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same time, I was after this tape. Without the right keys. Denied the right keys, by Ramirez and by Sabin, both. Is
that
somehow to the good of us all? So in that mood of executive curiosity, and during that search, I’ve dug into everything I could get, things that aren’t a restricted record. Like what files Ramirez got out of the Archive—what books he read. History. Earth’s history. That’s no surprise. Ancient, recent, didn’t matter to him. He
studied
the world he was trying to find, as if somehow the coordinates were going to occur to him, as if somewhere in the Archive, the actual location might be buried—or some necessary navigational cue. Never was going to happen.”
    “Never?”
    “We lost the signposts. The stellar signposts that should have been a clear marker for us. If you can’t see the noisiest stars in space, either something’s between you and them, or you’re way far from where you thought you were, so far lost that finding old Earth’s not even possible. No, it’s never been possible, beyond the original accident.”
    “That’s not what the ship told my ancestors.”
    “The great search. Along with a lot of other myths. But without an elaborate arrangement of fuel depots and far more ships, by what the navigators say, it wasn’t ever going to happen, and somehow the Guild never got around to building other ships or arranging any fueling stations. Whatever their reason, we can’t
reach
a point of vantage without traveling a lot farther than may be prudent, counting everything that’s happened, and we don’t know what direction to start looking. Take it from me, that never was really the reason we left Alpha. I think you know that by now.”
    “I know the ship’s
current
story.”
    Jase was silent a beat or two. “Fair enough.”
    “The ship wanted to take the colony out of Alpha, set up in deeper space, and the colonists—my ancestors—wouldn’t go for it. Is
that
still true?”
    “The Guild was for setting up further out in space. Building a place that would be just human, and just spacefaring. We weren’t supposed to live on a planet. Weren’t supposed to
contaminate
ourselves with what wasn’t human.”
    “Small choice atevi ever got about being contaminated.”
    “The Guild. The Guild’s decisions. The Guild split over Alpha. The faction that prevailed didn’t
want
your ancestors going down to the nice green, inhabited planet. No. And once it happened, even the solar system was too close for comfort. They were diametrically opposed to atevi contact—not so much to protect the atevi culture, though that was a consideration; but to protect our own.”
    “From us.”
    “Us. Which
us?
We were so few. The universe is so big. It’s an article of faith that original Earth exists somewhere—but from the Guild viewpoint, we’re the sole true custodians of the Archive, the guardians of human culture. Your ancestors wanted to dive into an alien gravity well and give it all up.”
    “That’s not all there was in the decision.”
    “You know I agree with you. But Guild
leadership
was obsessed with establishing a secure base where only human ideas had currency.”
    “It was a human idea to go down to the planet.”
    “But not a solely human idea that came back. In that they were right, weren’t they?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “To them it matters. It’s still going to matter. When they couldn’t control Alpha, they took the ship and left.”
    “To preserve their
purity.
”
    “And as soon as Guild leadership found a likely spot, they built again, not near a planet this time, not near any attractive, living world where people could escape by a low-tech dive to a living world, oh, no, not twice. They built Reunion out where everyone would be under their orders, always, totally, dependent on them and their orders. And the Guild leaders got off the ship. And established their rule over Reunion. And then—then I’m guessing here—I think after they’d built up