Chapter 8

This time their approach to the planet was much less fraught with concerns about the unknown than before. At the end of their first voyage Meiersdottir had thoughtfully left behind an audio communicator powered by a solar cell. She'd warned the natives that it would be some time before the humans returned—"probably a year, perhaps more"—but said that, when they did, they'd make contact as soon as they were able.

Thus, several days before they were even in orbit, they were able to begin talking to the Edenite collective. Meiersdottir had insisted on primacy at the Gardener end, so it was she who initiated the first contact when they'd approached closely enough that the transmission delay would be at least tolerable.

"This is Amanda," she began her first transmission. "Is there one who hears me?"

"I hear, Amanda," came the reply after the time-delay dictated by their remaining distance from Eden. "We hear. You are as long as you say, I wait long."

"You must wait only a little longer," Meiersdottir responded. "We will come in about four days. It is like the party you sent for the copper, for now we must speak and there is a delay, and then you may speak, we are still far away." The collective had learned about such delays from experience, just as the humans were departing it had sent a separate party to find copper deposits which were beyond the range of its telepathic interactions. But included in that party was a female—a "mother"—who, because she'd not yet produced fertile eggs, was still as able to travel as males, so the collective was still able to function, albeit now as two separate collectives.