The Creatures of Man (45 page)

"Thank you," came the telepath's thought. "I'm pleased that my ecologic control produces results you find attractive."

Borat thought with a touch of awe,
He makes the whole world his garden!
And evidently he did so without hoe and rake, but by thought processes alone—perhaps by "approving" a certain plant, or animal, in a certain place, in the manner of humans noted for their "green thumb," and by disapproving a plant that attempted to sprout, or an animal that attempted to forage, in an unsuitable area.

If this was the power of telepathy, then it was plainly a power the Lontastan Federation had to have!

Borat's crew landed some two hundred yards from the creature, and stood staring.

"We are," observed the telepath, "mutually appalled by one another's size."

"Is all of that you?" demanded Sherris.

"All of this and more," came the response. "Approximately one third of me is underground. My form is roughly spherical."

"Maybe we can name you Monte," Sherris murmured. "That meant mountain in one of our old languages."

"That will be satisfactory," the telepath replied.

The humans walked slowly toward the giant stony-looking ball that soared at least two hundred feet over the rolling grassland. To Borat, the creature . . . Monte . . . resembled nothing else as much as a colossal boulder, lying partially submerged in the soil.

"I had assumed," he said, "that you were basically animal in nature, with locomotive ability."

"I am," replied Monte. "If it became necessary for me to change my location, I could rock myself free of the soil deposited around me, and roll away. When my planet and I were younger, and I much smaller, frequent movements were necessary to escape being crushed, or deeply buried, by diastrophic processes.

"Once," the thought continued, "I overstayed in a spot that became the peak of a mountain, because of the nourishment I found there. When the nourishment was exhausted, the mountainsides were too steep for me to roll down without smashing myself."

"How did you get down?" asked Walver, one of the younger men in the crew.

"First I attempted to forest the slopes with a species of tree sturdy enough to brake my fall, but the climate was unfavorable for the trees. Eventually, I merely waited for erosion to lower the mountain."

"What nourishment was on the mountain?" asked Borat.

"Radioactive minerals. I am, as I told you, essentially animal, but one of my life-processes is similar to the photosynthesis of plant life. Only in my case the process is radiosynthesis. Ordinary light cannot penetrate to the depth of my synthesizing tissues. Thus, I always locate myself over the warmest radioactives I can find."

One of the crew's mineral specialists said to Borat, "There is hot ore under the surface deposits here: I'm getting a strong count."

Borat nodded, still looking at Monte. "You spoke of rolling yourself. How . . . ?"

"I breathe, of course," replied the massive sphere, "thus there is an air cavity inside me. By shifting this cavity I can shift my center of gravity and achieve motion."

"Like a man walking inside a barrel," giggled Baune.

Borat blinked. "Are you two back?" he asked.

"Right," came Orrson's voice. "I think we can put the limit of the telepath's range at seventy-eight light-hours. That's where our linkage faded, and where it began rebuilding on our way back."

Borat frowned. "You lost it completely?"

"Afraid so," said Orrson. "But we have it back now."

"O.K. Come on down."

"Why the bugged expression, Hage?" asked Sherris.

"We need Monte's telepathy," he told her. "But we need it outside his field of awareness. If Orrson and Baune couldn't stay in communion with each other beyond that, I doubt if anyone else could."

"Oh," Sherris nodded. "You thought our people could visit here long enough to become telepathic, and from then on they would have a communication system far beyond anything the Primgranese can produce—except that it won't work."

"Right." Borat turned his gaze to Monte once more. "There is no way to make us permanently telepathic?" he asked.

"Regrettably not," replied the telepath. "Your thoughts concerning 'econo-war' are fascinating, and make me wish I could play on your side. You must find it thoroughly pleasurable."

"It was more fun while we were winning," Borat replied gruffly, "and we were until recent years. Then the Primgranese developed miniaturized emo-monitors—devices that enable one to read the emotional reactions of others—and included them in their standard life-support systems. The resulting gain in understanding gave their teamwork capabilities a tremendous boost, and modified their economic competition among themselves.

"We've been trying to close the emo-monitor gap," he added, "but duplicating what the Primgranese did is a slow, technically difficult task. If we could share your telepathy, we would have what the Primgranese have—and more. Otherwise, well, the way the competition has gone recently, the Lontastan Federation will probably be beaten beyond recovery before the end of the century."

The thought depressed all.

"But look!" protested Walver. "All we have to do to use Monte's telepathy is take him home with us!"

Borat grimaced. "Why do you think he remarked that we were mutually appalled by our relative sizes when we landed and he could make a comparison?"

"Oh, that," mumbled Walver. "He's too massive to warp."

"I would say he's more massive than the biggest starship man ever tried to fly," Borat responded.

"However," put in the telepath, "we have unknowns that might work in our favor. Perhaps I can defend myself against prime-field turbulence, though you cannot. Our minds have their differences. Could not that be one of them?"

"I doubt it," said Borat. "Prime-field turbulence is one of the most basic phenomena of the universe. No kind of matter is immune to it."

"I am willing to put that to a test," Monte insisted.

Borat thought it over. "Well, perhaps—but not until we've exhausted every other possibility."

"Hey!" came Danta's voice from whatever planet in the system she was examining at that moment. "Does he reproduce?"

Grinning, Borat asked, "What about it, Monte? A small offspring of yours—or several of them—could warp wherever they were needed in safety."

"That may be possible," Monte thought dubiously. "I have never tried reproducing because it never occurred to me. The durability of my body has been sufficient to perpetuate me without recourse to a reproductive process. I must give the idea some examination."

The whole crew felt Monte's mental withdrawal into solitary contemplation.

"Gad," breathed Walver, "when we finally found an alien intelligence, it was real alien! And he wants to join our war! Frankly, folks, I don't figure this at all!"

"It makes sense," retorted Borat. "Monte is super-intelligent, and obviously thoroughly sane. Thus he—"

"Why is he thoroughly sane? How do you know that?" demanded the younger man.

"The orderliness of his planet, for one thing," said Borat, "his enthusiasm for another, and his quick understanding of the nature of man, and of a multiple society, to cap it off. You notice he didn't inquire into the reasons for the econo-war. Was anybody doing any concentrated thinking on that subject, by the way?"

Nobody replied.

"Then he recognized our war, as we have only recently done ourselves, as a near-essential game for the progress of human society. He didn't have to have it explained to him."

"But why does he want to play the game with us?" asked Sherris. "Just for the sheer fun of mingling with other intelligences?"

"Partly, I think," Borat replied slowly. "But partly for his survival. He needs radioactives, and his planet is getting older. Diastrophism is slowing down here, and fewer and weaker radioactive ores are emerging on the surface. I think his basic purpose is to work out a mutual aid arrangement with us. He'll help with the econo-war in return for the availability of radioactives."

Monte rejoined them mentally at that instant. "Such a hope had indeed occurred to me," he told them. "However, the production of offspring by me will be of no assistance to you. I find that I can reproduce, but only after a gestation period of fourteen of your centuries. Also, I recall that the ability to communicate with other life forms did not come to me until I had attained one-fourth of my present massiveness. My offspring, with a plentiful supply of radioactives and other nutritive requirements, might attain that size in half a billion years."

"Then telepathy is a function of brain-mass?" suggested Sherris.

"Possibly so."

"O.K., reproduction is out," said Borat. "What are the other possibilities?"

Cagoline spoke up, "Several Council of Commerce members on Nexal are urging a full-scale research project to investigate Monte's mind. They say if the telepathic synapse—whatever that is—can be isolated . . ."

"Tell them telepathy seems to be a function of brain-mass," Borat replied a trifle crossly. "The trouble is that research of that kind takes time . . . not as much as Monte's reproduction, but more time than we've got. Look how long it's taking our labs to duplicate the work of the Primgranese on life-support emo-monitors!"

"You might add," put in Monte, "that my participation in such a project does not strike me as fun."

"Tell them that, too, Cagoline," said Borat. "Now, if there are no other suggestions, let's start equipping Monte for the warp test."

"I don't have a suggestion," said Orrson. He and Baune had landed a short distance away and now walked up to join the group beside Monte. The man was frowning. "But I think we should be sure of what we're doing—and why. Maybe Baune and I feel a stronger attachment for Monte than the rest of you, and have a special stake in his well-being. But just the same, it's good sense not to go off half-cocked."

"O.K.," said Borat. "What do you question?"

"Well, as you said yourself, we can't really expect Monte to be able to
nullify
prime-field turbulence. It's too basic. And it's too akin to the stuff thoughts are made of to be cancelled by thought. All we can reasonably expect is that Monte will prove more able than ourselves to
endure
turbulence."

"No mind can endure it long," said Sherris.

"Right," said Orrson. "Just a split-second knockout of your egofield, and you have to get the help of a psych-releaser to clean up the resulting trauma. And, if it lasts two or three seconds, you get a trauma that can't be cleaned up at all—the one form of insanity that doesn't yield. And I'd hate to share the same universe with an insane mentality of Monte's power."

He paused, and the others were silent as the thought sank in. He continued, "If we let Monte make the test, we should keep it extremely brief . . . certainly no more than a second. Now, let's say we find that he
can
endure brief periods of turbulence, followed by periods in which he heals the resulting traumas, with or without human assistance. Over a span of several months or a few years, he could travel into the center of the Federation, to Nexal perhaps, by making several thousand of these minimal warp jumps. It would be risky for him, and probably unpleasant, but chances are he would make it.

"Now, here's my question. Once he was there, what
use
would he serve that would be worth the risk he had taken? And I'm not asking for a glowing generality, but for a highly specific answer. His telepathic range will cover only one planetary system. It can't have the Federation-wide application we need, to serve the same purpose as the Commonality's emo-monitors. So, how do we justify risking his sanity in a test?"

Cagoline's voice sounded in their ears: "Hage, let me take a crack at that one."

"Go right ahead," said Borat.

"O.K., here it is, Orrson," said the communications man. "Nexal's the place . . . the only place . . . we need Monte's services. I'm speaking as a guy who's stuck with a job that keeps him in touch with all too many of those Council of Commerce gabfests back home. The time those brass hats consume arguing! Makes me wonder sometimes if we're as sane as we say we are!"

"Sanity has nothing to do with differences of opinion, only with the manner in which they are settled," Borat put in. "The settling requires the exchange of sufficient information between the disputing parties to provide a basis for agreement. And the most desirable course to follow in dealing with the complexities of the econo-war can't be arrived at without considering a vast multitude of factors."

"And even then the brass comes up with a lot of wrong answers," Cagoline retorted sourly. "But that's what I'm getting at, anyway. With Monte on hand to put all those CofC brains in communion with each other, that information-exchanging routine would go a lot faster and surer. And the same process is needed at lower levels of government, and in corporation boardrooms. Most of our corporations have their main offices on Nexal, and that's where they do their planning and get in their licks against each other. If Monte goes to Nexal, we won't
need
him anywhere else! Not much."

"Could you do what Cagoline has described, Monte?" asked Borat.

"Yes, indeed," came the eager answer. "I am now providing communion channels numbering in the trillions . . . at a sub-rational level, of course . . . among life specimens on this planet. Certainly I could do the same for the mere billions of persons on your capital planet."

"But your beautiful ecology!" mourned Baune. "If you come to Nexal with us, it'll go to pot!"

"That possibility does not disturb me," the telepath replied. "Your econo-war interests me more."

Borat eyed his second-in-command. "Satisfied, Orrson?" he asked.

"I suppose so," Orrson shrugged. "Yes."

"Then let's go to work."

The squad's equipment included several inertial-control packs, warp units, and power modules, brought along for use in the shipment home of discovered items that merited full study. For two days, most of the humans busied themselves around Monte, drilling holes through his tough shell, installing the necessary devices, and working out with him the means by which he could control their operation.