“So you think we should do nothing at all?” asked Loaf, clearly disgusted.
“Oh, I think we should get the jewel, if we can-I liked it when you called me your second-story boy. I just think we shouldn’t forget that anything we do is going to be dangerous.”
“I’m a soldier, son, I know what danger is a lot better than you do.”
Umbo stood up.
“Get back into the water and scrub again.”
“I’m as clean as my body knows how to get,” said Umbo. “And in case you didn’t notice, you’re not my father and I don’t want one.”
“Then get some less-filthy clothes on and go call for my bathwater, if that ugly smart-mouthed girl can be bothered to carry it up. And then while I’m washing, go find out about where to get our laundry done.”
“I’ll do it if you say please.”
“How about if I don’t smack you six ways from Tuesday?”
“Wow,” said Umbo. “That was almost as nice as a tip.”
CHAPTER 20
What Knosso Knew All nineteen ships were now in a distant orbit around Garden. It was a beautiful world, with the blues, whites, and browns of Earth, but surrounded by a single dazzling ring. On its surface there was life in such profusion that the green of chlorophyll was not just visible but dominant in many places on the continents.
The original plan-much of which Ram had not been shown until now-called for the initial landing party to consist of a dozen scientists and a couple of sharpshooters, in case any of the local animals mistook humans for prey. Ram was supposed to have remained in the ship.
The expendables suggested that only they should visit the planet’s surface. They would spend several years doing extensive recording and sampling; they assumed Ram could enter stasis and not awaken again for nearly two centuries, until the extinction event was over and Earth biota had been fully established.
But Ram knew at once that this was wrong. “Human eyes have to see this world. A human needs to walk through Garden and then speak about it to other humans. My words will be a portion of what you record. Then I’ll return to the ship and go into stasis and wait until Garden has become something that it never meant itself to be.”
“I understand that your use of the intentional fallacy reflects sentiment rather than a loss of rationality,” said the expendable.
“Yes,” said Ram. “I don’t actually believe planets have intentions.”
“We know that it’s impossible for humans to discuss evolution without using such language. The tendency to interpret results as intentions is built into the DNA that allows you to process causality on a level superior to that of any other animal.”
“But not superior to yours?” asked Ram.
“We do not process causality per se,” said the expendable. “We process regular time-linear associations of events and regard them as probabilities.”
Ram looked over the suggested landing sites and chose one, then selected another six sites to visit for the initial sampling. Expendables from all the other ships gathered, so that Ram made the twentieth member of the landing party. He was the least efficient, the least capable, the least accurate of the group-but that would have been the case even if the others had all been human scientists.
In this expedition, Ram’s only real value arose from his inexperience, ignorance, and naivete. He would not immediately categorize whatever he saw, tempted to create a taxonomy based on a deep knowledge of the taxonomy of Earth. He would not immediately make assumptions about the geological history of Garden, based on a deep knowledge of the geology of Earth.
As much as was possible, Ram would walk through Garden with fresh eyes, as the first sentient being to set foot on the planet.
He piloted the lander with ease-air was air, weather was weather, and the automatic systems compensated for any atmospheric differences between Garden and Earth. Landing was smooth and relatively nondestructive.
He had no profound sentence to utter as he stepped from the lander, the first and last human who would visit this alien world in its native state. He wore a breathing apparatus and an airtight suit, for there must be no risk of a parasite taking hold in Ram’s body, but the suit was light and the headgear mostly transparent, so Ram was not particularly aware of the separation between himself and the life around him. He felt the springiness of the prairie grass. He smelled nothing and the breeze on his face was generated by the breather, but he could hear the buzz and whirr of insects, the rustling of the grass in the light wind. He could see the ripples of the grass, the shadows of the few trees, the distant mountains.
He wished he knew more about Earth-his upbringing, education, and training had not had, as a goal, the experience of as much of Earth’s habitats as possible. So he did not know if he should be astonished at the vast number of hopping insects that bounded up continuously from the tallish grass, or the reptiles of various sizes that shot straight up, spread their limbs to create parachutes out of the skin between, and then used tongue, jaws, or talons to snatch the hopping or hovering insects out of the air.
The expendables confirmed that the green of the grasses and leaves tended to vary in frequencies from the dominant shades of Earth plant life. But Ram also noticed that the grasses were grasses, the tree-leaves looked like leaves on Earth. The function determines the form, he thought. Perhaps Earth life will not make this world so very different from what it created on its own.
A single flying insect landed on the face of his suit. Another. Another. And then in a moment he could not see at all, except for tiny flecks of light making their way through momentary gaps between the insects that completely coated his suit. He could feel the weight of them, there were so many.
He held very still.
If these were bloodsucking parasites-and why else would they have evolved this swarming behavior?-there might well be enough of them to drain his body of blood. The local animals must have developed defenses against these swarms, but he had none. The fact that they probably couldn’t digest his blood into a usable form would not put back the blood they had taken.
Ram could see that trying to coexist with these insects, at least, might have posed a problem for the colonists. They could spend ten thousand years struggling to live with these swarms, or they could eradicate them-along with everything else-and get a fresh start.
No doubt many native insects would survive the extinction event. But probably not these parasites, since their hosts would be gone.
Would any of the hoppers-predator or prey-survive?
He walked through the grasses, found a stream, and looked down into it at the silver and grey finny fish and eels that thrived there. He walked as far as a nearby isolated tree and rested his hand on the bark. I touched you, he said silently. I brushed this leaf with my hand.
Meanwhile, the expendables gathered animal and plant life according to the instructions they had given each other-samples for analysis, not preservation, not on this trip. They had containers for them, and Ram wandered until they had filled as much space as they thought this grassland deserved on a first trip.
They visited rainforest, desert, tundra, high mountains, seashore. They followed the direction of Garden’s rotation so it was always daylight wherever they stopped. By the time Ram was exhausted and needed to sleep, the expendables announced that they had all the samples they needed to conduct their initial analysis.
“So we’re done?” asked Ram.
“Yes.”
“I have to sleep before I can safely pilot the craft,” he said.
“We don’t actually need you to pilot anything,” said the expendables. “Go ahead and sleep, so you’ll be awake and rested by the time we arrive back on the ship.”
“Will I visit the surface again, while it’s still Garden?”
