Mafkona looked at him with a question in her eyes. The young man continued, “I do not think that the predator will take our backpacks off of its prey before killing it. We must run to them.”
Omis and Mafkona looked at Ama in bewilderment, but when they saw that their companion had first sat on the edge of the boulder and then slipped off it, they followed him. Descended from the stone, the young people ran to the animals. As they were in motion, they were watching what was happening on the shore.
The BRLC-1 reached the amphibian one meter from the stream. The RLH-1 stopped, turned to meet the enemy, and opened its mouth wide. The predator didn’t pay any attention to this and, in turn, pulled apart its huge jaws. As a result, the large beast simply grabbed its victim by the head, in spite of its opened mouth.
Now the BRLC-1 was dragging the amphibian to the water, and the latter, spreading its legs wider, was trying to press against the stones. This effort appeared insufficient, and the predator was slowly but inexorably pulling it to the river.
When the carnivore had reached the stream with its victim in its mouth, about twenty paces separated Ama from the scene of battle. He stopped, raised his bow and, after a short spell aiming, fired an arrow. A moment later, a sharp stick pierced the wide side of the predator.
The beast immediately abandoned its prey, wheezed angrily and looked around toward the one who had wounded it. When it saw the strange creatures, the predator issued another wheeze, ending in a hiss, and rushed towards them violently.
The powerful animal soon realized that it now had worthy rivals. The second arrow hit it directly in its open mouth and disappeared there. The creature again tried to hiss, but instead a stream of orange blood burst from its mouth. The beast staggered and stopped moving forward. A moment later a third arrow pierced its only eye.
Meanwhile, the scouts had neared the beast, so that they could already hear its attempts to breathe, which ended with a series of gurgles. Finally, the creature fell on its left side. Ama, passing it by, simply cast a fleeting glance at the predator. He rushed toward the RLH-1, but to no avail. He couldn’t see an animal with their backpacks anywhere! The amphibian had managed to hide in the depths and had drowned their belongings!
Ama ran knee-deep into the water, and soon realized with surprise and bewilderment that he was too late. Mafkona and Omis, already standing beside him, also peered intently into the river-filled canyon. They silently walked back and forth along the bank, trying to see something in the transparent water.
Ama stopped first. He looked dejectedly at his companions and said, “What is the point of looking for it? Even if we see our things somewhere in the depths, do we dive after them? Was this beast the only one in this river?”
Hearing his words, Omis and Mafkona looked away from the river and stared at him. Shortly afterwards, the girl said quietly, “Everything happened so quickly.”
“This place looked so quiet and safe,” Omis added thoughtfully. “We have never seen such an animal in the River Quiet.”
“Maybe this river is much warmer than the Quiet, and because of this, it lives only here? Perhaps the geysers somehow heat this water?” Mafkona suggested.
Ama sighed, and said in a dead voice, “Let us first find out what we have lost and what remains.”
He slowly stepped out of the river and walked over to the only rucksack left on the pebbles. He opened it and looked inside. Naturally, there was only a raft-tent, its six wedges made of the wood of large plants, and an ax-hammer. Then he thoughtfully looked at the only maser lying nearby.
In addition, the wayfarers had a bow and quiver with six arrows inside it. They also had leather flasks on their belts. That was all. The food, two masers and the three UDs had disappeared.
Chapter 56
After the colonists had made that day’s decision, Em got up and, leaving the center of the settlement that was illuminated by electric light, headed to the river. He walked past the last house and approached the edge of the plateau. Here he raised his head and looked at the cloudless sky.
There, surrounded by stars, Seler hovered in the company of Tail. Sated in his view of the celestial bodies, he averted his look from the heavens and lowered it down. Here before his sight the neighborhood appeared, illuminated by the giant planet. It was as if the yellow rays of the night luminary covered the buildings, plantations in the north, a corn field in the south and the forest beyond them, with a golden patina.
The next moment the young man noticed a moving red dot in the north—a signal diode of the RA-5 or the RB-5.At these times, after the construction of the HPP, only one task remained to them—the night patrol of the colony. They walked around the perimeter of the extended living area, which comprised the residential buildings, a cattle pen, a bird yard, and beehives.
Having enjoyed the view, he descended a little bit down the hill and sat on the grass. In the surrounding silence the rustle and splash of the great river could be heard. Earlier, apart from this, nothing had disturbed the night’s calm, but now, when a rivulet, which they called Electro, was flowing inside of a narrow gutter, its flutter also added to the whisper of the river. Soon, the sound of approaching footsteps was joined to the duo of water currents.
“Do you also think of the three?” asked the newcomer.
“Why, we have already decided what to do, ’have not we, Bame?” Em, a muscular young man with chestnut colored hair and massive features, said without turning his head.
“Did you hear what I was interested in after supper?” His interlocutor answered with a question.
“It seems that you mentioned some uncertainty, but I do not remember, I was in my own thoughts,” Em said, and looked at his interlocutor at last.
“I tried to say that perhaps we have reached the age when the rules do not determine our whole life, but so far no one has realized this. This is not surprising, as I myself only realized this today,” Bame explained.
“What did you realize? I do not understand.” Em stared at his comrade’s poorly lit face.
Meanwhile, the latter squatted beside him. “I said that most of us will soon have a mate, but some will remain alone.”
Em shrugged and said calmly, “That is not news. Why are you telling me this?”
“You and I now live in the same house, and therefore we often communicate with each other more than with the others, so I will share my guess with you, and my plan.”
By saying ‘now’ Bame meant that, starting at the age of fifteen, the colonists had changed houses every hundred and fifty days. The draw determined who would live in which house, and with whom. They always checked the condition of their new home, and if they found a mess in it, then the old residents must eliminate the disorder. The young people could take with them into their new habitation only their personal clothes and shoes, sewn to fit their size.
“A plan?” Em showed moderate curiosity.
“Have you ever thought what you would do if the LAI-5 leaves you without a mate?” Bame spoke slowly.
“What for?” Em was a little surprised. “After all, the instructions say that a person who is left without a mate will receive it from the next generation, or due to unforeseen circumstances. What is the matter, why has it become so important to you today?”
“Aha!”Bame, instead of answering, said in a low voice, but merrily as if he had invented a way to travel to Earth. “I completely forgot that last point.”
Em stared at him expectantly. Bame met this look with an ambiguous smile and asked, “What if you have to wait for the next generation of women for twenty years? Are you ready to spend all that time, for example, in my company?”
Em, showing that he still did not know what kind of conversation they were having, puffed out his lower lip, and then asked, “This is written in the program, and you know it. I still cannot understand what you are trying to say to me.”
“I am trying to say,” Bame began vigorously. “I do not want to just work and watch for two decades how others mu
ltiply.”
“What do you have in mind?” Em was not following again. “Why are you attaching so much importance to this… hmm, have not I already asked you this question?”
“I did attach importance to this issue because, unlike you and the others, today I thought about the future,” Bame said firmly.
“You alone thought about the future, and no one else?” Em doubted, and reminded his interlocutor, “We have been doing that almost every night.”
Bame shook his head, pursed his lips for a few seconds, and answered, “Our talks about the future serve to plan what we will do the next day, the day after tomorrow, and in a few days. Or we dream of what will happen in the centuries to come. But actually these are just thoughts about how to implement the schedule drawn up by the earthlings for the development of this new planet. Now I am talking about our personal life—have we ever mentioned it?”
This time, Em listened carefully to his comrade, and then asked, “Personal life? In what sense? Does everything that happens on Neia not concern each of us personally?”
Bame shook his head in denial: “On the one hand, you are right—everything that happens or exists on Neia, and in general the entire planet, belongs to us—thirty people, equally. But in reality, this equality is deceptive, because not all of the men will have a mate. It means that some of us will not participate in the further implementation of the SQP project.”
“What do you mean?” Em asked. Apparently he was already tired of these puzzles.
“I mean that the extra men will not become the founders of a new humanity, because they will not have offspring,” Bame said energetically. “Others will produce a new generation and take care of its upbringing. At the same time, if you are left alone, you would have an existence similar to our almost worn-out robots. Do you want to exist like a robot does?”
Bame saw that his last words had finally melted Em’s indifference. There appeared to be signs of uneasiness on his face.
These signals encouraged Bame, and he continued to persuade his companion even more zealously, “Have you ever thought about such things? Have you tried to figure out what the future holds for you, Em? Where do you want to stop participating in the development of Neia? Do you want to end it simultaneously with your death? Do you want to disappear without a trace, or do you want to become the founder of a new humanity?”
Em frowned. This time he thought for a really long time, although in the end he just asked incredulously, “And how can this be changed?”
“It is necessary to develop separate rules, secretly from the others,” Bame replied, without batting an eyelid.
It took Em a few seconds to understand this idea. After that he fixed a puzzled look at Bame and specified hesitantly, “Must we come up with new rules secretly from our comrades? What kind of rules?”
Bame said resolutely, “We need rules which we do not have now, but which will guarantee us a mate.”
After hearing these words, Em asked, with obvious displeasure in his voice, “I still cannot understand your idea. Can you reveal it in full, and not in part?”
In response, Bame asked carefully and nervously, “Tell me, if those two, Omis and Ama, do not return, would it be good or bad?”
At first, Em looked at him with eyes widened in astonishment and then said, “Of course it would be bad. It is a pointless question.”
Obviously, Bame wasn’t going to say anything more. Instead, he glanced over his shoulder toward the refectory, visible to the south of the nearest house. Then he lowered his head and showed with his whole appearance that he was waiting for his interlocutor to think over what he had heard. Frowning, Em looked at him for a while. Then he turned away and set his gaze somewhere above the river.
Finally he took a deep breath and said, nodding to the darkness, “Indeed, what if something bad happens to them during the march? As far as I know, nothing is written in the rules about such an incident. The magnifier broke by accident, did not it?”
“That is exactly the circumstance that you reminded me of a few minutes ago, which allows the extra men to have mate,” Bame uttered.
Em, after he’d turned his head to his comrade and looked at him musingly, continued to speak slowly, “If Mafkona returns alone, there will be no extra men in the colony and…”
The assumption that he’d stumbled upon at that moment left Em awestruck. He lost the gift of speech and seemed to have turned to stone. Bame simply waited and even looked away from him. Finally, after a long pause, Em still managed to finish his thought:“…it turns out that, um, the non-existence of Ama and Omis would not hinder the mastering of Neia?”
Hearing these words, Bame turned to him and said with obvious relief, “I see you have already also understood that the plan of colonization has reached the threshold where it loses its former clarity and unambiguity. This follows at least from the fact that their disappearance does not change anything in the colonization schedule.”
After another long silence, Em nodded at his own thoughts once, then several more times, and in the end he said quietly, “It is unlikely. If something happens to the guys, Mafkona would not bring the crystal back on her own. The same danger—would affect her too.”
In response, Bame got up for a few seconds and looked at the dining room, where their comrades were sitting, lit by a meager electric light. Then he squatted down again and, after a deep breath, he spoke in a low voice: “I want to remind you what we studied at school—since the time when humanity mastered fire, the only other animal truly dangerous to them has been another human being.”
Em tried to find the true meaning of Bame’s words, but being unable to do so he simply asked, “What does that mean? How does this relate to our situation?”
It seemed that Bame had expected Em to understand his hint, but as this did not happen, he reluctantly continued to explain, as before, in his roundabout way, “I think that for Ama and Omis, given their armament, animals are not a real danger.”
Em frowned. Obviously, he’d followed the logical chain flowing from Bame’s words and, at last, understood the essence of the conversation. As soon as he did so, he looked at his comrade with widened eyes and began to speak without confidence, “Are you really saying that someone should eliminate the extra men?”
“Do you know why you are so amazed?” Bame asked imperturbably. “Because I have calmly and unhurriedly considered this situation, and you have not. Now you can do the same as I have—think logically."
He stopped for a moment and, having carefully examined Em’s face, continued to speak, “Did not you tell me a minute ago that the accidental death of Omis and Ama cannot affect the mastering of the planet? But what difference does it make if their deaths are accidental or intentional?”
Em stared at him with a look full with astonishment, and Bame continued to lay out his thoughts to him: “In the pursuit of a mate, primitive people used to eliminate their rivals physically. So what of it? Did this prevent the human species from mastering their planet and reaching space? We must take advantage of their experience, because we are now in a similar situation.”
Bame took a deep breath and resumed his speech, peering directly at Em’s pupils, illuminated by the pale brilliance of the night luminary: “Once again I tell you: think logically and get rid of emotions, because they interfere with proper thinking and contradict the mind. Do what we have been taught all our lives.”
Em listened to these admonitions with a petrified face, and when Bame had finished, he was silent for a long time, not taking his eyes off his interlocutor. Then he said in a muffled voice, “Do you think that this is the most correct action at this stage in the development of the colony?”
As Bame simply waited and did not utter a word, Em continued reluctantly, “Let us assume that…if we kill Ama and Omis, nothing will happen to us after that? Would the robots and the other colonists not do the same to us?”
Bame answered confidently, “From the moment the number of men and women are equa
l, further killings would be meaningless, and dangerous for the colony. On the contrary, I believe that the others would consider our action as logical and far-sighted. There is one more reason for this.”
“What if the LAI-5 decides that we can have a mate? Then it would appear that we had killed humans for no purpose.” Em said fairly loudly.
Bame once again looked toward the people in the refectory and then said with confidence, “Be that as it may, redundant males will be a big problem for the colonization plan in the future.”
“What do you mean?”
Bame explained, “Are you sure that later someone else might not come up with the same thing as we have? No, I think it will happen for sure, especially if he does not get a woman from the next generation. And what then? Are you sure that he will agree to be just an auxiliary robot until the end of his days? How do you know that he will not kill some other male, and perhaps not only him, but also his offspring, in order to give way to his descendants, as animals do?”
Em listened to this explanation and then asked, “How about the doctrine that we must take care of each other, help each other, not leave our comrades in trouble, and protect each other? We were taught that this is the main rule of our existence, were we not?"
Bame frowned for a while, and then began to answer with a stubborn expression on his face: “If people only cared for each other and did not challenge each other, being afraid to do harm, um, to a neighbor, if they did not compete constantly, how would they improve—how would they evolve?”
He looked at Em with the facade of a person who had invented a perfect way out in a hard situation: “Our intention is also to care, not only just for the individual, but about the whole species. For its benefit, the predominance of those genes whose owners have understood the new conditions earlier than others and have better adapted to them is needed. This is how evolution has worked from the very first day of human existence.”
Bame paused before finishing his speech, “We are looking for a way to rid the colony of future dangers, and we are showing our concern for both the future humanity of Neia and the plan of the earthlings.”
Space for Evolution Page 25