Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [172]
Ike was getting into the swim now. For the first time, he took up the argument himself. “Here, chimeras exist,” he said, “and they take all the extra opportunities that chimerization provides. At least, the worms and slugs do, because they’re the ones best fitted to do it.”
“And what makes them best fitted to do it,” Matthew said, “is that they’re so utterly and completely stupid. Swapping biomechanical bits back and forth between organisms is fine and dandy, just so long as the organisms are no smarter than Voconia, running their legs and tentacles on separable autonomic systems.”
“But the humanoids couldn’t do that,” Ike said.
“Right. In order to stay smart—and we have to assume that once they became self-consciously smart the humanoids wanted to stay that way—they had to cut right back on the joys of chimerization. That economy—the increasing strategic avoidance of all the kinds of chimerical renewal that might ruin their big and tightly organized brains—wasn’t particularly costly in reproductive terms, at first, because they’re naturally emortal. When it became costlier, though, as it must have done when they invented agriculture and opened up a whole new wonderland of opportunity to their rivals, they had to backtrack. That’s why social and technological progress did a U-turn here. And there, but for the grace of fire and iron … will that hold the stage for a little while longer, do you think?”
“You haven’t the slightest idea whether it’s true,” Ike pointed out, dutiful as ever. “But yes, as a story, I guess it will run, if only for a little while. Eventually, though, you’re going to have to face up to the fact that it’s all just talk.”
Matthew knew that Ike was right, but when he looked around, all he could see was sheer purple stalks, too slick for anything but a clever worm to climb, and serrated blades that would cut any climber but the most discreet to ribbons. The purple canopy was intriguingly complex, but it was far too dense for its details to be distinguished and defined. Enough light filtered through it to create delicate effects of shade and sparkle, but from the viewpoint of the camera’s eye it was mere wallpaper.
The ground on which they walked was by no means unpopulated by motile entities, but the light-starved population seemed to consist mainly of colorless saprophytes; its detail was not without scientific interest, but nor was it telegenic. There were undoubtedly animals around that were far more complex than worms, including reptile-analogues and mammal-analogues—ground-dwellers as well as canopy-climbers—but they were shy. It was well-nigh impossible to capture more of them on camera than their fleeing rear ends.
It would not have made very much difference, though, if the forest had been lavishly equipped with gorgeous flowers and monstrous insects. Everyone on Hope had already seen discreetly obtained flying-eye footage of thousands of different kinds of alien plants and hundreds of different kinds of alien animals. What they had not seen, and what Matthew had recklessly promised them, was a humanoid. That was what he had to deliver, in order to create the kind of consensus among the human emigrants that seemed so obviously lacking, and so obviously needed. In the meantime, he had to keep feeding them a story that was interesting enough to hold their interest.
So he and Ike did their double act.
Matthew put out every last thought that he had in reserve, but the day wore on and dusk arrived again, and the perpetual purple twilight faded to black for a second time.
They had covered more than forty kilometers