other sentient plant-beings on the Well World, eleven in the South here and nine in the North, although I’m not sure those are really plants as we understand them. We’re a distinct minority here, anyway. But there are great advantages to being in the vegetable kingdom.”
“Like what?” she asked, fascinated in spite of herself.
“Well, we are not dependent on any sort of food. Our bodies make it by converting light from the sun, as most plants do. Just get a few hours of real or artificial sun a day and you will never starve. You do need some minerals from the soil, but these are common to much of the Well World, so there are few places you can’t get along. Water is your only need, and you need it only once every few days. Your body will tell you when—as it did just now. If you get into a regular routine of drinking, you will never feel dizzy or faint nor will you risk your health from its lack. There is also no sex here, none of those primal drives that get the animals in such a neurotic jumble.”
“Such things have been minimized on my home planet,” she responded. “It would appear from what you say that I will not find this place that far from my own social concepts. But, if you have no sexes, do you reproduce by some artificial means?”
The crowd chuckled at this.
“No,” Gringer responded, “all races on the Well World are self-contained biological units that could survive, given certain ecological conditions, without any aids. We reproduce slowly, for we are among the oldest-lived folk on the planet. When something happens to require additional population, then we plant ourselves for an extended period and produce another of ourselves by fission. This is far more practical than the other way, for everything that we are is duplicated, cell for cell, so that the new growth is an exact copy that contains even the same memories and personalities. Thus, even though you will wear out in a few centuries, you will also live forever—for the growths are so identical that not even we are certain which one is which.”
Vardia looked around, studying the crowd. “Are there any such twins here?” she asked.
“No,” Gringer replied. “We tend to split up, stay far apart, until the years make us into different folk by the variety of experiences. We live in small camps, like this one, drawn from different occupations and interests, so that the camps provide a wide range of folk and keep things from getting too dull.”
“What do you do for work?” Vardia asked. “I mean, most—ah, animal civilizations are devoted to food production, building and maintaining shelters, educating the young, and manufacturing. You don’t seem to need any of those things.”
“This is true,” Brouder acknowledged. “Freed from the animal demands of food, clothing, shelter, and sex, we are able to turn ourselves to those pursuits to which other races must, because of the primacy of those needs, devote only a small part of their endeavors.”
Vardia was more puzzled than ever. “What sort of activities do you mean?” she asked.
“We think,” Brouder replied.
“What Brouder means,” Gringer cut in, seeing her uncomprehending look, “is that we are researchers into almost every area. You may think of us as a giant university. We collect knowledge, sort it, play with problems both practical and theoretical, and add to the greater body of knowledge. Had you followed the main road in the other direction, you would have come upon the Center, which is where those of us who need lab facilities and technical tools work and where people following similar lines meet to discuss their findings and their problems.”
Vardia’s mind tried to grasp it, and could not. “Why?” she asked.
Brouder and Gringer both showed expressions of surprise. “Why what?” Gringer asked.
“Why do you do such work? To what goal?”
This disturbed them, and there were animated conversations through the gathered crowd. Vardia was equally disturbed by the reaction to her question, which she had considered very straightforward. She thought perhaps she had been misunderstood.
“I mean,” she said, “to what end is all of this research? You do not seem to use it yourself, so who is it for?”
Gringer seemed about to have a fit of some kind. “But the quest for knowledge is the only thing that separates sentient beings from the most common grasses or lowest animals!” the Czillian said a bit shrilly.
Brouder’s tone was almost patronizing, as if addressing a small child. “Look,” the researcher said to her, “what do
“Why, to exist in happiness and harmony with all others for all times,” she replied as if reciting a liturgy— which is what it was, taught from the day she was produced at the Birth Factory.
Gringer’s long tentacles showed agitation. Its right one reached down and pulled up a single blade of the yellowish grass that grew for kilometers in all directions. It pushed the long stalk in front of her, waving it like a pointer. “This blade of grass is happy,” Gringer stated flatly. “It gets what it needs to survive. It doesn’t think or need to think. It remains happy even though I’ve pulled it up and it will die. It doesn’t know that, and won’t even know it when it’s dead. Its relatives out there on the plains are the same. They fit your definition of the ultimate goal of civilized society. It knows nothing, and in perfect ignorance is its total perfection and its harmony with its surroundings. Shall we, then, create a way to turn all sentient beings into blades of field grass? Shall we, then, have achieved the ultimate in evolution?”
Vardia’s mind spun. This sort of logic and these kinds of questions were outside her experience and her orderly, programmed universe. She had no answers for these—heresies, were they? Cornered but as yet unwilling to give up the true faith, she regressed.
“I want to go back to my own world,” she wailed plaintively.
Brouder’s expression was sad, and pity swept the crowd, pity not only at her philosophical dilemma but also for her people, the billions blindly devoted to such a hollow goal. Its rubbery tentacle wrapped itself around hers, and pulled her back into the reddish-brown, upturned soil of the camp.
“Any other questions or problems can wait,” it said gently. “You will have time to learn and to fit here. It is getting dark now, and you need rest.”
The shadows were getting long, and the distant sun had become an orange ball on the horizon. For the first time since waking up, she
“Except under the artificial light of the Center we are inactive in darkness,” Brouder explained. “Although we could go indefinitely there, we need the rooting to remain healthy and active. We gain minerals and strength from it, and it is also necessary for mental health.”
“How do I—ah, root?” she asked.
“Just pick a spot not too near anyone else, and wait for darkness. You will see,” Brouder told her.
The Czillian pointed out a good spot, then moved about five long paces from her.
Vardia just stood there for a while, looking at the small community in the gloomy dusk. She discovered that, although her eyes remained open, she was having trouble seeing. Everything looked very dark, as if she were peering through a piece of film that was badly underexposed. Then she felt the myriads of tiny tendrils in her feet creep out in response to some automatic signal and extend deep into the loose soil. The chill and tiredness seemed to lift, and she felt a warmth rising within her. Every cell of her new body seemed to tingle, and she was consumed in an orgasmic feeling of extreme pleasure that canceled out thought.
All over the hex of Czill, all who were not working in the Center were similarly rooting. To an alien observer, the land would be punctuated with over a million tall, thick vines as motionless as the trees.
And yet the landscape was not motionless. Millions of nocturnal insects set up a chorus, and several small mammals scurried around looking for food and, in the process, moving, aerating, and fertilizing the soil. They provided the carbon-dioxide-from-oxygen conversion needed for atmospheric balance in this hex. The teeming legions of life coexisted with the daylight Czillians in perfect balance. They existed under the thousands of stars in the night sky the sleeping plant-people could not see.
Because her eyes were lidless she saw the awakening even as she underwent it. It was strange to come out of that infinitely pleasurable sleep and see the morning simply fade in. Several of the others were in her field of vision, and she saw that the sleeping position was very stiff. Tentacles ran down and almost blended with the
