Moses nodded. He had heard of early attempts at genetic decoding—society’s attempt at improving the citizen stock. The result was Homo superior, the complacent hive citizen. Genetic engineers stumbled on the clock—polycistronic RNA which translated the message of species life span from the gene to the messenger RNA. A virus-like anti-gene was manufactured to destroy the clock, but the Big ES didn’t like the idea of multi-centenarian Methuselahs accumulating and obstructing the evolution of ideas. The old five-toeds had to be replaced over and over in order for the hive to evolve. Clock work was stopped—Moon and Dan were just relics. The gene molders turned to other things—the five-toed gene. It carried more than the toe… immunoglobulin A, calcium and collagen, neurohumoral axis, melanocytes. Those with the fifth toe could not be crowded. It had to be engineered out of the population,
“Did man ever reach the stars?” asked Moses.
Toothpick didn’t answer immediately.
“I’m not certain,” said the cyber slowly. “My own memory banks are small. What they contain seems to have been put in a long time ago. A lot of it doesn’t make sense. I’ve tried spying on the circuits of Big ES, but the stacks are badly cross-indexed. Whenever I make contact the questing fields seek me out and we have to run from hunters. Stars? I feel a warmth in my circuits, but I can’t explain it. I like to think that man did reach the stars before the hive stagnated.”
Eppendorff knew about stagnation. The Pipe caste was losing ground with simple drinking water and heat pollution.
They talked through the night. Toothpick and Moon had walked over most of the two major continents in the hemisphere. Conditions were the same everywhere. In the tropical and temperate zones, man had moved into underground shaft cities and cultivated every square inch of the surface. Vagabonds between the cities were tolerated when their numbers were small, but were relentlessly hunted like varmints when they increased.
Toothpick did not like this new Earth, but—Moses reasoned—he was a companion cyber and would naturally prefer a world where he could play a more important role than that of a vagabond.
At dawn Moon reset the deadfall at the cave mouth. It was a beautiful job of stonecutting—if you could ignore the gore long enough to admire the precision of the counterweight and the marble key.
Locking the key with his foot, Moon said, “Don’t want anyone to get hurt while we’re away—” and laughed.
He picked up a ten-centimeter section of tube and attached it to Toothpick’s shaft. It had an optic and had been set in the trigger area. Toothpick was more than a toy.
Moon gathered up the hostile’s kit and carried it back to the fire. Pocketing the food bars, he tried on various articles of clothing.
“This issue tissue certainly doesn’t last long,” he complained.
He was ready to lead out when Moses gave him an argument.
“Thanks for the invitation—but I won’t be going with you. It sounds like an interesting existence. I just don’t want to end my days as a fugitive crop-crusher… and certainly not as a cannibal.”
Moon flushed with anger.
“Do you really know what you’re going back to? That secure position in your hive culture? What is your life really? You live alone with no possibility of changing your future. Jobs? Move the sewage or kill the psychotic. Love? Nothing. Don’t tell me about your Attendant back there. The only reason she took you down off that ladder was to save her share of your rations. Future? You have none. That hive culture is reproducing only the four-toeds. If you come with us you can have more children than you can count.”
Moses winced at the thought.
“Jungle bunnies? Have children that will be hunted all their lives?”
“It is better to be hunted than not to exist at all. Look, you owe it to the human race to try to pass on your genetic fifth toe—Toothpick thinks you were born with the bud of one. The hive culture is the end of the line for man—evolution stops here. Hive humans can survive hundreds of millions of years with their damn four toes. Nebishes can’t evolve. The hive is like a living organism—each individual is just a specialized unit with one function. Even reproduction and sex are separated. If a Nebish ever did come up with a mutation that was advantageous for the individual, he’d probably end up in suspension. It only took a few thousand years to advance from camp fires to space ships. In the next million years the hive will accomplish nothing. It doesn’t have to. It is the dominant life form on the planet.”
Moses glanced at the old man, Toothpick and Dan.
Snugging up his shoulder harness, he put on his helmet and said, “Well, I came to see the other side of this mountain. Might as well take a real good look.”
Two humans, a dog and a cyber made the trip to the summit. The view was encouraging—naked rocks, ice, snow and an endless blue sky flecked with small puffs of white cloud. The old man waved proudly at the austere surroundings.
“No cubicles above the ten-thousand-foot mark. We can take our time along this range. Farther north there is the remnant of a tree line—a few real soft woods and lots of lichens.”
Moses discarded his Pelger-Huet helmet as they crossed a saddle ridge. He got a glance westward, saw fields of geometries. Monotonous tiered crops with shaft caps and canals. Millions of four-toeds lived in darkness while they were enjoying the sun and the wind. His forehead burned and then tanned.
He also learned. Toothpick tuned in on the agricultural robots and guided the group to food supplies. A few pounds of dried plankton gave them energy to reach the wooden tomatoes. A bedroll of those carried them into grain fields. His insulated suit had handy pockets and a water bottle, but they moved faster in the warmer low lands. Its bulk was in the way. Soon Moses and Moon were dressed alike—tattered rags.
When they had to cross open ground they trotted briskly, staying fifty yards apart. Buckeye sensors paid little attention to single warm-blooded forms.
Val and old Walter studied the report in disbelief.
“Moses Eppendorff has gone buckeye? First our Tinker, now our Pipe,” moaned Val. “Why?”
Walter gasped for air in his usual fashion, but he spoke calmly: “I don’t see any connection. Tinker was forced out by the Big ES decision to take away his natural child. Even you and I could see the logic in that. We tried to have the child certified.”
Val wasn’t being soothed. “But we can’t condone what he did. We hunted him, and would have killed him—I suppose—if we had to.”
They looked at the file that held the Sampler’s report. Neither had looked inside—for it held the findings on the three decaying bodies that were found near Tinker’s escape air vent.
“And Moses,” continued old Walter, “he was sent out by his supervisor, Birk—a reward for his discovery of the Moses’ Melon. Tinker’s child and Moses’ Melon—both resulted in the loss of a citizen to the Outside. Just a coincidence.”
“And the tightbeams?” Val prodded.