“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.
Nilis sighed and pulled the hood of his robe over his head. “Oh, my eyes. Not another shower! I will never finish.”
Pirius looked up. One of those clouds hovered right over his head, its underside dark and threatening. And water was falling toward him, fat drops of it. By tracking back along their paths, Pirius could see the drops were falling out of the sky itself.
It was too much; the last of his courage failed him. He turned and ran for the controlled environment of the apartment.
Later that night Pirius was restless again.
The apartment was dark. But as he walked through the rooms, a soft light gathered at his feet and washed into the corners of the room. It didn’t dazzle his night-adapted eyes, but was bright enough for him to see where he was going.
A colder light came pouring in from outside, through the window: a silver light tinged with green.
He walked forward, not allowing himself to think about what he was doing. Maintenance bots followed him with silent, discreet efficiency.
The terrace door was closed. He pressed his hand to its surface, and it dilated.
There was no rain. It looked safe.
Pirius stepped forward. That cool light picked out the lines of the terrace, washed over Nilis’s tiny garden, and sparkled from the broad back of the river beyond. It was an eerie glow that seemed to transform an already strange world.
Deliberately, he looked up.
The source of the light was the Moon, of course, the famous Moon of Earth. It was a disc small enough to cover with his thumb. But it was a transformed Moon — and one of Earth’s legendary sights, whispered of even in the Barracks Ball of Arches Base.
The face of this patient companion had gazed down through all of man’s turbulent history. But the face was unchanged no more. Patches of gray-green were spreading across the pale highlands and the dusty maria, the green of Earth life rooting itself in the Moon’s ancient dust. That was why moonlight was no longer silver, but salted with a green photosynthetic glow.
And a great thread arced out of the center of the Moon’s face, and swept across the night sky toward the horizon. Pirius thought he could see a thickening in that graceful arc as it swept away from the Moon toward the Earth. The arc was the Bridge, an enclosed tunnel that joined the Moon to the Earth — or at least to an anchoring station a few hundred kilometers above the Earth. The Bridge had been built with alien technology captured millennia ago; now the important folk of the Interim Coalition of Governance could travel from Earth to Moon in security and Comfort, as easily as riding an elevator shaft.
The Bridge itself, defying orbital mechanics, was unstable, of course, constantly stressed by tides, and it had to be maintained with drive units and antigravity boxes studded along its length. The whole thing was utterly grandiose, hugely expensive, and quite without a practical purpose. Pirius laughed out loud at its folly and magnificence.
The next morning he tried to describe his feelings on first seeing the tethered Moon.
Nilis just smiled. “We travel to the stars, but we still must build our pyramids,” he said enigmatically.
Chapter 9
Two weeks after his return to Earth, Nilis set up a meeting with a man called the Minister of Economic Warfare.
As he prepared for this meeting, Nilis made no secret of his nervousness, nor how much was riding on the outcome. “I suppose you’d call Minister Gramm my champion. My nano-food innovation was fundamentally an economic benefit, you see, and so its deployment in the war effort came under the purview of Economic Warfare. Since then, Gramm has supported me in my various initiatives — hoping I will pull out another gem!” He sighed. “But it’s difficult, it’s always difficult. The Coalition is very ancient, and has its own way of doing things. Mavericks aren’t treated well. Without the shelter of Gramm’s patronage, I’m quite sure I would have been sidelined long ago…