by Colin Kapp
Baba was a very strange planet, its atmosphere torn by unexpected and unpredictable storms. No intelligent life could be found but the larger Baban birds seemed to have a strong system of social hierarchy. Kinoul’s job was to decide whether the planet was suitable for human colonisation without displacing Baba’s sentient life.
* * * *
Shortly the great stormclouds obscured the brilliant Baban sun. A low and ominous twilight settled across the treetops. Everything was gripped by an unnatural calm. Even the slight wind, which was Baba’s prevailing right was absent from the leaves and the grasses. The great depression was a spring, tight-wound with an expectancy of the fury soon to come.
With the rising tension, came a failure of the light. Rockwell was becoming worried. He found it increasingly difficult to discern the route of the slight track along which he was attempting to drive the landcat. Even in sunlight the way was awkward enough to follow. Nature had a grim determination to heal every scar caused by a landcat’s tracks. Now, against the shades of unscheduled night, the chore of driving had passed into the realms of nightmare.
Too old and too unused to such continuous strain, Rockwell was tiring rapidly. Having gained what he had come for, he should have been clear of the area long before. He switched on the computer and drew out the charts, intending to navigate by instruments. To his consternation, tight bands of static swamped the transmissions from the radio reference beacons. The readout from the navigation computer made erratic nonsense. After a very few moments he rejected the electronic confusion and returned again to rely on his own senses. Things were becoming critical indeed.
The descending cloudbase was moving even lower and the scene was growing darker still. Rockwell switched on the searchlight to supplement the headlamps. Dark and lush, the greenness of the foliage, greedily absorbed the extra light and returned but little of it. The very existence of the track seemed to recede into improbability. Overhead the darkness was now total. Only on the far horizon, beyond the fringes of the storm, did there linger even the faintest trace of daylight.
The forest was frightened and still, waiting with tense expectancy for the storm to break. Even the minute forest fauna had fled for cover deep beneath the roots and leaves. No creatures roamed the runs beneath the ferns and brush. In the skies no great birds flew. A storm on Baba was something which nothing in Creation faced with equanimity.
The hiatus was broken by an eager wind blowing towards the centre of a maturing thundercell. Rockwell deduced its direction from the way it moved the foliage. He was not surprised to find the cell was located directly over his intended path. His dismay was coloured by a grudged appreciation of the scale of the fantastic trap into which he had driven. Probably this single thundercell involved a thousand cubic kilometres of tropical atmosphere, structured into a destructive electrostatic generator capable of exchanging million ampere pulses with the ground. Its location was precisely in accordance with the theory he had come to verify. Unfortunately its real implication was not so well defined.
Rockwell cringed as the sudden air-currents partially reversed their direction. As yet there was no sign of lightning, but the sign and intensity of the space-charge left him in no doubt of the seriousness of his position. A glance at the electrometer warned him that he was already as good as dead. With the local space-charge exceeding five kilo-volts per metre and rapidly rising, the chances of a lightning strike were very high. The danger was increased tenfold by the fact that the smooth bamboo-like trunks of the adjacent trees were natural insulators. They would drop very little electrical resistance even when wet. In such a terrain, the landcat would be the inevitable target for the main-stroke when it came.
He brought the landcat to a halt and considered his chances. A small strike on the ‘cat would probably leave him unharmed. One of Baba’s mega-amp strokes would be a different matter. He had seen landcats reduced to solid slag in similar circumstances. He had the choice now as to whether to remain with the ‘cat or to take his chances in the open. Objectively, he knew the outcome would be the same. Instant carbonisation, he had called it, in a moment of jest. Only now, the humour had died from his lips.
The preferred method of pedestrian locomotion when exposed to Baban storms was indicated by the emergency card on the ‘cat’s windscreen. The recommendations did not appeal to him. ‘Crouch low with legs together, and hop. Take extreme care not to approach the ground or other objects with the hands or other parts of the body.’ Dignity alone forbade him from considering such an ignoble mode of exit. In any case, Rockwell was more interested in retaining the ‘cat’s facilities than in abandoning them. He decided to take the chance and remain within the ‘cat.
When the rain started, however, he knew he had been mistaken in his choice. The first blinding deluge changed swiftly to soft hail. Above him the sky grew bright momentarily with multiple pulses of diffuse sheet lightning taking place within the cloud itself. Things could not have been worse. The countercurrents of wind as registered by the writhing brush cautioned him that the maturing thunder-cell was now directly above him. There were perhaps five hundred thundercells maturing in this particular storm, but it was no coincidence that the first cell had risen with the landcat at its epicentre.
Storms on Baba were not to be confused with acts of God.
There was no action he could still take to secure his own personal safety. Having accepted this as a fact, his next priority was to ensure the continuance of the information he had risked his life to gain. No planetary circuits could be entrusted with the message. It was therefore to the supervising STA satellite circuits that he turned the ‘cat’s transmitter. Even as he set the tape loop to transmit the message, it came upon him that it was also, in a sense, his last will and testament. Despite the interference and the static, those same words frequently repeated could be reconstituted by coincidence-seeking computers. With this in mind, he chose his last words carefully.
Then the storm broke with malevolent fury. Eight centimetres of rain in seven and a half minutes had to be experienced to be believed. Rockwell, of course, had no knowledge of the bright spear of the lead-stroke of lightning which searched the random atmosphere looking for the path of least resistance. It found its target, as Rockwell had known for certain it would. But it was the massive return stroke which vaporised the ‘cat...
When the great hatches of the space ferry opened, Sector-Superintendent George Kinoul of the Space Territories Administration stepped out—and immediately found himself up to his crutch in tepid water. This discovery crinkled his shrewd face into a wreath of genuine amusement. It had been a long time since he had last landed at a spaceport so primitive that a concrete lagoon was used instead of the conventional landing bowl and sprays. His baptism in algae-green water was part of the price he must pay for having spent the last few years of Service life behind an office desk.
Ruefully he waded towards the far bunkers of the spaceport installation. Nothing except a flat barge appeared on the lagoon. From this he concluded that his intention of arriving unannounced had been successful. Sector-Superintendents did not arrive at minor planets without major cause and Kinoul had been in the game too many years to miss the implications. Besides which, Professor Rockwell had been a very close friend of his.
Around the extensive lagoon, a wealth of tropical vegetation edged over the concrete banks and sampled the waters with slim and abundant tendrils. Overall a ruthless tropical sun burned down and the rising heat and moisture from the shallow reaches of the lagoon caused potential mirages to appear and disappear. High above the rich greenness of the surrounding vegetation, a few giant birds circled lazily, carving great circles through the air against a white-hazed sky. Here, one could imagine, was the land of lotus-eaters, timeless, untroubled, and narcotically beautiful. That it had also been responsible for the destruction of one of the more astute of the STA consultants, was an injunction to be very wary.
The spaceport Controller was surprised to see him. No passengers had been advised on the space ferry. This was a measure of Kinoul’s ability to influence the system. The spaceport Controller’s operations licence had been signed by Kinoul’s own hand. He too agreed to let the Sector-Superintendent’s presence pass unrecorded. He even volunteered a landcat and driver to take Kinoul to the STA Ecological Station some five kilometres away.
The landcat edged out of its shadowed portico and headed across the extravagantly tropical countryside. It had been on the tip of Kinoul’s tongue to ask why a tracked landcat was preferable to a wheeled vehicle for transport. The unbroken sweep of lush vegetation gave its own answer. Baba had no use for roads. Save for the few tracks made by Terran vehicles, no paths existed. Although there were vast plantations filled to the brim with cultivated flora, nothing disturbed the lineless contours devised by Nature.
Their way led uphill and down; through valleys and over high ridges purple with florid poppies; and through green and sheltered tunnels beneath huge palmaceous fronds. Kinoul was impressed and enthralled. He sensed the thrusting vitality and richness of the indigenous life of Baba; the urgent insistence on a place in the sun, and the repayment of this right by a display of consummate and colourful beauty. This was the background to the dedicated and passionately enthusiastic researchers of the late Professor Rockwell.
At the Ecological Station, the resident-in-charge was a slight and frail young female ecologist. She viewed Kinoul’s unheralded arrival with the degree of consternation normally reserved for a major earthquake. Janice Howell had been Rockwell’s assistant. She presumably knew more than anyone on Baba the interests that the professor had been following immediately before the time of his death. Janice led Kinoul into a cool, dark office, shielded from the worst effects of the Baban sun, and sat with fierce concentration waiting for the dreaded Sector-Superintendent to begin his examination.
Kinoul tried to put her at her ease.
‘I expect you’re wondering what I’m doing here,’ he said kindly. ‘Well, Professor Rockwell was a long-standing friend of mine. I don’t need to say that his death has touched me deeply. I had the usual communication from the civil authorities on Baba and I’ve no reason to doubt their findings that he was the victim of a storm. But before he died, the professor took the unusual step of transmitting some information directly into the STA satellite circuits.’
Far from growing at ease, Janice’s frown tautened into a band which must have hurt her forehead, but she volunteered no reply. Kinoul continued his explanation.
‘Exactly what his message was, we shall probably never know. The signal was too corrupted by static to be decipherable. We think it was a repetitive message, probably from a tape loop. But it continued for too short a time for us to be able to reconstitute the sense. The only coherent phrase we could regain contained the words “...the thunder said...” And that’s what brings me here. I need to know what he was trying to tell us.’
‘Need it have been that important?’ Her voice was moulded logic, equally as cool as the room in which they sat.
‘I think it was.’ Kinoul followed the idea with certainty. ‘Satellite circuit frequencies are used only by STA executives in cases of extreme emergency. Even then, they’re used only when other means of communication aren’t available or advisable. The fact of his sending the message has two implications. The first is that Professor Rockwell believed the information was sufficiently important to merit the use of the emergency circuits. The second is that he was quite certain he wouldn’t get the chance to impart the information any other way.’
She screwed up her face in concentration. ‘I don’t really know what the Professor was doing that morning. He was engaged in one of his interminable rows with the Terran Trade Consortium. Some sort of field trial had been arranged. He wasn’t explicit about the details. He was completely certain it was all going to be a waste of time.’
‘Yet by the time he contacted the satellite he knew he was going to die. Tell me, Miss Howell, how could he-know he was in danger of being destroyed by lightning?’
She did not think she was meant to answer the question, and she did not attempt to do so. For the first time a slight relaxation crept into her puzzlement. The problem became more important than the circumstances surrounding it. She went to the cabinet and consulted the files, not so much because there were things she could not remember, but because the act of searching helped her to remember associated details which might otherwise have escaped her notice. It also gave her time to think.
‘How much do you already know?’ she asked. ‘The Professor had a theory that some of the indigenous life on Baba has a level of intelligence on the Manneschen Scale sufficient to make Terran exploitation illegal. He was thinking of the birds.’
‘I’ve seen it mooted in his reports, but the case has never seemed too clear. I’ve also read the official counterblast by the Terran Trade Consortium, which appeared to make the Professor’s speculations seem rather academic’
She smiled wanly. ‘On the contrary, the initial impetus was based on no more than a hunch. The academics came later. We’d noticed that the larger Baban birds appeared to have a strong system of social hierarchy.’
‘So have many insects,’ said Kinoul, ‘but that doesn’t prove the presence of intelligence.’
‘In itself, no. But it does imply some mechanism of social regulation. In many classes of creature, the regulating mechanism can be right down at the hormone-exchange level. This was found not to be true for the birds of Baba. We examined their class-structure more closely—and finally identified the king.’
‘King?’
‘Boss-bird, flock leader—call him what you will. There’s one bird out there who appears to direct and co-ordinate the activities of the others. But in observing him, we got a shock ourselves.’
‘What sort of a shock?’
Janice Howell summed him warily for a few seconds before replying.
‘I don’t know if you’re going to believe this, Superintendent. It took us a little while to accept it ourselves. But while we were observing the king we gradually became aware—that he was observing us.’
‘How long is it since you last went home on leave?’ asked Kinoul sharply.
The question produced the kind of reaction he had expected. She flushed with sudden anger.
‘I said you’d not believe me! But you’ll find the fact well documented in Professor Rockwell’s notes. And if there’s further proof you want, you can see it for yourself.’
She reached for the shutters and flung them back from the windows to admit the bright glare of Baban midday.
‘There’s the king, out there. He’s been watching this place all morning. Could it be that he’s trying to figure out the reason for the arrival of a Sector-Superintendent ?’
Kinoul approached the window and looked out. Looking back at him from the lower branches of a nearby tree was one of the beautiful light-grey birds of Baba. The magnificence of this particular bird was much enhanced by its size, which greatly exceeded that of the largest Terran eagle. Its appearance was that of a bird of prey, with long clawed, zygodactyl feet, and a curved, hooked bill which was turned towards the Terran with an expression Kinoul could only interpret as one of great acumen.
The Superintendent watched it speculatively for many minutes, then turned and closed the shutters after him.
‘And Professor Rockwell believed that these creatures have a high level of intelligence?’
‘He did. But he found it an uncommonly difficult thing to prove. They’re so well adapted to their environment that almost any of their action can be ascribed to instinct rather than intelligence. It’s never been possible to capture one alive, so we’ve been unable to measure their performance in the laboratory. Nor have we been able to encourage one to grow tame as a pet. In fact, all our knowledge of them has had to come from the dissection of dead carcases and from remote observations in the field. And as you probably saw for yourself just know, one tends to project one’s own feelings into the encounter, and that spoils the objectivity.’
‘Is there any micro-biological evidence to support the idea of high intelligence?’
‘On a cellular level, no. They’ve a larger brain than any Terran aviform, but superficially not more complex. But our understanding of Baban biological structures is still in its infancy. There are organisational differences in their brain-structure, the implications of which we can’t even begin to understand.’
‘So it’s still anybody’s guess,’ said Kinoul. ‘Do you think they’re intelligent?’
‘I don’t have any doubt of it.’
‘Then you’re to take the next ferry offworld for three months leave regardless of your entitlement. That’s an order.’
‘But why...?’ She seemed suddenly near to tears. ‘Don’t you think I know my job?’
‘I never questioned your job ability. I look at it this way. If you’re wrong about the birds, you’re wasting STA money by not approaching the subject with an open mind.’
‘And if I’m right?’ she asked, with a sudden flare of spirit.
“That’s the rub,’ said Kinoul. ‘If you’re right, you’re logically in the same danger as was Professor Rockwell. I should hate for you to be struck by lightning. You’re much too pretty and much too earnest to deserve a fate like that.’
In the humid and breathless air, the tremble of thunder sounded distantly. The evening had grown progressively more clouded and more threatening. Once Kinoul had seen the ferry bearing Janice Howell safely offworld, he had been able to relax. He stood at the porch of the Ecological Station and listened to the thunder echoing now from the untamed forests and now from the great plantations covering the low hills. At least two thundercells were active, about fifteen kilometres apart and still well distant, but they had a common origin in the mass of Baba-cumulus cloud which covered the whole storm area. From his position on the edge of the storm Kinoul could see where the upthrusting air-currents were being drawn into the cloud, raising cauliflower-heads of Baba-cumulonimbus like towers above the massing cloud. Where the thundercells were active, the cloud-tops were even higher, being dragged into great anvils by the upper winds. It was appropriately from the direction of these anvils that the sound of the hammers of wrath came distantly across the extravagant terrain.
Kinoul was full of silent speculation. The focus of the thundercells depended on a very delicate balance of Nature —the existence of a dynamic balance in the lower air which caused great upthrusting currents to form massive cylinders of rising air ten kilometres in height and possibly as much in diameter. These were the origin of the dreaded thundercells of Baba, many times more destructive than their Terran counterparts. But the sheer randomness and instability of the dynamic process appeared to make it impossible to determine where the new cells would be maturing while their brothers spent their energy and decayed.
Inside the still-open door there was piled on the table the masses of statistics and notes culled from Rockwell’s files. The radio-facsimile printer in the corner was occasionally issuing yet more sheets of data from its on-line link with the STA data banks. But the most interesting document of all was one which Kinoul held in his hand. It was a fragment torn from a scribble pad. In Rockwell’s own hand it asked simply: ‘Why do the birds attend a storm?’
The question was relevant. The onset of the storm had been heralded by the arrival of great flocks of the giant birds, wheeling and calling and darting together low over the verdant bush. It was possible to speculate that the presence of a storm presented an opportune time for gathering some favoured article of food and that it was this which attracted them. Or else the birds, recognising danger, had evacuated the storm centre and had retired to its perimeter waiting until it was safe to return. Neither of these explanations satisfied Kinoul.
His own observations suggested that the storm itself attracted the birds. Even as he watched, he could see many thousands of the giant creatures looping and flashing across the treetops like a band of furious angels. Heedless of the occasional heavy showers of rain, they appeared much intent on some purpose of their own. Kinoul brought out binoculars and studied them carefully, but the purpose of their activity remained a mystery.
Only one of the birds seemed unmoved by the proceedings. This was the bird which Janice Howell had called the king. He perched darkly in a darkening tree and paid as much attention to Kinoul as Kinoul paid to the rest of the scene. Curiously, the Sector Superintendent did not find its presence threatening. In a way it was vaguely comforting. The feeling made him think of Janice Howell’s scientifically-unproven tenet that here was an awareness and an intelligence.
Kinoul decided that his long vigil was playing havoc with his own objectivity. He shrugged impatiently and retired inside. His imagination had leaped to a vision of the great birds actually shepherding the storm. His equilibrium was not improved by finding a similar observation in the notes of Janice Howell.
The storm that broke overhead during the night was the worst he had ever experienced. Though no damage was done to the installation, he lay for many hours listening to its violent fury. And again and again, too frequently for it always to have been imagination, he thought he heard the sound of great wings.
* * * *
At the headquarter offices of the Terran Trade Consortium on Baba, Kinoul sought out an old acquaintance, John Mangostein, the Consortium’s local director. Mangostein, not having heard that Kinoul was on Baba, was duly surprised.
‘I take it, George, that you’re not here on vacation?’
‘Far from it,’ said Kinoul. ‘I’m here because Professor Rockwell died and because before he died he tried to give us a message which didn’t get through.’
‘Well I’m afraid I can’t help you there. We discovered his ‘cat burnt-out in the forest and we sent you a summary of our findings. There’s little we can add to that.’
‘He was working on a theory that the birds of Baba possess a high innate intelligence.’
‘I was aware of his theory. It just didn’t happen to fit the facts.’
‘But you realise the implications behind the idea?’
‘Sure!’ Mangostein nodded sagely. ‘Under Space Conventions, it’s forbidden to exploit any planet where an indigenous life-form can be shown to have an intelligence rating above four on the Manneschen Scale. Sorry, George, but you won’t make that one stick. There’s not one shred of evidence that the birds out there rate more than one point two Manneschen—that’s about the same as a Terran chicken.’
‘Rockwell didn’t appear to think so.’
‘Let’s face it, George. Rockwell was not exactly in his prime. Now I know he was a friend of yours, so don’t take this amiss. But when he died he was closing up to sixty-five years of age, and well past retirement. Every man is entitled to the dreams of his dotage, but don’t let’s confuse them with reality.’
‘I’m trying to preserve an open mind,’ said Kinoul. ‘So to do justice to you all, I’ve opted to make an independent assessment.’
‘Yours? With respect, you’re not a trained ecologist, or an extra-terrestrial biologist. If your conclusions conflict with those of my specialists, I’d have no choice but to fight you through every court in the Galaxy.’
‘I hope it won’t come to that,’ said Kinoul. ‘But present evidence suggests you may be wrong—so wrong, in fact, that you’d be laughed out of even primary court.’
‘That’s a bold statement, George. But I’d be interested in hearing your evidence.’
‘Very well!’ said Kinoul. ‘Let’s consider first what the Manneschen Scale is supposed to represent. It claims to be a measure of alien intelligence. In the final analysis it’s purely a measure of the intelligence that can be communicated in terms a human estimator can understand. Communication is an essential feature in establishing a Manneschen level.’
‘Granted. But the ability to communicate is also an essential part of the concept of intelligence. An IQ of a thousand sealed up in a box is a nil intelligence as far as the rest of the universe is concerned.’
‘Then let’s look at intelligence as a survival factor. Species-wise, if your environment contains something you can’t tolerate, you either evolve so that the worry factor is of lesser importance—or you use your intelligence directly to manipulate your environment. You either develop long legs to run from the tiger, or you invent a gun with which to shoot it.’
‘I don’t see where you’re leading, George.’
‘Then tell me—has a bird on Baba ever directly injured a man?’
‘There were a couple of incidents in the early days when we were clearing the nests from the plantation areas. Finally we shot a few of the beasties and I don’t think there’s been a case since.’
‘Did it ever strike you as odd that shooting a few should have an effect on the behaviour of them all?’
‘I don’t think I ever thought about it. I suppose we just assumed...’ Mangostein paused in mid-sentence.
‘You just assumed that the creatures had learnt their lesson,’ supplied Kinoul. ‘A lesson learnt by a few, which radically altered the behaviour of the whole species. That’s a rare exercise in communication, by any standards. And you still maintain they’re devoid of intelligence?’
‘You’re splitting hairs,’ said Mangostein disgustedly. ‘What we really assumed is that when we stopped attacking the nests, they stopped attacking us. Though perhaps they do have intelligence enough to have a rudimentary language. But does that really alter the point ? We need the agricultural products we can grow on Baba. The plantations supply a lot of the essential alkaloids and natural organic derivatives which can’t economically be produced on Terra. The birds don’t use the space for a damn thing.’
‘Except to live in.’ Kinoul was critical. ‘It’s a questionable morality for us to acquire their living space simply to save ourselves a little commercial inconvenience.’
‘Are you going soft, George?’ asked Mangostein. ‘Isn’t that the way of all humanity since the beginning of time?’
‘On Terra, yes. But we’d hoped not to bring that particular trait with us to the stars. That’s why the Space Conventions were formulated.’
‘But you can’t cite one major instance where the birds use intelligence to manipulate elements of their environment to their own advantage.’
T think I can,’ said Kinoul quietly. ‘You see, it looks as though they have the ability to create and control the storms.’
‘Ah, so that’s your line!’ Mangostein moved stray locks of hair back from his forehead. ‘Beavers manipulate streams by building dams, remember. But that doesn’t qualify them for a high IQ.’
‘But you don’t deny the birds can manipulate storms?’
‘I don’t deny they associate with storms. I’d be very doubtful about their ability to control them. But whatever they do is an instinctive approach. It has nothing to do with intelligence.’
‘Then it gives you a hard question to answer. For the first couple of years you imported a considerable quantity of bird repellent field-dressing for seed protection. Then you stopped importing it. Why?’
‘There’s no mystery there. It was only necessary for certain crops. These crops we finally ceased to grow.’
‘Why? Did the birds get them?’
‘No. The venture proved uneconomic. As a matter of fact the plantations were all destroyed by storms.’
‘And how many types of crop which didn’t need bird-repellent dressings have had to be abandoned because of storms?’
‘Very few.’
‘Yet you refuse to accept the obvious conclusion that the birds directed the storms to destroy the plantations because they objected to the field-dressing?’
‘Yes, because it doesn’t fit the facts. It took us a long while to work out the answers, but the picture finally emerged. You see, the birds didn’t direct the storms to those fields—we did it ourselves.’
‘You?’
‘So our latest theory runs. We had asked Professor Rockwell to investigate the causal relationship between field-dressing and the incidence of storms. Unfortunately we couldn’t accept his findings that the correlation was due to avian intelligence. We therefore challenged him to put our own theory to the test.’
‘With what result?’
‘I’m truly sorry, George—but the resulting storm was the one which killed him.’
‘Then you’d better let me have the facts,’ said Kinoul, because this is one experiment which will have to be repeated.’
* * * *
Kinoul drove the landcat as far as he was able, finally coming to the edge of one of the great plantations where huge crimson plants were obviously under intensive cultivation. Not wishing to damage the crop, he necessarily had to skirt the fields. Soon his way was obstructed by wide irrigation channels and an unusual density of palms and bamboo-like vegetation which congregated close to the abundant water.
By trial he found he could proceed faster on foot than by landcat. The tall fronds overhead gave him a welcome shade which made his labours with a machette just about tolerable in the heat. Beneath the undergrowth his way was brightened by all manner of incredible flowers and orchids. In the little rills and streams which broke away from the main watercourse, a million rainbow water-creatures flashed brilliant in the occasional shafts of sunlight. The air was alive with heavy scents, unfamiliar, yet decidedly heady and pleasant. The brush was athrob with the rasp and whisper of living and thrusting yet virtually unseen fauna and overall came the long, clear calls of the great birds sporting in the high trees.
Half an hour’s exertions brought him to the place he had selected. The instrumented radio-pocketpack verified his position. He glanced at his watch and noted the time, then made a radiocall to the control centre of the Terran Consortium. Finally he returned the pocketset to the frequency of the supervising satellite and left the channel open.
He now faced a period of waiting. He occupied himself by studying the spacious trees rising above and appreciating the intense vigour of life in the brush on all sides. His position had placed him roughly on the edge of the forest and close to the great plantation whose florid blooms he could just discern as a sea of bright redness beyond the thinning treeline.
Life on Baba was thrusting and abundant, whether natural or cultivated in form. The urgent insistence of every living thing on the right to attempt to survive and multiply, was a message which he read very plainly. From the giant birds in the high branches down to the minutest insects underfoot, Baba was vibrantly; almost ecstatically, alive.
Within the hour he heard the sound of the Consortium’s helicopters far out in a circle around him. They were spraying bird-repellent across literally hectares of plantation and forest. By careful pre-arrangement they kept their distance and left a clear kilometre radius between him and the broad band of chemical emulsion which descended from their sprays. Using his binoculars, Kinoul watched the birds in the high, heavy roof of trees. They seemed attentive and aware of the event, but not unduly perturbed. As Mangostein had predicted, the great birds of Baba appeared to consider it no great concern of theirs.
Unconvinced, Kinoul sat down to await the next phase of the prediction. The theory was simple. As the emulsion dried upon the foliage it whitened—and in so doing increased the infra-red reflection over a local area to such an extent that broad thermal currents were caused to rise. These upset the equilibrium of Baba’s permanently unstable weather. Like Terra, Baba’s atmosphere was a gigantic heat-engine, drawing its energy from its sun. It was unlike Terra inasmuch as there were no great seas or substantial mountains to continually moderate the pattern. Baba was one great ball of virtually continuous tropical forest with an almost uniform absorption of radiant heat. Very little change in surface reflectively was needed before the hair-trigger sensitivity of the dynamic forces in the upper air would respond by producing a major thunderstorm.
It had been the contention of the Consortium investigators that any substantial change in surface reflectivity would be likely to initiate a storm. The theory was that the spraying of bird-repellent over a large area was itself sufficient to trigger the effect. They maintained that the destruction of the plantations so treated was in no way due to the presence of the birds. If this was proven, it left a deep gap in Rockwell’s case for avian intelligence. It was putting this theory to the test that had cost Rockwell his life.
Now Kinoul was having the experiment repeated, with himself at the proposed storm centre. He realised he could have observed the event more safely from a distance, but he was still unconvinced about the role of the birds merely as followers of the storm. His view, confirmed by Rockwell’s notes, was that the birds played an active part in the development of the storm. Kinoul felt that it was imperative that he understood the nature of the relationship between the avians and the forces of the sky. This was why he was placing his life at risk in the same manner as had Rockwell.
With his binoculars he constantly scanned the leafy heights and the patches of sky beyond. His first observation was the formation of a haze across the sun and the slow gathering of clouds. Perhaps the birds noticed it too, because one by one they split the leafy screen and rose lazily upwards to circle the area and then to fly beyond his ken. Presently none of them remained.
Kinoul felt he should have quit then—before the storm broke. Having determined the reason for the cloud’s formation, there was no logical sense in remaining to suffer the discomfort and danger of the aftermath. The ‘cat was only a kilometre distant and he judged he had ample time to gain it and be heading for clear weather before the fury broke. Yet some instinct urged him to remain and follow the development through.
As he turned and surveyed the tunnel formed under the great palms he felt a sudden sense of something unusual. The feeling was incredibly strong, yet for a moment he had difficulty in placing the factor which warned him. Then he realised that, whereas a minute earlier, the lesser wildlife-in the brush had been swarming industriously, all was now silent. Even the minute creatures in the bushes had run away and hidden themselves in whatever lairs they possessed. The swift transition from industry to the forlorn sense of desolation and desertion, was a contrast not to be treated with equanimity. He could only guess at the rising electrical charge, but the creatures knew its value. And the mechanics of natural selection had taught them to be very much afraid.
Slowly the cloud grew and a darkness descended. An overall shade killed what had been shadows and overlaid everything with even deeper shadow. This was an unusual and premature night, where the only suggestion of light crept in at the edges, providing surreal and impossible illumination for an impossible and surreal scene. Even the solitary leaves ceased their movement as the slight perpetual breeze was quelled by the depths of a mighty calm.
Kinoul now began to regard the trees with a new appreciation of their form. Almost sapless, their glazed trunks and knuckled joints had been fashioned by evolution to become almost perfect high-voltage insulators. When the electrical potentials of a growing storm approached seven or more kilovolts per metre, survival frequently depended on having either a high electrical resistance, or else in being very small. It was no accident that Baba possessed no large vertebrates except for birds. From his original contention that being struck by lightning was only a slight possibility, Kinoul was now forced to the conclusion that the probability ran uncomfortably high. Like Rockwell, he had already made the mistake of remaining in the area too long.
He felt the distinct bite of the bright and eager wind rushing towards the centre of the forming thundercell. It crossed his mind that it might at least be advisable to move away from the cell centre, but he decided it would be labour in vain. The darkness had continued to close until soon it was almost complete. It was no longer possible even to walk without tripping over trailing creepers and rotting logs.
In any case, he would have been halted by the rain. Never before in his life had he experienced anything to compare with the force of the deluge which descended. Although partly protected by the leafy screen above, the force of the falling water was a physical, bruising hurtfulness which thrashed his head and shoulders and soaked him instantly. Using his hands to protect his head against the beating streams, he staggered close against the bole of a large tree, gasping for breath as the water cascaded down his face and into his mouth and nose. Beneath his feet the forest floor became a minor river which rose halfway to his knees with unbelievable rapidity. With his legs trapped in a sea of muddy loam, he could only wait in shocked anticipation to see what the elements would deal to him next.
He did not have long to wait. Soft hail as large as hen’s eggs thrashed his soaked and unprotected shoulders and tore at his ears. He kept his hands protectively over his head and his face he kept down, with his forehead pressed against the tree. The chill shock of the semi-liquid snowballs against his spine caused his teeth to chatter and reduced him to a degree of wretchedness quite beyond his previous experience. If there was any consolation it was only that the sky had lightened somewhat to an overall murky grey, still forbidding but at least permitting him to see the details of the environment which caused him such discomfort. Nothing in his tribulations, however, quite prepared him for what followed.
There was an explosion to his right which he could have been excused for confusing with the bursting of a bomb. By some miracle the pilot stroke had sought a position some thirty metres distant. The mega-amp return stroke had literally vaporised a dozen trees in the dissipation of its energy. The sound of this barbarous event was prolonged, with the near effects arising first and apparently receding into the sky due to the limited speed of sound and the rapidly increasing distance of the ionised trail. It was a travesty of the actual speed and sequence of the pilot and return stroke.
Kinoul knew he was lucky still to be alive. The fantastic discharge current would be distributed radially through the local terrain. If the ground resistance was even only a fraction of an ohm per metre, the voltage drop between the legs of a standing man could still accrue to several kilovolts. Especially for a person as effectively earthed as he was at this moment. Thoughtfully he kept his legs pressed even closer together, though he suspected that he owed his life more to the conductivity of the water in which he stood than he did to any survival maxim.
Short though the period may have been, he could clearly differentiate between the pilot and the following dart leaders which accommodated themselves of most of the same ionised pathway through the skies. No less than seven dart strokes rocked the forest in the near vicinity. The roar of their explosive effects combined in a continuing cacophony of violent destruction. When his eyes had cleared of their brilliance and his ears of their thunder he was amazed to find how many surrounding trees had been destroyed. He was even more amazed to find that his own puny life had been spared.
Half deafened and with his nostrils rebelling at the ozone and vaporised sap, he clung to the one great bole which had somehow been his saviour. But he had little doubts about his final chances of survival. The thundercell above him was only just coming to maturity. It had many times the previously spent energy still at its disposal before it fell into decay probably an hour hence. In this time it would reexamine the electrical terrain beneath it, discount what had already fallen, and concentrate its energy on new paths of favoured low resistance. One such path must certainly include the soaking wet and upstanding body of George Kinoul and the tree beneath which he sheltered.
It was at this point that he thought he must be going mad. The whole forest seemed to come alive with movement, indistinct and impossible to identify in the dim light, but nevertheless crowded with life. His imagination painted a momentary picture of an attack by an army of giant rats. Then he rationalised his fears and decided that the fantastic gathering beneath the treetops could only consist of the giant Baban birds. Leaping, hopping and flying they came in a complete mass through the trees, like an animated wall of grey movement. Their alien mewing, soft though it was, completely drowned-out the sounds of storm.
What their purpose was, Kinoul had no means of knowing. He did not think it was to attack him, although he was obviously the focus of their attentions. He was no physical match for one aggressive bird, let alone the thousands who filled the forest spaces. Within minutes he was completely surrounded, but he received no more harm than the occasional accidental brush with a wingtip. Then as if by some signal, the whole mass flew upwards, shattering the leafy screen above as they made their exit beneath the base of the storm. There they flew in their thousands close above the trees like a great organic whirlpool.
Forgetting his own wretchedness, Kinoul emerged into a relatively open space and watched with open-mouthed fascination. Wider and wider spread the circle of the great wings. More and more birds flew in every minute from the distant skyline to join the marvellous roundabout, which spread like a spiral nebula right across the sky. Nor was it lost on him that the thundercell above went into rapid and impotent decay. The thunder which still growled ominously, retreated almost to the far side of the forest.
With the sky lightening rapidly in this area, the birds wheeled and chased the darker regions to repeat their fantastic exorcism at a gradually increasing distance. With the first traces of sun beginning to break through, Kinoul watched them go regretfully. There was no doubt at all in his mind that their deliberate and incredible action had saved his life. Not only did they shepherd the maturing storms, but they also had the ability to congregate and rise up and destroy a thundercell in full maturity. Such a degree of proficiency in controlling their environment was not a gift given to many creatures—not even to Man.
As Kinoul began to move back to his ‘cat, soaked and muddy and more than a little wearied by the experience, he realised that he was not quite alone. One of the giant birds had remained with him in the brush and was regarding him fixedly from a cautious distance. From its stance and apparent acumen he suspected that this was the same bird which had watched him at the Ecological Station. The one which Janice Howell had called the king...
As he passed it, Kinoul saluted gravely with a mud-stained hand.
‘I think you’ve made your point, Mr. King. I don’t think Manneschen ever considered this sort of possibility. But that was mainly due to our own limitations in understanding what constitutes a communication. Before Rockwell, nobody ever thought to listen to what the thunder said.’