Ascents of Wonder, page 3
The skimmer swooped down a bit, passing over the trees, the meadows, the strange tall grasses. The resemblance to Earth was startling. It was Earth, but strangely refracted or twisted, as if he were looking at a country scene through a colored filter or a special photographic lens, dutifully presenting the scene but introducing a note of strangeness into it, something that could be felt but not identified. Here, familiarity and otherness blended together, forming an intimate and alien whole, “There’s usually a herd of them about a klick away,” she was saying, “in this small meadow.” The skimmer tilted as she began a slow, wide turn. She pointed. “Look—there.”
Low trees scurried out from below them. A flat, grassy meadow appeared, dotted with small brown forms. Diva had time to guess there were about thirty of them, and then the field was pulled away.
“I’ll swing back around and land,” Airyn said.
His harness strained noisily as she brought the ship sharply around. The meadow swung back before them, and in a moment they were down.
The creatures nearest them observed the landing with a calm disinterest; the others did not seem to notice at all. Diva stepped down out of the skimmer and regarded the Dantean nearest him. It looked back mildly for a moment, then returned to its grazing.
“Lethargic things, aren’t they?” Airyn commented, strolling forward. “Come get a better look at them.”
“Isn’t walking right up going to frighten them?”
“Oh no; it’s only when they can’t see us that they get frightened. If they don’t see us but can hear us, they think we might be Furies.”
“You mean they have no interest in anything unless they know it to be dangerous?”
“That’s right.”
Diva shook his head. They approached the Danteans, walked right up to them. A few of the creatures regarded them incuriously, then went back to their foraging.
“This is all they do—just stand around eating roots?”
“That’s about it. When they tire of digging up tubers, they can go eat berries from the trees, or chew leaves from the bushes. Aside from eating, they don’t do an awful lot. There is no mating season, as there are no discernible seasons on this world, but the females go into heat at periodic intervals, and that seems to do it. There is no competition for the cows; no one tries to get a harem. They seem totally apathetic to the world, like any nonsentient animal. Let’s go look at another herd; we may find something more lively, though I doubt it.”
Diva stooped down, looked into the face of one creature. The Dantean stared complacently back, its eyes quiescent pools of bovine emptiness. Or w
Diva turned away, shaken. “I don’t know,” he said. The feeling began to pass. “There’s something strange about them. Something very strange.”
She nodded. “One sees it at first glance. They’re not like ordinary animals—they just don’t behave the same. There’s something wrong”
Diva looked once more at the creature. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right.”
She glanced at her watch, “I think we’d better move on and try to find another herd. This one seems pretty lifeless, even for Danteans. Let’s try another herd; perhaps there will be an event, something happening.”
“Perhaps.” He turned away from the creature, scratching at his throat nervously. “Crazy animals.”
The event happened two hours later.
Diva and Airyn were sitting on a pile of rock, a lookout some seven meters off the ground from which they could see about half a kilometer in any direction. They were watching a group of about two dozen Dan-teans stripping leaves from a thicket, but the monotony of what they had been doing all “afternoon” had led their thoughts to other matters.
“You’re a Cessationist, aren’t you?”
He glanced at her. “Yes, I am. Why?”
“I was just wondering why a person who is so vehemently against Furtherance would come out here to help us with a problem.”
“I have an unspoken but very important personal agreement with a close friend who happens to be a high official in Nexus. He has been a great help to me in the past, and I owe him a favor. 1 knew he wouldn’t ask me to do this unless it was really necessary, so when he did, T came.”
She nodded. “Reasonable. What I was really wondering. I guess, is why an obviously intelligent man like you would be a Cessationist.”
He sighed. “I had an interesting discussion with the captain of your Portal shuttle about this just a few hours-ago. X shouldn’t try to proselytize Furtherists, X know it won’t do any good; but I have this driving urge to express my views when they are called into question.
“I don’t support the Furtherance movement because I simply do not think it will do the human race any good. It certainly has not done so up to now. It has taken some of the best minds on the planet and shot them off and away, out of human society for centuries.
It is appallingly expensive—do you have any idea what the cost of sending out a Portalship is, or even the cost of maintaining this Portal here, with shuttles, a base, and the Portalship waiting around? Do you know how much money like that is needed on Earth? Of course not—you told me yourself you have no idea what has been going on there for the last forty years. The Furtherance program costs hundreds of billions a year— money that is virtually thrown away.
“And what of the planets it does open to us? If you haven’t heard the latest figures, there are exactly six Earth-like worlds so far discovered by Furtherance that have been cleared for human colonization. Of these, every one of them has undergone ‘Acclimatization’ prior to settling. Do you know what Acclimatization is? It’s the elimination of any life form that will interfere with the human settling of that world. Extinction. Room for us only. Two of the planets had bacteria against which it was impossible to effectively innoculate man and his domestic creatures. These worlds underwent sterilization. You know about that? That’s when they bring in about fifty ships with heavy fusion drives through the Portal, and they bum all the life off the land and out of the air. The polar caps melt, the continents glow red for about three months. Then they bring in plants and animals and start seeding the planet.
“Perhaps this doesn’t mean much to you. It means a lot to me. Manifest Destinv is something I had hoped the world had gotten rid of. It took us the Last War to do it, but it seemed as if now people would be able to exist with other people and other things without having to overcome them to prove their own superiority or fill their pockets. It seemed as if maybe mankind had finally realized that he is only a part of a bigger network of life and existence, without any God-given license to go out and seize what he can to further his own selfinterests. It appears I was wrong. We burst out to the stars, driven by the same desires that drove us across America and Asia five hundred years ago, ravaging the land and taking what we pleased, destroying what was in our way. We’re doing it all again, but this time on an interstellar level. Tell me, what happens when we come across a really intelligent race, one that lives on an Eden planet and doesn’t want to give it to us for our own use?”
“It hasn’t happened yet,”
“But when it does? You’re obviously prepared for it; look at the trouble you’re going through to determine whether or not the Danteans are Sentient. You must have special plans to deal with sentient races. When you find one, what are you going to do? Eradicate them, sterilize them? Or will you just subjugate them, turn their world into another outlet for the Terran Trade Industries, teach them English, build hotels and restaurants, and promote tourism? I don’t know what plans you have for any sentient races you find, but I hope to God that you’re not in business long enough to put them into effect.”
There was a pause.
“Is that all?” she said.
“Not quite. There’s one more thing. What is going to happen when we do meet someone out there; not just some small culture we can push around, but something bigger, stronger than us? We’re arrogantly pushing our way into the unknown as if we owned it; what is going to happen when we find someone already there who has no intention of letting us expand into their territory? You people are deluding yourselves if you think that man has some mandate over the universe that will let him reign supreme wherever he goes. I’ve heard those theories before; the ones that say that man is the toughest, most adaptable creature on this side of the galactic hub, and that he’ll always be in control of whatever situation he’s in wherever he goes, because he gained control of Earth. Well, that’s an awfully nice theory, but it ignores one thing: that outer space is different—it’s not like Earth, it’s not like anything we’ve ever known before. Man is adaptable, yes, but only within the narrow confines of his Earth-like environment. Assuming that Man can flourish outside of his natural habitat just because he flourishes inside it is one of the craziest fantasies I have ever encountered. It may get us annihilated some day. We’re risking so much for so little by sticking our necks into the unknown, when we should be back on Earth trying to improve the condition of living! We could do so much more, if we had the brainpower and money that is currently being wasted on Furtherance. We could make Earth a paradise. Instead, we’re wasting trillions of dollars on a project of deplorable moral worth that is of almost no use to Earth and could get us all exterminated for our pretensions. Now do you see why I don’t like Furtherance?”
She sighed. “You have a very pat argument, but it doesn’t hold water. Like the bit about it being unethical to alter worlds to fit our purposes—the primary ethic of life is survival. The Earth does what it must to keep itself safe and healthy; there’s nothing unethical about that. You can’t build a city without cutting down trees and depriving squirrels, who were there before you, of homes. Life is a struggle; you can’t be called unethical just because you win. Every animal in the universe fights to survive.”
“But we aren’t just animals, we’re humans. Animals don’t make laws, they don’t create philosophies or write music. We’re something basically different from any other creature on Earth; you can’t try to apply their characteristics to us. We should have reached the point where we can live with the universe without always trying to do battle with it—”
“But we have to survive, just like any other animal—”
A roar from a thicket behind them made them both jerk around. A Dantean leaped out of the bushes, pursued by a short, sleek creature that looked like a marmoset. The creature was colored almost exactly like the vegetation; features were impossible to make out. The Dantean streaked across the twenty meters of meadow and bounded up the rocky mound upon which Diva and Airyn were sitting. They leaped to their feet. The Dantean, clambering desperately up the rock, paid them no attention. It reached the top, not five meters from them, and turned to look back down upon its predator. The sleek creature regarded it a moment, then began to stealthily crawl up the rock. The Dantean looked about wildly for a means of escape, chattering in rage or fear. There was none. It beat its paws agitatedly against the ground, then grabbed a stone in its rudimentary hand and flung it at the creature. It struck rock half a meter from the Fury’s head. The creature snarled, but continued climbing. The Dantean snatched another, and began hurling stones and clods of earth at its attacker with both hands. Diva stared in open astonishment, The creature bared its teeth, and was struck on the head. It shrieked. Another rock struck its shoulder. It turned and fled down the hillock.
The Dantean watched its adversary disappear into the undergrowth for some seconds, then released the last stone it held and dropped back on all fours. It sniffed vaguely at the rocky earth, then picked its way back down to the meadow and resumed eating.
“Did you see that?” Diva whispered. “Did you see that?” They stared at each other in disbelief.
“The creature was definitely using tools,” Airyn said. She gestured with her hands as if unconsciously trying to mime the stone-hurling she had seen. “He was throwing rocks at his attacker. I don’t see how there could be any doubt as to what he was doing.”
“Yes, but several other animals have been known to use tools,” said Fostoevitch, “without any evidence of intelligence on their part. The otter, for instance, who crushes mollusks with a rock. Or the chimpanzee, who strips the leaves off sticks and pokes them down ant-holes to catch ants.”
“But those are simple reflexes, inborn tasks the animals have been doing for millions of years. What we saw had spontaneity, immediacy; the creature needed to defend itself and grabbed the first thing in sight. Have there been any other reports of this kind of thing?”
“No,” Fostoevitch admitted.
“Then there’s something awfully damned funny about these Danties,” said Diva. Politics had disappeared with the Fury’s attack; he was all business now. “Okay. Two things. First, they display definite signs of intelligence when you first landed. Caution but not mindless fear; curiosity, interest. Abruptly, this all disappears and they go back to being animals. Second, a Danty gets trapped by another animal. A Fury. He is trapped and about to be killed and responds by throwing rocks to drive the Fury away. After it does so, it walks away. Two separate incidents, but both with one important thing in common.”
Fostoevitch said, “Threat.”
“Precisely. A threat of some sort or another. Maybe Danties don’t like to think, and have to be scared into it.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like much of a survival factor. Nonetheless, that’s all we have to go on at the moment, Two events, with similar stimuli—threat to the Dantean; and a similar result—acts which seem to be the product of an intelligent mind. Neither the stimulus nor the result form normal events in the lives of the Danteans. Logically, the next step to take would be to try a third stimulus and see if we receive the same result.”
“Hmm, Interesting. Are you planning on trying something of that nature?”
“Yes—right away, if possible.”
Fostoevitch raised his eyebrows in surprise. “It’s darktime at the moment.”
“That’s exactly why I want to do it now. We’re going to have to establish control groups to determine whether it actually is the threats that are triggering the responses in the Danteans. It could conceivably be something else, or a combination of things. Maybe they react completely differently at night. We need to stimulate the Danteans under a variety of circumstances before we can start thinking about a cause.”
“Yes,” said Fostoevitch meditatively, “you have a point. Airyn, do the Danteans act any differently at night?” -
“They usually slow down somewhat, but there is no specific behavior changes. The nightfalls here are too irregular for them to have any regular cycles of activity around them. They seem to sleep at about thirty-hour intervals, night or day.”
“Hmmm. Well, there could still be something valid in Mr. Ghalandi’s argument.” He sat back into his seat. “AH right, go on out. But for God’s sake, make sure you’re monitored at all times, eh? I don’t like it out there at night,” He smiled crookedly. “I can’t help but get the feeling that those sneaky bastards shed their skins when we’re not watching and go dancing in the moonlight.”
Darkness on Dante had none of the shadowed familiarity of a terran night. Darkness, the satellite, eclipsed Dante’s sun, but imperfectly: A thin orange wedge shone eerily over the night, like the Cheshire Cat’s faceless smile. Caught in the cloak of its penumbra, the Zone seemed to take on a brooding malevolence. One of the other moons, Virgil, was just below the horizon on the other side of the sky; it diffused a dim ruby glow through the ash of a distant eruption. And everywhere was the wind: a distant howling, touching lightly on the back of one’s neck like the sound from an ultrasonic whistle, from some strange mystical place beyond the tiny warm haven that was the Life Zone.
A scene to breed superstition, thought Diva. He could see how the xenobiologist had envisioned the Danteans dancing under the moon.
The skimmer hovered a silent ten feet above them as Diva and Airyn swung down the ladder and dropped onto Dantean soil. Its dark shadow hung over them a moment, then shrunk and merged swiftly into the gloom as the ship rose smoothly into the upper air.
“We’ll be monitored continually,” Airyn’s voice whispered in his ear. He jumped in spite of himself, “They’re covering the area with a heat-sensor screen, in case there are any Furies around. Nonetheless, I think we’d better do whatever you wanted and get out of here as quickly as possible. Fost is right about it being dangerous at night.”
“Right,” he said. They were both whispering, he noticed; apparently Airyn was affected by the landscape as well, “Where are the nearest Danties?”
She studied the panel on a tiny box in her palm. “There’s a high-density heat source about half a key from here. That would be a small herd of them. We can cut straight through to it. This way.” She pointed.
