Balance of Power Page 3

  Our joint brief was to discover whether the failure of such colonies as this one was accountable to biological or sociological reasons. And whichever it was, we were supposed to come up with some plan of action which might avert future difficulties of the same kind.

  It was easy enough to obtain a historical map of the failure. The first few good years had brought in a good supply of food—enough to support more than half the colony in work that was not primarily productive—like building houses and locating resources: coal, iron, copper, oil, salt, etc., etc. All these things were accessible, and the colonists even knew where to look, thanks to the survey reports. But resources can’t be exploited with bare hands. To secure each supply the others were necessary. To get at the coal you have to have the iron, and to work the iron ore you have to have the coal. You have to work your way into the feedback loop, a little at a time. To begin with, everything is difficult—even making soap and brick and glass and cloth. It all has to be done the hard way. It continues to be difficult for many years, but with every small triumph it gets a little easier, and then easier, and then easier still...and then progress lifts off along an exponential curve.

  In theory.

  It had happened that way on Floria. It was happening on Wildeblood. But in both cases the process had received some kind of boost—unforeseen and with hidden snags. So far we had not found a single case where the takeoff had happened without some kind of extra assistance.

  The basic needs of a colony are simple: machines and power. Iron and fuel. With these, you can make everything else you need. But to begin with you have just one kind of machine—body machines, human and animal. Muscle power is the only significant energy reserve you can exploit, with what aid you can co-opt from wind, water and burning wood. The extent to which muscle power can be devoted to the difficult business of making the first machines and finding the first supplies of fuel is controlled by a simple equation: the amount of manpower required to produce enough food to maintain each man. If every man has to work full-time just to supply his own needs there can never be progress. If one man’s efforts can supply the food needed by a thousand, it doesn’t take long to reach takeoff.

  In the beginning, the colony’s food-making was efficient. Efficient enough. But after ten years it began to decline, and it continued to decline, as the local life-system reacted against the invasion. At a time when more and more manpower should have been liberated year by year in the cause of progress, year by year more and more manpower had to be returned to the farms and the fields, to clear and plant new land because the land already cleared was failing in its yield, to fight a long, long battle on the land already under cultivation. Insecticides became more important than iron; the selection of crops to find strains which could cope with the responses of the local life-system became more important than coal. The fight for survival from one year to the next, in all it entailed, became the sole aim. The fight for progress was stillborn.

  Those were the ecological reasons for failure.

  But ecological crises are reflected in social priorities. In the beginning, the colony had an efficient governing body, capable of coordinating the efforts of the whole colony. They could ask for men to work for the benefit of the whole and be answered. But as circumstances changed, that became more and more difficult. As it became more difficult for men to support themselves it became more difficult to ask them to work for the whole rather than for themselves. As the fight for survival became more basic the holistic qualities of the colony were steadily eroded. Priorities retreated, as men stopped working for the whole in favor of working directly for themselves or for the local groups where mutual cooperation in working the same land was necessary. As there were fewer men to spare the category of administrators had to shrink. The government itself had to fragment, especially as the colony had to expand in all directions to continually bring new land under cultivation. The colony dispersed and broke up, with each group becoming insular, trading with others but united only in the medium of exchange which they used.

  Put simply, the government lost control. They could no longer plan the long-term development of the colony. They could no longer command such spare manpower as there was, because it owed its first loyalty to the local community. The civil service, such as it had ever been, shrank in numbers and became all but impotent. Taxes were collected, and there was always money to hire men for particular projects, but there were few men to be hired. The administrators of the colony had to be very selective indeed in deciding what should be done and when—what kind of “collective endeavors” the colony as a whole (a ghost of a whole) could embark upon.

  That was why there had been only four attempts in more than a hundred years to build ocean-going ships. That was why the New Hope was a wooden ship entirely dependent upon the wind. The colony on Lambda had the knowledge and—theoretically—the technology to build a ship of steel, powered by steam, but it would have been too expensive to do so. Too expensive since materials were in extremely short supply because of the extremely short supply of manpower. Wood was cheap, and so was the wind. The crew wasn’t...and neither had been the men who labored to build the ship.

  Now, because of its disintegration, it would take a long, long time to bring the colony together again. With the Daedalus and its laboratory at their disposal, the government of the colony could turn the tide of the agricultural problems. We could fight the pests, remodel the crops, bring the land back to life. But we couldn’t remake the way of thinking that had come into the colony. We couldn’t restore the sense of collective identity. We couldn’t break down the insularity which had developed in the scattered elements of the colony, or the resentment they had developed with regard to taxation and the “parasitic” civil service which existed on those taxes. When the corner was turned, and things began to get better, it seemed likely that each local community would go its own way, that there would be mistrust and hostility and conflict between them. Progress would take care of itself—manpower not released to the central government would be released into entrepreneurial activities. All that would be lost would be what the colony had started out with: unity and purpose.

  And that would be bad—or, to take the cynical view, it would appear to the UN to be bad. Because the whole point of sending colonies out from Earth was to get away from mistrust, hostility and conflict. There was a very considerable body of opinion on Earth which said that man had no right to pollute the galaxy until he had solved his problems on Earth. If we brought back evidence that the colonies were inescapably reproducing all those features which on Earth were considered evils, then a very large brick would be knocked out of the edifice of argument by which we might seek to resume the colony project.

  I was already certain in my own mind that the ecological problems here could be solved. I was prepared to predict that another Daedalus in a hundred years’ time would find the colony a lot better off in terms of its technological development and its agricultural performance. I had felt guilty about leaving so much of the work to Conrad and Linda, but I wouldn’t have done so if I hadn’t been absolutely sure that there were no major difficulties.

  But Nathan Parrick wasn’t in the least convinced that the social situation was—or could be made—satisfactory. Satisfactory, that is, to the UN.

  “It’s important that this trip should succeed,” he had said, on the night before the New Hope set sail. “Important to the colony, but maybe even more important to us. It will allow us to show in our reports—and to argue when the time comes—that the colony is still capable of acting as a whole, that even in the face of adversity it is trying to widen its horizons. Crossing oceans in wooden ships is the kind of gesture that people appreciate—symbolic of triumph over circumstance. This trip has a heroic dimension that the government—and we—will be able to exploit. If it succeeds. The failure of the earlier trips will add extra mystique to its triumph.”

  He always talked like that. The symptoms of a perverted sense of values. But I knew eno
ugh to realize that what he said was probably true enough, however perverted. To him, almost everything we encountered was advertising copy. Pro or anti. The voyage of the New Hope was not only no exception, it was an example par excellence. It was romantic, nostalgic, impressive.

  “What would you like us to find at the other end?” I had asked, dryly.

  “The aliens, of course,” he said. “A new continent is fair to middling. Echoes of Columbus...it has its mythical resonances. But the aliens add something else. They represent the face of the unknown. If anything can jerk this colony out of its introverted priorities it’s contact with aliens. There’s nothing else that will restore to them any real sense of collective identity or solidarity.”

  “Perhaps you’d like me to arrange a war?” I asked. “An alien invasion of Lambda. There’s nothing like a common enemy to unite people, so the cliché says. A good war fires national enthusiasm like nothing else.”

  “It’s a stupid cliché,” observed Nathan. “The so-called national spirit that emerges at the time of war is itself nothing more than a propaganda device. It isn’t real. It’s an illusion conjured up by the government in the hope of forcing national spirit upon the people. The last thing we need is war. War with the aliens is exactly what the let’s-not-export-our-sins-to-the-galaxy brigade need to sink the colony project forever. And at a more mundane level, if the aliens did invade Lambda—assuming, that is, that the aliens have any political entity capable of managing a war—they’d almost certainly conquer it with no trouble.”

  “There is that,” I agreed, sarcastically.

  “What we need,” said Nathan, “and what the colony needs, of course, is some kind of symbol of peaceful cooperation. Hands across the sea. A meeting of minds. That sort of thing.”

  “You want me to bring back a peace treaty and make political speeches? Maybe a pipe of peace? Gifts of elephants and exotic silks?”

  “If you could manage it,” he said, with equanimity, “yes.”

  With such ideas in mind—even as kitschy metaphors—we had sailed with optimism in our hearts. That was the way the voyage had been set up—a gran geste, a publicity stunt.

  Now, a couple of days from shore, I didn’t feel nearly so good. In fact, I didn’t feel good at all. Neither did Nathan. I reported in every morning by radio, and explained the situation. There was never much news beyond the fact that things were getting steadily and irrevocably worse. Nathan had run out of encouraging suggestions weeks before. If he’d been that way inclined he’d be praying for miracles by now.

  I told him what we’d decided about cutting our trip short.

  “It means no hands across the sea,” I told him. “No peace treaties. If we even see the aliens it’ll be a quick hello/goodbye.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Salvage what you can. Better a hint of success than a total failure. Come back with what you can, but at all costs come back.”

  “They made a good story out of Mutiny on the Bounty,” I commented.

  “Sure,” he said. “But Mutiny on the Santa Maria would be a pretty sick story compared with Columbus Discovers America. Be careful.”

  “If only,” I said, as I signed off, “my being careful was all that was required.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  There was a knock at the door, and it was unceremoniously yanked open. I was glad that it opened outwards—it could have done a lot of damage if it had been hurled into the cluttered space within.

  The man who leaned through the doorway, reaching out a big, horny hand, was Ogburn.

  “Binoc’lars,” he said, with his usual economy.

  A funny rejoinder occurred to me, but I didn’t use it. I handed him the binoculars instead.

  “Why?” I asked.

  But he was already gone.

  I jumped to the conclusion that we had sighted land, and followed him at a rapid pace. It seemed as if a great weight was about to be lifted from my mind. But when I got on deck, there was nothing in sight but the mottled green sea. Ogburn was balanced on the rail on the starboard side of the ship, with his elbow hooked into the rigging. He wasn’t even looking to the west, but to the north.

  I shaded my eyes and squinted slightly, following the direction of his gaze. There was, in fact, something on the horizon.

  An off-white triangle.

  A sail.

  Ogburn jumped down, and with an uncharacteristically graceful gesture, handed me the binoculars. I focused them quickly. I saw that the edges of the triangle were curved, and that the sail was vaguely reminiscent of that carried by an arab dhow. I couldn’t see the body of the craft beneath it. It was sailing away from us, disappearing beyond the horizon.

  “Do we chase?” asked Ogburn.

  I considered for a moment. While I was considering, Nieland joined us, having been alerted to the fact that something was up. I handed him the glasses and waited for him to react. It was really his decision.

  “We must be near land,” he said, when he lowered the binoculars.

  “We already know that,” I said.

  “Keep heading west,” he said to Ogburn.

  Ogburn looked dubious. He seemed to be about to make some perceptive comment, but then decided against it. It took a few more seconds for me to realize what was wrong.

  Nieland realized too. “But they haven’t got sailing ships!” he complained. “Only canoes.”

  So, at least, said the survey report.

  “The survey team only surveyed Delta from the air,” I reminded him. “They didn’t make any contact with the natives. Everything they said about them was based on photographic evidence. And it was two hundred years ago. They could have missed the sailing ships. It’s even possible that the sail was invented some time during the last couple of centuries. Times change.”

  “It was a big boat,” put in Ogburn. “Funny sail for a fishing boat.”

  He didn’t sound too rapturous about it.

  “How big?” I asked.

  “Sixty footer,” he replied.

  “That’s not big,” said Nieland. “Not by comparison with the New Hope.”

  There was a certain proprietary pride in this expostulation. But I knew what Ogburn meant. It was big by comparison with a canoe. And the sail design was really quite sophisticated. From the canoe to the dhow in two hundred years? It didn’t seem likely. The survey team must have missed the sailing boats. Unless....

  “The other expeditions,” I mused, speaking aloud. “They never got back. But that’s not to say that they never got here....”

  “We should go after it,” said Ogburn.

  “It’s going away from us,” said Nieland. “It’s already out of sight. There’s no point in chasing it all day. Let’s make landfall first and worry about it later.”

  He was very impatient. To him, the only thing that mattered was getting there. I sympathized—and Ogburn didn’t really want to press his case.

  Behind us, a couple of the crewmen were muttering. I knew them as Roach and Thayer. They were making unkind and ominous remarks about the sail and about us. Ogburn ignored them. He didn’t even tell them to get back to work. Instead, he signaled to the mate—a man named Malpighi—and gave him the binoculars, which he plucked from Nieland’s hand without asking.

  “Send a man up top,” he grunted. “Keep a lookout.”

  Malpighi selected Thayer. While he was beginning the long climb up the mainmast Roach slouched away. He glanced at me, and said: “Gone to fetch the fleet, I shouldn’t wonder. Blow us out of the water. Probably what happened to Verheyden.”

  It looked like the beginning of a rumor which, if not exactly ugly, could hardly contribute to the morale of the ship’s personnel. But there was nothing I could do except give him a dirty look. He scowled back.

  I glanced at Ogburn. “If I were a fisherman and I saw something like the New Hope,” I said, “I’d run for home and tell them I saw one this big. And they wouldn’t believe me.”

  He didn’t laugh.

  I
couldn’t blame him.

  The party broke up. Nieland began setting the position of the sun on his sextant—his regular ritual of position-finding. We were still cutting through the weed without any trouble, and the wind was blowing from the southwest, which was about as favorable as we were likely to get. It was brisk enough to be turned to our advantage. I decided to do some fishing, and went below to get some line and a few hooks. I didn’t really care whether I caught anything or not.

  The day wore on at its customary turgid pace—it was about two hours longer than an Earthly day, but there were a few less of them in the planetary year, which was only a couple percent longer than standard. By now I was an expert at letting the time pass unheeded, and I managed to occupy myself while retreating into the privacy of my contemplation. I always did fancy myself a spiritual descendent of Newton: “A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought—alone.”

  I thought mainly about the aliens, wondering why a dhow was sailing so far south. The most civilized region of Delta was a long way north of here—we’d deliberately set out to sail across the ocean the shortest way, which brought us to the bulge of the lower part of the small-case delta. There was nothing but forest here, and the aliens in the forest—according to the two-hundred-year-old survey reports—were Iron Age swidden farmers without much iron. Not the type of people who’d suddenly take to the sea.