Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [102]
Matthew took the invitation as the compliment it was, but he wasn’t able to respond. He hadn’t made any progress at all in wondering what might substitute for Earthly seasonal changes as a series of cues determining the pattern of Tyrian life cycles. All he was able to do, as yet, was turn the question around.
“Do you have any ideas?” he asked, humbly.
“Not ideas, exactly,” Tang replied.
Matthew guessed quickly enough what that meant. “You mean you have worries,” he said. “Fears, even.” Matthew belatedly remembered what Solari had said about Tang reportedly having shown recent “signs of strain and acute anxiety.” He had seen none himself, so far—quite the reverse, in fact—but Kriefmann must have had some basis for his opinion.
“It seems to me,” the biochemist said, softly, “that the hidden potential contained in the duplex genomes of Ararat-Tyre must be responsive to ecological shifts of some kind. Perhaps it evolved in an era of intermittent ecological crises—not environmentally generated ecocatastrophes, but ecocatastrophes associated with dramatic population increases. I know that you know exactly what I mean, because I recall the rhetoric you used to employ in your inflammatory broadcasts: the lemming principle, the Mouseworld allegory, and so on. If so, isn’t it possible—perhaps probable—that the arrival of alien beings with radically different genomic systems might constitute exactly such a crisis. Thus far, I admit, the world has not responded to its invaders—unless the arrival in this vicinity of the creature that stung Maryanne can be counted a response—but the establishment of three discreet and understaffed Bases in three years has been the merest scratch on the surface. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
Because he obviously wanted Matthew to be the one to say it, Matthew spelled it out. “You’re saying that we might have avoided tweaking the lion’s tail thus far,” he said, “but that decanting the remainder of the would-be colonists and establishing an ecological base for their long-term survival would be a whole new ballgame. You’re saying that although this doesn’t look like a death trap today, it could turn into one with frightening rapidity.”
“We simply don’t know,” Tang added. “Until we figure out the protocols of reproduction, we have no idea what dangers lurk in all that hidden potential.”
And that, Matthew thought, was exactly why Tang was becoming more and more nervous as time went by, and why he had become an enthusiastic advocate of withdrawal, allying himself with the groundling party to which Konstantin Milyukov was implacably opposed.
He figured that the ice had been sufficiently thawed to allow the raising of more delicate issues. “I hear that you and I are rivals for the empty berth on Bernal’s boat,” he said, biting the bullet.
“It’s not Bernal’s boat,” Tang pointed out, mildly. “Common consent had certainly determined that he was entitled to his place in the expedition, but we have all played a part in the design and construction of the boat.”
Matthew took due note of the fact that the we in question did not include him, although Tang had not said in so many words that he ought not to be entitled to a vote when the time came to settle the matter of who should replace Bernal Delgado on the expedition downriver.
“I’m sorry,” Matthew said. “I didn’t mean to imply that it wasn’t a collective enterprise. I dare say that everybody here would gain some benefit from the opportunity to see a little more of the continent, and to penetrate the dark heart of its mysterious vitreous grasslands. I understand that you want the berth as much as I do….”
“I don’t,” Tang put in.
The interpolation took the wind out of Matthew’s sails. “You don’t?” he echoed. He was about to apologize again for his misapprehension when Tang wrong-footed him again.
“It’s not a matter of wanting,” the biochemist said. “It’s a matter of which of us is best-equipped to make productive use of the opportunity.