Chapter 68

Igwanda and Meiersdottir walked back to their mini-pavilion, as they had come to call it, in stunned silence. Meier was awake and cranky; "I changed him," Lee said, "but I think he's hungry. Can't help you there."

"Thanks, Janet," replied Meiersdottir absently. "I'll take it from here." She took the baby and with practiced movements opened her tunic to give him suckle as Lee left. "Hey, ouch, little man," she said, "just suck gently ... ah, there you go." As the baby fed she looked over at her husband.

"Do you think they have any idea at all what they've done?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No. And they are so proud of their achievement, I had no heart to say anything."

"I know. Neither did I. It never even crossed my mind that this could happen."

"Nor mine. I wonder if with all our teaching we have nevertheless done them no favor. Their thinking together gave them such an integrated structure."

"Well, what did we expect?" she asked rhetorically. "This is the planet Eden in the real world, not the Garden of Eden."

"Or it is the Garden of Eden, and a mean-spirited deity with a warped sense of humor has cast us in the role of serpent," he put in.

They sat in silence for a moment.

"You know what I keep thinking?" she said. "About ancient Athens. The first democracy, when the citizens all got together and started making their own decisions by vote instead of taking orders from some leader or chief or tyrant or whatever. No mediators, no elected representatives, nobody in the way, just each citizen with an equal voice. It wasn't really thinking together the way they do it, of course, but it was as close as we 'singles' can ever get."

"Then the Athenians began establishing colonies," he picked up her thought. "Just as these have begun doing. It was still a democracy, but suddenly the colonists found they were no longer part of the demos but nevertheless were controlled by it. And there was resentment, which turned to rebellion, which ultimately became the Peloponnesian War and the end of both the Athenian democracy and the culture that spawned it."

"Exactly." Meier was growing restless. She searched momentarily for a cloth, found one, spread it on her shoulder, and moved Meier on top of it to pat his back gently. She was rewarded with a small belch and a slight regurgitation, followed by a healthy squall. She moved the baby smoothly to the other nipple, where he went back to feeding.

"Carlos, remember when I asked Gagugakhing if the males agreed with their feminine lib thing, the mothers participating more actively in the think-together and bringing in their nest-think? She couldn't really even understand the question, couldn't conceive of how they could disagree. They've never known internecine conflict because they've all been part of one mind.

"Now there'll be two minds, three minds, more. The group that establishes the copper mine will see its copper going to power the electrical equipment of the original group. The zinc settlement, the tin settlement, the maritime settlement, the just-because-it's-there settlement will all begin to feel their needs and wants are secondary to some other group's. And there they'll be—conflict where they've never experienced it and no thinking together to settle things down."

"Perhaps it would have been best if we had not come," he said. "They had all they needed until we gave them the taste for more."

"Oh, don't go all Rousseauan on me, the Noble Savage and all that rot," she said impatiently. "You know better. This particular Noble Savage started off trying to murder us just to steal our stuff, and then trying to steal our minds so they could learn how to make stuff of their own. That's what Chavez and his girlfriend were all about."

"You know, Chavez said they would find a way around their geographic limits," Igwanda remembered. "In fact, one of the alternatives he suggested was colonization. Now, scarcely months afterwards, we see his prediction already coming true."

"Are you sorry now that you stopped him?" she asked quietly.

"No," he answered instantly. "No-one has the right to stand in final judgment over another intelligent species. Certainly no human. Though I do wonder, will it be a warlike species of our own creation that joins us in interstellar space now so much sooner than if we had left them to their own devices? And one with all its think-together capacity still intact within each group. All it would take is one single colony run amok, one group of mothers and their males—"

"And all it took with us was two nutcases with what they thought were nuclear weapons to try to make an entire species extinct," she interrupted. "Carlos, this won't change your report when we get back about the Edenites being no threat, will it?"

"No, that would be irrationally far-fetched," he reassured her. "The danger they present is much less to us than to themselves."

"Yes. If I'd even thought they'd go this way, I could have ... If I had more time..."

She trailed off, lost in thought. After more than a minute he spoke gently. "We are coming back after all, are we not, my love?"

"Oh, Carlos..." The baby had stopped feeding and was now hovering near sleep. She burped him efficiently again; he scarcely stirred, and was lightly snoring as she laid him back in his cradle.

"Carlos, this is my child," she said quietly as she gazed down at the tiny body. "I owe him the best life I can give him. And I want to give it to him."