Divergence

EPILOGUE

“Tell me, Louis Nenda.” The pheromonal message was filled with quiet satisfaction. Outside the port, the convoluted structure of Serenity stretched away in endless arching spirals.

“Tell me this. Do humans have a word to describe the actions of two beings who are convinced that between them they can oppose and defeat an entire civilization, one that is hundreds of millions of years old and of huge technological powers?

“Sure. We wouldn’t be humans if we didn’t. In fact, we have lots of ’em, with all shades of meaning. Fancy words, like hubris, or plain ones like chutzpah and balls.”

“I am delighted to hear that. Cecropians are the same. We have more than one expression for what we are proposing to do, but the most commonly used is Fore-ordained by the Great Creator. Shall we proceed?”

“Just one second.” Nenda reached down to his feet. The infant Zardalu had bitten a chunk off the leather toe of his boot, spat it out, and was ready for another go. He pulled a lump of hard cheesy material from his pouch and placed it where the hard bill could bite into it. “There. Try that, little feller.”

The Zardalu began to eat. Nenda stood up again and stared out of the port at the alien abundance of the artifact.

“It’s not just a fortune out there, At. It’s the fortune. The biggest one ever. And there’s millions more cubic kilometers of stuff we can’t even see from here. Once we work it so the Builders and Speaker-Between do what we want them to do, an’ not the other way round, we’ll be sittin’ on the ultimate jackpot.”

“Indeed we will. And potentially, it is all ours.”

“Hell, you can drop that potentially.” Nenda glared at Atvar H’sial. “I don’t like to hear no negative thinking. I’m tellin’ you, we’re a ravin’ shoo-in certainty. Like Graves said when he left, it makes you proud to be a human or a Cecropian. You have to feel kind of sorry for The-One-who-Waits an’ Speaker-Between an’ all the rest of the Builders.”

“With reason. Against us, they do not stand a chance.”

“Not a prayer. They’ll never even know what hit ’em.”

Louis Nenda brushed his greasy hair away from his forehead, wiped his dirty hands on his pants, and stood tall.

“All right, let’s go get ’em. Poor devils. Supposed to be smart, been around five hundred million years — and still don’t know that guys like you and me always win.”