Footfall

Fistarteh-thuktun and his spaceborn acolytes looked down for a long moment of meditation before beginning their work. It was a ritual, and necessary. One could become too used to the Podo Thuktun; could take it for granted. That must never happen.

At one time bloody wars had been fought over the diagram in the central face of the Podo Thuktun. Was that diagram in fact a picture of a Predecessor? Half the world had been conquered by the herd that thought it was. Many generations had passed, and heretics had been raped of their status with dismaying regularity, before the fithp realized the truth.

Message Bearer’s interstellar ramjet had been made from that diagram.

The priest and his acolytes turned to the library screen. Paykurtank tapped at a tab the size of a human’s fist. The screen responded by showing a succession of photographs. One after another, granite half-cubes appeared in close-up against varying half-seen backgrounds.

“Skip a few,” Koolpooleh suggested.

“I countermand that,” Fistarteh-thuktun said instantly. “We’ll at least glance at them all. We’re seeking any relevant information left by the Predecessors regarding aliens, or Winterhome, or its natives,”

The thuktunthp were arrayed in order of their discovery, and roughly in order of simplicity of the lesson delivered. The history of the fithp could be read in the order of discovery of the thuktunthp. Uses of fire, mining and refining of metals, uses of the wheel: the Predecessors had made these easily available to their successors. Later discoveries had been found in caves or mountaintops or lifeless deserts.

“Pause that. Koolpooleh, is this nothing but mathematics?”

“I have no trouble reading the Line Thuktun, Fistarteh-thuktun. Simple plane geometry, a list of axioms.”

“Go to the next one.”

“The Breaker has arrived with trainees.”

“Ignore them. Pause that!”

Koolpooleh and Paykurtank were watching the humans, furtively, with one eye each. Fistarteh-thuktun pretended not to notice. Perhaps they could learn from watching the aliens. Perhaps not. The fithp warriors were even now aground and dealing with the prey.

Fistarteh-thuktun remembered what it was like to run, to take prey from a rushing stream, to see nothing but mountains in the distance and clouds overhead…

These creatures must first be defeated. Surely the knowledge was here! All knowledge was contained in the thuktunthp.

The Life-Thuktun was surely interesting enough. The script and diagrams dealt with biology, and Fistarteh-thuktun had studied it before. Hierarchies of plant life to the left, animal life to the right. Tiny, ancient single-nucleated life at the bottom, scaling toward complex warm-blooded air breathers at the top. Simple sketches at every level. The sketch that was third from the top resembled a stunted fi’. It was bulky, flat-skulled, with but one branch to its trunk. The feet were clubs, each with a tiny afterthought of a claw.

The creatures sketched above the prom-fl’ were extinct, though skeletons had been found preserved in soft sedimentary rock. Other pictured life forms had disappeared too, but…shouldn’t that top sketch be the lineaments of a Predecessor? Wouldn’t they have considered themselves the top of the ladder of life? Wars had been fought over that question, too.

It was not easy to ignore Tashayamp, half an octuple of soldiers, and four of Winterhome’s small, flat-faced natives, including one in a wheeled cage. Fistarteh-thuktun could hardly fail to hear Takpusseh lecturing them in baby talk. He let himself glance at the humans. They didn’t resemble that top sketch in any way. Fistarteh-thuktun felt a relief he would not let himself admit.

Since his revival from the death-sleep, the priest’s position had never been stronger. The average fit’ aboard Message Bearer had no grasp of what the Predecessors were all about, or how much Fistarteh-thuktun didn’t know.

But he had a task. He must advise the officers. He must seek any relevant information left by the Predecessors.

He had Koolpooleh’s attention again. “Go on,” he said.

The next thuktun explained the making of aluminum.

“Not known, the shapes of the—” Others? Predecessors? “No pictures of selves. Shape of Predecessor minds, half known.” Tashayamp was speaking slowly, and Wes was catching most of the meaning, he thought. He had to concentrate.

“There were eights of eight-cubed of thuktunthp scattered about the world. The Predecessors” — Tashayamp glanced toward the priest, busy at his huge display screen, and her breathy trumpet of a voice dropped a little — “did not know everything. They did not know that what they did with their machines would ruin the world for them. Maybe they did not know where life would be in the world, after the world healed. They left the thuktunthp everywhere.

“Not told, things about fithp, things about Predecessors. Perhaps thuktunthp were thuktun” — meaning message here — “to Predecessor children’s children. But Predecessor children were not made.”

Arvid asked, “What happened?”