Birthright

by Mike Resnick

  “I know all about the planet,” Tanayoka pointed out. “After all, we're standing on it. What I want to know is, are they intelligent? And, equally important, why did they decide to make war on our miners?” “And you want me to tell you all that, based on beings and a culture I've never seen?” said Consuela. “I appreciate the Republic's confidence in my ability, but it's absolutely out of the question.” She paused for a moment. “For what it's worth, the most important single fact now at our disposal is that they waited more than half a year to attack us, and that they did so only after we began making off with the ore.” “Does that imply intelligence?”

  “Perhaps. Or it could just be territoriality. Many unintelligent creatures will protect what they consider to be their property. A dog and his bone, for example.” “How about the fact that they have neither clothing nor any other decoration?” asked Tanayoka. “It's a warm planet,” said Consuela “And not all sentient beings feel the need to wear tokens and trinkets. No, I'm afraid I can't even begin to reach a decision until I've had the chance to observe one of them at close range.”

  “They've shown no desire to hide from us,” said Tanayoka. “I can have one captured and brought to you in a matter of hours.”

  “Unharmed,” said Consuela.

  “Of course. My dear Mrs. Orta, what kind of monsters do you take us for?” “If you'll be polite enough to take me back to the ship to await the alien, I'll be polite enough not to answer your question.”

  Tanayoka sighed, returned Consuela to her quarters aboard the spacecraft, and issued orders to capture

  one of the aliens. Two hours later he knocked on her door and informed her that her subject was in the brig, awaiting her pleasure.

  When she arrived, she found an inhabitant of Beelzebub pacing back and forth like a caged animal, which it indeed resembled. She pulled up a chair and sat down to observe it. The alien uttered a loud hooting sound, glared at her for a moment, and then resumed its pacing. “The jaw's built all wrong,” said Consuela. “It must ingest by suction. It couldn't possibly have any teeth.”

  “Are you a physiologist as well as a psychologist?” asked Tanayoka. “A little of both. Our field has come a long way since it was concerned with why husbands strayed from the fold.”

  “Touché!” said the little man. “I notice that it has well-articulated thumbs on its hands. Wouldn't that imply some intelligence? I mean, you need thumbs to build machines, and so on.” “There are still some apes and monkeys in captivity on Earth,” said Consuela. “They have thumbs, but they've reached an evolutionary dead end, and hence haven't developed the power of abstract thought.” “What kind of dead end?”

  “They're herbivores,” explained Consuela. “Thus they have no need to do anything with their hands except peel bananas. There is no environmental need for them to think.” “Surely you're not suggesting that only carnivores can develop intelligence!” said Tanayoka. “What about the Butterballs of Gamma Leporis IX, or the—” “You misunderstand me,” said Consuela “Being carnivorous has nothing to do with developing intelligence. In point of fact, only a very small percentage of sentient races spring from carnivores. Most meat-eaters evolvephysical means of catching and killing their prey. What I said was that environmental need creates intelligence. Man developed it because he weighed about a hundred pounds and was trying to kill half-ton herbivores for dinner. No amount of physical equipment could have helped him. Other races develop intelligence for other reasons of need. However, many of them—most, in fact—get sidetracked somewhere along the way. Like the monkeys, for example.” “Then how can you tell if our alien here is intelligent?” “I intend to ask it,” said Consuela.

  “How? You don't know anything about its language.” “It's quite possible that we have a language in common. May I have the loan of some paper and a pen?” Tanayoka sent for them, and a moment later she was carefully drawing a right triangle and writing Pythagoras's theorem beneath it.

  “What makes you think it has the slightest acquaintance with the square of the hypotenuse and its

  relatives?” asked Tanayoka.

  “It's a pretty universal theorem,” said Consuela “I expect it is just as true on Beelzebub as on Earth.” She passed the paper through the bars to the alien. It looked at the figures, contorted its mouth into a snarl, and ripped the paper to shreds. Three more attempts brought forth the same results. “Obviously it's not geometrically inclined,” said Consuela. “I'm going to try some simple binary equations next, but technology is usually the forerunner to a knowledge of the binary system, and there's been no evidence of any technology on this world, so I rather expect our friend here to give this the same treatment.” The creature ripped up five sheets of paper before Consuela put her pen and paper aside with a sigh. “Nonmathematical,” she said. “Or noncooperative. Probably the latter.” “Unintelligent?” asked Tanayoka tentatively. “Not necessarily. I have a son who could never make change, and now he's a newsman of some renown. His math is still absolutely abominable, but I hardly consider him unintelligent.” “I'm beginning to get an appreciation of the problems involved in your line of work,” said Tanayoka with a grim smile. “It has also occurred to me that it may know perfectly well what you're doing, but feels obligated to offer you nothing but its name, rank, and serial number.” “That's quite possible,” she agreed, without ever taking her eyes off the alien. “And as a whole, psychology is coming up with about sixteen percent successes,” said Tanayoka “I'm amazed that you come up with even one percent!” “Well, you can do a lot with percentages,” said Consuela. “Usually the Republic considers us successful if we discover their weaknesses. Understanding them takes a little more work.” She paused, looking at the alien for a long minute. “Has it had any water since it was captured?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” said Tanayoka “Good,” said Consuela. “Let's see if we can't set up a little reward situation.”

  With the aid of some of the crew members she set up two transparent boxes, each containing a jiggerful of water. One box had an untreated red top, the other a blue top that emitted a mild electrical charge when touched. Then she heated up the room and raised the humidity until everyone in it, human and alien alike, was feeling uncomfortable.

  The alien was then presented with the two boxes. It immediately opened the one with the blue top. “Some of us just aren't born lucky,” said Consuela, as the alien drank the half-ounce of water within the box. The boxes were removed, the missing water replaced, and they were offered to the alien again. This time it chose the red box.

  It chose the blue and the red in order the next two times, and Consuela turned to Tanayoka.

  “By now it should know which one is loaded,” she said. “Let's start switching them around.” After thirty tries, the alien had chosen the blue box twenty-seven times. “Some of us were just born dumb,” commented Tanayoka. “Not so,” said Consuela. “An unthinking animal would get the right box fifty percent of the time, probably even more. Take my word for it, our friend knows the difference.” “Then why did it purposely shock itself almost every time?” “Maybe it feels good. This isn't a human physiology we're dealing with.” “So is it intelligent?”

  “More than a laboratory mouse,” said Consuela. “That's all I can tell you today. Let's cool the room off and give it something to eat.”

  They left the brig area, and Consuela asked to be taken to the mining site once again. “I'm having a little difficulty understanding why the aliens took no action against the miners the whole time they were extracting and refining the minerals,” she said, her eyes scanning the landscape. “It would seem more sensible for them to attack the moment the miners began stripping the mountains.” “Maybe they wanted to make sure the ore was being removed before they committed themselves,” suggested Tanayoka.

  She shook her head. “There's no sign of any technology on this planet. They couldn't know what a refining operation was for, so why did they wait?” “Does it make that much of a differen
ce?” asked Tanayoka. “Certainly. If I can come up with a reason as to why they didn't mind raw materials being taken but objected to refined ore, that would prove they were intelligent.” “In what way?”

  “Because, having no experience with refined ore, they would have had to extrapolate, by abstract thought, the uses to which it might be put.” “But why would they disapprove?”

  “It doesn't matter. The mere fact that they could form a chain of reasoning that would lead to disapproval would be sufficient to prove they were sentient. Don't ask me to psychoanalyze their racial consciousness in twenty days. If I can show you they're intelligent, that ought to be enough to keep the Republic from annihilating them.”

  She walked from the refining site to the foot of the nearest mountain, then back again.

  Then she shrugged, shook her head, and asked to be returned to the ship. She didn't visit the alien again

  that day, but spent her remaining waking hours poring over Pioneer Bowman's report on the planet. It didn't tell her much. The alien civilization was totally nomadic—but so were many sentient races. They had a rigid tribal structure—but so did ants and baboons. Pioneer Bowman could discern no intelligible language—but Pioneers had no training in alien linguistics. True, they had no sign of any technology—but Man himself had existed without technology for well over a million years. In short, there was simply not enough information to form a decision one way or the other, which stood to reason: the aliens constituted only a minuscule section of the report, the bulk of which concerned the minerals to be found on the planet and the conditions under which the miners would have to work. The next morning was spent drawing simple pictures and even simpler mathematical formulae for the alien, with absolutely no success. Then Consuela requested that some samples of raw and processed minerals be brought to her.

  She showed and then offered each in turn to the alien, but elicited no response. Borrowing a laser hand weapon, she destroyed both samples. The alien ignored her. She offered it a piece of gold jewelry; it placed it to its lips, grimaced, and flung it back at her. She spent the next two days alternately trying to communicate with the alien and to get it to demonstrate that it could differentiate between raw and refined minerals. If the alien understood or cared, it kept it a secret.

  On her fifth day on Beelzebub, Consuela had two crew members construct a miniaturized spaceship and tiny human figurines. She placed them on a board in front of the alien, put tiny pieces of refined material in their hands, and slowly moved them across the board into the ship. The alien looked bored. “Have you any inkling as to whether they are intelligent?” asked Tanayoka at dinner that night. “None whatsoever,” replied Consuela. “Nor do I have an answer to the more important problem of why they attacked the miners when they did.” “More important?” asked Tanayoka.

  “Certainly. Even if they are not sentient, I don't wish to see them destroyed. If I can find out what precipitated their attack, perhaps we can avoid provoking them again.” On the sixth day, she had the crew members jerryrig a small smelting plant outside the ship. The alien was taken there, under heavy guard, and allowed to observe. It showed no interest at all. On the seventh day, the alien was escorted to a nearby mountain, one which had not been mined. Consuela, again borrowing a laser weapon, carved a hole three feet above the ground level, exposed some precious minerals in their raw form, and accompanied by the alien and its guards, took the minerals from the site to the ship. There she smelted them as the alien watched, and waited for a reaction. There was none.

  After another day of trying to communicate with the alien, Consuela approached Tanayoka. “It's highly unlikely,” she said, “but there is always the possibility, however slight, that you've captured their equivalent of the town idiot. Let's turn it loose and get another one.”

  Tanayoka gave the appropriate orders, and three hours later Consuela was attempting to make some

  sense out of a new subject. By the dawn of her sixteenth day on Beelzebub, she had released the second alien as well.

  “We can bring you a third one if you think it will do any good,” Tanayoka said gently. She shook her head. “If I've done nothing else, I think I've proved that no one is going to communicate with these fellows in the time remaining to me.” “Then you're giving up?”

  “Not at all. I'm just going to have to attack the problem from a different angle. Either our two subjects were going out of their way to be uncooperative, or else they don't give a damn about what we do to their mineral wealth. Since the Republic finds the former conclusion untenable, I'm going to have to assume the latter.”

  “I'm not quite sure if I follow you, Mrs. Orta,” said Tanayoka. “Since you're not going to stop mining anyway, and since the aliens don't seem to care about mining, I'll have to proceed as if something else precipitated their attack. Now, I'm not as versed in the physical sciences as I should be, but could any of our equipment have emitted a sound, possibly beyond our ability to hear, that could have driven them wild with pain or fury?” “No,” said Tanayoka. “We considered all possible physical causes before we contacted you. There were pungent odors, of course, but they had existed for weeks. There wasn't enough in the way of harmful radiation to have killed an insect. None of the miners went hunting aliens or anything else for sport or meat. We never used a megaphone or microphone in case the volume might startle them. We landed the ship in a totally deserted and desolate area to make sure we didn't damage any life forms.” “The men visited the ship during the first thirty weeks?” asked Consuela. “Yes.”

  “Then what,” she said, more to herself than to him, “could they possibly have done differently?” “I wish I knew,'’ said Tanayoka.

  “Let me take another look at the site,” said Consuela. They took the groundcar and arrived a few minutes later. She walked around, certain that the answer was staring her in the face if only she could rid herself of her preconceptions long enough to see it. “You seem distressed,” said Tanayoka gently, after some time had elapsed. “I'm just trying to clear my mind,” she said. “You see, there is an enormous tendency on the part of alien psychologists to anthropomorphize, to give human traits and values to aliens who simply don't possess them. I've got to force myself to stop wondering what would makeme want to attack the miners, and start attacking the problem of why an alien would do so.” “I see,” said Tanayoka.

  “It could be something so odd or so tiny that a human would completely overlook it,” she continued.

  “For example, did the miners build latrines or outhouses or anything else that might be considered a desecration of alien ground?”

  “Quite possibly they did,” said Tanayoka. “But I couldn't begin to tell you where. We put everything back in order before we left. We even spent an extra day restoring the mountains.” “Is there anything else they could have done on the final day that they hadn't done before—hold a party, send a radio message to Deluros or Earth, anything?” “Nothing comes to mind,” said Tanayoka. “Then why were they attacked?” she said, more irritated at herself than her companion. “The aliens watched them mine the mountains for half a year. What did they do differently?” “I wish I could help you, Mrs. Orta.”

  “So do I,” said Consuela.

  She sighed, walked to the groundcar, took one last look at the terrain before returning to the ship— —And then it hit her.

  “Curious,” she said.

  “What is?”

  She shook her head in wonderment. “Of course!” “You know, don't you?” said Tanayoka excitedly. “What was it we did?” “You know, too,” said Consuela. “It's that damned tendency to anthropomorphize again. I should have figured it out two weeks ago.”

  “I haven't figured it outyet ,” said Tanayoka. “Won't you please tell me what you've found?” “Just use a simple process of elimination,” said Consuela “What did our miners do when they were ready to move on to the next site? Well, they tried to load the ore onto the ship, but we are forced by necessity to assume that didn't trig
ger the aliens off.” “Why forced by necessity?”

  “Because you and I both know that if that's the reason, it's too damned bad for the aliens, because the Republic is going to keep on extracting what they need from Beelzebub. “Besides, our two sample aliens showed no interest whatever in refined ores. And we know it wasn't the knowledge that the ship would soon be taking off, because they could have had no such knowledge. And we know the miners didn't create any disturbance in their exuberance at completing the first phase of their jobs.”

  “But thereis nothing else!” said Tanayoka.

  “Yes, there is,” said Consuela. “Look around you, Mr. Tanayoka, and tell me what you see.”

  “The mountains.”

  “And what did the miners do to the mountains when they were through mining?” “Nothing,” said Tanayoka.

  “You still don't see it, do you?” said Consuela with a smile."They restored them." “Of course they did,” said Tanayoka. “Surely you're not implying that...” “Indeed I am,” said Consuela. “It's the only other thing they did that they had not been doing for the thirty weeks that the aliens left them alone.” “But why should putting the land back the way we found it drive them into a frenzy? It doesn't make any sense.”