“When I first came here,” Tang said, “I was excited by the possibility that we might be able to go straight to the top, as it were, by recovering some genetic material from the city-builders, but the quest has so far proved frustrating. We know that there are monkey-analogues further downstream, which are presumably the nearest relatives of the humanoids so far observed, but our attempts to trap mammal-analogues in and around the ruins have been just as frustrating as our attempts to discover humanoid remains. The river expedition was, of course, intended to compensate for those disappointments. I assume that it still is. One of my fallback projects—fortunately, as it has turned out—was to investigate the class of creatures that includes the one that incapacitated poor Maryanne. My initial interest had nothing do do with the fact that all the species in the group are poisonous, but the work Maryanne and I have done on the toxins has proved very useful. You’ve presumably been informed that the genomics of organisms like this one seem unusually complex even if one sets aside the matter of the second coding molecule. The genomic potential of the DNA-analogue seems to be far more elaborate than its representation in quotidian proteomics.”
Matthew had little difficulty in cutting through Tang’s excessively pedantic choice of terminology, which inevitably tempted him to an opposite extreme. “You mean that it has more genes than it seems to be using at any one time,” Matthew chipped in. “In other words, the orthodox exon-bank has all kinds of tricks up its sleeve—just the sort of thing that a serial chimera would need.”
Tang didn’t take offence at the crudity of Matthew’s presentation. Indeed, he recognized its propriety with a smile. “That’s one possible interpretation,” he agreed. “But let’s not forget the example of the humble frog.”
Matthew nodded to signify that he took the biochemist’s point. Earthly genomic analyses had shown that the relationship between genomic complexity and physical complexity wasn’t a simple one. In spite of their metamorphic capability, frogs were fairly low down on the complexity scale, but they had very bulky genomes because they maintained several parallel sets of genes for performing such seemingly simple tasks as determining the conditions in which their eggs could hatch. On the other hand, that same flexibility extended to patterns of development in early embryos—which was exactly the kind of versatility that might be an interesting consequence of the relative complexity of Tyrian genomes. “Have you made any progress figuring out what the presently unexpressed genes might be for?” he wanted to know.
“Yesterday, I would have had to say no,” Tang said. “Today …” He paused in order to wave a languid hand at his prize specimen before picking up the story. “It’s not just bigger than the other specimens I’ve seen. The mass-surface area considerations that affect growth and form are universal. It hasn’t got legs, so it doesn’t suffer from the supportive problems that affect so many Earthly animals, but the tentacles pose a similar problem. The muscular strength needed to move them increases geometrically in proportion to their length. That could be accomplished straightforwardly by adding muscular bulk, but it isn’t. The structural materials framing the muscle are different. Either a different set of genes has come into play, or the exons are teaming up according to a different pattern. Ike will suspect the latter, of course, but he’s primed to look for gene-nesting explanations. He and I will have to get together to see if we can fit the proteomics to the genomics.”
“That might help to explain why the local invertebrates don’t use a chitin-analogue in their exoskeletal components,” Matthew said. “The advantages of hardness and strength have to be set against the disadvantages of inflexibility. Earthly insects have to shed their exoskeletons if they want to get bigger. Here, where versatility is the order of the day, they use an entirely different set of molecules because it makes it easier to ring the changes.”
“Quite possibly,” Tang agreed. “It remains to be seen, of course, how flexible the system might be. So far, I’ve only had the opportunity to observe relatively minor variations of size and form. Until I find a much bigger giant, or manage to identify two radically different forms of the same chimerical cell-mix, it’s all conjecture.”
“Have you searched the flying-eye data for giant slugs that might be blown-up versions of this one?” Matthew asked.
“Not yet,” was the suitably guarded reply.
“But even if we keep the frog example in mind—especially if we keep the frog example in mind—it’s plausible that the extra genes in the DNA-analogue part of the genome include metamorphic options. Options that remain permanently in place, rather than simply guiding a growing individual through a fixed series of stages.”
“It’s all speculative, at present” Tang said. “But yes, those are the lines along which we’ve all been thinking. The parallel systems in frogs are all to do with reproduction—the options can determine the sex of hatchlings as well as facilitating development at a range of different temperatures—so it’s possible there’s a reproductive function here, if only we could figure out exactly how these creatures do reproduce. I’m no anatomist, but I can’t find anything resembling sex organs in this specimen or any of its kin. Andrei Lityansky undoubtedly told you about Bernal Delgado’s speculations about chimerical renewal and exchange, but I’m afraid that I haven’t been able to find any supportive evidence for the kinds of process he imagined. If the organisms are very long-lived, they might not bother to maintain their sex organs permanently—they might develop them temporarily just for the mating season. There are Earthly examples … but the simple fact is that we don’t know.”
“That thing is a chimera, I suppose,” Matthew said, pointing yet again at the creature in the biocontainment cell. “Is it a more complicated chimera than its smaller kin?”
“Oddly enough, no. When I began investigating the specimen I half-expected to find far more extensive chimerization than the smaller specimens exhibit, but it’s a mosaic of eight genetically distinct but phenotypically similar cell-types, which is exactly the same level of complexity as specimens with a tenth of its body mass, and less than some thumb-sized individuals of other kinds. Eight is by far the most frequent figure that turns up—four is only half as common, sixteen less than a quarter. Two crops up fairly regularly, but I haven’t yet found a thirty-two—or, for that matter, a singleton.”
“What about the mammal-analogues?” Matthew asked.
“The work that’s been done at Base One hasn’t turned up anything but fours and eights. That’s disappointing, in a way. There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between phenotypic complexity and chimerical complexity—but everything we’ve examined thus far has been a simple chimera in the sense that all the cells are closely related—often sibs or half-sibs. Again, it all comes back to reproduction. If they don’t grow temporary sex organs for the mating season they may well indulge in periodic radical experiments in chimerization, but …
“Until we catch them at it,” Matthew finished for him, “we have no way of knowing what they get up to.”
It wasn’t quite the way Tang would have put it, but he nodded agreement regardless.
“How much hidden potential are we talking about?” Matthew wanted to know. “Setting aside worries about the frog example, how versatile might these beasts be when they’re not cruising in neutral?”
That was a step too far for Tang. “I really can’t say,” the biochemist told him, sadly. “Before I could make any sort of guess I’d have to know what kind of potential it is. I’d be very interested to know what might trigger its release, if you had any ideas on that score.”
Matthew took the invitation as the compliment it was, but he wasn’t able to respond. He hadn’t made any progress at all in wondering what might substitute for Earthly seasonal changes as a series of cues determining the pattern of Tyrian life cycles. All he was able to do, as yet, was turn the question around.
“Do you have any ideas?” he asked, humbly.
“Not ideas, exactly,” Tang replied.
Matthew guessed quickly enough what that meant. “You mean you have worries,” he said. “Fears, even.” Matthew belatedly remembered what Solari had said about Tang reportedly having shown recent “signs of strain and acute anxiety.” He had seen none himself, so far—quite the reverse, in fact—but Kriefmann must have had some basis for his opinion.
“It seems to me,” the biochemist said, softly, “that the hidden potential contained in the duplex genomes of Ararat-Tyre must be responsive to ecological shifts of some kind. Perhaps it evolved in an era of intermittent ecological crises—not environmentally generated ecocatastrophes, but ecocatastrophes associated with dramatic population increases. I know that you know exactly what I mean, because I recall the rhetoric you used to employ in your inflammatory broadcasts: the lemming principle, the Mouseworld allegory, and so on. If so, isn’t it possible—perhaps probable—that the arrival of alien beings with radically different genomic systems might constitute exactly such a crisis. Thus far, I admit, the world has not responded to its invaders—unless the arrival in this vicinity of the creature that stung Maryanne can be counted a response—but the establishment of three discreet and understaffed Bases in three years has been the merest scratch on the surface. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
Because he obviously wanted Matthew to be the one to say it, Matthew spelled it out. “You’re saying that we might have avoided tweaking the lion’s tail thus far,” he said, “but that decanting the remainder of the would-be colonists and establishing an ecological base for their long-term survival would be a whole new ballgame. You’re saying that although this doesn’t look like a death trap today, it could turn into one with frightening rapidity.”
“We simply don’t know,” Tang added. “Until we figure out the protocols of reproduction, we have no idea what dangers lurk in all that hidden potential.”
And that, Matthew thought, was exactly why Tang was becoming more and more nervous as time went by, and why he had become an enthusiastic advocate of withdrawal, allying himself with the groundling party to which Konstantin Milyukov was implacably opposed.
He figured that the ice had been sufficiently thawed to allow the raising of more delicate issues. “I hear that you and I are rivals for the empty berth on Bernal’s boat,” he said, biting the bullet.
“It’s not Bernal’s boat,” Tang pointed out, mildly. “Common consent had certainly determined that he was entitled to his place in the expedition, but we have all played a part in the design and construction of the boat.”
Matthew took due note of the fact that the we in question did not include him, although Tang had not said in so many words that he ought not to be entitled to a vote when the time came to settle the matter of who should replace Bernal Delgado on the expedition downriver.
“I’m sorry,” Matthew said. “I didn’t mean to imply that it wasn’t a collective enterprise. I dare say that everybody here would gain some benefit from the opportunity to see a little more of the continent, and to penetrate the dark heart of its mysterious vitreous grasslands. I understand that you want the berth as much as I do….”
“I don’t,” Tang put in.
The interpolation took the wind out of Matthew’s sails. “You don’t?” he echoed. He was about to apologize again for his misapprehension when Tang wrong-footed him again.
“It’s not a matter of wanting,” the biochemist said. “It’s a matter of which of us is best-equipped to make productive use of the opportunity. If I thought that you were the person who could derive the most benefit from the expedition, I would unhesitatingly concede your right to be a part of it—but you have come to this situation three years too late. I feel that it is my duty to place my own expertise and experience at the disposal of the expedition.”
“But you don’t actually want to go,” Matthew said.
“That’s correct,” Tang said. He still wasn’t showing any glaringly obvious signs of strain or acute anxiety, but Matthew was beginning to realize what it was that Godert Kriefmann had picked up on.
“In fact,” Matthew added, “you don’t actually want to be here at all. You’d far rather be on Hope with Andrei Lityansky, maintaining a safe distance from your subject matter.” He reminded himself that Tang was a biochemist: a man for whom reality was contained in chemical formulas and metabolic cycles.
“That too is not a matter of wanting,” Tang told him, very calmly indeed. “it is a matter of responsibility and common sense.”
“Responsibility to whom?” Matthew challenged.
Tang sat back in his chair and regarded him very carefully. “Since you were awakened, Dr. Fleury,” he said, “you have been briefed by Konstantin Milyukov and Andrei Lityansky. It’s rumored that you have also talked to Shen Chin Che. You have certainly heard Rand Blackstone’s opinion, and Lynn Gwyer’s. Every one of those five is opposed to the notion of a temporary or permanent withdrawal from Tyre, and every one will therefore have taken some care to represent the opposing case as a matter of cowardice or foolishness—but I do not believe that you are the kind of man to take aboard the ideas of others unthinkingly. I was rather young when I first encountered your work, and not yet twenty-five when you disappeared from the media landscape, but I have had time enough to familiarize myself with your writings and your intellectual legacy. I may be mistaken, but I feel that I know you rather better than some of the people who first encountered you in the flesh—people like Lynn Gwyer and Ikram Mohammed, perhaps even Bernal Delgado. I feel confident, therefore, that you will not have prejudged this question, and that you will understand far better than many others the true significance of the changes in our situation that have taken place since Hope left Earth’s solar system.”
Wrong-footed yet again by the earnest flattery, Matthew had no idea how to reply to it. In the end, wariness defeated his reflexive impulse to try to guess what Tang might mean. “Okay,” he said. “I’m listening. Convince me.”
Tang nodded, as if this was no more than he had expected. “When we enlisted for this mission,” he said, “we did so in the expectation that Earth was about to enter a new Dark Age. You joined the ranks of the frozen in 2090 or thereabouts, more than twenty years before me, but you were a prophet of no mean ability and Mr. Solari must have told you that the situation in the early 2110s seemed every bit as desperate as you had anticipated. The ecosphere was suffering a near-universal collapse, and new plagues were in the process of sterilizing every human female on Earth. I always trusted that the human race would pull through, but I expected a drastic interruption of scientific and social progress. It seems, however, that you and I were too pessimistic.
“There was indeed a Crash, but the rebound was more rapid than you or I would have dared hope. The intelligence gleaned by Hope’s patient crew during the last few centuries suggests that the Dark Age lasted less than half a century, and that technological progress had resumed its ever-more-enormous strides by the end of the twenty-second century. Even then, it seems, men dared to hope that they could live long enough to be the inheritors of authentic emortality. It appears that they were wrong, but a potent technology of longevity was discovered soon enough—three hundred years in what is now our past. You and I, Dr. Fleury, would be members of the last generation of mortal men were it not for the fact that we both have mortal children in suspended animation aboard Hope.”
“But we’re here, and the emortals are still in the solar system,” Matthew pointed out. “We have to deal with our own situation as we are, as mortals—as we always knew that we would. The fact that Earth’s human population has survived and thrived instead of dying is welcome news, but it doesn’t affect what we came here to do. We’re still the first wave of extraterrestrial colonists: the vanguard of the diaspora.”
“On the contrary,” Tang came back at him. “That one fact changes everything—not, admittedly, in terms of what we wanted to do when we set out from the solar system, but in terms of our obligations to our fellow men. Had Earth really en
tered a Dark Age, we would indeed have arrived here as pioneers, entitled to believe that we might be the best if not the only hope for the long-term survival of our species. Given the circumstances that actually pertain, however, we are obliged to ask ourselves whether we can still go ahead with the colonization of Tyre, given that it may require less than a hundred years—and will certainly require less than two hundred—for us to learn how to engineer men who would be far better adapted to that task.
“It is certainly not the case that we could not make good use of a delay, given what we have already discovered about the problematic and enigmatic nature of the local ecosphere. If we rush ahead foolishly with the colonization project we do so at the risk of disaster—not merely for ourselves but for the local ecosphere. If, instead, we were to remain in orbit until communications with our parent world could be properly restored, continuing our studies in the meantime with reasonable discretion, we would lose nothing but time. We left the solar system because we thought the human race had run out of time, but we were wrong. We did have time, and we have it still. To act as if we did not would be stupid and irresponsible.”
Tang had been right to point out that everyone to whom Matthew had so far spoken had taken the view that the colonization project must press ahead as originally envisaged. He had also been right to imply, without being so impolite as to state it forth-rightly, that their views had fitted in so readily with Matthew’s preconceptions that he had not even thought to challenge their views with any real vigor. Now, Matthew realized that there might be some merit in the ancient saw that said that wherever fools were inclined to rush in, angels ought to tread more carefully.
“So you’re not actually against the idea of colonization,” Matthew said, carefully. “You just want to take it slowly.”
“I’m not for the idea of colonization either,” Tang said. “I believe that we ought to proceed slowly and carefully, so that we can make a proper determination of the practicality of colonization. I believe that we ought to discover the solutions to the many enigmas with which we are faced before we commit ourselves to a course of action that might be mutually destructive. And I believe that we ought to make sure that if, or when, we decide that colonization of Tyre is both feasible and desirable, the task is undertaken by people who are fully prepared for the job. You and I, Dr. Fleury, are not. We might wish that we were, but the fact remains that we are remnants of a primitive era, who have been far outstripped.
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