Elegy favored me with a wan, semitolerant smile. ‘The Ur’sadi turned to genetic manipulation to save themselves. They equipped their circulatory systems with inheritable organic “lymphostats.” The autopsy report, by the way, mentions this unusual adaptive feature in Bojangles’s blood – or the vestiges of this feature, since Denebola is now in a protracted “quiet” phase. And these freely circulating lymphostats regulated the production of lymph cells in the Ur’sadi’s blood, no matter what Denebola happened to be doing. Storming or smiling.
‘The Ur’sadi also moved to make extensive genetic alterations in their eyes. The most significant was to give their organs of sight and communication the ability to photosynthesize. Each individual optical cell was equipped with a chromoplast containing one or more photosynthetic pigments. Previously, as my father had incorrectly assumed was true of present-day Asadi, the optical cells had produced their spectral displays solely by means of minute, controlled chemical reactions. Now, though, the spectral displays employed the ancient chemical reactions along with the light-reflecting properties of the photosynthetic pigments added by the Ur’sadi geneticists. This tandem arrangement prevented a major rewiring of the brain – specifically of Bojangles’s area – and it gave the Ur’sadi not only an immunity to Denebola’s unpredictable radiation showers but a means of freeing themselves from their dependence on BoskVeld’s dwindling resources.
‘The familiar pigments our Komm-galens found in Bojangles’s optical chromoplasts, by the way, include chlorophyll, earotenoids, and phycobilins. Substances that reflect light in either green or red wavelengths. But our surgeons also found BoskVeld-specific pigments capable of converting sunlight and water into energy – substances that radiate light in the blue, violet, and even brown frequencies. We don’t even have ready-made names for them, Ben; they’re new to us, just as Governor Eisen told us last week in the hangar. And it’s these pigments – perhaps – that made the new Ur’sadi such efficient processors of Denebolan sunlight. So efficient they no longer had to depend on social cooperation for their survival. Each neo-Ur’sadi was a living factory capable of supporting itself anywhere on the planet – so long as it had access to sunlight and water.’
Kretzoi suddenly appeared in the helicraft’s doorway. Stalking on all fours, he proceeded past our table and into the cargo section. Once there, he sat back on his haunches and scrutinized Bojangles’s meat-sibling,
‘You think the ability to photosynthesize was a major cause of the Ur’sadi’s collapse?’ I tried to ignore Kretzoi, to disregard him in his bedside watch over our macabre guest.
‘We ought to check him’ Elegy said. ‘He probably ought to be outside. In direct sunlight. Where he can sustain himself.’
‘Elegy,’ I asked her quietly, ‘why the hell don’t we simply let him die? Bojangles is gone, and that poor bastard back there’s apparently got no affectionate family left to devour him. He’s got no one to apply the medications he needs.’
‘He’s got us,’ Elegy said. She rose and walked into the cargo section. I shook my head in acquiescent dismay. Then, along with Jaafar, I joined Elegy and Kretzoi aft. Shoulder to shoulder, the four of us stared down at our charge.
Today the most amazing thing about Bojangles’s meat-sibling was not his gnawed and mutilated body, but the fact that his eyes were lethargically pinwheeling through a spectral display. Baby talk, maybe. Or maybe the incoherent babbling of one in delirium. Although the pattern made no sense to any of us, it gave us all the feeling that we were eavesdropping on someone’s dying words.
I nicknamed the creature Cy; short for Osiris.
‘Look at him,’ I said, even though we were all looking fixedly at him. ‘This is your proof the Asadi are on the road to an evolutionary recovery from barbarism?’
‘He’s in pain,’ Elegy murmured to herself. ‘He’s been seven or eight days without tending.’ Aloud she said, ‘Jaafar, hand me that kit, please.’
Jaafar handed her a medical kit. From this Elegy extracted a syringe and a vial of the sedative we used in our tranq launchers. After diluting the substance with a measured quantity of water, she knelt over Cy and injected the sedative into a vein in his neck. The creature shuddered visibly; the rate of his optical baby talk accelerated nearly to the point of blurring.
Still squatting above Cy, Elegy said, ‘This is a recovery, Ben. No matter what it looks like to you, it’s a recovery. You see, the Ur’sadi had purposely avoided speciation within their own genetic pool by maintaining deliberate proximity to one another. They also kept individuals moving back and forth from one adjacent colony to another to stress the psychological cohesiveness of the whole and to keep small pockets of divergent populations from springing up. Their ill-fated experiment on Earth had been one factor persuading them of the necessity of maintaining their genetic integrity no matter where they went. On BoskVeld, where things were proving especially hard for them, this policy seemed even more crucial. They had to emphasize solidarity – social, psychological, genetic – just to survive the hardships of their new world and its ornery sun.’ Elegy stopped stroking Cy’s mane. ‘Let’s get him outside. He’s calming now. See his eyes?’
The creature’s eyes had stopped displaying; a strange film occluded each concentric ring comprising his organs of sight. Jaafar and I then picked up the nest by the handles affixed to the tarp beneath it and struggled through the Dragonfly and out into the clearing.
Elegy suggested that we place the nest in a squat, broad-leafed tree on the edge of the drop point, and that’s what we did. As we carried Cy into the Wild and lodged his nest at waist height in the tree, Elegy tried to complete for us her private reconstruction of the Ur’sadi/Asadi past.
Her main argument was that the first Ur’sadi to receive the ability to photosynthesize broke the ages-old prohibition against separating themselves from the indivisible whole. They formed self-sufficient sects and splinter groups. These retreated into the remaining forests of BoskVeld and purposely maintained themselves distinct from
