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passage, we have yet to discover them, unless there is in fact some superstition regarding the calibans.
There is no writing except in primitive accounts of food inventory. Spelling is not regular, nor is the majority literate beyond the capacity to make tallies. There has been some linguistic change, on which we might derive more information if we knew the world of origin of these Union colonists and the azi (see document E). The accent is distinctive after less than a century of isolation, indicative of a very early breakdown of formal education; but the forms of standard grammar remain, not uncommon in azi-descended populations where precise adherence to instruction has been tape-fed as a value.
The local nomenclature has changed: few townsmen recognize Newport as the name of the colony. Their word for their world is Gehenna, while the primary is called simply The Sun, and the principal river on which they have settled they name Styx. The literary allusion is not known to them.
There is no indication that the inhabitants understand any political affiliation to Union, or that there will be any active opposition to Alliance operations or governance.
There is, however, a second and more serious consideration, and it is one which the mission hesitates, in the absence of more evidence, to present to the Bureau. While Union documents describe the highest lifeform as nonsapient, evidence points to caliban intrusion into human living area during the colony's height. It would be speculative at this point to suggest that caliban activity may have led directly to the decline of the colony, but it is remarkable that the decline has been so thorough and so rapid.
Dissension and political strife among the colonists might have disrupted human civilization, but the town, of considerable population, does not show any fear or carry any weapons excepting utilitarian objects such as knives or sticks, and does not threaten with them. We do not yet have a census, but the town is a little smaller than we would expect. Granted the usual Union colonial base, the world population in fifty years might well exceed a hundred thousand by natural reproduction alone.
Possibly poor health care and limited food have worked to keep the rate of increase somewhat lower than average, although families observed are 165
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large. Possibly there was a conflict. Possibly there was decimation by conflict or disease. Based on information given by townsmen, nomadism may be a factor to be considered both in population estimates and in politics. The town numbers perhaps as many as 70,000, with extremely crowded conditions. There are small outlying settlements of less than 1000
individuals sharing town fields and probably established for convenience.
The heart of the town is limestone slab construction, but the outlying districts and later additions to central district houses are brick and timber, indicating change of supply or change in technological level. Access to the limestone of the central hills may have been cut off, perhaps marking some change of affairs regarding hill communities and the town, but it would be speculation at this point to draw any conclusion.
There is division of labor into brickmaking, pottery, weaving, agriculture.
There are no domestic animals: clothing is linenlike, from the cultivation of local plants. There has been a successful economic adaptation to locally available materials, and insofar as success of a colony might be its ability to remain viable without offworld supply, Newport, or Gehenna as the locals name it, has achieved at least a tenuous success.
The atmosphere is overall agrarian and tranquil, although our military advisors persist in warnings that they may be awaiting the departure of the ship and attempting to secure an advantage of surprise. The scientific mission doubts this, but will of course take suggested precautions. The mission for its part has advised that extreme precautions extend to native lifeforms.
From Section D, mission report Dr. Cina Kendrick
…. Intelligence is not, as indicated above, a scientific term. I have objected to the description sapience in previous studies and again take issue with biological studies which attempt to attach this imprecise assessment of adaptive and problem-solving capacities to non-human lifeforms.
Two considerations must be made. First, that an organism's behaviors may be survival-positive in one environment and not in another, and 166
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second that its perceptive apparatus, its input devices, may be efficient for one environment but not for another. The quality imprecisely described as intelligence is commonly understood to describe the generalization of an organism, i.e, its capacity to adapt by the use of analogy to a variety of situations and environments.
On the contrary even the concept of analog is anthropocentric. Logic is another anthropocentric imprecision, the attempt to impose an order (binary, for instance, or sequential) on observations which themselves have been filtered through imprecise perceptive organs.
The only claim which may be made for generalization as a desirable trait is that it seems to permit survival in a multitude of environments. The same may be said of generalization as part of the definition of intelligence, particularly when intelligence is used as a criterion of the inherent value of an organism or its right to life or territory when faced with human intrusion. Generalization permits migration in the face of encroachment; and it permits one species to encroach on another, which adds another dimension to natural selection. But when extended to intrusion not over another mountain ridge within the same planetary ecology and the same genetic heritage, but instead to intrusion of one genetic heritage upon another across the boundaries of hitherto uncrossable space, this value judgement loses some credibility.
The dominant lifeform on Gehenna II is a scaly endothermic quadruped without aesthetic attraction. The description that leaps too readily to mind is reptile, which does not adequately describe an interior structure which is not reptilian or pertinent to any previously catalogued lifeform; it does not describe behaviors such as mound-building or suggest reasons for an advance into human "territory". Nor does it adequately describe the adaptive process by which this lifeform succeeds in the face of a human colony armed with modern weapons, furnished with heavy construction equipment, and established with the precedent of many previous successes.
I dissent from the mission opinion which seeks to debate whether the Union colony may have "contaminated" a sapience. I dissent not to condone the intrusion of humankind into this ecosystem, but to protest a proceeding which will attempt on the basis of quantitative anthropocentric 167
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standards to determine the relative value of a lifeform against the desire of humankind to possess what this world has held until now unique within the rules established by its own genetic heritage.
Report, document E
Dr. Carl Ebron
Observation indicates human sites scattered through the hills to such an extent that it would take years and force to lift human presence off this planet. The colonists of the town might obey a summons to be lifted off. It is doubtful that others would be receptive, and the result of any attempt to remove the human population would be a scattering of human presence on a world where humanity can survive without technology. The end result is still contamination, and possibly hostility which might be exploited centuries hence. We are ironically faced with a first-contact situation involving our own species, a situation fraught with the direst potential hazard to zonal stability and peace.
My own recommendation is a quarantined observation point, allowing what has begun here to take as natural a course as is possible under regrettable circumstances. The other logical solution, a thorough sterilization of the entire area of possible contamination, the elimination of both human and native lifeforms in the hope of preserving a planet from contamination, is Draconian and unthinkable. We are human beings. Our morality constrains us from such a decision as might undo an evil. I do not know whether this is (a term to which Dr. Kendrick would object)
intelligent on humanity's part, but it is certain that nothing on this world offers us resistance or seems to mean us harm, and I see no choice but the maintenance of the status quo until such time as a more informed decision might be made.
Document G: Dr. Chandra Cartier
I respectfully dissent from Drs. Kendrick and Ebron. Dr. Kendrick's thesis, taken in the extreme, might be extended to every lifeform on every world, but I believe that the hazard on Gehenna is more specific, without claiming that it is mindful or sapient. The danger is in ourselves, that humankind and human civilization have failed so miserably here and that 168
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we are raising atavistic suspicions of aliens in our midst. I object to the proposition that human beings be quarantined and observed in poverty, disease, and ignorance to protect the supposed value of native life which has not evidenced any creative capacity. I object to the proposition that there is not relative value involved, the value of human beings trapped in a situation of squalor and futility, neither of which may be scientific terms, but both of which have stark value on a world whose last civilized inhabitants named it Hell. I propose on the contrary that it would be a crime against humanity to wall ourselves off from these people. On the contrary, we should bring hospitals, educational facilities, and bring these survivors into the modern age, at least to the extent that they become capable of transforming Gehenna into a viable colony. From the neolithic to the space age may be too great a leap for one generation; but metal plows and engines to pull them are not too great a leap; rejuv and modern medicine are not too great a leap; aid in years of bad weather, advice in agriculture, the judicious importation of plants and livestock, all these things are minimal response to this human suffering. I do not dignify with a response the suggestion advanced by Dr. Ebron that neither humankind nor native life might count against the ideal of ecological restoration: he is correct; the idea is inhuman. As for Dr. Kendrick's debate of values, it is attractive only in the abstract. Taken in substance it would have starved our species out of existence as soon as it had conceived the theory: our intelligence, whether anthropocentric or otherwise, advises us that we have ensured the survival of terrene species by our actions. Whales survive in the oceans of Cyteen; bears and seals and other species on Eversnow. Was this moral? Is it moral for us to have left our ancestral Sun? Human history is collision, not stasis. It is inhuman not to preserve these people in a reasonable quality of life. There must be a perimeter established here within which humanity can retreat to remain human; and that perimeter must be defended with whatever measures are necessary until investigation has established what we have done on this world. The fact that this world has reduced one well-equipped human effort to the neolithic is eloquent enough argument that humankind has to be wiser in its dealings with this environment and what lives here.
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vii
Alliance HQ Newport/Gehenna Mission
Couriered by As Boreas
…Equipment and personnel arriving with this message will permit the expansion of a secure perimeter to include the landing site and town and fields as well as a river access. Establishment of permanent health care and educational facilities for Newport/Gehenna citizens should be given a high priority, but security of Alliance personnel and equipment must not be compromised in the process, regarding force of nature or force of arms, and not excluding the possibility of action by Union agents or native lifeforms.
This office has contacted Union colonial offices with a further request for data on humanitarian grounds and there has been some negotiation opened in this matter, but progress is likely to be minimal and slow.
In the absence of further information, the mission is instructed to establish a perimeter as wide as possible without conflict and within the limits of available equipment and security and tactical considerations. Conflict is to be avoided with humans and native life, but this prohibition does not extend to the function of effective fencing devices. The Bureau draws no conclusion on the sapience or competency of the calibans and awaits further data which the mission will supply.
The priorities of the mission will be as follows: (1) to secure the area of its own operation
(2) to determine whether any activity of any other outside agency might exist; if so, to take appropriate measures
(3) to secure the area of the town and adjacent villages necessary for establishment of a viable economy
(4) to assist colonists with medical and educational facilities
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(5) to encourage trade with the center of colonization in preference to trade with those in outlying areas, with a view of centralization of economy and facilities and the establishment of an Alliance-influenced capital which will tend to draw scattered human settlements toward the landing site by the attraction of food and stability, minimizing future political difference
(6) to educate all available citizenry in hygiene, agriculture, small manufacture, and government
(7) to defend against encroachment by native agency by the use of whatever force is minimally sufficient to deter the attempt, up to and including lethal arms.
Closely following this equipment delivery another ship will follow, bringing a station module and personnel for the core of a permanent manned orbiting port, which will monitor the majority of Newport planetary surface and serve, with the addition of a shuttle by future shipment, to maintain constant surveillance and flow of supplies.
It is not Bureau policy to permit a colony to suffer failure from neglect.
The human inhabitants regardless of origin are now an Alliance polity but must be dealt with under Section 9 procedures as a first contact. The mission is urged to provide answers to questions of local sapience, and particularly to assist the station when operational in determining what planetary areas might be developed without contact with high lifeforms.
Of high priority, therefore, is the establishment of a landing area at Newport Base….
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Newport Base briefing room
"Then the decision is to exploit," Ebron said, "in potential disregard of native life."
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"It's a political decision," said Kendrick. "We're in the proposed path of expansion. They want Gehenna. That's what it comes to. Union seeded it, we cultivate it— they're happy, you understand that? They're actually relieved the population's sunk to the stone age. And devil take the calibans."
"That's off the record," Cartier said.
Kendrick drew a breath and let it go again. "That's off the record. Of course it's off the record. You had your way, didn't you?"
"No," said Cartier. "Unfortunately I didn't."
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GENEALOGY CR 72
Gehenna Outpost [235]
ix
Year 72, day 130 CR
The Hills
It was many a day that Pia Elder sat atop her hill, watching the coming and going in the camp, a long hard walk for an old woman, and the first such walk of the spring. Cloud was panting when he had come so far, and relieved that the old woman was here.
His heart was beating very hard when he came up the slope, partly because the old woman was sitting very still (but she often did that) and his mother had done that when she was dead; and partly because he was afraid of this old woman, who was thin and dry as a stick and strange enough to do things like this, coming out before dawn to look at a place she would not go.
"Ma Pia," he said very quietly, and circled to the side of her and came facing her, squatted down with his elbows tucked between his knees. It was cold in the morning wind. He was cold. He shivered, looking into a 173
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face wrinkled like old fruit and eyes like black Styx stone, water-smoothed and cold. She let her hair grow. Neglect, he guessed. "Ma Pia, father he wished w
as you well, ma Pia."
A while longer the implacable eyes gave him nothing. Then Pia Elder lifted a bony arm from beneath her blanket.
"New buildings this spring."
He looked, turning his head and turning on his haunches. It was so that there were more buildings in the camp, tall and strange buildings. Perhaps the old woman was being conversational with him. He looked back at her hoping that it would be easy to get her home.
"They've smoothed the mounds, levelled the way to the river," the old woman said. "But you don't remember how it was."
"They made the mounds flat."
"And they go on building. See how the fields go, right across the plain; see where the fences go."
"Mustn't touch them fences, the power'll hurt you."
She whipped out her arm straight toward him, snapped her fingers. It had as well been a blow; might have been if she had had her stick in her hand.
He clenched his arms in shock. "Them fences."
"Those fences, ma Pia." He was trembling, from the hour, the cold, the old woman's eyes.
"Who taught you to talk? Stupid Nine's lot?"
"No, ma Pia."
"You talk, hear? Not like Nine's breed. Not like my brother Jin's either.
You know why, boy?"
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