by Sam Smith
“Where’s Earth?”
The Senate Member for South Five gave Awen a brief historical and astronomical lesson. Awen was none the wiser. His interest, like his occupation, was in the here and now.
“What’s your degree in?” Awen asked the back of the man.
“Anthropology. But I’ve since specialised, like your friend, The Doctor. Don’t be misled by the word ‘specialist’ though. Because paradoxically such specialisation leads us along many unexpected paths. For instance, both The Doctor and I have had to learn how to pilot a ship — to do our field work. I chose to specialise in the tribal evolution of these apes, and find I’ve got to take aboard ichthyology, zoology, et cetera, et cetera. Not forgetting also that my specialisation has led me into this Senate. It always makes me laugh when I hear the expression ‘narrow specialist field’. You make films. Today you’re finding out about amphibious apes. You’re a narrow specialist?”
“How do you know,” Awen skipped a step to catch up, “there haven’t been Nautili here for years?”
“The life of all habitable planets is logged. I saw a film of it being done once. Out on the edge. A new planet. Teams were swarming over it, did a complete survey. Plants, animals, insects, fishes. Geology. Fossils. Everything. Right down to the microbiologists. In the seas, for instance, they selected different habitats in every ocean, of every possible kind on the planet, and they stunned every fish within each given area. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but they’d have had to be extremely unlucky to miss anything.”
“And it was done here?”
“About five hundred years ago. Here we are.”
They had arrived at a rough timber built dwelling. It had three sides and a fabric roof covered with branches. In the three sides were three large windows. The dwelling was built on a small cliff about ten meters high which jutted out into the estuary. The current of the river, in swirling out around the cliff, had deposited silt and sand on the opposite shore. The colony of amphibious apes was on that grainy yellow beach.
The apes were of all sizes, from tiny mother-hugging infants to adult males about two meters in height. First impressions were of a flat head, broad shoulders and sleek black fur. When Awen looked through his telescopic lens he noticed that, unlike other apes, their noses were tiny and pinched tight, which made their eyes seem larger than those of other apes.
“Pretty eh?” the Senate Member said. Awen, still looking through his telescopic lens, whispered in reply.
“They can’t hear us,” he was told. “The water going round the bluff masks all sound from this side. Unless we shout.”
“Will any go in the water?” Awen asked.
“If we wait long enough. Though, since the tides have stopped, some seem to be going in less and less. While others are permanently in the water. But it’s early yet.”
“This could change their evolution then?”
“Could be a parting of the ways. It certainly is going to have an effect. Because, before this, although we call them amphibians, they rarely immersed themselves. Only when the tides were opposed to their daylight feeding. Normally they’d just go along at low tide picking up shellfish and cracking them open. Used to go a couple of kilometres in either direction, along both shores. I had to wait weeks sometimes to see them go into the water. Now it’s every day. Those three sitting together on the left have already developed salt sores. And those others, at the back there in the shade, they’ve taken to hunting small mammals and reptiles in the jungle. Testing various fruits. About ten days back two small ones poisoned themselves.”
“So, if they all go into the woods, bang goes your telepathy?”
“Not necessarily. Because three, no, four days ago I went over there and followed them. And it is very dark in that part of the jungle. They didn’t once call out to each other. Listen to them now. Quiet for an ape colony, eh?”
“What about those that stay amphibious?”
“That I don’t know. Their staple diet, the shellfish, only live in tidal waters. These waters are not tidal anymore. Of course, in time, the shellfish might adapt. And if, before that, the apes adapt to another underwater food, then they may stay amphibious. But I don’t really see what they can now eat. Crustaceans possibly. No, this is where the die-hards die and the adaptable adapt.”
The Senate Member, with the enthusiasm of all scientists for their subject, as well as aware of the greater audience beyond Awen, proceeded to give particulars of each of the apes below them. The only living creatures he often saw for weeks on end, he had a fondness and a name for them all. Awen’s camera was busy.
After they’d been there an hour a large male and a smaller female ambled down to the river’s edge.
“They swim always in pairs, always male and female,” the Senate Member said, “though rarely with their mate. This makes me suspect that they must have compatible minds.” The two apes climbed over rocks upstream.
“They’ll go about a hundred meters along the shore, then go in and work down with the current.”
“How do you know they just don’t use hand signals underwater?”
“See the silt in that water. Visibility is down to fifty centimetres. Just enough to see the shellfish on the bottom. But they swim ten meters apart at all times. Never any closer. I’ve done bodyheat scans on them. See those large reptiles on that sandbank up there?” On the bend of the river above them Awen could make out several long low reptiles. “A natural enemy. One day, when we still had tides, there were twelve apes in the water at the same time. The water was as murky as it is today. One pair of apes surfaced for a breath, saw one of those brutes coming downstream. They dived back under and within two minutes every pair of apes was back on shore. How were they all, spread out over two hundred meters, made simultaneously aware of the danger?”
Assured that the apes most definitely made no sound underwater Awen suggested that one ape could have swum swiftly along underwater and with a touch have warned the others. The Senate Member had the scene on film. All, he told Awen, including the pair who had spotted the reptile, had raced for the closest land.
Awen gave up trying to think of other forms of communication, filmed the two apes as they waded carefully out into the river. As one they crouched and submerged. Nothing more was seen of them until, simultaneously, their flat heads surfaced downstream. They took a breath, and almost immediately dived again. The next time they surfaced they were crawling up onto the beach. Once free of the water they each laid down their few black shells, shook themselves, then collected up their shells and took them each to share with their own mate. Awen filmed them scooping the slippery orange insides out of the cracked shells and sliding them into their upturned mouths.
Two more pairs were now clambering upstream over the rocks. The Senate Member pointed to the rear of the beach. Three other pairs were disappearing into the jungle.
“They keep to the same hunting pairs on land?” Awen asked.
“So far as I can make out. If this carries on I’ll probably have to build another hide over there. Up a tree more than likely.”
“Do you ever get a hunting pair who mate?”
“Not since I’ve been here. The hunting pairs are formed before maturity.”
“What happens if one of a hunting pair dies?”
“It’s happened twice. With the older ones. Their breeding mate keeps them supplied with food. They’re monogamous. And of the hunting pair — the one whose breeding mate is still hunting takes less of the food than the one who’s mate isn’t. They’re highly social animals. I suspect, though I’ve yet to have it proved, that if one ape should happen to lose both his hunting partner and his breeding mate he would be supported by the rest of the colony. The young, for instance, help themselves regardless of whose catch it is.”
“These the only apes on the planet?”
“Three more colonies of these apes. Two upstream. One on another estuary further along the coast. On the planet itself there are eight other ape
species Usual noisy crew. In evolutionary terms this is still a primitive planet. Quite a few large reptiles still. All of them predatory. Mostly on the other continents. The leap to intelligence here could be anywhere in the next million years.”
“This,” Awen signified the tideless yellow river, “should give them pause for thought.”
Fascinated by the activities on the beach opposite Awen stayed the day in the hide. Only when the Senate Member suggested that they return before dark did Awen realise that he had missed lunch. Talked out they made the return trip in silence.
At the cabins they found Hambro awaking from his afternoon nap and declaring that he was going to rewrite his speech. Tevor Cade had not left his ship. He was now transmitting for an hour, listening for an hour. Awen fetched him some food and they ate together in the ship.
While he was eating Awen noticed that the two lines of buoys were now slightly curved. He asked Tevor what was happening.
“A miscalculation,” Tevor ruefully admitted. “Always one simple oversight. I calculated the sitings on the old tidal charts. But, of course, no moon equals no tides. Some of the buoys motors have been running since we first dropped them. Mostly those in the main current of the channel. Those too in the stronger local eddies to the side. Should still be good for another week though. Then I’ll re-site them.”
Tevor Cade, however, continued to look worried. Awen decided that he liked him better than the man who had been so certain of exactly what would happen next.
Later that evening Awen ran the day’s film through his editors, reloaded his cameras. And he sat with Tevor Cade, speculated with him about the apes, and waited.
Chapter Twenty-Five
On their third day on the planet Hambro Harrap and Awen Mendawer accompanied the Senate Member for South Five to yet another Extraordinary Meeting of the Happiness Senate.
Awen Mendawer hadn’t wanted to go: Senate meetings were not, no matter what the topic under discussion, original footage. Nautili were. Hambro Harrap, however, had interpreted Awen’s presence on the planet as being to record his, Hambro Harrap’s, meeting with the Nautili; and Hambro Harrap was a friend of Anton Singh, who was for the moment Awen’s sole employer.
Loathe to make an enemy of the powerful, and assured by Tevor Cade that nothing was likely to happen for at least another twelve hours, Awen took his bleeper with him and boarded the Senate Member for South Five’s small silver plane.
For the first twenty minutes of the flight Awen stayed by a fuselage window filming first the wilderness shrinking below them, then a coffee plantation’s high boundary fence, a straight line which rose and fell over the contours of the continent below, chaotic wilderness on the one side, regimented coffee bushes on the other. He soon tired of the lack of variety, took himself forward to sit beside the Senate Member for South Five. Hambro remained in his seat, absorbed in the case open on his lap.
Awen asked the Senate Member how much longer the flight would take. The Senate Member pointed ahead to a wall of white cloud,
“That lays over the coastline. An hour over the sea, another half hour after that.” Awen filmed the approaching cloud.
“What do people here make of events so far?” he aimed his camera at the Senate Miember’s profile.
“Worried, naturally.” The Senate Member smiled, “The missing moon’s led to a few bizarre theories. Quite a few cults of the irrational have gained substantial credence.” Aware of the impression that he might be making upon Space watchers, the Senate Member added, “Some have tried to work it out logically; logic, though, depends on information.”
“Cults of the irrational?” Awen said. “Such as?”
“Usual thing,” the Senate Member reluctantly admitted. “Feel they’re undergoing punishment for some unspecified misdeed. As Doctor Tevor Cade would say, externalising their own anxieties. Can’t say I blame them; it’s always more comforting to come up with a reason — no matter how implausible — than to say you don’t know. And don’t go away with the idea that this is peculiar to planets. It isn’t. Because, now that natural phenomena and human behaviour can be increasingly explained in rational terms, people everywhere, including Space, are seeking out the irrational, the inexplicable, the mystical. They want to demonstrate mankind’s ignorance on some matters so that they may, willy-nilly, hold onto their ragbag of primitive prejudices. And, like everywhere else, including Space, we’ve always had our share of blind prejudices here.”
Before their arrival in the capital Awen returned to his seat. Hambro had closed his case.
“What you going to tell them?” Awen asked him.
“Enough,” Hambro favoured him with a smile, preparing himself for his coming audience. “‘Attempt the truth,” he quoted, “‘and men mock you for a fool. Tell lies and men praise you for being wise.’ I will attempt the middle road.”
They landed beside the other small planes on the Senate Building’s apron. The interior of this building being a facsimile of all Senates, Hambro knew his way around and, for the first time since he had left the city, he seemed to exude his usual air of benevolent complacency.
In the vestibule the Senate Member for South Five effected the first introductions to the other Senate Members, then the Spokesman took over. While Hambro was thus gladhanding Awen made his way up to the gallery, began setting up his equipment alongside the other reporters. Hambro joined him there a few minutes before the meeting convened.
“Who are they?” he whispered to Awen.
“Locals.”
“Should they be here? They could syndicate it.”
“Don’t worry,” Awen adjusted a lens. “Anton’ll have it sewn up.”
The custom is that the most junior Senate Member vacates his or her seat for the guest speaker. In the case of Happiness’s Senate this was the lot of the Member for North One. She joined the reporters in the circular gallery, watched the Members move to their places.
No sooner was the last Member seated than the Spokesman called the meeting to order. He formally introduced the guest speaker. The orb moved across to Hambro. With a cultivated elegance Hambro casually laid his fingertips upon the orb.
How Members lay claim to the orb is often seen as indicative of their personality, of their temperament, even of their politics. Some jealously pounce upon the orb, others negligently stroke it, some clutch at it as if the head of an adventurous small child about to slip their grasp, while others roll it indifferently under their flattened palm, while yet others appear to regard it as an erotic artefact and absentmindedly caress it. Hambro Harrap though, his wrist arched, his fingers spread, almost disdainfully deigned to touch it.
Including the assembled Senate Members in his confidential smile, he began.
Like all politicians and popular entertainers he began by first obliquely flattering his audience,
“I must confess that the fine sensibilities of us fastidious Spacers are offended by the rawness of planetary life. A consequence of that is that there exists in Space a low opinion of those who choose to live on planets. You are seen as regressive. I, however, do not share that opinion. I believe you to be pioneers. Yes, pioneers. It is not open to all of us to venture out beyond the edges of civilisation, to expand our frontiers. So, frustrated pioneers that you are, you have come here, armed with all the advances of Space, to refight the battles of our intrepid ancestors. A necessary fight. Because you are indispensable to our civilisation. You are worthy members of it. Your troubles are our troubles. Your concerns are our concerns. City, station or planet; we are indivisible.
“Senate Members of Happiness,” Hambro paused so long Awen thought, for a moment, he had forgotten what he was going to say next. But continue he did, “We are about to make history. On this day, here on this aptly named planet, we are about to communicate with the Nautili.”
The lack of response from the Senate Members surprised and puzzled Hambro. He had anticipated gasps of shock, at least a raising of eyebrows, possibly even involuntary cries
of alarm breaching the discipline of the orb, for which he would, with wise understanding, have forgiven them. Instead, as if they were hearing what they had expected to hear, a few merely nodded. While the remainder waited expressionlessly for him to continue.
Like all City Senate Members Hambro had the open sesame code to every Service file. He had seen that the record of his meeting with XE2’s Director had not been put on file prior to his departure from XE2. When he had left XE2 that meeting had still been in progress, had yet to be closed and indexed. Tevor Cade’s ship, therefore, had not carried a record of that meeting. It followed that Happiness’s Senate Members could not have found out about the Nautili from official records.
What Hambro hadn’t allowed for was a Senate Member who, having little else to do, was an avid reader of science papers and who had immediately recognised Tevor Cade. Nor, with his customary arrogance, had Hambro allowed for the deductive powers of Happiness’s inhabitants. Because the Senate Member for South Five, following Hambro’s instructions, hadn’t mentioned Nautili to the Spokesman, had simply informed him that Tevor Cade had been dropping sonar buoys in the ocean. The Spokesman had called only four of his fellow Senate Members, had imparted that same information to them. Those four Senate Members had relayed their own conclusions to their colleagues. By the time Hambro came to speak the initial idea had already been digested by the Senate, its implications considered.
“I realise that this may come as a shock to you,” Hambro, putting his puzzlement and his suspicions of treachery aside, pressed on with his prepared speech. “I realise that some of you have lost loved ones. I realise that you may be concerned for your own safety. But I believe that, now that we know why your ships and your moon have disappeared, no further harm will come to any on this planet. I believe that the Nautili did not know fully what they were doing. I believe that once we explain to them the consequences of their actions then they will immediately desist. Because, and let us not overlook this, the Nautili are intelligent and civilised beings too.”