Outies

by Pournelle, J. R.

And when His angels cross our doors

  We’ll know we’ve made amends.

  Arise! And leave no stone unturned!

  Arise! And plow each field!

  Arise! Believe! That all who yearn

  Will see His Face revealed!

  We fled in fear His awful Gaze

  But with His Earthly Eye

  He sees, He knows, He sends His Grace

  Across all starry skies.

  So shoulder all your burdens!

  For when your time is done

  Revealed at last! His angels

  Will make all Churches one!

  Mesolimeran Tables of Measure

  From: New Utah “Motie” Accounting Systems, A.S.A.C.H. Quinn

  “Three-Hand,” or “Cattle” Accounting

  Living beings that can be entailed, leased, loaned, bought, or sold, and that are entitled to ration allotments from their “holder,” are accounted with the so-called “three-hand,” or “cattle” system. Classed as “digits,” these entities include livestock, slaves, adopted children, widows, orphans, lower-ranks military members, various laborers, and powered vehicles, equipment, and appliances.*

  “Three-Hand,” or “Cattle” Accounting

  Note that both “1,000” and “10,000” are called a “Grip.” The difference is generally inferred from context.

  *A considerable body of religio-legal precedence grew from litigation surrounding classification of individuals in this schema. In this body of work, three underlying principles came to guide juridical decision-making. These were that the individual concerned (a) is not entitled to, or is incapable of, independent food production, (b) is not entitled to, or capable of, independent food procurement by other means, and (c) is entitled to be fed by someone else, as a matter of both legal and sacred obligation. By extension of these principles, powered vehicles and machinery also came to be accounted in this way. In the figurative sense, like fingers that grip and manipulate, but wither if cut off from blood supply, “digits” add power to the hand that wields them—but at a price.

  In “three-hand” accounting, units 1-“10” represent the six digits of the first hand. Each unit of “10,” or a Hand, is then tallied on hand two, up to the total possible “100” (6x6=36), or a Side. Finally, each Side is transferred to the three fingers of the gripping hand, for a possible grand total of “1,000,” a Grip. Thus, in the Motie trihexagesimal system, “1,000” does not represent (6+6)2, as we might expect from our own finger-based base-10 analogy, but 6x6x3—in keeping with a Master’s finger tally.

  Land Accounting

  Land is measured and accounted by the “ar,” or “Farmer’s Grasp” system. Ar accounting is based, not on physical surface area, but on productivity estimates. The basic unit, an “ar,” or “Farmer’s Grasp,” represents approximately 1 cubic meter of fertile, arable soil.

  In some terrain, one ar might be thinly spread over many square meters of surface area. In others, one square meter of surface might actually extend several ar deep. Land payments and allotments are made in ar by a Landholder (usually, a Master), to an ar-holder (usually, a Farmer). In return, rents and taxes are paid in produce by the ar-holder to the Landholder, Creditors, and the ar-holder’s Cattle.

  Thus, it is generally in everyone’s interest to conserve and increase ar value. For the Landholder, a rise in ar promised an increase in available allotments, and the revenue derived therefrom. For the ar-holder, it meant the possibility of beating the system by getting more produce out of an allotment than it was originally worth.

  However, since arability varies with moisture, friability, and other factors, a given plot of land’s value in ar was a matter of continual, intense agronomic negotiation, accounting, and legal dispute between ar-Holder and Landholder. The most vicious disputes arose at two crucial times: (1) following natural disaster, when the ar-Holder tried (often desperately) to shift the burden of responsibility for failed crops or dead Cattle onto someone else; and (2) on an ar-Holder’s death, when final reckoning for all accounts due the Landholder and other Creditors took place.

  Land, or “Farmer’s Grasp” Accounting

  Commodity Accounting

  Harvested commodities and materials that are consumed in manufacturing, such as foodstuffs, ores and minerals, are subject to multiple (generally volumetric) systems of measure and reckoning. These are based upon what have come to be standardized in-kind payments and delivery quotas for the commodities in question.

  Humans find transaction negotiation across these systems extremely confusing (if not outright litigious). Within the Empire of Man, such contracts are concluded using standardized pricing structures derived from ancient currency-based monetary institutions. Outside the Empire, exchange rates are set by local commodities markets—many of which are de facto pegged to the Imperial Crown.

  Moties, however, have no difficulty making simultaneous calculations in several reckoning systems, while applying current, local conversion rates and standards on-the-fly. At any given time, these conversion rates and standards appear to be universally and intuitively understood by all parties, including the leveraging effects of variables like transportation costs and availability across time.

  The actual negotiation process for Motie commodity barter is poorly understood. Current research suggests that Motie commodity transactions presume perfect cost-factor knowledge, and that the opening phase of any commodity barter negotiation includes an extremely rapid exchange and verification of all underlying fiduciary assumptions. Thereafter, the subject of negotiation and litigation is never one of relative commodity value. Rather, the substance of discussions seems to treat issues of rank, duty/privilege, and ability of litigants to extract commodities by force, should negotiations collapse.

  Commodity, also called “Keeper’s Grasp” or “Bowl” Accounting

  Asymmetry, Chimerism, and Hermaphroditism in New Utah Swenson’s Apes: An Adaptive “Gene Banking” Mechanism?

  New Utah Founder’s Day Plenary Address prepared for presentation at the twenty-seventh Irregular Meeting of the New Caledonia Chapter, Interplanetary Association of Xenobiology, 2867

  Introduction

  I begin this paper with what will at first sound like a digression into some arcane points of New Utah history. Please bear with me: they will, in the end, prove relevant. And, for those of you unfamiliar with our little, far-away, home-grown university, this dip into our admittedly short history may even prove interesting.

  Probably the best-known thing about us is the tendency among residents of Maxroy’s Purchase True Church “outback” communities to imagine (and refer to) New Utah as “heaven” or “paradise.” Indeed, this is an oft-cited example of a “Golden Age” mythology, wherein subsequent generations suppress memory of actual hardships and create legends attesting a simpler, more abundant golden age in the past. Kroeber described this phenomenon in Old American Navajo myths that attested “endless flocks” of sheep with “pastures beyond the horizon” prior to European contact—an obvious example of false reminiscence, since sheep did not exist in Navajo lands prior to European arrival.

  We have had little to go on in assessing the facts of New Utah’s “golden age” presumption. Two documents existed: the New Utah True Church Founder’s Report to the Elders of Maxroy’s Purchase, filed 300 years ago by the First True Church Colony in New Utah of 2567, and the Imperial Navy’s Initial Assessment Report (IAR), filed at the turn of the following century.

  The Colony Founder’s Report refers to New Utah as a land of endless, green bounty, teeming with huntable game. That Colony, founded at what is now the New Utah capital of Saint George, was laid down in the silty plains of the Oquirr river delta. As we shall see, it may well be that, at the time of landing, the plains were covered with bright green vegetation similar to Spartina grasses, as well as animals that depended on those “grasses” for sustenance. Further, at the time of founding, the True Church on Maxroy’s Purchase itself had just withdrawn to Glacier
Valley. The expenses of that withdrawal were massive; as a consequence, the Saint George Colony was not well-funded, and the primary goal of the colony was to establish a self-sustaining agronomic base. In short: at its beginning, the TC colony at Saint George was fully occupied with survival, and conducted virtually no exploration outside the Saint George plains. Therefore, the Founder’s Report may in fact be accurate, if it is understood as applying to those plains, and not to New Utah as a whole.

  On the other extreme, the Navy IAR reported a planet that, while habitable, was largely devoid of interesting ores, characterized by brown, steppic expanses, and devoid of significant indigenous life. Once again, the context of these fly-bys must be noted: they were never intended as systematic surveys. Conducted by sector patrol ships just prior to outbreak of the Secession Wars, their primary aim was to ascertain what, if any, profitable industries might be quickly established in New Utah’s orbit. The Naval survey was aimed at identifying potential profitable resources for industrial-scale usage in space, not for local development needs. Since New Utah has only one moon—a small, lumpy, rock devoid of metals—and no significant asteroids, it was clear that any industrial resources would need to be planet-based, significantly increasing transport costs for either ores or finished products. Nothing likely to be profitable was identified in the IAR, and the report did not recommend undertaking the expense of more intensive follow-up.

  Thus, from the perspective of New Utah colonizers, New Utah was heaven: readily available surface water, arable land, abundant grazing for pastoral production, and sufficient game to see the colony through the first few winters. Further, as compared to the extreme winter temperatures of Glacier Valley, the Saint George climate was exceedingly mild. However, from the perspective of the Imperial Fleet, there was nothing of interest that was not more readily available from (already remote) Maxroy’s Purchase or the recently terraformed planets of New Caledonia. Indeed, at the time, there was a good deal of political pressure to provide justification for the high investment made to terraform New Ireland and New Scotland.

  By local standards, the New Utah colony was a quick and enduring success. According to MP True Church records, within one decade the Saint George colony not only became self-sustaining, but stockpiled the rotating four-year surplus advocated by LDS doctrine. At the conclusion of that decade, explorers and provisioned settlers had established farmsteads on the fertile plains surrounding what is now Bonneville, and TC tithe-houses quickly followed. Stock-grazing expanded rapidly, and the 20-year report shows in-kind payments of course and fine mohair fabrics made to the Colony Foundation. Urban centers at Saint George and Bonneville grew and, for a time, even thrived, fueled by locally developed energy resources, particularly solar. Although New Utah remained fairly remote, additional settlers trickled in via Maxroy’s Purchase, gradually increasing the urban population. Many of these were non-dogmatic Mormon “Sixers,” excommunicated and shunned by the True Church expansion on Maxroy’s Purchase, who passed through Saint George and on to the Bonneville frontier.

  The question then becomes: what happened during the intervening three centuries? Until now, we knew only that the agricultural boom did not last. As early as sixty years after foundation, Saint George tithe records show that net production began to decline. The colony remained “successful,” but remained in stasis. Little or no further exploration was undertaken, and no new colonies were established on New Utah. This trend continued until, at this writing, Saint George crop and livestock production had become completely dependant on rare earth mineral supplements, in particular, selenium. Data are not available for Bonneville, which from shortly after foundation operated its affairs semi-autonomously. If Bonneville filed annual reports with the main Temple at Saint George, they have been subsequently lost.

  No doubt the onset of the Secession Wars played a role in this. New Utah and Maxroy’s Purchase were distant even from New Caledonia, and both remained largely neutral. It is likely that no external capital—from either Imperial or Secessionist forces—for further exploration and colonization was available. The True Church did (and does) continue to finance a Mission to Saint George, providing selenium-enhanced fertilizers and nutritional supplements, but New Utah agricultural operations now operate on a break-even sustenance, not a profitable surplus, basis.

  More complete answers may lie in private, family records in Bonneville. From the outset, Saint George was a True Church Farm Colony (and protectorate). Farming was conducted along strict doctrinal lines, with emphasis on high-yield production. The colony did not include a geochemist, xenobiologist, xenobotanist, or any other member dedicated to basic science. Although a TC institution for higher education was soon established, its focus was strictly vocational-technical. None of these observations is intended as criticism, rather as a description: this was a working colony, and could not afford much in the way of overhead.

  Bonneville, however, was, from the outset, a good deal more eclectic. “Sixers,” while Mormon, are descended from six LDS dissidents of the twentieth century who advocated freedom of rational intellectual inquiry. For them, investigation of basic questions is not merely a matter of interest: it is of a matter of religion. Given the severe limitations on access to information they endured—no Imperial libraries, no Universities, not even access to the True Church Archives in Saint George—most of these personal intellectual quests were at best amateurish.

  Nevertheless, amateurs often prove to be very keen observers, and some are even keen recorders. Which brings us, finally, to the crux of this paper. Although we have virtually no official surveys of the flora, fauna, or natural history of New Utah, one such keen observer and recorder did exist there. In the course of his occupational travels, during the first 50 years of New Utah’s colonial existence, John David Swenson, professional provisioner and amateur naturalist, traversed the length and breadth of all inhabited areas. He observed, imaged, and recorded the behavior of dozens of species, but became particularly enamored of a class of animals, now extinct, herein referred to as Swenson’s Apes, in honor of his discoveries.

  Swenson’s records might well have been lost to posterity, had they not on his death in Bonneville been ceded to the newly founded Saint George Technical Institute, where, he said in his will, “he hoped they might do some good.” That Technical Institute grew to become the Saint George College of Arts and Sciences, and finally Zion University. During those growth years Swenson’s notes were not in fact doing anyone much good. Due to lack of interest, they were never scheduled for data migration, and so eventually became unreadable. However, during the run-up to New Utah’s 300th Founder’s Day celebration, for her senior project an industrious Zion undergraduate took it upon herself to dredge up and transfer as many founder’s era records as possible to current media. In the course of this endeavor, she discovered Swenson’s remarkable material, and brought it to my attention.

  Swenson’s recordings are nothing less than phenomenal. At the time, these animals were classed as agricultural pests, and subject to local extermination. Swenson saw them otherwise, and became determined to record all he could before they completely disappeared. In addition to his meticulous observations, he acquired many killed specimens, conducted meticulous autopsies, and rendered three-dimensional holographic recordings. He made equally meticulous investigations of their reproductive habits, nutritional requirements, and of the plants on which they primarily depended. In the course of his work, Swenson became convinced that the creatures—or at least some of them—were sentient and deserving of protection. The Church disagreed: his work was ridiculed and suppressed, and thus his work, save the keen perception of one sharp student—was very nearly lost for all time.

  In this paper, I will not only present the first summary of Swenson’s observations to see the light of day in nearly 250 years, but demonstrate that they constituted a cautionary tale. Had they been appreciated at the time, New Utah’s agricultural collapse might well have been prevented, and New Utah w
ould not now be dependent upon selenium supplementation from Maxroy’s Purchase. As it is, they attest an exciting and possibly unique biological adaptation to extreme conditions and highly variable climate. I present it here at this conference in the hope that xenobiologists from every world will review this data, as it is directly relevant to questions of how life begins on and propagates across many worlds.

  The Planet of the Apes

  Swenson observed and recorded dozens of now-extinct animals on New Utah, but in this paper I will focus on several related species divided into two groups herein classified as Swenson’s Greater Apes and Swenson’s Lesser Apes. Swenson himself did not refer to them as “apes” at all; he was quite clear that despite their physical appearance, they were not even mammalian, let alone Earth primates. However, their general hirsute appearance, bipedal locomotion, direct manipulation of their environment with arms and hands, and absence of tails made them appear ape-like to early settlers. The chief physiological distinction between the two groups is that the Lesser Ape species are six-limbed and bilaterally symmetrical, with two legs and four arms, while the Greater Apes (in general, as we shall see below) are not, possessing only three arms.

  Swenson viewed these creatures directly, as well as conducting detailed interviews with farmers and construction workers. Early observers presumed that there was only one species of Swenson’s Ape, but that it was highly variable in size and color. The presumption was natural. The animals lived in colonies widely dispersed among the vast “grass” marshes of the Oquirr delta, about which more later. Each colony included animals ranging in size from that of a newborn human infant, to some (at the largest) approaching two meters in height. The tallest individuals were generally white in color, and the smallest brown or black, although this was not always the case. Colors included white, brown, black, and occasionally striped individuals, locally called “zebras.”