Tomorrow Happens (30 page)

The younger pilot pointed again, this time to a broad, flattened area not far away. "Firing pits," he pronounced. "A launching field."

"Don't jump to conclusions. We can't be . . ." The senior pilot abruptly stopped and stared. The cartographer gasped. As they topped a gentle rise, an immense cube of shining metal came into view, glittering under the slanting sunshine. Gafengria covered her eyes, wishing the giant thing would go away. She had a premonition about it, which caused her fringes to shrink down to their roots. It did not feel good.

"The Council calls," their comm operator said. "Command wants us to approach the artifact. Shipboard image enhancement indicates
writing
along the sides, inscribed in binary code!"

In hushed awe, the pilots brought the boat nearer. Ras Gafengria sank back in her seat, while the comm operator tuned to the frequency of the linguists, onboard the mother ship. Those experts babbled urgently about ciphers and contexts and translation possibilities. About analogies and similarities . . .

"
It's all terribly ironic
," Gathengria recalled her father pronouncing across the light years. "
These Mhenn are also refugees! They, too, fled a world that could barely support them. They didn't use robot probes to search for a new planet. Their method appears to have been more direct, though I can't say I really understand it well enough to explain it
.

"
Anyway, here they are. They awakened me, and I told them where you'd all gone. They're very much like us, you know
. "His smile had been bitter. "
They may look strange, but it's uncanny how much like us they truly are
."

Holograms from the cubic artifact filled the tank in front of Ras Gafengria. It was a full body portrait of an alien being, a roundish shape coated with tentacles. To her surprise and relief, those who had left this monolith weren't at all similar in appearance to the "Mhenn" shown in her father's message.

Thank the gods
, Ras sighed.
That
irony would have been too much to bear—that one species should deplete its home world in order to fly to a refuge that had been depleted by another race in
its
own desperate effort to flee to the first . . .

As a matter of fact, that tragedy was logically impossible. For one thing, the Mhenn had come from a direction opposite to the one the people had fled towards. And anyway, her father had said the Mhenn were
pleased
with their new world. In fact, the poor creatures had seemed pathetically ecstatic, calling their new home a "paradise." How devastated their own planet must have been, then, to think so highly of tired old Bharis!

Ras noticed that the others on the boat had stopped talking. "What—?" she began. The cartographer turned and whispered. "The translation, noble Ras! They've translated the inscription!"

Blinking, she saw that the alien figure in the holo tank was moving! Over the hum of the hovering engines, a tinny voice accompanied the movements, soft and lilting. In text below the figure flowed the mother ship's translation, in the language of Bharis.

"
. . . So we were forced to decide . . . to remain and face continued famine, or to take a desperate gamble, squandering our last resources to fling our race of heroes across the stars . . . The
(undefined term)
choice was obvious to all but a few
(undefined term) . . .
By the time the necessary
(undefined term)
transmitters were completed, our world was humbled . . . ruined . . . less than a quarter of her land arable . . . dead in so many . . .
"

"Less than a
quarter
?" The voice of the assistant ecologist cracked. "They call that ruined? The message can't be correctly translated!"

But Ras Gafengria sighed, seeing it all in utter clarity. So. They had been spared the irony that was superficially most cruel, only so they might have nightmares over a far more subtle joke the Universe had played on them. Or that
they
had all played on the Universe.

She closed her eyes and wished the onetime denizens of this world good luck in their quest.
May they find their bountiful new home. Though to satisfy them, it need be so rich as to stagger my imagination. They don't deserve success, of course, but neither did we . . . nor the Mhenn, presumably
.

In her mind she envisioned a chain of intelligent but short-sighted races, each getting more mercy than it merited, joyful to inherit the leavings of the one ahead of it in line. Each conditioned to see its new, leftover wasteland as a heaven.

She thought of Wathengria's wry words, and wished he had not taught her so well the burdensome gift of honesty.

"
The Mhenn had a terrible time
," the Mas had said. "
But they kept faith, and knew they would find a world as nice as Bharis, someday Amongst them, there is a saying almost as old as their race. When times were hard, they repeated it to one another for encouragement. For the courage to move on. Loosely translated, it goes something like this—

" '
Over the mountain, the plant life will be a more pleasant shade of green
.'

"
Now I must end this message, and begin trying to teach the new tenants of Bharis how to take care of her. Perhaps this time I will have better luck
.

"
May fate bless you, my wayward children. As little as you deserve it, may you also find the grass greener, and the waters sweeter . . . on the other side of the hill
."

Authors note:
This story was one of my very first published. It may not be high art, but nothing at all has changed to make the central point obsolete. We still face the fundamental truth—a people who deserve the stars will be people who first learned to be wise at home.