Elegy – for the sake of argument, I think – took Moses’s part: ‘Kretzoi and Bojangles did manage to get on the same wavelength for a while, Ben. For the short while, I’m pretty certain, they . . . well, touched.’
‘If they did,’ I said, ‘it proves only that Bojangles was able to cross an interspecies Rubicon unfordable by you or me. Bojangles made the crossing, Kretzoi didn’t. And we may never be able to make it – for the same reason iguanas can’t fly or hippopotami sing.’
That shut us all up for a while, even me.
Then Moses pulled another folder toward him and opened it. ‘This one has to do with the eye,’ he announced. ‘Not the areas in the brain that store visual memory or the Asadi’s indecipherable optical grammar, mind you – but the structure and function of the eye itself. Photoreception, the willed conversion of photosynthetic pigments into spectral displays, and the breakdown of sunlight into chemical energy usable as metabolic fuel. The eyes of the Asadi, you see, have at least three distinct functions – they see, they communicate, and they feed. They may do other things as well, but we’re not certain yet what they are.’
‘Then the Asadi eye is capable of photosynthesis?’ Elegy asked.
‘So it appears,’ Moses responded, ‘although we still don’t completely understand the mechanism. Their eyes capture sunlight in specialized cellular structures containing energy factories similar to the chloroplasts because they contain light-absorbing pigments in addition to chlorophyl, some of which we’ve never seen before – convert light energy into electrical energy and electrical energy into chemical energy. Some of the chemical energy is radiated in the Asadi’s special displays, which may be either willed or random – although the consensus at the hospital seems to be that the Asadi control them. Just as your father surmised, Civ Cather, and just as we’ve all along assumed on the basis of simple observation and the empirical evidence of the eyebooks.
‘The remainder of the chemical energy produced in the Asadi’s optical chromoplasts goes into the manufacture of ATP and, ultimately, of course, glucose. The efficiency with which their chromoplasts use absorbed light energy appears to be nearly one hundred percent, and the oxygen that in plant photosynthesis is given off as a waste product the Asadi manage to channel back into their systems as an agent in the purely animal-specific energy-producing process of the Krebs cycle. In a sense, then, the Asadi even breathe through their eyes. That’s why, when we first began examining the optical photosynthesis theory, our tests for especially high concentrations of oxygen over the Asadi clearing always proved negative.
‘Now, apparently, the theory’s been confirmed, and that confirmation suggests a reason for their staying in the jungle clearing only during the hours between sunrise and sunset – that’s when their eyes photosynthesize most efficiently, and that’s when they’re best capable of communicating with one another through their spectral displays. The two processes complement each other, setting up a positive feedback loop in the same way that the tendency to bipedalism in early terrestrial hominids and the need to carry objects reinforced and further developed each other. But a positive feedback loop can dictate and drastically limit behavior, too, and that seems to be one of the reasons the Asadi have fallen into such a stagnant and repetitive life-style during their recent history. Perhaps the structure and function of their eyes have been the undoing as well as the making of the Asadi as a viable species.’
‘They’re completely viable,’ Elegy put in. ‘Their numbers are small, but they don’t appear in danger of extinction. What you’re really saying is that by the standards of Sol III’s arrogant human primates, they’re not readily comprehensible. Isn’t that it? Besides, the Asadi aren’t absolute slaves to this physiological and biochemical process; at some point, they must have chosen to assemble at dawn and to disperse at sunset.’
‘Why?’ Moses asked.
‘Because visible light exists prior to dawn and after sunset. Their eyes, if they really operate at almost one hundred percent efficiency, could easily photosynthesize at these times, too.’
I got up, clasped my hands at the small of my back, and stared at Kretzoi’s half-concealed form in the poolside foliage. ‘That still doesn’t suggest conscious choice, Elegy. The pattern – you suggested this yourself when you implied we could redeem the Asadi by taking them out of their clearing – the pattern may be part of a genetically dictated behavioral program. An instinct. You said yourself their willingness to suffer the monotony of the clearing must have survival value. Don’t you remember your speculations about cannibalism?’
‘All I know is that we’ve lost Bojangles, Ben, and that I’m tired of theory and speculation.’
‘That’s why I’ve come to you with facts,’ Moses said, again riffling the pages of a report. ‘Look. Look here. Do you remember your father’s account of the Asadi “chieftain” – Chaney called him Eisen Zwei; a typical Chaney impertinence – who did battle with Denebola, staring directly at it and wrestling the sun with his hands?’
Yes, said Elegy, she remembered.
‘The result was that the old Asadi’s eyes burned out, became like two blackened holes in his head.’ Moses shook the report. ‘The evidence here is that blindness is equivalent to death for the Asadi. And those among them who are handicapped by an absence of photosynthetic pigments in their eyes – like The Bachelor, like the chieftain Eisen Zwei – are regarded with either passive repugnance or worshipful terror, as we might regard a zombie, one of the living dead. These handicapped Asadi have to depend on sources in addition to sunlight to feed themselves, you see, and they’re unable to communicate with their fellows in the usual Asadi way. Hence, they’re not simply “mutes” to the community at large, they’re walking dead men. That’s why, after Eisen Zwei’s ritual suicide, The Bachelor – a former pariah – was chosen to succeed the old man as “chieftain.”’
‘You’re theorizing again,’ I reminded Moses.
‘All right,’ he
