The Florians Read online

  We passed through the village and moved into open countryside again. Cultivated fields stretched in all directions, and small clusters of buildings were dotted randomly over the whole area. It seemed very Earth-like, but we were in a region which had at one time been cleared of all native vegetation so that imported crops could be sown. To some extent the Earth crops had now been replaced by Florian ones, but the techniques of artificial cultivation had made sure that the alien plants did not seem too strange. All the vegetation was exceptionally rich—the Earth plants as well as the native ones flourished in this soil and grew well. There was little enough contrast because the Florian plants were green, and the range of shades was not dissimilar to the range of their counterparts. The actual photosynthetic agent was not chlorophyll, but it was designed to the same operational specifications and with the same optimal characteristics. This is not always the case on worlds which may be classified as Earth-like in purely physical terms, but unless the empirical chemical foundations of a planetary life-system are fairly similar to those of Earth’s life-system colonization is not possible. On all worlds to be successfully used by man, the building blocks of life have to be the same. The proteins and complex carbohydrates are always liable to be different, but the simple amino acids and hexose sugars which form their structural units are almost invariably the same. The limits of chemical possibility are ultimately binding and not all that wide (given identical physical conditions). There are only so many ways that you can build a molecule out of a handful of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Natural selection operates between chemicals as well as between organisms, and the ones recruited to do various specific jobs are generally very similar. Hence, Floria’s chlorophyll-substitute looked and acted like chlorophyll.

  But what holds true for chemical evolution does not hold true for the evolution of organisms. It isn’t until you first set foot on alien soil that you begin to realize how large a role pure chance has played in the design of Earth’s biosphere. This applies far more to animals than plants, but even the Florian plants—to my trained eyes, at least—showed their alienness in their structure.

  The casual observer screens out the unfamiliar and sees the familiar. A casual observer looking at the fields of alien crops planted by the colonists would see nothing odd. He would see leafy plants and grasses, huge bulbous fruits and seed-pods. But the casual observer has no real appreciation of complexity or of the various kinds of unity underlying complexity. The trained eye, however, screens out similarities and searches for the unfamiliar—not merely in the complexity of forms but in the kinds of unity underlying the complexity. The more my eyes searched the fields which we passed by in the cart as the two dray horses made their leisurely way along the rutted track, the more I was able to perceive the oddities which I had, until now, known only as remarks in reports written more than a century before.

  Perhaps the most striking thing of all was the strict adherence to geometric principles practiced by Floria’s plants. Stems grew straight, foliage was arranged in an orderly fashion. Leaves tended to be precisely shaped, although the shapes were often very complex and three-dimensional—the curving of the photosynthetic sheets was as important and as precisely defined as the dimensions of the sheet themselves.

  There were no pretty flowers because there were no insects to recruit to the business of pollination. However, though there were no birds and mammals either, there were fruits. Because most of the motile life-forms on the world were saprophytes, preferring dead flesh to living, the fruits were grown only to rot. The seeds were usually tiny, and were picked up accidentally by the worms and slugs which fed on the rotting fruit, either internally or externally, and were thus redistributed. The colonists, by taking the fruit early to eat while still fresh, were introducing a new factor into the whole balance of nature here.

  Soon, we passed beyond the cultivated fields into wilder land, where the Florian life-system still reigned supreme. There was no sign of invasion of this untouched land by Earthly “weeds.” The imported plants could not compete with the native ones on equal terms. Here, trees grew, and wild grasses in great profusion. There was not, however, the same degree of randomness as is seen in wild land on Earth. The geometrical compulsion was still clear, in the distribution of the plants as well as their forms. The trees grew tall, and they bent in the wind to show off a considerable degree of elasticity. Their branching was precise and ordered. They carried passengers: not merely parasites such as often infest the bodies of Earthly trees, but commensals using the structure without, apparently, inconveniencing the trees overmuch. The grasses were wide bladed and rather rigid, looking rather like clusters of crystals.

  The Florian plants were photosynthetically more efficient than the Earth plants, not because of their chemical organization but because of their structural design. An acre of Florian plants could fix a good deal more solar energy than an acre of plant cover in a comparable environment on Earth. This was, in a very literal sense, a land of plenty, where everything grew big and healthy. With nearly twice as much energy pouring into the biosphere, there was much more available at the top of every food chain. But there was also a very fast energy turnover here. The plants grew fast, but they also died quickly. The flesh-structures built with such calm efficiency decayed very quickly. That was why there was so much scope here for saprophytes...so much scope that herbivores had never evolved. And just as herbivores had never evolved, neither had carnivores.

  “Do you have much trouble keeping the native plants out of your fields?” I asked Harwin. “It seems to me you might have difficulties with alien weeds.”

  “They come back,” said the farmer laconically. “But it’s not too bad. We clear ‘em out before planting. Some of them are real bastards—can grow a mile of root in a week, it seems. But we manage.”

  “I suppose it’s easier with the native crops, though,” I said.

  “We don’t get much trouble there,” he agreed.

  “And a higher yield per acre?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “In that case,” I said, “one might expect that all you farmers would be gradually switching over to native produce. The demand for it must have been low to start with, but over the years you must be slowly replacing the Earth stock with native plants.”

  He turned to look at me then, and recognized with the slight nod that he gave me that I knew what I was talking about. I was right, and he was slightly surprised that I knew.

  “It could be dangerous,” I commented, “phasing out the Earth crops altogether.”

  “Won’t happen,” he said. “Still a lot of prejudice. Lot of people in the towns won’t eat nothing but the stuff that came with the ships. Out here...well, we grow the stuff. It comes out of the same soil, and we do the same work putting it in and taking it out. The difference don’t seem so important to us, I suppose.”

  Here, at last, was something useful. There were people who ate only traditional food...and yet they were presumably as big as the farmers who lived on a mixed diet...they had to be. Otherwise the correlation would have been too easy to miss. So it wasn’t as simple as it seemed. It wasn’t just something in the native food that made them grow.

  “Does anyone live exclusively on native crops?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Pigs, I guess. Don’t see why not, but don’t know that it ever happens, either. But like I said, out here we don’t think so much of the difference. We just grow what we can, and what the people in town want. What’s it matter which ones came with the first colonists and which were here when we arrived?”

  And from his point of view, of course, it didn’t much matter. So far as he was concerned, Floria was the one and only world, not one of a series of alien planets. To him, it was all familiar. And familiarity breeds...well, not always contempt, but at least contentment. It would be easy for these farmers to take too much for granted. Nothing in the alien life-system had ever proved inimical to human life...yet.

  �
�There’s someone coming,” said Nathan.

  He had been listening to our conversation without manifesting any real interest, but now he was alert again. I shielded my eyes from the bright morning sun and looked ahead along the dirt road. About a mile away there was another horse-drawn vehicle approaching us. There was also a man on horseback. I thought, for a moment, that I saw several more horsemen some way off to the north, but when I tried to find them again with my eye they were out of sight. They were obviously not on the same road, in any case.

  As we came closer, I saw that the other vehicle was a closed carriage. It looked like a miniature version of one of the ancient stagecoaches used in the days of the America pioneers.

  “Someone coming to meet us?” suggested Nathan.

  “Must be,” muttered Harwin, with obvious displeasure. He had not anticipated our being taken out of his hands so soon, and he obviously felt that there was a certain amount of prestige to be gained as the man who arrived in South Bay with the visitors from Earth. There was, however, nothing he could do. I wondered why the messenger had not been told that someone would come out to collect us.

  Several minutes passed before we eventually met and both vehicles came to a halt, the horses face to face and apparently thoroughly bored. The man on horseback stayed behind the carriage, whose driver simply stared into space. It was the man who descended from the vehicle who was in command.

  He was as massive and powerful as Harwin, but the manner of his clothing left no doubt that he was a townsman. The cloth was less coarse, and the way he wore the garments made it clear that they were not merely functional, but had style—far more style, in fact, than our own clothes, which were simple plastic all-purpose garments. As Nathan stepped down to greet the newcomer it seemed that the big man was the representative of civilization greeting a less-favored cousin. They exchanged formal pleasantries while I climbed down, and Nathan introduced me to him.

  His name was Arne Jason. He did not mention any official rank or title but was so obviously accustomed to authority that the omission seemed natural. He thanked Harwin for taking care of us, and we thanked him too. Harwin accepted all the thanks with something less than perfect grace, but with a philosophical attitude. At least the ship was near his village, and would remain the center of affairs.

  Nathan relaxed visibly as we transferred ourselves to the carriage. It was shaded from the sun, had upholstered seats, and smelled of polish...altogether more to his taste than a farm cart. In addition, Jason was a man to whom he could talk. Nathan Parrick was the kind of person who grows visibly brighter in the company of people with whom he has something in common.

  As the carriage turned around, Jason looked out of the window. He was wearing a smile which struck me as being somehow unpleasant. His face was not handsome, but it was impressive. The features were clean-cut and the eyes were keen. There is an unreasoning prejudice which leads people to think that size and intelligence are inversely proportional, but this giant was obviously an intelligent man.

  “I’m tempted to say,” he said smoothly, “that it’s been a long time. But why pretend to be the voice of history? This is...completely unexpected. We had come to believe that Earth was finished with us. We have been working with that assumption.”

  “Earth has passed through a kind of historical twilight zone,” explained Nathan. “It has proved impossible to send out ships for nearly a hundred years. We should not have left it so long before recontacting you, but circumstances went against us.”

  I studied Jason, half expecting him to say something along the lines of “better late than never.” But he just smiled. I got the impression that he might have preferred never.

  “I suppose,” said Nathan carefully, “that the news of our arrival has caused a certain amount of confusion. We did try to contact you while we were still in space, but it appears that you have no radio equipment.”

  Again, Jason made no reply to the comment. Instead, he said, “I had not thought that we would be so very different. Have we changed so much in becoming Florians?”

  I exchanged a quick glance with Nathan.

  “It appears,” I said, “that there have been changes. You seem to have added twelve inches and sixty or seventy pounds to the average height and weight of the population here.”

  “Floria,” he said, still smiling, “is a good world. We have done well here. Is that what you came to find out?”

  “We are recontacting all the colonies,” said Nathan. “Restoring communication to the network of human culture spread across the arm of the galaxy. There has been an unfortunate hiatus, but we have better ships now, and the resources to equip them properly. Primarily, we have come to offer you help—if you need any.”

  I disapproved slightly of the misleading nature of the statement, although the only point at which the truth was really stretched was the use of the word “ships” in the plural. But I kept quiet. It wasn’t my scene.

  “As simple as that?” said Jason.

  “It’s not simple,” said Nathan. “Our basic intention is to reopen communication and provide such help as we can...but that can be quite a complicated business. We come to your world, you see, in complete ignorance. We know nothing about you. We have a great deal to learn, before we establish any meaningful links. We don’t know, for instance, what kind of government you have. You are taking us, I presume, to someone who can speak for the colony as a whole?”

  “No one man can do that,” said Jason.

  “That’s what I mean,” said Nathan. “It can be difficult opening meaningful channels of communication.”

  “And can you speak for Earth?” asked Jason smoothly. “The whole Earth?”

  Nathan smiled apologetically. “Not really,” he said. “But in a purely practical sense, we represent Earth. Primarily, we represent Earth science. Our ship is a laboratory...we are equipped to analyze and perhaps help you combat any problems you have encountered in adapting to your new world.”

  Jason shook his head. “We have no problems,” he said flatly. Maybe they had a proverb here: Beware of Earthmen bearing gifts. Nathan tried a different tack.

  “I understand that the seat of government is several hundred miles away,” he said. “I presume we will be able to reach it by rail.” He was fishing desperately for some information. Jason wasn’t exactly forthcoming. I thought, personally, that a straightforward “Where are we going?” might have served the purpose better.

  “We’ll have to take the train from South Bay,” agreed Jason. “It won’t take too long. Our ultimate destination won’t be the capital, even though the administration of the colony is centered there. I’ll take you to the Library. The Planners operate from there.”

  “The Planners?”

  “They’re the men who guide the colony. They’re the people you will want to talk to.”

  My mind went back to what I’d said to Karen about the possibility of guiding history by the selective introduction of technology. No prizes for guessing, though—it was logical enough, in the circumstances.

  “We can’t move the ship, I’m afraid,” said Nathan. “We set it down as close as possible to the location which was planned as a landing site for the first colony ship, but there’s always an error factor—a few hundred miles isn’t a great deal in terms of continental dimensions. The ship will have to serve as our operational base.”

  “What operations are you intending to carry out?” asked Jason.

  “Investigations into the co-adaptation process,” I interrupted.

  “But we have no problems,” said Jason. “As I have already told you.”

  “If that’s so,” I replied, “I’m glad. But we’d like to know why you haven’t.”

  Nathan gave me a dirty look. I realized why as the giant pounced on the implication.

  “You mean that other colonies do have such problems?” he asked. “Serious ones?”

  “Yes,” I said. I saw no point in denying it.

  “Perhaps, then, we have
been lucky.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed.

  There was a brief pause. Then Jason said, “I’m sure that the location of the ship will pose no real problems. I’m sure the Planners will be able to work with you wherever your base is. I’m sure that there will be a fruitful exchange of ideas. How long do you intend to be here?”

  “We can’t say, exactly,” said Nathan. “A year, perhaps.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “We’ve been such a long time getting here. There’s a lot to catch up on. But if you need no actual help, then we may not stay so long.”

  “And what happens next?” asked the big man. “Once you have forged your new links of communication, that is. What are your...long-range objectives?”

  His tone was light and friendly. The inquiry was polite. But I didn’t need Mariel’s gift to guess what lay behind it. Jason didn’t believe us. He didn’t think that we’d come here to find out what Earth could do for Floria, but to find out what Floria could do for Earth. He was suspicious. And why not? A century and more had passed since the last shipment of colonists. We had shown no interest at all in the colony until now—until, it must seem from their point of view, they were beginning to win their struggle with the alien environment. They had conquered the world, in metaphorical sense, and now here were men from Earth, landing in their fields, asking how they were getting along. They didn’t hate us for leaving them alone so long, as the colonists on Kilner’s recontact mission had, but they had no cause to treat this as some kind of joyous family reunion. The farmers had given us a good welcome, but to the Planners who were busy mapping out the future of this world, our arrival—and the possibility of our interference—might be bad news indeed.

  “We have no fixed long-term plans,” said Nathan. “What happens in the future depends very much on what we find in the present. Until the recontact has been completed, the UN can hardly form a policy. The important thing, though, is to reopen communication. Once we can talk to one another, we can begin to talk about uniting the whole network of human worlds into some kind of interplanetary community. There is only one human race, even though some of its fragments are widely scattered.”