Fire Time (11 page)

Bel arrived in heaven, shadows doubled and the ember illumination became rosy. Jill halted at a grove where a spring flowed. ‘How ’bout breakfast?’ she proposed. ‘Afterward we’ll go more leisurely.’

‘Magnifique.’
Dejerine opened the carrier box on his vehicle. ‘I regret being unable to make a real contribution, but here is an Italian salami, if you will accept–’

‘Will I!’ She clapped her hands in glee. ‘I’ve had that exactly once before in my life. Believe me, a first love is nothing compared to a first Italian dry salami.’
Liar,
she thought, remembering Senzo. And yet … the hurt of that was well healed over.
In you also, darling, I trust.

Dejerine helped her spread a cloth on the ground and unpack the food she had brought, bread, butter, cheese, jam.
He is pleasant,
she thought.
Damn good-looking, too.
As she was plugging the coffee maker into her wheeler’s capacitor, he startled her: ‘I have not had a minute to say this before, Miss Conway, given your whirlwind procedure. But I know your brother Donald. He asked me to send his best greetings.’

‘Huh?’ She sprang from her hunkering position. ‘You do? How is he? Where’s he bound for? Why hasn’t he written?’

‘He was in excellent shape the last time I saw him,’ Dejerine replied. ‘We had spent quite a few hours talking, in the course of days. You see, when I was assigned here, I – you say? – I looked up whoever I could get from Ishtar, in hopes of a briefing. That happened to be Don.’ His smile was quite captivating, easy, warming the whole face, accompanied by a regard which was not a stare but an appreciation. ‘He told me considerable about you.’ He turned serious as quickly as she herself might. ‘Where is he posted? I know only that it is to the front. Please don’t worry too much about him. In every way, equipment, training, organization, we are far superior to the enemy. And as for the rest, he was busy and preoccupied; he admitted he hates to write letters, and so he entrusted me with his word. I did make him promise he would write soon.’

Jill sighed. ‘Thanks a billion. That’s Don, for sure.’ She returned to the coffeepot. ‘Let’s save the details for later. Like this evening, if you don’t mind, we can land on my parents. My sister and her husband would want to hear too.’

‘As you wish,’ he said with a slight bow. He had the sense
not to try to help when he would obviously get in her way. Instead he admired their surroundings.

The grove stood on a rolling plain. It was chiefly tall red-topped swordleaf, though domebud added splashes of bright yellow. The turf shaded by the trees was that low-growing, tough lia which humans called dromia. The spring issued from beneath a boulder spotted orange with clingwort, ran down in a rivulet, and soon vanished into the soil. Nevertheless it nourished a wide area, for many kinds of shrubs grew around the coppice. Further out, sward gave place to waist-high fallowblade and head-high plume, waves of dull gold across kilometers. The wind blew warm and dry, bearing scorchy odors, awakening a thousand rustlings above the faint gurgle of the water.

‘Do you know the names of all these plants?’ Dejerine asked.

‘The common breeds,’ Jill said. ‘I’m no botanist. However’ – she pointed around – ‘most of what you see is assorted kinds of lia. It’s as varied and important as grass is on Earth. Bushes– That little fellow yonder is bitterheart; the Ishtarians use it for seasoning and a tonic, and it seems to have medicinal properties for humans as well. But watch out for the scraggly thing, night thief. It’ll make an Ishtarian sick, and kill you or me if we eat it. There’s no firebloom around here – needs more moisture – but the thunderweed gets really spectacular in the rainy season, which we’re heading into; and then in spring, the pandarus.’

‘The what?’

Jill giggled. ‘I forgot you wouldn’t know. That’n. It draws entomoids to pollinate it by duplicating their sex attractants, both sexes. Quite a spectacle.’

For an instant she regretted her remark. Dejerine might take it as an invitation. He simply inquired, ‘Do you use translations of the native names?’

‘Seldom,’ she answered, relieved. She could fend off a pass, but–
Well, if there are going to be any, I prefer to initiate them.
Wryly:
Not that I’d win trophies, of whatever shape, in a contest for femme fatale of the year.
‘Most aren’t translatable – how would you say “rose” in Sehalan? – and
we aren’t geared to pronounce the originals properly. So we invent our own. Including “lia”, by the way. The first scientific work on the family was done by Li Chang-Shi.’

‘M-hm. I understand the photosynthesizing molecule here isn’t identical with chlorophyl, only similar. But why are both red and yellow this frequent?’

‘The theory is, the yellow color is basic, but red pigments originated in Haelen as an energy absorber. A heath of sun-drinker is a wild thing to see. The phylum proved sturdy enough to spread across the globe and differentiate every which way. Just a theory, you realize. Lord, a whole world! In a century we’ve barely begun to get the outlines of how little we know … Let’s eat, shall we?’

As they did, the sky was darkened by a flock of pilgrim, made thunderous by their wings and clangorous with their cries. Startled, several azar broke from a swale where they had been grazing and bounded off, their six legs undulatingly graceful. Through binoculars, the humans saw details which Jill explained.

‘No true horns on Ishtarian theroids. Those stubby things you see are more like what grows on a rhinoceros. A few kinds of azar – it’s a whole clutch of genera – a few big types in North Beronnen do develop an impressive spread, but mainly for display. Look … can you make out how the front legs have a special shape? And their hoofs are sharp striking weapons. Seems to be a general tendency on Ishtar, for the forward pair of limbs to do something besides help locomotion. The extreme case, of course, is the sophonts and their relatives; forelegs become arms and forefeet become hands.’

When the splendid parade had ended and quiet dwelt again beneath the wind, Dejerine looked gravely at her as he said, ‘I get a glimpse of how you who were born here must love this planet.’

‘It’s ours,’ Jill replied. ‘Though in a peculiar way. Our race will never take it over, will never be more than a few. It belongs to the Ishtarians.’

He dropped his gaze to the cup he held. ‘Please understand, I appreciate how dismayed you must be that your
humanitarian plans are set aside. Always in war, many hopes are interrupted or destroyed. I pray for an early end of the fighting. Meanwhile, perhaps we can work something out for you.’

Maybe,
Jill thought.
Don’t push too hard, girl.
She smiled and, very lightly and briefly, patted his hand. ‘Thanks, Captain. We’ll talk about that. But today we’re enjoying a peek-around. I’m supposed to be your docent, not your nag.’

‘By all means,’ he said. ‘Ah … you mentioned relatives of the natives. My sources describe equivalents of the apes–’

‘Kind of,’ Jill nodded. ‘Like the tartar, which really corresponds more to a baboon. The closest kin is the fellow we call a goblin.’

‘The semi-intelligent species? Ah, yes, I was coming to those. How much do you know about them?’

‘Very little. It’s rare and shy in Beronnen. Fairly numerous – is our impression – in the opposite hemisphere; but fully developed Ishtarians have hardly penetrated there yet. I can’t tell you a lot more than that goblins make crude tools and appear to have a language of sorts. As if Australopithecus survived on Earth.’

‘Hm.’ Dejerine stroked his mustache. ‘How strange that they have been allowed to.’

‘No, not really. Remember what an enormous amount of ocean, stormier than any on Earth, lies between.’

‘I mean that where ranges overlap, the higher species hasn’t exterminated the lower.’

Ishtarians wouldn’t. Not even the most warlike barbarians have our casual human bloodthirstiness. For instance, nobody here has ever tortured prisoners for fun or massacred them for convenience. You probably think of the Gathering of Sehala as a sort of empire. It isn’t. Civilization has developed without any need for the state. After all, the Ishtarians are a more advanced form of life than us.’

His surprise took her aback, until she reflected that an idea with which she had always lived must be new to him. After a moment he said slowly, ‘My readings did mention post-mammalian evolution. They never made too clear to me what was meant. I assumed –
Tiens,
you are not claiming
they are more intelligent than us? This was not in my books.’ He drew breath. ‘True, they seem better at some things than we are, but less quick and original in others. That’s usual among contrasted sophont species. The totals always seem to even approximately out. I think the explanation is reasonable, that beyond a certain point there is no selection pressure to increase brain power further, and indeed this would grotesquely unbalance the organism.’

She studied him with rising respect. Had he, the military man, taken that much trouble, that much thought?
Okay, I’ll pay him the compliment of answering in kind, not talking down any more than necessary.

‘Can you stand a lecture?’ she asked.

He smiled, leaned back against a bole, offered her a cigarette from a silver case, and, after she declined, helped himself. ‘When such a lecturer gives it?’ he murmured. ‘Mademoiselle, I try to be a gentleman, but my glands are in good working order.’

Jill grinned. ‘We will have a twenty-minute quiz at the end,’ she said. ‘Ay-hem.

‘You know life here – ortho-life, that is, not T-life – developed quite similarly to Earth’s, the original environments being so similar. Mainly the same chemicals, two sexes, vertebrates descended from something like an annelid worm, and so forth. We can eat most of each other’s food, though we’d come down with deficiency diseases if we tried it exclusively, and certain things that one breed likes are poisonous to the other. The fact of hexapodality versus quadrupedality appears to be fairly trivial, a biological accident. Ishtar has its equivalent of fish, reptile, bird, mammal, et cetera. The differences are important enough that we lay on names ending in -oid. For instance, the theroids are warmblooded, give live birth, and suckle their young; but they don’t grow either hair or placentas – they’ve got astonishing alternatives – and in general, the variations are endless.

‘Maybe they’d be more like us yet, except for Anu’s going off on a red giant kick about a billion years ago. It’s spent the whole while since growing bigger, and nastier each time it passes close. This means Poikilothermic land animals –
whoops! Cold-blooded, if you prefer – they’ve been at a still worse disadvantage than on Earth, and never got far. No trace among the fossils of anything analogous to dinosaurs. The theroids grabbed an early lead and kept it.

‘Okay. On this basis, which you’re doubtless familiar with already but I wanted to spell out – on this basis, we think – we think, mind you; the actual evidence to date is pitifully slight – we think the theroids have had more time to evolve than mammals on Earth. (Yes, I realize mammals are very old, but they didn’t really take off till the Oligocene.) The trick they invented here that we haven’t, is symbiosis. Oh, sure, you’re symbiotic with a few organisms yourself, like your intestinal flora. One definition would even include your mitochondria. But the well-developed Istarian theroid is a whole zoo and botanical garden of co-operating species.

‘Let’s take a sophont, for instance – a few of his most conspicuous partners. His pelt, or hers, is a mossy plant, shallowly rooted in the skin but connected to the bloodstream … because his skin is a lot more complicated than ours. His mane and brows resemble ivy. Their branches make a tough armor for the upper backbone and a fairly thin skull. The plants take out carbon dioxide, water, and other by-products of animal metabolism for their own use. They give back oxygen directly, plus a whole string of vitamin-like materials we’ve barely started to identify. True, the plants don’t furnish a complete respiratory-eliminative system. They supplement lungs, double heart, intestines, every organ – all of these with their special symbionts – but the upshot is an individual who functions better than we do. He can live on a far wider variety of food He’s less extravagant of water, through sweat or wastes or simply breathing. Thanks to Anu, water is in short supply over large areas of Ishtar. And, ah, our native also carries a built-in emergency food supply, those same plants. He can eat them and still survive, however handicapped by the lack. They’ll soon grow back from their roots or from spores in air and soil, same as they do on the newly born.’

Jill paused for air. ‘Whew!’

‘I can see the advantages,’ Dejerine said slowly.

‘Did you know this already?’

‘I have read, yes. However, I’m glad to hear it repeated in a larger context.’

‘I’m coming to one, I hope.’ Caught in an excitement which for her never faded, Jill said: ‘Those advantages go beyond the obvious. Look, symbiosis like this isn’t merely helpful directly. It frees genes.’ Observing his puzzlement: ‘Well, think. Genes, which Ishtarian life also has, genes store information. Their storage capacity is bodacious, but it isn’t infinite. Imagine a set of ’em which governs some metabolic function. Now imagine that function being taken over by your friendly neighborhood symbiont. The genes aren’t needed for it any more. They can go into new lines of work. Mutation and selection see to it that they do. The mutation rate’s probably higher among Ishtarian theroids than Terrestrial mammals anyway, because body temperature is. The problem on Ishtar is much oftener keeping cool than keeping warm; and the theroids solve it partly through their plants – assorted endothermic chemistry more than transpiration – and partly by being naturally warm themselves.

… I’m digressing all over the place, hm? Well, nature does. The point I’m trying to make is that the Ishtarians have advantages over us, including a longer evolutionary history as homeothermic animals. They may not have reached their present level of intelligence as early as humans – though Lord knows when that was – but they phased into it more gradually. This is one reason those goblins are still around. And the history shows. It shows.’