by James White
“The majority of my people are unwilling to take risks,” it went on, “whether physical or philosophical. They tend to ignore challenges until the challenger has either died of old age or… Can you move faster, Martin?”
Martin did so, feeling the other’s body nudging at his feet when they threatened to dig into the side walls. He said, “By challenger do you mean a person among you who issues challenges? Do these people influence or control others by means of a greater physical strength or other forms of coercion? Do such individuals indulge in conflict, either directly or by proxy? Do the leaders of your culture achieve their high positions as a result of such conflicts?”
He had almost forgotten that his life could end at any moment, and for that he was deeply grateful to the fat, animated pancake which was following him along the tunnel. It had reminded him of his job.
“We try to coerce people,” the burrower replied, “by argument and debate and warnings of impending trouble, but their mental inertia and innate conservatism is such that we have little success. But stranger, are you suggesting that there are beings out there who impose their wills violently on other sentient people? Surely that is inconceivable. It would be the action of an intelligent predator, if that were not a contradiction in terms. Violence must only be offered toward non-sentient animal and vegetable life in the interests of food provision.
“You worry me, Martin,” it concluded. “Are there beings out there who practice such insanity?”
And with those words, Martin knew, his preliminary assessment of the burrower culture was complete, and entirely favorable.
Reassuringly, he said, “There are a few such individuals, but they are not allowed to influence normal people. However, if others like myself were to come here, could we talk to the whole population and ask questions of them?”
That would be the final stage of the assessment, the examination of the individual candidates for citizenship.
“Yes, Martin,” the burrower replied, “but there is no guarantee that they would listen. My friends took a grave risk in making themselves known to you. Had the outcome been different, we would have been ostracized for life. But the areas of this world which can support my people are fast being eaten out, and if there was the slightest chance of finding an answer to the problem, or of finding someone with the answer, the risk had to be taken. Soil, living space, is our most urgent need.”
Martin thought that it was grossly unfair that he had to conduct this discussion while crawling along a low and dangerously unstable tunnel on his stomach, but he tried to choose his words with care.
He said, “Soil can be provided, on another world. There would be no limit to the area or depth you would inhabit, and there would be no predators other than those you might wish to bring along to make you feel at home.”
Cromonar was silent for so long that Martin wondered if he had seriously misjudged the situation. Removed from what was literally their native soil, the burrowers might be helplessly disoriented, and Cromonar was intelligent enough to realize that. But still, they dreamed of traveling to the stars.
“Another world?” Cromonar asked finally. “For us? Empty?”
“Not empty,” Martin said dryly, thinking of the teeming populations already living within the Federation World. “But there would be more territory than you would ever need if your species lives and grows for a thousand generations. It is difficult to explain while I’m crawling on my…”
“My apologies, Martin,” Cromonar broke in. “You do not feel your surroundings as I do, and are unaware of the solid rock above us and that the cavern is but a short distance away.”
“Confirmed,” Beth said. “I’m sorry, I was too busy listening to tell you.”
“Travel in the emptiness above the air was only a theoretical possibility until your first vehicle arrived,” Cromonar went on, “and I find it difficult to believe that you have vessels capable of moving an entire planetary population.”
“It can be done,” Martin said, moving more slowly. “But the people who go must want to go. And they must satisfy my superiors that they would not be disruptive influences, or be capable of deliberately harming any being of their own or any other species they might meet.
Having satisfied these requirements, they can be moved whenever they wish.”
“It is probable,” the burrower said after another long silence, “that my people are too backward and… unsuitable.”
Chapter 17
GENTLY, Martin said, “You must not be overawed by the size and power of the Federation’s mechanisms. They are simply developments of the wheel and the transfer of power along a metal wire, and you should not feel ignorant or inferior because we have had more time to develop and advance. Or do you and your group consider yourselves unsuitable for another reason?”
“We are, or we try to be, disruptive influences,” the burrower replied. “I am afraid your Federation would find our group unsuitable.”
Martin did not reply at once because they had left the tunnel and he was enjoying the sensation of standing and stretching his arms above his head. As he looked around the wide, low-ceilinged cavern, he said, “My life-mate and I are considered unsuitable, at present, for Citizen status, because we are too restless and inquisitive. Those are some of the qualities needed in our job. Like you, I have to try to convince people, your people in this case, that the course I urge on them is for their own good, that it is in their own best long-term interests to leave this planet.”
“I understand,” the borrower said. “And because you consider our thinking to be alike, it might be easier to convince our people here, and try to elicit their support, before expending effort on the more conservative element?”
“Correct,” Martin said.
Cromonar was moving deeper into the cavern over a floor covered with large heaps of soil from which projected small, irregular pieces of metal. He concentrated his helmet light on one of them and saw that there was a machine of some kind under the pile, with burrowers using the soil heaped around it to position themselves where their stubble could operate the mechanism and feel its indicators.
“People with less adventurous minds,” the burrower said suddenly, “are not necessarily stupid. They view situations simply and practically, and can often be influenced by considerations of personal or group advantage. But first, Martin, you must convince me of the advantages. Tell me about this world we should move to. Let me feel its shape and texture and people.”
“And how,” Beth asked from the hypership, “will we manage that?”
At this stage of a first contact procedure he would normally project tri-di pictures showing the Federation World in space and the incredible immensity of its interior-pictures so awe-inspiring and self-explanatory that the accompanying words were often redundant. It was a beautiful and impressive demonstration, the key element in both the first contact and preliminary assessment procedures, but it was designed to inform and convince beings who could see.
Sophisticated visual aids, Martin thought as he bent down beside a small pool on the cavern floor and scraped up two handfuls of the damp, claylike soil, were no use at all to the blind.
“The new world is shaped like this,” he said, when the clay had been molded into a sphere with conical projections at each pole. He placed it on the ground, balanced on one of the points, within a few inches of the burrower and went on, “It is extremely large, hollow, and situated close to the center of the galaxy where the stars are very numerous…”
It was a ridiculous and abysmally inadequate description. Martin thought as Cromonar and several others moved up to the clay model, felt its contours briefly, and moved away again. But how could he convey to them the picture of the Federation World as he had first seen it, and its effect on him?
He went on. “All around this world there are countless billions of suns like your own, with vast distances separating them, but from your position in space they would feel close together, like a great carpet of dens
e, spiky grass. Closer to you, and negating the feel of the distant suns behind it, is the vast, hollow world of the Federation of Galactic Sentients. It cannot be felt so easily because it does not radiate touchings, except for those needed to enable ships to feel their way to the entry ports.
“It is an unimaginably large world,” he continued, “which encloses its own sun. The internal area is such that it will provide more than enough living space for the future projected populations of every intelligent species in the galaxy.
“Even now there are many different species to feel,” he went on, ‘together with their mechanisms, native animal and vegetable life forms, and environments. Or you may prefer, if you are suited to the work, to feel and help operate some of the mechanisms which provide the services for this superworld. For example, you could be trained to…”
“Hold, stranger!” Cromonar broke in. “Surely you exaggerate the importance of the part we would play. And you offer so much. What must we do for you in return? What is the purpose of this superworld, and are you sure that we would be allowed to go there?”
“I cannot promise that you will all be allowed to go there,” Martin said. “As to what you will give in return, let me ask instead what reward you receive from your own people for trying to help them against their will? To certain psychological types, the effort is its own reward.”
More and more of the burrowers had emerged from the soil enclosing their machines and were gathering closely around him as he went on to describe the tremendous philosophical and technological goals of the World and the Federation contained within it.
“Stranger,” one of the burrowers broke in, “is it not a fact that a species contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction? Surely a number of these seeds will take root in your superworld?”
Blind they might be, Martin thought, but they could see a lot farther and faster than many other extraterrestrials he had encountered. He was remembering the shock to the Earth’s population when, a little over a decade earlier, they had been contacted by the Federation. But the initial fear and distrust had been quickly overcome because the Federation psychologists were able people who had not tried to lie, diplomatically or otherwise. He should try to do the same.
“Examination and induction procedures will be devised for the special sensory requirements of your species,” Martin said. ‘These will be aimed at identifying, and where necessary excluding, the small minority of candidates who will be unsuitable for citizenship.
“These will be the sentient predators who turn up in nearly every species,” he went on, “and who cause disruption and suffering out of all proportion to their number. If there are any such beings on this world, here they will stay.”
The burrowers crowding around him had become very still. Perhaps they were worried, or felt insulted and angry at the thought that some of them would not qualify for citizenship. He wondered what he would do, unarmed as he was, if they reacted physically to the insult.
But was he unarmed, when all he had to do to paralyze them with shock was to open his visor and speak loudly?
“There is a third category,” he continued, “which comprises the curious, restless, adventure-seeking minority that is in every intelligent species…”
Briefly he went on to describe the advantages and the few, so far as he personally was concerned, disadvantages of non-Citizen status, and when he finished, the silent stillness of his listeners was Teldin in its perfection.
Bypassing the translator, he said worriedly, “I’m not being totally honest with them, half promising things which… They’re blind, dammit! What can they really do?”
“You’d be surprised,” Beth said. ‘The main computer and I have been considering that very question. It seems that their hypersensitivity of touch, and the psycho-sensory matrix which evolved as a result of having one single and unspecialized receptor, gives them a unique advantage over the four- and five-sensed species. They actually feel the world about them and in time, they will be able to feel the three-dimensional relationships and constituents of space, perhaps time as well. That advantage should enable them to make significant progress toward the complete understanding of the nature and structure of the universe.
“The computer is displaying its equivalent of wild excitement,” she went on, “and is making odious comparisons between the long-term potential of the burrowers and Earth-humans. And I thought that thing was a friend of mine.”
‘These non-Citizens,” Martin resumed, knowing that his smile of visible relief was lost on the burrowers, “are the kind of people who might volunteer to go to the Federation World, to experience the hypership journey there and the interesting touch of beings whose shapes they can scarcely imagine; to touch every part of the situation and to report back on it to the main population. I feel that many of your future non-Citizens are here now.”
“I understand, Martin,” Cromonar said. “But all these matters must be discussed and made known to our people before we can give you our decision about visiting or moving to your Federation World. And you must be anxious to escape from what is for you an unpleasant environment, and to rejoin your life-mate and your vessel. Might I suggest a method which will not bring your violent machine into our research establishment?”
“Please do,” Martin said warily. The thought of another slow, claustrophobic crawl back to the digger was making his pulse hammer again. Cromonar was immediately aware of his discomfort.
“Do not be disturbed, Martin,” it said. “At the other end of the cavern is a fissure leading to within two of your body lengths of the surface. We can eat a path out for you and ensure that the area remains free of dangerous predators while you are waiting to be retrieved. May we retain your digger for examination?”
Just in time Martin stopped himself from laughing out loud with relief. He said, “You may, with all the other models and devices which we will construct and send down to you, so that you can give a full explanation of the situation to your people.”
Cromonar moved closer and briefly touched the side of Martin’s leg. It said, “Please follow my friends. I cannot accompany you because I have already eaten much more than was good for me while clearing the tunnel, and must rest. Thank you again, Martin.”
As he turned to go Martin gave Cromonar an unseen wave, and was about to say “Be seeing you” when he thought better of it.
“We’ll stay in touch,” he said.
Chapter 18
IN the eight years since contact had first been established, they revisited the planet of the Blind Ones three times. The visits had not been strictly necessary, but special provision had to be made for the education and subsequent examination for Federation Citizenship of a candidate species who possessed only one sensory channel. While Cromonar’s people were not distrustful of the Federation’s motives, when situations arose which were particularly delicate or complex, they preferred the personal contact of Martin and Beth to the cold, artificial touchings of induction center robots.
These extended visits had been allowed, the supervisor told them, because there was nothing more urgent or important requiring their attention. In answer to persistent questioning they had been told that first-contact situations were still occurring, but that the physiologies and environments of the life forms concerned were such that the assignments could not be carried out by warmblooded oxygen-breathers without an unacceptable level of risk.
As a result they had been given a succession of assignments which, however interesting, varied, and demanding, were simply odd-jobs. And this latest one, Martin thought as he stared through the aircraft’s nose canopy, involved a trip inside the World itself.
Far below them there unrolled a rich, dark carpet of synthetic soil which stretched endlessly toward the nonexistent horizon until sheer distance, even in this pellucidly clear and cloudless sky, made it disappear into haze. At this latitude it was possible to circumnavigate the globe without seeing any change in the scenery, so widely scattered were th
e inhabited areas. But if their atmospheric craft’s respectable Mach 3 could have been maintained without stopping for the replacement of age-expired components, or crews, circumnavigation would have taken more than two centuries.
In the controlled and utterly calm atmosphere of this world, the airborne seeds and spores from the seven-thousand-miles-distant cultivated area which was their destination did not propagate at anything like Mach 3, and so the soil below remained fallow.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Beth said as she stared intently into the incredibly distant haze. “It’s too big. I feel much more comfortable in the more confined depths of interstellar space.”
Martin laughed sympathetically. “With me, it is a feeling of awe mixed with utter boredom. Knowing our masters, the feelings are being engendered deliberately. They want to remind us of our origin and purpose from time to time, so that when we speak of this place to others it will be with conviction.
“When we say big,” he added, laughing, “we will mean big.”
“And our passengers?” Beth asked.
“Even though they live here as Citizens,” Martin replied, “I expect they need to be reminded, too. Especially when they decide to go calling on their neighbors.”
Beth sighed and said, “We’ll be landing before midday meal tomorrow. Maybe we should go back and try to talk to them again about the difficulties they can expect. Not to frighten or discourage them, of course. We must try to be realistic but reassuring, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms.”
“It is,” Martin replied shortly, then added, “They don’t even like us, and don’t seem to listen to anything I say. Citizens!”
“Fortunately,” she said, smiling, “you’re the contact specialist. I’m just the driver. Let’s go.”
The lounge currently being occupied by the passengers smelled to high Heaven but, because the body odor was alien, it was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. In addition to the smell, the air was filled with an alien gabble which was being processed by his translator into the buzz of excited conversation. The sound faded for a moment as he entered, then continued at a higher level.