because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our abilities and skills…”
Nemoto laughed. “President Kennedy’s 1961 speech. It is a long time since I heard those words.”
“Malenfant was fond of quoting it.”
“So,” Mane said, “you intended to live on your Moon, to colonize it.”
“Ultimately, I guess, yeah.”
“And then?”
“And then the other planets,” Emma said vaguely. “Mars, the asteroids, the moons of Jupiter.”
“And then?”
“And then the stars, I guess. Alpha Centauri… You’d have been better asking Malenfant.” She studied Manekato, trying to read the expressions that passed over that broad, blue-black face. “Every intelligent species must have the same kind of goals. Expansion, colonization. Mustn’t they? Especially every intelligent variety of hominid.”
Nemoto was shaking her head. “Not so, it seems.”
Emma was growing irritated again; she wasn’t enjoying being treated as the dope of the class. “Why are you here, Manekato?”
“Like you,” Mane said evenly, “when this Red Moon appeared in our skies — and it disrupted our world as much as it did yours — we asked the question why.”
Emma leaned forward. “But why you. Mane, rather than somebody else?”
Mane frowned. “I came because I had no home.”
It turned out that Mane’s home, which she referred to as a Farm, had been wiped off the face of her Earth by Red Moon tides.
“She came here because she was forced,” Nemoto said.
“You could have rebuilt someplace else.”
“There is nowhere else,” Mane said. She pulled at an ear that was all but buried in thick black fur. “It was the end of my Lineage. A Lineage that stretched back through a hundred thousand generations.” She sighed, and began to scratch at the other ear.
Emma sat, stunned. A hundred thousand generations? If each generation was, say, twenty years at minimum — why, that added up to two million years.
Nemoto said, “Emma, these people are not like us. They are much more like the Hams. They sit on those Farms of theirs, for ever and a day. They do not covet what their neighbours possess. There is no robbery, no territorial or economic expansion, no nation, no war.”
“And if you lose your Farm—”
“If you lose your Farm, you die. Or anyhow your Lineage does.”
“That’s terrible,” Emma said to Mane. “What do they do? Sterilize you? Take your children?”
But it seemed that once again she had asked the wrong question. Mane asked blankly, “They?”
“Nobody has to enforce it,” Nemoto said. “It just happens. The families let themselves die out. It is seen as a price worth paying for ecological stability. Emma, the Daemons have evolved this way, shaped by their cultural imperatives. Two million years, remember.”
Emma shook her head, uncomfortable under Mane’s steady gaze. She felt defiant. “Humans wouldn’t live like that. We wouldn’t accept it.”
Mane kept pulling her ear. “What would you do?”
Emma shrugged. “The family would go on. The Mayflower syndrome. We’d carve a place out of the wilderness—”
“But there is no wilderness,” Mane said. “Even without war, even if you found a space not already cultivated, you would be forced to occupy a region, delineated in space, time, and energy flow, already exploited by another portion of the ecology.”
It took some time for Emma to figure that out. “Yes,” she said. “There is bound to be some environmental impact. But—”
“Other species would find reduced living space. Diversity would fall. And so it would go on. Soon the world would be covered from pole to pole by humans, fighting over the diminishing resources.” Mane nodded. “Such was the ambition of Praisegod Michael. At least you are consistent.”
“The Daemons limit their numbers,” said Nemoto. “They don’t overrun their Earth. By respecting the stability of the ecosystem that provides for them they have survived for millions of years. They even accept their short lifespans, though it would be trivial for them to do something about that.”
“A brief life burns brightly,” said Manekato.
Emma shook her head. “I still say humans couldn’t live like that.”
Nemoto said slyly, “The Hams do. And they are almost human.”
“Are you saying we should live like Neandertals, in caves, wearing skins, wrestling buffalo, watching our children die young?”
Mane said, “Are the Hams suffering?”
No, Emma thought. Actually they are happy. But her pride was hurt; she stayed silent.
Mane leaned forward, and Emma could smell her milk-sweet breath. “The lion takes only the last deer in the herd. She does not dream of having so many cubs that the plains would be full of nothing but lions. There are simple laws. Most species figure them out; you are the exception. An ecology of a single species is not viable. A diverse, stable world would provide for you.”
Candy-land, Emma thought.
“We have a story,” Mane said. “A mother was dying. She called her daughter. She said, ‘This is the most beautiful Farm in the world.’ And so it was. The mother said, ‘When I die, you will be free to act. Do with it what you will.’ The daughter pondered these words.
“And when the mother died, the daughter took a torch and set fire to her Farm every bit of it, the buildings and crops and creatures.
“When asked why she had done this — for of course, without a Farm, her Lineage would be extinguished — the daughter said, “One night of glory is better than a thousand years of toil.’” The big Daemon actually shuddered as she finished her tale.
“We have a similar legend,” Emma said. “There was a warrior, called Achilles. The gods gave him a choice: a brief life of glory, or a long, uneventful life in obscurity. Achilles chose the glory.” She looked up at Mane. “In my culture, that story is regarded as uplifting.”
Mane turned her tremendous head. “The tale I told you is, umm, a scary story. Intended to frighten the children into proper behaviour.”
Nemoto said grimly, “But we will go on anyhow. To the planets, the stars. If we get the chance; if we survive the human-induced extinction event that is unfolding on our Earth. Because we don’t have a choice.” She eyed Manekato bleakly. “Sure our strategy is flawed. But it has a deadly internal logic. We’re stuck on this road we have chosen. We have to keep expanding, or we’ll die anyhow.”
“There is that,” Mane said gently. She stood, and with startling clumsiness rammed her head against the low roof of the chalet. “You wish to see the engine of the world. So do I, Em-ma. We will go together.”
Nemoto nodded warily. “How? Will you Map us?”
Manekato laid a hand on Emma’s scalp. It was heavy, gentle, the pads of flesh on the palm soft. “We have found we cannot Map there. But it would not be appropriate anyway. We are all hominids together, here on this Red Moon. Let us do what hominids do. We will walk, to our destiny.”
Four of them would be travelling together: Emma, Nemoto, Manekato — and Julia, the Ham. As Emma was preparing to leave, Julia had walked out of nowhere, with every sign of staying at Emma’s side until they reached whatever there was to find, at the centre of this wind-wrapped crater.
Manekato loomed over the three of them, the massive muscles of her shoulders as big as Emma’s skull. “Now we go, we four, to discover the secret of the universe.” She threw back her mighty head and laughed, a roar that rattled off the smooth-walled structures of the compound. And, without hesitation, she walked off the yellow platform floor, heading for the interior of the crater, and the forest that lay there.
The little column turned single-file and spread out. The going was easy over the dust-strewn rock, and Emma, hardened by her weeks of living rough, found it easy to keep up with Manekato’s knuckle-gallop. But when she looked back she saw that Nemoto was labouring, lagging behind Emma by a hundred yards. Julia walked at her side, stolid, slow, patient, her own awkward gait endearingly clumsy.
Emma waited until Nemoto caught up. Nemoto did not look her in the eye; she plodded on, her gait showing a trace of a limp. Emma clapped her on the shoulder. “I guess the human species isn’t going to conquer the stars if we can’t even walk a couple of miles, Nemoto.”
“I am not as acclimatized as you,” Nemoto said.
“Despite all that astronaut training you must have had. Whereas / was just thrown here on my ass from out of the blue sky—”
“Punish me if you like. Your misfortunes are not my fault.”
“Right. You came here to rescue me. Or was it just to give me somebody even worse off than I am?”
Julia moved between them. “No” worry, Emma. I help.”
Emma grinned. “Just throw her over your shoulder if she gives any trouble. Nemoto — even if they can’t Map there, I don’t understand why the Daemons haven’t been to this centre before.”
“They have been studying it. They can be remarkably patient. And—”
“Yes?”
“I think they have been waiting for us.”
Emma observed, “Nobody’s carrying anything.”
Julia shrugged. “Fores” has food. Fores” has water.”
“You see?” Nemoto glared. “These others do not think as we do. Julia knows that the land will provide everything she needs: food, water, even raw materials for tools. It is a different set of assumptions, Emma Stoney. Just as Manekato said. They see the universe as essentially bountiful, a generous mother land. We see the universe as an enemy nation, to be occupied and mastered.”
“So we’re inferior in every way,” Emma grumbled, resentful.
“Not that,” Nemoto said. “But we are different. The Daemons” intellectual capacity is obvious — the rapidity of their comprehension, the richness and precision of their thinking. But they come from a world where hunters, indeed predators of any kind, cannot prosper. Even their games are cooperative, all concerned with building things.”
“What about religion? What do they believe?”
Nemoto shrugged. “If they have a religion it is buried well, in their minds and their culture. They need not worship sublimated mothers or seeds as we do, because they control nature — at least, below the Red Moon. And without the metaphor of the seed, of renewal, they have no urge to believe in a life beyond the grave.”
“Like the Hams.”
“Yes. The Hams, Neandertals, have much more in common with the Daemons than we do. And remember this, Emma Stoney. Mane’s people regard us as less intelligent than them. Save for academic interest or sentimentality, they have no more interest in talking to us than you would have in chatting to a Colobus monkey. This is the framework within which we must operate, no matter
