Chapter 13

Meiersdottir was true to her word; the following morning the chamber was again full. There'd been a good deal of grumbling about "unnecessary" meetings, but her prestige was such that she'd persuaded even the most recalcitrant among her scientific peers to attend. And, she noted with approval, his military ... task force, she remembered, were also present.

After calling the meeting to order Shaw, as pre-arranged, immediately recognized her.

"Thank you all for coming today," she began. "I want to begin with an apology, on behalf of all of us. I believe we owe it to Col. Igwanda." Instantly murmurs of dissension came from the floor; this wasn't how they'd been told the session would proceed. "No," she raised her voice. "It's in our prerogative to disagree with anyone. It's not in our prerogative to shout that person down. This is, I hope, a serious group and a serious gathering. Two days ago we wouldn't hear out a man who has as his duty our protection. We wouldn't even let him complete a sentence. I ask only this: that now we do so."

She turned to Igwanda. "Carlos, this meeting is yours. We promise to listen."

Igwanda rose. For a moment he stood silent. No, dammit Carlos, don't just 'surveille' them, talk to them, they aren't the enemy, she thought. But then he spoke and his timing, she saw, was right.

"Thank you, Amanda," he said, turning and bowing slightly. "But I must correct you to begin; it is not you, nor any of you"—he turned back toward the floor—"who need apologize to me, it is I who owe the apology. I have treated you poorly."

As she'd predicted, he had their attention. "Let me tell you from the beginning: I have known from before the voyage that the attack on the Argo landing party was not due to some accident, some failure on their part. I have known that it was planned by the Eden natives before any human ever set foot on their planet."

Loud murmurs began from the floor. "Please," he said loudly, "I did not say this is my surmise, I said I know this to be fact. And I can prove it to you, and will do so today. Will you listen?"

There was quiet again. It wasn't quite as he and Meiersdottir had rehearsed it, but it would do.

"My apology is that I did not share this with you many weeks ago. Dr. Meiersdottir—I beg your leave to call her as I do when we are alone, for I think of her as a friend—Amanda has made me understand that this was error, that by my failure I have shown you disrespect. I offer my excuse that I did not intend it that way, that I believed you, as my superiors in intellect and attainment, would naturally have seen this even as I did."

Careful, Carlos, don't lay it on too thick, she thought.

"But she has made me aware that my point of view may not be the same as your own," he went on. "We look perhaps for different things. I ask your permission to review the holograph of the Argo's landing as it appears not only to me but to others of my background with whom I have reviewed it back on Earth."

"Colonel, I think we've all seen the scan—" began Shaw. Meiersdottir interrupted quickly. "Bernard, we agreed that Carlos might proceed. All right?" He shot her an annoyed look— they were beyond prearrangements by now—but subsided.

"Yes," said Igwanda. "We have all seen it, most of us many times. Amanda has told me that it has been her own opinion, as I believe most of you also consider, that the attack was spontaneous as a result of some mistake on the part of the landing party. I know it to be otherwise, as I will show you."

"Colonel, may I ask something before you begin?" The voice was that of Gustav Heisinger, the Gardener's senior xenobiologist. "If it hadn't been determined the other night that we and not you are authorized to decide when and where the landing will occur, would we be hearing any of this?"

"Probably you would not," came the prompt response. There was restless shifting and muttering from the floor. He raised his voice slightly. "But that is not because I would have chosen to withhold this information from you. It is because I thought you already knew it!" The group quieted again. "I only became aware that this was not common knowledge when Amanda confronted me yesterday. I had made the error of assuming that, since you had the same information available to me, we were communicating on a basis of shared understanding. I had forgotten the old aphorism that to assume is to make an 'ass' of 'u' and 'me.'" The chuckles he had solicited were perfunctory, but they came. "I realize now my assumption was wrong, and earnestly ask that you allow me to correct my failing."

Talking about one's own "errors" and "failings" usually serves well to gain the attention of a hostile audience. Igwanda could see that he was still not going to win a popularity contest, but he had their eyes and ears as he reached for the holo controls, and that would suffice for now.

"First, I trust we are agreed that the aliens' assembly for the landing with weapons concealed is beyond the norm of their ordinary behavior," he said. He touched a button on the control panel in front of him; the meeting-room monitor came alive with images of the natives moving back and forth to their field with both "hands" either occupied by other implements or visibly free.

"But then they weren't going to meet unknown intruders descending on them out of thin air!" called a voice from the floor—an interjection that Meiersdottir had carefully planted before the meeting.

"To be sure," he said smoothly, with a placating gesture. "That the Edenites might have seen our landing as a threat is understandable." He was now on familiar territory; his voice rang with authority. "They were threatened, too, when these six-legged creatures" (another image appeared on the screen) "imperiled their crops. They took weapons then, too, to drive the herd off." He displayed the scene. "But they did not conceal those weapons, as you see; indeed, if anything they flaunted them.

"On Earth, in our environment, animals seek to avoid battle by first displaying their capability to win it." A sequence of images—a peacock fanning its tail, a bear extending claws and displaying teeth, a cougar with its muzzle transfixed in a snarl. "It is of course a natural survival trait; in a fight accidents of combat place both sides at risk, whereas if one can be persuaded by a show of force to withdraw before the fight begins the victory can be attained without that risk. Thus the natives acted with their own wildlife, suggesting that such displays are of importance on Eden as well. Therefore, it must be asked, why not the same display with us? Why strict concealment?"

"Because it was clear that our technology surpassed theirs!" rang out from the floor. "All they had going was surprise, so keep it hidden!" Meiersdottir had not pre-arranged this interruption, but it fit her purposes as well as if she had.

"Once again a reasonable explanation," he said. "But it does not comport with what followed.

"Now," he continued, changing the image, "I would like to take you again through the sequence of the debarkation from the lander. First we see the natives approaching the vessel cautiously, but in steadily growing numbers. This is remarkable mass response time; the lander has only been on the ground a few minutes, yet an entire community has overcome its shock at the unprecedented arrival, armed itself, and assembled at the site.

"Here the ramp deploys. There is a startled reaction, but no single weapon is raised! All remain in concealment. Again, why? Surely if a threat is uppermost in their minds, the extrusion of an unknown object from this already incomprehensible flying thing should suggest the possibility of a weapon, causing at least some to assume a defensive posture. Yet they merely pull back momentarily and then reassemble.

"Further, I would point out that the scanner equipment included audio capability and worked correctly; we hear nothing not because of equipment limitations or malfunction but because there is nothing to hear. The natives are wholly silent. Were it a human gathering we would expect at the least a strong undercurrent of talk—'wow!' 'look at that!' 'did you see that?' and so on, neighbor talking to neighbor in the social reinforcement of communality that is characteristic of our species."

"Well," came another voice, "the Edenites aren't of our species. It seems they just don't talk a lot."

"That would explain the lack of chatter," the colonel agreed. "But total silence means a complete lack of oral communication. No orders are being given, no discussions entered into, no decisions considered. I will tell you that, in my experience, the human parallel for such utter silence among assembled groups is in the final briefings of military missions when decisions have already been made and each individual understands his or her part in the planned activity."

"That's reaching!" came another voice. "Perhaps their primary means of communication is above our hearing range. Or it's not even oral."

"First, the equipment is capable of receiving both ultra- and sub-sonics; the scan has been analyzed and shows neither. Nor are their mouths moving. Yet we know they do vocalize, and within our range." He shifted to the captain's subsequent announcement that "we come in peace" and the responsive sounds emanating from many of the aliens. "On Earth all higher species communicate at least in part by sound. This is not due to accident of evolution but because it is far more efficient than gesticulation or other means that require unobstructed line of sight. It would be remarkable for an intelligent species to evolve that did not use an efficient means of communication."

He paused momentarily, but no-one had anything to say.

"Now, I move forward to the one-by-one procession of the first four members of the lander's complement down the ramp. Note that as each reaches the ground and moves away to allow the next person room, he or she is quickly encircled by the aliens. These encirclements are individual; the aliens do not actually block the humans from joining one another, but the mass of their bodies serves to prevent that short of significant physical exertion. And quickly many of the aliens begin to reach out—always with the unweaponed limb—to touch, though not yet restrain, the humans. Do you see?"

There was silence.