He visited Oor, whom he found talking to the fastcall creature. The fastcall could not answer Oor because it had no mouth, but as Afah approached he caught a wisp of the creature’s thoughts. The image caused a thrill to run down to the tip of his tail.
The exploration party has returned.
“Returned?” he exclaimed aloud to Oor. “Where are they?”
“The spacehopper is in the secondary pouch and our team is on its way. They have a specimen, I think,” said Oor. “The fastcall was able to pick up alien emanations nearby. We’ll know soon.” He was grinning with excitement.
The wings of the spacebat—thin membranes designed to catch the stellar winds—spanned more than a thousand kilometers. The body of the bat was relatively small, honeycombed with fleshy passages in which the kikihuahuas lived and worked. Once the spacehopper had latched onto its host, the route to the central chambers was short.
“Not before time,” said Afah casually, playing the Memorizer and elder statesman. “I’ve wasted a good proportion of my life in wakefulness waiting for those people. So they’ve brought a life-form, have they? At least they haven’t wasted their time.”
“You know what this means?” asked Oor excitedly.
“I would say there’s a possibility this planet is suitable for colonization. They wouldn’t collect specimens for no purpose; there’s a Minor Example against that sort of thing. No—they’ve discovered the planet will support our kind of life.”
“So we’ll be going down there!”
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Oor. There’ll be meetings, and we must expect opposition.”
“Opposition? How can there be opposition to colonization of a planet which has no intelligent life? It’s denying the very purpose of our existence!”
“The purpose of our existence is to obey the Examples, Oor. There are many ways of doing that without colonizing planets.”
Although the conversation might have seemed animated to a kikihuahua, to a human of that period—but of a different happentrack, of course—it would have appeared quiet and reasoned. Kikihuahuas have all the time in the greataway to conduct their business, and rarely need to raise their voices. Their active lifespans are little longer than a human’s, but they spend many thousands of Earth years in hibernation at the bat’s nipples. During this period they have the ability to control their dream processes, so that they can explore their memories and philosophize while still asleep. They awaken much wiser creatures.
This particular conversation ended at that point, and the two kikihuahuas slipped into a contemplative silence. The fastcall creature turned away, vast ears twitching as it tuned into the telepathic waves of the greataway, seeking a far distant friend which it knew as Yt. In due course, the exploration party arrived.
They came at an un-kikihuahualike run, pursuing a lanky biped which possessed a fair turn of speed.
“Stop that thing!” shouted Ou-Ou, the leader of the exploration party, as the hunters raced past.
“I assume the project is successful,” Afah called at Ou-Ou’s retreating back.
“Not if we lose the creature!” panted Ou-Ou, who was inclined to fat. The biped had disappeared down a tunnel with the rest of the exploration party in noisy pursuit. Ou-Ou paused. “It could hide forever in the passages. There are catacombs out there which have never been memorized.”
“It’ll come back when it gets hungry.”
An almost guilty expression could be seen through the hairs of Ou-Ou’s face. “It’s carnivorous. It’ll start eating the very bat from around us.”
“By the Sword of Agni!” Afah exclaimed. “Couldn’t you have found a more peaceable creature?”
“It’s the most intelligent on the planet. It’s the most suitable for genetic purposes.”
Afah looked worried. “But it’s not really intelligent, is it? We can’t colonize a planet where intelligent life already exists. That’s fundamental.”
“By our standards, this animal is pretty stupid. Its ancestors lived in trees. It still sleeps in trees itself.”
“It has no tail. The loss of the tail is generally a sign of higher evolution.”
“But not necessarily higher intelligence.” Ou-Ou glanced significantly at Afah’s own tail.
Afah sighed, exhausted by the conflict. Ou-Ou was duty bound to protect the integrity of his project. And the matter of the tail was of little significance. So far as the kikihuahuas themselves were concerned, it was a genetic accident. Their ancestors had engineered a life-form suitable for inhabiting the spacebats, and the prescription happened to include a tail. … A vision of a nipple suddenly appeared before him, and he could almost taste the warm bat-milk. Yawning, he said, “I think I’ll just take a short hibe. I haven’t slept for a long time.”
“Wait a moment.” Ou-Ou caught hold of his controversial tail, restraining him. It was an impolite gesture, but what else could you expect of a kikihuahua aggressive enough to lead exploration parties? “I can hear them coming back,” said Ou-Ou.
Soon a little crowd appeared, clustered around the leggy alien, stroking it and uttering soothing sounds. They crossed the chamber and halted before Afah, pushing the creature toward him as though offering it for inspection. It was calmer now but still nervous, glancing this way and that, heavy-browed.
Afah obediently inspected it.
It was considerably taller than a kikihuahua, and a little thinner. Its body was covered in sparse, gingery hair, but its face bore only a few whiskers around the chin. Its hands were prehensile but its feet, clearly, were not. It was a creature of grassy plains and forest fringes.
“Take it to a nipple and we’ll call a meeting,” said Afah.
Once the exploration team and its captive were out of sight, a strange thing happened to Afah, their empathy leader, their spokesman-emote, their Memorizer, the person through whom the kikihuahuas directed and gave voice to their composite will. He began to tremble. Visions of the coarse, violent biped rose before his mind’s eye. Thoughts of the savage world beneath them drifted into his mind like wraiths of putrescence. Shuddering, he tried to control himself.
“I am the leader,” he murmured. “I must act for the good of our race.”
And yet …
“I am scared,” Afah confessed to the meaty walls of his home. “I’ve lived in the comfort of the spacebat for too long. For an unknown period of time I’ve faced nothing more dangerous than my own dreams. And now we must colonize a new world. Sooner or later I, the leader, will have to go down there. …”
The thoughts of the fastcall floated by. “Yt … Yt … we colonize. … We colonize …” Even now the news was slipping through High Space,-being picked up by other kikihuahuas in other bats.
Loudly, Afah said, “It is my duty to lead my people into their new world and this I will do—or may I perish by the Sword of Agni!”
He made his way to the hibernation pouch to awaken his fellow-travelers.
The kikihuahuas assembled in the Great Chamber, the largest open area in the bat. The chamber was situated in the atrophied bronchial passages which the creature used only once every few thousand years, when it entered an atmosphere, latched onto a beacon hydra to draw sustenance, and breathed. Now the air was still while hundreds of kikihuahuas waited for a lead from Afah. The spacebat’s blood released a gentle flow of oxygen into the air, triggered by the kikihuahuas’ exhalations. The walls glowed. The little aliens had designed the creature that way.
“So we will colonize,” said Afah. A sigh passed through the crowd. The wild biped lay before him, drugged with batmilk. He tried not to look at it, and he tried to keep his fears from his people. “We will design and send down a preliminary colonization team.”
“We will colonize?” came a voice.
“There is no question. It’s our duty.”
“It could be dangerous. That creature looks strong and crafty. It must be on the verge of intelligence. I’ve been on a long hibe, and I’ve had time to think.” In the
dim fluorescence, Afah recognized the speaker as Phu, with whom he’d had an interesting philosophical discussion eons ago. “I’m beginning to doubt the concept of colonization, in a theoretical way,” said Phu mildly.
Afah’s heart thumped. Would Phu suggest that they sailed on, and ignored the livable planet?
“I’m working on it,” Phu continued. “I have much thinking to do.”
The hope died. And now Ou-Ou the explorer had stepped forward. “I shouldn’t have to remind you of the benefits of colonization,” he began in his forthright manner. “There’s evidence enough in the secondary pouch. The whole population of the spacebat Yub is asleep there, and I don’t suppose they will ever awaken of their own accord. They are degenerate!”
There was a murmur of alarm from the others. “What? What?” said someone.
“You were probably asleep at the time,” Ou-Ou said. “It all happened long ago. One of these waking periods,” he added—a provocative aside, “we should look into devising a measurement of time, but that’s beside the point. Long ago the fastcall detected the spacebat Yub. Its passengers were crying for help. The bat was dying and they were in danger of suffocation.”
“Why hadn’t they directed it to a beacon hydra, or created a young bat?” somebody asked.
“As I said, they are degenerate! They had spent too long asleep at the nipples, dreaming and thinking the time away without even keeping a skeleton watch. They’d passed up colonization opportunities and beacon hydras. They’d lost all initiative, they hadn’t produced any young and they’d become addicted to sleep. We took them off their bat and gave them sanctuary here. They still sleep.”
“But they could be woken up,” said Phu thoughtfully.
“What do you mean?” There was a note of alarm in Ou-Ou’s voice.
“Well, just suppose, for the sake of discussion …” Phu’s voice was quiet and reasonable. “Only suppose, that there was a definite rift or schism, as to whether we should or should not colonize this planet, I would say that the opinions of the inhabitants of Yub deserve some consideration.”
“They’re all asleep,” said Ou-Ou shortly.
“That can be remedied.” There was a murmur of agreement.
Eyes wide in amazement, Ou-Ou stared round at the assembled kikihuahuas. “Are you saying that you want to count the opinion of those degenerates? Do you realize they outnumber us? That’s tantamount to saying that you don’t agree with colonization, Phu! Let me get this straight. Do you want us to colonize this planet or don’t you? Declare yourself!”
“I don’t have to declare myself. That is not the way. It may be a long time since our last meeting, Ou-Ou, but surely you haven’t forgotten how decisions are made. We express our communal view through Afah. Individuals do not count.”
Ou-Ou appealed to Afah. “It’s our duty to colonize. There’s nothing to discuss.”
Phu also addressed the leader. “Colonization is not mentioned in the Examples.”
“Neither is sleeping. The Examples leave certain things to our common sense.”
Afah, as he listened to their arguments, was also receiving a generalized impression of the feeling of the meeting. It was divided. Some people favored colonization; others, like himself, were apprehensive about a change in the pattern of their lives. He could sense the latter like a smell of fear, and he hoped Ou-Ou couldn’t detect the same feelings emanating from himself. He, Afah, was the leader. It was right that they should colonize. And yet …
“We must adjourn the meeting to give us a chance to search within ourselves,” he said.
“That also gives certain people a chance to awaken the inhabitants of Yub,” objected Ou-Ou.
“If they are awake, their views must be counted,” said Afah. “That is the way.”
“Then we will go the same way as them. We will become degenerate.”
“If that is our fate.”
Ou-Ou looked directly at Afah with an alarming display of aggression. “You will be personally responsible, Afah!” he said.
* * *
The sections of the Song of Earth which tell of this period in kikihuahua history are different from the vast bulk of that epic, because they were not recorded by mankind’s legends or by mankind’s machines, such as the Rainbow. Instead, they came from the mouths of kikihuahua Memorizers—those ancestors of the Miggot who lived through certain segments of history and then hibernated for eons, carrying their knowledge into the ifalong.
So they were not myths or legends, these stories; neither were they recorded facts, as the Rainbow accepts facts. They became known finally as the Kikihuahua Cantatas, and they found a special place in the Song of Earth. The most popular cantata was, and always will be, “The Cantata of the Sa and the Hua-hi.” Almost as famous, however, is the Cantata called “Afah’s Lie.”
It is almost impossible, genetically, for a kikihuahua to lie. But Afah did it.
When the kikihuahuas reassembled, Afah saw that their numbers had not increased.
“I was expecting the degenerate hordes of Yub,” he said dryly.
Ou-Ou couldn’t conceal his elation. “They could not be awakened,” he said. “They slept as if dead. Now, Afah—we cannot delay the decision any longer. Do we colonize?”
The answer was clear. The weight of the combined thoughts flowing into Afah’s mind said: We colonize. Without the inhabitants of Yub to sway the vote, the more dynamic kikihuahuas had prevailed. Which is as it should be, he told himself sadly.
“We colonize,” he told the meeting.
There was a murmur of approbation.
Maintaining the momentum, Ou-Ou said, “We must now select the characteristics of our initial colonization party.”
“You know the planet,” said Afah. “You lead the discussion. I will memorize the decision.” He moved away, shivering. The decision was made.
“First, the form our colonization will take,” said Ou-Ou. “Obviously it should be a biped, like this.” He indicated the alien which lay before them, still drugged. “Although it needn’t be so big. A smaller form would be more economical.”
“But it wouldn’t be so strong,” somebody said. “Wouldn’t it be safer if it were bigger than the present dominant life-form on the planet?”
“You forget—it will have an intelligence equal to our own. I’m sure we could outwit a brainless killing machine such as this.” Ou-Ou felt a wave of amusement from the audience. They were with him now—carried away, as usual, by the mental challenge of devising a suitable creature for genetic engineering. “Our creature must reproduce sexually in order to fit in with the current state of evolution on our new planet,” he continued. “Two sexes. Now that should provide our designers with something to think about.”
So the meeting continued, and the various physical aspects of the new creature were discussed, evaluated and decided upon. Everything went well until Ou-Ou arrived at the mental qualities of the product.
“Of course, it will need to be considerably more aggressive than we are,” he said.
The audience was suddenly silent. “Aggressive?” repeated Phu, who up to now had said little.
“There are frightful monsters down there. Our representative must be able to defend himself. To do this he must have certain innate characteristics.”
“Like what?”
“Like not submitting himself readily for slaughter, when attacked,” replied Ou-Ou irritably. “Like having the ability to make himself a few simple weapons, to beat off predators. Like kindling the Wrath of Agni occasionally, to frighten off night prowlers.”
Now the audience was decidedly restless. “You’re advocating heresy, Ou-Ou,” said Phu. “You’re saying that our representative should contravene every single Example.”
“Or die,” said Ou-Ou. “And then what is the point?”
“Maybe this is the wrong planet.”
“That decision has been made.”
Afah realized it was time to intervene. If a discussion became too acrimoniou
s it became fragmented, which made it impossible for him to act as leader-emote because no generalized impression could be divined. “We must seek a precedent,” he said, looking around the gathering.
An old kikihuahua stepped forward. “I am Offo,” he said slowly, as though his thoughts filtered through memories too dense and ancient to allow ready expression. “I am a Memorizer. I am also the oldest person in this bat. I retain memories from Cast, Laq and Remocogen.” He had firsthand knowledge of planets which were mere legends in the minds of the others. There was a murmur of awe.
“Can you educe an occasion when the Examples have been … bent, in the name of colonization?”
Offo gave a wintry smile. “I can educe them being shattered into tiny fragments like a primitive’s clay pot.”
The Hua-hi and the Sa
Give me a Hua-hi and I will create a
world and a God—or a world of Gods,
if that is your desire … or mine.
—From Sa of the Baska,
the 328th Kikihuahua Cantata
It is remembered that there was a time when the kikihuahuas had reached an exalted point in their civilization. In thunderous spaceships they had explored the nearby galaxy; then, as always happens to an intelligent race, they turned inward and used their abilities to fashion a more comfortable life. Their spaceships, empty and dead, spun in aimless circles around the home planet, while the kikihuahuas built labor-saving devices, which in turn built other labor-saving devices.
The culmination of all this was the Tin Mother: a robot so sophisticated that it was almost an independent life-form. It was intelligent and it reproduced itself. Its principle characteristic—of course!—was its devotion to the kikihuahuas. The Tin Mothers made life easy for their masters. They built huge Domes for them to live in. They cosseted them and pampered them, fed them and provided them with entertainment.
Inevitably there arose an opposition group, a nucleus of kikihuahuas who preferred to work for themselves and refused all help from the Tin Mothers. They grew their own crops, built their own houses, made their own entertainment—and carried out research in genetic engineering.
Fang, the Gnome (Song of Earth) Page 30