The interior was dark at first but brightened immediately as overhead panels shifted to let in sunlight through a wide expanse of glass.
The walls hissed as an oxygen-rich flood of air pressed in to bring the thickness up to a level the butterfly found comfortable. A trough in the floor gurgled and filled with water, and he drank gratefully. These events were all unexpected, of course, but there was a definite rightness about them. This was the way a butterfly should be received in the Nest That Man Left, and it was not difficult to place in his knowing.
The Nest addressed him: "You are a butterfly, and you are here to call Man." The mind of the Nest was shrouded, somewhat like that of the spider except for an absence of personality.
"Yes," the butterfly responded.
"I am the voice of the Nest, a contrivance that does not live but that can converse with you to a limited extent. Do you have injuries or unmet needs that are an immediate danger to you?"
"No." The butterfly's senses searched his surroundings while the voice addressed him, and he gained a partial knowing of the nature of the voice contrivance. Man had to be wise, indeed, to construct such a complex dead device and to shelter it so perfectly that, after untold thousands of years, it could still awaken and engage in a conversation of minds.
"Do butterflies continue to know the now-moment?" the Nest asked.
"Yes."
"That is an ability Man did not give me, and one that he lacks himself," the Nest told him. "Thus I do not know the nature of the emergency that brings you here. Nor do I know where Man is, nor what he may have become during the centuries since he made me, mutated your ancestors and departed."
"Man does not change himself, according to my knowing," commented the butterfly.
"Not intentionally, perhaps, but he changes nevertheless. He is a discontented being who, not knowing the now-moment, wanders and searches for new things to know. What he finds changes him, not in the orderly manner in which he fitted you for conditions on this world, but in ways that are unplanned and sometimes undesirable. Occasionally he finds something very damaging to him, something that darkens his intelligence and causes him to forget much of his learning from previous findings."
* * *
The butterfly struggled with this information. His difficulty was not that what the Nest told him was new. On the contrary, it was ancient; so ancient that it had been all but forgotten—dismissed as having no meaning to current knowing. It occurred to the butterfly that perhaps the creatures of Man had wanted to forget that Man could not know the now-moment, which implied that Man was inferior to themselves. But then, he quickly reassured himself, Man must have completely different abilities that made him superior—abilities so far beyond a butterfly's comprehension that the Nest would not attempt to describe them.
At last he addressed the Nest: "Then if I call Man, the being who responds may be unlike the beings who established the creatures of Man on this world. He may even have forgotten that he has such creatures as us."
"That is correct," the Nest responded. "Man instructed me to be sure you understood that before he was called. If he comes, the results will be unpredictable. You are to reconsider the nature of your emergency with this in mind and decide if your need for Man is sufficient for you to accept the uncertainties of his present nature."
This was a difficult decision indeed. The butterfly thought about it for several minutes before saying, "In essence, the emergency is an intellectual one. An area of blankness has entered our knowing. Since Man does not know the now-moment, it is possible that we could not explain to him the nature of the emergency."
"That is possible," agreed the Nest. "In any event, unless Man has changed greatly, you will be unable to communicate with him directly. Man does not speak mind-to-mind, the way you and I are conversing, but through the use of special sounds he can emit, each sound being a symbol of a fragment of thought."
"Then how could we have ever communicated?" asked the astonished butterfly.
"Through intermediary devices such as myself," said the Nest. "You can talk to me and I can put your thoughts into the words of Man, like this." The Nest emitted, from a wall cavity, a complex series of noises.
The butterfly listened in stunned recognition. He had never heard such sounds before today, but as he had hovered over the metal-secreters earlier that morning just such noises, though dim and muffled, had struck his sensors. But Man was supposed to be ten-fingered—more manipulatory members than even the spider! And the metal-secreters had clearly been deficient in this respect, having only two pairs of legs.
The Nest was continuing: "Communication is rendered more complex by the use of differing sets of sound-symbols called languages, and by the fact that a given set of symbols tends to change with the passage of years to become an entirely new language. I probably would not know the sounds man uses today, but would have to communicate your thoughts, with some explanation, to a device similar to myself that Man brought with him, and that device in turn would speak to Man."
"Man uses metal extensively, does he not?" asked the butterfly.
"Yes. Metals were abundant on his, and your, original planet. He built his nests of them and other dead materials, and also his flying shelters in which he journeyed here and to many other worlds."
"What are fingers?"
"They are relatively small, slender extensions of Man's arms, his upper legs. They are useful for gripping and manipulating. He has ten of them, normally."
"I wish to call him," said the butterfly.
"Very well . . . The call is now being emitted. I do not know when he will arrive. He may have to come far, a journey of more than a day for his fastest shelter. Certainly, he cannot be expected to arrive within a hundred hours at best. As there is no food stored for you here, I suggest you return to your hunting ground to await him."
"My knowing is unsure," replied the butterfly, "but I believe Man to be quite close. I will wait outside, at least for a while. It is certain he will respond to the call?"
"If he does not," the Nest said, "he will have changed too greatly to be of any assistance to you. I am preparing to open the door."
The air thinned; the door opened, and the butterfly went out onto the mountaintop. This was the kind of air Man could breathe without the protection of an artificial exoskeleton, the butterfly reasoned. Thus this mountaintop was the place where Man should be met by his creatures.