Tenho certeza que você está procurando por Can These Bones Live, de Ted Reynolds, publicado pela primeira vez na revista Analog em março de 1979. Ele deveria estar disponível em SmashWords Outubro de 2015 como parte de esta antologia.
de Alienígenas e Alienígenas Sociedades: Guia do escritor para criar vida extraterrestre, por Stanley Schmidt:
Some human-alien interactions will be unique and hard to classify—and some of those may be the most haunting and memorable of all. Consider Ted Reynolds's Can These Bones Live?, which might be considered the ultimate wish-fulfillment story: Humanity is extinct, but aliens revive a single individual and offer her a single wish—and a test.
do link SmashWords :
Can These Bones Live?: The last human survivor has the option to bring the human race back to life. But she's not sure that she wants to.
Encontrei este trecho de The SF Best World de 1980:
de Donald Wollheim“The universe is full of creatures,” it said slowly, “and all live their separate lives and crave their varied wants and hold their distinct values, and little do we comprehend or sympathize with any of them. One thing we find always and everywhere. When an individual is brought back to brief existence, and permitted to request racial rebirth, it invariably wishes the return of its own species, Each being appreciates the existence of its own kind, shares their particular values. We never grant such requests. We are rather . . . amused”
It looked at her, its eyes almost pleading. “But you . . . you have shamed us.”
It was silent awhile, rocking hack and forth on its haunches, considering.
“If you ask for rebirth,” it said at last, “not for your own kind, but for another, we can only assume that, however little we can appreciate the reasons for such requests, there is something in that other race of higher and more universal value than the contingent preference of a single species. We feel we must grant such a request. For what is higher, should be...”
The dwarf tightened its lips. “We can restore life when we choose. But the cost to us is high. High not in your concepts of money, or time, or energy, but in terms you could not grasp, though to us they are of highest importance. But somehow at this moment, although we feel the costs, we shall ignore them. Your request is granted, then. The race of the Toomeer shall live again, as they did when we were young.”
She bowed her head. “Thank you,” she said softly.