Part 14 (1/2)
Jerry began to look interested.
”Earth daylight is too bright,” I continued. ”It slows them down, even makes them curl up. At a light level approximating dusk, they're at their most active across the widest possible temperature range-that's when they really move. When we found them, they were torpid-but only by comparison. I take it to be a pretty good indication of the general level of brightness to be found on Chtorr. Hence, the big eyes.”
Jerry said, ”Hm,” and looked back into the millipede case with studied thoughtfulness.
”If I had access to a terminal,” I hinted, ”I could tell a lot more. It's very interesting how sensitive to light and temperature differences these creatures are. That suggests to me that the climate on Chtorr is incredibly stable. The nights must be fairly warm in relation to the days. I'd guess that the planet has a fairly hazy atmosphere with a lot of carbon dioxide in it; that would create a greenhouse effect and keep the nights from cooling too much. I also think the planet may not have any moons-or maybe only very small ones. Nothing that can exert strong tidal effects. That would make the planet stormy, not hazy.”
”Hazy, huh?” Jerry pursed his lips as he thought. His whole rubbery face deformed. ”I do know a little bit of theoretical ecology,” he said. ”You might be right-” Then he added, ”but I doubt it.”
”Oh, thanks.” I folded my arms across my chest. ”Listen, if you know a little bit, then you know a little bit isn't enough.”
He nodded his agreement. ”I know. I took my degree in T.E.”
”B.S.?”.
”Ph.D.”
”Oh.” Suddenly, I felt stupid.
”Listen, I applaud your industriousness-as well as your imagination-but your theory has holes in it big enough to drive a worm through.”
”Name six.”
”Just one will do.” He closed the lid on the case again. ”If Chtorr has a hazy atmosphere, then that means they can't see the stars. If the atmosphere is hazy enough, they won't see any moons either, especially not if they're small. That means no celestial objects in the sky to attract their interest-and that means no incentive for an intelligent race to discover s.p.a.ce travel. If your theory is correct, these bugs shouldn't be here, and neither should the worms who brought them.”
”Their eyes are much more sensitive than ours,” I replied. ”They should be able to see celestial objects under far worse viewing conditions. Look-” I took a deep breath. ”To an exobiologist, the species filling the bottom rungs of the ladder are very efficient little monitors of the physical conditions of the planet-its rotation, its temperature cycles, its light levels, its weather patterns and a thousand and six other variables. You can extrapolate the context of the ecology out of the content, if you know what to look for. Based on this evidence, Chtorr is a perpetually smoke-filled room. Or haze, or smog, or something. The point is, the atmosphere is thick and the primary is dim, but how much of each, I don't know-oh, but I can tell you what color it is.”
”Huh?” Jerry's jaw dropped. ”How?”
”That's what I've been working on.” I tapped my disk. ”It's all on here.”
He blinked. ”What is it?”
”It's a three-dimensional graph-the variables are temperature, light intensity and light frequency, demonstrated by millipede reactivity.”
”Oh,” said Jerry. He looked impressed.
”Well, hey-!” put in Ted, ”What color is it?”
”It's red,” I grinned. ”The star is dark red. What else?” Jerry considered that. His face was thoughtful. ”That's fairly well advanced along the sequence. I can see why the Chtorrans might be looking for a new home; the old one's wearing out.” He looked at me. ”How do you know?”
”Serendipity,” I admitted. ”I thought I could approximate darkness with a two-hundred-lumen output in the red bandwell, it works in a dark room; why not here? I got tired of stumbling into things. But then the new measurements didn't fit the curve I'd already established. The bugs were way too active. So I started thinking about the wavelengths of their visual spectrum. All last night I had the computer varying the color temperature of the plates at regular intervals. I gave the bugs eighteen different colors. Most of them provoked no response at all. The yellow gave some, the orange a bit more, but it was the red that made them sit up twice. A little more testing this morning showed they like it best no brighter than a terrestrial twilight-and then it correlates almost perfectly with the other set of tests.”
”It sounds like a good piece of work,” said Jerry. Suddenly, he grinned. On his face, the effect was grotesque. ”It reminds me of a project I did once. We were given three disparate life forms and we had to extrapolate the native ecology. It was a two-year project. I used over twenty thousand hours of parallel processing.” He grew more serious. ”So please don't be upset when I tell you that your conclusions might be premature. I've been through this exercise once. I know some of the pitfalls. You can't judge a planet by a single life form. There's a lot of difference between rattlesnakes and penguins. You don't know if these millipedes are representative or just a special case. We don't know what part of the planet they're from, or what kind of region-are they from the poles or the equator? Are they representative of mountainous fauna on Chtorr, or swampland creatures? Or desert, or gra.s.slands, or what? And what would that identification imply about conditions on the rest of the planet? What kind of seasons are these bugs geared to-how long are they? What kind of biological cycles? How long are the days, months, years? If they have no moons, or more than one, do they even have cyclical equivalents of months? The real question about these specimens is, where do these millipedes fit in the Chtorran ecology? All you have here are indicators: the worms like to eat bugs, and the bugs like to eat anything-is that a general or arbitrary condition? What can we imply about the shape of their food chain? And what about their breeding-what is their reproductive cycle like? What are their growth patterns? Their psychology-if they even have one? Diseases? And I haven't even begun to ask questions.”
”That's what we're here for,” I said. ”To help ask questions-and to help find answers.”
Jerry accepted that. ”Good.” He said, ”I'll see that your information gets pa.s.sed along to those who can make the best use of it. You've probably opened up a valuable area of inquiry.” He held his hand out for the disk.
”Sorry.” I shook my head. ”No terminal, no disk.”
”Uh-” Jerry looked annoyed. ”If you have information about any extraterrestrial or suspected extraterrestrial life forms, you know you're required by law to report it to the federal authorities. This is the agency.” He held out his hand again.
”No way,” I said. ”A man died for this information. I owe it to him to see it delivered. I don't want it disappearing down some rabbit hole.”
”It's against regulations to let you on a terminal before you're cleared.” He looked unhappy. ”What branch of Special Forces did you say you were with?”
”Alpha Bravo.”
”And what do you do?”
”We burn worms.”
”I wouldn't phrase it like that, if I were you. At least, not around here.” He thought for a moment, then made a face. ”Phooey on regulations. You've got a green card, haven't you? All right, I know how to do it. Come on.” He led us to a nexus of four terminals, powered up two of them, logged himself in on one and slaved the second one to his control. ”Go ahead,” he said. ”Create a pa.s.sword for yourself. You too-Jackson, is it? You'll be operating on a special department account for V.I.P.s---0h, and don't tell anyone I did this. Now, first thing-I want you to dupe that disk-”
SEVENTEEN.
THE BUS station was next to the PX. There were fifteen or twenty people standing around and waiting, most of them dressed in evening clothes or uniforms.
Hardly anybody looked up as we approached. ”What's up?” I whispered.
Ted said, ”I'll find out,” and disappeared into the crowd. He left me standing there looking after him.
Our intention had been to ride into town and take in a show or a tribe-dance. Now I just stood in front of the bus terminal, staring at the big wall-screen. It was flas.h.i.+ng: NEXT BUS-22 MINUTES. There was a blinking dot on the map, showing its present location.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and turned around. Almost immediately, I found myself staring into the face of a thin, pale little girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen at most, probably younger; she was hanging on the arm of a large, bombastic-looking man. He was puffy and florid-faced, and obviously drunk. He was old enough to be her father. He wore a plaid kilt and a rumpled military jacket. I didn't recognize the nationality; he could have been anything from Australian to Scot. I pegged him as a colonel. Or a buffoon. I was just about to give the girl a smile when he noticed me studying them. He glared and I turned away embarra.s.sed.
I looked at the two WACs instead-at least, I a.s.sumed they were WACs. They could just as easily have been wh.o.r.es. Dad always said the way to tell the difference was that ”wh.o.r.es dress like ladies, and ladies dress like wh.o.r.es.” But I never understood what he meant by that. I always thought a wh.o.r.e was a lady. By definition. These two were murmuring quietly to each other, obviously about something neither of them cared about. They were swathed in elegance and indifference. They should have been waiting for a limousine, not a bus; but-well, the whole crowd was an odd conglomeration. Maybe they were with the three j.a.panese businessmen in Sony-suits who were arguing so heatedly over something, while a fourth-obviously a secretarykept referring to the readouts on a pocket terminal.
There were four black delegates speaking some unidentifiable African language; I would have guessed Swahili, but I had no way of being sure. Three men and a tall, striking woman with her hair in painful-looking corn rows. All were in bright red and gold costumes. The woman caught me looking at her, smiled and turned away. She whispered something to one of the men and he turned and glanced at me; then he turned back to his companion and the two of them laughed softly together. I felt myself getting hot.
I was embarra.s.sed. I turned and stared into the PX window. I stayed that way, staring at faded packages of men's makeup kits until Ted came up grinning and punched my arm. ”You're gonna love this!” he said.
I turned away from the dusty window. ”What did you find?”
”Oh ... something.” He said it smugly.
”For instance?”
”An orientation reception. You know what's going on here?”
”Chtorran studies, I hope.”
”Better than that. The First Worldwide Conference on Extraterrestrial Life, with special emphasis on the Chtorran species, and particular objectives of contact, negotiation and coexistence.”
”What about control?”