Part 4 (1/2)
Ramsey opened the letter and read it. Dated five Earth months before, it ran:
_My darling Margot: By the time you read this I shall be dead.
Ironical, isn't it? Coming so close--with death in the form of an incurable cancer intervening._
_As you know, Margot, I always wished for a son but never had one. You'll have to play that role, I'm afraid, as you always have. Here is the information I told you I would write down.
Naturally, if you intend to do anything about it, you'll guard it with your life._
_Apparently the hyper-s.p.a.ce pattern from Irwadi to Earth is the one I was looking for. The proto-men, if I may be bold enough to call them that, first left hyper-s.p.a.ce at that point, perhaps a million, perhaps five million, Earth years ago. I don't have to tell you what this means, my child. I've already indicated it to you previously. It suffices to remind you that, in what science has regarded as the most amazing coincidence in the history of the galaxy, humanoid types sprang up on some three thousand stellar worlds simultaneously between one and five million years ago. I say simultaneously although there is the possibility of a four million year lag: indications are, however, that one date would do quite well for all the worlds._
_Proto-man was tremendously ahead of us in certain sciences, naturally. For example, each humanoid type admirably fits the evolutionary pattern on its particular planet. The important point, Margot, is the simultaneity of the events: it means that proto-man left hyper-s.p.a.ce, his birth-place, and peopled the man-habitable worlds of the galaxy at a single absolute instance in time. This would clearly be impossible if the thousands of journeys involved any duration. Therefore, it can only be concluded that they were journeys which somehow negated the temporal dimension. In other words, instant travel across the length and breadth of the galaxy!_
_Whoever re-discovers proto-man's secret, needless to say, will be the most influential, the most powerful, man in the galaxy.
Margot, I thought that man would be me. It won't be now._
_But it can be you, Margot. It is my dying wish that you continue my work. Let nothing stop you. Nothing. Remember this, though: I cannot tell you what to expect when you reach the original home of proto-man. In all probability the whole race has perished, or we'd have heard of them since. But I can't be sure of that. I can't be sure of anything. Perhaps proto-man, like some deistic G.o.d, became disinterested in the Milky Way Galaxy for reasons we'll never understand. Perhaps he still exists, in hyper-s.p.a.ce._
_Finally, Margot, remember this. If you presented this letter to the evolutionary scientists on any of the worlds, they'd laugh at you. It is as if unbelief of the proto-man legend were ingrained in all the planetary people, perhaps somehow fantastically carried from generation to generation in their genes because proto-man a million years ago decided that each stellar world must work out its own destiny independently of the others and independent of their common heritage. But in my own case, there are apparently two unique factors at work. In the first place, as you know, I deciphered--after discovering it quite by accident--what was probably a proto-man's dying message to his children, left a million years ago in the ruins on Arcturus II. In the second place, isn't it quite possible that my genes have changed, that I have mutated and therefore do not have as an essential part of my make-up the unbelief of the proto-man legend?_
_Good luck to you, Margot. I hope you're willing to give up your career to carry out your dying father's wish. If you do, and if you succeed, more power will be yours than a human being has ever before had in the galaxy. I won't presume to tell you how to use it._
_Oh, yes. One more thing. Since Earth and Alpha Centauri are on a direct line from Irwadi, Centauri will do quite well as your outbound destination if for some reason you can't make Earth.
Again, good luck, my child. With all my love, Dad._
Ramsey frowned at the letter. He did not know what to make of it. As far as he knew, there was no such thing as a proto-man myth in wide currency around the galaxy. He had never heard of proto-man. Unless, he thought suddenly, the dying man could have simply meant all the myths of human creation, hypothecating a first man who, somehow, had developed independently of the beasts of the field although he seemed to fit their evolutionary pattern....
But what the devil would hyper-s.p.a.ce have to do with such a myth?
Proto-man, whatever proto-man was, couldn't have lived in hyper-s.p.a.ce.
Not in that bleak, ugly, faceless infinity....
Unless, Ramsey thought, more perplexed than ever, it was the very bleak, ugly, faceless infinity which made proto-man leave.
”Breakfast!” the Vegan girl called. Ramsey joined her in the kitchen, and they ate without talking. When they were drinking their coffee, an Earth-style beverage which the Vegan girl admitted liking, the apartment door irised and Margot Dennison came in.
Ramsey, who had replaced the letter where he'd found it, said: ”Just what the devil did you think you were doing, locking us in?”
”For your own protection, silly,” Margot told him smoothly. ”I always lock my door when I go out, so I locked it today. Naturally, we won't have a chance to apply for a new lock. Besides, why arouse suspicion?”
”Where'd you go?”
”I don't see where that's any of your business.”
”Believe it or not,” Ramsey said caustically, ”I've seen a thousand credits before. I've turned down a thousand credits before, in jobs I didn't like. As for being stranded here on Irwadi, it's all the same to me whether I'm on Irwadi or elsewhere.”
”What does all that mean, Captain Ramsey?”
”It means keep us informed. It means don't get uppity.”