Abrak came from a star as far from Balbain’s as the latter was from Solsystem. When fully erect he stood less than five feet in height and had a skin like corded cloth: full of neat folds and wavy grains. At the moment he squatted on the bare floor, his skeletal legs folded under him in an extraordinary double-jointed way that Eliot found quite grotesque.
Abrak’s voice was crooning and smooth, and contained unnerving infra-sound beats that made a human listener feel uneasy and slightly dizzy – Eliot already knew, in fact, that Abrak could, if he wished, kill him merely by speaking: by voicing quiet vibrations of just the right frequency to cripple his internal organs.
‘So the picture we have built is vindicated?’ he replied to Eliot’s announcement, pointing a masked, dog-like face towards the Earthman.
‘There can be little doubt of it.’
‘I will view the offspring.’ The alien rose in one swift motion.
Eliot had already decided that there was no point in reporting to the fifth member of the team: Zeed, the third of the non-humans. He appeared to take no more interest in their researches.
He led the way back down the connecting ramps, through the interior of the spaceship which he had been finding increasingly depressing of late. More and more it reminded him of a hurriedly-built air-raid shelter, devoid of decoration, rough-hewn, dreary and echoing.
Balbain’s people had built the ship. Eliot could recall his excitement on learning of its purpose, an excitement that doubled when it transpired he had a chance of joining it. For the ship was travelling from star to star on a quest for knowledge. And as it journeyed it occasionally recruited another scientist from a civilisation sufficiently advanced, if he would make a useful member of the team. So far, in addition to the original Balbain, there had been Zeed, Abrak (none of these being their real, unpronounceable names, but convenience names for human benefit: transliterations or syllabic equivalents), and, of course, Eliot and Alanie.
Alanie had been, for Eliot, one of the fringe benefits of the trip – another being that when they returned to Solsystem they would take back with them a prodigious mass of data, a sizeable number of discoveries, and would gain immortal fame. The aliens, recognising that human sexuality was more than usually needful, had offered to allow a male-female pair as Solsystem’s contribution. Eliot had found that his prospect of a noble ordeal was considerably mitigated by the thought of spending that time alone with his selected teammate: Alanie Leitner, vivacious, companionable, with an IQ of 190 (slightly better than Eliot’s own, in fact) and an experienced all-round researcher. The perfect assistant for him, the selection board had assured him, and he had found little in their verdict to disagree with, then or since.
But the real thrill had been in the thing itself: in being part of a voyage of discovery that transcended racial barriers, in the uplifting demonstration that wherever intelligence arose it formed the same aspiration: to know, to examine, to reveal the universe.
Mind was mind: a universal constant.
Unfortunately he and Alanie seemed to be drifting apart from their alien travelling companions, to understand them less and less. The truth was that he and Alanie were doing all the work. They would arrive at a system and begin a survey; yet very quickly the interest of the others would die off and the humans would be left to carry out all the real research, draw the conclusions and write up the reports completely unaided. As a matter of fact Zeed now took scarcely any interest at all and did not stir from his quarters for months on end.
Eliot found it quite inexplicable, especially since Balbain and Abrak, both of whom had impressed him by the strength of their intellects, admitted that much that was novel had been discovered since leaving Solsystem.
At the bottom of the ramp he led Abrak into the laboratory section. And there to greet them was Alanie Leitner: a wide, slightly sulky mouth in a pale face; a strong nose, steady brown eyes and auburn, nearly reddish hair cut squarely at the nape of her neck. And even in her white laboratory smock the qualities of her figure were evident.
Though constructed of the same concrete-like stuff as the rest of the spaceship, the laboratory was made more cheerful by being a place of work. At the far end was the test chamber. Abrak made his way there and peered through the thick window. The parent specimen they had begun with lay up against the wall of the circular chamber, apparently dying after its birth-giving exertions. It was about the size of a dog, but was spider-like, with the addition of a rearward clump of tissue that sprouted an untidy bunch of antennae-like sensors.
Its offspring, lying inert a few yards away, offered absolutely no resemblance to the spider-beast. A dense-looking, slipper-shaped object, somewhat smaller than the parent, it might have been no more than a lump of wood or metal.
‘It’s too soon yet to be able to say what it can do,’ Alanie said, joining them at the window.
Abrak was silent for a while. ‘Is it not possible that this is a larval, immature stage, thus accounting for the absence of likeness?’ he suggested.
‘It’s conceivable, certainly,’ Eliot answered. ‘But we think the possibility is remote. For one thing we are pretty certain that the offspring was already adult and fully grown, or practically so, when it was born. For another, the fact that the parent reproduced at all is pretty convincing confirmation of our theory. Added to everything else we know, I don’t feel disposed towards accepting any other explanation.’
‘Agreed,’ Abrak replied. ‘Then we must finally accept that the Basic Polarity does not obtain here on Five?’
‘That’s right.’ Although he should have become accustomed to the idea by now Eliot’s brain still went spinning when he thought of it and all it entailed.
Scientifically speaking the notion of the Basic Polarity went back, as far as Solsystem was concerned, to the Central Dogma. In a negative sense, it also went back to the related Koestler’s Question, posed late in the twentieth century.
The Central Dogma expressed the keystone of genetics: that the interaction between gene and soma was a one-way traffic. The genes formed the body. But nothing belonging to the body, or anything that it experienced, could modify the genes or have any effect on the next generation. Thus there was no inheritance of acquired characteristics; evolution was conducted over immensely long periods of time through random mutations resulting from cosmic radiation, or through chemical accidents in the gene substance itself.
Why, Koestler asked, should this be so? A creature that could re-fashion its genes, endowing its offspring with the means to cope with the hazards it had experienced, would confer a great advantage in the struggle for survival. Going further, a creature that could lift life itself by its bootstraps and produce a superior type in this way would confer an even greater advantage. Furthermore, Koestler argued that direct reshaping of the genes should be perfect within the capabilities of organic life, using chemical agents.
So the absence of such a policy in organic life was counter-survival, a curious, glaring neglect on the part of nature. The riddle was answered, by Koestler’s own contemporaries, in the following manner: if the soma, on the basis of its experiences, was to modify the gene-carrying DNA, then the modification would have to be planned and executed by the instinctive functions of the nervous system, or by whatever corresponded to those functions in any conceivable creature. But neither the instinctive brains of the higher orders, nor the primitive ganglia of the lower orders, had the competence to carry out this work: acting purely by past-conditioned responses, they had no apprehension of the future and would not have been able to relate experience to genetic alteration. Hence life had been dependent on random influences: radiation and accident.
For direct gene alteration to be successful, Koestler’s rebutters maintained, some form of intellect would be needed. Primitive animals did not have this; if the gene-changing animal existed, then that animal was man, and man worked not through innate bodily powers but by artificial manipulation of the chromosomes. Even then, his efforts had been partial
and inept: the eradication of defective genes to rectify the increasing incidence of deformity; the creation of a few new animals that had quickly sickened and died.
And with that the whole matter of Koestler’s Question had been quietly forgotten. The Central Dogma was reinstated, not merely as an arbitrary fact but as a necessary principle. If Koestler’s Question had any outcome, then it was in the recognition of the Basic Polarity: the polarity between individual and species. Because the species, not the individual, had to be the instrument of evolution. If the Central Dogma did not hold, then species would not need to exist at all (and neither, incidentally, would sex). The rate of change would be so swift that there would be nothing to hold them together – and any that did exist, because of some old-fashioned immutability of their genes, would rapidly be wiped out. And indeed the Basic Polarity seemed to be the fundamental form of life everywhere in the universe, as Balbain, Abrak and Zeed all confirmed.
Eliot was thinking of renaming Five ‘Koestler’s Planet’.
On a world where all traces of the past could be wiped out overnight, they would probably never know exactly what had happened early in Five’s biological evolution to overthrow the Central Dogma. Presumably the instinctive functions had developed, not intelligence exactly, but a unique kind of telegraph between their experience of the external world and the microscopic coding of the germ plasm. It would, as Alanie pointed out, only have to happen once, and that once could even be at the bacterial level. The progeny of a single individual would rapidly supplant all other fauna. In the explosion of organic development that followed it would be but a short step before gene alteration became truly inventive; intellectual abilities would soon arise to serve this need.
It had been some time before the idea had dawned on them that Five might be a planet of single-instance species; in other words, of no species at all. There was one four-eyed stoat; one elephantine terror; one leaping prong; one blanket (their name for a creature of that description which spent most of its time merely lying on the ground). In fact there was a bewildering variety of forms of which only one example could be found. But there were one or two exceptions to the rule – or so they had thought. They had videotaped six specimens of a type of multi-legged snake. Only later had they discovered that the resemblance between them was a case of imitation, of convergent evolution among animals otherwise unrelated.
So they had been forced, reluctantly, to accept the evidence of their eyes, and later, of the electron microscope. But only now, in the last hour, was Eliot one hundred per cent convinced of it.
Another thing that had made him cautious was the sheer degree of knowledge and intelligence consistent with this level of biological engineering. He would have expected every creature on the planet to display intelligence at least equivalent to the human. Instead the animals here were just that – animals. Clever, ferocious animals, but content to inhabit their ecological niches and evincing no intellectual temperament.
All, that is, except Dominus.
They called him Dominus because he had the aspect of being king of all he surveyed. He must have weighed a thousand tons at least. He was also owner of the road system, which at first they had taken to be evidence of a civilisation, or at least the remains of one. It was now clear, however, that the road had been Dominus’s own idea – or, more probably, his parents’ idea.
The great beast had demonstrated his understanding when they had gone out and tried to trap specimens for laboratory study. The exercise had proved to be dangerous and nearly impossible. Five’s fauna were the universe’s greatest experts at not getting killed, caught or trapped, and had responded not merely with claw, fang and evasive speed, but with electricity, poison gas, infra-sound (Abrak’s own speciality), corrosives of various types they had still not classified but which had scared them very much, thick strands of unknown substances spun swiftly out from spinnerets and carried on the wind, slugs of pure iron ejected from porcupine-like quills with the velocity of rifle bullets, and – believe it or not – organically generated laser beams.
Retreating after one of their sorties to the shelter of their space-ship’s force shield, the hunters had been about to give up and go back inside.
Alanie had said: ‘Let’s get off this planet before one of those things throws a fusion beam at us.’
And then Dominus had acted. Rushing down, like a smaller hill himself, from the hill where he had parked himself, he had advanced driving several smaller animals before him. Finally they had delivered themselves almost at the scientists’ feet and promptly fallen unconscious. Dominus had then returned to the hill-top, where he had squatted motionless ever since. And Eliot, blended with his amazement, had felt the same thrill and transcendence that had overwhelmed him at the first arrival of Balbain’s starship.
Dominus understood their wants! He was helping them!
Conceivably he could be communicated with. But that problem had to wait. They got the creatures inside and put them under adequate restraint. Then Eliot and Alanie went immediately to work.
The creatures’ genes followed the standard pattern produced by matter on planetary surfaces everywhere: coded helices forming a group of chromosomes. The code was doublet and not triplet, as it was on Earth, but that in itself was not unusual; Abrak’s genes also were in doublet code. More significantly, the single gonad incorporated a molecular factory, vast by microscopic standards, able to dispatch a chemical operator to any specific gene in a selected germ cell. And, furthermore, a chain of command could be discerned passing into the spinal column (where there was a spinal column) and thence to the brain (where there was a brain).
Eliot had written in his journal:
I get the impression that we are witness to a fairly late stage of Five’s evolutionary development. For one thing, life here is relatively sparse, as though fierce competition has thinned down numbers rather than increased them, leading to a more subdued mode of existence. There are no predators; defensive mutations on the part of a potential prey would no doubt make it unprofitable to be a carnivore. The vegetation on Five conforms to the Basic Polarity and so presumably predates the overthrow of the Central Dogma, but it survives patchily in the form of scrub savannahs and a few small forests, and in many areas does not exist at all. The majority of animals own a patch of vegetation which they defend against all comers with an endless array of natural weapons, but they eat only in order to obtain body-building materials – proteins and trace elements – and not to provide energy, which they obtain by soaking up the ubiquitous lightning discharges. Some animals have altogether abandoned any dependence on an external food chain: they carry out the whole of the anabolic process themselves, taking the requisite elements and minerals from soil and air and metabolising all their requirements using the energy from this same lightning.
It has occurred to us that all the animals here are potentially immortal. Ageing is a species-characteristic, the life-span being adjusted to the maximum benefit of the species, not of the individual. If all our conclusions are correct, an organism on Five would continue to live a self-contained life until meeting some pressing exigency it was not able to master; only then would it reproduce to create a more talented version of itself and afterwards, perhaps, permit itself to die. This notion suggests that a test may be possible.
The slipper organism was the outcome of that test. They had placed the spider-thing in a chamber and subjected it to stress. They had bombarded it with pressure, heat, missiles, and various other discomforts suggested by the details of its metabolism. And they had waited to see whether it would react by ‘conceiving’ and ultimately giving birth to another creature better than itself.
Of course, the new organism would be designed to accomplish one thing above all: escape. Eliot was curious now to see how the slipper would attempt it.
‘Might it not be dangerous?’ Abrak questioned mildly.
Eliot flipped a switch. A thick slab of dull metal slid down to occlude the window. Instead, they could
continue to watch through a vidcamera.
‘I’d like to see it get through that,’ he boasted. ‘Carbon and titanium alloy a foot thick. It’s surrounded by it.’
‘You are being unsubtle,’ said Abrak. ‘Perhaps the beast will rely on trickery.’
Alanie gave a deep sigh that strained her full breasts voluptuously against the fabric of her smock. ‘Well, what now?’ she asked. ‘We’ve been here six months. I think we’ve solved the basic mystery of the place. Isn’t it time we were moving on?’
‘I’d like to stay longer,’ Eliot said thoughtfully. ‘I want to see if we can get into communication with Dominus.’
‘But how?’ she asked, sitting down at a bench and waving her hand. ‘Communication is a species-characteristic. He probably would never understand what language is.’
‘And yet already he’s given us help, so we can communicate after a fashion,’ Eliot argued.
A warning sound came from Abrak. Something was happening on the screen looking into the test chamber.
The slipper organism had decided to act. Gliding smoothly to the far side of the chamber, the one nearest the skin of the ship, it pressed its tapered end against the wall. Abruptly the toe of the slipper ignited into an intense glare too bright for the vidcamera to handle. An instant later fumes billowed up and filled the chamber, obscuring everything.
By the time the fumes cleared sufficiently for the onlookers to see anything, the slipper had made its exit through the wall of the chamber, and thence through the ship’s skin, by burning a channel whose edges were still white-hot.
‘I think,’ said Eliot sombrely, ‘it might just have been a fusion beam, or something just as good.’
He paused uncertainly. Then he flung open a cupboard and began pulling out gear. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re going after our specimen.’
‘But it will kill us,’ Alanie protested.
‘Not if Dominus helps us again. And somehow I think he will.’
Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis Page 41
