The prejudice that the local dendrite species seemed to have against orthodox branching-patterns seemed even more obvious now than it had when he had walked from the shuttle to the bubble-complex. The stems of these plants always grew in clusters rather than singly, usually coiling about one another. When they subdivided they did so into further clusters of intricately entangled helices. The resulting bundles were obviously strong, because the biggest dendrites could attain heights of twenty meters in spite of their lack of stoutness, but the competition between individuals and species seemed to be intense: the resultant crowding prevented all but the most powerful individuals from gaining any considerable dominance. The tallest crowns were the most lavishly equipped in terms of bright fans and other leaf substitutes, and it was also the tallest structures that supported the broadest globular structures, some of them as large as basketballs.
Matthew checked the data that had been downloaded into his notepad to see whether anyone had contrived to determine the nature of the globules, but most of the data related to the easily gatherable specimens that grew on the tips of more modest structures. Several observers had noted that DNA-analyses revealed that some of the globules were parasites with radically different chimerical compositions, although they were not obviously different in appearance from the rest. Many reports had recorded the impression that the globules were reminiscent of eggs in that they had unusually thick and resilient vitreous teguments protecting unusually soft and fluid inner tissues, but no one had yet been able to determine whether they had a reproductive function. Globules subjected to experimental “planting” had not so far contrived to generate new dendrites or anything else. In spite of this lack of success some of the experimenters clung hard to the supposition that they mustbe reproductive structures of some kind, but that no one had yet found the trigger that would cause them to “germinate.” One dutiful statistician—a crewman, not a groundling—who had taken the trouble to collate all the available data about the shape and size of “bulbous protuberant apical structures” had discovered that “ovate ellipsoids” were nearly twice as common as “oblate spheroids,” and that 70 percent of the structures that exhibited “evident quasiequatorial constrictions” also had “bipolar spinoid extensions.”
All in all, Matthew decided, the vast majority of the structures seemed to be no more exotic than a coconut, and considerably less weird than a pineapple. He went back to his patient search for signs of animal-equivalents. He was now quite adept at spotting lizard-analogues, even when their long bodies remained quite motionless, but his eye was continually attracted by subtle movements that turned out not to be animal movements at all. He began to realize for the first time that the plants clustered at the waterside were considerably more active than those he had seen in and around the ruins.
While he had been walking from the shuttle to the bubble-domes of Base Three it had been the odd quality of the background noise that had seemed to be the most alien component of the environment, but the lapping of the water against Voconia’s flanks seemed much more familiar. The movements of the bundled stems and their superficial plant-parasites now seemed the creepiest subliminal impression that his mind was picking up. He wondered whether the subtle not-quite-swimming deformations of the craft in which he was traveling helped him notice similar inclinations among the elements of the forest.
Eventually, Matthew became uneasily conscious of the fact that the relationship between the faint breezes that stirred the riverside canopy and the responses of the “leaves” was by no means a simple matter of pressure-and-deformation. But why, he asked himself, were the twisted stems, their radar-dish plates, and their coquettish fans moving so purposefully? Presumably, it was to catch the light more efficiently as the sun tracked across the sky. Why, then, did the movements seem so capricious and disordered? The competition between the plants was so intense that they had probably been forced to make more strenuous efforts to harvest their share of solar energy than their Earthly analogues—but was that the only reason for their subtle fidgeting? They had been guided by natural selection to make use of certain animal tricks—in much the same way, he could not help thinking, that the Voconiahad been engineered to combine plant- and animal-inspired devices—but how versatile was that legerdemain?
In a way, he thought, the real wonder was that there was such a clear distinction on Earth between vegetable “creepers” and animal “creepy-crawlers.” When Pliny the elder had assembled his classic Natural Historyhe had been unable to resist the imaginative allure of hypothetical creatures that combined the utilitarian attributes of stems and worms—so was it not surprising, in a way, that natural selection had been so firm in its actual discriminations? Was there not a certain common sensein the refusal of Tyre’s ecosphere to maintain such a stark apartheid? Why should Earthly plants be so restricted in their powers of movement, and Earthly animals so determined to place photosynthesis under rigid taboo? Why should Earth’s entire ecosphere be so determined to use a single coding molecule, when it was obvious nowthat there was a much greater range of opportunities lurking in the exotic hinterlands of organic chemistry?
The likely answer, of course, as Ike Mohammed had pointed out with brutal simplicity, was that the relevant fuel-consumption equations had never quite added up. Here, the sums had been done differently. Was the arithmetic more elegant or more efficient? Probably not—although the apparent lack of biodiversity among the vertebrate-analogues and arthropod-analogues ought not to be taken as a reliable indicator. But it was probably no lesselegant, once one grasped the fundamental aesthetics. It would be foolish to assume that either ecosphere could be judged significantly superior, even on the simplest of comparative scales.
The more eyes Matthew noticed—especially when he began to glimpse pairs of forward-looking eyes, some of which presumably belonged to monkey-analogues—the more convinced he became that while he was studying the alien world, it was studying him. It was impossible to guess how much intelligence there was in the observing eyes—although he had no doubt that there was far less than there was behind his own—but it was observation nevertheless. The new world might not be alarmed by the presence of aliens, but it was sensitive to their arrival and continued presence; the invaders were not being ignored.
“You’ll see a little more when the sun’s not so bright,” said a voice from behind him, breaking into his reverie, “but you won’t heara lot more until it’s dark. Rather frustrating, that.”
Matthew turned to look at Dulcie Gherardesca. “It’s the same in most places on Earth,” he reminded her. “Sensible animals only come out to play in the dark. Daylight’s for the primary producers and lumpen herbivores, darkness for the nimbler herbivores and the cleverer hunters. Except for birds. And people.”
“The people of the city were daylight-lovers too,” she said. “They were artists, after a fashion, as well as technologists. Artists and artificers have to work in the light, at least to begin with. The cave paintings our remotest ancestors made were celebrations of their mastery of firelight: the power to banish darkness. The Tyrian city-dwellers didn’t have that. They never domesticated fire, so they had to work in daylight.”
“They probably had less incentive as well as less opportunity to domesticate fire,” Matthew suggested. “Milder weather, fewer big predators to scare away, fewer forest fires. But it is odd, isn’t it? Agriculture without cooking. Culturewithout cooking. A fundamental difference between our ancestors and theirs. If they’d domesticated fire, maybe they’d have made a go of civilization. Do you think so?”