Birthright

by Mike Resnick

  Bareimus was a star about eight parsecs from the Kandor system. It had seven planets circling it at distances of from the 34 to 280 million miles. Two of the planets were inhabited; five were totally devoid of life. The Astronomy Department had decided, by means she could barely begin to understand, that Bareimus was going to go nova, or possibly supernova, within two years. Her job was to evacuate the indigenous populations of Bareimus III and V before the cataclysm took place. The natives of Bareimus V, a docile, philosophically-oriented race of chlorine-breathers, were more than happy to relocate around a stable sun, and the problem there was merely one of logistics. Though “merely,” she reflected, was hardly an adequate adverb to describe the task of moving some two billion beings and their possessions halfway across the galaxy in a year's time. Her troubles—and her incipient ulcer—were being caused by Bareimus III. There was nobody in the

  department, indeed in the whole Oligarchy, lacking an opinion on the matter. With one notable exception:

  Psychology couldn't make up its collective mind, and that was the root of the problem. The whole thing had begun some five years earlier, when a botanical survey ship made a landing in a clearing near one of the more densely forested regions of Bareimus III. They had thought they were setting down amid some lush green vegetation, but when the crew left the ship they discovered that the tail-first landing had placed them down on a small barren patch of dirt. Nobody had thought too much about it until the time came to Sixth Millennium: Oligarchy 141 collect samples to bring back to their lab—and some of the small green plants they were approaching began running away. They finally caught a couple by hurling a large net at them, and discovered, when they tried to take the plants back with them, that they were once again rooted. They dug up both the plants and the surrounding dirt, took them back to the ship, and determined that they were semicarnivorous. They didn'thave to eat insects and rodents, but they were equipped to do so, and indeed seemed to thrive better with occasional additions of small living things to their menu. They seemed healthier and more vibrant after such meals, and their color turned brighter, leading one of the crew to dub them Greenies, a name that stuck. The next unusual occurrence came later on that same survey trip, when a botanist casually threw a still-lit cigar onto the turf—or onto what had been a Greenie-filled turf an instant earlier. As he released the cigar, the little plants scurried away, giving it a wide berth. Curious, the botanist returned to the ship, lit a cigar, and held it near one of the Greenies. There was no reaction. Then he dropped it on the plant. Despite the fact that the base of its stem was badly burned, it made no attempt to uproot itself and move away. Further experimentation proved that the Greenie samples in the ship showed none of the self-preservation instinct they had manifested in their natural habitat, nor did a reward-oriented experiment using small animals cause them to act in any manner other than that of exotic cousins to Venus Flytraps. The observations and experiments were written up, logged and forgotten. Then, some two years later, another ship landed in the Bareimus system. During their stay among the chlorine-breathers of Bareimus V they discovered a malfunction of their life-support systems, and since the planet-bound population could afford them no help, they sent a message back to the nearest world where they could reasonably expect repairs to be made, and decided to await the arrival of the rescue ship on Bareimus III, where they wouldn't be forced to use any more of their limited supply of oxygen. Their observations of the Greenies were identical to the earlier reports, although they attempted no experiments. However, upon returning to the Deluros system, they presented their information to the Biology planetoid, and eventually someone who was interested enough to read it gathered all the reports together, and still another expedition was sent to Bareimus III, but this time with the express purpose of learning what made the Greenies tick.

  The ship landed, and the scientific crew noted all the usual traits of Greenie behavior. Five of the plants were “captured” and taken back to the ship's greenhouse, where they failed to respond to any stimuli. Then they were marked, and placed back where they were found, amid thousands of other Greenies. And now, back among their fellows, they once again responded to heat and other threats. The experiment was repeated numerous times with different Greenies, and always the results were identical. Under laboratory conditions, they acted like any other plant; but placed in their natural environment, they protected themselves at all costs.

  Next, a number of Greenies were moved not to the ship's greenhouse, but to a patch of ground a few

  miles from the other Greenies. They still responded, but slowly, as if they were befuddled. Their confusion increased proportionately with the distance between them and their home colony, until, at exactly 5.127 kilometers, they once again became inert. The next step was to move larger and larger quantities of Greenies 6 kilometers away from the home colony. When some 2,000 were assembled, from a colony of 11,500, they began to react, but again, very slowly and in much obvious confusion. As their number increased, so did their efficiency, until, with 4,367 Greenies present, they functioned as well as they had in the original colony. And, conversely, as the original colony was depleted to where only about 1,500 remained, all reaction to stimuli stopped. The implications were staggering. Here, undoubtedly, was a group mind at work. Each plant acted as a single cell of that mind. With only 1,500 cells, the mind was mere potential; at 2,000 cells, it was kinetic but retarded; and at 4,367 or more cells, it functioned at peak efficiency. The Greenies’ mass mind represented a phenomenon heretofore unknown in the galaxy, even among those few races possessed of telepathy.

  The next problem facing the scientists was of equal or even greater import. Granting that the Greenies, as a group, had a mind, was it a sentient one? Simply having a functioning brain was no proof of sentience; for every intelligent life form that Man had found, there were thousands that lacked the power of abstract thought.

  The task was an intricate and complex one, for no vegetation had yet been discovered that even hinted at having the Greenies’ capacity for intelligent action. And no one quite knew how to test a plant for intelligence.

  Scores of reward situations were devised, usually with rodents Sixth Millennium: Oligarchy 143 native to Bareimus III. In every case, the Greenies devised ways to catch them. But did that make them intelligent, or merely coldly efficient hunters with thousands of outlets for their senses? No one knew. An entire Greenie colony was transported back to the Biology Department and studied. Thousands of botanists and psychologists created literally millions of tests. Most were discarded out of hand; those that were administered could not produce definite results. The Greenies could crack almost every maze or hunting situation devised, but they showed no interest in anything else. They solved feeding problems that would have stumped even Man, but, once fed, they became mentally inert. Nor could any divisiveness be imposed; feeding one half of the colony while starving the other half did not produce a small-scale vegetable war. And, the scientists concluded, how could it? If half a brain lacks blood or oxygen, it doesn't take up arms against the other half. Still, no one was totally convinced that the Greenies were sentient. It was simply a case of nobody being able to guess what kind of thoughts were entertained by a Greenie's mind. Some telepaths from the distant world of Domar were called in; they all agreed that there was some sort of mentality there, but it was so alien that none of them could either make contact with it or begin to figure out how it functioned. That was where matters stood when it was discovered that Bareimus was about to go nova. And since no one knew what the Greenies were or were not, they had thankfully given the problem to Ulice Ston, who had never even seen a Greenie, and knew next to nothing about botany and alien psychology.

  Her first step had been to ascertain the cost and the logistics of evacuating the Greenies from Bareimus

  III. This required an initial expenditure in excess of two billion credits simply to locate and chart the

  Greenie colonies. Then Cartography was asked to find a wor
ld approximating the atmospheric and gravitational conditions of Bareimus III. Some 3,096 worlds filled the bill, but only four of them had the requisite insect and rodent population. Evacuation usually posed no ecological problems on a race's new world, but, as in all other things, the Greenies were an exception: They would ingest nothing but live food, and there was no way that 45 billion transplanted Greenies would fail to make a dent in any planet's ecological balance. That knocked out two of the four worlds, and the other two seemed to have so many herbivores that there was considerable doubt about the Greenies’ ability to survive in such a predator-filled environment. Nor, if they were sentient,should they be placed in a situation where they'd have to fight for survival.

  Her preliminary reports caused Psychology to set up a few more experiments, in each of which various herbivores were turned loose on the Greenies. Most disdained the little plants, but the few that showed any interest in eating them had merely to catch them. The Greenies, it was concluded, may have been masters at evasive maneuvering, but they lacked any form of offensive or defensive weaponry that would be effective against anything larger than their normal prey. When the first phase of her job had been completed, Ulice sent in her recommendations:If the Greenies were an intelligent species, they must perforce be evacuated; and if they were evacuated, an artificial planetoid simulating their own world must be provided. It would take approximately one million men, working around-the-clock shifts, about five months to evacuate all the Greenies. They could be transported, again in shifts, on a minimum of two thousand cargo ships, and preferably three thousand. The operation could not be done any faster, her report continued, because in addition to 45 billion Greenies, the Oligarchy would also have to move the entire rodent population of Bareimus III, and a goodly number of its insects as well.

  She was not surprised when the recommendations were not acted upon. The Oligarchy assured her that were the Greenies truly sentient, they would spare no expense in relocating the race and all that it needed to survive; but in light of the phenomenal expenditure in money and manpower required, they simply couldn't authorize any action until they knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the Greenies were indeed an intelligent race. She requested a firm opinion from Psychology, and got only a muddled “Maybe.” The general attitude was that the Greenies probably were possessed of some form of intelligence, but they were so different, so completely alien in outlook, that no objective answer could be made until more conclusive tests could be devised ....

  The Military politely but regretfully informed her that while they would indeed like to lend a hand, and doubtless had the capacity to do the job with fewer men and in less time than she Sixth Millennium: Oligarchy 145 had estimated, their budget was stretched to the limit already, and they were barely able to carry out their mundane day-to-day chores. Of course, they added, if she could wrest an executive order out of the Oligarchy, together with an ample appropriation, they'd be delighted to pitch in and help....

  The Treasury coldly informed her that they had more than the requisite funds, and of course they would spend any amount to protect any race that fell under the sanctions of Oligarchic Law. Was that the case with the Greenies? No? Well, that made things a little more difficult; but all she had to do was get Psychology to proclaim officially that the Greenies were an intelligent race, and then the money would flow like water....

  The Bureau of Education and Welfare didn't know what it could do to help, but should anyone find a

  way of communicating with the Greenies, they'd be happy to do whatever they could. And in the meantime, could she possibly spring loose some of Botany's and Psychology's findings so that the Greenies could be incorporated into some of the textbooks and tapes.... Only the media came to her aid. They took up the Greenies’ case with a single-minded vengeance. Within weeks every planet had its “Save the Greenies” committees, and three campuses actually erupted in violence over the Oligarchy's refusal to commit itself. As for the alien races, they had their own problems, and weren't about to stick their necks out fighting for the right to life of a plant species which might or might not be sentient. Besides, they were as far removed from the intellectual state, if any, of the Greenies as Man was.... So the problem remained in her department, on her desk. She was tempted at times to declare that Greenies were nonsentient and wash her hands of the whole affair, except that, like everyone else, she had a sneaking suspicion that they were indeed capable of thought. After all, who could know what kind of thoughts occupied the mind of a plant? There was no doubt that sooner or later Psychology and Botany between them would determine the Greenies’ status. However,later wouldn't do the Greenies any good. Given the amount of time it would take to get the wheels of evacuation and planet-building going, plus a safety factor in case Bareimus went nova a little sooner than expected, she figured that she had, at most, three months in which to break through the mile upon mile of red tape and get the project off the ground. Psychology was doing its best, to be sure, but in this case its best just wasn't good enough. Aware of the time factor, they had leaped ahead to trying to force the Greenies to show a capacity for creative thought. They supplied them with all the requisite tools and apparatus for creating artificial light, and then cut off their sunlight. Fully one-third of the Greenie colony died before they called a halt to the experiment. They cut the Greenies’ food rations by eighty percent and tried to get them to breed their remaining rodents and insects rather than eat them on contact. A quarter of the remaining Greenies died of starvation before that experiment was called off. They injected DNA molecules from similar plants into a number of Greenies; those that didn't die immediately showed absolutely no change whatever. They kept the Greenies under constant surveillance in an attempt to discover how they communicated, and were unable to determine their method. They introduced an especially poisonous species of vegetarian wasp from Balok VII, hoping to force the Greenies into displaying some defense mechanism other than flight, and destroyed five hundred more Greenies before the wasps were removed. They tried everything their combined minds could think of with no visible effect, and yet were unable to state conclusively that the Greenies didn't think, or even that they simply didn't think along those particular lines. Then, two months prior to Ulice's deadline, Psychology made its first real breakthrough. Experimenting with ultrasonic vibrations, they discovered that the sounds had a soothing effect on the Greenies. A number of buttons and levers were set up, and the Greenies immediately figured out how to manipulate them to produce more ultrasonic waves. Then different frequencies were added, and within a matter of three days the Greenies were creating melodies of greater and greater complexity. They were beyond the range of human hearing, to be sure, but oscilloscopic instruments were able to detect every note, every variation, every subtle nuance of the orchestrations. Anxious to either begin the evacuation or abandon it, Ulice started pressing her demands for a decision as to the Greenies’ intellectual capacity. It seemed obvious to her that any being capable of producing such intricate symphonic arrangements must be sentient, but Psychology still wasn't willing to commit itself. After all, they pointed out, numerous birds on Earth and myriads of other planets also created

  lovely melodies without anyone's claiming that this particular art was a manifestation of intelligence.

  Admittedly, no Sixth Millennium: Oligarchy 147 birds—and probably no Men, either—had yet come up with any music as complex as that produced by the Greenies, but that didn't necessarily prove... On her own initiative, Ulice hired a number of musicians to transpose the oscilloscopic readings of the Greenies’ symphonies into a score that could be played to an audience of humans. More money went to hire an orchestra, and, after a week of rehearsals, the premier performance of the Greenies’ Symphony No. 6, the most sophisticated of their creations, was given to an audience consisting entirely of psychologists and musicians. The symphony was unlike anything ever heard before; fully half the audience walked out before the evening was completed, while most of thos
e who remained gave the orchestra—and, by implication, the composers—a standing ovation. When questioned, opinions were split right down the middle. Rostikol, perhaps the greatest conductor ever seen on Deluros VIII, claimed that it was a work of absolute genius; to his mind there was no doubt that the Greenies were intelligent, quite probably more intelligent than Man. Malor, the uncrowned king of the serious composers, found it interesting but incomprehensible. And Kirkelund, foremost of the critics from the alien culture of Canphor VII, found it a hideous cacophony of sound indicating nothing more than random selection of discordant and atonal thematic material, hardly the type of music on which to base a case for intelligence.

  The seven members of the Oligarchy, as well as the Military, were completely noncommittal, awaiting a decision from Psychology. Psychology was leaning toward a statement declaring the Greenies to be a sentient race, but still wasn't ready to make it without further data. Ulice decided that she couldn't wait any longer, and two days later the Department of Alien Affairs publicly proclaimed that the Greenies were intelligent and every effort would now be made to evacuate them from Bareimus III prior to its sun going nova. She had her executive assistants make out the proper requisition forms and sent them to the various branches of the Oligarchy from which she required assistance.

  The first to reply was Treasury. It had placed the money in escrow, but was not prepared to relinquish it on the say-so of a woman who possessed virtually no experience or expertise in the field of alien psychology. Next to report was the Military. They were still more than willing to help, but their hands were tied until the Oligarchic Council gave them its written approval. Psychology responded with a scream of rage. What right did Ulice Ston think she had to preempttheir function? The Greenies would officially become an intelligent race if and whenthey said so, and not until then. And the Council simply threw up its collective hands in dismay and turned its attention to other business. The question was still unresolved when Bareimus went nova two years later, becoming the brightest star in the local heavens for almost a month. The Greenie colony on the Science planetoid continued to thrive and turn out more complex and masterful symphonic works. Psychology still refused to make a judgment concerning their intellectual capacity. The Education Department decided not to incorporate the Greenies into their textbooks until a decision was reached, if indeed it ever was. That portion of the Military concerned with the evacuation of planets turned its attention to more pressing problems. And Ulice Ston resigned as the head of the Department of Alien Affairs, married a man who had never set foot on any world or planetoid within the Deluros system, and had eight children in the next eleven years. 12: THE MEDIA