Pirius was impressed. “It was a great contribution to the war effort.”
Nilis looked at him quizzically. “Well, I suppose it was, though I didn’t intend it that way. My nano- food got me this apartment, and a source of funding — and, more importantly, a power base, of a sort; at least, a position of independence. Yes, I’m proud of my work, and I’m certainly not shy of shouting about it when it’s useful. But I certainly didn’t achieve it by thinking in the way we’re all supposed to, with that peculiar mixture of arrogance and narrowness that characterizes the Druz Doctrines. I was prepared to look into the murky corners of the past — I was prepared to accept the uncomfortable, paradoxical truth that though we have conquered a Galaxy we are utterly dependent on an alien technology!
“And, of course, the latitude I won as the Man Who Fed The Galaxy has allowed me to cultivate my garden. Come see. Don’t worry; I won’t ask you to get your hands dirty…”
Nilis’s “garden,” confined to the concrete troughs, was unprepossessing, just tangles and clumps and spindles of green, crimson, and black, some curled together. Everything was small, compact, tough- looking.
Nilis watched Pirius’s reaction. “So what do you think?”
Pirius shrugged. “All I’ve seen of nature is rats, and the algae you have to scrape out of air ducts, and nobody makes a pet of that.”
Nilis laughed. “Well, my little gatherings here are nobody’s pets either. I suppose you’d say they are weeds.” He picked up one scrawny growth, a green stem topped by a gaudy yellow flower. “This is a native plant, obviously. Its chlorophyll green has become mankind’s symbol, hasn’t it? Even though we try to stamp it out wherever we find it. Ironic! We understand its biochemistry, of course, but we’ve long forgotten the name our forefathers gave it. I found it growing in the heart of the city — of Lunn-dinn, right here. Our Earth is supposed to be managed, Ensign: paved over, milked as efficiently as possible by the nanobots. But even in the cities, where the concrete cracks, a little earth gathers. And where there is earth, plants grow, welcome or not. But look here.”
From a tangle of vegetation, Nilis pulled out leaves: one a neat oval shape but jet black, the other almost square, and brick red. Nilis said, “I found this black leaf on Earth — but it’s not a native! It’s actually from a planet of Tau Ceti. And this red leaf isn’t a native either; it comes from a system a thousand light-years away. I doubt if these little creatures were brought here on purpose; they traveled as spores in the recycling systems of starships, perhaps, or lodged in the sinuses of unwary travelers. Both come from worlds basically like Earth, though, worlds of Main Sequence suns and carbon-water chemistry, or else they couldn’t survive here.
“But even on worlds so similar to Earth, life can develop in radically different ways. All these leaves are photosynthetic; they all gather energy from sunlight. But only Earth life uses chlorophyll; the others use different combinations of chemicals — and so they aren’t green. Interesting; you would think that this black shade is actually the most efficient color for a gatherer of sunlight… On each world life is born, like and yet unlike any other life in the universe. Once it’s born it complexifies away, endlessly elaborating, until it has filled a world. And then we come along, with our starships and Expansions, and mix it up, complexifying it further.”
Pirius frowned. “If their biochemical basis is so different, they can’t eat each other.”
“Well, that’s true. But these plants coexist anyhow. At the very least, they compete for the same physical resources — the sunlight, say, or room in the soil; whoever grows fastest wins. There may be reasons to eat something even if not for the biochemistry; a concentration of some essential mineral fixed by your prey, perhaps. And look at this.”
He moved to another trough and showed Pirius a kind of trellis, no more than ten centimeters high, covered in tiny black leaves, with a green plant draped over it. “The miniature trellis is a tree- analogue from the Deneb system,” Nilis said, “and the green plant is a pea, from Earth. The pea has learned to use the frame as a support. And probably the trellis is using the pea for its own purposes, perhaps to attract other Denebian life-forms; I haven’t figured it out yet.” He smiled. “You see? Cooperation. The first step to an interstellar ecology, and all happening by accident. It wouldn’t surprise me to come back here in, oh, ten or fifty million years, and find composite life-forms with components from biochemical lineages once separated by light-years. After all, our own cells are the results of ancient mergers between beings almost as divergent, between oxygen-haters and oxygen- lovers.”
As he pottered around the little plants, cupping each gently with his dirt-stained fingers, Pirius suddenly saw how lonely this man was. I’m not sure why you’re showing me this, sir.”
Nilis straightened up, massaging his back. “I wish I’d had these troughs built a little higher! Just this, Ensign. We live in a universe of endless, apparently inexhaustible, richness. Everywhere life complexifies, finding new ways to combine, to compete, to live; endlessly exploring the richness of the possible — indeed, as in this example, actually expanding that richness. Once, human society itself showed the same tendency to complexify: no surprise, as we are children of this rich universe. But the Druz Doctrines deny that tendency. The Doctrines try to hold us static, in form, thought, intention — for all time, if necessary.”
Pirius said, “The Doctrines have kept mankind united for twenty thousand years, and have taken us to the center of the Galaxy.”
“There is truth in that. But it can’t last, Ensign. The Doctrines are based on a falsehood — a denial of what we are. And, in the weeds that grow through the tarmac of our spaceports, we see clear evidence of our lack of ability to control. In the social realm it’s just the same — remember those Virtual fan messages you had! The world is much more messy than Commission propaganda allows us to believe.
“And that is my philosophical objection to the Doctrines, Pirius. That is why I have strained every sinew for years to find a way to win this war — before we lose it, as otherwise we inevitably must. You wouldn’t think we are in peril, looking around. We have covered the Earth, enslaved nature, spread across a Galaxy. We are strong, we are united — but it is all based on a lie, it is all terribly fragile, and it could all fall apart, terribly easily.”
Pirius heard a soft tapping sound. He looked down, puzzled. The concrete platform was becoming speckled with dark little discs: water splashes. Then he felt a pattering of droplets on his bare skin — his hands, his brow, even his hair. Perhaps some climate-control system had broken down.