Happiness: A Planet (25 page)

“So it is Nautili you’re after?” Awen’s answering smile neither admitted nor denied it.

Like all competent journalists Awen had, soon after landing, checked his lines of communication and had found them closed behind him. Hambro Harrap was going to tell this planet’s Senate about the Nautili the following day. There was no fear of this Senate Member leaking the news to Space and spoiling Awen’s exclusive. As for Happiness... what it did, or didn’t know, was Hambro Harrap’s affair; Awen wasn’t going to antagonise his companion, his present source of information, for the sake of a secret already surmised.

The Senate Member took Awen’s silence as an affirmative.

“Pretty obvious it must be. Soon as I told our unscientific Spokesman you were dropping buoys in the ocean he figured the same thing. Spoil our City Senate Member’s little surprise speech, eh?” But he didn’t wait for Awen to respond, walked on along the path, which now led back up into the speckled gloom of the jungle.

Awen filmed him, ran after him.

“Could they have been Nautili?” he changed cameras.

“Those little fish you mean?” the Senate Member didn’t turn around. “No. Maybe a far distant relative. Though I doubt even that.”

“You seen a Nautili?”

“Made history if I had. No, an educated guess. Most fish vertebrates are primitive life forms. Nautili are much more likely to be cephalopods of some kind. The many arms would give them the dexterity required for construction. Unless, of course, a scaly vertebrate has adopted its pectoral fins to that purpose  In which case size would be against them. And their spaceships aren’t that big. No, much more likely to be cephalopods.”

“Aren’t you worried about them killing off your apes?”

“I must admit it’s a distinct possibility. They do systematically wipe out other amphibious mammals. But, and this is in my apes favour, those mammals are usually all plankton feeders. And it’s pretty certain Nautili are deepwater creatures. Be too shallow up this estuary for them.”

They reached the crest of a low hill within the jungle. Awen was puffing: there are no hills in Space.

“Like to rest a moment?” the Senate Member asked him. Awen breathlessly nodded, and squatted to the ground. A camera remained at his face. The Senate Member leant one-handed against a smooth tree trunk. Below them the river gleamed whitely-silver between the trees.

“Why do you think they’re deepwater?” Awen asked.

“Every fish has a swim bladder. Very susceptible to changes in pressure, sensitive to sound. Brought suddenly to the surface the swim bladder would expand fatally. So they stay deep. And in the deeps they’re probably averse to light as well. Especially the bright surface light of habitable planets. So, even within their ships, the surface having no buoyancy to offset gravity, the physical defiance of gravity probably costs them too much effort. Which would explain why their ships are so rarely seen on a planet’s surface, yet why they can travel through space at lightspeeds. In space, in deep water, it’s probably easier for them to maintain a constant light and to keep a constant pressure.”

“You think the Doctor will make contact with them?”

“Hard to say. They are a species of such a vastly different intelligence... Possibly the only thing we have in common with them is that we are both intelligent. What though, say, if Nautili reproduce asexually? If we did we would have a completely different perception. Our entire civilisation would have evolved differently. Our laws, everything, would be fundamentally different. All our art, for instance, is based primarily upon an appreciation of either the outward male or female form. The art forms of an asexual intelligence, though, would most likely be derivative of the food they ate, of what most gave them visual pleasure. So, even if the Doctor does succeed in talking to them, he could create more problems than he solves, could end up creating barriers to genuine communication instead of removing them.”

“Worth a try though?”

“I’m not sure. Could create dangerous misunderstandings.”

Awen, his breath regained, rose and they continued along the path through the jungle.

“How come you know so much about Nautili?” Awen asked the Senate Member.

“Dag Olvess.” Awen had never heard of him. “It’s the standard work,” the Senate Member told him. “And the only real comprehensive research that’s been done. And even then it’s far from complete. And it’s slanted. Throughout the work he’s trying to prove that the Nautili originated on Earth. Highly tenuous links. Old folklore. Garbled legends. Mention of leviathans. Makes quaint reading. Wide of the mark of course. Earth isn’t even close to one of the eight systems we’ve now narrowed it down to. But, otherwise, his work is all that we have to go on.”

“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.