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Let Chen listen to recordings of what the spy beam shows of this! Let him savor his victory! I'll destroy him somehow, my staff is still loyal to me, I'll put together an army, I'll hire assassins of my own, I'll make contact with Admiral Sipp, and then Chen will be the one to sob, crying out for mercy as I disfigure him the way he has mutilated me-- Fool.
Leyel rolled over onto his back, dried his face on his sleeve, then lay there, eyes closed, calming himself. No vengeance. No politics. That was Rom's business, not Leyel's. Too late for him to enter the game now-- and who would help him, anyway, now that he had already lost his power? There was nothing to be done.
Leyel didn't really want to do anything, anyway. Hadn't they guaranteed that his archives and libraries would continue to be funded? Hadn't they guaranteed him unlimited research funds? And wasn't that all he had cared about anyway? He had long since turned over all the Forska operations to his subordinates-- Chen's trustee would simply do the same job. And Leyel's children wouldn't suffer much-- he had raised them with the same values that he had grown up with, and so they all pursued careers unrelated to the Forska holdings. They were true children of their father and mother-- they wouldn't have any self-respect if they didn't earn their own way in the world. No doubt they'd be disappointed by having their inheritance snatched away. But they wouldn't be destroyed.
I am not ruined. All the lies that Rom told are really true, only they didn't realize it. All that matters in my life, I still have. I really don't care about my fortune. It's just the way I lost it that made me so furious. I can go on and be the same person I always was. This will even give me an opportunity to see who my true friends are-- to see who still honors me for my scientific achievements, and who despises me for my poverty.
By the time Deet got home from the library-- late, as was usual these days-- Leyel was hard at work, reading back through all the research and speculation on protohuman behavior, trying to see ff there was anything other than half-assed guesswork and pompous babble. He was so engrossed in his reading that he spent the first fifteen minutes after she got home telling her of the hilarious stupidities he had found in the day's reading and then sharing a wonderful, impossible thought he had had.
"What if the human species isn't the only branch to evolve on our family tree?
What if there's some other primate species that looks exactly like us, but can't interbreed with us, that functions in a completely different way, and we don't even know it, we all think everybody's just like us, but here and there all over the Empire there are whole towns, cities, maybe even worlds of people who secretly aren't human at all."
"But Leyel, my overwrought husband, if they look just like us and act just like us, then they are human."
"But they don't act exactly like us. There's a difference. A completely different set of rules and assumptions. Only they don't know that we're different, and we don't know that they're different. Or even if we suspect it, we're never sure. Just two different species, living side by side and never guessing it."
She kissed him. "You poor fool, that isn't speculation, it already exists. You have just described the relationship between males and females. Two completely different species, completely unintelligible to each other, living side by side and thinking they're really the same. The fascinating thing, Leyel, is that the two species persist in marrying each other and having babies, sometimes of one species, sometimes of the other, and the whole time they can't understand why they can't understand each other."
He laughed and embraced her. "You're right, as always, Deet. If I could once understand women, then perhaps I'd know what it is that makes men human."
"Nothing could possibly make men human," she answered. "Every time they're just about to get it right, they end up tripping over the damned Y chromosome and turning back into beasts." She nuzzled his neck.
It was then, with Deet in his arms, that he whispered to her what had happened when Rom visited that day. She said nothing, but held him tightly for the longest time. Then they had a very late supper and went about their nightly routines as if nothing had changed.
Not until they were in bed, not until Deet was softly snoring beside him, did it finally occur to Leyel that Deet was facing a test of her own. Would she still love him, now that he was merely Leyel Forska, scientist on a pension, and not Lord Forska, master of worlds? Of course she would intend to. But just as Leyel had never been aware of how much he depended on his wealth to define himself, so also she might not have realized how much of what she loved about him was his vast power; for even though he didn't flaunt it, it had always been there, like a solid platform underfoot, hardly noticed except now, when it was gone, when their footing was unsure.
Even before this, she had been slipping away into the co
I'm like the information that was lost in all those neglected archives.
Disappearing bit by bit, u
Self-pitying fool. That's what happens to everyone, in the long run. Even Hari Seldon-- someday he'll be forgotten, sooner rather than later, if Chen has his way.
We all die. We're all lost in the passage of time. The only thing that lives on after us is the new shape we've given to the communities we lived in. There are things that are known because I said them, and even though people have forgotten who said it, they'll go on knowing. Like the story Rinjy was telling-- she had forgotten, if she ever knew it, that Deet was the librarian in the original tale.
But still she remembered the tale. The community of librarians was different because Deet had been among them. They would be a little different, a little braver, a little stronger, because of Deet. She had left traces of herself in the world.
And then, again, there came that flash of insight, that sudden understanding of the answer to a question that had long been troubling him.
But in the moment that Leyel realized that he held the answer, the answer slipped away. He couldn't remember it. You're asleep, he said silently. You only dreamed that you understood the origin of humanity. That's the way it is in dreams-- the truth is always so beautiful, but you can never hold on to it.
***
"How is he taking it, Deet?"
"Hard to say. Well, I think. He was never much of a wanderer anyway."
"Come now, it can't be that simple."
"No. No, it isn't."
"Tell me."
"The social things-- those were easy. We rarely went anyway, but now people don't invite us; we're politically dangerous. And the few things we had scheduled got canceled or, um, postponed. You know-- we'll call you as soon as we have a new date."