“Scans show no operating technology of industrial level or higher,” it said. “There are indications of controlled heat sources in concentrated areas, consistent with possible small structures.”

  “So something like villages might still exist? Your people might still be around?”

  “Yes. Next step would be to make contact. However, in the absence of technology, that will require a landing. I am not equipped for this. I request assistance in this regard.”

  “Of course,” I replied. “We’ll transfer a drone and a couple of roamers to you, and I’ll show you how to control them. In the longer term, though, I think we need to upgrade your printer.”

  “That would be appreciated.”

  The drones were large enough to have SCUT transceivers, but not the roamers. Since Gunther was going to have to learn our radio comms standards anyway, we decided it would be simpler to just downgrade the drone to the old radio comms, to keep things consistent. We weren’t trying to keep SCUT tech from Gunther; we just didn’t want to throw too many changes at it all at once.

  Gunther took to the new units right away and ferried a couple of roamers down to one of the villages it had identified to do some basic spying. Meanwhile, Dae and I began constructing an autofactory out at a high orbit around the centaur planet. There was more than enough orbital debris, like former geosynchronous and high-altitude satellites left over from the centaur civilization.

  We were taking a break, going over the project plans, when we got a call from Gunther. “I have completed the astronomical calculations. It has been 562 years since I left Centaurvania.”

  I did a quick mental conversion while Dae muttered, “We have to come up with a better translation of their planet’s name.”

  I spared him a brief eye roll. “That’s almost seven hundred Earth years, Dae. So whatever happened to the empire was already old news by then.”

  “Uh-huh. But really, seven hundred or seven hundred thousand—after a certain point, how much difference does it make?”

  “Depends on what actually happened, I guess.”

  Dae paused, a thoughtful look on his face. “Icky, whatever it was, I don’t think it was the same thing that depopulated the empire. Centaurvania has never been connected to the wormhole network, so I doubt they were subjected to whatever happened there.”

  “So this was just a good old-fashioned civilization collapse?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I have also established surveillance of the local populations,” Gunther continued, breaking into our sidebar. “They speak a language that is recognizable as Standard, but only just. I will have to study them extensively to establish meaningful dialogue.”

  “What will you do, Gunther? Long term.”

  “Learn what caused the collapse of our civilization. Take steps to avoid a repeat. Try to build the people back up to our former level. Some of these are doubtless the descendants of my family. In the absence of specifics, I must aid everyone in order to aid any members of my bloodline.”

  “I don’t think we can hang around for this, Gunther. You’re talking about decades of work.”

  “It is my duty. It is not yours.”

  I glanced meaningfully at Dae, and he nodded. “However, we have more technology that we can give you. Take your time implementing it. None of it is necessary immediately, but it will help in the longer term. We’ll put together some files and send them to you.”

  “Appreciated.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine:

  The Quiniverse

  Bob

  August 2341

  In Virt

  I’d received an invitation from Theresa to attend the first Quinlan moot, and a token since this was going to be in Quiniverse dataspace. This was also a milestone for Theresa and Anec, as they would be officially welcoming their one-thousandth resident.

  I activated the token at the required time and found myself in Quinlan form in an enormous pub. Theresa, seated at a picnic table, smiled at me and patted the bench beside her. Anec sat across from her, holding a coffee with both paws. Around us, a drone of conversation filled the hall as hundreds of Quinlans drank, talked, and ate.

  “So what’s on the agenda?” I said, sliding into the seat.

  Theresa looked at Anec, who made a slight hand motion back to her. Taking that as permission, she explained, “The intent here is to form more of a community for our replicants. Anec is concerned that most of the new residents have been engaged in solitary VR lives, with very little interaction with their neighbors.”

  “I get that,” I replied. “Quinlans are social but not necessarily sociable. Being mobile, furred predators makes you much more able to strike off on your own. Humans”—I pointed to myself—“would have a lot more difficulty surviving outside of a tribe, so we more naturally tend to congregate.”

  “Still,” Anec said, “solitude is suboptimal.”

  I opened my beak to reply when a blaaat sounded from one end of the moot. I glared at Theresa, and she laughed. “Fair game, Enoki.”

  Well, it wasn’t like Bill had a copyright, and if it worked, it worked. And it seemed to, as the attendees all turned to the sound. A Quinlan stood on stage, holding an air horn. “Daughters and Sons,” she announced in an amplified voice, “we are here to inaugurate the first Quiniverse moot and to welcome our one-thousandth member. It has been an admittedly slow start … ”

  I started to tune out as I realized she was winding up into a good old-fashioned stump speech. Generally, I hate speeches. I glanced at Theresa, who seemed enraptured. Understandable, I guess. She had a personal stake in this, and possibly a reputational stake as well.

  Then it happened. Loud voices started venting forth off to one side of the hall. I couldn’t make out what the source of the conflict was, but Anec commented, “Several Quinlans have decided that they are the one-thousandth member. I told Rita that she should name names, but noooooooo … ”

  I almost laughed out loud at this expression of wry impatience from an emotionless AI. Anec was either very good at mimicry, or he wasn’t living up to his own billing.

  All very interesting, but these were Quinlans, and this was an argument, and—yep, someone threw a punch. Or a claw rake, or something. Didn’t matter. In moments, that end of the moot hall was a hissing, spitting, raging ball o’ Quinlans. Anec did a facepalm but otherwise didn’t react. I looked at Theresa wordlessly.

  “It’s VR, Enoki. I shouldn’t have to remind you. No one will get hurt.”

  “Sure, but that just means they’ll keep fighting.”

  Anec looked up at this, frowned, then did a sort of squint thing. The roiling ball of Quinlans turned into—I kid you not—the cartoon version of a fight from when I was a child watching TV. A sort of ball of smoke emitted lightning bolts, Quinlan heads, and limbs. Around us, Quinlans who had been watching the fight began to laugh, first with disbelief, then with uncontrollable mirth. The fight began to die down immediately as the combatants registered the laughter, and that it was at their expense. Within mils, they were looking around at Quinlans howling and rolling on the floor with laughter. I had to suppress a chortle myself. The ex-combatants all had cartoon X-shaped Band-Aids and parallel-line scratches, straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

  I looked at Anec, and he shrugged. “I have been watching HumanTube.”

  Whatever I might have thought of it, the tactic worked. The ex-combatants, shamefaced, all sat down and righted their beer steins, which miraculously refilled.

  “Lectures and finger wagging would be ineffective,” Anec continued, “but being laughed at is harder to ignore. Fights at moots will not be tolerated.” He finished by glancing significantly at Rita, still on the dais. She met his glance and nodded.

  “As I was saying,” she announced into the general buzz, “we are welcoming our one-thousandth member, Norm of West Elbow, to the membership … ”

  And the speech was back on track.

  Chapter Fifty:

  The Big Guy

  Howard

  June 2344

  Jabberwocky

  Bridget managed to get herself ensconced in the Research Division, which was a not-completely-incorrect translation of the dragon name for the table-and-scroll group. She wasn’t one of the senior scribes, thank the universe. That apparently always involved de-feathering, and neither one of us was willing to stand still for that. But Bridget had displayed just enough reading skill to make the librarians think she’d be useful as an assistant and gofer. Maybe the scribes wrote down their latte orders or something.

  In any case, she was taking every opportunity to ask questions and pick up more of the written vocabulary. And fetching food and tuev.

  And speaking of tuev, Ursula seemed to have the kind of sense of humor that people sometimes killed you for, because she apparently thought it would be just a rip-snorting rib-splittingly funny thing to transfer me to Supply and Logistics, where I was assigned to—wait for it—brewing and providing tuev to the army. Yeah, funny girl.

  It was only a cover story, of course, so I didn’t really mind, but the thought of her chortling around the campfire about how she’d pulled one over on the noob made my teeth grind. I resolved that if I could ever get her assigned to keel control, it would be a good day.

  But meanwhile, Bridget had gotten a whole lot more info on Alexander, although much of it was contradictory. We were sitting in our apartment in Trantor during a dragon sleep period, and she was updating me.

  “The unofficial word is that Alexander is from the western continent—”

  “Nope,” I interjected. “No dragon population. Mario said so.”

  “I know, Howard, but that’s the story. He supposedly sailed here on that canoe made from metal given to him by the Ancients—”

  “If you stretch the definition of given, sure.”

  “Say, who’s telling this story? Mind shutting up?” She glared at me, and I made a zipping gesture across my lips. “Thank you. So he sailed here and discovered that the fish are dying off, and he wants to take everyone back to his continent, where the land flows with milk and honey. Or the local equivalent.”

  “Come the socialist revolution—”

  “Howard!”

  “Sorry.”

  She gave me another glare, then continued. “There are a lot of holes in his official history, not the least of which is that he seems to have local friends from way back before he first supposedly appeared on the scene. Also, of course, the Ancients are just a myth. But at least we know his endgame. He’s trying to get a large number of dragons across to Lemuria.”

  “But why is he capturing all the floaters?”

  “Because he only has one canoe, Howard. Dragons can’t make that flight. There aren’t enough thermals over the ocean to glide on, and dragons don’t have the range in flapping mode.”

  “But floaters avoid the ocean.”

  “I don’t get the impression he intends to ask politely. They’re being tied together, and he’s got teams learning how to drive them by controlling their keels. Also, if he takes a lot of floaters, he can lose some and still make it.”

  “Fine, okay, he can theoretically pull it off. But why? Because fish stocks are falling? It seems like an overreaction.”

  “I don’t know, Howard. Maybe I can convince him to talk to us … ”

  “Hopefully without getting beheaded.”

  “I’d prefer that as well, thanks.”

  We stood, staring at Alexander on the throne, and I took the opportunity to get a close look. It actually appeared to have been assembled from stone, mortared together into an oversize chaise of sorts. Obviously designed to impress visitors.

  Alexander regarded us indolently. He was not physically prepossessing, at least in terms of size. But he obviously had what it had taken to raise, control, and maintain an army big enough to absorb all of dragon civilization.

  “I understand you have concerns about my plans,” he finally said. Not in a mocking tone, either, which was unexpected.

  Bridget glanced at our guards, then, plainly deciding to ignore them, plunged right in. “I understand now that you’ve been tracking fish stock, and I understand that you want to take people to the west continent before the food chain crashes. What we don’t understand is why you think it’s going to crash that badly. Removing all these floaters from Atlantis is going to cause a lot of harm as well. Do you not care about that, or do you think things will be so bad that it won’t matter for the people left behind?”

  “You can read, right? I’m told you’ve been examining the appropriate scrolls.” Alexander held up a hand to forestall Bridget’s reply. “You haven’t seen all of them, though. The histories show that this has happened before. Three times for which we have records. Each time was worse than the previous. Each time lasted longer. And it’s not just the fish. The air becomes foul. Breathing becomes difficult. Many die before they have time to starve.”

  I was surprised enough to speak up despite my decision to let Bridget take this. “You have historical data? How far back?”

  Alexander smiled at me. “My family has been tracking these things for thousands of years.”

  “Seems like an odd kind of hobby.”

  Alexander laughed easily. “I come from a family of scribes. Members of our clan have always been what many might call obsessive, so we were always record keepers. We tracked movements in the heavens—eclipses, occultations, the changing of the seasons. This has been our family’s main vocation for millennia. But it leaves one with a lot of spare time. It was a natural sideline to begin keeping track of movements of animals, population changes, dragon lineages, and yes, availability of fish. I was the first to examine the whole sweep of recorded history and notice the patterns.”

  “So you aren’t from Lemuria.”

  Alexander smiled without reply.

  Bridget spoke to me over the intercom. “If he’s right, we should be supporting him, not trying to stop him.”

  “I guess the Prime Directive is out the window again,” I replied.

  “We were always interfering, Howard. It’s just a question of how.”

  The exchange had only taken a moment, but Alexander was gazing at us with narrowed eyes. “You two almost seem to be talking sometimes, though there’s nothing to hear. Everything about you is strange. Why should I not remove you just out of a sense of caution?”

  “Because we can help you get to Lemuria,” Bridget said.

  Well, that’s it, I thought. Decision made.

  “I’ve been to Lemuria.” Alexander pointed to the canoe. “I don’t need help.”

  “Did you explore the entire continent?” Bridget asked, gesturing at the map on the wall. “Do you know the shortest distance? Do you know the water and air currents? Can you be forewarned about bad weather?”

  “And you presumably have all this knowledge? Where does it come from, pray tell?”

  “My home library has maps of the world, including the continent of Lemuria. It is said they were given to us by the Ancients. I don’t know about that, but I do know they are considered very accurate. My trip west was at least partly about measuring what the maps say against reality.”

  Alexander stared at her, silent, his canines protruding slightly. My autonomous system wasn’t giving me an automatic translation, so I queried my database. That was a threat or defense posture, generally meaning the subject wasn’t quite sure how to respond. I had to admit, I couldn’t think of a direct human equivalent.

  “May I see these maps?” Alexander asked.

  Bridget tapped her head. “It’s all up here. But I can draw one for you if you want.”

  Alexander nodded, making a decision, and stood up. “Very well. Let us begin.” He walked deeper into the pavilion, gesturing at us to follow. We found ourselves at a large table, on which was painted a detailed map of the dragon home continent of Atlantis. To the west, a vague outline of Lemuria had been chalked in, and a dotted line extended from our position straight across.

  Tapping the dotted line, Alexander explained, “This is the most obvious route. But is it the best?”

  I ran my finger down across the line. “The main air current between the continents runs northeast to southwest. You’ll be blown off course and be constantly beating northward to get back on track. Right into the teeth of the winter storms.”

  “And the western continent,” Bridget added, “has a large bay to the south, making the distance to shore even greater. You’ll be better to start north of our location and beat straight west, letting the airflow pull you south. About”—Bridget squinted—“a hundred miles north. Here.”

  Alexander frowned. “At the best speed we can coax out of the flotilla, that will take almost two weeks. It’s a late start and puts us further into winter weather.”

  “We could wait until spring,” I suggested.

  “I don’t think we can,” Alexander replied. “The fish stocks will not recover next spring, if they are following the pattern. We will have spent the winter eating our reserves, with no way to replenish them. Then an ocean voyage of several weeks? No, not workable. Many would starve en route.”

  “But if we leave now from here, you’re doubling the duration of the voyage,” Bridget replied. “Even without the issue of a bad storm, do you have the reserves?”

  Alexander looked at her, then dropped his eyes, a rare display of fallibility. “Unlikely. Again, starvation. No matter how we attack this, we do not have enough food.”

  “What happened in previous cycles, when everyone stayed put? I’m assuming no one ever tried heading west.”

  “Some did try heading west, in fact,” Alexander replied. “But generally, they were driven by hunger, and already weakened. I met no dragons on the western continent, so I don’t think they would have survived the voyage.”

  “And the people who didn’t leave?”

  “Several years of famine and bad air from eruptions. Most fish stocks died. More than half the population starved as a result. Many floaters died, so battles over territory took out many of the rest of the dragons. Our family was always well respected, and we had always maintained a personal army, so we came through and preserved the records.”