The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

“Perhaps the ship accidentally came close enough to a jump point much farther along than its original destination, and it popped out,” Geary speculated. “Or maybe jump space will eventually eject anything that doesn’t belong there if the object gets close enough to a gravity well. But who was this person?”

“Perhaps this will tell us,” Dr. Nasr said, holding up a small rectangle of metal with tiny letters and numbers embossed on it.

“The same old form of the language,” an Earth representative said, taking the tag and tilting it to catch the light of Sol. “It is hard to read. It says, ‘Maior . . . Paul . . . Crabaugh. 954 . . . 457 . . . 9903.’ That first word must be Major. Rank and name and a personal identification number used back then.”

“This is the last object in the box,” Dr. Nasr said. He had in his hand another piece of metal, this one about half the size of the palm of a hand, rectangular, and with an enameled decoration on one side. The ancient enamel still shone brightly in the sunlight.

As the Earth representative took the object, Geary craned his head to see the decoration. There were big letters on it, easy enough to read, over a scene of fields of bright green vegetation heavily dotted with large flowers bearing vivid yellow petals.

“The large word says Kansas,” the man from Earth read. “The small word says Lyons. This place. A souvenir. Perhaps from his family. Made when this town still lived and such plants grew here, as they will again. He took this into space with him, to remind him of home.”

“Now we know why the Dancers wanted to come here,” Rione said. “They were bringing him back.”

For a long time, no one spoke. The Dancers waited silently near the hatch to their shuttle. The wind sighing through the ruins of the town was the only sound.

“Why didn’t they tell us why they needed to come here?” Desjani finally asked.

“How would they have explained it?” Charban replied. “Apparently, they felt an obligation to return the body here. If they had told us at Varandal that they had him, we would have wanted him given to us at Varandal. If they had then refused to turn over the remains for reasons they couldn’t convey to us, what would we have done?”

“Totally misinterpreted things,” Rione said.

Dr. Nasr knelt by the container holding the remains of Major Crabaugh. “I see no signs of autopsy or other invasive procedures. If they examined his body, they did so only by noninvasive means.”

“They respected him,” Costa said, sounding angry. But as she glared at the other humans, it was clear her anger was not aimed at the Dancers. “They didn’t take him apart, they didn’t desecrate the body, they didn’t treat him like some strange animal cast up on their doorstep. Instead, they treated his remains as if he were . . .” She struggled for words.

“One of theirs,” Dr. Nasr finished for her. He stood up but continued looking down at the remains. “They did not know who he was, or what he was, or where he had come from. His appearance was very different from their own, perhaps as hideous in their eyes as the Dancers appear to us. But they looked at the artifacts with him, they looked upon him, and they saw a creature who must be like themselves in many ways. A creature whose remains deserved respect. A creature with a family and a home, both of which might be waiting for his return. They looked upon him and did not see the differences. They saw what this human must have in common with them, and when they could, they brought his carefully protected remains back to his home.”

“They have shamed us,” Senator Suva said. She was standing very straight, tears running down her face. “They have shamed us. We would not have done as well. We never have, and even after so many centuries of supposed progress, we still look at each other and see only the differences between us.”

“I will not be shamed by something that looks like that,” Senator Costa muttered, then gave Suva a challenging look. “I won’t be less than them. What they can do, I can do.”

Suva hesitated, then nodded. “We can try.”

Standing beside Geary, Senator Sakai spoke softly. “For so many years we searched for them. For someone like ourselves, yet different. When we found them, we thought we could learn from them, that whatever they were they would see things in us that we did not. It seems the philosophers were right. But will knowing this be enough to overcome human folly?”

“We don’t even know if we’re interpreting their actions here correctly,” Geary said in a very low voice so only Sakai and Desjani could hear. “But I don’t think I want to bring up that possibility. Maybe what we think we’re seeing is best left unexamined for now.”

Tanya reached out and squeezed Geary’s wrist. “Those sorts of questions are way above my pay grade. We got the Dancers here, and the Dancers did what they wanted to do. What do we do now?”