The Florians (15 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

They were seven.

They were distributed haphazardly about the room rather than being grouped in the manner of a court or jury. Such grouping would have been impossible. I had expected to find them all old (old, that is, by the standards of this world) and all in the grip of the uncontrolled, quasi-cancerous tissue-growth. But only three—two women and one man—wore bodies which had run completely out of control. These three reclined on couches equipped with tiny wheels. Each of the three had lost all the powers of self-locomotion save one. They could not crawl, nor lift their heads, but the use of their hands remained. While they kept control of their hands, and could continue to use their senses, they retained some essential humanity. When that was gone...but they seemed, in any case, to be close enough to death.

Of the others, two were clearly losing the fight. They were both men. Both, I think, could have walked—but no great distance. They sat in conventional chairs rather than accepting in advance the need to become recumbent. The remaining two—one man, one woman—were still robust and healthy. The woman, by my estimate, was in her early thirties. The man was the youngest of them all, perhaps no more than twenty-five.

Nathan had already tried to warn me in advance as to which might be sympathetic and which set hard against us. Those he thought he could count on were Edward Buckland—one of the middle-aged men—and Ewan Rondo, the youngest of the seven. The most powerful opposition came from one of the women—Ruth Alcor—and the younger woman would probably back her. The third woman, however, whose name was Viana Calmont, was probably the most influential voice within the group, and she had given no indication at all—so far as Nathan had been able to detect—of where she stood.

We were not offered seats, but left to stand. Jason waited behind us, beside the door. There were some preliminaries.

Nathan introduced us by name, but the Planners did not introduce themselves. I was hoping that I would be allowed to make a simple statement, but the Planners wanted things done their way. The youngest man—Rondo—was, apparently as a matter of form, their question-master, and there was something of the attitude of prosecuting counsel in the way he began. Nathan had said that this one was sympathetic, but I guessed that that was in his personal capacity. It seemed to be his duty now to play devil's advocate.

“You're a scientist?” he asked. “And you came here in order to give us advice, and perhaps assistance, with any problems which fall within your intellectual province?”

“Yes,” I said, knowing there was more to come.

“You do not seem to have conducted yourself like a scientist.”

“That depends on your expectations,” I replied. “Scientists on Earth don't function in quite the same way as scientists here.” As I said this, my eyes ran over the whole group. “You practice science in a covert manner. It is the business of an elite. In being kept secret, it has become sacred.”

“You don't approve?” probed Rondo.

“I don't know,” I said honestly. “But that doesn't matter.”

“You realize that your presence here represents a threat to our aims? You know that your arrival has precipitated a crisis, and that your actions have helped compound that crisis?”

“We have already agreed,” said Nathan, interrupting smoothly, “that the crisis was inevitable. It is the product of history, and our arrival has done no more than reveal it prematurely. Our actions have made no significant difference.”

“We are talking not so much about a political crisis as a crisis of values,” said Rondo. “Rebellion against our rule—a rule which is purely theoretical, as we have no legal power—is a product of the social circumstances of the colony. But that rebellion is really immaterial. It hardly matters who is in nominal control of everyday events. It is merely a matter of labeling. What does matter, however, is the prospect of a rebellion against the values we have tried to inculcate and maintain in this colony. And your actions—the very assumption under which you act—represent a threat to those values. When challenged, you react violently. You invade our home, secretly, and import violence with you. This is intolerable.”

“We have been violently used ourselves,” I said. I was about to go into detail, but I was conscious of Jason at my shoulder. It was not the time for accusations. It was better to wait...there was another way.

“This is the whole trouble,” said Rondo. “You arrive, and violence flares up. With you, violence breeds violence, and the whole situation becomes aggravated, inflamed. That is what we want to avoid at all costs. It is not violence per se which we are trying to eradicate from this culture, but the syndrome by which violence breeds
more
violence, and quarrels become wars. Our aim is to isolate acts of violence from the inflammatory consequences which are inevitable in your way of thinking.”

The one thing that could not be said was:
That's impossible.
That was exactly what they were trying to fight with all the means at their disposal—the acceptance of what they considered to be our way of thinking as natural, rational, and inalterable.

I remained silent, waiting.

The crucial question came.

“Can you offer us any reason why, in view of the dangers implicit in your presence here, we should tolerate you?”

“Because you need us,” I said. “You need us far more than you fear us.”

I heard the quick intake of breath behind me, and it made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

“Why?” demanded Rondo, his voice like the lash of a whip.

“You fear us,” I said, “because we may corrupt you. But if we can do that—if our mere presence here is enough to send all your generations of cunning, considered planning to perdition—then what do you really have as a result of your generations of work? What have you really achieved, if what you have can be sustained only in artificial conditions? Violence is already here, as you know...and the men who would use it to breed more violence, the men who would exploit violence for their own ends...they're here, too. The products, I think you said, of history. Perhaps our presence will help them...except that we are already committed to helping
you.

“And you need that help. You need it most of all because you do not know how desperately you need it. If I were to say now that this colony faces a danger of extinction within two or three generations, you would not believe me. Perhaps you would be right. I don't know enough, at present, to say any such thing. But I will say this. You have no concept of the nature of the force which has you in its grip. You do not know the extent or the nature of your danger, because you are too close to it. You have not the objectivity to know what is happening to you.

“Perhaps, somewhere, locked in the vaults where you keep your closely guarded supply of human knowledge—knowledge two centuries out of date by Earthly standards—you have the information which would have allowed you to know what is happening to you. But where is the man with that knowledge in his head? Where is the man who uses that knowledge in his everyday work and his everyday thinking? He is not here, because so far as you are concerned that knowledge is for
use,
and for use
only,
in practical terms. You deal in the knowledge which is necessary in order to make and build things...and in the knowledge which has to be concealed lest certain other things be made and built. Because you have no theoretical scientists, but only applied scientists, you have no one with the broad perspectives necessary to see past your own limited objectives. You have no one, except us.

“And even if you had a man, or men, with a mind educated in such a way that he was capable of perceiving what is desperately wrong here, what could he do about it? You are, I have no doubt, making great strides in medical science and medical technology. But I have no doubt, also, that the science of genetic engineering is one of those areas of knowledge which you have decided—on the basis of good historical evidence—should be left untouched. It is too dangerous, too amenable to misuse. What were its consequences on Earth? Plagues, bacteriological warfare, tragic accidents in ecological management. There were successes, too, of course, but history is an interpretative art...and it is always easier to explain disasters.

“There is, I believe, no way that you can cope with the disaster which you face, a disaster which already has you in its grip, without our aid. Aid which only Earth can provide.

“It is not a matter of tolerating our presence here—it is a matter of welcoming it and making use of it. I cannot say that if you command us to leave you will all die, or even that your grandiose schemes will be doomed to failure. I only assure you that we are the only ones who can find out how much danger there is...and you cannot afford not to know.”

I paused, and looked around at all the pairs of eyes that were watching me. They were hostile: each and every one. It wasn't surprising. I was attacking the very roots of all their most precious dreams. Nathan, no doubt, had walked carefully in the garden of their hopes and beliefs, determined not to step on any cherished blossom. He had won such support as he had gained with flattery and promises and sweet words. But I was no diplomat.

Behind me, I heard the door open and close. Without turning around, I knew that Jason had left the room. He didn't know what the outcome of the argument would be, but he already knew enough. He had failed to win us or to make use of us. He felt that all his ambitions were under threat. He had gone to do something about it. While I paused, I wondered what.

But there was no time....

“Tell us, please,” said Rondo coldly, “exactly what danger you imagine faces us.”

“The flesh on your bones,” I said bluntly. “And the bones themselves.” He made as if to interrupt, but I held up my hand. “Oh, yes,” I went on, “you're aware of the problem. You're seriously concerned about it. But what you don't realize is the full range of its implications.

“When the average height and weight of the colonists began to increase, you± forefathers probably thought of it as a good, healthy sign...Earthmen growing big and strong in their new world. At first it seemed good, and later, it seemed normal. The change has been gradual, uniform...almost imperceptible in a population of ignorant people.
You
knew...when the unfortunate corollaries of growth began to appear you became concerned. But only you. And even you fell prey to the same trap. It
seemed
to be normal, to be part of your way of life. In your minds, you knew that you were different from Earthmen and becoming more so. But knowing something intellectually isn't enough of a stimulus. You accepted its consequences, because they were consequences which affect you all, and you have an insular perspective.

“And there's another factor, too: the belief that the man who is obese, or, indeed, loses control over his body in any way at all, is personally responsible. When a man is injured. or invaded by parasites, that is sickness—to be treated. But when a man grows fat, that is the legacy of self-indulgence, a lack of self-discipline—not sickness so much as failure. There is a certain contempt which people feel for other men who become fat and ugly...and there is a similar contempt which such men feel for themselves. You
know
—intellectually—that obesity may result from genetic or glandular disorders, but again it is what you
feel
that is preventing you from searching out the whole truth.

“I am sure you have searched for the glandular disorders. I am sure that you have tried to identify, somewhere in the range of foods you use, some chemical compound which is causing your bodies to put on weight unnaturally. Perhaps you have searched for a virus or for an anomaly in the tissue involved. You have tried to see it as a disease, as a cancer. And you have failed. But this only reinforces the feeling that you have that you yourselves are responsible...that you lack control over your bodies because of some inner inadequacy.”

They were looking at me as if I were mouthing obscenities. I could see hatred in more than one pair of eyes. But I had already cut away all the clothes of convention, the rituals of unmentionability. They were listening. They were hanging on to my every word.

“I don't know how old you are,” I said. “I don't know how long you expect to live. All the indicators by which I'd try to guess are confused, and even the terms in which I'd have to measure are different. Floria's year is not the same as Earth's year. But I believe that you're dying too soon...that you have barely as long a maturity as you have a youth, and that your bodies begin to betray you all too early in life. I think that if I were a Florian I would now be barely able to walk. I would be eternally hungry and eternally putting on excess weight by the pound. My life would be almost over. As things are, however, I am perhaps halfway through my life. I have as many years left to me as I have already used. In ten years, in thirty years, I'll still be active in body and in mind. Frail, perhaps, and slow...but active, still able to
use
my body.”

All this was merely hitting them where it hurt. I wanted to be
sure
of them. I wanted them frightened. I wanted them committed not just to making deals with us, but protecting us as the richest resource on the planet. I wished only that Jason were still here to listen, because I thought I could have panicked even him.

“What you must realize now is that you are still Earthmen trying to live on an alien world. You have deliberately forgotten that fact, tried to bury it.
This
is your Mother World, your only world, the world with which you identify, the world whose substance is the substance of your flesh...but it is still an alien world, and may always be so. You think you have adapted, but adaptation is something which can take seventy generations rather than seven, and may take forever. As you adapt, the world adapts: and you grow apart as well as together.