“We’ve spared and extended the lives of all those who were with you,” the voice drummed. “That makes us your slaves, does it not?”
“What do you take in return?” Joao demanded.
“Ah, hah!” the voice fairly barked. “Quid pro quo! That’s this thing called business which I didn’t understand. Your father will leave soon to speak with the men of his government. He is our messenger. He trades us his time. He is our slave as well, is it not so? We are tied to each other by the bond of mutual slavery that cannot be broken. It never could be broken… no matter how hard you tried.”
“It’s very simple once you understand the interdependence,” Joao’s father said.
“Understand what?”
“Some of our kind lived once in greenhouses,” the voice rumbled. “Their cells remembered the experience. You know about greenhouses, of course.”
The giant face turned to look out at the cave mouth, where dawn was beginning to touch the world with gray. “That out there, that, too, is a greenhouse.” Again, it peered down at Joao, the giant eyes glittering. “To sustain life, a greenhouse must be maintained in a delicate state of balance by the life within it—enough of this chemical, enough of that one, another substance available when required. That which is poison one day can be the sweetest food the next day.”
“What’s all this to do with slavery?” Joao demanded, and he heard the petulance in his own voice.
“Life has developed through millions of years on greenhouse Earth,” the Brain rumbled. “Sometimes it developed in the poison excrement of other life… and then that poison became necessary to it. Without a substance produced by wireworms, that savannah grass out there would die… in time.”
Joao stared up at the rock ceiling, his thoughts turning over like cards in a file. “China’s barren earth!” he said.
“Precisely,” the Brain said. “Without substances produced by… insects, and other forms of life, your kind of life would perish. Sometimes just a faint trace of the substance is needed, such as the special copper produced by arachnids. Sometimes the substance must pass through many valences, subtly changed each time, before it can be used by a life form at the end of the chain. Break the chain and all die. The more different forms of life there are, the more life the greenhouse can support. The successful greenhouse must enclose many forms of life—the more forms of life, the healthier for all.”
“Chen-Lhu,” Joao said. “He could be made to help. He could go with my father, tell them… Did you save Chen-Lhu?”
“The Chinese,” the Brain said. “He can be said to live, although you abused him cruelly. The essential structures of the brain are alive, thanks to our prompt action.”
Joao looked down at the bulging, fissured mass on the floor of the cave. He turned away.
“They have given me proof to take back with me,” Joao’s father said. “There can be no doubt. No one will doubt. We must stop killing and changing insects.”
“And let them take over,” Joao whispered.
“We say you must stop killing yourselves,” the voice rumbled. “Already the people of your Chen-Lhu are… I believe you would call it reinfesting their land. Perhaps they will be in time, perhaps not. Here, it is not too late. In China, they were efficient and thorough… and they may need our help.”
“But you’ll be our masters,” Joao said. And he thought: Rhin… Rhin, where are you?
“We’ll merely achieve a new balance,” the Brain said. “It will be interesting to see. But there will be time to discuss this later. You are quite free to move… and capable of it. Just do not come too close to me: my nurses will not permit that. But for now, feel free to join your mate outside. There is sunshine this morning. Let the sun work on your skin and on the chlorophyll in your blood. And when you come back here, tell me if the sun is your slave.”
About the Author
Frank Herbert, whose work has been compared to such widely varied writers as Aldous Huxley and Edgar Rice Burroughs, has been a newspaperman on the West Coast for many years. Both a writer and a professional photographer, he is also a student of subjects ranging from oriental religions to jungle botany and undersea geology. His rich background of experience includes work as a TV cameraman, radio news commentator, oyster diver, jungle survival instructor, lay analyst, and teacher of creative writing.
Copyright
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THE GREEN BRAIN
Copyright ©, 1966, by Frank Herbert
Part of this novel has appeared in Amazing Stories as a novelette entitled Greenslaves and is copyright, ©, 1965, by Ziff-Davis Publications, Inc.
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AN ACE BOOK
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