Earthfall (Homecoming) (36 page)

“It’s a delicate balance,” Zdorab said. “I found one place where it reached a crisis. The diggers had lost discipline and were eating more than the infants and the strays. They were systematically wiping out the angels in their area. When I got there, only a few beleaguered families of angels survived. But the diggers were already paying the price. They had plenty of old statues, of course. But no new ones. And so after about five years, their birthrate fell off. Just as it has here. Not so suddenly, of course, since they were still worshipping the statues they had, only the statues contained progressively less and less of the enzyme. Births became more and more rare. With fewer diggers to prey on them, the angel population was going to start recovering soon. When it did, eventually the few surviving diggers would also recover.”

Shedemei took over again. “So there’s a social balance, you see. The diggers can’t harvest too many of the angels for food, because then they lose their own ability to reproduce. It’s self-correcting.”

“What’s to stop the angels from taking off and starting a colony where there aren’t any diggers?” asked Protchnu.

“Nothing,” said Shedemei, “and I’m sure it’s happened many times. But they can only live where they can find clay that supports the flatworms. That means that they can only live where there’s a pattern of rainy season flooding, and they can only live at elevations where the flatworm can survive. It’s a pretty narrow range, common enough on this massif but not elsewhere. And the diggers range far and wide. I don’t think there’s anywhere that angels can go without a digger finding them sooner or later. When the digger finds them, he goes home and reports that he’s found a new spot that’s favored by the gods, and so they send out a colony. It’s actually to the benefit of the angels. Without diggers devouring their young, their populations reach climax very quickly.”

“Are you suggesting,” said Nafai, “that we should let the diggers go back to kidnapping and eating angel infants?”

“That’s the question,” said Shedemei. “That’s really the question, isn’t it?”

“Does any of this,” asked Chveya, “have to do with the evolution of intelligence among the angels and diggers?”

“Some, I think,” said Shedemei. “The way the angel females select their mates is by the intricacy, beauty, originality, and accuracy of their sculptures. Obviously, the more intelligent and creative the angel male, the better his chances of reproducing early and often. For the diggers, it’s a little different. In order to kill angels, they have to be devious and smart. We don’t see it that much now, of course, because the diggers are
so
smart that the angels had almost given up trying to stop them. But we’ve all seen the traps that the angels set at the perimeter of their villages. It may be that the stupid diggers used to get caught in such traps. Now they recognize and evade them easily. But perhaps their very intelligence evolved because only the smart ones got through the angel traps in order to steal statues and baby angels.”

“In other words, intelligence evolved naturally,” said Chveya. “It’s this symbiotic relationship that’s unnatural.”

“Not just unnatural,” said Shedemei. “Human-made.”

“How can you know that?” asked Protchnu.

“Because we believed that it couldn’t be natural. And we knew that humans ceased to live on Earth at the time of the emigration that settled Harmony and, no doubt, other worlds as well. As we searched with the Index, we found that the one part of history where the ship’s library had
no
useful information was human life at the time of the emigration.”

Zdorab, the librarian, took over here. “Now, we have always imagined that this was because it was such a terrible time that they tried to forget it. There were implications of wars using weapons so dreadful that they turned the Earth for a while into a ball of ice. That’s what the Oversoul himself believed. But then something Nafai said to me one time made me realize that this paucity of information really wasn’t believable. He said, ‘How could the people who saved humanity by leaving Earth have allowed themselves to be so completely forgotten?’ And I thought, Of course they couldn’t. So I started searching the computers on the ship, the ones that
aren’t
tied to the Oversoul. And I found what I was looking for. A database that the Oversoul has no conscious access to. It’s called, as nearly as I can translate it,
The Book of the Sins of the Human Race
.”

“Sins?” asked Mebbekew.

“Well, it’s the most economical translation. It’s a term that means ‘willful mistakes.’ ‘Crimes of avoidable negligence,’ perhaps. I thought
sin
was a pretty good way of summing it up.”

“What does the book contain?” asked Nafai.

“I only just found it. I haven’t read it all, and I’d be glad to have any of you who have the time and interest help me in the translation. The language is close to several known languages but it’s very very old and the Oversoul hasn’t been updating it because he wasn’t conscious that it was there. The thing is, one of the first things I found was the explanation for how the angels and diggers began. It was one of the ‘sins,’ you see.”

Zdorab brought up a document on the computer screen nearest to him and began to read aloud.

“We have sinned by fiddling with the genes of animals, giving them intelligence without freedom, talent without power, desires without hope. We used them for our amusement, displaying their paintings and sculptures and music and dance while keeping the painters and sculptors, the musicians and dancers in prisons. If they escaped their freedom was worthless because they could have children only in captivity. This was an abomination, and the Keeper of Earth revolted against it, driving away the slavemakers and slavekeepers, and setting the little ones free.”

Shedemei spoke up. “I think the possible connection with diggers and angels should be obvious. The angels are the ones who still do some kind of art, but that’s what they were bred for, perhaps. Zdorab and I can’t think what the diggers were originally bred to do.”

“Dig,” said Elemak.

“Possibly,” said Shedemei. “Just because the
Book of Sins
mentioned only the intelligent animals created in order to entertain humans doesn’t mean there weren’t also animals that were genetically enhanced in order to do more menial tasks. Like seeking out underground deposits of various minerals, for instance. Or simply digging tunnels.”

“Sewer work,” said Elemak.

“As I said, we don’t know,” said Shedemei. “I think there’s a good chance that the diggers’ ancestors weren’t very intelligent at all. Enhanced physically, but not mentally. But they survived because they
were
bright enough, or lucky enough, to live close to a tribe of angels and perhaps simply by chance they rubbed themselves with the statues.”

“Or maybe they survived,” said Zdorab, “because the diggers lived in burrows and the angels lived in caves, and so when the Earth went into a profound ice age they both survived underground and developed their symbiosis there.”

“Or maybe they were taught to do it in a dream,” said Luet.

“Well, there we are,” said Shedemei. “It might all have been planned and controlled. Even as the Keeper of Earth drove out the human race, she might have been planning to replace our ancestors with new species. She might have been manipulating them both to help them both evolve intelligence.”

“And in the meantime,” said Zdorab, “to make them symbiotic so that they couldn’t possibly survive without each other. The old humans created the flatworms and made it so that the angels’ ancestors
had
to sculpt clay or they couldn’t reproduce. Perhaps they didn’t give any of the other captive animals a mechanism that would allow them to get a supply of the chemical they needed without human intervention. Only the diggers found their own way to piggyback on the angels’ survival method. Who says the Keeper of Earth couldn’t have put it all together that way? Perhaps it was because of the Keeper that humans first developed the flatworm vector for creating the chemical the angels needed. Perhaps the Keeper planned it all.”

“Whatever the Keeper is,” said Meb.

“I have another idea,” said Elemak. “What if there’s no such thing as the Keeper? Those dreams you had back on Harmony, you were all so sure they came from this supposed Keeper because the Oversoul knew nothing about the diggers and the angels. But now we find out that the Oversoul had all this information in his databanks, only he simply couldn’t
consciously
access it. So those dreams could have come from the Oversoul all along, without his knowing it, right? And now we don’t have to imagine some mechanism for sending dreams faster than light across the space between Earth and Harmony.”

“Very good theory,” said Shedemei. “But it doesn’t explain Kiti making a perfect likeness of Nafai a hundred years before we arrived here.”

“I don’t think,” said Volemak icily, “that it’s very helpful to assume that just because we find the natural mechanism by which some things came to be, we have therefore proven that the Keeper of Earth does not exist. We don’t know how far the reach of the Keeper might be, or what power he has; perhaps all he can do is give dreams to people. Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking.”

“I’ll memorize that one, Father,” said Meb. “That was deep.”

Elemak smiled but did not speak.

“If we can set aside speculative theology,” said Shedemei, “I want to lay two choices before you. The first choice is this: We can explain everything to the diggers and angels. The diggers can go back to using the sculptures. The angels can start trying to control their population by breeding less often—perhaps nothing more than each man making a sculpture only every other year. There’s no reason to go back to the slaughter of infant angels. The trouble is that while this might work here, it will have no effect elsewhere. But perhaps that’s the reason the Keeper of Earth brought us here, to teach the diggers and angels how to live together without killing.”

“I thought we were setting aside speculative theology,” said Meb.

“The other choice,” said Shedemei, “is to get rid of that prophylactic gland.”

“Get rid of it?” asked Volemak.

“I’ve found the gene that creates it. It’s artificial—it was inserted. By analogy with the genes of unaltered rats and bats, we’ve found all the inserts and they’re quite obvious. We isolated the particular genetic word that creates the prophylactic gland by inserting each of the artificial words into common rats and bats and seeing which ones developed the prophylactic gland. Knowing which gene causes it, we can uncause it.”

“How?” asked Volemak.

“A bacterial infection that carries an enzyme whose sole function is to find that genetic word and clip it out. It’s the method I use to do gene alteration anyway. I’ll just use an infectious bacterium instead of the benign ones I usually work with. It has few symptoms. With the diggers it’s a little stuffness of the joints and some nasal inflammation. With the angels it can also cause weeping eyes for a few days. Once the infection has spread throughout all digger and angel populations, reproduction will be cut loose from the flatworms. The angels can sculpt to their hearts’ content, of course, but if they stop it won’t matter. The change will only affect those conceived after the bacterial epidemic made the alteration in their parents, and it may cause spontaneous abortion of male digger and angel embryos that happen to be in the first few weeks of development when the infection comes. But in a single generation, the prophylactic gland will disappear.”

“I don’t like it,” said Oykib. “The Keeper of Earth set up a mechanism that kept balance here, and we’ll be destroying it.”

“I don’t know, Okya,” said Chveya. “It was humans who set up the mechanism, really. It’s listed in the
Book of Sins
. It’s one of the things that the Keeper hated. Maybe we’ve been brought back just to remove it.”

“As I said,” Shedemei went on. “We have those two choices. But personally I favor intervention. Removing the prophylactic gland seems to me like striking the manacles off a slave. After forty million years, it’s about time, don’t you think?”

“Just do it,” said Elemak. “Don’t waste our time with endless discussion about what the Keeper might want or might not want. You have the power to do it, and it’s a decent thing to do, so just do it and have done.” Elemak got up and left.

It took many hours of discussion after that, but finally Elemak’s point of view prevailed. The only reason the discussion took so long was because Protchnu suggested asking the diggers and angels what
they
thought should be done. But they all realized that neither the diggers nor the angels had the conceptual framework to understand the genetic issues involved. “They won’t receive it as science because they have no science,” said Volemak as he reached his decision. “They’ll convert it to religion and it will cause division and controversy among them and may lead to real hatred of us or civil war within their own communities. I believe in letting people make their own choices, when they’re capable of understanding the choice. But you don’t let your toddlers decide whether or not they’re ready to play in the stream. You simply keep them away from the water and you don’t even try to explain the concept of drowning. Later you can explain it to them, when they’re older.”

“So the diggers and angels are our children now?” asked Meb, mockingly.

“Better to treat them as our children,” said Volemak, “than to treat them as our ancestors did—as slaves, as playthings. So the decision is made. We explain only as much as they can understand. Oykib will explain to the diggers, and Nafai to the angels. I’d appreciate it if everyone else would keep their mouths shut about it. Shedemei, I’d like you to introduce the bacteria as quickly as possible into both communities.”

“It’s simple enough,” she said. “I’ll simply expose everyone here to it right now. It’ll cause a bit of a runny nose, maybe a slight fever in a few cases. Just make sure you follow your normal patterns of interaction with diggers and angels, and the disease will spread naturally. Just come up here and swab the insides of your noses with this gel.”