Birthright

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 world 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