“Yet you are attempting it, with some success, I hear.”
“Well, we made a certain amount of progress on the mainland with both dromids and ouranids. But believe me, ‘certain amount’ is a gross overstatement.”
“Next you are trying it on Hansonia, where the cultures must be entirely strange to you. In fact, the species of ouranid—Why? Do you not add needlessly to your difficulties?”
“Yes—that is, we do add countless problems, but it is not needless. You see, most cooperating natives have spent their whole lives around humans. Many of them are professional subjects of study: dromids for material pay, ouranids for psychological satisfaction, amusement, I suppose you could say. They’re deracinated; they themselves often don’t have any idea why their ‘wild’ kinfolk do something. We wanted to find out if mindscan can be developed into a tool for learning about more than neurology. For that, we needed beings who’re relatively, uh, uncontaminated. Lord knows Nearside is full of virgin areas. But here Port Kato already was, set up for intensive study of a region that’s both isolated and sharply defined. Jan and I decided we might as well include mindscan in our research program.”
Hugh’s glance drifted to the immensity of Argo and lingered. “As far as we’re concerned,” he said low, “it’s incidental—one more way for us to try and find out why the dromids and ouranids here are at war.”
“They kill each other elsewhere too, do they not?”
“Yes, in a variety of ways, for a larger variety of reasons, as nearly as we can determine. Let me remark for the record, I myself don’t hold with the theory that information on this planet can be acquired by eating its possessor. For one thing, I can show you more areas than not where dromids and ouranids seem to coexist perfectly peacefully.” Hugh shrugged. “Nations on Earth never were identical. Why should we expect Medea to be the same everywhere?”
“On Hansonia, however—you say war?”
“Best word I can think of. Oh, neither group has a government to issue a formal declaration. But the fact is that more and more, for the past couple of decades—as long as humans have been observing, if not longer—dromids on this island have been hellbent to kill ouranids. Wipe them out! The ouranids are pacifistic, but they do defend themselves, sometimes with active measures like ambushes.” Hugh grimaced. “I’ve glimpsed several fights, and examined the results of a lot more. Not pleasant. If we in Port Kato could mediate—bring peace—well, I’d think that alone might justify man’s presence on Medea.”
While he sought to impress her with his kindliness, he was not hypocritical. A pragmatist, he had nevertheless wondered occasionally if humans had a right to be here. Long-range scientific study was impossible without a self-supporting colony, which in turn implied a minimum population, most of whose members were not scientists. He, for example, was the son of a miner and had spent his boyhood in the outback. True, settlement was not supposed to increase beyond its present level, and most of this huge moon was hostile enough to his breed that further growth did seem unlikely. But—if nothing else, simply by their presence, Earthlings had already done irreversible things to both native races.
“You cannot ask them why they fight?” Chrisoula wondered.
Hugh smiled wryly. “Oh, sure, we can ask. By now we’ve mastered local languages for everyday purposes. Except, how deep does our understanding go?
“Look, I’m the dromid specialist, she’s the ouranid specialist, and we’ve both worked hard trying to win the friendship of specific individuals. It’s worse for me, because dromids won’t come into Port Kato as long as ouranids might show up anytime. They admit they’d be duty bound to try and kill the ouranids—and eat them, too, by the way; that’s a major symbolic act. The dromids agree this would be a violation of our hospitality. Therefore I have to go meet them in their camps and dens. In spite of this handicap, she doesn’t feel she’s progressed any further than me. We’re equally baffled.”
“What do the autochthons say?”
“Well, either species admits they used to live together amicably… little or no direct contact, but with considerable interest in each other. Then, twenty or thirty years back, more and more dromids started failing to reproduce. Oftener and oftener, castoff segments don’t come to term, they die. The leaders have decided the ouranids are at fault and must be exterminated.”
“Why?”
“An article of faith. No rationale that I can untangle, though I’ve guessed at motivations, like the wish for a scapegoat. We’ve got pathologists hunting for the real cause, but imagine how long that might take. Meanwhile, the attacks and killings go on.”
Chrisoula regarded the dusty ground. “Have the ouranids changed in any way? The dromids might then jump to a conclusion of post hoc, propter hoc.”
“Huh?” When she had explained, Hugh laughed. “I’m not a cultivated type, I’m afraid,” he said. “The rock rats and bush rangers I grew up amongst do respect learning—we wouldn’t survive on Medea without learning—but they don’t claim to have a lot of it themselves. I got interested in xenology because as a kid I acquired a dromid friend and followed her-him through the whole cycle, female to male to postsexual. It grabbed hold of my imagination—a life that exotic.”
His attempt to turn the conversation into personal channels did not succeed. “What have the ouranids done?” she persisted.
“Oh… they’ve acquired a new—no, not a new religion. That implies a special compartment of life, doesn’t it? And ouranids don’t compartmentalize their lives. Call it a new Way, a new Tao. It involves eventually riding an east wind off across the ocean, to die in the Farside cold. Somehow, that’s transcendental. Please don’t ask me how, or why. Nor can I understand—or Jan—why the dromids consider this is such a terrible thing for the ouranids to do. I have some guesses, but they’re only guesses. She jokes that they’re born fanatics.”
Chrisoula nodded. “Cultural abysses. Suppose a modern materialist with little empathy had a time machine, and went back to the Middle Ages on Earth, and tried to find out what drove a Crusade or Jihad. It would appear senseless to him. Doubtless he would conclude everybody concerned was crazy, and the sole possible way to peace was total victory of one side or the other. Which was not true, we know today.”
The man realized that this woman thought a good deal like his wife. She continued: “Could it be that human influences have brought about these changes, perhaps indirectly?”
“It could,” he admitted. “Ouranids travel widely, of course, so those on Hansonia may well have picked up, at second or third hand, stories about Paradise which originated with humans. I suppose it’d be natural to think Paradise lies in the direction of sunset. Not that anybody has ever tried to convert a native. But natives have occasionally inquired what our ideas are. And ouranids are compulsive mythmakers, who might seize on any concept. They’re ecstatics, too. Even about death.”
“While dromids are prone to develop militant new religions overnight, I have heard. On this island, then, a new one happens to have turned against the ouranids, no? Tragic—though not unlike persecutions on Earth, I expect.”
“Anyhow, we can’t help till we have a lot more knowledge. Jan and I are trying for that. Mostly, we follow the usual procedures, field studies, observations, interviews, et cetera. We’re experimenting with mindscan as well. Tonight it gets our most thorough test yet.”
Chrisoula sat upright, gripped. “What will you do?”
“We’ll draw a blank, probably. You’re a scientist yourself, you know how rare the real breakthroughs are. We’re only slogging along.”