From the Ocean from teh Stars (27 page)

Order was emerging out of chaos as the directing fields started to
guide the herd along invisible channels. Presently the electric barriers
gave way to concrete ones; the whales were swimming along four parallel
canals, too narrow for more than one to pass at a time. Automatic senses
weighed and measured them, rejecting all those below a certain size and
diverting them back into the sea—doubtless a little puzzled, and quite
unaware how seriously their numbers had been depleted.

The whales that had passed the test swam on trustfully along the two
remaining channels until presently they came to a large lagoon. Some
tasks could not be left entirely to machines; there were human inspectors
here to see that no mistakes had been made, to check the condition of the
animals, and to log the numbers of the doomed beasts as they left the
lagoon on their last, short swim into the killing pens.

"B.52111 coming up," said Franklin to the Thero as they stood to
gether in the observation chamber. "Seventy-foot female, known to have
had five calves—past the best age for breeding." Behind him, he knew
the cameras were silently recording the scene as their ivory-skulled, saffron-robed operators handled them with a professional skill which had
surprised him until he learned that they had all been trained in Hollywood.

The whale never had any warning; it probably never even felt the
gentle touch of the flexible copper fingers as they brushed its body. One
moment it was swimming quietly along the pen; a second later it was a
lifeless hulk, continuing to move forward under its own momentum. The
fifty-thousand-ampere current, passing through the heart like a stroke of
lightning, had not even allowed time for a final convulsion.

At the end of the killing pen, the wide conveyer belt took the weight
of the immense body and carried it up a short slope until it was completely clear of the water. Then it began to move slowly forward along an endless
series of spinning rollers which seemed to stretch halfway to the horizon.

'This is the longest conveyor of its kind in the world," Franklin ex
plained with justifiable pride. "It may have as many as ten whales—say
a thousand tons—on it at one time. Although it involves us in considerable
expense, and greatly restricts our choice of site, we always have the
processing plant at least half a mile from the pens, so there is no danger
of the whales being frightened by the smell of blood. I think you'll agree
that not only is the slaughtering instantaneous but the animals show no
alarm whatsoever right up to the end."

"Perfectly true," said the Thero. "It all seems very humane. Still, if
the whales did get frightened it would be very difficult to handle them,
wouldn't it? I wonder if you would go to all this trouble merely to spare
their feelings?"

It was a shrewd question, and like a good many he had been asked in
the last few days Franklin was not quite sure how to answer it.

"I suppose," he said slowly, "that would depend on whether we could
get the money. It would be up to the World Assembly, in the final analysis.
The finance committees would have to decide how kind we could afford
to be. It's a theoretical question, anyway."

"Of course—but other questions aren't so theoretical," answered the
Venerable Boyce, looking thoughtfully at the eighty tons of flesh and bone
moving away into the distance. "Shall we get back to the car? I want to
see what happens at the other end."

And I, thought Franklin grimly, will be very interested to see how you
and your colleagues take it. Most visitors who went through the processing
yards emerged rather pale and shaken, and quite a few had been known to faint. It was a standard joke in the bureau that this lesson in food
production removed the appetites of all who watched it for several hours
after the experience.

The stench hit them while they were still a hundred yards away. Out
of the corner of his eye, Franklin could see that the young bhikku carrying
the sound recorder was already showing signs of distress, but the Maha
Thero seemed completely unaffected. He was still calm and dispassionate
five minutes later as he stared down into the reeking inferno where the great carcasses were torn asunder into mountains of meat and bone and
guts.

"Just think of it," said Franklin, "for almost two hundred years this
job was done by men, often working on board a pitching deck in filthy
weather. It's not pretty to watch even now, but can you imagine being
down there hacking away with a knife nearly as big as yourself?"

"I think I could," answered the Thero, "but I'd prefer not to." He
turned to his cameramen and gave some brief instructions, then watched
intently as the next whale arrived on the conveyer belt.

The great body had already been scanned by photoelectric eyes and
its dimensions fed into the computer controlling the operations. Even
when one knew how it was done, it was uncanny to watch the precision
with which the knives and saws moved out on their extensible arms, made
their carefully planned pattern of cuts, and then retreated again. Huge
grabs seized the foot-thick blanket of blubber and stripped it off as a man
peels a banana, leaving the naked, bleeding carcass to move on along the conveyer to the first stage of its dismemberment.

The whale traveled as fast as a man could comfortably walk, and
disintegrated before the eyes of the watchers as they kept pace with it.
Slabs of meat as large as elephants were torn away and went sliding down

side chutes; circular saws whirred through the scaffolding of ribs in a
cloud of bone dust; the interlinked plastic bags of the intestines, stuffed with perhaps a ton of shrimps and plankton from the whale's last meal,
were dragged away in noisome heaps.

It had taken less than two minutes to reduce a lord of the sea to a
bloody shambles which no one but an expert could have recognized.
Not even the bones were wasted; at the end of the conveyer belt, the
disarticulated skeleton fell into a pit where it would be ground into ferti
lizer.

"This is the end of the line," said Franklin, "but as far as the processing side is concerned it's only the beginning. The oil has to be extracted from the blubber you saw peeled off in stage one; the meat has to be cut
down into more manageable portions and sterilized—we use a high-
intensity neutron source for that—and about ten other basic products
have to be sorted out and packed for shipment. I'll be glad to show you around any part of the factory you'd like to see. It won't be quite so grue
some as the operations we've just been watching."

The Thero stood for a moment in thoughtful silence, studying the notes
he had been making in his incredibly tiny handwriting. Then he looked
back along the bloodstained quarter-mile of moving belt, toward the next
whale arriving from the killing pen.

"There's one sequence I'm not sure we managed to film properly,"
he said, coming to a sudden decision. "If you don't mind, I'd like to go
back to the beginning and start again."

Franklin caught the recorder as the young monk dropped it. "Never
mind, son," he said reassuringly, "the first time is always the worst.
When you've been here a few days, you'll be quite puzzled when new
comers complain of the stink."

That was hard to believe, but the permanent staff had assured him
that it was perfectly true. He only hoped that the Venerable Boyce was
not so thoroughgoing that he would have a chance of putting it to the
proof.

"And now, Your Reverence," said Franklin, as the plane lifted above
the snow-covered mountains and began the homeward flight to London and Ceylon, "do you mind if I ask how you intend to use all the material
you've gathered?"

During the two days they had been together, priest and administrator
had established a degree of friendship and mutual respect that Franklin, for his part, still found as surprising as it was pleasant. He considered—
as who does not?—that he was good at summing men up, but there

were depths in the Mahanayake Thero beyond his powers of analysis. It
did not matter; he now knew instinctively that he was in the presence not
only of power but also of—there was no escaping from that trite and
jejune word—goodness. He had even begun to wonder, with a mounting awe that at any moment might deepen into certainty, if the man who was
now his companion would go down into history as a saint.

"I have nothing to hide," said the Thero gently, "and, as you know,
deceit is contrary to the teachings of the Buddha. Our position is quite simple. We believe that all creatures have a right to life, and it therefore
follows that what you are doing is wrong. Accordingly, we would like to
see it stopped."

That was what Franklin had expected, but it was the first time he had obtained a definite statement. He felt a slight sense of disappointment;
surely someone as intelligent as the Thero must realize that such a move
was totally impracticable, since it would involve cutting off one eighth
of the total food supply of the world. And for that matter, why stop at
whales? What about cows, sheep, pigs—all the animals that man kept in
luxury and then slaughtered at his convenience?

"I know what you are thinking," said the Thero, before he could
voice his objections. "We are fully aware of the problems involved, and realize that it will be necessary to move slowly. But a start must be made somewhere, and the Bureau of Whales gives us the most dramatic pres
entation of our case."

"Thank you," answered Franklin dryly. "But is that altogether fair?
What you've seen here happens in every slaughterhouse on the planet.
The fact that the scale of operations is different hardly alters the case."

"I quite agree. But we are practical men, not fanatics. We know
perfectly well that alternative food sources will have to be found before
the world's meat supplies can be cut off."

Franklin shook his head in vigorous disagreement.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but even if you could solve the supply problem,
you're not going to turn the entire population of the planet into vegetar
ians—unless you are anxious to encourage emigration to Mars and Venus.
I'd shoot myself if I thought I could never eat a lamb chop or a well-done
steak again. So your plans are bound to fail on two counts: human
psychology and the sheer facts of food production."

The Maha Thero looked a little hurt.

"My dear Director," he said, "surely you don't think we would over
look something as obvious as that? But let me finish putting our point of
view before I explain how we propose to implement it. I'll be interested

in studying your reactions, because you represent the maximum—ah—
consumer resistance we are likely to meet."

"Very well," smiled Franklin. "See if you can convert me out of my
job."

"Since the beginning of history," said the Thero, "man has assumed that the other animals exist only for his benefit. He has wiped out whole
species, sometimes through sheer greed, sometimes because they de
stroyed his crops or interfered with his other activities. I won't deny that
he often had justification, and frequently no alternative. But down the
ages man has blackened his soul with his crimes against the animal king
dom—some of the very worst, incidentally, being in your particular pro
fession, only sixty or seventy years ago. I've read of cases where har
pooned whales died after hours of such frightful torment that not a scrap
of their meat could be used—it was poisoned with the toxins produced
by the animal's death agonies."

"Very exceptional," interjected Franklin. "And anyway we've put a
stop to that."

"True, but it's all part of the debt we have to discharge."

"Svend Foyn wouldn't have agreed with you. When he invented the
explosive harpoon, back in the 1870s, he made an entry in his diary
thanking God for having done all the work."

"An interesting point of view," answered the Thero dryly. "I wish
I'd had a chance of arguing it with him. You know, there is a simple test
which divides the human race into two classes. If a man is walking along
the street and sees a beetle crawling just where he is going to place his
foot—well, he can break his stride and miss it or he can crush it into
pulp. Which would
you
do, Mr. Franklin?"

"It would depend on the beetle. If I knew it was poisonous, or a pest,
I'd kill it. Otherwise I'd let it go. That, surely, is what any reasonable
man would do."

"Then we are not reasonable. We believe that killing is only justified
to save the life of a higher creature—and it is surprising how seldom that
situation arises. But let me get back to my argument; we seem to have
lost our way.

"About a hundred years ago an Irish poet named Lord Dunsany wrote
a play called
The Use of Man,
which you'll be seeing on one of our TV programs before long. In it a man dreams that he's magically transported
out of the solar system to appear before a tribunal of animals—and if
he cannot find two to speak on his behalf, the human race is doomed.
Only the dog will come forward to fawn over his master; all the others
remember their old grievances and maintain that they would have been