Senzei took hold of the ancient drawing with care and gently freed it from its tissue cocoon. The paper had yellowed with age and its ink had browned; he was infinitely careful as he turned it toward the lamplight, sensing just how fragile it was. On it was sketched a mammal, four-legged and tailed as all Ernan mammals were. Visually unimpressive. He read the Latin name inscribed beneath it (Earth words, Earth terms, the species had been renamed so many times it hardly seemed to matter what it had originally been called) and then the date. And he looked up at Damien, startled. “2 A.S.?” “The original. This is a copy. Done some two hundred years later, but supposedly an accurate reproduction. If the introduction is correct, the artist was copying from a sketchbook belonging to one of the original colonists.” “The landing crew,” Senzei breathed. Tasting the concept. Damien leaned back in his leather-bound chair; overhead, the deeply shadowed vaults of the cathedral’s Rare Document Archives seemed to stretch toward infinity.
