Space for Evolution

by Zurab Andguladze

  “The situation is clear,” Fof summarized. “We will wait for your connection after the crossing.”

  While the young people were resting, talking, and waiting, after some time the fog began to disappear. At first a view of an almost vertical descent appeared—a slope about fifty meters long, covered with moss and with stones protruding from it. Later, they gradually saw a rocky riverside strip, and a wide, slow current behind it. Then the whole opposite shore appeared: a limitless plain covered with dense forest. It looked like the ocean but differed from it in color and in the hills protruding from it. At this picture the scouts were carried away.

  “I have never been at such a height and never looked so far,” Mafkona said. “It feels like the first time I am seeing the planet Neia.”

  “We have orbital photographs,” Omis reminded her.

  “Those are just pictures, documents…from the photographs we even know how Earth looks,” the girl replied after pondering for a short while.

  “You know,” Ama joined her. “You just expressed my opinion. Now I imagine myself as a person who has discovered a new world, and, as you said, I also feel it seems I am seeing our planet for the first time.”

  After these words, they were silent for a while, contemplating the mysterious open spaces that were stretched before their eyes, and realizing that soon they would intrude into truly unfamiliar places.

  Finally, Omis broke the silence: “I agree that looking at this limitless expanse causes a strange feeling in us, but look at the countdown; it does not stop for a moment.”

  These words brought his companions back to reality. Ama pointed forward with his forefinger and said, without taking his eyes off the boundless forest on the opposite bank: “I remembered something. The hill that has the crystal deposit at its foot has a height of one hundred and twenty meters. The cliff on which we are standing now,” he looked at his UD and put his fingers several times to its screen, calling up topographical data, “is fifty-three meters. Thus, if I am not mistaken, we can see our goal right from here.”

  "I will check." Omis picked up this idea, and his fingers ran across the touch screen of his UD. “So what do we want?” he muttered. “We know the radius of Neia… mmm-m, as well as the height, the distance… hence the square root of Pythagoras… yes.” The young man finished the calculation. “This hill is within our visibility, in this direction.” Of course, he was pointing to the northwest.

  Mafkona and Ama fixed their eyes in the distance.

  “There is something vague over there behind those two hills, indeed,” the girl said.

  “The UD monocular has only a twenty-fold increase, but still I see that it is free of vegetation,” Omis told his comrades. He used the video camera as a spyglass and saw the hillock much more clearly than his companions. “It seems the plants could not take root in the crystal,” he suggested.

  “It is as if these two hills have marked our route in a dotted line,” Ama remarked, and pointed in turn at the two elevations between the river and the crystal deposit.

  “Yes, that is right,” Omis, still looking at his device, confirmed Ama’s observation. “The first hill is five kilometers from here. Between him and the next one… um…are eleven, and from the last to the ore… yes, of course, six kilometers.”

  While they were dreaming, sharing their impressions with each other, observing and counting, only remnants of the fog persisted. The scouts began preparations for the descent.

  Chapter 52

  “Our UD may interfere with our descent by restricting the wrist.” With these words, Ama took off his device and put it in Mafkona’s backpack, because his own was filled with the raft-tent and an ax-hammer.

  His fellow travelers followed his example, also putting their devices into the girl’s bag. Then, with the belt of one of the masers, Ama tied the bow, the leather quiver and the maser itself to this load. In addition, part of the food was stored in it, too. To Omis’s backpack, which contained most of the food, they tied the other two masers.

  Actually, all of their luggage, with the exception of the weapons, could easily be put in one backpack, but they divided it into three parts so that each of them was equally lightly loaded, and they could all walk for a long time.

  The young people each took their share of the cargo and, before starting the descent, just in case, walked along the edge of the precipice in the hope of finding an easier way down. The slope turned out to be equally steep everywhere, and they returned to the original point.

  During the descent, it soon became clear that the slope was much harder than it had looked from above. Throughout the long way down, they never managed to find even a relatively flat place where they could put their whole foot. Only fragments of rock sticking out of the slope here and there helped the travelers. They could grab onto them and move through the difficult sections.

  They even invented a way to move down in a chain of two or all three people. With this method, one of the young men held onto a ledge with one hand, and with the other one he held Mafkona’s hand, and she, in turn, held the second man. Then this chain stretched and reached to the next piece of rock.

  Such a difficult road took an unexpectedly long time: they spent almost an hour just to overcome fifty meters. The lower they went, the more they felt stuffy. In addition, they smelled rotten eggs more and more distinctly.

  After this hour the wayfarers learned that they still had yet to reach the foot of the cliff. Its last section turned out to be just sheer rock, four meters high. It was impossible to climb down it in any way. And still, here they felt some relief, because the narrow but flat edge of this wall gave them the opportunity to stand upright.

  “We did not foresee that we might need a rope,” Ama said, looking at his companions.

  They said nothing in answer. Seeing this, he suggested an obvious way out: “We must jump down.”

  At these words he took off his bag and gave it to Omis, who stood next to him. Then Ama gently bent his knees and sat on the edge of the shelf. He turned sideways and, one after another, laid his forearms on the flat surface, gradually transferring his weight to them. As a result now he’d turned to face the cliff. Straightening his arms in his shoulder joints and leaning the toes of his sandals against the surface, he slowly slipped down the stone wall and in the end of this maneuver appeared to cling to its upper edge with his palms and fingers. In the end, he straightened his elbows and slid further down.

  Now he hung about two meters above the foot of the cliff. Ama slightly pushed the wall with his palms and toes of his sandals and jumped. He landed on the rocky ground, stumbled and nearly fell on his back, but he managed to take a couple of steps backwards and, in the end, stayed on his feet.

  The young man raised his head and beckoned his companions with his hand. In response, Omis first handed him all the bags in turn, dropping them as low as possible and releasing them into Ama’s hands. Then Mafkona headed down. Since she was twenty centimeters shorter than Ama, she had to jump from a greater height, but this didn’t pose a problem: Ama caught her. Omis came down last, and both of his comrades helped him. When finally all three were on the rocky clearing, they were sweating as if they had taken a shower without undressing.

  “How do we climb this rock on our way back?” Mafkona asked, puzzled. She was inspecting the wall that stretched endlessly in both directions.

  “We will invent something. Maybe we will bring a log up and put it to the rock as a ladder,” Omis replied, who was also studying the surroundings. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Look, what is it?”

  He pointed upstream, showing something near the main current. His companions looked in that direction and saw two muddy puddles about thirty meters away. Of these, from time to time, columns of mud about half a meter high erupted, accompanied by a muffled gurgle.

  “If I am not mistaken, they are geysers,” Ama said. “Now I understand why it is so hot and stinky here. The water in this river will be warm.”

  “In addition, th
at is apparently why the fog did not dissipate this morning for so long,” Mafkona added.

  The travelers carefully examined the environs and, noticing nothing suspicious, went to the river. Stepping closer, they laid their backpacks on the pebbles, took a few more steps and found themselves right next to the current.

  “It is so transparent,” the girl said.

  She squatted down and, having immersed her hands into the water, proclaimed: “It really is very warm. Compared to the Quiet, it is as if it is warmed up. Let us call it the River Warm."

  “I agree with this proposal, and in turn I suggest eating right now.” Supporting Mafkona, Omis practically settled the issue with a geographical, or rather ‘neiagraphical’, name.

  “I agree with both proposals,” Ama nevertheless supported them. After that he leaned over the nearest bag, which appeared to be Mafkona’s one to untie the maser, bow, and quiver from it.

  After a brief hesitation, Ama threw the bow and quiver over his shoulder, and then looked around for a comfortable “dining room.” Among the many large stones, about twenty steps from the river, the young man noticed one flat boulder. He went up to it, made sure that the stone really fit, and put his weapon beside it. After that he wandered around a bit and found three smaller stones with a rather smooth surface. He brought them to the first one and thus prepared a “table” and three “stools.”

  Meanwhile, the girl stopped washing her hands, got up and returned to the backpacks they’d left on the pebbles. Here, since it was already free of weapons, she opened her backpack and took out from it smoked meat, already cut, corn tortillas and three boiled eggs. To Omis it remained to take a bunch of greens, a piece of cheese, and three apples to the “table.”

  The young man, holding the food in his hands, first looked at the masers tied to his bag, then he glanced at the one that Ama had untied from Mafcona’s luggage and left lying on the pebbles. Then he began to think.

  First, he took turns inspecting the river, then the cliff from which they had just descended, and finally the stony bank of the river where he was standing. After that, the young man decided that he was in a safe place. On the one side, they had a steep crag, on the other side a river flowed where nothing big and dangerous lived, only the RLH-1 and the thin SRC-1. Yes, the other shore was covered with bushes and forest, but it was far away, and on the nearside there was only a rocky field, an open space where nothing could sneak up on them. Moreover, Ama had grabbed the bow. As soon as he made the conclusion, Omis went to his comrades.

  The young people were almost full when they heard a snort from the river. Turning in that direction, the travelers saw a RLH-1.

  As soon as they recognized the animal, the young people stopped paying attention to it. Moreover, the appearance of such a familiar and peaceful vegetarian reinforced their sense of security. On the contrary, the animal showed an interest in the unfamiliar creatures. It moved toward them without hesitation.

  “Why did it come here?” Mafkona asked. “It seems this creature lacks food in the water.”

  Her companions simply looked at the animal in bewilderment.

  Meanwhile, the herbivore stared motionless at the new, unknown animals with its vibrating eye. No one knew how long it was going to study the young people, but suddenly something interrupted this research. Omis noticed it first.

  “Look, I think it is listening to something in the river,” he told his friends, and a second later he asked hesitantly: “What is it?”

  Until now, Mafkona and Ama had been sitting sideways to the flow, and then they turned their heads towards it. A moment later, their eyes widened and their jaws dropped from shock. Not quite opposite to them, but at a certain distance downstream, a huge, unknown creature had crawled out of the river.

  Chapter 53

  “It seems we cannot finish today,” Bef said. She was a slender, beautiful girl with almost black skin, and a thin face decorated with large brown eyes. She doubtfully examined the garden. “We have a rich harvest.”

  She, along with Pamo and Bame, was harvesting beans. These legumes were twined around long poles, and the pickers sometimes had to jump up, and sometimes pull the sprouts down to reach the pods, which they then threw into their baskets. The height of the plants gave them a certain relief: the young people were thus working in the shade and that was handy in the hot afternoon.

  “Yes,” Bame said, looking at the girl with eyes colorless as water, “the ancient botanists proposed precise genetic tuning for terrestrial plants, depending on what kind of soil and other natural conditions would be found on the unknown planet.”

  “I know that,” the girl replied. “I just meant exactly that.”

  “I get it,” Bame said.

  “But a vegetable called a ‘potato’ did not work,” Pamo reminded them.

  “Yes, but we also know that nothing is perfect,” Bef agreed with him, too.

  Their monotonous work didn’t require their full attention, and the young people had the opportunity to talk about anything, as they always did in such cases. However, recently they were talking mostly about an upcoming event—the creation of family pairs by the LAI-5.

  Thus, Bef involuntarily switched to the topic: “Having mentioned the scientists of Earth, I wondered again why they did not explain the inequality of the sexes.”

  The Neians didn’t understand why the LAI-5 had made more boys than girls. In case of a programming error, why did the machine then not correct the sex of one of the embryos? Although the young colonists knew that they could exclude a mistake for sure.

  The rules clearly said, “Each house is intended for one family, consisting of parents and their ten children. Thus, the first fourteen couples will give birth to one hundred and forty babies, which would allow the inhabitants of the planet to avoid degeneration due to the crossing of individuals with close genotypes.”

  The premeditation of this imbalance also confirmed another paragraph of the rules, “A man left without a mate will find her among the new generation of women, or because of unforeseen circumstances.”

  Pamo had been listening to her and working at the same time, but suddenly he stopped and stood rooted to the spot for a while. Then he looked at the girl and said: “Your words have prompted me to have an unexpected thought. One which we have never discussed before. Now I see this problem from the other side. Maybe its solution lies here?”

  “Well, tell us,” Bef invited him.

  “What if someone does not agree to be extra, and refuses to wait for the next generation of females? What consequences could this have?" asked Pamo, and scratched his head.

  “What does it mean ‘to refuse’?” At first, Bef didn’t understand, but after a second, when the essence of the young man’s question reached her, the girl stopped her activities. She stared at Pamo in surprise, but he just looked back at her in response.

  At last, Bef resumed speaking, “How is it possible to not execute the requirements of the rules?”

  Until that moment, Bame had been listening to them without distracting himself from his work, but, having heard Pamo’s last words, he first was gradually lost in thought, and then his hands with the pods in them just froze.

  After some pondering, Bame realized that during this conversation his companions had stumbled upon an uncertainty. Moreover, he soon realized that it was very important for him to understand the essence of this uncertainty. With each subsequent moment he became more and more confident that something important was happening. He had already ceased to listen to his companions. He even forgot where this chat had begun.

  Bame tried to grasp the situation. At first he asked himself what would happen if the LAI-5 did not provide him with a mate; what then? On the one hand, he must obey the LAI-5, and on the other, there was no explanation of what would follow if he did not obey.

  But how could he get a mate without permission? The RA-5 and RB-5 had not disappeared anywhere. As before, they could divest you of food, and even apply an electrical imp
ulse, one that had not been used for a very long time. But what if he still wanted a mate, although he could not get one? The robots could not deprive him of desire. They could only punish him in order to prevent future errors.

  He had never thought about the future before. Why should he, if everything had long ago been planned on Earth? From his very first conscious perception of reality, he’d known that instructions had to be followed without exception. And now, because of the chatter of his comrades, these strange questions arose in his mind.

  Who will tell me what to do with my desire? Bame asked himself internally.

  He stood like a statue, as if awaiting the answer to his question. After a few seconds, he met it indeed: This riddle must be solved by those for whom it is intended—by the colonists; I have to do it myself! The comprehension of this excited the young man.

  Then he recalled another point from the manual on the expansion of the colony. Namely, regarding human reproduction, “Naturally born people will create pairs without the intervention of machines, only in accordance with their desires.”

  Aha. Bame’s thoughts continued to seethe. So, having been left without a mate, should he wait for the next generation of women? What would happen then? By that time he would have grown old, and it was very likely that the new females would wish to live with their peers and not with him.

  Bame’s brain, at first indistinctly and in some disorder, but then more clearly, formed the picture of a new reality: it was wrong to rely only on the colonization program. Life at the prompts composed by earthlings had come to its end. He wanted to say it to Pamo and Bef, but at the last moment he restrained himself.

  A sudden feeling stopped him. It convinced him that he should not share this conjecture with anyone. It turned out that there was such a part of his consciousness, the content of which was not subject to disclosure to another person. Fascinated by these intense thoughts, he unclenched his fist and dropped the pods beyond the basket.