Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [162]
Matthew paused again to give Ike the chance to pan around, displaying the purple forest yet again in all its peculiar glory. This time, Matthew, hoped, the view would add something to the argument. By now, the viewers should have learned to see the alien environment through eyes whose curiosity had been cleverly restimulated: eyes informed by a more prolific imagination.
“Even in that sort of situation,” he added, hoping that his confidence was warranted, “I suppose sex could have established itself as an individual-to-individual thing, but it didn’t. It remained within individuals, and chimerization became the means by which those individuals produced new individuals, in orgies of mass production not unlike those in which most Earthly organisms indulge on a yearly basis—except that here on Tyre, there is no yearly basis. Where complex organisms are concerned, those orgies are much more widely spaced. Even for the reptile-analogues we might have to think in centuries; for the humanoids, who knows? Maybe millennia.
“In terms of the natural cycles of this world—a world whose ecosphere may be a billion years older than Earth’s—the three years we’ve been here might only be the equivalent of a few hours on Earth: a few hours in the depths of winter, when nothing’s busy with the adventurous kind of reproduction, except maybe people. But in spite of appearances, the people of Tyre aren’t like the people of Earth. They couldn’t be. Convergent evolution might have given them keen eyes and clever hands and self-conscious brains to go with their bipedal stature, but it couldn’t give them a way of making babies, because that’s not the way things work hereabouts. Think about the possible consequences of that difference, if you care to, while I’m off the air. I’ll pick up the story later. In the meantime, thanks for listening.”
THIRTY-FIVE
There’s an incoming call,” Ike said, as soon as Matthew had closed his eyes in order to collect himself.
“What?” Matthew said, automatically reaching for his useless beltphone.
“Not the phone,” Ike said. “The screen in back of the camera’s rigged to receive as well as to monitor and the fuel cell’s five times as powerful as a phone’s. We can be contacted that way, provided that—”
“Provided that the other guy has a similar rig,” Matthew finished for him, as enlightenment dawned. “Milyukov.” He took the camera from Ike’s weary arms and looked into the monitor.
“Captain,” he said. “How good of you to call. Are you enjoying the show?”
“You are being irresponsible,” Milyukov said, flatly. “You have been awake for little more than ten days. You are not qualified to produce these fantasies.”
“So put someone who is qualified on the air,” Matthew retorted. “I’m leaving gaps between broadcasts of a couple of hundred of your metric minutes—it’s up to you to decide what to fill them with.”
“We don’t go in for such time-wasting relics of Earthly barbarism as round-the-clock broadcasting,” was Milyukov’s frosty response.
“It’s up to you, of course,” Matthew told him. “But you’ve got an audience whether you want to keep it entertained or not. If you don’t want to broadcast I’m sure that you could find people at Base One who’d be only too glad to amplify or challenge my speculations, if you’d care to drop them the relevant equipment.”
“That would not be appropriate,” the captain said.
“Not from your viewpoint it wouldn’t,” Matthew agreed, sarcastically. “After all, you wouldn’t want them bringing discussions about the future of the colony into the open at such a delicate time. You certainly wouldn’t want to get involved in an actual debate, would you? You’d rather talk to your own people directly, without anyone having a chance to interrupt. Well, you’ve been well and truly interrupted, and you can either make provision to answer back or keep quiet.”
“I can take you off the air.”
“Can you? The camera Ike’s using has enough power to send out a signal