Murasaki, page 13
“Good work,” he told Phs’n’kah.
“Time to dissect and record?”
“No. Not yet. Let me look over the samples first. Then we’ll do another test dig together to make sure we haven’t missed a trick.”
He was confident the translator would get the meaning across. Phs’n’kah’s snorkel waved, then he gathered up the samples and the reed mat. But, before turning to head back to the science dome, the little male stopped and asked one more question.
“Have we found any *** yet that the *** humans can honorably eat?”
Minoru started. How did Phs’n’kah know? That ulte-rior motive for Minoru’s fevered sampling of flora and fauna went beyond the principal focus—of understanding this island’s complex ecosystem.
But of course, he realized. That would be the first thing to occur to a native.. . . They have no real conception of science. But eating, cooking, the search for something new and good. . . he probably thinks that’s the main purpose of all this collecting!
Perhaps this explained why it was males, the gatherers and tenders of the hearths and cook-pots, who were most enthusiastic about helping Minoru, while the females seemed to prefer gathering around Emile, with his endless appetite for words.
“No, my friend. Nothing good to eat, yet. But we can still, hope.”
“Hope is ***. Hope can even be ***.”
Phs’n’kah turned away and waddled up the path lead-ing to the science dome. Minoru wondered what piece of wisdom he had imparted. It sounded like an aphorism. He would store it, and play it back for Emile later.
“That’s enough,” he told the workers turning the corer. The translator wheezed something in the native lan-guage that must have been approximately correct, because they stopped working and squatted back, panting. Occa-sionally, one of them would open its mouth to pick its teeth with one of the slender tentacle arms. Only at times like that was Minoru able to tell, for absolute certain which was male and which female. Besides being generally smaller, the males had tongues that were longer and raspier for some reason; ending in a sort of bulbous fixture. Curiously, it did not seem to affect their speech—at least to his untutored ears. Back at Okuma Base they were still trying to figure out what the apparatus was for.
It was one topic the locals kept decidedly closemouthed about.
The latest core sample came up slickly... a tube of past history sheathed in electro-stiffened plastic.
His helpers were by now well-rehearsed in this procedure. They de-tached and then loaded the five-meter tube onto the inges-tion tray of a portable disassembler-reader. As the core passed into the machine, layer after sedimentary layer was atomized. A dust of ages came out the other end, while all the information content that had been locked in ordered patterns of mud and ancient fossils flowed as data into the capacious memory of the computer back at the dome.
Gradually,—a database was forming. It would take years, probably decades, to comprehend more than a cur-sory view of life on Genji—its detailed chemistry and com-plex, interlaced ecologies.
Nevertheless, some pieces were already falling into place.
For one thing, life was at least as old here as on Earth. Evolution had apparently progressed at almost the same pace, despite a lower incidence of ultraviolet irra-diation to cause mutations. Here, instead, a built-in driver toward diversity came about because of half a dozen extra, unconventional amino acids that were added to the protein code. With that increase came a higher chance of replicative error, and so Darwin’s grinding-mill had as much to work with as back home, producing a profusion of winners and losers to make up a broad-branched tree of life.
Broader than Earth’s, in certain respects. Murasaki System was emptier of comets and asteroids than Sol’s, and apparently there had been fewer big impacts to shake up the Genjian biosphere. Few mass extinctions meant many ancient, ancestral families and phyla that might have gone extinct still co-inhabited the planet. It was as if some of the wild experiments tried on Earth during the pre-Cambrian, recorded in half-billion-year-old formations like the Burgess Shale, had never died out but gone on to share the seas with shark and squid and whales. In addi-tion to multicelled creatures built from segmented tubes—like Phs’n’kah’s people and all metazoans on Earth—there were also distantly related branches that specialized in growing as flat sheets, or as radial stems. Orbital scans of the other hemisphere appeared to show creatures so eerie that Genjians themselves could be thought almost human.
One of his workers performed something akin to a yawn, and Minoru blinked, stepping backward suddenly. Apparently some of the other natives were as put back as he was by the gesture, since several hissed and one even tried to take a nip at the offender’s tail: She snarled back.
Then, quite suddenly, the altercation was forgotten. Almost as one, the natives lifted their heads and turned. Minoru carefully shuffled around to look, and saw that a darkness had begun approaching from the east. The deck of low-lying clouds dimmed along a sharp border that ap-proached rapidly, laying a rapidly nearing shadow across the hillsides and the fog-draped sea. A low moan rose from the Genjians as they reared to gape in the direction of Chujo—even though the sister world was covered from view by clouds. The translucence of sunlight vanished as Genji’s twin passed in front of Murasalci, signaling com-mencement of the noon eclipse.
Time to down tools. This was—at least for this cul-ture, on this archipelago—a holy interval, lasting about twenty minutes, during which it was permissible to speak and rest, but never to work or fight.
Minoru stood in what he hoped the natives took as an attitude of respect. After all, on shipboard—and even in their tiny habitation domes—many human crewmembers kept little Shinto or Buddhist or Christian or Gaian shrines.
He was proud of the Japanese attitude toward religion, which said, essentially—whatever works.
As soon as the Genjians’ keening song of greeting was finished, one of the largest females turned and approached Minoru in a slow, tail-swishing undulation. He recognized Ta’azsh’da by several scars along her left flank, which she had told Emile she’d acquired in a raid by another village, during her youth on another island. Females were the wan-derers and warriors in this species, a fact that still had some sociobiologists at Okuma Base puzzled. Minoru, at least, thought he was beginning to see why.
— You *** our Rites of *** and Shadow,—the trans-lator said, struggling with her words. It had more trouble with some topics than others. “If we are *** will you con-vey our *** to ***?”
“I’m sorry ... I “ Minoru gave up. “Connect to Emile,—he said, and almost without, a pause, his partner’s face lit up the left quadrant of his visor.
“Minoru. I’m kind of busy.”
Minoru could see Emile with three of his language helpers, squatting in the shirt-sleeve environment of the halfway dome ... set to an atmospheric pressure midway between that of Genji’s surface and what was comfortable for humans. Emile’s skin pallor didn’t look good, and his eyes were droopy, but at least he didn’t have to wear a stinking suit all the time. Minoru envied him.
“Just a quick one. Give me a read on this, will you?” And Minoru squirted over Ta’azsh’da’s question. Emile puzzled for a. moment, then he laughed. “Oh, she’s just asking to hitch a ride to Chujo.”
“To Chujo!”
Emile lifted one eyebrow. “You hadn’t heard? It seems, according to their mythology, Chujo is the home of the angels. Many of them think that’s where we came from.”
“No wonder they’re so cooperative! But what will happen when they find out—”
“Relax. There’s no religious hysteria about it. At least not among this group ... though the boys over at Purple Cliffs Island seem to have had a rough moment when the truth came out. Anyway, I’ve already explained the entire situation to several of their traveling monks, or rabbis, or holy whatever you call them—and say, did you know they’re nearly all females? Anyway, I told the priests we’re not from Chujo but another star. They don’t seem to mind.
“Here, let me give you a nice, soothing, diplomatic answer for Ta’azsh’da.”
Emile muttered a command and Minoru’s translator conveyed a string of Genjian words directly from Minoru’s helmet speaker. Ta’azsh’da took a couple of steps back at one point, rocking her head in an expression Minoru thought might mean perplexity.
But then she seemed satisfied. Or at least she turned and wandered away. Emile’s picture disappeared without a sign-off, and Minoru tried not to be offended. He him-self must, sound just as curt when experts from other teams called him, demanding quick biological answers while he was still flailing around, looking for the big picture.
Sometimes, it seemed almost too much, and he longed for crowded but comfortable Osaka.
I am doing my life’s work, Minoru reminded himself at those moments. No one could he happier.
That was true, as far as it went. Only occasionally Minoru wished he were a different sort of person altogether ... one born with simpler tastes and more mundane inter-ests, who was not the type to volunteer at age fifteen to be sent hurtling toward such a heaVy world. Weren’t there less exhausting roads to happiness?
Alas, those roads were not in his dharma to tread.
Genji Expedition Database:
SUMMARY ON GENTIAN SAPIENTS
by Shigei Owari, Chief Xenologist
The intelligent beings we call Genjians bear some resemblance to Earth’s amphibian life-forms. Such comparisons can be misleading, however, since there is nothing at all primitive about this planet’s autochthons. It is true that they have not spread to as many ecological niches as humans had, at similar levels of tech-nological development. (By the Iron Age, hu-man beings occupied even mountaintops and arctic wastes, while the natives of this world seem almost exclusively to inhabit coastlines and alluvial basins.) Nevertheless, it should be noted that—in most other indicators we seem to have met peers.
Preliminary studies by Komiko Takashita reveal an emotional range as vivid and finely textured as our own. Komiko’s pre-liminary intelligence profiles demonstrate con-siderable overlap in cognitive ability with precomputer human societies....
... the Linguistic Group has decided to adopt as generic the species self-name used in this archipelago by the autochthones. In all future documents, therefore, sentient Genjians shall be referred to as Ihrdizu.
This has been deemed ac-ceptable by natives at all contact sites....
... their strong tails, with two horizontal flukes, appear to propel the torpedo-shaped Ihr-dizu efficiently through the water. On shore, they use their tails for support and to assist locomo-tion. The heavily muscled appendages also serve as formidable weapons....
...Adult females measure about two meters in length and mass nearly 100 kilograms. The slender male seldom exceeds a meter and a half in length....
.... only capable of poor directionality with their flap-and-tympani hearing apparatus, al-though we expect the system probably works quite well underwater. Their vision system is ca-pable of extreme dark-adaptation, and can focus under a wide variety of conditions....
Another word for balance was equilibrium. Minoru contemplated this as he sat naked under a sunlamp, in padmasama position, on a reed mat that had been do-nated by the village elders. The little habitation dome hissed as it fed the produce of his respiration—and from his previous meals—into wall panels that used sunlight and algae to recycle human wastes. At the output end, there accumulated an all-too-familiar green paste that, despite, its blandness, would keep his body going, ena-bling him and Emile to extend their visit here at least an extra month.
The dome-recycler seemed a perfect example to con-template. At first sight, it appeared to be a balanced system. But it wasn’t in equilibrium, not really. The pallid glow of Murasaki was barely adequate to drive the process, for one thing. And anyway, even at best the return was less than thirty percent efficient.
Minoru often dreamed he was back aboard the Yu-mato, where, despite the ennui of ten years’
subsistence on hydroponics, there was at least some variety. And, once a month the chef would prepare delicacies from that exclu-sive, locked chamber where fish were kept in special tanks, where licentious amounts of power and resources were spent nurturing rare herbs.
Tomorrow the supply boat would come with provi-sions for the two of them. Even if it failed to arrive, the clever recycling devices would certainly keep Minoru and Emile alive for some time. But not in equilibrium. Without replenishment, they would waste away on ‘-a narrow diet of ever-declining value.
There was a parallel in his mission here. His purpose on this island was only partly to help Emile and the main xenology team on Purple Cliffs Island make contact with the Ihrdizu. Over the months and years ahead, Minoru’s principal job would be to figure out what kept this world from toppling over into catastrophe.
Catastrophe like the kind we experienced on Earth so recently, he thought. Only in his parents’
lifetime had the chain of ecological crises back home abated enough for nations to contemplate deep-space exploration again. And although heroic efforts had finally stopped the spreading deserts, Minoru knew that those gleeful, rosy-eyed propa-gandists in the press were wrong. Earth would never be “just as good as before.”
The timer on the sunlamp rattled to a stop. The warm, brilliant glow from the UV panels tapered off gradually to let his eyes readapt. These daily sessions were welcome, as well as necessary to stave off Sunlight Deficiency Disorder. But they also reinforced his sense of being on an alien world. The most luminous day on Genji wasn’t bright enough to satisfy a human’s biologi-cal hunger for light.
Nor was this a particularly shiny day even for Genji. Wrapping a robe around himself, Minoru went to the east-facing window and watched high tide finish inundat-ing the natives’ broad expanse of trapping ponds, depositing the sea’s bounty there to be left high and dry when the waters receded again. Tending these carefully designed basins took up the time of half the labor force, and their ownership was subject to fierce inheritance tra-dition... sometimes enforced by nasty local feuds among the natives.
Minoru went to his computer deck and surveyed his latest composite of this island’s biological history. Slowly, out of all his, deep core samples, soil siftings, and animal dissections, a picture was resolving. The family tree he had already traced out—of land and shore species indigenous to the region—was probably no more than two percent filled in. And yet, the shape of that tree was taking form. From the fossil record, he was beginning to suspect all was not as it appeared here on Genji.
My supervisor may not like this report, he thought as he popped a macro-cube into the memory slot and copied onto it his monograph, to be sent back to Okuma Base.
Nevertheless, he looked forward to tomorrow’s lander. Perhaps Yukiko would be the pilot.
If only I had something to offer her.
Starship Yamato Crew Database: General News
Infrastructure Team: Sr. Lt. Hideo Ishikawa, in temporary command of the Yamato, reports find-ing an unfortunate lack of carbonaceous chondrite asteroids in convenient orbits near Genji-Chujo space. It appears we will have to set up a purifi-cation plant on Chujo, after all, to provide water for our
,
orbital facilities.
To no Chujo Expedition: Capt. Koremasa Ta-mura commands from Lander Four. Exploration dome established near the Area Fifty—one Anom-aly—a purported “archaeological” site accord-ing to surveys by the Spacer party. Twenty-five total personnel. Fifteen assigned to the forthcom-ing attempt to contact purported sentients. Ten to examine Spacer landing area for evidence of contamination.
Genji Expedition: With deployment of the big antenna in high orbit, a report has been prepared for beaming back to Earth. Unlike prior data-clusters, this one shall be designed specifically for public consumption. It has been decided to focus this first show on the harmonious, cooperative na-ture of Ihrdizu society. Although violence does play a small role in life among the inhabitants, their traditions of serenity appear to have much in common with those which we have managed to maintain in Japanese society. The value of this message to the people of Earth as a whole should be exemplary.
The Ihrdizu children were engaged in one of their fre-quent games of hide-and-find-the-object.
Among the younger ones, this apparently involved a lot of sniffing and nosing around to find some concealed item—usually an overripe piece of fruit. But as the game involved older par-ticipants, teams formed and elaborate rituals of clue and deception seemed to come into play. According to. Emile, understanding the game ought to reveal a lot about the na-tives’ psychology, and so Minoru’s partner became a fixture in the village green just before sunset, when the competi-tions were most frequent. He could be seen quite often clumsily but enthusiastically following the players about in his clunking pressure suit, breathlessly speaking into his portable recorder and panning with his camera.
Minoru, meanwhile, had taken an interest in the vil-lage pets, and pests.
“So you say the Kaw Kaw were brought to the is-land by your ancestors?” he inquired of Ta’azsh’da late one afternoon, pointing to a pair of snuffling, six-legged animals that prowled the fringes of the hamlet’s garbage midden.
“It is true. ***. It is said that Ish’n’Po herself took the *** Kaw Kaw on her very own raft, lest the *** families on other rafts throw the *** things overboard during the long voyage.–
“You mean your ancestors actually had a use for those things?” he asked dubiously. The Ihrdizu had symbiotic relationships with quite a few other creatures, which ap-peared to serve roughly the same roles dogs, cats, donkeys, and falcons used to play for humans back on Earth. But this disgusting creature rooting around below them hardly seemed promising. From the natives’ name for it—which translated as something like “bad stink”—Minoru gathered it was considered vermin.
