Tenthag's pulsations seemed to stop completely for a moment. He said in an awed whisper, "You think your work has paid off so completely?"
"Think?"—with a harsh chuckle. "Beyond my wildest dreams! I now see how to grow a bud from every pairing!"
"This is because of me?"
"Yes, what we learned from you made all the difference. You haven't seen Pletrow the past few days, have you?"
"Ah—no, I haven't! She said she was busy with some new research, and I'm used to being by myself, so..."
"She, who never took a bud before, has taken mine, and it's a female, exactly as my theories predicted. Now will you let us re-equip your porp? I should remind you: you're bound by the couriers' oath to distribute whatever information you are given, and there are folk the world around who could learn just by looking at what we plan to graft on her a means to multiply a score of different food-plants! We want—we need to have that information running ahead of any news about transforming animals ... like us!"
A terrible chill bit deep into Tenthag's vitals, but his voice was quite controlled as he replied.
"It is not, as you point out, my place to act as censor. I'll leave that to the Order of the Jingfired. I'm amazed, though, that you want to send off one courier, not laqs of us! Surely this is something every expert in life-studies ought to hear of right away!"
"All the experts on the planet may not be enough, but if we fail ... Who'd care, if an unpeopled globe crashed on a star? We must have seen it happen countless times! Maybe the New Star itself was some such event! Come, bring Rapper to the fresh-water pool on the east coast. She will be tamer there, and you can retrain her while the grafts are taking."
And, as Tenthag numbly moved to comply, he ended, "But what I said about certain people being able, just by looking, to judge our achievement where plants are concerned, may also hold good for animals and for ourselves. The news you spread will be enough to bring the People of the Sea hither in a year or two. I hope it won't be sooner. The resources of the ocean are no less limited than those of the land, and I greatly fear what would happen were our nomads, already saddened by the fading of their ancient glory, to seize on my techniques before they understood the repercussions. For the time being, therefore, you will be our sole link to the outer world, and Bowock the sole place where all the facts are known."
"But," Tenthag confessed to the Council of the Jingfired a month later, "all Gveest's wise precautions went for nothing. On my outward voyage, beset by mustiqs, I had traded Bowocker credits for a pair of spuders, as you know. Returning, I was accosted by the same fleet, and it appears that rumors of Gveest's success had already reached them. I was faced with the choice between redeeming Bowocker credits against new knowledge—which, I respectfully remind the councilors, is the ultimate justification for their existence—or attempting to dishonor them, and Bowock, by making my escape. The fleet consisted of about a score of junqs, and a few were young and very fast. Not only would I have been trapped for certain; my action would have brought the credibility of Bowock into disrepute. I maintain I had no alternative but to honor the Bowocker pledge."
He fell silent, and waited trembling for the verdict. It was very quiet here in the Grand West Arbor of Bowock; the plashing of waves underpad, where only a mat of roots separated the assembly from ocean ripples, was louder than the distant sound of the city's business. A few bright-colored wingets darted from bloom to bloom; otherwise there was no visible motion beneath the canopy of leaves.
Until the Master of the Order stirred. He was very old, and spoke in a wheezing tone when he spoke at all. His name was known to everyone— it was Iyosc—but this was the first time Tenthag had set eye on him. For years he had been sedentary, like an adult cutinate, incapable of mustering pressure to move his bulk unaided. Yet, it was said, his intellect was unimpaired. Now was the time for that opinion to be confirmed.
"It would have been better," he said at last, "had the credibility of Bowock gone to rot."
A unison rush of horror emanated from the company. Tenthag could not stop himself from cringing to half normal height.
"But the courier is only a courier," Iyosc went on, "and not to blame. It is we, the Order of the Jingfired, who have failed in our duty. We, who supposedly have the clearest insight of all the folk, equipped with the best information and the most modern methods of communicating it, should have foreseen that a solitary courier crossing the Worldround Ocean might be accosted twice by the same squadron of the People of the Sea. Where is Dippid, chief of the couriers? Stand forth!"
Dippid complied, looking as troubled as Tenthag felt.
"We lay a new task on you," Iyosc husked. "Abandon all your others. News of what can be done, thanks to Gveest's research, with food-plants and—yes!—animals must outstrip news of what can now be done to people! I speak with uttermost reluctance; like Barratong, who forged the Greatest Fleet in the years before the Thaw, and created the foundations of the modern world, I have hankered all my life after the chance to plant a bud ... and always failed. Now it's too late. But the notion of two, three, five taking in place of one fills me with terror. Long have I studied the history of the folk; well do I comprehend how, when starvation looms, our vaunted rationality flows away like silt washing out of an estuary, to be lost on the bottom mud! Nothing but our powers of reason will save us when the claws of the universe clamp on our world and crack it like a nut! For the far-distant survival of the species, we should have risked loss of confidence in the credits that we issue. Now we are doomed beyond chance of redemption!"
A murmur of furious disagreement took its rise, and he clacked his mandibles for silence. It fell reluctantly.
"Oh, yes! There are many among you who are young enough to benefit—as you imagine—from Gveest's achievement! But are you creating the farms and fields, the forests and the fish-pens, which will be needed to support the monstrous horde of younglings that must follow? Where would you be right now, if you had to support five times the population of Bowock from its existing area? And don't think you won't! As soon as the word gets abroad that the secret of fertility is known here, won't crowds of frustrated strangers quit the countryside and the service of the sea, and concentrate here to await a miracle? We're none of us so absolutely rational as to have forgone all hope of miracles! Besides, by this time it's beyond doubt that the People of the Sea must have landed on Ognorit and appropriated Gveest's techniques."
"No! No!" Tenthag shouted, but realized even as he closed his mantle that Iyosc had seen deeper than he to the core of the matter.
The Master of the Order bent his bleary old gaze on the young courier.
"Yes, yes!" he responded with gentle mockery. "And I still say you were not to blame. You weren't brought up, any more than I or the rest of us, to react in terms such as the People of the Sea are used to. We tend to think more rigidly; we draw metaphors from rock and glass and metal, all the solid changes in the world that fire can wreak. Theirs is the universe of water, forever in flux, forever fluid. They will not heed the strict conditions we'd apply; they'll rush ahead as on the back of a swift junq, and exclaim with pleasure at the sparkle of her snout-wave. Yet some of them are clever scientists. I'll wager it won't be longer than a year before we learn that they are trading Gveest's discovery to just those poor communities which are least fitted to fill extra maws!"
VII
And those isolated settlements, naturally, were the ones the couriers must leave to last...
Obeying Iyosc's directive, the Guild mustered in force to distribute Gveest's data concerning food-plants and—against their will—animals that had once been used for food. Scores of volunteers were impressed to make more and ever more copies, enclose them in waterproof capsules, bind them to the saddles of the porps. Meantime the nervograps were exploited to their utmost and beyond; the two which stretched furthest overland shriveled and died. Therefore old techniques had to be revived, so messages were sent by drum, or tied to flighters, or to bladders cast l
oose on the ocean currents.
"It must have been like this during the Thaw," Tenthag said suddenly as he, Nemora, Dippid and other couriers readied their porps for departure. Dippid glanced round.
"How do you mean?"
"For the rising waters, put the People of the Sea."
"Oh, yes!" said Nemora with a harsh chuckle, giving Scudder a final tap on her flank before ascending the saddle. "Eating away at our outlying coasts, while we make desperate shift to salvage what we can on the high ground! I've always been in love with open water, but for once I wish I could be a landliver, doing something direct and practical to stem the tide!"
"There's nothing more practical than what we're doing!" Dippid snapped. "No matter how much land you cultivate, no matter how many animals you help to breed, you can't withstand the onslaught singleclawed! We must alert the world, not just a chosen few!"
"Oh, I know that." She sounded suddenly weary as she secured her travel-harness. "But I have this lust for something basic instead of abstract! I want to puddle in the dirt and watch a chowtree grow! I want to see more life come into existence, instead of darting hither and thither like some crazy winget that doesn't even drop maggors!"
Her voice peaked in a cry, and to the end of the porp-pens other people checked and gazed at her.
Tenthag, remembering Pletrow at Ognorit, said soberly, "You mean you want a bud."
"Me?" She shook herself, like one emerging from a swim, and curled her mantle's edge in wry amusement. "No, since you I've grown too accustomed to my solitary life! But what I would like is a bud from Scudder. Never was there such a swift yet docile porp, and now she's old, and I must train a new one to replace her ... Had it not been for this emergency, I'd have asked leave to try and breed her with a wild male. Probably it wouldn't take, but I'd have liked to try, regardless. As things are, however—Oh, never mind my dreams! There's work to do!"
And, shouting farewells, she plied her goad and drove the porp to sea.
Watching her go, Dippid said softly, "That's one problem I hadn't thought of."
"You mean her wanting to raise a youngling of Scudder's as a—what's the word?—surrogate?" Tenthag suggested.
"Exactly. I suspect there may be many cases like hers, as soon as the implications of what the People of the Sea are doing have sunk in."
"But they don't take porps, only briqs and junqs," said Tenthag, missing the point. "So even if they multiply—"
"Of course they don't!" Dippid retorted. "Porps are what we couriers have made our own, of all the creatures on the planet! But even before Gveest's discovery, we were looking forward to our own abolition. Have we not envisaged nervograps across the deepest oceans? Have we not heard of means to transmit images as well as symbols? And are there not scholars as brilliant as Gveest working on the idea of actual flight, with gas-bladders and musculators to carry folk aloft? Oh, I know what you'll say to that—I've heard it often from the youngest couriers! Given that our ancestors were flying creatures, we could adapt to the air! Maybe you could. Not me, not Nemora. Yet it would be something to have passed on certain skills, in navigation, for example ... But that's not what threatens us now: not simple obsolescence. It's actual disaster, the risk that in two or three generations' time there won't be enough sane folk to make new discoveries, there won't be any news to carry, there won't be any reports to publish, there won't be scholars anymore, but just a pullulating mindless mass, alive enough to breed but not well fed enough to reason and to plan."
"It cannot happen," Tenthag said obstinately.
"Don't you mean: you won't admit it's likely?"
Dippid's self-control had slipped. Meantime, silence had fallen over the whole area of the pens, and everybody was listening to the argument. Abruptly aware of anger-stink, Tenthag strove to prevent his voice from shaking.
"Even though I did let the People of the Sea redeem their credits—and nineteen in every score of us would have done the same!—I still say things won't be that bad. It calls for intelligence and planning to apply Gveest's treatment. Without that, our bud-rate will drop back to what it has been."
"But how long would it take before we could restore our food-supplies? One explosion in one generation would suffice to set us back a score-of-score of years, at least!" Dippid pulsed violently. "Have you not seen the madness due to famine?"
"No, never," Tenthag admitted.
"If you had, you wouldn't treat what you've done so casually! I saw it, when I was no older than you are now. There had been a crop-blight at the Southmost Cape. You know about that dreadful episode?"
"I've heard it mentioned, yes."
"That's not enough! You had to be there. I was among the couriers who brought away samples of infected food-plants for Scholar Vahp to study—the same Vahp who taught Gveest, by the way. And the folk were so desperate, we had to land with an escort of prongers because they didn't want us to take even a leaf, even a stalk, infected or not. They were just aware enough to remember that they needed more food, and they were prepared to fight for it. Yes, fight! Tear gashes in each other's mantles, slash each other's tubules if they could! They say everyone's entitled to one mistake, Tenthag, but it's given to few of us to make an error as immense as yours!"
"But I...!"
The attempted rejoinder died away. Turning to mount Flapper, he said humbly, "Only time can judge whether it was as grievous as you claim. Deliver my commission and let me go."
Memory of the hostility that had overwhelmed him haunted Tenthag until he was well under way. Objectively he knew that he was not at fault—Iyosc himself had exonerated him—but that didn't alter the impact he had had on the lives of his companions in the Guild ... and everybody else.
He delayed long before studying his commission, afraid it might be some sort of punishment. On the contrary: the route assigned him was through familiar waters and to familiar ports, and the tour actually concluded at Neesos. Would the People of the Sea have reached his old home before him? He dared to hope it was unlikely. They would have started by selling the knowledge they stole from Ognorit among the islands of the southern and equatorial zones; perhaps they would not get as far as Neesos this summer. He cheered up.
But his optimism faded as he made his assigned stopovers, delivering to the local savants messages concerning plants and animals. Rumor, if not precise information, had outrun the couriers; wherever he called, the folk were impatient to the point of rudeness, and tossed aside his dispatches.
"We want to bud!" they shouted. "We want Gveest's secret of fertility! There are five-score fewer of us than this time a score of years ago!" Or "two-score" or "half a score" ... but always fewer. It was in vain to insist that before more buds were brought forth there must be extra food. Even the wisest old'uns were in the grip of passion; they dismissed everything he said with a wave of one casual claw.
"We'll take more from the sea!" was a typical answer, or, "We'll go back to wild plants like our ancestors!" Sharply he said, "It looks as though you already decided to!" For everywhere he saw the symptoms of decline: parasitic weeds hanging about the eaves of the houses, blocking the sap-run on which depended edible plants and funqi; mold spoiling swatches of good fruit; clamps and copses abandoned in the surrounding countryside as all the folk converged on ports where the latest news was to be expected. The air was full of a dreadful expectation, and the reek had so permeated everyone, they no longer cared to plan for anything except that miraculous day when they too—even they—would parent buds.
Explanations of the dual-species theory met with mockery. Reasoned arguments about numbers versus resources met with boredom. Here and there a few people still remembered sanity and begged to be taken away on Flapper's back, but the couriers were forbidden to carry passengers, and anyhow it seemed better to leave them where they were in the hope that sense might after all prevail. At Klong, a month after leaving Bowock, Tenthag first encountered an outburst of religion, and trembled to the core of his pith. So dreamness could take a new grip o
n the folk even before the actual onset of the population explosion. Mere rumor had sufficed, at least in this one land...
He fidgeted with the urge to make for Neesos, but defied it. He must make his own obeisance to reason—his own sacrifice, whatever a sacrifice might be.
By dark especially, while Flapper broke the water into glowing ripples as she fed on drifting weed and occasional fish, he stared achingly at the sky wherever it was clear of cloud and wondered about voyages across space. Were there living creatures in that ocean of oceans? Watching a comet bloom out of a dim and distant blur, it was hard not to make comparison with a plant sprouting under the influence of summer. Marking the dark-by-dark progress of the planets, it was tempting beyond belief to imagine other beings capable of transforming inert matter into something that could feel, and react, and devise and plan and—make mistakes...
In ancient times, he had been told, some folk held that when the welkin shed its fleeting streaks it was a means of signaling, which no one here below could understand. With all his pith he wished he could send back a message of his own:
"Help us, strangers! Help us! We're in danger!"
Budded in the year called Two-red-stars-turn-blue, Tenthag sought comfort in the unaltered patterns of the sky, and found none. For they weren't unaltered.
As though to harbinger the shock the folk must bear, the dark before the bright that saw him at his bud-place was lighted by a singular event.
One of those very stars, on the fringe of the Major Cluster, which had gone to blue from red, changed yet again. A hint of yellow touched it. It seemed brighter ... but a cloud drifted across it, and there was no way of being sure about the outcome before dawn.
VIII