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Page 32.

Once again they were on the water. They headed southwest, hugging the coastline.

Alex suspected that the coastline roughly followed the old Atlantic contour, but several hundred miles further inland. Occasional Siirk fishing villages drifted past. He saw little evidence of technological progress—they were roughly in the 15th Century because they had guns, yet they seemed not to be great explorers or inventors. But they were sharp—Nizin clearly knew that the ship they’d visited had come from the sky somehow, and he wanted to trace its route back to raid whatever he could.

He witnessed his first fight between Siirk. It happened in the water as one swam back to the curtained mystery boat, and the other was just coming from there. They had a brief staring contest, then knives came out—thin, mean, personal dirks they were, not like the broad utility knives they carried on their belts—and one or both were about to die when Nizin stood up and yelled at them to grow up.

Finally, all the boats ran aground, as if to stay a while. Alex gathered there was a Siirk city further along the coast, but this was as far as they were going for now. This looked like one of Nizin’s permanent camps.

The Thuga were herded away somewhere. Nizin, Omas, and Kogran led Maryan and him through a forest, down through a canyon where they had to ford a small river, and back up the other side. The forest water was cold and his feet hurt. He was glad to be back in the sunlight, which warmed him back up.

They followed a broad trail of beaten earth, surrounded by thick forest on both sides. Occasionally, Siirk on horseback passed. At one crossroads, they saw two Siirk warriors in chain mail, leaning on their axes and chatting. These Siirk greeted Nizin with feral respect, deferent but proud, and there was always some loathsome undercurrent, Alex thought, in the way these reptile-men sized each other up.

The group turned on a narrower trail and entered an area of cliff dwellings. Passing there, they left the Siirk town and came to a beautiful wilderness. It was a mountain meadow full of gorgeously colored flowers. They marched toward a forest on the other side, and now the aim of their journey became clear.

Sitting at the edge of the forest was a giant ball with the same blinding, shiny material they’d seen in the wrecked spacecraft. Only this one wasn’t wrecked.

As they approached they came up to the ball, for it sat slightly elevated; they had to climb up a rubble wall about ten feet high to actually reach the ball. He noted the finely slitted vent grills that ran horizontally along the bottom. An array of broken tools littering around the base told him Nizin’s people had worked hard to pry this nut open, and had failed.

It was perfectly round, a ball he estimated to be fifty feet in diameter—the size of a small house.

“Geedeen!” their three Siirk officers yelled, all banging on the sides of the device. “Ingish!”

Nizin took him by the shoulder and pulled him close. Nizin lifted the amulet he wore on a thong around his neck and tapped it against the ball. He touched the skin, and a panel appeared in the otherwise perfectly featureless surface that captured the blue of the sky, the white of clouds, the light of the sun, and swirled them into a blinding abstraction.

“Greetings,” said a man in a suit, holding some papers as if he were a TV anchor. “I’m Vector, your friendly transport and communications expert. This automated boat has landed to answer your emergency call. First, we must determine if you are truly a human requiring assistance, or if the call was the result of some natural phenomenon such as lightning. Please state the name of the first President of the United States in English.”

“Ingish!” the Siirk yelled. Besides Omas, Nizin, and Kogran, a half dozen Siirk officers clustered around.

Noticing that Omas had the knife out, and Maryan in a headlock with the other arm, he said: “George Washington.”

“Thank you,” said the man brightly in his well-modulated announcer’s voice, “That is correct.”

The Siirk gaped as he continued: “Please choose from the following menu by reading out loud. If you are injured and cannot speak, please wait until the next scheduled orbital patrol can make a pass over your location.”

Orbital! They had something in orbit that sent out patrols? Yes, but a million years ago. If there were still someone up there, they would have long since come by to investigate. He felt safe betting that nobody would come to help them.

The Siirk were beside themselves, staring at the list of written items.

He now had a little bargaining power. He stripped his net off and threw it on the ground. He motioned for Maryan to come stand beside him. Omas let her go after a reluctant glance toward Nizin, who gave a hooded nod.

They stared up at the menu, which included: Injured?, Need Police?, Need Food & Water?, Lost?, Value Added Tax?, Voice Line, News Update, News Archive, More Selections.

Alex pressed News Update.

The Siirk stepped back, gasping, as an elderly woman anchor read slowly and painfully from a note pad in her trembling hand: “This is Jill Claymore with World News Incorporated aboard the orbiting city Yuri Gagarin. I am the last anchor person alive, and this will be my last broadcast. It is March 13, 2090, and I have been told that I only have a few weeks or months to live with my cancer. I don’t know if there are any people left on Earth. I do know there are fewer than 100 of us left here on the station, and all other points in space shut down years ago as we ran out of young people. I expect this generation will be finished in the next five years or less, because I am 86 years old and one of the youngest persons here.

“It may well be that you are a freshly born young person, a clone of someone who lived before his time. If so, we wish you well. You are the only hope for humankind’s future, and we send you all our love.”

The Siirk were wide-eyed, mute, with mouths hanging open as they clustered around to hear this strange monologue.