Free IGMS Issue 22 by IGMS Page A

at Wanda. "Sorry I can't offer you equivalent companionship."
    "Not a problem. I'm not here to relax. Something has happened, something important. I had to tell you."
    "What?" I said.
    "There are still people in this galaxy."
    "Yeah," I said. "You, me, Ormond, Bana --"
    "No, Rordy. I mean
real people
."
    I forgot the blonde.
    "That's not possible," I said, standing up.
    "I've been to their planet. I've seen them for myself."
    "Where?"
    "About 3,500 light-years further out along the Sagittarius arm from here."
    I walked slowly -- not caring about my nudity -- until I was face to face with Wanda. Like me, her body was a mechanical illusion, something she'd constructed to look like her former self, using the universal factories onboard her ship. Some of the others had taken great liberties when building their simulated bodies. Wanda and me -- we'd kept it real.
    "I can't believe it," I said.
    "I didn't want to either," she admitted, throwing her arms out in a gesture of resignation. "When Carlos found me slow-coasting through the Perseus arm, he had to argue hard to get me to take his claim seriously. But he and the others were right -- there are humans on Eden."
    "Eden?" I said.
    "That's what the others call it. It seemed like an appropriate name."
    I stared, not sure I could let myself believe what I was hearing. The blonde had picked herself up and wandered to my side, glancing briefly at Wanda before looping her arm through mine. The three of us began walking.
    "It's a wonder the Swarmers haven't jumped on this before now," I said.
    "We can't really be sure what the Swarmers know," Wanda said. "But we're gathering -- everyone who can be found -- to make sure Eden has a proper defense. Because if we know anything about the Swarmers, it's that they'll find Eden eventually."
    "What about these humans, aren't they armed?"
    "The inhabitants of Eden are in no condition to fight."
    "What do you mean?"
    "Easier if you see for yourself," she said.

    Almost four thousand light-years later Wanda and I stood on an altogether different beach, along with a few of the other two dozen who had answered the call. Our mechanical eyes gazed across the white-capped expanse of a kilometers-wide bay, to the tiny collection of bodies moving on the other side. If the natives of Eden could see us, they didn't show it. They were naked and mocha-colored with proud long faces like Native Americans and hair so light it was almost white. Even the children. The men had beards and the women were pregnant. They appeared to be collecting nets and baskets filled with some sort of sea life, all from the prows of dugout canoes.
    "How many are there?" I asked.
    "Taking a planetary census wasn't easy, but they appear to number several hundred thousand strong, scattered in tribes across every continent and most of the islands."
    "Tribes," I said. "Is that your way of saying
all
of these people have reverted to a pre-technological state?"
    "I don't know if reversion is the right word, Rordy. There is every indication from the archeological sites we've looked at that these humans have been on Eden for a very long time, and have never risen much beyond a stone-age level of sophistication."
    "They're mystics," said Bana, whose artificial body mimicked a Hindu painting: blue skin and multiple arms, an androgynous face and no external genitalia. "They have no use for science."
    "What about medicine?" I said.
    "There isn't a single terrestrial virus or microbe on this planet," Ormond said. When biologically alive, he'd been a research physician -- a smallish white man condemned by age to a wheelchair. Now he possessed a towering three-meter frame and skin like brushed copper. "These people live at least a hundred or more of our years before even beginning to show signs of geriatric disability. Whatever force brought them here, it did them a favor in the process."
    "So they are truly human?" I said.
    "DNA shows a bit of cleaning up," Ormond said, "but yes, they're human.