“Thank you,” he says. She is young. She does not know.
“If it’s just a passing gloom I can edit it out in one quick snip.”
“Thank you,” he says. “No.”
“I forgot. You don’t like editing.”
“My father—”
“Yes?”
“In fifty years he pared himself down to a thread,” Tom Two Ribbons says. “He had his ancestors edited away, his whole heritage, his religion, his wife, his sons, finally his name. Then he sat and smiled all day. Thank you, no editing.”
“Where are you working today?” Ellen asks.
“In the compound, running tests.”
“Want company? I’m off all morning.”
“Thank you, no,” he says, too quickly. She looks hurt. He tries to remedy his unintended cruelty by touching her arm lightly and saying, “Maybe this afternoon, all right? I need to commune a while. Yes?”
“Yes,” she says, and smiles, and shapes a kiss with her lips.
After breakfast he goes to the compound. It covers a thousand hectares east of the base; they have bordered it with neutral-field projectors at intervals of eighty meters, and this is a sufficient fence to keep the captive population of two hundred Eaters from straying. When all the others have been exterminated, this study group will remain. At the southwest corner of the compound stands a lab bubble from which the experiments are run: metabolic, psychological, physiological, ecological. A stream crosses the compound diagonally. There is a low ridge of grassy hills at its eastern edge. Five distinct copses of tightly clustered knifeblade trees are separated by patches of dense savanna. Sheltered beneath the grass are the oxygen-plants, almost completely hidden except for the photosynthetic spikes that jut to heights of three or four meters at regular intervals, and for the lemon-colored respiratory bodies, chest high, that make the grassland sweet and dizzying with exhaled gases. Through the fields move the Eaters in a straggling herd, nibbling delicately at the respiratory bodies.
Tom Two Ribbons spies the herd beside the stream and goes toward it. He stumbles over an oxygen-plant hidden in the grass but deftly recovers his balance and, seizing the puckered orifice of the respiratory body, inhales deeply. His despair lifts. He approaches the Eaters. They are spherical, bulky, slow-moving creatures, covered by masses of coarse orange fur. Saucer-like eyes protrude above narrow rubbery lips. Their legs are thin and scaly, like a chicken’s, and their arms are short and held close to their bodies. They regard him with bland lack of curiosity. “Good morning, brothers!” is the way he greets them this time, and he wonders why.
I noticed something strange today. Perhaps I simply sniffed too much oxygen in the fields; maybe I was succumbing to a suggestion Herndon planted; or possibly it’s the family masochism cropping out. But while I was observing the Eaters in the compound, it seemed to me, for the first time, that they were behaving intelligently, that they were functioning in a ritualized way.
I followed them around for three hours. During that time they uncovered half a dozen outcroppings of oxygen-plants. In each case they went through a stylized pattern of action before starting to munch. They:
Formed a straggly circle around the plants.
Looked toward the sun.
Looked toward their neighbors on left and right around the circle.
Made fuzzy neighing sounds only after having done the foregoing.
Looked toward the sun again.
Moved in and ate.
If this wasn’t a prayer of thanksgiving, a saying of grace, then what was it? And if they’re advanced enough spiritually to say grace, are we not therefore committing genocide here? Do chimpanzees say grace? Christ, we wouldn’t even wipe out chimps the way we’re cleaning out the Eaters! Of course, chimps don’t interfere with human crops, and some kind of coexistence would be possible, whereas Eaters and human agriculturalists simply can’t function on the same planet. Nevertheless, there’s a moral issue here. The liquidation effort is predicated on the assumption that the intelligence level of the Eaters is about on par with that of oysters, or, at best, sheep. Our consciences stay clear because our poison is quick and painless and because the Eaters thoughtfully dissolve upon dying, sparing us the mess of incinerating millions of corpses. But if they pray—
I won’t say anything to the others just yet. I want more evidence, hard, objective. Films, tapes, record cubes. Then we’ll see. What if I can show that we’re exterminating intelligent beings? My family knows a little about genocide, after all, having been on the receiving end just a few centuries back. I doubt that I could halt what’s going on here. But at the very least I could withdraw from the operation. Head back to Earth and stir up public outcries.
I hope I’m imagining this.
I’m not imagining a thing. They gather in circles; they look to the sun; they neigh and pray. They’re only balls of jelly on chicken-legs, but they give thanks for their food. Those big round eyes now seem to stare accusingly at me. Our tame herd here knows what’s going on: that we have descended from the stars to eradicate their kind, and that they alone will be spared. They have no way of fighting back or even of communicating their displeasure, but they know. And hate us. Jesus, we have killed two million of them since we got here, and in a metaphorical sense I’m stained with blood, and what will I do, what can I do?
I must move very carefully, or I’ll end up drugged and edited.
I can’t let myself seem like a crank, a quack, an agitator. I can’t stand up and denounce! I have to find allies. Herndon, first. He surely is onto the truth; he’s the one who nudged me to it, that day we dropped pellets. And I thought he was merely being vicious in his usual way!
I’ll talk to him tonight.
He says, “I’ve been thinking about that suggestion you made. About the Eaters. Perhaps we haven’t made sufficiently close psychological studies. I mean, if they really are intelligent—”
Herndon blinks. He is a tall man with glossy dark hair, a heavy beard, sharp cheekbones. “Who says they are, Tom?”
“You did. On the far side of the Forked River, you said—”
“It was just a speculative hypothesis. To make conversation.”
“No, I think it was more than that. You really believed it.”
Herndon looks troubled. “Tom, I don’t know what you’re trying to start, but don’t start it. If I for a moment believed we were killing intelligent creatures, I’d run for an editor so fast I’d start an implosion wave.”
“Why did you ask me that thing, then?” Tom Two Ribbons says.
“Idle chatter.”
“Amusing yourself by kindling guilts in somebody else? You’re a bastard, Herndon. I mean it.”
“Well, look, Tom, if I had any idea that you’d get so worked up about a hypothetical suggestion—” Herndon shakes his head. “The Eaters aren’t intelligent beings. Obviously. Otherwise we wouldn’t be under orders to liquidate them.”
“Obviously,” says Tom Two Ribbons.
Ellen said, “No, I don’t know what Tom’s up to. But I’m pretty sure he needs a rest. It’s only a year and a half since his personality reconstruct, and he had a pretty bad breakdown back then.”