The Florians (16 page)

“You are all being poisoned, by a poison so slow that it takes generations to take effect, and so subtle that you cannot detect it. We can detect it, because we have the resources.”

“All this is very inventive.” The speaker now was one of the older men, not Rondo—the formalities had been abandoned now. “But it is only rhetoric. You will have to tell us more about this poison you have invented.”

“I will,” I told him. I went on, “The most puzzling aspect of the giantism which affects you all is its uniformity. This was what troubled me most when I first arrived here. Had it been caused by any individual agent—a hormonal mimic fortuitously manufactured by an alien plant or group of plants—then certain members of your population would have suffered far more than others, and you would have had no trouble identifying the cause. But the fact that all of you seemed to have been affected to the same degree suggested that it was something universal—not only in the alien life-system, but in the crops you had yourselves imported. It was several times pointed out to us that on Floria,
everything
grows big. Men, pigs, pigeons, potatoes, even ears of corn.

“I didn't immediately see how that could be, until I'd had a chance to look at things more closely. The important fact, and the key to the whole thing, was something I already knew—but only in my mind. It wasn't until I came here, and got out into the wilderness, that I began to see and feel the implications of that fact.

“The balance of nature here is a very different balance from that found on Earth. All the secondary consumers on this world consume dead and decayed matter—the soil is exceptionally rich in organic compounds, the legacy of previous generations of plants. The plants here are superefficient. They fix solar energy quickly, grow quickly—and die quickly. The
turnover
in the energy budget is remarkably high. I was inclined to think that the fact that
real
animals—consumers of living flesh—had never evolved here was because there were no
incentives.
It was too easy to live on decayed flesh, because there was always plenty of it about.

“But that explanation, you see, isn't competent. Where there are opportunities for a new way of life, natural selection will inevitably discover them...provided that natural selection has a chance to work.

“On Floria, it hasn't. This is partly due to the fact that there are so few regimes of change...the lack of tides is important here. But it's also due to the fact that there is a factor here channeling change, preventing change along certain lines by permitting it along others.

“Natural selection is so important on Earth because minor changes in genetic structure mean big changes in physical form. Organisms in Earth's life-system have very little innate plasticity. I'm using the word
plasticity
here in a special sense which it assumes within genetic theory: it means the range of different options open to different organisms with identical genes. It's sometimes important in plants when genetically identical seeds grow in very different environments: from one seed you might get a tall plant with abundant leaves, whereas from another you might get a small one with aberrant leaves—these differences can be forced by different limiting factors in the soil. The growth of an embryo is not
entirely
controlled by genes, but also by factors prevailing in the environment where it develops. Now, on Earth only plants have a very considerable degree of plasticity—and by careful management of their growth and judicious interference one can turn out miniature trees or giant fruits. Animals, by and large, have less plasticity...and among the higher animals, whose embryos grow in carefully regulated conditions within the womb, there is virtually no
natural
plasticity at all. Growth can be stunted by malnutrition, but that's not really the same thing. Muscles can be destroyed and limbs permanently bent by consistent physical interference, but again, that's in no way natural.

“Here on Floria, things are different.
Especially
with respect to tissue growth. I've seen trees which were twins genetically but as far apart on the spectrum of size as one could imagine. I've seen marsh creatures obviously belonging to the same species with a host of small, idiosyncratic differences almost all involving excessive tissue growth locally or generally. Here, all life-forms are individually plastic to a large extent; and where genetic changes make far less difference to the options of a growing organism natural selection is far, far less effective. The animals of Floria, feeders on the dead, have not evolved because they are so
individually
adaptable that new species hardly ever arise.

“The reason why such plasticity is universal has to be that the system of genetic regulation characteristic of this life-system—the way that the expression of the genes is controlled and regulated, not only during embryo-growth but also during functional life—differs somewhat from the system by which the genes in Earth's life-system are regulated. The poison that you, and every other species you have brought to Floria, are picking up here is something rather more basic than a hormonal mimic: it's a compound which interferes with the regulation of genetic programming, with the way the genetic code is read in building and maintaining organisms. Obviously, this regulator compound is not as effective in Earth species as it is in Florian ones. But at this level, compounds are selected for
function
—and just as the photosynthetic agent which makes your grass green is functionally similar to chlorophyll, so this compound is capable of functioning to some degree in Earth-type genetic systems.

“As to where you're picking up the poison
from
, the answer is everywhere. You see, it's in the soil. It's part of the decayed plant-matter which is the staple diet of all organisms on Floria that don't make their own molecules. It's taken up by the imported crops, and it affects them. When your animals are fed on alien food, and even when they're fed on Earth food, they are affected by it, too. And the same applies to you. Whatever grows in Florian soil, or feeds on the produce of Florian soil, picks up this poison.

“Within the Florian life-system, of course, this compound is useful. It is, in fact, central to the whole Florian way of life, in the broadest possible sense of the phrase. In humans, too, it can have useful effects. If its effects could be restricted, perhaps it might not be reckoned as a poison at all. But human bodies, you see, were designed by natural selection on the assumption that plasticity was virtually nonexistent. Human genes aren't organized to cope with plasticity. In the developing embryo, the regulated conditions of the womb restrict the influence of the rogue factor to a matter of size: a fairly slight influence, within the spectrum of human practicality. But in the mature organism, which isn't built to last forever, the influence of the rogue factor increases with time—and eventually, the body runs wild. The careful limitations on the behavior and control of tissues are eroded. You all fall victims to a kind of slow, generalized cancer.

“That is what is happening to you. It has to be brought under control. You have to find a way of coping with this poison; and since you can't avoid it you must find a way of opposing its action. It should be possible...once we have isolated the compound in the
Daedalus
laboratory and studied its action. All complex biological compounds have weaknesses. We not only have the means to find out what those weaknesses are, and build biological counteragents in the laboratory, but through genetic engineering we can alter plants or microorganisms in order to make them produce the counteragent for us. We can design a life-form to do the job, to substitute for the laboratory. That's what we're here to do for you, if you'll let us.

“You must not cut yourselves off from Earth,” I concluded, in a voice so soft as to be almost a stage whisper. “Because, no matter how much you despise all that Earth stands for in your mythology, you remain men of Earth...and you cannot become men of Floria in the ultimate sense of the word unless you accept all the help that Earth can possibly offer.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

They wanted to discuss it. There wasn't really anything to discuss, and we all knew it, but they didn't like the way I'd rammed it down their throats and they were determined to make some kind of show. Karen, Nathan, and I returned to Nathan's room like the accused awaiting the verdict of the jury.

I found, when we got there, that I was trembling. I had to sit down and grip the arms of the chair to hold myself ready.

“When did you work that out?” asked Karen. She sounded a little sour, as if she felt that she might have been let in on the secret earlier. She thought it had all come to me in a flash of divine inspiration when the miniature tree came away in my band, or when I was fishing in the salt marsh.

“I don't know,” I told her truthfully. “The pieces just fell Into place. Slowly. I wasn't sure when I started exactly what I was going to say. I hoped only that I could make some sense of it. It isn't as simple as that, not really. But I had to make it clear.”

“Are you sure it's right?” demanded Nathan.

“You don't solve scientific problems like Sherlock Holmes,” I told him, for the second time. “I wish you did. But it's the right way to look at the problem...and before you ask, I can't guarantee results. All I can say is that if the answer's accessible, we'll find it. Given the chance.”

“You'll get your chance,” he said. “There can't be much doubt about that.”

“What about
your
chance?” I said. “Your successful world doesn't look quite as good anymore, does it? There really isn't so much difference between Floria and the other colonies, is there?”

“There's enough,” he assured me.

“What you mean,” I said, “is that if you write your reports cleverly enough, playing up the right aspects and glossing over the embarrassing ones, you can make this seem a very different proposition.”

“You disapprove?” he said. “But this is all in the service of the dream you hold so dear. Isn't this what you want? The rebuilding of the myth, the reinstitution of the space program, the union of Earth and colonies...surely you believe that what I'm trying to achieve is for the good of mankind?”

His voice was mocking, and I was surprised by the sudden aggressiveness. It made me angry. I couldn't make out for a moment or two what I'd done to annoy him, to justify the attack. Then I realized that it might not be anger, but a mixture of contempt and envy. I'd upstaged him before the Planners—and I'd done it with a sincerity, a sense of purpose, which be didn't feel. He was doing a job—playing a game—and he believed only in the game.
Ars gratia Artis.
He looked upon this whole mission as an exercise in manipulation: manipulation of the people with whom we came to deal, manipulation of the great host of committees back home who would have the job of deciding what to do on the basis of our reports. In a way, he was like Arne Jason, the man in the middle, rejoicing in the unique privilege of his situation. History was cupped in the palms of his hands...but the power to exert his own influence upon it meant far more to him than any sense of purpose, any sense of responsibility. I realized now what Karen had implied when she had told me, back in the village, that not everyone shared my outlook.

“I disapprove,” I confirmed dully.

“You have to be realistic,” he said, his voice becoming normal again after the brief moment of nakedness. “Don't you?” This addition was aimed at Karen.

“Maybe,” she said, with a marked lack of certainty.

In the silence that followed, the tension which had flared slowly ebbed away. It was a good time to change the subject.

“What's Jason's next move?” I wondered aloud. “He didn't stay to hear the end of what I had to say. As soon as he knew I wasn't cooperating he was off. Where to?”

“He has only two choices,” said Nathan, who seemed ready enough to talk about something else and heal the breach, superficially. “Either he stays with the Planners...or he changes sides.”

“And?” I prompted.

Nathan shrugged. “In his present mood, I think he'll change sides. I suspect he already has. It's the wrong decision, of course. But he's tried to play the game his own way, to force things into his predetermined pattern. They wouldn't go. He lost...and now he's angry. He won't be content to do the simple thing, which is to patch things up, sit back and wait, keeping hold of what he already has. He'll feel a compulsion to act—to
react
against the failure of his naïve little schemes. He needs to hit out, to show off the fact that he really
is
the kingpin and that fate can't treat him thus and get away with it. At least, that's how I read the situation.”

It sounded all too terribly plausible. Jason, his temper flaring, would go to Ellerich and Vulgan. If he couldn't run things from the island in the way he thought he could...then he would try to run them from the mainland, at the head of the rebellion.

He would hit out....

And he still had Mariel. And no one seemed to be doing a damned thing about it. Sit and wait, never act. Talk and think. It was Nathan's way, and it was the Planners' way. But to the Planners—and perhaps to Nathan as well—Mariel was something remote, just another piece on the board, to be moved or taken as the game demanded.

I got up from the chair quickly. I moved toward the door, saying, “Come on, Karen.”

“Where do you think you're going?” said Nathan, moving to try to block my path.

“To the radio,” I said. “We have to call the ship, to find out what's going on. Even if Jason isn't handing out any ultimatums yet, Rolving is supposed to be monitoring communications on the mainland. Maybe be can tell us what's happening.”

Nathan hesitated, then nodded.

“All right,” he said. “Let's go and find out what's going on.”

We went out into the corridor and began making our way to the fifth floor of the western side of the building. The corridors seemed as dimly lighted by day as they had by night...the daylight streaming through the thin windows was wan and cool. The day was overcast and somber.

We passed a number of people in the corridors—mostly young people, presumably students in training for the elite. They watched us as we passed, alertly but incuriously. We must have been the dominant topic of conversation among them for days.

There were more people in the radio room. In fact, there was quite a crowd there. One of them moved to cut off the doorway as we approached, but big though be was be couldn't block the view. His action had been reflexive in any case, for as we peered past him he thought better of it, and moved aside.

The people within were picking through the wreckage.

To the man who had attempted to block our way, I said, “Who did it?”

“Jason, Lucas...perhaps a dozen others.” He was hesitant, but his hesitancy was born of anxiety rather than any reluctance to let us in on the secret. He seemed almost glad we were there, as if it were a relief to have someone with whom to share the responsibility for the discovery. Presumably, the authority he would normally have notified of any untoward incident was Jason, or Lucas...or any of the others in the administrative group. When you find that the law has committed a crime, where do you turn?

“Where are they now?” I asked, taking advantage of the fact that answers were easy to come by, for once.

“They went to the mainland,” said the giant. “They took all the boats but two...and the others are damaged, sinking in the harbor.”

“It seems,” said Nathan, still monumentally unperturbed by the whole chain of events, “that Jason is not a man to do things by halves. He's done a comprehensive job of cutting us off from the mainland. He appears to have won himself time, if nothing else.”

“Time to do
what
?” I demanded.

But he ignored the question. Instead, he asked the Florian whether the Planners had been informed. The idea of interrupting the Planners in the course of their affairs was obviously not a welcome one so far as the young man was concerned. Among the acolytes in the aristocracy presumptive, if nowhere else, the Planners preserved their status as demigods.

“You'd better make sure they're informed,” said Nathan gently.

As he turned away, I said, “What do
we
do?”

“We go back to my room,” he said, “and we wait. I know you don't like it, but there's nothing we can do. I think the Planners will tell us what's going on in due course, and perhaps invite us into their council. In the meantime, we take things easy.”

There was, as he said, nothing we could do. What I found offensive, however, was not his insistence on making this clear but his apparent contentment with it.

The sensation of being completely helpless is—at least so far as I am concerned—one of the most painful in the range of human experience. It is one with which, perhaps, I was always overfamiliar. Those who allow themselves to perceive the everyday tragedies that occur perpetually in the world around them live in a constant state of excited awareness, and when the wheel of chance brings such tragedies so close as to make personal contact the fury of impotence can become overwhelming.

That afternoon and evening, I could not help envying Nathan his detachment—his lack of emotional involvement even with events happening to him and around him. I could not help, also, a degree of insight into the way Arne Jason had been pricked into hasty—and perhaps violent—action by the conspiracy of circumstances. He was not angry because he had lost anything real, but he had lost his pretensions, his illusions, the cloak of pretense which had kept him isolated from the impact of feeling his own impotence to control and direct the pattern of events. As Nathan had said, the Planners were aware of him, were manipulating him even while he believed himself to be manipulating them: a tissue of ambivalence maintained by mutual consent. And now...we had denied him. And all of a sudden, he was at the head of a revolution.

How, I wondered, were the Planners to cope with the rebellion? How could they possibly suppress it? If Jason and his new allies were to take control of the colony by force—as, perhaps, they already had—what could the Planners do? There was no question of their fighting back...for that was precisely what they stood implacably against. On a world where violence has been banished, what conceivable defense is there against it?

I not only felt personally helpless, but conceived of us all as being helpless. So far as I could see, we were at the mercy of Jason's injured pride. I recalled the day when my son's mother had been killed, in a random traffic accident that was part of a great pattern of random accidents extending across all the roads of the world and all the hours of the day and night. I had not even been in the same country when it happened, and though she lived a while in the hospital there was no way I could have traveled fast enough to reach her before she died. But if there had been—if there had been a device like the
Daedalus
, to translocate me in space-time with negligible delay—I could have done nothing save wait for her to die, at the whim of a pattern of events without sense or order.

In my head, I live in an ordered universe of cause and effect and the eternal, immutable principles of natural law. But real events in the real world are not subject to the same constraints as the universe of thought inside any man's head, and we are all at the mercy of the unpredictable.

Even Mariel, to whom no lies could be told.