And those boxlike cars—each was subtly different, in the design of the lights or the signs of repairs or the way the parked cars folded into themselves.
The limousines stopped. “We’re here,” Horvath’s Motie announced. “The zoo. The Life Forms Preserve, to be more exact. You’ll find that it is arranged more for the convenience of the inhabitants than for the spectators.”
Horvath and the rest looked about, puzzled. Tall rectangular buildings surrounded them. There was no open space anywhere.
“On our left. The building, gentlemen, the building! Is there some law against putting a zoo inside a building?”
The zoo, as it developed, was six stories tall, with ceilings uncommonly high for Moties. It was difficult to tell just how high the ceilings were. They looked like sky. On the first floor it was open blue sky, with drifting clouds and a sun that stood just past noon.
They strolled through a steamy jungle whose character changed as they moved. The animals could not reach them, but it was difficult to see why not. They did not seem aware of being penned up.
There was a tree like a huge bullwhip, its handle planted deep in the earth, its lash sprouting clusters of round leaves where it coiled around the trunk. An animal like a giant Motie stood flat-footed beneath it, staring at Whitbread. There were sharp, raking talons on its two right hands, and tusks showed between its lips. “It was a variant of the Porter type,” said Horvath’s Motie, “but never successfully domesticated. You can see why.”
“These artificial environments are astounding!” Horvath exclaimed. “I’ve never seen better. But why not build part of the zoo in the open? Why make an environment when the real environment is already there?”
“I’m not sure why it was done. But it seems to work out.”
The second floor was a desert of dry sand. The air was dry and balmy, the sky baby blue, darkening to yellow brown at the horizon. Fleshy plants with no thorns grew through the sand. Some were the shape of thick lily pads. Many bore the marks of nibbling teeth. They found the beast that had made the tooth marks, a thing like a nude white beaver with square protruding teeth. It watched them tamely as they passed.
On the third floor it was raining steadily. Lightning flashed, illusory miles away. The humans declined to enter, for they had no rain gear. The Moties were half angry, half apologetic. It had not occurred to them that rain would bother humans; they liked it.
“It’s going to keep happening, too,” Whitbread’s Motie predicted. “We study you, but we don’t know you. You’re missing some of the most interesting plant forms too. Perhaps another day when they have the rain turned off…”
The fourth floor was not wild at all. There were even small round houses on distant illusory hills. Small, umbrella-shaped trees grew red and lavender fruits beneath a flat green disc of foliage. A pair of proto-Moties stood beneath one of these. They were small, round, and pudgy, and their right arms seemed to have shrunk. They looked at the tour group with sad eyes, then one reached up for a lavender fruit. Its left arm was just long enough.
“Another unworkable member of our species,” said Horvath’s Motie. “Extinct now except in life forms preserves.” He seemed to want to hurry them on. They found another pair in a patch of melons—the same breed of melon the humans had eaten for dinner, as Hardy pointed out.
In a wide, grassy field a family of things with hooves and shaggy coats grazed placidly—except for one that stood guard, turning constantly to face the visitors.
A voice behind Whitbread said, “You’re disappointed. Why?”
Whitbread looked back in surprise. “Disappointed? No! It’s fascinating.”
“My mistake,” said Whitbread’s Motie. “I think I’d like a word with Mr. Renner. Care to trail along?”
The party was somewhat spread out. Here there was no chance of getting lost, and they all enjoyed the feel of grass beneath their feet: long, coiled green blades, springier than an ordinary lawn, much like the living carpets in houses of the aristocracy and the wealthier traders.
Renner looked amiably about when he felt eyes on him. “Yes?”
“Mr. Renner, it strikes me that you’re a bit disappointed in our zoo.”
Whitbread winced. Renner frowned. “Yah, and I’ve been trying to figure it out. I shouldn’t feel this way. It’s a whole alien world, all compacted for our benefit. Whitbread, you feel it too?”
Whitbread nodded reluctantly.
“Hah! That’s it. It’s an alien world, all compacted for our benefit, right? How many zoos have you seen on how many worlds?”
Whitbread counted in his head. “Six, including Earth.”
“And they were all like this one, except that the illusion is better. We were expecting something a whole order of magnitude different. It isn’t. It’s just another alien world, except for the intelligent Moties.”
“Makes sense,” said Whitbread’s Motie. Perhaps her voice was a little wistful, and the humans remembered that the Moties had never seen an alien world. “Too bad, though,” the Motie said. “Staley’s having a ball. So are Sally and Dr. Hardy, but they’re professionals.”
But the next floor was a shock.
Dr. Horvath was first out of the elevator. He stopped dead. He was in a city street. “I think we have the wrong door…” He trailed off. For a moment he felt that his mind was going.
The city was deserted. There were a few cars in the streets, but they were wrecks, and some showed signs of fire. Several buildings had collapsed, filling the street with mountains of rubble. A moving mass of black chittered at him and moved away in a swarm, away and into dark holes in a slope of broken masonry, until there were none left.
Horvath’s skin crawled. When an alien hand touched his elbow he jumped and gasped.
“What’s the matter, Doctor? Surely you have animals evolved for cities.”
“No,” said Horvath.
“Rats,” said Sally Fowler. “And there’s a breed of lice that lives only on human beings. But I think that’s all.”
“We have a good many,” said Horvath’s Motie. “Perhaps we can show you a few… though they’re shy.”
At a distance the small black beasts were indistinguishable from rats. Hardy snapped a picture of a swarm that was scrambling for cover. He hoped to develop a blowup later. There was a large, flattish beast, almost invisible until they were right in front of it. It was the color and pattern of the brick it was clinging to.
“Like a chameleon,” Sally said. Then she had to explain chameleons.
“There’s another,” Sally’s Motie said. She pointed out a concrete-colored animal clinging to a gray wall. “Don’t try to disturb it. It has teeth.”
“Where do they get their food?”
“Roof gardens. Though they can eat meat. And there’s an insectivore…” She led them to a “rooftop” two meters above street level. There were grain and fruit trees gone riot, and a small, armless biped that fired a coiled tongue over a meter long. It looked as if it had a mouthful of walnuts.
Bitter cold met them on the sixth floor. The sky was leaden gray. Snow blew in flurries across an infinity of icy tundra. Hardy wanted to stay, for there was considerable life in that cold hell; bushes and tiny trees growing through the ice, a large, placid thing that ignored them, a furry, hopping snowshoe rabbit with dish-shaped ears and no front legs. They almost had to use force to get Hardy out; but he would have frozen in there.
Dinner was waiting for them at the Castle: ship’s stores, and slices of a flat green Motie cactus 75 cm across and 3 thick. The red jelly inside tasted almost meaty. Renner liked it, but the others couldn’t eat it at all. The rest they ate like starved men, talking animatedly between mouthfuls. It must have been the extra-long day that made them so hungry.