Awed into silence, Ham nodded.
“Was that a yes or a no?” I asked.
“Certainly!” Kettle quaffed long, then wiped foam from his lips and chuckled. “Who can say?” Unlike some saints, he was never reluctant to admit ignorance. He taught us that the best questions have no answers.
“The third reason is the founder effect, as the texts call it. There were so few of the firstfolk to start with, and when they divided at the time of the Great Compact and then fragmented and later sub-fragmented into all the various tribes and peoples and races—some of those groups that seem so numerous now must be descended from a mere handful of men and women. And if even one of them had a conspicuous deformity—red hair, say—then it would not be unlikely…”
And Ginger, copper-haired man of the deserts, calmly promised violence upon him and anyone seen smiling.
Some raucous forestfolk right behind me were growing loud in one of their tribal rondeaux, accompanied by much complex drumming on the table. We had to raise our voices to compete.
“Then consider wetlanders,” Kettle continued, unperturbed, “since Roo has already undertaken to slay me, and he can only do so once. The normal brown or black colors of human hair and skin are due to the presence of a pigment called melanin. Roos hair and eyes lack it, so he is a blond. His skin will produce it under the influence of sunlight, so bright sunlight would soon darken him from that pretty baby pink shade he is at the moment to about your color, Fox. Conversely if you were to put Roo in complete darkness…”
He dried up. During all my long stay in Heaven, that was the only time I ever saw Kettle embarrassed. The others noticed and were puzzled. Our table fell silent, while the others clamored as loudly as before around us.
I was about to reach for my tankard, but my hand had started to shake, so I quickly put both hands under the table. “That’s all right,” I assured him, although I knew that nightmares would haunt my next sleep. “Pray continue, holiness.”
Much redder than usual—almost maroon in the dimness—Kettle drank beer while the others exchanged perplexed and wary glances. Then he launched forth again, slightly less loudly. “Now, in areas of low sun and cloudy weather, fair skin is an advantage. There is some evidence that blue eyes see better under misty conditions. We know from a reference in the ancient texts”—here he beamed smugly, to indicate that the reference was some extremely obscure passage that he had discovered himself—“that some of the firstfolk had those blond characteristics. Indeed, the firstfolk seem to have included all of the shades we have now, from Roo to Beef there!”
Beef was almost invisible in dim light, but his teeth and eyes flashed now in a grin.
“I thought,” the Fox said, “that the Venerable Ones all had skin of the same color, and Our Lady Sun punished—”
He was drowned out in boos and groans. Religion was never discussed in Heaven.
Kettle chuckled. “Not the firstfolk! But a few generations later the annals mention that almost everyone was by then becoming a sort of middle brown color, because of inbreeding—I don’t think we need take that too literally!” He peered around pugnaciously, but no one argued.
“So the redivergence into different races came later still?” Ginger asked.
“Exactly! Environments on Vernier were selected for the same adaptations as similar environments had on First World. Of course! Hook noses in dry climates, for example. Persistence of the lactase enzyme into adulthood among cattle-herding peoples. That sort of thing. But we have a question, class! Are the wetlanders descended from original blonds—by chance—or have they been selected for blondness by their environment, or did blond humans deliberately choose a climate that suited their blond coloring? Hmm?”
After a long pause I said, “Tell us the answer then.”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Kettle boomed triumphantly, “and I can think of no way to find out! That’s why people are so interesting.”
That was also why, Ginger muttered darkly, the most ancient texts told of saints being martyred.
But ants had been mentioned, and ants were always of interest to me, who still nursed secret dreams of vengeance. I had never mentioned these dreams to anyone, but everyone in Heaven must have known of my obsession with ants. Where did ants get their sadism? I asked. Which of the three causes produced that?
Natural selection, Kettle thought. “Survival of the ruthless? A squeamish ant would leave, probably, or be driven out.”
“Or founder effect?” I suggested. “Someone must have invented slave owning.”
He agreed, rather grudgingly. The conversation began to drift elsewhere, but Kettle suddenly dragged it back with his remark about ants not understanding pain.
I replied that they used pain so effectively that they must obviously understand it. Knowing how I had come by the disability that led them to call me Roo, the others fell silent, but Kettle argued. He eventually convinced me that the ants would be able to use their slaves more efficiently if they terrorized them less. Or he almost convinced me, for I knew that I would never have worked so hard for so long under a kinder rule.
“But talk to Blue-red,” he added. “Get him to tell you about the ant with half a foot!”
Blue-red was not then in Heaven, so of course we all demanded that Kettle himself tell us about the ant with half a foot, and after another long draft of beer, he did so.
Blue-red-brown had once met an ant. The encounter had been quite amicable, for although the ant had been part of an army on the move, Blue-red had been unable to prove anything against that particular ant or his companions. This ant, Blue-red said, had been missing half of his right foot. When younger, he had gone to sleep before a roaring fire. A burning log had rolled and charred his toes before he awoke.
“Are you saying that ants don’t feel pain?” I demanded, astonished and suddenly enraged. I could remember Hrarrh having his blisters licked. That had been a true ordeal for him, and the other ants have been impressed by his stoicism.
“They may feel some,” Kettle said sympathetically, “but not as much as we…others—not like we others do. I’ve seen an ant stick a knife through his hand on a bet! It may be a founder effect. It may be an adaptation—a banged elbow in a mine is painful, but not an indication of great danger. I don’t know, cherub, but I am sure that ants do not feel pain as much as you do.”
As I had…
“Tell me, holiness,” inquired the Fox, who was a trader-slasher cross, a studious and smart little fellow, a born saint but never angel timber. “Can founder effects explain some of the sexual differentiation characteristics?”
Kettle’s teacher eyes flickered over the blank expression on the faces of Beef and Ham. “You mean like herdmen being so much larger than herdwomen? Or like trader males being smarter than their females?”
That raised a small chuckle. Before the Fox could work out a believable retaliation, I unthinkingly said, “I’m sure that’s not true, Kettle. I think trader women are a lot smarter than they like to make out. I knew one who certainly was.”
Across the table from me, Beef smirked. “Hot stuff, was she, Old Man?”
My tankard and its contents hit him in the face just as the room made one of its frequent lurches. That lurch distracted the others, and even a cripple can be effective at close quarters. I had overturned the table and Beef also before they could block me, and then Beef and I were both on the floor, with me on top and my thumbs on his carotid arteries. Fortunately even that grip takes a moment to kill a man, and I had not thought to try anything more sudden, like crushing his larynx. Ginger and Dusty methodically broke my hold and lifted me off my victim. They pushed me back in my chair and held me there until my fit passed and I stopped screaming. The furniture was righted, the beer replaced, and the rest of Cloud Nine’s clientele persuaded to overlook the incident.