There wasn't anything to do about it so we all sat down to watch the TV together. All of us wanted to see the Savannah Reed show, our favorite.
Savannah's main guest that evening was the first man ever to eat a Mungulu. He was quite open about it, even somewhat defiant. He said, “If you think about it, why should it be ethical to eat only stupid creatures, or deluded ones? It is only blind prejudice that keeps us from eating intelligent beings. This thought came to me one day recently while I was talking with a few glotch of Mungulu on a plate.”
“How many Mungulu make up a glotch?” Savannah asked. She's no dummy.
“Between fifteen and twenty, though there are exceptions.”
“And what were they doing on a plate?”
“That's where Mungulu usually hang out. Accumulate, I should say. You see, Mungulu are plate-specific.”
“I don't think I know this species,” Savannah said.
“They're pretty much unique to my section of Yonkers.”
“How did they get there?”
“They just pretty well showed up on my plate one night. First only one or two glotch of them. They looked a little like oysters. Then more came so we had the half dozen or so it takes to generate a halfway decent conversation.”
“Did they say where they were from?”
“A planet called Espadrille. I never did quite catch where it was, quadrantwise.”
“Did they say how they got here?”
“Something about surfing the light-waves.”
“What gave you the idea of eating the Mungulu?”
“Well, I didn't think about it at all at first. When a creature talks to you, you don't right away think of eating him. Or her. Not if you're civilized. But these Mungulu started showing up on my plate every night. They were pretty casual about it. All lined up on the edge of my good bone china, on the far side from me. Sometimes they'd just talk to each other, act like I wasn't even there. Then one of them would pretend to notice me—oh—it's the Earth guy—and we'd all start talking. This went on every night. I began to think there was something provocative about the way they were doing it. It seemed to me they were trying to tell me something.”
“Do you think they wanted to be eaten?”
“Well, they never said so, not in so many words, no. But I was starting to get the idea. I mean, if they didn't want to be eaten, what were they doing on the edge of my plate?”
“What happened then?”
“To put it in a nutshell, one night I got sick of horsing around and just for the hell of it I speared one of them on the end of my fork and swallowed it.”
“What did the others do?”
“They pretended not to notice. Just went right on with their conversation. Only their talk was a little stupider with one of them missing. Those guys need all the brain power they can come up with.”
“Let's get back to this Mungulu you swallowed. Did it protest as it was going down?
“No, it didn't even blink. It was like it was expecting it. I got the feeling it was no cruel and unusual punishment for a Mungulu to be ingested.”
“How did they taste?”
“A little like breaded oysters in hot sauce, only subtly different. Alien, you know.”
After the show was over, I noticed a bassinet in a corner of our living room. Inside was a cute little fellow, looked a little like me. At first I thought it was little Claude Bayerson, somehow returned. But Rimb soon put me wise.
“That's little Manny,” she said. “He's ours.”
“Oh,” I said. “I don't remember you having him.”
“Technically, I haven't. I've delayed the actual delivery until a more convenient time,” she told me.
“Can you do that?”
She nodded. “We of the Ghottich persuasion are able to do that.”
“What do you call him?” I asked.
“His name is Manny,” Rimb said.
“Is ‘Manny’ a typical name from your planet?”
“Not at all,” Rimb said. “I called him that in honor of your species.”
“How do you figure?” I asked
“The derivation is obvious. ‘Manny’ stands for ‘Little Man.’”
“That's not the way we generally do things around here,” I told her. But she didn't understand what I was talking about. Nor did I understand her explanation of the birth process by which Manny came into being. DDs, Deferred Deliveries, aren't customary among Earth people. As far as I could understand it, Rimb would have to undergo the actual delivery at some later time when it would be more convenient. But in fact we never got around to it. Sometimes it happens like that.
Manny lay in his crib and ooed and aaed and acted like a human baby would, I suppose. I was a pretty proud poppa. Rimb and I were one of the first viable human-alien intermatings. I later learned it was no big deal. People all over the Earth were doing it. But it seemed important to us at the time.
Various neighbors came around to see the baby. The Bayersons came in from their new room which they had plastered on the side of the apartment house after molting. Mrs. Bayerson had spun all the construction material out of her own mouth, and she was some kind of proud I want to tell you. They looked Manny up and down and said, “Looks like a good one.”
They offered to baby-sit, but we didn't like to leave Manny alone with them. We still didn't have a reliable report on their feeding habits. Fact is, it was taking a long time getting any hard facts about aliens, even though the federal government had decided to make all information available on the species that came to Earth.
The presence of aliens among us was responsible for the next step in human development, the new interest in composite living. You got tired of the same old individualism after a while. Rimb and I thought it could be interesting to be part of something else. We wanted to join a creature like a medusa or a Portuguese man=of=war. But we weren't sure how to go about it. And so we didn't know whether to be pleased or alarmed when we received our notification by mail of our election to an alien composite life-form. Becoming part of a composite was still unusual in those days.
Rimb and I had quite a discussion about it. We finally decided to go to the first meeting, which was free, and see what it was like.
This meeting was held at our local Unitarian Church, and there were almost two hundred people and aliens present. There was a lot of good-natured bewilderment for a while as to just what we were supposed to do. We were all novices at this and just couldn't believe that we were expected to form up a two hundred person composite without prior training.
At last someone in a scarlet blazer and carrying a loose-leaf binder showed up and told us that we were supposed to be forming five unit composites first, and that as soon as we had a few dozen of these and had gotten the hang of morphing and melding, we could proceed to the second level of composite beinghood.
It was only then that we realized that there could be many levels to composite beings, each level being a discrete composite in its own right.
Luckily the Unitarian Church had a big open space in the basement, and here is where we and our chimaeric partners fit ourselves together.
There was good-natured bewilderment at first as we tried to perform this process. Most of us had had no experience at fitting ourselves to other creatures, so we were unfamiliar with for example, the Englen, that organ of the Pseudontoics which fits securely into the human left ear.
Still, with help from our expert (the guy in the scarlet blazer) who had volunteered to assist us, we soon had formed up our first composite. And even though not everything was entirely right, since some organs can fit into very different types of human holes, it was still a thrill to see ourselves turning into a new creature with an individuality and self-awareness all of its own.
The high point of my new association with the composite was the annual picnic. We went to the Hanford ruins where the old atomic energy place used to be. It was overgrown with weeds, some of them of very strange shapes and colors indee
d. There was a polluted little stream nearby. We camped there. There were about two hundred of us in this group, and we deferred joining up until after lunch was served.
The Ladies' Auxiliary gave out the food, and they had a collection point just beyond, where everyone put in what they could. I dropped in a Synestrian bill that I had just been paid for a novelette. A lot of people came around to look at the bill and there was a lot of ooing and aahing, because Synestrian bills are really pretty, though they're so thick you can't fold them and they tend to make an unsightly bulge in your pocket.
One of the men from the Big Red composite cruised over and looked at my Synestrian bill. He held it up to the light and watched the shapes and colors chase each other.
“That's mighty pretty,” he said. “You ever think of framing it and hanging it on the wall?”
“I was just about to think about that,” I said.
He decided he wanted the bill and asked me how much I wanted for it. I quoted him a price about three times its value in USA currency. He was delighted with the price. Holding the bill carefully by one corner, he sniffed at it delicately.
“That's pretty good,” he said.
Now that I thought about it, I realized that Synestrian money did have a good smell.
“These are prime bills,” I assured him.
He sniffed again. “You ever eat one of these?” he asked me.
I shook my head. The notion had never occurred to me.
He nibbled at a corner. “Delicious!”
Seeing him enjoying himself like that got me thinking. I wanted a taste myself. But it was his bill now. I had sold it to him. All I had was bland old American currency.
I searched through my pockets. I was clean out of Synestrian bills. I didn't even have one left to hang on my wall back home, and I certainly didn't have one to eat.
And then I noticed Rimb, melding all by herself in a corner, and she looked so cute doing it that I went over to join her.
Microbe
JOAN SLONCZEWSKI
Joan Slonczewski is a scientist and writer who lives in Gambier, Ohio, and teaches at Kenyon College. Her novels, such as her famous A Door into Ocean, are informed by Quaker ideals and feminism, as well as by the loving scientific details underpinning the story. This is a rare short story by one of the finest younger SF writers. It is set in the same future universe as the novel mentioned and its sequel, Daughter of Elysium, but in a different place and in the distant future of even that imagined setting. Like the Baxter story, it harks back to the fiction of Hal Clement and, in this case, James Blish of “Surface Tension,” inventing and solving a clever SF problem posed by a precisely imagined world of wonders. It appeared in Analog.
That rat didn't die.” Andra walked around the holostage. Before her, projected down from the geodesic dome, the planet's image shone: Iota Pavonis Three, the first new world approved for settlement in over four centuries. As Andra walked around, the brown swirl of a mysterious continent peered out through a swathe of cloud. She stopped, leaning forward on her elbows to watch. What name of its own would the Free Fold Federation ultimately bestow on IP3, Andra wondered; such a lovely, terrifying world.
“Not the last time, the rat didn't.” The eye speaker was perched on her shoulder. It belonged to Skyhook, the sentient shuttle craft that would soon carry Andra from the study station down to land on the new world. A reasonable arrangement: The shuttle craft would carry the human xenobiologist through space for her field work, then she would carry his eye on the planet surface, as she did inside the station. “The rat only died down there the first eight times.”
“Until we got its ‘skin’ right.” The “skin” was a suit of nanoplast, containing billions of microscopic computers, designed to filter out all the local toxins—arsenic, lanthanides, bizarre pseudoalkaloids. All were found in local flora and fauna; inhaling them would kill a human within hours. In the old days, planets had been terraformed for human life, like Andra's own home world Valedon. Today they would call that ecocide. Instead, millions of humans would be lifeshaped to live here on planet IP3, farming and building—the thought of it made her blood race.
“We got the right skin for the rat,” Skyhook's eye speaker pointed out. “But you're not exactly a rat.”
From across the holostage, an amorphous blob of nanoplast raised a pseudopod. “Not exactly a rat,” came a voice from the nanoplast. It was the voice of Pelt, the skinsuit that would protect Andra on the alien planet surface. “Not exactly a rat—just about ninetenths, I'd say. Your cell physiology is practically the same as a rat; why, you could even take organ grafts. Only a few developmental genes make the difference.”
Andra smiled. “Thank the Spirit for a few genes. Life would be so much less interesting.”
Pelt's pseudopod wiggled. “The rat lived, and so will you. But our nanoservos completely jammed.” The microscopic nanoservos had swarmed into sample life forms from IP3 to test their chemical structure. But for some reason they could barely begin to send back data before they broke down. “Nobody cares about them.”
“Of course we care,” Andra said quickly. Pelt never let anyone value human life above that of sentient machines. “That's why we cut short the analysis, until we can bring samples back to the station. That's why we're sending me.”
“Us,” he corrected.
“All right, enough already,” said Skyhook. “Why don't we review our data one last time?”
“Very well.” A third sentient voice boomed out of the hexagonal panel in the dome directly overhead. It was the explorer station herself, Quantum. Quantum considered herself female, the others male; Andra could never tell why, although sentients would laugh at any human who could not tell the difference. “Here are some microbial cells extracted from the soil by the last probe,” said Quantum.
The planet's image dissolved. In its place appeared the highly magnified shapes of the microbes. The cells were round and somewhat flattened, rather like red blood cells. But if one looked closer, one could see that each flattened cell was actually pinched in straight through like a bagel.
“The toroid cell shape has never been observed on other planets,” said Quantum. “Otherwise, the cell's structure is simple. No nuclear membranes surround the chromosomes; so, these cells are like bacteria, prokaryotes.”
Skyhook said, “The chromosome might be circular, too, as in bacteria.”
“Who knows?” said Pelt. “On Urulan, all the chromosomes are branched. It took us decades to do genetics there.”
“We just don't know yet,” said Quantum. “All we know is, the cells contain DNA.”
“The usual double helix?” asked Skyhook. The double helix is a ladder of DNA nucleotide pairs, always adenine with thymine or guanine with cytosine, for the four different “letters” of the DNA code. When a cell divides to make two cells, the entire helix unzips, then fills in a complementary strand for each daughter cell.
“The nanoservos failed before they could tell for sure. But it does have all four nucleotides.”
Andra watched the magnified microbes as their images grew, their ring shapes filling out like bagel dough rising. “I'll bet their chromosomes run right around the hole.”
At her shoulder Skyhook's eye speaker laughed. “That would be a neat trick.”
Quantum added, “We identified fifteen amino acids in its proteins, including the usual six.” All living things have evolved to use six amino acids in common, the ones that form during the birth of planets. “But three of the others are toxic—”
“Look,” exclaimed Andra. “The cell is starting to divide.” One of the bulging toroids had begun to pucker in, all along its circumference. The puckered line deepened into a furrow all the way around the cell. Along the inside of the “hole,” a second furrow deepened, eventually to meet the furrow from the outer rim.
“So that's how the cell divides,” said Skyhook. “Not by pinching in across the hole; instead it slices through.”
“The better to toast
it.”
At that Pelt's pseudopod made a rude gesture. “Pinching the hole in wouldn't make sense, if your chromosomes encircles the hole; you'd pinch off half of it.”
Andra squinted and leaned forward on her elbows. “I say—that cell has three division furrows.”
“The daughter cells are dividing again already?” Skyhook suggested.
“No, it's a third furrow in the same generation. All three furrows are meeting up in the middle.”
“That's right,” boomed Quantum's voice. “These cells divide in three, not two,” she explained. “Three daughter cells in each generation.”
Sure enough, the three daughter cells appeared, filling themselves out as they separated. Other cells too had puckered in by now, at various stages of division, and all made their daughters in triplets. “How would they divide their chromosomes to make three?” Andra wondered. “They must copy each DNA helix twice before dividing. Why would that have evolved?”
“Never mind the DNA,” said Pelt. “It's those toxic amino acids you should worry about.”
“Not with you protecting me. The rat survived.”
Quantum said, “We've discussed every relevant point. We've established, based on all available data, that Andra's chance of survival approaches 100 percent.”
“Uncertainties remain,” Skyhook cautioned.
Andra stood back and spread her hands. “Of course we need more data—that's why we're going down.”
“All right,” said Skyhook. “Let's go.”
“I'm ready.” Pelt's pseudopod dissolved, and the nanoplast formed a perfect hemisphere.
Andra unhooked Skyhook's eye speaker from her shoulder. Then she walked back around the holostage to lift the hemisphere of Pelt onto her head. Pelt's nanoplast began to melt slowly down over her black curls, leaving a thin transparent film of nanoprocessors covering her hair, her dark skin, and her black eyes. It formed a special breather over her nose and mouth. Everywhere the nanoplast would filter the air that reached her skin, keeping planetary dust out while letting oxygen through. The film covered the necklace of pink andradites around her neck, spreading down her shirt and trousers. She lifted each foot in turn to allow the complete enclosure. Now she would be safe from any chemical hazard she might encounter.
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