Free Across a Billion Years by Robert Silverberg Page A

Brolagonian-controlled world all I have to do is show it, and it’s as good as having a Brolagonian passport.”
    “Can I see it?” I asked.
    “Don’t be a lecher. It’s in an embarrassing place.”
    “I have purely scientific curiosity. Besides, there aren’t any embarrassing places, only embarrassed people. I didn’t know you were so prudish.”
    “I’m not,” said Jan. “But a girl’s got to have some modesty.”
    “Why?”
    “Beast!” she said, but she didn’t sound very angry.
    So I won’t see her birthmark.
    But I’m glad to know she has one. Call it snobbery, but I’m much taken by the news that Jan isn’t entirely human. It seems so dull to confine yourself just to girls of your own species.
    Of course, she’s still desperately in love with Saul Shahmoon. Or says she is. I’m not sure she means it. Just as a scientific experiment, I kissed her. To see if a girl who is one-fourth Brolagonian kisses in an exotic way.
    I didn’t detect anything in the least Brolagonian about her kissing. However, she did seem remarkably enthusiastic, considering she keeps brooding over her unrequited love for Saul. Maybe she’s losing patience with him. Maybe the rig-a-dig with Leroy this morning got her temporarily unhinged in the libido. Maybe—
    I definitely am going to blot all this stuff before Lorie hears it. Right now I’m simply talking to myself, which is as good a way as any of sorting out one’s feelings and emotions and things on a day when one has not only made a major scientific discovery but also fallen at least slightly in love with an unusual and very attractive female-type vidj. But I don’t want to make things any tougher for Lorie by giving her these little sidelights on archaeological romance. How lousy it must be to be stuck in a hospital room for your whole life, with a million different monitoring instruments taped to your skin or hooked right into your nervous system, and knowing that you’ll never walk, kiss or be kissed, go on a date, marry, have a family, anything! She’s got her TP … but is it enough?
    All this gets blotted.
    Holy holocaust! Mirrik just galloped into view. He must have quit digging a couple of hours ago and gone off to his frostflower grove for some refreshment, because he’s as looped as I’ve ever seen him. He came thundering by, gleaming with sweat and shouting what I suppose is Dinamonian poetry, and right now is doing a kind of war dance in front of the lab. I’d better get over there and steer him away before—
    Oh, no!
    He went into the lab! I can hear things crashing and smashing from here!
    An hour later. Mirrik made quite a mess, but nobody cares about that now. Because it has also turned out that the machine I found is still in working order. It’s a kind of movie projector.
    Which is showing, right now, billion-year-old movies of the High Ones and their civilization.

six
    September 6, 2375
    Higby V
    M IRRIK HAS FOOL’S LUCK. That caper yesterday afternoon should have finished him. Instead it made a hero out of him, in a zooby way, because everyone is now forgiving past sins.
    It looked like disaster when he burst into the lab. The lab’s a smallish bubble to start with, and it’s set up for work, not to accommodate the leapings of a drunken Dinamonian. When I got there, Mirrik was trying to prance, which is a lost cause for a creature built like a rhinoceros, and with each clumsy bound he was knocking things off tables and breaking them. Dr. Horkkk had scrambled to the top of the bubble and was clinging there in terror. 408b was sitting on top of the computer; Dr. Schein had picked up one of the little lasers and was holding it like a dangerous weapon; and Pilazinool was hastily screwing his legs back in place and getting ready to defend himself. Mirrik loudly tried to explain that he had had a profound spiritual experience in the frostflower grove. “I have seen true wisdom!” he cried. “I have known revelation!”
    He swung around