Moon Flower (24 page)

“Right.” Evassanie nodded.

“You made it sound like something people would approve of — the right way to run a business.”

“Well, yes,” Evassanie agreed, hesitating for a moment, as if it should have been obvious. “It pays the debt we owe to those who provide for us.”

Jerri gave a quick frown and tossed up a hand. “But wouldn’t there be more for him if he had fewer helpers and paid them less?” she said.

“Is that how they do it on Earth?”

“That’s what they aim at, sure. Being efficient.”

Jerri had to pause and think about that. “Then their ideal should be to employ nobody at all and pay nothing,” she said finally. “If everyone did that, then nobody would be able to buy anything. Every business’s workers are other businesses’ customers. They’d all have no business. That doesn’t sound very efficient.”

They treated each other decently, Jerri told herself — not through fear of some insane, vengeful god, or to earn favors for personal gain, but because in the longer term it added up to a life that was better for everyone. Were all of them smart enough to have figured that out? Jerri didn’t think so. For one thing, as Uberg had said, they didn’t do much figuring out about anything. And for another, the problem had been subjected to several centuries of logical analysis beyond the point of exhaustion on Earth, and the inevitable verdict had always been that survival in the short term demanded selfishness, and if that reality of life was not heeded, whatever might or might not happen in the longer term didn’t matter. So it had to be the “uncanny intuition” that Uberg had alluded to that enabled them to see further. Somehow the Cyreneans just
knew
when more immediately apparent benefits were illusory, and what would be genuinely better for them in the long run. Deferred gratification. Being able to recognize and act on it was supposed to be an indicator of intelligence. If so, the Cyrenean brand didn’t correlate with any of the measures of intelligence that Jerri was familiar with. But it seemed to be fearsomely effective. She was glad she wasn’t a con-artist trying to make a living among these people, she decided.

Later, when Evassanie had finally settled down and become still, Jerri stood at the window of the darkened room, staring out over the sleeping town. Its daytime lines had blended into blocks of shadow broken by scattered lighted windows and orange lamps in the streets and under the arches, and disconnected highlights and outlines cast by the paler light of Calypso emerging above clouds to the east. Nim, too, was unusually alert, sitting on his haunches on the window seat, tongue lolling and eyes wide, sharing her contemplation of the scene and absorbed in dog thoughts. Above the seat back, extending the width of the window outside, was a planter box containing a mixture of leafy growths and maybe a dozen blooms that Jerri had recognized earlier in the day as moon flowers. They stood now in their nocturnal regalia of large dark petals fully opened, reduced to eerie silhouettes in the moonlight, throwing distorted shadows on the glass.

What the Cyreneans called “long-sight” seemed to have its effects also in their history. Although, to be sure, there had been occasions when differences got out of hand or a local squabble boiled over to the point of people getting violent, they were rare. Cyrene had known nothing like the orgies of mass bloodletting and cruelties that Earth had known. The Cyreneans simply wouldn’t follow leaders who would bring about such things, Jerri was beginning to realize. They sensed insincerity. They knew when the line they were being spun was for the spinner’s ultimate benefit, not theirs.

She thought of the untold millions on Earth who had marched and cheered and hated, fought and bled, hacked each other to shreds, blown each other to pieces, rotted in jails, seen themselves and their families starve... all, at the end of it, for the enrichment and greater security of others, and to expand other people’s authority and power. It couldn’t happen on Cyrene. She was looking out at a whole world that would never let it, of people who would never be a part of it.

Just as surely, she found herself becoming aware with a strange clarity of mind that she couldn’t remember ever experiencing before, yet not for a specific reason that she was able to pinpoint, that her future now lay here, on Cyrene. She felt as if she had never been completely alive until this moment and was knowing for the first time what it was to be fully conscious. Earth, even with all its memories and associations, seemed like a dream already fading, that had left impressions and fragmented images but no longer held anything of great consequence for her. She had no explanation, but crazy as it was, after a mere few days she had never felt more certain of anything in her life than that she
belonged
here.

She thought back to the Terran base that she had stayed in for precisely one night. The impression that came back to her was of a prison, with connotations of fear and degradation that were vivid emotionally but featureless in terms of anything definite that she could identify. She just
knew
.

Had she been there now, she realized, her only impulse would have been to get away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Chev put Shearer in mind of brigands and buccaneers, or swashbucklers from a Dumas novel. He was sturdily built, with brawny arms and shoulders, wavy black, neck-length hair, dark eyes, and a tanned, roguish face that carried a small, pointy beard and split into laughter at the least provocation. He had gone out by the time the three Terrans rose the next morning, but reappeared shortly after, wearing a short-sleeved leather jacket over a loose yellow shirt, voluminous pants tucked into calf-length, turned-over boots, and a jaunty hat. Although evidently thinking it to be an odd requirement, Soliki had procured Cyrenean clothes for the other three who were leaving. After making sure that they had all their things, Chev led them downstairs and out to the same carriage that brought them from Vattorix’s residence. This time, however, Chev would be driving it himself. Antara and Soliki came out from the shop to see them off, and Antara gave Jerri a bag containing bread, cheese, fruits, and some Cyrenean wine for their journey, along with some scraps and a bone for Nim.

The drive through the town afforded more spectacle and novelty than they were able to take in. The usual Cyrenean extravaganzas of color and botany proliferated everywhere, with banks of shrubs and greenery fronting the buildings and finding their way into the alleyways between, and trees lining the centers of the wider streets. Life thronged and bustled on every side. Small shops with gaily painted shutters beneath strangely scripted signs displayed wares ranging from foods, fabrics, and apparel, to pottery, metal goods, and art works. Arcades of stalls huddled beneath terraces of windowed apartments and roof gardens, and dark bazaars wound away out of sight among the archways and buildings. There were street entertainers drawing small crowds, performers dancing and reciting to peculiar music following an unfamiliar scale, strange odors and cooking scents. In one place a strong man was demonstrating his prowess; in another, an audience of children shrieked with mirth at some kind of mime and puppet show. Nim was transfixed with his head hanging out of the carriage window, paws on the ledge, several times getting involved in growling and barking exchanges with a number of lithe-limbed woolly creatures loose on the streets that hissed and appeared to be more a mixture of feline and ursine characteristics than canine, but seemed to fit into much the same niche.

There were the negative aspects too. The municipal trash collection department could have done with some improvement, and a minor river that they crossed via a bridge and then followed upstream for a short distance — from its direction, a tributary flowing into the channel that connected the lake to the bay — was oily and sluggish with discharges from dye works, tanneries, abattoirs, and innumerable other trades shops and yards. They seemed to have been mixed indiscriminately with the dwellings and amenities as circumstances and expedience dictated. The situation was not helped by the reliance on animal traffic, which inevitably left its mark everywhere as piles of dung shoveled aside to await removal, and in several places, foul-smelling gutters overflowing from blocked drains.

These were all things that were fixable, and in the fullness of time no doubt would be fixed. But as Jerri pointed out, they were just superficialities. More important, the underlying social bedrock, upon which the emerging culture was founded, was right. They didn’t alienate themselves with delusions of independence, and turn competition into an obsession that made nastiness a virtue and brutality venerable. Apologists for the system back on Earth taught all the reasons why it couldn’t be different, but somehow the Cyreneans had stumbled on a way whereby it could. And with the coming material abundance to be expected from the technologies that showed every sign of being imminent, things could surely only get better. The benefits would naturally find fair distribution without need of strife and struggle between each and all to fight for them. Jerri seemed to have undergone something akin to a sudden enlightenment, and had been enthusing about things Cyrenean all morning.

“Have you heard their story of why there are hes and shes, and why they pair up?” she asked the other two. She had on a knee-length belted tunic that reminded Shearer of Diana the Huntress, and over it a long, heavy, hooded cloak. They were coming into the outskirts of the town, with houses more spaced out among gardens, orchards, and tracts of open land. On one side, a small, festively dressed crowd suggestive of a wedding party were gathered outside a curvy building with a pointed dome.

“No,” Shearer said, looking away from the carriage window. “What is it?”

“Evassanie told me last night. Originally, Nature had planned a totally competent, all-round capable being to inhabit the world, that would know everything and could do anything.”

“That sounds like me when I was as teenager,” Uberg commented. “I find myself going around saying what everyone does: Oh to be young again, knowing what I know now. But I’m beginning to suspect it’s the wrong way around: Better to be the age I am, and knowing what I
thought
I knew then. Which was everything.”

Shearer smiled. Jerri went on, “But it was too complicated, and so many things about it were irreconcilable with each other that it could never work. So what Nature did was split it into two individuals. So to recover the complete person, you have to join them together again. And that’s why families have two parents. It needs both to
raise
kids. If it was just about making them, there are lots of other ways.”

“I like it,” Shearer said.

“So why does it take two with bugs, plants, and fish that just lay their eggs and swim away?” Uberg challenged. He meant it light-heartedly. In a dark green frock coat, cornered hat, and with his metal-rimmed spectacles, he looked like a character from light comic opera.

Jerri thought for a second, then shrugged. “Nature was practicing getting the machinery right.” She looked back to take in Shearer as well. “But it doesn’t stop with families. They see all of their society in the same kind of way — as a complex superorganism that needs all of them working togther to function. So is it surprising that things like wars and destructive rivalries never became a major problem?”

***

The daytime period at this time of year came in three phases. First was a Yocalan word derived from Goruno, the Yocalan word for Ra Beta, denoting the period of redder, lesser light brought by the rising of the more distant companion star, which commenced before most people were awake. Then there followed the brilliant “Two Kings,” translated by Terrans as “full morning,” that began with the rising of Ra Alpha and lasted for as long as both stars were visible in the sky. The final and also the longest phase was “Henkyl’s Day,” or simply “day,” which lasted from the setting of Ra Beta in the west to when Ra Alpha followed. This was the beginning of the current four hours of darkness that completed the planet’s twenty-eight hour rotational cycle. Since the onset of full morning was the normal time for getting up, the earlier part of the waking day was hottest. Therefore Cyreneans in general tended to begin their day slowly with social and more leisurely activities, and get down to their heavier business later.

The carriage emerged into open country on the north side of the town, where the road began winding its way upward between craggy folds of rocks, and ravines carved by fast-flowing streams. Among them, clumps of strange trees with thick, rounded boles and broad, bluish fronds stood above tangles of vines and brush. At the top of the climb the terrain leveled out into a vista of broad, rounded slopes extending away to the north. Little changed for what must have been several hours, and then they came to a settlement of houses and outlying farms that Chev informed them was known as Vigagawly.

It had one or two stores and a staging post, where they stopped to change horses. While a groom took the carriage around to the stable, Chev brought his charges inside to meet the proprietor, who was evidently an old acquaintance. He produced a hot brew and a dish of something like quiche with spinach to supplement the food that Antara had provided. Meanwhile, word of the Earth aliens’ arrival had traveled quickly, and before they had finished their meal they found themselves being investigated by a deputation of children from the village, while curious adults in an assortment of smocks and trousered work outfits hovered in the background. Chev had no time for such mincing uncertainty, and bellowed at the children to come and introduce themselves and not just stand there. Some at once complied rambunctiously, while others were more shy and hung back. The more forward among them proceeded eagerly to show off their mastery of such phrases as, “Hello,” “Goodbye,” and “What is your name?” Evidently, other Terrans had passed this way before. Interesting, Shearer thought.

The children were also accompanied by a couple of domestic bear-cat creatures like the ones in town, one with spiky orange fur and black markings, the other smoother and a uniform tan color. After the ritual exchange of suspicious hisses and growls, with encouragement from their respective owners they and Nim seemed to accept each other and settle down. Shearer’s NIDA was unable to find a word for them and kept evoking images of dogs, which would be of no use when he was talking to a Cyrenean and wanted to refer to one or the other. Overriding the associative function, he touched the button on the control unit attached to his belt — it didn’t emit a tracking signal that Terran satellites could pick up — to ask the system for the nearest phonetic rendering of the Yocalan word.