The Florians (12 page)

CHAPTER TEN

One of the most useful features of the all-purpose clothing which we'd been issued for this expedition was the fact that it was water-repellent. The gaps could, all be sealed so that—if and when it became necessary—we could wade through water neck deep and stay dry.

In the salt marsh, it almost came to that.

We had no trouble getting across the bridge unseen by human eyes, but in order to make use of the structure we had been forced to come so far upstream that there were three or four miles of marsh to be traversed before we got to the group of huts. We couldn't walk along the river bank itself, because there were paths running alongside the south bank. We had to go some way north so that the tall reeds and swamp shrubs hid us from any passersby across the river.

It wasn't easy forcing our way through the rushes which grew wherever there was exposed soil—all the tiny islands in the marsh were packed tight with all manner of growths. For the most part, it was easier to wade in the shallows beside the islets, though we couldn't avoid the rushes without swimming.

Progress was slow. I led the way, armed with a long stave I'd broken from a tree and trimmed with the aid of Karen's iron bar, which was flattened at the hooked end and made a fairly serviceable scraper. I used the stave to test the depth of the water we were walking in. The bottom was invariably glutinous with silt and organic debris, and there were worms and aquatic slugs in some profusion feeding there—none of which made the going any easier.

Occasionally, we came across great flat carpets of vegetation which seemed to offer a much easier way, but these were invariably floating rafts of tangled stems, and when we attempted to walk on them we could not persuade them to support our weight for more than a few seconds at a time. They gave the impression that if we were to run lightly over their surface, not pausing at any one point, we could avoid sinking, but the business smacked too much of tightrope-walking. If one of us were to fall into the middle of such a raft, becoming entangled in the mass of knotted fiber, getting out again might be next to impossible.

We stopped, occasionally, on a convenient islet for a rest. Most of the squat trees were decked with creepers and colored fungoid growths, but it was usually the work of a couple of minutes for Karen to clear a space to sit with a few graceless swings of the crowbar, in whose use she was becoming adept.

While we rested on such occasions I couldn't help taking to “fishing” with the pole—trying to lift the denizens of the ooze up to the turbid surface where I could study them briefly before they flapped themselves clear and sank again to the mundane business of life. I would have lifted them out to display them, taking a more careful look at their bodily organization, but they were of such bizarre color and shape, and their texture so pliably gelatinous that even I didn't like to handle them.

There are, of course, only three basic styles in animal shapes: spherical, radial, and bilateral—and the first of those is generally restricted to the most elementary of organisms. But the majority of the creatures which I managed to haul up for inspection showed scant respect for any kind of symmetry—radial
or
bilateral. Even on Earth, nothing is
exactly
symmetrical, but here on Floria the basic symmetry underlying every growth process—and to which the plants adhered most rigorously—seemed to have been abandoned by most of the animals as they grew larger. They were untidy bundles of flesh, looking rather like parcels which had come apart in the mail and were barely constrained by loose, tangled string. Even the worms had bulbous processes and groups of tentacles distributed without rhyme or reason along their length. The creatures which were more bulbous to start with—creatures resembling sea cucumbers, starfish, jellyfish or mollusks—elaborated themselves in all kinds of strange ways.

In water, of course, mass means little, and when your specific gravity is very much the same as that of the mud you inhabit it hardly matters what weird form you adopt, but the sheer profusion of it all was what seemed remarkable. It was not that there were incredibly vast numbers of organisms so much as the fact that there seemed to be no two
alike
. Every one I dredged up seemed to be something quite unique. It was an illusion, of course—it was simply that different individuals of the same species might differ considerably in details of form and coloring. On Earth, the human species exhibits two distinct physical forms and a number of minor variations of color and features but here...identity—individual identity—meant so much more.
More
, among the animals...but less among the plants.

The trees themselves, where we rested, tended to have their animal life: small vermiform creatures not unlike leeches wandered among the branches, as did a profusion of snails (who wore their shells, of course, as a guard against desiccation, not a protection against predators). I looked at these creatures, too, and found their diversity fascinating. Karen, once I had confirmed that the leechlike individuals were not, in fact, leeches, was content to ignore them all. They did not have the same fascination for her.

I was, not unnaturally, tempted to linger whenever we stopped. Over and above the necessity for regular periods of rest I felt that I was under some compulsion to find the basic pattern underlying all this confusion. Occasionally, when the water was very shallow, I could watch the creatures
in situ
, moving slowly through the mud and throwing up tiny eruptions as they dived deeper or “surfaced.” The creatures I yanked up with my staff were the big, ugly ones, but not all the denizens of the swamp were big and ugly. There were tiny creatures: spiral worms, hydra-like creatures, and even ciliates and amoeboid forms comfortably visible to the naked eye. If I cupped my hands and dredged the mud in the shallows I could net thirty or forty tiny creatures which flipped around on my palms as the water drained away through my fingers. They reminded me strongly of the rich profusion of the microscopic protozoa inhabiting ponds and sea-shallows on Earth...except that these were on a larger scale. No doubt there were microscopic forms
as well
, to complete the spectrum. Except, of course, that the spectrum was not “complete” in the same way that Earth's spectrum of motile creatures was. After all, these creatures of jellylike flesh were only half-animals, living on decaying organic matter. Only a very tiny fraction of them could eat healthy plant tissue, and virtually none could prey upon their brethren.

The fierce competition for organic molecules—the motive force behind the primary differentiation of primitive cells into molecule-makers, and molecule-stealers, and thus into plants and animals—had never been fierce
enough
on Floria. The dice had been loaded in favor of the industrious molecule-makers, and the bandit cells which—on Earth—were ancestral to virtually all mobile, free-living organisms had never flourished.

The analogy between the evolutionary ecology of Floria's life-system and the history of the human colony did not escape me. In this life-system the struggle for existence was not a kill-or-be-killed, eat-or-be-eaten affair, but a competition for efficiency, where the healthiest and most competent won out by producing more offspring. The rigid regime of competition here was found among the plants, which competed for space and light, and all failures were stillborn: seeds which failed to germinate rather than organisms which grew halfway to maturity and then were destroyed. On Floria, evolution was not so cruel. And the Planners wanted to build a society in which cruelty was banished from human relationships.

Was it possible? Was it possible, in
either
case? There was one piece, I knew, still missing from the evolutionary puzzle: the one fundamental thing which was responsible for the difference between Floria's biosphere and Earth's. I knew what kind of piece it was, but I hadn't quite found it yet....

Evolution, on Floria, had a kind of built-in indolence. A sloppiness. Animal evolution, that is. The plants were refined, precisely formed, efficient. But the animals got along any old how. They grew large, ugly. They were leisurely in their conduct, content to live on sludge. Soft flesh and idle habits. Why...?

In a sense, I thought, Floria is a kind of Paradise. The
pressure
on living organisms is not the same. And because it's a Paradise, it's ugly. The animals are wonderful, but repulsive. Because there's a correlation between beauty and efficiency. A big cat is beautiful because it's been fashioned by evolution to a particular purpose. It is designed to chase and kill. And by the same token, the antelope is beautiful because it's designed to run and escape. The whole process is circular—the faster and more graceful the predator becomes, the faster and more graceful the prey. But not here. Not on Floria. No grace, no speed. Just giants.

The human colony on Floria was going the way of all Florian flesh. Slowly and casually (how else?) the humans were being sucked into participation in the Florian way of doing things.

Today, giants...tomorrow....

“My God,” said Karen, with feeling, “this is a horrible place!”

A great flattened worm with a ragged fringe had convulsively coiled itself around her leg. It wanted to get away just as much as she wanted to get it loose, but as she stabbed at it with the iron bar it was at the mercy of its own reflexes. It coiled and writhed, and could not get free. I tried to stop her stabbing with the crowbar, but before I had her arms restrained she had slashed the soft flesh to ribbons, and cloudy dark green ichor was bursting from the rubbery flesh. I put my arm down and let the worm wind itself off Karen's leg and onto my wrist, and then let it alone to uncoil itself and go on its way. But as it did so, it was already dying.

“Do you have to start smashing
everything
with that damned thing?” I demanded, with some asperity.

“Hell's bells!” she replied, with more than equal ferocity. “It's only a goddamn
worm
.”

“It couldn't do you any harm,” I said. “It's not built to take injuries like that—once ruptured these creatures are as good as dead. They haven't any built-in resilience.”

“What the hell does it
matter?”
she demanded, perhaps more in surprise than in anger.

“The crowbar isn't the answer to everything,” I said soberly. “Nor is the way you use it. It's for opening boxes...but ever since you picked it up you've been using it like a battle ax. That's Earth thinking. It doesn't belong here.”

She looked at me, the surprise dulling into puzzlement. “You really mean that, don't you?”

“Of course I mean it.”

“You're a fool,” she informed me.

“It may seem rather silly,” I admitted, “defending the rights of a worm. But I don't think it makes me a fool.”

“It's not just the worm,” she said. “It's everything. You really believe in all this, don't you? You really have faith.”

“All what?” I said guardedly.

“The mythology of space conquest. The whole bit. Man emerging from the womb of Earth to a mature existence among the stars. Man learning to live on alien worlds, throwing off the shackles of his particular heritage, finding new cosmic perspectives. You believe in the possibility of a new saintly humanity out here in space, free of all the squalor and the viciousness and all the original sins of Earth. You believe in higher destiny...in the ultimate perfectibility of man...and you believe there's something tragic in hitting a worm just because it isn't built to cope with being hit.”

The irony in her words was positively scorching. There was only one way I could possibly face it.

“Certainly I do,” I told her. “I believe in all of that. Maybe more. Some of the words are loaded, of course...but so far as the thoughts underlying them go, I believe in the whole bag. Don't you?”

“You have to be joking,” she said.

“Why? You came out here as part of the same project. You volunteered for space...accepting a part in all that mythology you're so scornful about. We're both here, on an alien world, wading through an alien swamp in pursuit of the same vague ends...what's the difference between us?”

“I'm carrying a battle ax and you're feeling sorry for a wounded worm.”

I sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

She started to look self-satisfied, but she hesitated. She wasn't sure. She didn't know whether she'd won the exchange or not.

“Go on,” I said tiredly. “There's a long way to go yet.”

We moved off, making the same slow progress. The sun was high in the sky by now, and we were sweating in the humid heat. I still led the way, probing with my stick.

“You know,” I said, without turning my head to face her, “I have a son who feels exactly the way you do about the conquest of space. He thinks that it's evil. He thinks that we should conquer Earth first, build a Utopia at home, before we even think about the stars. But he doesn't understand. you see. He's trapped by his historical perspective. He believes in progress by stages...levels of technology, if you like. He doesn't realize that all kinds of processes go on simultaneously, that historical time can't be segmented. Even in your own life, you have several processes going on simultaneously. All your selves develop together...all your personal mythologies grow and develop, each alongside the others.... That's the way change happens.”

She didn't answer, or indicate that she had even been listening. Perhaps it was all meaningless to her. Perhaps I had already exceeded the limits of her tolerance. But even cynics occasionally take time out to think.

Sometimes.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We waited in one of the huts until nightfall.

I had hoped that there might be food to be discovered somewhere in the small huddle of buildings, but we were unlucky. Not so much as half a loaf of stale bread did we locate. Just boats, and nets, and miscellaneous tackle. The Florians were a habitually tidy people, not ones to let debris linger and accumulate.

We had a choice of boats. We selected the smallest, believing that it would be the easiest to row. I took the oars first. We launched it into the river and tried to sneak unobtrusively along in the shadow of the north bank. This proved somewhat difficult as the current persistently attempted to drag us out and get a better grip of us. Although it was taking us the right way I found myself fighting it—and losing, thanks to the clumsiness born of inexperience. Within minutes, I realized that the best thing to do was allow the current to have its way. We were far more likely to be discovered because of my inexpert splashing of the oars than through the keen sight of anyone on the bank. A drifting boat occupied by two shadows might not receive much attention anyhow, whereas one obviously occupied by unskilled rowers quite possibly would.

Once beyond the mouth of the river I began assisting the current again, and by the time the river's thrust had abandoned us I had acquired a reasonable rhythm. It never became easy, but I felt that I had mastered the business and was moderately comfortable.

We could see the lights of the town to the south, supported on a raft of liquid light that was their shimmering reflection in the sea. When there was no longer any possibility that we might be noticed, I began to find the view rather beautiful. Karen, who was sitting in the prow of the boat behind me, did not have the opportunity to become lost in rapt contemplation of it all, for it was her business to make sure that I stayed on the right course. Fortunately, the lights of the buildings on the island showed up as brightly as those of the town—individually, in fact, they were probably much brighter, and I guessed that the aristocrats of knowledge made far more use of electricity than the common people. Where wealth is knowledge you get a better class of status symbol.

The weed was not such a hazard as I might have imagined. Close to the shore we moved amid the tips of the frond-forest, and there was no trouble save when I dipped an oar too deeply and contrived to get weed wound around it. Farther out, when we encountered the floating weed, we found the cohesiveness of the rafts rather less than I had imagined. Instead of the tightly knit mats we had found in the marsh—which one could almost run across—we found much less firmly bound aggregations which continually divided and rejoined, and which would part easily to allow the boat through. The weed making up this loose scum was made up of short, thin branching filaments. One could pick up handfuls of it, squeeze the water out, and be left with a pad of compressed tissue feeling something like blotting paper, but which could be pulled apart very easily.

The sea seemed preternaturally full of sound. The sound of the wind—hardly more than a breeze—stirring up small waves which lapped the sides of the boat was negligible, and the muted splash of the oars hitting the water was ordinary enough. But there were other splashing sounds, midway between a clean
plop
and a glutinous gurgle, as vermiform creatures broke the surface and instantly submerged again.

When I exchanged roles with Karen and moved up to the prow of the boat to guide us, I noticed that the water in front of us had a faint luminosity which disappeared as we cut into it and scattered the tiny organisms responsible. I imagined us leaving a black wake in a softly shining sea, but in fact the luminosity was patchy anyhow, and tended to fade as waves rippled through it. Only on nights of utter calm might the sea take on a radiant sheen stretching evenly for hundreds of miles. And even then, with the sea creatures forever blindly active....

Nothing is perfect.

One by one, the lights on the island began to go out. But some remained. Most were dim and yellow because the electric bulbs were not directly opposite the rather narrow windows, but one—the one I came to rely on more and more as a beacon—was pearly and clear. It was a window high in the largest building—the one on the peak. It was probably set just beneath the slanting roof. I wondered, idly, how to characterize that building, which was obviously the home of Floria's historical architects. A citadel? A university? A fortress? A library? In a metaphorical sense, it was all of them...and perhaps in a literal sense it would have to fulfill all roles before its appointed mission was very much older. Times change, even if plans don't.

“How much farther?” asked Karen, not turning around to judge for herself lest she lose the rhythm of the oars.

“Not far,” I replied, letting myself fall into Florian habits.

“
I
don't feel as if I'm getting any nearer,” she said. Her mood could not exactly be described as sunny. It had been a long day and at times we had lacked a certain bonhomie which seems to be essential to cooperative ventures in speculative heroism. In short, we were a bit pissed off with the whole issue, and maybe with one another as well. However, when needs must....

And needs very clearly did.

“It's easy,” I assured her. “We're doing fine.”

“It's getting bloody cold again. The trouble with weather is that it has no consistency.”

“Keep hauling on the oars,” I advised. “Work keeps you warm.”

I leaned over the prow and dabbled my fingers in the water, breaking up the bioluminescent glow a fraction of a second before the boat itself. There was a somewhat louder splash as a worm did its doubling-back flip within inches of the boat. I didn't see the worm but I saw the ripples.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Sea monsters,” I replied absently.

She didn't believe me.

“Well,” I said, “maybe just a little one. But out in the deeper water...maybe the warmer water in the tropics...there are no limits to growth. The deep-living scavengers will be able to grow so big as to make the most gigantic squid ever reported on Earth look like something you'd put in a goldfish bowl. They wouldn't be vicious, of course, but if one of them took sick and drifted up to the surface just as a little rowboat...or an ironclad liner...was making its innocent way home....

“You're a real joy to sail with, Alex,” she said.

“What do you want me to do?” I replied, in a desultory tone. “Sing sea shanties?”

“You're so beautiful when you're mad,” she countered.

It was on the tip of my tongue to make the obvious reply, but I successfully avoided it. There was, however, nothing further to be said. The island was still “not far” away, but it would still take a lot of rowing to get there. I hoped I wouldn't have to take a second spell at the oars, but Karen wasn't about to let me get away with it. Plaguing the same unpracticed muscles a second time made them hurt, and all the blisters rubbed up on my fingers and thumbs burst under the renewed pressure. Even my head began to hurt again.

But we got to the island. In the end.

We were lucky, I suppose, in that we didn't find any jagged rocks or sandbanks, which could have proved a nasty embarrassment, but the seacoast of Floria seemed to be a relatively placid and hazard-free place.

We landed on a narrow “beach” beneath a shallow sandy cliff. The beach was composed of gravelly pebbles, and when we dragged the boat out of the water we made rather a clatter. The sandiness of the soil face extending into the night above and in front of us was due to the gradual pulverization of the rock by rain. The sand associated with seashores back home is the product of the more careful and extended work of the tides. On Floria, the mills of God were by no means so consistent or so powerful.

The light in the high window was still visible, and we concluded that the cliff was by no means sheer. It still seemed like a good idea, however, to walk along the shore toward the shallower end of the island and then come back up the steady incline of the central plateau. It was the long way around but there wasn't any climbing involved and we still had a lot of the night in hand.

First, though, we searched out a crevice in the cliff—a kind of low-slung shelf rather than a bona fide cave—under which we could conceal the boat. It seemed the appropriate thing to do...I'm certain the Scarlet Pimpernel would have done no less.

Walking—even walking in the dark—seemed easy after all that arm-work, but general fatigue induced by our long trek through the marshes soon made it painful. We had not gone far before I discovered a distinct limp caused by the fact that my right leg was trying to do more work than my left and was thus suffering more acutely. Karen seemed to have the same problem.

“Heroism,” I commented, “is a degrading business.”

But it wasn't a very big island, and the stars were shining more brightly than they had during the previous night. Curiously, I still found my eyes searching the sky for familiar constellations—almost subconsciously—and inducing a sensation of dislocation which was quite different from the sense of strangeness I experienced during the day, when the whole alienness of the world was exposed in the bright sunlight. I suppose an alien Earth is one thing, but an alien universe—heaven with a new mask—is something different, affecting a different part of you. Perhaps, though, it was only the legacy of all those myths that Karen had quoted to me.

The settlement on the island was more ordered in structure and layout than anything I had seen on the mainland. The whole complex measured nearly a half mile lengthways and two-thirds of that sideways. Being built at the higher end of the island it gave the impression of being an ornate architectural crown for an eternal natural formation. The individual buildings had little separate identity, being parts of a corporate whole.

There seemed to be an awful lot of it, when one bore in mind Vulgan's comment about a “handful” of recruits being taken to the island each year.

The main building itself was at the northwestern tip of the isle, and the array of minor buildings was spread out on the shallow slope like a bridal train. The main building was more solid than its cohort, and—unlike virtually all edifices we had previously seen—looked structurally finished: unalterable and aloof.

“They didn't throw
that
up in any tearing hurry,” I said. “It's like a feudal castle,” said Karen.

“That's what we have here,” I observed. “An intellectual feudalism. It stands to reason that the acme of architectural achievement would be an impregnable temple of knowledge. I bet they keep the books in vaults, and the students wander around like monks in holy orders.”

I was semi-serious. But as I was saying it, something pricked at my mind...a jarring note. Into such a system, where exactly did a man like Jason fit? He might be knowledgeable, but he was also tough. Who were his counterparts in Earthly history? Cardinal Richelieu? Savonarola? He didn't really fit the picture at all. The thought of Jason made me uneasy.

We made our way slowly and cautiously along the side of the citadel. The ground-floor windows were high, but I suspected that the intention had been to stop people peeping rather than to accommodate seven-foot giants. This place had been built by smaller people, and today's Florians might be outgrowing its corridors and ceilings...so much for a structure built to outlast eternity.

Eventually, we found a window with a light that would be accessible if we cooperated. As Karen was a good deal lighter than I, it was I who crouched in order to let her climb on my shoulders.

Kneeling, with her unsteady feet on either side of my head, I waited for her to report. But all she said was, “Jesus, will you look at that!”

Under the circumstances, it was not a helpful remark.

She jumped backward and landed on her feet. Because I was taller I didn't need as much lift to let me look in through the window, and so she was able to hoist me up for a few seconds simply by cupping her hands and hauling hard when I used them as a step. This way, I had only the barest glance of the contents of the room, but it was enough to let me see what had induced her exclamation.

I got only the most fleeting impression of the inanimate contents of the room—its furniture and fittings—because my eyes were drawn immediately to its lone human occupant. She was reclining on a large, shallow couch, her body cradled by cushions and her head supported by cushions. She was reading by the light of an electric bulb. The book was a large volume, ill bound but undoubtedly heavy. It had obviously been produced here on Floria. She supported its weight easily, but the fingers with which she was controlling the pages were clumsy. Her hands were massive, but far more massive in terms of bulk than dimension.

The same thing applied to her body. Its length was difficult for me to estimate but its mass was quite phenomenal.

She must have weighed at least three times as much as myself. The flesh ballooned out from her frame, seeming to spill out onto the couch like a great fluid mass. Her forearms were thicker than my thighs.

Her face was folded, because the aggregation of the flesh could not be constrained by the structure of the skull. It was discolored—yellowing in the cheeks and the chin. It was also wrinkled and lined...seemingly the wreckage of a face rather than anything real and alive. There were eyes, and a bulbous nose, and lips showing irregular teeth as breath oozed in and out of her mouth, but the whole impression of the visage was monstrous, hardly human at all.

I could not judge her age from what I saw...but I could guess....

When I hit the ground again as Karen released me I had not the presence of mind to save myself from falling. But the sound of the tumble was muffled, and must have gone unheard. We moved on a little way, though, before we risked whispering again.

“Did you see it?” hissed Karen unnecessarily. “Like one of those goddamn jelly things you fished up out of the swamp mud.”