Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [106]
“If anything,” Ike declared, “it’s a trifle overcooked. We’ve added so many accessories that it’s going to be a hell of a job dismantling it and putting it back together.”
“Dismantling it?” Solari echoed. “Why would you want to dismantle it and put it back together?”
“The river doesn’t run smoothly all the way,” Matthew told him. “There’s only one major fault line, but that’s associated with a cataract at the edge of the lowland plateau. We’ll have to rig a hoist of some kind so that we can lower the disassembled parts and the cargo on a rope.”
“We?” said Dulcie Gherardesca, her gaze flicking back and forth between Matthew and Tang. “I thought you’d decided to agree that Tang would be a more useful member of the expedition.”
“Not exactly,” Matthew replied. “I’d conceded that there was an arguable case to that effect. Having thought it over, though, I’ve decided that I still want to go.”
It was Dulcie, not Tang, who said: “It’s not really a matter of wanting, is it?”
“Actually,” Matthew said, having had time to prepare his case, “I think it is. Tang doesn’t want to go—he only thinks he ought to because his exaggerated sense of duty tells him that he might be more useful as an observer and interpreter of whatever we find down there. He’s interested in the specimens that we might gather, of course, but he’s interested as a biochemist. He won’t be able to do much with them en route. I, on the other hand, do want to go—and my admittedly unexaggerated sense of duty tells me that I might be just as useful an observer and interpreter as he would be. I’m an ecologist: I need to see the wildlife in its natural habitat, to get a feel for the way that actual organisms live and interact. Bernal was desperate to go because he knew that the environments downstream are much richer than the ruins, and he believed that an ecologist’s eyes were necessary to supplement Ike’s and Lynn’s lab-educated vision. He was right, and that’s why I should be the one to go.”
Dulcie and Godert Kriefmann both looked at Tang to see what his reaction to that would be, but Blackstone was quick to butt in. “I agree with Fleury,” he said. “A fresh pair of eyes is what we need.”
“That’s not why I think I’d be useful,” Matthew was quick to say. “Quite the reverse, in a way. It’s the way my eyes are trained that’s important. We’re all biologists, but with all due respect to Tang, Ike, and Lynn, I’m the only one who knows how to look at organisms as organisms, and as participants in ecosystems, rather than as aggregations of molecules. Tang knows far more about the genomics and proteomics of Tyre than I could hope to learn in half a year, let alone a few days—but there’s a sense in which that kind of perception is blinkered. The expedition needs more balance than Tang can provide; it needs Dulcie, and it needs me. And I want to go—not as a mere matter of duty, but as a matter of enthusiasm. I think that ought to count.”
There was a slight pause before Kriefmann said: “I suppose we ought to vote on it, then.”
“No,” said Tang. “That’s exactly what we shouldn’t do. I am prepared to concede the point. Matthew should go.”
Matthew was less surprised by this turn of events than some of the others seemed to be—which was, he supposed, support for Rand Blackstone’s conviction that a fresh pair of eyes could be an asset. One conversation with Tang had been enough to convince Matthew that the biochemist was a man so reasonable that his reasonableness might almost be reckoned excessive—and that same conversation had apparently served to reassure Tang that Matthew was a potential convert to his cause.
“Aren’t we forgetting something?” Vince Solari put in.
No one was in any doubt as to what he meant. “You can’t expect us to put everything on hold while you complete your investigation,” Lynn Gwyer said. “There’s no guarantee that