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arrange a rendezvous at dawn my time.
Then I busy myself with a quick check and turn to giving away everything I can
possibly spare. The lander's big batteries will recharge the boat and the
laser; I estimate their battery lives at years with a little care. My best
knife I send to Mavru via Donnia, along with the big medikit. The laser is for
Sintana and the little one for Maoul. Everything else blankets, lenses, a
small microscope, emergency cook pans and all I heap on them.
"Use your judgment. Something nice for Agna and this waterproof drawing pad
and stylus for the older man who does Relations. God, I wish there were more."
"It is ample," says Sintana. His eyes are on the lander, I sense that both are
anxious to see it go up.
But there isn't room for them to stay on the island, with the exhaust. So I
bid them farewell and send them out in the boat. They seem reluctant to have
me leave. As they motor out I catch a last gleam of blue.
Waiting to lift, I allow myself to think of what has haunted me, ever since
the goldskins' coming:
On ancient Terra there was once another race of Humans. They were big-brained
and, some think, unaesthetically formed. They flourished for a time, leaving
few signs in the stone records except their bones and a grave lined with
flowers. We call them Neanderthals.
And then came Cro-Magnon, our direct ancestors, and after that Neanderthal was
seen no more.
What happened no one knows, whether some interbred, or whether they were wiped
out in one of our first acts of genocide. (We left no living close relatives.)
What thoughts Neanderthal thought, what intellectual discoveries he made, no
one will ever know. They were strong; the fact that they disappeared at
Cro-Magnon's advance must have been partly a matter of temperament. Perhaps
they were noncombative.
Have I been seeing the start of just such a tragedy? I have no illusions about
the Mnerrins' ability to defend themselves against Homo Ferox. Their wonderful
artifacts of song and thought reside in their minds, their art of Relations is
literally written on the sands. If they go under, no one will ever know that
here men were following the thinking of Pythagoras, in a wholly different
technological contest. But they do not need the technology, except now, for
self-defense.
No. No one would ever know any more than we will ever know the color of the
eyes that looked out from under Neanderthal's shaggy mane. Perhaps they were
clear, and filled with compassion and the growing light of reason. We cannot
know. We have, I fear, killed them. And I fear, I greatly fear, that those
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lost eyes were a brilliant blue.
? ? ?
Now I have made my record. To you who hear it, I beg, allow yourselves to
imagine how it was. To be moved. To help! Surely the Federation could spare
one small party to sort this out, to transport the goldskins to another
planet. To save what can never be replaced of peace and beauty, of mind.
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