Blue Remembered Earth (18 page)

Gleb had retrieved the wheeled trolley, dug some granular foodstuff out of one of the containers and was now sprinkling it down into the enclosure via a hopper above the window. The dwarf rhinoceroses must have taken his fingernail tapping as the sign that dinner was imminent.

‘It’s . . . an ingenious solution to the problem,’ Geoffrey said.

‘You find it troubling,’ Chama said.

‘I wonder whether it might have been better to keep these organisms on ice until you had the means to grow them to full size.’

‘Even if that meant waiting decades?’

‘The Green Efflorescence doesn’t sound like a short-term plan.’ It felt odd to speak of the Efflorescence himself, as if by voicing its name he had bestowed upon the enterprise a measure of legitimacy, even tacit approval.

He was still undecided as to whether it might be some kind of vile, misanthropic eco-fascism. He would need to know a lot more before he made up his mind.

‘These animals don’t know that they’re dwarves,’ Gleb said, patiently enough. ‘On a neurological and behavioural level, there’s no evidence of developmental impairment. There’s a huge redundancy in brain tissue – it’s why birds are at least as good at problem solving as primates, even given the massive disparity in cranial volume. So we have no ethical qualms whatsoever. Chama and I wouldn’t countenance the creation of misery merely to serve some distant utopian objective.’

‘They do look happy enough,’ he allowed.

‘We won’t deny that there are difficulties still to be overcome, with some of the other species.’

Something ominous clicked in Geoffrey’s head. ‘If you can do rhinoceroses, you can do mammoths and elephants. It’s been a while, but I remember something about dwarf populations in those species: the Cretan elephants, the mammoths in the Bering Sea Islands.’

‘We can do
Proboscidea
,’ Chama said. ‘And we have. But there are difficulties.’

He led Geoffrey and Sunday to one of the far windows. Geoffrey’s stomach churned with apprehension.

‘I’m not sure this is right.’

Gleb was pushing the trolley again. ‘Always scope for improvement. But that doesn’t mean the elephants should be put on ice, or euthanised.’

Compared to the rhino habitat, the grass was lower, scrubbier – dry and bleached like the Serengeti before the short rains. In the middle distance lay a waterhole, now reduced to a muddy depression. Standing on the far side of the waterhole, clumped together into one multi-legged, multi-headed Cubist mass, were three dwarf elephants. They were the size of baby goats, grey bodies camouflaged with olive-brown patches of drying mud.

‘Tell me how these elephants were born,’ he said.

‘In artificial wombs, here in the Descrutinised Zone,’ Gleb replied. ‘The fertilised eggs were imported, carried
in vivo
, in human mules. Chama and I both carried eggs, and we’ve both fallen foul of the Indian and Chinese Lunar authorities at various times.’

‘You’d need hundreds – thousands – for a viable population, though.’

Chama nodded. ‘We have hundreds. But so far only these elephants have been allowed to be born.’

‘Just these three?’

‘As many as the habitat can reasonably support,’ Chama said.

Geoffrey had been agnostic about the rhinoceroses. Now his distaste sharpened into precise, targeted revulsion. ‘This is wrong. No matter what your objectives, you can’t do this to these animals.’

‘Geoffrey—’ Sunday began.

He ignored her. ‘Elephants aren’t born into a vacuum: they’re born into a complex, nurturing society with a strong maternal hierarchy. An elephant clan might contain thirty to a hundred individuals, and there are strong inter-clan bonds as well. What you’re doing here is the equivalent of dropping human babies into isolation cubes!’

Sunday’s hand was on his arm. She tightened her grip. ‘They’re not unaware of these issues, brother.’

Chama appeared in no way offended by Geoffrey’s outburst. ‘From the moment these habitats were conceived, we knew that the elephants would need surrogate families to provide a developmental context. So we devised the best way to provide that surrogacy. From the time they were embryos, these animals have grown with neuromachinery in their heads. That shouldn’t horrify you, should it?’

‘Not necessarily – but it depends what you do with that machinery,’ Geoffrey said.

‘These elephants need a socialising context,’ Gleb responded. ‘So we provide it. The neuromachines drop hallucinations into their minds via direct activation of the visual, auditory and olfactory modules. We create figments – in other words, a ghost-herd – to provide stimulus and guidance. The elephants move in augmented reality, just as we do when we ching.’

‘The difference is we know that figments are figments. Elephants don’t have the cognitive apparatus to make that distinction.’

‘If they did, the figments would be pointless,’ said Chama.

‘The figments are computer-generated, but they’re based on observations of millions of hours of the social dynamics in real herds,’ Gleb said. ‘The same database reassures us that the dwarves’ responses are fully in line with what would be expected if the figments were real. These are not developmentally impoverished creatures.’

‘Well, if you’ve no qualms—’

‘I didn’t say we’ve achieved shining perfection,’ Gleb countered.

‘Computer-generated figments may provide some kind of stabilising framework,’ Geoffrey conceded, choosing his words with tightrope precision, ‘but elephants are individuals. They have memories, emotions. They can’t be modelled by mindless software. Maybe these dwarves won’t grow into monsters. But they won’t turn into fully socialised elephants either.’

‘No,’ Chama agreed. ‘But you could help matters so that they do.’

‘Help you? I’m on the verge of pushing for your extradition on the grounds of Schedule One biocrimes!’

‘We’re aware of your work,’ Gleb said. ‘We’ve read your papers. Some of them are quite good.’ He allowed this calculated slight to hang in the air before continuing, ‘We know what you’ve been doing with the Amboseli herds.’

‘If you know my work,’ Geoffrey said, ‘then you should have guessed that I wouldn’t be too keen on any of this.’

‘We also saw that you might be able to provide a possible solution,’ Chama said.

Geoffrey hooked a finger into his belt. ‘This I’m fascinated to hear.’

‘We know of your matriarch, Matilda – we’ve followed her with passive ching. She’s magnificent. She also has neuromachinery, as do most of your elephants.’

‘As a monitoring tool, nothing else.’

‘But the same neuromachinery, with a few configuration resets, could provide an aug layer.’

‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this.’ But he was surer than he cared to admit, even to himself.

‘These dwarf elephants already interact with hallucinations,’ Gleb said. ‘Instead of being computer-generated fictions, why couldn’t they be the ching figments of Matilda and her clan? There’s no reason why Matilda and her elephants couldn’t perceive the Lunar dwarves as being physically present in the basin, as another family or group of orphans in need of adoption. By the same token, the Lunar dwarves could experience real-time interaction with genuine Amboseli elephants, as if they were here, on the Moon.’

Geoffrey didn’t need to think through the technical implications. Chama and Gleb had undoubtedly considered every possible wrinkle. He shook his head sadly.

‘Even if it could be done . . . it wouldn’t work. My elephants have never encountered dwarves, and your elephants have never encountered fully grown adults. They wouldn’t know what to make of each other.’

‘The size differential doesn’t matter,’ Chama said. ‘It can be edited out via the ching, along with the morphological differences between the two populations. Each group would perceive the other as being perfectly normal. This can be done, Geoffrey. It’s
beyond
trivial.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s taken me years to establish a bond of trust with Matilda and her family. I can’t betray that trust by manipulating their basic experience of reality.’

Chama wasn’t giving up. ‘From Matilda’s point of view – from the point of view of her whole family – it would be a minor detail in the scheme of things. Three new elephants, that’s all. Orphans are routinely adopted by families, aren’t they?’

‘And sometimes left to die,’ Geoffrey said.

‘But it does happen – it’s not something strange and alien by elephant standards,’ Gleb said. ‘Meanwhile, all the other complex herd interactions would proceed perfectly normally. The benefit to the orphans, however, would be incalculable. Having grown up in a stabilising framework, the orphans would then be in a position to mentor a second generation of Lunar dwarves through to adulthood. Before very long, we would have the basis of an entirely independent and self-perpetuating elephant society, here on the Moon.’

‘By assisting us,’ Chama said, ‘you can be part of something heroic.’

‘The Green Efflorescence?’

‘Put that aside for now,’ Gleb said. ‘Just think of these elephants, and what they could become. What wonders. What companionship.’

‘Companionship?’ Geoffrey did his best not to sneer. ‘As pets, you mean?’

Chama shook his head. ‘As cognitive equals. Think of all the crimes we’ve committed against their kind, down all the blood-red centuries. The atrocities, the injustices. The carnage and the cruelty. Now think of us giving them the stars in return.’

‘As what? Recompense?’

‘It wouldn’t begin to balance our misdeeds,’ Chama said. Then a softness entered his voice. ‘But it would be something.’

The old place, Sunday was relieved to see, wasn’t as busy as she had feared. ‘Any chance of a table in the Japanese module?’ she asked as they stooped into the dingy, angular, off-white interior of the International Space Station.

‘Follow me,’ said a blue-boiler-suited staffer, shoulders embroidered with the patches of various barely remembered space agencies.

It had been Sunday’s idea for them all to meet up again, Chama and Gleb included, when they were done with their day’s work. The zookeepers could be overwhelming until you built up sufficient exposure tolerance. Sunday had passed that point years ago: the wilder excesses of their starry-eyed idealism now ghosted through her like a flux of neutrinos.

Besides, it was about time she broke something else to Geoffrey: the Akinyas were already embroiled.

‘So,’ she said, when they were on the first round of drinks, ‘what did you think of Chama and Gleb?’

‘They’ve achieved a lot,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I don’t necessarily approve of all of it, but I can’t deny the trouble they’ve gone to, or the risks they’ve taken.’

‘But you’re still uneasy about the whole Pan thing,’ Jitendra said, cradling a huge stein of beer.

‘I’m not big on cults or cultists, I’m afraid.’

‘Look,’ Sunday said, ‘there’s something that might put things in a different light. Like it or not, we’re already involved.’

‘Who’s “we”?’

‘Us. The family. I’m talking ancient history now, but it’s the truth. Have you heard of a woman called Lin Wei?’

Geoffrey made no visible effort to search his memory. ‘Can’t say I have.’

‘She’s the Prime Pan, the woman who started the whole movement way back when. Lot of radical thinkers around then. Extropians. Transhumanists. Long-lifers. The Clock of the Long Now. The Mars Society. A dozen other space-advocacy types, with – on the face of it – not a lot to agree on. Lin Wei still got them all to sit down and agree on common ground. Some of them said no thanks and went their own way. But Lin found points of agreement with others, shared objectives. She was very charismatic. Out of that came the Panspermian Initiative, and the basis for the UAN.’

Geoffrey smiled nicely. ‘And your point is?’

‘Lin Wei and Eunice were best friends. That’s my point.’

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Eunice was never a Pan, not on any formal level, but the connection was there right through her career. The Pans were heavy backers in something called Ocular.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘You heard of it?’

‘Remind me.’

‘Ocular was the first step towards exoplanet colonisation. A telescope big enough to image surface features on an Earthlike planet beyond our solar system. Well, they built it – nearly. The project fell to pieces halfway through, and that was the start of the big falling out between Lin and Eunice.’

Geoffrey’s interest appeared to be perking up. ‘What happened?’

‘Hard to say, other than that it had something to do with Mercury. That was where they were assembling the parts for the telescope and launching them into space. We were helping with the shipment of materials and know-how. Not a free lunch, though: Eunice and Lin might have been pals, but this was business. But the Pans weren’t paying us directly. In return for our services, the Akinyas got to piggyback their own start-up venture on Mercury.’

‘What kind of venture?’

‘That’s where it gets murky. I’m
in
the family and even I can’t get to the bottom of what went wrong.’ Sunday couldn’t help but lower her voice: it was a pointless but unavoidable response. ‘We built a facility there, to tap into the same solar-power grid the Pans were using for their Ocular assembly and launch plant. What we did in that facility . . . well, that’s not easy to say. Cover story was physics research, which makes a sort of sense: we were involved in propulsion system design, and you’d need a lot of energy to do anything worthwhile in that area. But it appears that was just a smokescreen.’