,” Trist said. “And we gave them Penser.”

“You may be overlooking one thing, Trist,” Bram said. “Before you can induce another species to unriddle your genetic code, you’ve got to be able to communicate with them. And the dragonflies aren’t very good at that. In fact, they may be inherently incapable of it.”

“They won’t need to broadcast their genetic code,” Trist said grimly. “They’ll just spread from star to star. And when their ships are good enough they’ll reach other galaxies the way we did.”

“Don’t be so gloomy, Trist,’ Marg said. “You’ll spoil the party.”

“Sorry, Marg.” He swallowed the last of his elderberry wine. “I think I’ll get myself another drink. Who’ll join me?”

Before he could carry out his intention, Jun Davd came hurrying into the lounge, followed by an assistant. He spoke briefly to. the assistant, who nodded and went to the holo to make some kind of adjustment; then Jun Davd came through the crowd to Bram and his group.

“You’ll want to see this,” he said. “We’ve been tracking the dragonfly father ship for the past few hours. They’ve finished seeding the rim with their spawning bubbles, evidently, and they’re ready to go on to the next diskworld. They’ve been following the rim around, using their fusion engine to build up velocity.”

“Oh, no!” Mim exclaimed.

“They’ve sterilized a swath over ten million miles long so far.”

“Why … they’ll burn their own colonies,” Orris said.

“No, they shut down when they drop one,” Jun Davd said. “They’re not mindless, you know.”

“Not when it involves their own species,” Trist said tightly.

“They’re flying low,” Jun Davd went on, as if he were discussing an abstract problem in ballistics. “The interesting thing is that they haven’t passed under a moon yet. It’s over twenty-two million miles between moons. Ah, here we are. We’re picking them up now.”

The telescopic display at the end of the lounge jiggled and blurred, then centered on a brilliant spark skimming the top of the fantastic wall that stretched across the stars. People stopped their conversation to look.