Part 5 (1/2)

They seemed so very thoughtful that I could not help but wonder what was going on in their minds.

When I flicked my fingers in front of their eyes they blinked reflexively, but I could not seem to elicit any conscious reaction from them. I didn't entertain for a moment the thought of striking one, but it did occur to me to try to shock them by violating their unwritten law of existence by picking some of the brightly-coloured flowers from the bushes and the creepers, and from the forest floor itself. I a.s.sembled a bunch of about seven, with moderately long stalks. They watched me, but did not show surprise. Finally, I held out the bunch, offering it to one of them. When she made no move at all, I reached out to take her hand so that I could put the flowers into her palm. She must have realised what I intended, because she finally reacted. I had barely touched her when she had gone. She just stepped back, and with bewildering speed she vanished into the green cage of the forest. The others were gone too, in the same instant.

I smelled each flower in turn. They were all scented. Then I dropped them, feeling slightly guilty for having picked them in the first place. The scent lingered strongly on my hands, and wiping them vigorously on my trousers had no noticeable effect.

I then set about following a second line of thought.

Having discovered that morning that the local fauna seemed to subsist on a diet which was exclusively liquid, I began to search for a source of supply. I could find nothing near ground level, but I had already observed the arboreal acrobatics of the natives, and I had been half-expecting that their food supply might be up in the treetops.

There was an abundance of small branches low down on the tree trunks, not to mention smaller woody plants, but there was very little that could possibly support my weight. I would have to climb the creepers.

I am not an accomplished rope-climber, and I found that a good many of the hanging fronds were either inadequately secured up above, or had insufficient tensile strength to take my weight for the length of time I required to ascend to the heights. All in all, it took me the best part of an hour to finally make my way up into the main branches of one of the trees. Once there it was an easy matter to make my way high into the crown of the forest.

I had chosen a very large tree, in the hope of being able to get up high enough to look out along the forest roof, but I found that the top of the tree was as heavily infested with accessories and hangers-on as the region close to the forest floor. The sheer profusion of the vegetation was a little strange. Virtually all the leafy material was made up of tiny leaflets in great numbers, and despite the great multiplicity of plants, the bright sunlight was not filtered out to anywhere near the extent that one might expect in a subtropical forest. The branches of the trees and the stems of the creepers were all relatively thin, and not nearly as turgid as I had expected to find them.

But I was sure that the aliens, and the rest of the local wildlife, milked these plants in some way and I was determined to find the method. I spent some time in a fruitless search for organs like teats, long after logic should have told me that a ma.s.s flow of any magnitude was impossible owing to the anatomy of the plants involved. Not until I realised that the majority of the supple strands which festooned the branches were not creepers at all, but parts of the tree, did I guess how the animals were nourished by the plants.

The natives must swallow the filaments to a considerable length, so that the leafleted stem was taken into the gut. The photosynthetic surface then disgorged, in liquid form, a fraction of the produce of its photosynthesis, over a very large surface area. The natives would then reel the stems-unharmed-out of their gut and allow them to continue photosynthesising.

But if the plants fed the animals with a substantial fraction of what they took from the sun, yet had not evolved more efficient processes for taking up solar energy, how did the trees provide their own growth and reproductive needs? And the answer, of course, was that they didn't. Another fact, which ought to have been obvious to me before, was revealed by a quick check. The flowers bore only one type of reproductive organ. Not only the animals, but also the plants, were exclusively female. Then why have flowers and nectar at all? Probably, as I had already suggested, some types of animal or bird fed on the nectar. But what did the plants get out of it?

None of it made sense. Except as somebody's dream of Paradise.

I told Charlot so when I met him again later. He did not seem impressed, nor did he seem particularly interested. He just looked tired. When we returned to the s.h.i.+p together we did not talk. We had already exhausted all our complaints and our bewilderment on ourselves. We were frustrated.

On the way back, as we pa.s.sed through the town, we were accosted no less than three times. The first person to approach us was David Holcomb, who started off asking sweetly enough for a personal interview with Charlot so that he could explain his side of the dispute. When Charlot told him, fairly shortly, that he (Holcomb) didn't have a side in the dispute and that he was welcome to say anything he had to say to the monitor or to one of the crew members, but otherwise just stay out of the way, he began to build up a fit of righteous indignation. Charlot stopped that dead with a few well-chosen insults that were quite alien to his usual style in such matters. Holcomb then retreated, swearing blind that if he didn't get his proper hearing, New Alexandria was going to hear a great deal more about the Aegis movement.

The second man who stopped us was the fat man, Frank Capella. I thought when I saw him approach that he was going to say exactly the same thing that Holcomb had, and I was all prepared for vitriolic words, but he was a far better diplomat. He only wanted to help us. He wanted to a.s.sure himself that we were getting all possible co-operation from his scientific staff, to apologise for the unpleasantness concerning one of his men and one of ours, and to tell us that we only had to ask for anything we wanted.

Charlot spent the whole interview nodding and grunting and generally radiating utter boredom.

Finally, Keith Just pa.s.sed us by, in a carefully contrived accidental fas.h.i.+on, and asked how we were getting on and what possibility there might be of Charlot's reaching a decision in the relatively near future.

Charlot was at least polite to Just, and when the man had pa.s.sed by he commented that Just was a man who might possibly be able to give us a new perspective. He suggested that I should talk to the peace officer in the reasonably near future.

Once we were on the road again, and relatively free from the danger of interruption, I asked him what was wrong.

”You've been looking like something six weeks dead ever since the first night,” I said. ”I've never seen you handle people like this before. You're showing about as much diplomacy as I usually do. What's the matter?”

”The lack of diplomacy is partly calculated,” he said. ”We have a real job to do here, and I can't spare the time to oil all the wheels as I usually can. I've delegated as much of the liaison work as possible to Captain delArco and Miss Lapthorn purely and simply so that I can free myself for study. Possibly I should have brought a diplomatic staff out from New Alexandria, but I knew full well they'd plague me almost as much as these people would if I allowed them to. I feel more comfortable working with the people I have here. Even with you.

”But you're right in that I am ill. It was a very minor affliction before I arrived here, but the slight effect that the air here has on metabolic processes is aggravating the illness.”

”Surely it's nothing incurable?” I asked, deeming the question virtually rhetorical in an age where disease- though widespread-never stands a chance against medicine.

But he replied ”Yes,” and he added: ”Old age.”

8.

I knew that something had to happen sooner or later, and it was that night that the plot sickened considerably. I was back at the s.h.i.+p, feeling restless, and wondering whether it was a good idea to go into town to talk to Just, or maybe to have a drink instead. Charlot had managed to seize some paperwork from Merani, and he was closeted in his cabin searching it for inspiration. Eve and Nick were in town, where they had stayed for the evening meal, and were presumably still involved in the thankless task of collecting meaningless opinions from meaningless people for their meaningless record of procedure.

Johnny and I were together in the control room. He had been on the s.p.a.cefield all day, and he was looking somewhat sulky-not to say bruised-as a result of his exploits on the previous day.

”There's a couple of things you ought to check on while you're here,” he told me.

”Like what?” I asked.

”I was checking some of your instruments,” he said hesitantly.

”You leave my instruments alone,” I said. ”You know b.l.o.o.d.y well that your interest in this s.h.i.+p starts below this deck. You keep out of the cradle and away from this panel. Now what the h.e.l.l do you mean by there being something I ought to know about?”

”Take a look in the hood,” he advised.

I was angry. The hood is the most sacrosanct element in a pilot's paraphernalia. I would have objected to Eve's touching the hood, even though she was a pilot herself, had flown the s.h.i.+p, and might have to again one day. For Johnny to play about with it was a considerable violation of principle.

”What the h.e.l.l have you been doing?” I demanded, my right hand reaching for the hood, but making no attempt to swing it across and locate it.

”I was looking,” he said uncomfortably. ”h.e.l.l, I knew I shouldn't, but I just wanted to see what things looked like-to help me to understand what goes on up here while I'm keeping the flux balanced in the belly. I wouldn't have told you, except that I think there's something odd out there.”

”Why didn't you tell me before?” I demanded. ”We've been sitting here for half an hour.”

”Because it should be rising about now. In the east. For G.o.d's sake, look. You can give me the lectures later.”

I located the hood. The s.h.i.+p's instrument panel wasn't dead, of course, but it didn't volunteer information unless it was asked. The panel was primarily for input. The hood was mostly for observation and sensory functions.

I looked to the east, expecting to see one of the planet's two tiny moons rising. But it wasn't a moon. At least Johnny hadn't walked himself into trouble for nothing. It was a s.h.i.+p, orbiting the world, where no s.h.i.+p had any right to be.

It couldn't be the Caradoc supply s.h.i.+p-which was the only s.h.i.+p legally ent.i.tled to land here while our investigation was going on-because that wouldn't hang around in orbit wasting company money.

”Well?” said Johnny, after a decent pause.

”It's a s.h.i.+p,” I said.

”I was right,” he said, sounding very relieved. ”It's perhaps as well I looked.”

”d.a.m.n it,” I said. ”You know b.l.o.o.d.y well that finding a s.h.i.+p doesn't justify your being where you had no right to be. I don't give a d.a.m.n if you find a twenty-ton meteorite that's going to drop right on top of us, I don't want you playing with my equipment.”

”But it could be important,” he complained.

”Not that important,” I a.s.sured him. But I was thinking hard, and the venom had drained out of my voice. I was very curious about that s.h.i.+p.

”Should I get the boss?” he asked.

”You can leave him alone, too,” I said. ”I haven't a clue why he hired you in the first place-if it was just to pry me loose from your back room I'd just as soon he hadn't bothered-but the least you can do is to keep him from regretting it. He already has one score against you for pulling idiot jailbreaks on Rhapsody. Don't give him any more.”

”h.e.l.l,” he said, ”I only suggested telling him there was a s.h.i.+p in orbit.”