Moon Flower

by James P. Hogan

  “More than that,” Shearer said, his voice strained. “Even before the type of picture is determined. He knows which emotional state will be produced.”

  Wade nodded to Nick, who stopped the run. Nick came back to the seat, released Brutus, and hoisted him onto an arm, at the same time pulling more nuts from his pocket. “No more of that tonight, eh? You did good, cobber. Makes yer old uncle Nick right proud, it does....”

  “This is what you told us,” Uberg said, finally finding his voice. “Information propagating backward in time. The animal was reacting to it.”

  “All living organisms do,” Elena reminded him. “That was the point I was making earlier. They can alter their behavior according to what they sense is going to happen — or is more likely to happen. That’s how they do it: by reacting to A-waves.”

  While Nick moved away to return Brutus to the cage, Wade turned aside to take something from a piece of apparatus on one of the benches.

  Uberg was rubbing his brow perplexedly. “All living organisms,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” Elena said.

  “Including our own — on Earth?”

  “But of course. Aren’t things that are alive there distinguished just as much from things that aren’t?”

  Uberg pointed at the screen they had just been looking at. “But you’d never see a demonstration like that on Earth.”

  “True,” Wade agreed. “But that isn’t because life on Earth is less responsive to any great degree. It’s because there’s less there for it to respond to. The A-radiation environment is weaker. Cyrene is a lot more fortunate.” Wade glanced around to make sure he had everyone’s attention. They seemed to be at the crucial part that it had all been leading up to. He paused for a second to choose his words, and then cocked his head to single out Shearer. “Elena and I had corresponded for some time before we came out to Cyrene with the first mission. She left the base first, and later got in touch asking me to join her to look more deeply into something she thought she’d discovered here.”

  Wade held out the object he had taken from the bench and let Shearer take it. It was a silver metal cylinder about the size of a coffee mug, with a bundle of wires coming out from one end to terminate in a connector, and a thin glass cap covering the other, inside which was an intricate arrangement of insulating struts and filaments supporting what looked like a small crystal bead. “There’s an adtenna that works,” he said. “I’ll show you some tests with it tomorrow. The results are indisputable. Even Ellis would be convinced. But it needs the stronger signal conditions that exist here. On Earth, the information gets drowned in all the noise and fuzz.”

  Shearer handed the device back almost reverently. All eyes remained fixed on Wade. There was no need for anyone to speak. So what made the difference between Earth and Cyrene?

  Wade replaced the detector in the apparatus that he had taken it from. As he turned to face the others again, he stopped to peer at a moon flower standing in a glass flask alongside and ran one of the opened red petals lightly between his thumb and a finger. “This will interest you, Doctor Uberg,” he said, sounding almost casual. “The botany on Cyrene is very unusual — unusual to us, anyway. But I’m beginning to suspect that as far as the rest of the universe goes, it might be Earth that is unusual.” He released the petal and carefully rearranged it back the way it had been. “I’m sure you’re all aware that plants absorb radiation at some wavelength and reemit it at others. That’s how they get their energy, and what gives them their coloring. However, some of the plants on Cyrene have a very remarkable property. They reemit not only electromagnetic radiation, but also the radiation we’ve been talking about — which we said all living things react to. The moon flower and its relatives are particularly good examples. The effect is greatest at night, when other disturbances that tend to swamp it are absent. The result is to amplify the natural A-wave background. So living things here feel the effects more strongly than living things on Earth do. They see farther into the fog.”

  Wade directed a challenging look around his listeners, as if inviting them to make of it what they would. “They have a sharper sense of consequences, and know what will be better for them. That’s why you’ll have trouble trying to sell them on a lousy deal that will ultimately prove self-destructive, and why they prefer to do most of their important thinking at night.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Lang had not slept well. It wasn’t so much a case of inability to sleep — the long ride over the high country from Doriden, followed by the winding descent into the Geevar valley, had been tiring by any standards — or of a night’s tossing and restless sleep. If anything, he had slept unusually deeply. But he awoke beset by disturbing feelings of a kind he couldn’t recall experiencing before.

  He and Xorin, his guide from Revo, had stayed the night in a house by the river with a ferryman by the name of Ayano and his wife, Fiera. They had a son called Mutu, whom Lang put at around twelve, as well as two younger children who were at present spending a couple of weeks with friends farther along the valley. Besides the ferry, Ayano also worked a smallholding of a few fields that rotated between grain, vegetables, and pasture, and managed a mixed herd of animals. Their house was one of two standing close together. The other, with its adjoining shed and forge, belonged to a smith.

  Lang was still withdrawn after getting up, trying to analyze what was troubling him, while the others exchanged local gossip over a pot of pikoe. He was out of training for horseback riding, too, he realized. After two months of forced inactivity aboard the Tacoma, the days of hard travel from Revo had left him decidedly stiff and sore. Perhaps from observing Lang’s movements, Xorin announced that he would leave him to rest for a few hours and scout around the area on his own for news concerning the carriage. Lang couldn’t summon much inclination to disagree. Maybe it would give him some time to untangle his confused thoughts, he told himself.

  Ayano and Fiera announced that they would be leaving shortly to check on a sick neighbor and take her some food. After Xorin departed and while Fiera was tending to the animals and collecting eggs, Ayano and Mutu went out to the stable to hitch up the wagon. Lang used the sink in the kitchen to wash. It was fed by a hand pump that seemed to fascinate Mutu, and which Ayano said had come from an Ibennisian town somewhere along the coast. The water was clear and refreshing. As Lang scooped it over his face and through his hair, letting it run down over his bare chest, he looked out through the window at the river and the leafy canopy of the forest beyond, and his movements slowed. He had never before experienced such vivid sensations color of and texture... and the feeling of harmony that it all went together to create. The moving river seemed to have come alive; and it was filled with life. Every tree was a miracle forming part of a larger whole, for which the planet beneath was merely a support. All of it was there to enable some underlying message to express itself.

  Lang blinked and shook his head, and reached for the towel to wipe his eyes. He was an intelligence operative and had sometimes killed people. He didn’t think this way. The only purpose in the whole sick mess was to stick with it for as long as it took to make enough to get out, and make sure that the ones who had scores to settle wouldn’t track you down. Was this place starting to get to him already, the way he’d heard people say? Some thought it had to do with chemicals in the air, but the labs hadn’t found anything.

  He dried his face and went out through the kitchen door to the small garden at the rear by the river’s bank. As he stood toweling his arms and body, the feeling came over him again more intensely, in waves. The pale reddish light of first morning was giving way to the full dawn, with the primary star just beginning to rise. Across the river, the trees stood in rounded green, yellow, orange, and brown banks, their arms extended in rapture to greet their sun god. He turned slowly one way, then the other, awed and uncomprehending. The branches above and around the house, the flowers lining the wall and coloring the water’s edge, a new shoot prying its way up through th
e gravel of the pathway... every leaf, every insect teeming among them, even the specks of life invisible in the ground beneath, were parts of the same vibrant wholeness that he could feel.

  A world of sound that he had been deaf to engulfed him: the pulsing rhythms and subtle undertones that formed the voice of the river; the rustles of the wind dancing among the trees; the nearby birds and the answering choruses from the far bank; an insect hovering around a plant by the door. He was immersed in an ocean of life that he had never realized existed. In some strange way, even though he had set foot on this world for the first time just a week before, the feeling of belonging, of being a part of it all, was stronger than any he had known through all his years on Earth.

  And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the thought of returning there felt somehow dismal and empty. He had no clear idea why. Pictures came into his mind of the people who had befriended him, whom he had deceived, and the prospect that lay ahead of fulfilling the mission that had brought him here. And he was overcome by revulsion.

  “It’s nice out here early in the morning,” Ayano’s voice said from behind him. Lang turned to find him and Fiera standing inside the gate from the yard to the side of the house. “We’re away, then. We’ll eat breakfast with Rannie when we get there. Mutu will fix you something if you get hungry.”

  “He’s not going with you?”

  “Oh, someone has to stay to take charge of the ferry. He’s man enough now. There’s a little bit of work to be done at Rannie’s that I’ll take care of, so we might not be back until later today.”

  Lang stepped forward and extended a hand to shake with each of them. “Well, we’ll probably be gone by the time you get back. Thanks for everything.”

  “Ah, you’re welcome any time, Jeff Lang from Earth. What else are friends for, eh?”

  “Have a safe trip to wherever you end up heading,” Fiera said. “You’ll have good weather anyway.”

  Lang moved to the gate and watched Ayano help his wife up onto the wagon, then walk around and climb up onto the driver’s seat. As they clattered out onto the roadway, he found himself feeling closer in some strange way to these simple, honest people that he’d met only yesterday than he had to almost anyone that he could remember. They seemed more alive, more real. It was as if he had been only half awake all his life, and the people that he had encountered in the course of it, shells and shadows — figments of a dream that was already fading. He shook his head and went back inside the house.

  Mutu came back in when Lang had finished dressing and was pulling on his boots. He was strong and agile, with a lean, tanned face topped by a mop of yellow hair, and alert, lively eyes that were curious about everything and missed nothing. “Your horse is watered and fed, Jeff,” he said. “And I’ve brushed him down, and his feet look fine.”

  “That was good of you.”

  “Father asked me to take care of him for you.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  Mutu made a show of being in charge of the house, clearing the table and putting things back in the cupboard and hanging others in their place. “He also asked me to prepare a meal for you before you leave, if you want one. Are you hungry, Jeff?”

  “Well, that was a good supper last night. But something small maybe, since we’ll be traveling.”

  “I could do some eggs and sausage with bread.”

  “Sounds good. Need a hand?”

  Mutu added some wood to the range and put a pan on to heat. “Just hand me the pikoe and I’ll warm it up.” Lang passed him the pot, then took some clean dishes from the dresser and sat down at the table while Mutu gathered the things he needed.

  For some reason, watching him evoked a sense of well-being and optimism that Lang was unable to pin down. Feelings came to him of Mutu being able to look forward to a worthwhile and rewarding life on this world, with connotations of warmth and security, a life of meaning... none of which made any sense, because Lang had no knowledge or experience of Cyrene upon which to base such notions. He recalled images of the remains of children he’d seen in combat theaters in Africa and Asia who had been shredded or dismembered by fragmentation munitions, or turned into blackened heaps barely recognizable as human by incendiary. He had seen boys of Mutu’s age who had been taught to attach bombs beneath cars and lay mines, others screaming and bloodied under electric shock interrogation. What kind of a world treated its young people, who trusted and believed that a better world could come of it one day, in such ways? Mutu turned from the range to deliver the food from the pan. Lang reached for the pot of rewarmed pikoe, filled their mugs, and banished such thoughts from his mind.

  “I heard that Terrans have carriages that fly through the sky like birds,” Mutu said, sitting down to join him. “But I’m not sure I believe it.”

  “That’s right,” Lang told him. “Why don’t you believe it?”

  “Then why are the other Terrans that you’re looking for traveling in an ordinary carriage? And why did you come here on a horse?”

  “Sometimes when you’re in somebody else’s world, it’s better to just fit in and do things the way they do,” Lang said. “Our flying ships are big and noisy. I don’t think you’d want them coming down all over the place. You need places that are built for that kind of thing.”

  “We had a traveler cross the river here on the ferry about a week ago, who said it was just a tale,” Mutu said. “He said he was a professor, and that it was impossible for anything heavier than air to fly.”

  “Birds fly, don’t they?” Lang pointed out.

  Mutu scratched his head and looked perplexed. “Yes, that was what I thought too. I suppose he meant things that aren’t alive, and are heavier than air.”

  “Why should it make a difference?”

  “I don’t know.... So how do you do it?”

  Lang thought for a moment, then picked up a knife, held it a foot or so above the table for a second, and then let it drop. “First, ask yourself why things fall down,” he said. The way of thinking was obviously new, and Mutu had no ready answer. Lang reached out and gave him a short but firm shove on the shoulder, causing him to move sideways. “Feel that? It’s called a force, right? When you apply a force to something, it moves — just as you did.” He picked up the knife again. “So here it is not moving. I let go of it...” He repeated what he had done before. “And it moves. So it must have felt a force.” He picked the knife up again and held it out, inducing Mutu to take it. “See, you can feel that force yourself. It’s what’s called weight.”

  “So where does it come from?” Mutu asked. Lang thought that maybe he was beginning to understand why Dad had taken a break. He pointed downward at the floor. “The ground does it?” Mutu said.

  “Everything. The whole world underneath it. All of Cyrene. It draws things to itself. Did you ever see a magnet?” Mutu nodded. “Same kind of thing.”

  “How does it do that?”

  “I don’t think anyone really knows.” In any case, Lang didn’t.

  Mutu ate in silence for a minute or so. Lang let him think about it. The eggs had something of a fishy taste but were okay. The sausage was strong and spicy. Lang had watched Fiera making it herself the evening before.

  “It still doesn’t tell me how you make something fly,” Mutu said finally.

  “We said that Cyrene exerts a force on things that pulls them down, right? Well, then all you have to do is find a way of creating another force, acting up, that’s stronger.” Lang showed the knife, tossed it upward a few inches from his palm and caught it again. “See, I did it right there.”

  “But it fell down again. You’d need something that acted all the time,” Mutu pointed out.

  “Well, that’s what you have to figure out,” Lang said. “Birds did.” He took another mouthful of his meal while Mutu thought some more, and then added, “Here’s a piece of advice. Never look at a problem and say, ‘It can’t be solved because...’ Like, ‘You can’t make it fly, because it needs a force pushing it up all
the time.’ That’s negative. Instead, you need to say, ‘It could be solved if...’ So, ‘Hey, we could make it fly if we found a way to produce a steady force that pushes up.’ That’s positive. Get it?... So there’s something to tell your professor if he ever comes back this way again.”

  Mutu seemed to decide that it was enough deep thinking for the time being. “So is that what you do, Jeff?” he asked. “Make bird carriages?”

  Lang shook his head. “No. That was just something I picked up.”

  “So what do you do?”

  Lang rubbed his eyebrow with a thumbnail, unsure how to answer. “I help protect people from others who might try to damage their work or steal it,” he said finally.

  “You mean like a guard?”

  “Close enough,” Lang said, and let it go at that.

  After they had finished eating, Mutu insisted on taking Lang to the nearby house to meet Holgath, the smith. He said Holgath made tools and implements and knew all about forces, and Mutu was sure he would be interested in the things Lang had said. Lang suspected it was more to show off the alien guest from Earth; or maybe Mutu thought Lang would tell Holgath how to make a flying carriage. In any case, Lang was happy enough to go along.

  They found Holgath at work in the forge, thick-armed and brawny, clad in a leather apron and wearing a headband stained with soot and sweat. Although he looked the image of a smith and could almost have been taken from a Terran history book, his house and the general condition of the workshop and its fittings didn’t quite fit. Like other artisans, the blacksmiths of Terran history books and folktales eked a meager existence typically on the borderline of poverty, and lived in surroundings to suit. While unpretentious, Holgath’s house looked solid, comfortable, and well maintained. His shop was well built and contained ample equipment of good quality. Cyreneans didn’t try to gouge each other or profit excessively at the cost of another’s ruin, Lang had learned from Orban during his short stay in Revo. How anything like that could be made to work, he had yet to comprehend.