Starplex

When it got to be this year, I unlocked you. Don't worry, though. I intend to put you back where you came from." A pause. "Remember that pink nebula you saw as you came out of the gate? That's what's left of what used to be Sol." Keith 's eyes went wide.

"Don't be concerned," said Glass. "No one was injured when Sol went nova. It was all carefully engineered. See, that type of star doesn't naturally go nova; it just decays to a white dwarf. But we like to recycle. We blew it up so that its metals would enrich the interstellar medium."

Keith felt dizzy. "And how — how are you going to return me to my time?"

"Through the shortcut, of course. Time travel to the past works well; we just can't do it to thefuture — that's why we had to let you come forward in stasis through ten billion years. Ironically, it turns out that it's forward time travel, not backward travel, that results in unsolvable paradoxes, making it impossible. We'll send you back to the moment you left. You don't have to worry about your friends missing you; no matter how many hours you generously stay with us, we'll get you to Tau Ceti at the time you're expected."

"This is incredible."

Glass shrugged. "It's science."

"It's magic," said Keith.

Glass shrugged again. "Same thing."

"But — but — if you're really me, if you're really from

Earth, then why did you screw up on the simulation?"

"Pardon?"

"The Earth simulation. It has errors in it. Fields full of four-leaf clover, something only ever found as the occasional mutant, and birds that I've never seen before."

"Oh." The wind-chime sound. "My mistake. I took the simulation from some ancient recordings we had, but I was probably a bit sloppy. Let me just check with my reckoner… yup, my fault. It is a perfect simulation of Earth, but of Earth about one-point-two million years after you were born. The things that were out of place were species that hadn't yet evolved in your time. Come to think of it, you wouldn't have recognized the constellations, either, if I'd ever let it become nighttime."

"My God," said Keith. "I hadn't even begun to think about evolution.

If you're ten billion years older than me, then — then you're older than any form of life on Earth in my time."

Glass nodded. "By your time, life had been evolving on Earth for four billion years. But there are Earth-descended life-forms in this time that are products of fourteen billion years of evolution. You'll never believe what daisies evolved into — or sea anemones, or the bacteria that caused whooping cough. In fact, I had lunch a few days ago with someone who evolved from whooping-cough bacteria."

"You're kidding." "No, I'm not."

"But it's incredible…"

"No. It's just time. Lots and lots of time."

"What about humans? Did humans continue to breed, to have children?

Or did that stop when — when life prolongation was discovered?"

"No, humanity continues to evolve and change. New humans — those who've been evolving for the last ten billion years — don't mix much with old humans like me.

They're… quite different."

"But if you're me, how did you change? I mean, your body is see-through."

Glass shrugged. "Technology. Flesh and blood tends to wear out; this is better. In fact, I can reconfigure myself any way I want.

Transparent is in style right now, but ! think the hint of aquamarine is quite classy, don't you?"

Chapter XVI

Rissa, Hek, and the rest of the alien-communications team continued to exchange messages with the darmat they'd dubbed Cat's Eye. The conversation became increasingly fluid as new words were added to the translation database, or old words had their meanings refined. When Keith next came onto the bridge, Rissa was in the middle of an apparently philosophic conversation with the giant being.

The usual alpha-shift crew was on duty, except that the ExOps station was vacant: Rhombus was off doing something else, and his position had been slaved to a dolphin floating in the open pool on the starboard side of the bridge.

"We have been unaware of your existence," Rissa said into the microphone stalk rising from her console. "We knew a large amount of invisible matter was out there, because of the gravitational effects, but we didn't know it was alive."

"Two types of substance," replied the darmat in that French accent PHANTOM had assigned to him.

"Yes," said Rissa. She looked up and waved a greeting at Keith as he took his seat next to her.

"Not react sharply," said the Cat's Eye. "Only gravity the same."

"That's correct," said Rissa. The all-encompassing hologram showed an enhanced view of Cat's Eye in front of the cluster of workstations.

"Most like us," said the darmat.

"The vast majority of all matter is like you, yes," replied Rissa. "Ignore you."

"You've ignored us?"

"Insignificant."

"Were you aware that part of our type of substance was alive?"

"No. Not occur to look for life on planets. So small you are."

"We. wish to have a relationship with you," said Rissa.

"Relationship?"