“Ah. You are fond of kaeba pie, are you not?”
“Well, yes. Who is not?”
“But you more than most. If someone tried to get you to give up kaeba pie by offering you only mashed loogubble in exchange, how happy would you be to cooperate?”
“Please do not ask me to make this sacrifice for Clan Aelool, sir. I will, most certainly, but…”
“It would be a great sacrifice. I know.” His eyes crinkled in the Indowy equivalent of an impish grin. “That is, more or less, what our enlightened colleagues among our own race and the others attempted to do with the humans.” He clucked his tongue in a “tsk” picked up from humans.
“Would it surprise you to know that the humans have established in excess of one hundred specialized colonies, in the areas that were totally destroyed, in pursuit of the different varieties of bean for this continent’s favorite bean soup? These barbarian carnivores — yes, I know they are — consume bean broth in the megaliters. How many specialized colonies do you think they have established in pursuit of favorite meats?”
His younger clanmate shuddered, “Ugh. What a question. Thousands, at least, based on your bean data.”
“Zero,” the Indowy Aelool said. “Exactly none.”
The other Indowy actually stopped walking in consternation, then appeared to have a thought dawn. “That is easily explained, Clan Father. They raise captive populations of most of the meat animals they most prefer. Perhaps it is more difficult to grow their beans in various places, with their primitive technologies.”
“Partially true. Yet there are meat animals they used to eat — do not shudder, we miss things when we look away too soon — that they like, that they have not reclaimed. Then there are twenty-something specialized colonies dedicated to replanting large populations of another bean whose fermented products are particularly favored by their females — and consumed in no small quantity by many males.”
“If they are so fond of these beans, why did the Sub-Urb experiments not feed them these beans rather than other foods?”
“A mere deficiency of metabolism. The lipids and sugars forming the food value of these much-favored vegetative foods can only be metabolized by the humans into energy, not synthesized into the building blocks needed for major body maintenance and repairs. The Sub-Urb plan failed because those carrying it out were too lazy or too careless. The carnivores disgust them, so they equated all beans to all other beans and substituted beans and seeds that do provide the compounds humans can metabolize — as we have in the food facilities for humans on this base, as well. With the problem being that the humans tolerate those foods but are about as fond of them as we are of loogubble.”
The youngster shuddered.
“The first thing one would think is to fortify the favored beans with the necessary compounds. Again, the problem is the humans hate the taste or the texture of the fortified beans.”
“So why are you so preoccupied with catering to their aesthetic whims?”
“If we want them to change their behavior without resistance, we must make them prefer to do so. If you were offered meat on your plate or kaeba pie, which would you eat?”
“Neither! The dead flesh would make me ill!”
“You would eat the kaeba pie, or even loogubble, in preference at least partially because you like it better. Philosophy be damned, it suits your preferences.”
The youngster winced.
“The obvious solution never occurred to the relevant planners. Provide the humans with the ability to metabolize the vegetable foods they already prefer into the nutrients they need. It was too much trouble to take with the disgusting, immoral, primitive carnivores.” The clan head’s own disgust was obviously for the planners, not the humans. It was an almost blasphemous rebuke of their recognized wisdom.
“Clan Father, in another, I would consider the assertion of one’s wisdom over those planners as presumptuous. You, however, are such an eminent xenologist, and my Clan Head, that I must consider the possibility that your wisdom, in this, may exceed theirs. Is it permitted for me to ask if you have evidence?”
“I am so glad you asked. You see, we are going to my human dietary laboratory. You will please excuse the decor. It is designed to make the humans especially comfortable with the foods that proceed from it. First, let me confess that I have taken the small ethical liberty of fortifying the foods with specialized nannites that convert the food compounds available to the ones necessary for human health. The nannites build up in the system of humans who consume the foods and make the preferred stream of vegetable substances much more nutritionally available to those humans. I do not tell them about the enhancements.”
“That is quite an ethical lapse, if you will forgive my horribly impertinent comment.”
“It is. I believe they would consent if they knew. I believe they would then also imagine deficiencies of taste in the foods. This belief is the result of other experimentation in their kitchens. True meat was presented, falsely, as vegetatively enhanced. They not only claimed to notice a taste difference, they preferred the true meat so presented much less than the true meat honestly presented. Oh, do not shudder so. They would have been eating it anyway, and they would not, as one of us, be misled into an ethical breach — they perceive no ethical reasons to prefer the vegetative offering, anyway. That particular deception had no negative ethical value for the humans — I checked with the human planner Nathan O’Reilly. He has also approved this experiment, on the grounds that if the ones eating the nano-enhanced foods like the taste, and have no adverse health consequences, they are getting a pleasant treat and little more. I do confess his approval probably was contingent on the way I presented the information — truthfully, but in a persuasive way. Could I please attempt to produce aesthetic human treats as long as I endeavored to ensure they were healthy and did not impair the functionality of his operatives and staff?”
“Well, if their planner approved, of course it is ethical. Why did you not tell me that at the beginning?”
“The humans would not entirely agree on that ethics evaluation, customarily requiring individual consent.”
“Insane,” Rael Aelool echoed the sentiment he had heard, often though surreptitiously, from his elders.
“Not for them,” his Clan Head contradicted. “Alien minds are alien. If we want their cooperation, we must respect that. Do not wince. To ignore the differences in alien minds in our dealings with them is the height of folly. If we had not once done so with the Darhel, all this plotting and intrigue — this Bane Sidhe — would have been unnecessary to begin with.” The clan head had the expressions of an instructor commencing a class.
“From your enthusiasm, it almost sounded as if you were going to tell me they are not that different from you and me.” The child’s wry tone was an unwitting display of his genius.
“What? Of course they are different. Incalculably different. They are aliens. That is my whole point. We respect the Tchpth; we respect the Himmit; we even, after a fashion, respect the Darhel. We had better, out of sheer survival interest. We wrote the Darhel off as primitive because of their history. Short-term thinking to our long-term sorrow. One would think we had learned nothing from our mistake.”
“So are we to respect the Posleen next?”
“Interesting question, despite your ironic tone, but one for another day. The course of study for your immediate future is humans. First lesson. Forget ‘insane’ unless you are talking about an organism that is a mentally damaged individual of its species. Alien and damaged are not the same thing. The thought patterns and behaviors of a healthy individual in a species are the way they are because they served an evolutionarily positive function for that species. Yes, there are evolutionary dead ends, but too often we Indowy say ‘insane’ when what we really mean is ‘not like us,’ ” the clan head lectured.