"My home is here."
"I meant the place your people came from."
"Ten light years."
"The images you showed me--that quiet valley--that is ten light years
away?"
"Yes. But that was my father talking to you, through me. He was grown
when the journey began. He is two hundred and forty years old--our
years, thirty-two days longer than each of yours."
Mainly I was conscious of a flood of relief. I had feared, on the
basis of terrestrial biology that her explosively rapid growth after
hatching must foretell a brief life. But it's all right--she can
outlive me, and by a few hundred years at that.
"Your father is here now, on this planet? Shall I see him?"
She took her hands away--listening, I believe. The answer was: "No.
He is sorry. He is ill and cannot live long. I am to see him in a few
days, when I fly a little better. He taught me for twenty years after I
was born."
"I don't understand. I thought that--"
"Later, friend. My father is grateful for your kindness to me."
I don't know what I thought about that. I felt no faintest trace of
condescension in the message.
"And he was showing me things he had seen with his own eyes, ten light
years away?"
"Yes." Then she wanted me to rest a while; I am sure she knows what a
huge effort it is for my primitive brain to function in this way. But
before she ended the conversation by humming down to her nest she gave
me this, and I received it with such clarity that I cannot be mistaken:
"He says that only fifty million years ago it was a jungle there, just
as Terra is now."
* * * * *