Seeker by Jack McDevitt Page B

to, I thought.
    It was a religious ceremony. A priest requested the blessings of the Almighty on the happy couple, and led them in their vows. The best man produced the ring, Adam slipped it on her finger, she waltzed into his arms, and they kissed.
    I envied them that moment. I’ve had a good life and can’t complain. But I don’t think I’ve ever approached the sheer joy I saw in Margaret’s eyes as she let go of him, and they started back down the aisle.
    The best man was described as a lifelong friend of Adam’s, Tolly Weinborn. I recognized him immediately and switched back to the Explorer ceremony. And there he was, about thirteen, standing at attention with his comrades, with all due intensity and innocence.
     
     
    I found Tolly after a quick search. He was living in Barkessa, on the northern coast, where he was an administrator at a public service office, the kind of place people go to when they’re in trouble. He was not available at the moment, the AI told me. Could they have him return the call?
    I found other tasks to occupy my time while I waited, among them looking for books that dealt with the Margolians and their flight from Earth. I came across
The Golden Lamp
, by Allie Omar. Omar looks at the causes of humanity’s long history of starting and stopping, taking three steps backward, turning left, going forward, and doing lots of pratfalls. Her basic question: What might have happened if, since the twenty-seventh century, the human race had been able to avoid the infighting, the economic dislocations, the collapses? Had we sidestepped the three distinct sets of dark ages that set in during the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth Millennia? Assume a straightforward dead-ahead unimpeded progress. Where would we be?
    She doesn’t answer her own question, but is satisfied with speculating on what the result might have been had the Margolians succeeded. The bottom line: They would be technologically three or four thousand years ahead of us.
They’d regard us, not as barbarians, but as distinct inferiors
.
    In the early years of interstellar travel, people worried about meeting aliens who would prove to be vastly superior.
In technology. Perhaps ethically. Possibly both
. And the fear was that, faced by a hypercivilization, however benevolent its intentions might be, humans would simply lose heart. Similar effects had been observed time and again during the early years as man spread around his home world.
    But, where the Margolians were concerned, the fears were, of course, unfounded. After leaving Earth, they were never seen again. And, across thousands of years, the only aliens we’ve encountered are the telepathic Ashiyyur, the Mutes, sometime friends, sometime rivals, occasional enemies. We discovered to our surprise that we were their technological equals. And since they still engaged in war among themselves, and occasionally against us, we were further gratified to conclude they were no better than we were.
    There was no one else. Visits to star systems over the millennia produced numerous living worlds, but none with anything you could call recognizable intelligence. Of course there were some species out there with potential. If you were prepared to wait around a few hundred thousand years, you might have someone to talk with. But the galaxy, as Art Bernson famously said, has a lot of empty rooms.
     
     
    Tolly never called back, so I tried him at home that evening. When I mentioned Wescott’s name to his AI, he immediately agreed to talk to me. He still looked relatively young, despite the accumulation of years. The features, cherubic in the twelve-year-old, congenial in the best man, had assumed a kind of world-weariness.
    He’d gained weight, and his face was lined, his once-red-blond hair gone mostly gray. He wore a beard, and he had something of a haunted look. Too many years of public service, maybe. Too many sad stories.
    I identified myself and explained that I was doing some historical