Dark Ararat (30 page)

That was a step too far for Tang. “I really can’t say,” the biochemist told him, sadly. “Before I could make any sort of guess I’d have to know what
kind
of potential it is. I’d be very interested to know what might trigger its release, if you had any ideas on that score.”

Matthew took the invitation as the compliment it was, but he wasn’t able to respond. He hadn’t made any progress at all in wondering what might substitute for Earthly seasonal changes as a series of cues determining the pattern of Tyrian life cycles. All he was able to do, as yet, was turn the question around.

“Do
you
have any ideas?” he asked, humbly.

“Not
ideas
, exactly,” Tang replied.

Matthew guessed quickly enough what that meant. “You mean you have worries,” he said. “Fears, even.” Matthew belatedly remembered what Solari had said about Tang reportedly having shown recent “signs of strain and acute anxiety.” He had seen none himself, so far—quite the reverse, in fact—but Kriefmann must have had some basis for his opinion.

“It seems to me,” the biochemist said, softly, “that the hidden potential contained in the duplex genomes of Ararat-Tyre must be responsive to ecological shifts of some kind. Perhaps it evolved in an era of intermittent ecological crises—not environmentally generated ecocatastrophes, but ecocatastrophes associated with dramatic population increases. I know that you know exactly what I mean, because I recall the rhetoric you used to employ in your inflammatory broadcasts: the lemming principle, the Mouseworld allegory, and so on. If so, isn’t it possible—perhaps probable—that the arrival of alien beings with radically different genomic systems might constitute exactly such a crisis. Thus far, I admit, the world has not responded to its invaders—unless the arrival in this vicinity of the creature that stung Maryanne can be counted a response—but the establishment of three discreet and understaffed Bases in three years has been the merest scratch on the surface. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

Because he obviously wanted Matthew to be the one to say it, Matthew spelled it out. “You’re saying that we might have avoided tweaking the lion’s tail thus far,” he said, “but that decanting the remainder of the would-be colonists and establishing an ecological base for their long-term survival would be a whole new ballgame. You’re saying that although this doesn’t look like a death trap today, it could turn into one with frightening rapidity.”

“We simply don’t know,” Tang added. “Until we figure out the protocols of reproduction, we have no idea what dangers lurk in all that
hidden potential
.”

And that, Matthew thought, was exactly why Tang was becoming more and more nervous as time went by, and why he had become an enthusiastic advocate of withdrawal, allying himself with the groundling party to which Konstantin Milyukov was implacably opposed.

He figured that the ice had been sufficiently thawed to allow the raising of more delicate issues. “I hear that you and I are rivals for the empty berth on Bernal’s boat,” he said, biting the bullet.

“It’s not Bernal’s boat,” Tang pointed out, mildly. “Common consent had certainly determined that he was entitled to his place in the expedition, but we have all played a part in the design and construction of the boat.”

Matthew took due note of the fact that the
we
in question did not include him, although Tang had not said in so many words that he ought not to be entitled to a vote when the time came to settle the matter of who should replace Bernal Delgado on the expedition downriver.

“I’m sorry,” Matthew said. “I didn’t mean to imply that it wasn’t a collective enterprise. I dare say that everybody here would gain some benefit from the opportunity to see a little more of the continent, and to penetrate the dark heart of its mysterious vitreous grasslands. I understand that you want the berth as much as I do….”

“I don’t,” Tang put in.

The interpolation took the wind out of Matthew’s sails. “You don’t?” he echoed. He was about to apologize again for his misapprehension when Tang wrong-footed him again.

“It’s not a matter of
wanting
,” the biochemist said. “It’s a matter of which of us is best-equipped to make productive use of the opportunity. If I thought that you were the person who could derive the most benefit from the expedition, I would unhesitatingly concede your right to be a part of it—but you have come to this situation three years too late. I feel that it is my duty to place my own expertise and experience at the disposal of the expedition.”

“But you don’t actually
want
to go,” Matthew said.

“That’s correct,” Tang said. He still wasn’t showing any glaringly obvious signs of strain or acute anxiety, but Matthew was beginning to realize what it was that Godert Kriefmann had picked up on.

“In fact,” Matthew added, “you don’t actually want to be here at all. You’d far rather be on
Hope
with Andrei Lityansky, maintaining a safe distance from your subject matter.” He reminded himself that Tang was a biochemist: a man for whom reality was contained in chemical formulas and metabolic cycles.

“That too is not a matter of
wanting
,” Tang told him, very calmly indeed. “it is a matter of responsibility and common sense.”

“Responsibility to whom?” Matthew challenged.

Tang sat back in his chair and regarded him very carefully. “Since you were awakened, Dr. Fleury,” he said, “you have been briefed by Konstantin Milyukov and Andrei Lityansky. It’s rumored that you have also talked to Shen Chin Che. You have certainly heard Rand Blackstone’s opinion, and Lynn Gwyer’s. Every one of those five is opposed to the notion of a temporary or permanent withdrawal from Tyre, and every one will therefore have taken some care to represent the opposing case as a matter of cowardice or foolishness—but I do not believe that you are the kind of man to take aboard the ideas of others unthinkingly. I was rather young when I first encountered your work, and not yet twenty-five when you disappeared from the media landscape, but I have had time enough to familiarize myself with your writings and your intellectual legacy. I may be mistaken, but I feel that I know you rather better than some of the people who first encountered you in the flesh—people like Lynn Gwyer and Ikram Mohammed, perhaps even Bernal Delgado. I feel confident, therefore, that you will not have prejudged this question, and that you will understand far better than many others the true significance of the changes in our situation that have taken place since
Hope
left Earth’s solar system.”

Wrong-footed yet again by the earnest flattery, Matthew had no idea how to reply to it. In the end, wariness defeated his reflexive impulse to try to guess what Tang might mean. “Okay,” he said. “I’m listening. Convince me.”

Tang nodded, as if this was no more than he had expected. “When we enlisted for this mission,” he said, “we did so in the expectation that Earth was about to enter a new Dark Age. You joined the ranks of the frozen in 2090 or thereabouts, more than twenty years before me, but you were a prophet of no mean ability and Mr. Solari must have told you that the situation in the early 2110s seemed every bit as desperate as you had anticipated. The ecosphere was suffering a near-universal collapse, and new plagues were in the process of sterilizing every human female on Earth. I always trusted that the human race would pull through, but I expected a drastic interruption of scientific and social progress. It seems, however, that you and I were too pessimistic.

“There was indeed a Crash, but the rebound was more rapid than you or I would have dared hope. The intelligence gleaned by
Hope
’s patient crew during the last few centuries suggests that the Dark Age lasted less than half a century, and that technological progress had resumed its ever-more-enormous strides by the end of the twenty-second century. Even then, it seems, men dared to hope that they could live long enough to be the inheritors of authentic emortality. It appears that they were wrong, but a potent technology of longevity was discovered soon enough—three hundred years in what is now our past. You and I, Dr. Fleury, would be members of the last generation of mortal men were it not for the fact that we both have mortal children in suspended animation aboard
Hope
.”

“But we’re here, and the emortals are still in the solar system,” Matthew pointed out. “We have to deal with our own situation as we are, as mortals—as we always knew that we would. The fact that Earth’s human population has survived and thrived instead of dying is welcome news, but it doesn’t affect what we came here to do. We’re still the first wave of extraterrestrial colonists: the vanguard of the diaspora.”

“On the contrary,” Tang came back at him. “That one fact changes everything—not, admittedly, in terms of what we
wanted
to do when we set out from the solar system, but in terms of our
obligations
to our fellow men. Had Earth really entered a Dark Age, we would indeed have arrived here as pioneers, entitled to believe that we might be the best if not the only hope for the long-term survival of our species. Given the circumstances that actually pertain, however, we are obliged to ask ourselves whether we can still go ahead with the colonization of Tyre, given that it may require less than a hundred years—and will certainly require less than two hundred—for us to learn how to engineer men who would be far better adapted to that task.

“It is certainly not the case that we could not make good use of a delay, given what we have already discovered about the problematic and enigmatic nature of the local ecosphere. If we rush ahead foolishly with the colonization project we do so at the risk of disaster—not merely for ourselves but for the local ecosphere. If, instead, we were to remain in orbit until communications with our parent world could be properly restored, continuing our studies in the meantime with reasonable discretion, we would lose nothing but time. We left the solar system because we thought the human race had run out of time, but we were wrong. We did have time, and we have it still. To act as if we did not would be stupid and irresponsible.”

Tang had been right to point out that everyone to whom Matthew had so far spoken had taken the view that the colonization project must press ahead as originally envisaged. He had also been right to imply, without being so impolite as to state it forth-rightly, that their views had fitted in so readily with Matthew’s preconceptions that he had not even thought to challenge their views with any real vigor. Now, Matthew realized that there might be some merit in the ancient saw that said that wherever fools were inclined to rush in, angels ought to tread more carefully.

“So you’re not actually against the idea of colonization,” Matthew said, carefully. “You just want to take it slowly.”

“I’m not
for
the idea of colonization either,” Tang said. “I believe that we ought to proceed slowly and carefully, so that we can make a proper determination of the practicality of colonization. I believe that we ought to discover the solutions to the many enigmas with which we are faced
before
we commit ourselves to a course of action that might be mutually destructive. And I believe that we ought to make sure that if, or when, we decide that colonization of Tyre is both feasible and desirable, the task is undertaken by people who are fully prepared for the job. You and I, Dr. Fleury, are not. We might wish that we were, but the fact remains that we are remnants of a primitive era, who have been far outstripped.

“In other circumstances, you and I might have been justified in thinking of this world as our Ararat: the place in which, for better or for worse, our daughters must grow up and bear children of their own. In the circumstances that actually pertain, it is our duty—however unpleasant—to recognize that if our daughters are to be among the mothers of a new human race, they ought not to take on that role until we are able to make full use of the technologies of twenty-ninth-century Earth in shaping their offspring.”

“I see,” said Matthew, meaning that he understood the argument but needed time to think it over.

“I wish you did,” was Tang’s unexpected rejoinder. “Alas, you have only just begun to see. I, on the other hand, am able not only to see more clearly but also to
feel
the true alienness of this world. When you return to Rand Blackstone, he will tell you—scornfully—that I am afraid, and that I have begun to sense menace in every ripple of the river, every cloud in the sky. He is right. I
am
afraid—but what I fear more than anything else is the insensitivity of men like him. Given time, I am sure that you would learn to see as clearly, and feel as deeply, as myself—but there are those here and in orbit who would far rather press you to reach premature conclusions.”

Matthew hesitated for a moment before saying: “What did Bernal Delgado think?”

“Bernal was an honest scientist,” Tang told him. “He had listened to both sides of the case, and had reserved his judgment—but I must believe, must I not, that he would have seen soon enough that I am right?”

“Are you implying that that was the reason for his murder?”

“I have not the slightest idea why Bernal was murdered,” Tang assured him, “nor have I any idea who might have killed him, in spite of what your friend the policeman thinks.”

“Vince has reserved his judgment too,” Matthew assured him. “If he suggests otherwise, it’s purely for tactical reasons. What difference would it make to your calculation of the logic of the situation if the alien humanoids turned out not to be extinct?”

“As a good Hardinist,” Tang said, letting a little irony into his voice, “I would surely be bound to assume that they were the putative owners of the world, and the best potential stewards of its future development. If there are intelligent aliens here—and if the city-builders still exist, even if they have given up the city-building habit, they must surely be reckoned intelligent—they are entitled to every moral consideration that we would apply to our own kind. This is not 1492, Dr. Fleury; we must learn from our historians as well as our prophets.”