would Kithrup really have been left fallow for so long, in an overcrowded galaxy where every piece of real estate was desired?
The Institute of Migration was the only one of the loose Galactic bureaucracies whose power and influence rivaled even that of the Library Institute. By tradition, all patron-lines obeyed its codes of ecosphere management; to do otherwise courted galaxy-wide disaster. The potential of lesser species to one day become clients, then patrons in their own time, made for a powerful galaxy-wide ecological conservatism.
Most Galactics were willing to overlook humanity’s pre-Contact record. The slaughter of the mammoth, the giant ground sloth, and the manatee were forgiven in light of Mankind’s “orphan” status. The real blame was laid on Homo sapien’s supposed patron—the mysterious undiscovered race that all said must have left humanity’s uplift half-unfinished, thousands of years ago.
Dolphins knew how close the cetaceans themselves had come to extinction at the hands of human beings, but they never mentioned it outside Earth. For well or ill, their fate was now linked to Mankind’s.
Earth was humanity’s until the race moved on or died out. Her ten colony worlds were licensed for smaller periods, based on complex eco-management plans. The shortest lease was a mere six thousand years. Then the colonists of Atlast had to depart, leaving the planet fallow once again.
“Four hundred million years,” Creideiki mulled. “That seems an unusually long time with no re-survey.”
“I agree!” Charlie Dart shouted, now fully recovered. “And what if I told you Kithrup was occupied by a machine civilization as recently as thirty thousand years ago? Without any entry in the Library at all?”
Hikahi rolled over closer. “You think-k these crustal anomalies betray an interloper civilization, Dr. Dart?”
“Yes!” he cried. “Exactly! You all know many eco-sensitive races will only build major facilities along a planet’s plate boundaries. That way, when the planet is later declared fallow, all traces of habitation will be sucked down into the mantle and disappear. Some think that’s why there are no signs of previous occupancy on Earth.”
Hikahi nodded. “And if some species settled here illegally …?”
“They’d build only at a plate boundary! The Library surveys planets at multi-epoch intervals. All evidence of the incursion would be sucked underground by then!” The chimp looked eagerly from the holo display.
Creideiki had trouble taking this very seriously. Charlie made it sound like a whodunit! Only in this case the culprits were civilizations, the clues whole cities, and the rug under which the evidence was being swept was a planet’s crust! It was the perfect crime! After all, the cop on the corner only swings by every few million years, and is late, at that.
Creideiki realized every metaphor he had just used was a human one. Well, that was to be expected. There were times, such as spacewarp-piloting, when cetacean analogies were more useful. But when thinking about the crazy politics of the Galactics, it helped to have watched a lot of old human movie thrillers, and read volumes of crazy human history.
Now Brookida and Dart were arguing some technical point … and all Creideiki could think of was the taste of the water near Hikahi. He badly wanted to ask her if the flavor meant what he thought it meant. Was it a perfume she had put on, or natural pheromone?
With some difficulty, he forced himself back to the subject at hand.
Charlie’s and Brookida’s discovery, under normal circumstances, would be exciting.
But this has no bearing on escape for my ship and crew, nor getting our data back to the Terragens Council. Even the mission I sent Keepiru and Toshio on, to help appraise the native pre-sentients, is more urgent than hunting arcane clues in ancient alien rocks.
“Excuse me, Captain. I’m sorry I’m late. I’ve been listening quietly for a while, though.”
Creideiki turned to see Dr. Ignacio Metz drift up alongside. The gangling, gray-haired psychologist treaded water slowly, casually compensating for a small negative buoyancy. A slight pot belly distended the neat fit of his slick brown drysuit.
Brookida and Dart argued on, now about rates of heating by radioactives, gravity, and meteoritic impact. Hikahi, apparently, found it all fascinating.
“You’re welcome even late, Dr. Metz. I’m glad you could make it.”
Creideiki was amazed he hadn’t heard the man approach. Metz normally made a racket you could hear halfway across the bay. He sometimes radiated a two kilohertz hum from his right ear. It was barely detectable now, but at times it was quite annoying. How could the man have worked with fins for so long and