INTERVENTION (61 page)

Life-forms of Planet Four are C-H-O-N-S-Fe proteinoid, predominantly aerobic. Both the oceans and the land harbor large populations of protist and multicellular autotrophs. There are some 690,000 species of photoautotrophic, chemoautotrophic, and mixotrophic plants—with green photoautotrophs making up the majority of micro- and macroflora. About 60 percent of the energy they bind is taken up by heterotrophic life-forms. Heterotrophs include some 2,000,000 species of protists, plants, and animals—marine, amphibian, terrestrial, and semiaerial. Most of the animals and about half of the protists and plants are mobile. Higher species of animals display homeostasis, bilateral symmetry, disexuality, and endoskeletal body structure, with increasing cephalization in the more highly evolved species. The most advanced life-form is a presapient ovoviviparous semierect terrestrial biped with a brain classification of 67:3:462. It is stalled in its cephalic evolution by a low birth rate and the presence in its ecosystem of six major predators, two of them aerial.

PRELIMINARY PLANETOLOGICAL RATING:
Suited for colonization, with optional ecological modification to the
Fifth Degree.

WEIGHTED RACIAL COMPATIBILITY PERCENTAGE:
Simb: 89. Gi: 80. Poltroyan: 48. Krondak: 13.

"Well," Dota'efoo noted sadly, "even a quick visual scan shows that the place was severely damaged. The cloud cover's down to about fifty percent. The climate has cooled to the ice-age stage, and the concomitant lowering of sea level has exposed nearly all of the continental shelves. The greater percentage of the islands has merged into dry land."

"So much for Gi colonization. Without plenty of island trysting sites, their reproductive psychology packs up and the eggs are sterile." Luma'eroo activated a battery of monitoring devices at the same time that he sent the craft plunging out of orbit. When the black spheroid reached the planetary tropopause it came to an abrupt halt, hovering in the deep-blue sky while thin jet-stream winds hummed around it. "At least the magnetosphere has recovered to its normal value. Reversed, though."

"I was afraid of that. Is the ozone layer rebuilt?"

"To within normal parameters for the Gi sun." He twiddled with the radiation-monitoring unit, which was overdue for a refit. "Albedo's down to twenty-eight overall. UV and solar wind penetration to surface within normal range. Ditto the cosmic radiation."

Dota'efoo studied the atmosphere analysis. "Oxygen is down by a full two percent, and nitrogen is up one. Carbon dioxide has gone from .05 to .03 ... And just look at the biotic differentiation read-out! We've lost nearly half of the plant species and an even larger percentage of the animals to hard radiation overdose, UV exposure, or general niche deterioration."

"It could have been worse, Alk'ai, and the place
was
perhaps overspeciated. Residual populations have probably expanded to fill most of the vacant niches—to say nothing of the successful mutations. The grosser supernova damage to the biota seems to have healed."

"But the world is still ruined."

He blinked his primary optics in doleful agreement. "It is no longer libidinously stimulating enough for the Gi and it is now too cold and dry for the Simbiari. It remains too warm, too deficient in oxygen partial-pressure, and too gravity-strong for us Krondaku. That leaves only the Poltroyans as potential colonizers—but the place is probably too warm for them as well, except in the circumpolar regions."

"And don't forget, we'd also have to do ecological modification of a high degree to accommodate our little mauve brethren. This planet never did have enough sulfur springs or useful species of purple anaerobic photosynthesizers for their tastes."

"Too true," he agreed. "Shall we bother doing a surface recon? Or wouldst thou prefer that we simply mark it for a dead loss and minimize the insult to our freshly heightened sensibilities?"

She hesitated. "I would like to descend, Tok—if thou wouldst indulge me. We did spend so much time on the original survey. Besides, it's fitting to give it the utmost benefit of the doubt."

"I agree." Disdaining the instrumentation, he did a fast metapsychic farsean of the largest continent, which projected some distance into the North Temperate Zone. This part of the world, which had the most landmass, was at the onset of winter; but there was as yet no snow on the ground and the vegetation was still adequately lush. "Let us visit the eastern coast of the major continent, Alk'ai. There is a great river now traversing the old continental shelf and a rather interesting embayment."

"Very well."

The survey vessel plummeted toward the planetary surface in a straight line, shielded by its rho-field from the constraints of gravity-inertia and by a temporary sigma-field from atmospheric ablation. The region Luma'eroo had selected was just at the terminator, and so they landed just as the sun was going down behind low hills, painting a dancing golden pathway across the indigo waters of the windswept bay. There was abundant plant-life. On the hills and on the exposed headland where the ship rested were stands of trees with sturdy ligneous stems and deep-green aciform leaves. Other species of trees in the lowlands on either side of the river showed the beginning of chlorophyll degeneration in their obviously deciduous foliage, which was stained in startling coppery, xanthic, and rubineous hues.

The Krondaku emerged carefully from the ship and moved with difficulty in the gravitational field that was nearly twice their racial optimum. They slithered over a ground cover of low-growing anthophytes. Some were dried out; others, still green, bore star-shaped pink, yellow, or white sexual organs. The air tasted of terpineol, geranyl acetate, coumarin, and phenylethyl alcohol. There was also a distinctive chloride-iodide exudation from the marine organisms at the rocky margin of the sea. An offshore breeze made a rustling sound as it passed through the needle-leaf trees, and waves crashed on the seaward side of the headland. Up in one of the trees, an invisible creature voiced a complex warbling ululation having a frequency between two thousand and four thousand cycles per second. Small white-winged animals in a ragged V-formation flew low over the bay waves, heading toward the open sea.

The two tentacled monsters contemplated the scene for some time, utilizing both their conventional senses and their ultrafaculties. The sun set and the cloudless sky turned from yellow to aquamarine to purple, studded with the first bright stars. The major moon, in its full phase, came up over the blackening eastern sea like a great disk of refulgent amber. One of the twin moonlets was also in view, shining modestly silver through the silhouetted branches of a nearby tree.

"Ruined." Dota'efoo spoke with emphatic finality. "In its present state, the planet is patently unfit for colonization by any of the coadúnate races of the Milieu."

"It's hopeless," Luma'eroo agreed. "Ecological engineering up to the Tenth Degree wouldn't even begin to put it back into shape." He ruminated for a few moments more. "Strange ... it rather reminds me of
their
world." And he projected an oafish racial image that had become a notorious target of low humor among less charitable Simbiari and Poltroyan planetologists.

"By the All-Penetrant—I do believe thou art correct. Shall we go back inside the ship and check the correlates?"

"With pleasure. My plasm aches from this burdensome gravity."

The two Krondaku reboarded and went again to the control room, where the computer confirmed Luma'eroo's hunch. The weighted compatibility percentage was an amazing 98.

"And so, in the most unlikely event that they are admitted to the Milieu, our poor little orphan planet would undoubtedly be among the first worlds to be colonized by
them.
" Dota'efoo called up some additional data. "Here is a noteworthy item. They recently sent an exploration team to their most hospitable neighbor planet—a dusty red frigid-desert hulk with an exiguous atmosphere. They are also constructing orbiting habitats in a futile effort to siphon off their excess population."

"Idiots. Why don't they simply limit procreation?"

"It is contrary to the prevailing ethic of certain racial segments, and others are too ignorant to appreciate the reproductive predicament of their planet. Thou must understand, Tok, that these people are even more fecund than the Poltroyans, and this poses technical difficulties for practical contraception as well as motivational ones. Their principal means of population control are famine, abortion, a high infant death-rate among Class Two indigenes, and war."

"Those amazing humans!" Luma'eroo lifted four tentacles in a gesture of puzzlement. "If the Lylmik are truly intent upon foisting them upon the Milieu, we are in for some interesting times. I think we may someday be grateful, Alk'ai, that there are numbers of solar systems on the far side of the Galaxy that await our personal scrutiny."

His mate allowed a barely perceptible risibility to enter her mind-tone. "And yet, they do have a certain reckless courage. Imagine a race of their classification seriously attempting to colonize a nearly airless, frigid-desert planet ... or worse, artificial satellites!"

"It surpasses understanding."

Dota'efoo summoned a last modicum of data from the computer. "If Earthlings
are
accepted into the Milieu, their overpopulation problem will become an asset overnight. As of now, we have 782 ecologically compatible planets within a 20,000-light-year radius of their home world all surveyed and ready for settlement." She flicked a dismissive tentacle at the viewport, with its moonlit seascape framed by evergreen trees. "And this place makes 783."

"Frightening. They'd very likely overrun the Galaxy in a few millenaries..."

Dota'efoo shuddered. "Let's get out of here."

Her mate activated the rho-field generator to full intertialess and sent the survey vessel screaming into interplanetary space.

FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

O
N THE FACE
of it, there was nothing suspicious about the accidental deaths of my three nieces.

The twins Jeanette and Laurette, who were twenty-one, and their sister Jacqueline, two years younger, were driving home from a ski weekend in North Conway early in January 1995 when their new RX-i 1 went out of control on the icy highway, crashed, and burned. Denis flew back from Edinburgh, where he had been called as an expert witness for the defense in the sensational trial of Dr. Nigel Weinstein. Once again he and Victor supported their widowed mother through the ordeal of an old-fashioned Franco-American veillée, funeral Mass, and cortège to the family plot in the cemetery outside Berlin, where the girls were buried next to their father.

Sunny was not just grief-stricken, she was devastated. Both Denis and I detected nuances of irrationality beneath the stuporous anguish that cloaked her mind, but neither of us recognized the fear. Denis had to return to Scotland immediately. He urged me to stay in Berlin for the week following the funeral to make a closer assessment of his mother's mental health. When I told him that Sunny seemed in the grip of a morbid depression, he asked a colleague from the Department of Metapsychology, Colette Roy, to come to Berlin for consultation with the Remillard family physician. Dr. Roy, Glenn Dalembert's wife, had been studying the abnormal psychology of operants and was the best redactive prober (outside of Denis) working at that time at Dartmouth. Her examination of Sunny was inconclusive and she urged that I bring Sunny to Hanover for a further evaluation at the Hitchcock Clinic. Sunny adamantly refused to go. She said she would not leave the other five children, who ranged in age from thirteen to eighteen, even when Victor offered to pay for a full-time housekeeper. The terrible anxiety that Sunny displayed at the suggestion that she leave her rather fractious adolescent brood was diagnosed by Dr. Roy as just another symptom of the depression; but in this Colette was mistaken. Sunny, the mother of two metapsychic giants, had managed for all her latency to screen her innermost thoughts with a thoroughness none of us dreamed possible.

When Denis returned to New Hampshire after Weinstein's acquittal and pleaded with her, Sunny finally agreed to a two-week course of treatment at Hitchcock, with monthly outpatient checkups to follow. She also said she would accept domestic help in the big house on Sweden Street that Denis and Victor had bought for her four years earlier. Victor interviewed and rejected a parade of Berlin applicants, and eventually hired one Mme. Rachel Fortier of Montréal, an amazonian femme de charge who came with the highest references and eye-popping salary requirements. Sunny accepted the housekeeper with apparent goodwill, and by the second week in February things seemed to be going back to normal.

So I went to a science-fiction convention.

Every year since 1991 I had attended Boskone, a sedate gathering of fantasy buffs, writers, artists, booksellers, and academics. Those unfamiliar with such meetings may get a hint of the general atmosphere when I say that I, a known operant and close relative of one of the mostfamous metapsychic personalities in the country, was looked upon as nothing out of the ordinary by the convention-goers. I was just another bookseller, not to be mentioned in the same breath with genuine celebrities such as the best-selling author of
Tessaract One,
the producer of the
Gnomeworld
video series, or the first artist to do on-the-spot lunar landscapes.

Sometimes at these conventions I shared a table in the dealers' room with a fellow bookseller, offering middling rarities and telling all comers about the much greater trove of goodies to be found at my shop in Hanover. Sometimes I just circulated and perused the other dealers' wares for likely items, or bought a few pieces of artwork, or attended the more bibliophilic panel discussions, or sat in on readings by my favorite authors. I scarcely ever bothered with the endless round of parties that was a feature of convention nights, preferring in earlier years to do my serious drinking in solitude. The only festivity I attended was the combination masquerade and meet-the-lions bash that traditionally took place on Friday evening. There one might legitimately scrape up acquaintance with notables, so as later to be in a favorable position to offer them modest sums for their hand-corrected proofs, typescripts (a surprising number of science-fiction writers still refused to process their words), autographed first editions, or literary curiosa of a marketable sort.