Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6

“But these... they weren’t starved,” Reese argued. “They were probably half-starved when they were captured, of course, but they’ve been fed since then—most of them several times.”

“I cannot believe that,” Hitchcock retorted. “Those creatures were starved.”

Reese shook his head. “Their reaction was pure habit,” he said. “Food is scarce for them. It’s been scarce all their lives. Their ... their ravenousness is natural for them.”

With a look of scornful pleasure on his face, Hitchcock pounced. “May I ask why you permit them to starve?”

It came to Reese that he had made a mistake. In trying to win a small argument, he had given Hitchcock support for a much more serious—much more difficult argument.

“Why... why,” he stammered. “We’re scientists. We’re here to... to study the Floppers. It’s our whole reason for being here. You see... you see, we believe the floppers stand a very good chance of developing human-level intelligence. We’ve been watching for signs of it for nearly a thousand years, now. And if we tried to make their lives any easier, it would interfere with their development.”

“Nonsense,” Hitchcock sniffed.

“It isn’t nonsense,” Reese persisted reasonably. “It’s a logical conclusion based on the principle of natural selection. If you’d let me explain the situation here—”

“I am fully aware of the situation here,” Hitchcock replied. “I consider it disgraceful.”

Reese gritted his teeth. “This is an unusual planet,” he said earnestly, hoping the man would pause and begin to doubt. “That is, its orbit is unusual.”

“Well, certainly,” Hitchcock said. “I would expect a planet in a double-star system to have a distorted orbit.”

“It’s worse than that,” Reese persisted mildly. “When this system was explored the first time, this planet had an orbit around Alpha—it’s still in the books as Alpha II. But now it’s going around Beta.”

“What?” Hitchcock boggled. “Preposterous.”

“It’s true,” Reese said helplessly. “And not only that, we think Alpha and Beta have been passing it back and forth ever since it was formed. They have rather eccentric orbits around each other, you see, and they come rather close together every forty-five years. If the planet is in the right part of its orbit when they’re closest together, the other star captures it.”

“Does this happen very often?” Hitchcock asked sarcastically.

Reese made a helpless gesture. “It’s different every time,” he explained. “It might stay with one star for a hundred thousand years, or maybe just for a couple of hundred. Each time it’s traded, it takes up a different orbit—that is, different from any it’s ever had before. The next time it happens will be three and a half thousand years from now.”

Hitchcock sniffed. “This is very interesting, if true,” he said. “But it has nothing to do with the deplorable way you have treated the natives.”

“It has everything to do with how we treat them,” Reese insisted. “You see, every time the planet changed orbits, its climate has been drastically altered. We have a lot of geological evidence of that. I guess Alpha and Beta are more similar than most binary pairs, but there’s still quite a difference in their radiation. And the various orbits the planet took put it at different distances out from them.”

“I presume this has some significance,” Hitchcock interrupted testily.

Reese nodded. “We’re almost certain that the living things on this planet can endure great extremes of climate— if they couldn’t, they’d have died out long ago. It’s even possible that life here was wiped out completely by some of the changes—it might have happened hundreds of times before the cycle we’re seeing now got started. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for sure.”

Hitchcock looked down at him with a fastidious expression on his face. “Never have I heard such a preposterous idea,” he declared. “As if the spark of life could be snapped off and on like an electric lamp.”

Reese had heard of people who thought like that, but he had never met one before. It was like meeting something out of the dark ages. “I was trying to emphasize how... how hardy the life-forms on this planet must be,” he explained diplomatically. “How... how adaptable. We think they have the capacity to evolve hundreds of times faster than on any other planet. So you see, being here is a wonderful opportunity to see evolution at work. And—”

“You have not yet explained,” Hitchcock reminded him again, “why you have neglected the welfare of the natives here ... why you vivisect them, and—”

So he was back where he started, Reese thought. It was discouraging, “Why, I thought it was obvious,” he explained. “The Floppers aren’t really intelligent—yet. But they do have the... the potential to become intelligent. It’s really almost inevitable in a situation like this—that is, with an unpredictably erratic environment, intelligence is almost certain to develop sometime, because intelligence is the one specialization that gives an animal the ability to live in a whole lot of different environments. You see, we’re not just studying the evolution process here—we’re ... we’re watching the development of intellect. Sooner or later, somewhere on this planet, the Floppers are almost certain to become... to become intelligent. I mean, intelligent the way a...a human being is intelligent. And we want to be here. We want to see it happen. We’ve never had the chance to see it happen in an animal before.”

Hitchcock scowled. “You speak as if men were animals,” he criticized. “As if an animal could have a mind.”

“Well, human beings are a form of animal,” Reese put in.

“That,” Hitchcock snapped, “is nonsense. Dangerous nonsense. I want to hear no more of it.” He hitched up his camera’s shoulder strap. “As for this matter of intellect, I have only your word they are not intelligent right now. I will have to have proof, Mr. Reese. I must have proof.”

Ben Reese gave up. He could not prove a thing to a man who refused to believe.

It was a good time to hunt. No wind blew loose snow on the screecher’s tracks, blotting them. No mistiness obscured the distance, and the sky’s light shimmered on the white land. Qua-orellee kept his eyes tightly lidded to lessen the glare. The tracks were new. The beast could not be very far ahead. Qua-orellee loped along, following them, but he stayed well aside of the trail for fear the snow would open under him like a mouth and devour him.

He had seen it happen, once. He and some other people were following the tracks of a bushy-tailed runner, and one of the people went close to the creature’s trail. A hole opened under him and he was gone. Qua-orellee and the other people fled instantly. Since that time, Qua-orellee had never gone closer than three body-lengths to any creature’s trail—not even his own.

The screecher’s tracks vanished over the crest of a rise. Qua-orellee veered away from the trail, to reach the crest well away from where the screecher had been. It was hard to climb the slope with only his rear legs. He dropped down and hobbled along using one of his front limbs. In the flipperlike hand of the other, he clutched his rock.

His rock was a treasure—his only possession. He would need it when he came upon the screecher and had to kill it. It was hard to find a rock of a good shape and size for killing beasts with, but a rock was wonderfully better than ice. Ice broke easily. It didn’t keep its shape. And, too, it took a much stronger blow to kill with it.

He never let the rock out of his sight, and rarely out of his hand. He clasped it to him when he slept, and he slept in his own secret place. Any other of the people would eagerly kill him—if they dared to try—to possess that rock.