Part 45 (1/2)
”Oh?” Hemner raised an eyebrow. ”The people kill the tarbines' protector bololins so that the mojos can breed more easily; in turn the mojos protect their owners from attack. What's that if not symbiosis? But my real question is what did the mojos do before humans came along?”
All eyes s.h.i.+fted to Telek. ”Lizabet?” Stiggur prompted. ”Any ideas?”
”Not offhand,” she answered slowly, a frown creasing her forehead. ”Huh. Never even occurred to me to wonder about that. Have to be a predator, certainly-a big one, to deal with the bololins. I'll have to check the Troft records, see how many likely candidates there are.”
”If you'll forgive me,” Roi put in, ”I don't see that this is a vital part of figuring out how to stop the mojos now that they are riding around on the
Qasamans' shoulders.”
”If you'll forgive me,” Telek shot back, ”one never knows in this business where a key fact will show up.”
She launched into a mini-lecture about the interdependence of biological structure and function with ecological position, but Jonny missed most of it.
Skimming the Qasaman biological data, he hit a small sentence that brought his eyes and mind to a screeching halt. He backed up and read the section carefully... and a not-quite-understood s.h.i.+ver went up his spine.
Stiggur was saying something mollifying when Jonny's attention returned to the group. He waited until the governor-general was finished and then spoke up before anyone else could do so. ”Lizabet, have you had time to study the fauna records the Menssana brought back? Specifically, the ones from the planet
Chata?”
”I glanced through them.” Her expression said you know I did, but the thought remained unsaid. ”You driving at anything specific?”
”Yes.” Jonny tapped keys to send the two pages he'd been looking at to the others' displays. ”On the left is our profile of the flatfoot quadruped of
Chata; on the right, yours of the Qasaman bololin. If you'd all take a moment to scan the two pages, I think you'll see what I mean.”
”Interesting,” Vartanson nodded a minute later. ”A lot of similarity there.”
”In particular the use of magnetic field lines for navigation,” Telek agreed.
”Highly unusual for large land animals. Probably a cla.s.sic example of the
Trofts' so-called common-stock theory-you know, the same argument as to why we get similar flora and fauna on Aventine, Palatine, and Caelian.”
”Uh-huh,” Jonny said. He'd found the other two pages he needed and now put them on the displays. ”Okay, then, how about the mojo on the right and this bird on the left?”
Fairleigh snorted. ”From a binocular photo and computer-generated views? Even I know you need more than that for a similarity study.”
Jonny kept his eyes on Telek. ”Lizabet?”
”Both predators,” she said slowly. ”Beaks and wing coverts very similar. Feet... not enough detail, but... interesting. Those short filaments coming off the crown and lore-here and here? The mojo's got some sort of vibrissae there, too; tied somehow into its auditory system, we think. Unless that's a false construct generated by the computer. Where did you spot this-oh, there it is. Tacta. The last planet on your survey, right?”
”Right,” Jonny said absently. So the mojos were apparently close cousins to the strange bird whose behavior had spooked them off its world. Which meant... what?
”For the moment, at least,” Stiggur said, ”Lizabet is right that the mojo data needs more detailed study before we can discuss a counter to them. So I'd like to move on to a strategic discussion of the society itself, particularly the structural aspects that we already know. Uh... let's see... right: page 162 is where it starts.”
The discussion lasted nearly an hour, and despite the relatively raw state of the data a picture emerged which Jonny found as depressing from a military standpoint as it possibly could have been. ”Let's see if I've got all this straight,” he said at the end, trying to go as easy as he could on the heavy sarcasm. ”We have a society whose members all regularly carry firearms, whose population is largely spread out in small villages, whose light industry is also solidly decentralized and whose heavy industry is buried deep underground, and whose exact technological level is still unknown. Does that pretty well cover it?”
”Don't forget their willingness to use brain-boosting drugs and to h.e.l.l with the personal consequences,” Roi growled. ”And all of them h.e.l.lbent paranoids on top of it. You know, Brom, the more we get into this, the less I like the idea of them sitting out there ready to explode across s.p.a.ce as soon as they reinvent the stardrive.”
”You sound as if they'll be orbiting us the next morning,” Hemner said. He coughed, twice, the spasms shaking his thin shoulders, but when he continued his voice was firm enough. ”Qasama is forty-five light-years away, remember-it'll take them years to find us, even if they're specifically looking. Long before that they'll run into the Trofts, and whether they begin trade or warfare they'll be tied up with them for generations. By then they'll have forgotten this little fiasco and we'll be able to start fresh with our brother humans as if this had never happened.”