“So we will drift genetically, and they will not,” said Ram. “We will evolve and they will not.”
“Eleven thousand years is not really very long, in terms of evolution,” said the expendable. “Human populations that were separated for seventy thousand years during the great drought in Africa remained capable of interbreeding.”
“The separation probably wasn’t complete,” said Ram. “If you’re talking about the genetic bottleneck after the explosion of Mount Toba, it only lasted twenty thousand years. And the southern African group was known to be a seafaring one, since they colonized all around the Indian Ocean, including Australia and New Guinea.”
“I used the longer timespan to make my point clear,” said the expendable, “but even your shorter genetic bottleneck was twice as long as the isolation of this colony is going to last.”
“And at the end of it, modern humans were far different. Longer-legged, lighter in weight. Endurance runners who could chase prey until it collapsed from oxygen depletion. Spear throwers and expert blade makers. Storytellers who could use language to create a map that others could follow through strange lands to find water. Creative thinkers who could learn from others and then innovate and adapt, and then spread the cultural innovations across hundreds of miles in a single generation.”
“You seem to have made a detailed study of this,” said the expendable.
“After your question about the human species, of course I did,” said Ram. “Ten thousand years is plenty of time for real change in the human species, because this time the isolation will be complete.”
“But you have a question for us, dealing with nineteen starships and one world,” said the expendable.
“What if we could establish nineteen colonies, each knowing nothing about the others? They would never encounter their genetic doubles. There would be no rivalry. One would not triumph over all the others. These nineteen colonies, plus Earth, would divide the human race into twenty parts. Potentially, our species could explore twenty different paths of development, genetically, culturally, intellectually. All of human history, all the wars and empires and technology and languages and customs and religions, they all evolved in less time than we’ll have here. There is enough land mass to create nineteen enclaves larger than Europe, larger than the land from Egypt to Persia, larger than the Americas from the Aztecs down to the Incas.”
“No doubt the humans in every enclave will oblige you by becoming Egypt or Athens or Tenochtitlan.”
“I hope not Tenochtitlan,” said Ram. “I’d like to think we’d retain some of the progress we already made back on Earth, and leave human sacrifice behind.”
“But you’d keep the pyramids?”
“Or whatever monuments they build. And if they not only create new things, but also become a new, but still human, species, so much the better, as long as they don’t try to destroy any of the others.”
“Your optimism and ambition prove that you are truly human, especially because you ignore the strong likelihood that all the enclaves will end up like isolated mountain valleys, where primitive people who once roamed the oceans in boats filled with pigs and babies ended up living naked in mud huts and cannibalizing each other.”
Ram shrugged. “I won’t be there to see it.”
“Like a salmon, you spawn and die, letting the younglings hatch and thrive—or not—as chance dictates.”
“Not chance—their own strength and wit. Chance affects the lives of individuals, yes, but the human species makes its own chances.”
“We are in awe of your noble vision, while taking due note of the fuzziness of your ‘creative’ thinking, as opposed to the clarity of autistic and animal brains. Yet you have a problem whose solution your wonderfully fuzzy creative mind cannot solve.”
“Fuzzy creative human minds built you and the ships’ computers,” said Ram, “in order to solve such problems for us.”
“You want us to find a way to keep the colonies completely isolated from each other—to such a degree that they don’t know of each other’s existence.”
“You guessed it! And you say you aren’t creative!”
“We did not guess anything. We deduced it from the plethora of data you provided us, both consciously and unconsciously.”
“And yet you couldn’t detect the irony in my enthusiasm.”
“We detected it. As information, however, it was worthless.”
• • •
Loaf was a tired old man. He might still look strong to others, and act vigorous enough, but that was the problem: It was all an act. Things needed to be done, and he did them, but if he had been left alone, if he had had no responsibilities, he would have been content to sit in a rocking chair, close his eyes, and dream. Not the dreams of sleep, but the dreams of memory.
The trouble was that half those memories were unpleasant. Not so much the memories of killing, though Loaf had known his share of battles; in the frenzy of war, it was invigorating to slice and probe and hack and slay, especially considering that if he did not keep his attention fully engaged, he himself would have been sliced, probed, hacked, and slain. Rather his unpleasant memories were of the words he wished he hadn’t said, or the clever things he didn’t say because he only thought of them later.
The quarrels he could have avoided; the quarrels that would have been worth starting if only he had thought of the witty insults that would have brought him the pleasure of a well-earned split knuckle or sliced lip.
He could put up with the memories of missed opportunity and other regrets, for there were other memories—childhood friends and enemies, all remembered now with fondness. The dire fears of youth that now he knew were not to be feared at all. The childish longings that, fulfilled or not, he now wished he could feel again.
His life with Leaky was a good one, and he was not going to disappear from her life, which is what it would amount to, if he were to sit in that chair and dream. They had an inn to run, and it was a thing worth doing—the rivermen, scoundrels though so many of them were, needed a safe haven at this spot on the river, and this town needed somebody to keep the fire of ambition sparking and snapping here in this little strip between the water and the woods. He kept hoping someone else would come along with the spunk to make things happen, but there were no others besides himself and Leaky.
And Leaky was really the one with the spunk; Loaf merely acted as if he cared as much about things as she, because it made her happy when she believed he shared her feelings.
So in a way it had been a relief to join the boys on their downriver trip, and get away from the duties of Leaky’s Landing. She would manage splendidly while he was gone, Loaf knew that. And these boys, with their magic and their mirthful talk. They were ambitious, or at least Rigg was. Determined to fulfil his duty to his dead father, or so Rigg said—but Loaf saw in Rigg what he had seen in a few of the commanders he had served under: the fire of hope. Rigg wanted to do something that mattered. He wanted to change the world, and because he was a good lad, he wanted to change it for the better.
Umbo was more like Loaf—content to follow along, to let Rigg set forth the goals that they’d pursue. Not that Umbo was above grumbling when he didn’t like the duties that Rigg’s ambition imposed on him. Good soldiers grumbled all the time—but they followed the plans laid out for them all the same.
But when Rigg was taken captive, and Loaf and Umbo fled the boat and went back upriver, Loaf began what might have been the happiest time of his life. Oh, he felt bad that Rigg was arrested and when he thought about what might be happening to him, he worried. But mostly he just lived day to day with Umbo, like a soldier on the march, teaching the boy what he needed to learn, watching as Umbo struggled to do things that Loaf couldn’t imagine doing. Umbo was consumed with his need to learn how to save his friend by traveling backward in time, but since Loaf knew that it was beyond him, he was free to watch, to encourage, to protect, and, as near as Loaf could understand the feeling, to love him the way a father might love a son.