The solar mirrors were now almost perfect circles in the night sky, intolerably bright. LaNague pointed to a soft glow ahead on the horizon.
“That's it. That's got to be it.”
The glow grew and spread left and right until most of the horizon ahead of them was suffused with a soft yellow haze. Suddenly they were upon it and in it and sinking through wispy clouds of bright mist. When those cleared, they could see huge fields of green far below them. A sheer wall of ice was behind them, swinging away to each side in a huge crystal arc.
“By the Core,” Broohnin said softly. “It's a huge valley cut right out of the ice!”
LaNague was nodding excitedly. “Yes, a huge circular cut measuring thirty kilometers across if my reports are correct-and they haven't failed me yet. But the real surprise is below.”
Broohnin watched as their slow descent brought them toward the floor of the valley. The fine mist that layered over the top of the huge manmade depression in the South Polar Plateau diffused the light from the solar mirrors, spreading it evenly through the air. Acting as a translucent screen, it retained most of the radiant heat. The valley was one huge greenhouse. Looking down, Broohnin saw that what had initially appeared to be a solid carpet of green on the valley floor was actually a tight grove of some sort of huge, single-leafed plants. Then he saw that the plants had legs. And some were walking.
“It's true,” LaNague whispered in a voice full of wonder. “The first experiments were begun centuries ago, but now they've finally done it.”
“What? Walking plants?”
“No. Photosynthetic cattle.”
They were like no cattle Broohnin had ever seen. A vivid bice green all over, eight-legged, and eyeless, they were constantly bumping into and rubbing against each other. He could discern no nose, and the small mouth seemed suited only to sucking water from the countless rivulets that crisscrossed the valley floor. The body of each was a long tapered cylinder topped by a huge, green, rear-slanting rhomboidal vane averaging two meters on a side. All the vanes, all the countless thousands of them, were angled so their broad surfaces presented toward the solar mirrors for maximum exposure to the light…like an endless becalmed regatta of green-sailed ships.
“Welcome to Emerald City,” LaNague said in a low voice.
“Hmmmm?”
“Nothing.”
They watched in silence as the sentry's cutter completed its low, slow circuit of the valley, passing at the end over herds of smaller green calves penned off from the rest of the herd, held aside until they were large enough to hold their own with the adults. The cutter rose gently, leaving the valley hidden beneath its lid of bright mist.
“Didn't look to me like one of those skinny things could feed too many people,” Broohnin remarked as the wonder of what they had seen ebbed away.
“You'd be surprised. The official reports say that even the bones are edible. And there are more hidden valleys like that one down here.”
“But what's the advantage?”
“They don't graze. Do you realize what that means? They don't take up land that can be used for growing food for people; they don't eat grains that can be fed to people. All they need is water, sunlight, and an ambient temperature of 15 to 20 degrees.”
“But they're so thin!”
“They have to be if they're going to be photosynthetic. They need a high surface-area-to-mass ratio to feed themselves via their chlorophyll. And don't forget, there's virtually no fat on those things-what you see is what you eat. As each green herd reaches maturity, they're slaughtered, the derived protein is mixed with extenders and marketed as some sort of meat. New ones are cloned and started on their way.”
Broohnin nodded his understanding, but the puzzled expression remained on his face. “I still don't understand why it's being kept a secret, though. This is the kind of breakthrough I'd expect Earth to be beating its chest about all over Occupied Space.”
“It doesn't want the out-worlds to know yet. Earth realizes that those green cows down there could spell economic ruin for the out-worlds. And the longer they keep the out-worlds in the dark about them, the worse shape they'll all be in when grain imports are completely cut off.”
“But why-?”
“Because I don't think Earth has ever given up hope of getting the out-worlds under its wing again.” “You going to break the news?”
“No.”
They flew in silence through the polar darkness for a while, each man digesting what he had just seen.
“I imagine that once the word gets out,” LaNague said finally, “and it should leak within a few standard years, the Earthies will move the herds into the less hospitable desert areas where they can probably expect a faster growth rate. Of course, the water requirement will be higher because of increased evaporation. But that's when Earth's need for imported grain will really begin to drop…she'll be fast on her way to feeding all her billions on her own.”
The lights of the sentry station appeared ahead.
“Speaking of all these billions,” Broohnin said, “where are they? The spaceport wasn't crowded, and there's nothing below but snow. I thought you told me every available centimeter of living space on Earth was being used. Looks like there's a whole continent below with no one on it. What kind of residue you been giving me?”
“The coast of the South Polar continent is settled all around, and the Antarctic Peninsula is crowded with people. But from what I understand, inland settlements have been discouraged. It's possible to live down there,” he said, glancing at the featureless wastes racing by below the cutter. “The technology exists to make it habitable, but not without extensive melting of the ice layers.”
Broohnin shrugged. He managed to make it a hostile gesture. “So?”
“So, a significant ice melt means significant lowland flooding and there are millions upon millions of people inhabiting lowlands. A few thousand square kilometers of living space down here could result in the loss of millions elsewhere in the world. Not a good trade-off. Also, 80 per cent of Earth's fresh water is down there. So Antarctica remains untouched.”
The cutter slowed to a hover over the sentry station, then descended. As they prepared to debark, LaNague turned to Broohnin.
“You want to see billions of people, my friend? I'll show you more than you ever imagined. Our next stop is the Eastern Megalopolis of North America. By the time we're through there, you'll crave the solitude of the cabin you occupied on the trip in from the out-worlds.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
…human beings cease to be human when they congregate and a mob is a monster. If you think of a mob as a living thing and you want to get its I.Q., take the average intelligence of the people there and divide it by the number of people there. Which means that a mob of fifty has somewhat less intelligence than an earthworm.
Theodore Sturgeon
“You sure you know where you're going?”
“Exactly. Why?”
“It's not the type of neighborhood I'd expect to see the ‘third richest man in Sol System’ in.”
“You're right. This is a side trip.”
The press of people was beyond anything Broohnin had ever imagined. They were everywhere under the bleary eye of the noonday sun, lining the streets, crowding onto the pavement until only the hardiest ground-effect vehicles dared to push their way through. There were no fat people to be seen, and the streets themselves were immaculate, all a part of the ethics of starvation wherein everything must be recycled. The air was thick with the noise, the smell, the presence of packed humanity. And even behind the high, cheap, quickly poured apartment walls that canyonized the street, Broohnin was sure he could feel unseen millions.