the rest of you can be saved. I had to do it!'
'You
didn't do it very well,' Osden said, standing half-naked, all rib and bandage,
at the door of his cubicle. 'I could have hit myself harder. Hell, it isn't me
that's scaring you blind, Porlock, it's out there - there, in the woods!'
Porlock
made an ineffectual attempt to assault Osden; Asnanifoil held him back, and
continued to hold him effortlessly while Mannon gave him a sedative shot. He
was put away shouting about giant radios. In a minute the sedative took effect,
and he joined a peaceful silence to Eskwana's.
'All
right,' said Harfex. 'Now, Osden, you'll tell us what you know and all you
know.'
Osden
said, 'I don't know anything.'
He
looked battered and faint. Tomiko made him sit down before he talked.
'After
I'd been three days in the forest, I thought I was occasionally receiving some
kind of affect.'
'Why
didn't you report it?'
'Thought
I was going spla, like the rest of you.'
That,
equally, should have been reported.'
'You'd
have called me back to base. I couldn't take it. You realize that my inclusion
in the mission was a bad mistake. I'm not able to coexist with nine other
neurotic personalities at close quarters. I was wrong to volunteer for Extreme
Survey, and the Authority was wrong to accept me.'
No
one spoke; but Tomiko saw, with certainty this time, the flinch in Osden's
shoulders and the tightening of his facial muscles, as he registered their
bitter agreement.
'Anyhow,
I didn't want to come back to base because I was curious. Even going psycho,
how could I pick up empathic affects when there was no creature to emit them?
They weren't bad, then. Very vague. Queer. Like a draft in a closed room, a flicker
in the corner of your eye. Nothing really.'
For
a moment he had been borne up on their listening; they heard, so he spoke. He
was wholly at their mercy. If they disliked him he had to be hateful; if they
mocked him he became grotesque; if they listened to him he was the storyteller.
He was helplessly obedient to the demands of their emotions, reactions, moods.
And there were seven of them, too many to cope with, so that he must be
constantly knocked about from one to another's whim. He could not find
coherence. Even as he spoke and held them, somebody's attention would wander:
Olleroo perhaps was thinking that he wasn't unattractive, Harfex was seeking
the ulterior motive of his words, Asnanifoil's mind, which could not be long
held by the concrete, was roaming off towards the eternal peace of number, and
Tomiko was distracted by pity, by fear. Osden's voice faltered. He lost the
thread. 'I ... I thought it must be the trees,' he said, and stopped.
'It's
not the trees,' Harfex said. 'They have no more nervous system than do plants
of the Hainish Descent on Earth. None.'
'You're
not seeing the forest for the trees, as they say on Earth,' Mannon put in,
smiling elfinly; Harfex stared at him. 'What about those root-nodes we've been
puzzling about for twenty days - eh?'
'What
about them?'
'They
are, indubitably, connections. Connections among the trees. Right? Now let's
just suppose, most improbably, that you knew nothing of animal brain-structure.
And you were given one axon, or one detached glial cell, to examine. Would you
be likely to discover what it was? Would you see that the cell was capable of
sentience?'
'No.
Because it isn't. A single cell is capable of mechanical response to stimulus.
No more. Are you hypothesizing that individual arboriformes are
"cells" in a kind of brain, Mannon?'
'Not
exactly. I'm merely pointing out that they are all interconnected, both by the
root-node linkage and by your green epiphytes in the branches. A linkage of
incredible complexity and physical extent. Why, even the prairie grass-forms
have those root-connectors, don't they? I know that sentience or intelligence
isn't a thing, you can't find it in, or analyze it out from, the cells of a
brain. It's a function of the connected cells. It is, in a sense,
'You
didn't do it very well,' Osden said, standing half-naked, all rib and bandage,
at the door of his cubicle. 'I could have hit myself harder. Hell, it isn't me
that's scaring you blind, Porlock, it's out there - there, in the woods!'
Porlock
made an ineffectual attempt to assault Osden; Asnanifoil held him back, and
continued to hold him effortlessly while Mannon gave him a sedative shot. He
was put away shouting about giant radios. In a minute the sedative took effect,
and he joined a peaceful silence to Eskwana's.
'All
right,' said Harfex. 'Now, Osden, you'll tell us what you know and all you
know.'
Osden
said, 'I don't know anything.'
He
looked battered and faint. Tomiko made him sit down before he talked.
'After
I'd been three days in the forest, I thought I was occasionally receiving some
kind of affect.'
'Why
didn't you report it?'
'Thought
I was going spla, like the rest of you.'
That,
equally, should have been reported.'
'You'd
have called me back to base. I couldn't take it. You realize that my inclusion
in the mission was a bad mistake. I'm not able to coexist with nine other
neurotic personalities at close quarters. I was wrong to volunteer for Extreme
Survey, and the Authority was wrong to accept me.'
No
one spoke; but Tomiko saw, with certainty this time, the flinch in Osden's
shoulders and the tightening of his facial muscles, as he registered their
bitter agreement.
'Anyhow,
I didn't want to come back to base because I was curious. Even going psycho,
how could I pick up empathic affects when there was no creature to emit them?
They weren't bad, then. Very vague. Queer. Like a draft in a closed room, a flicker
in the corner of your eye. Nothing really.'
For
a moment he had been borne up on their listening; they heard, so he spoke. He
was wholly at their mercy. If they disliked him he had to be hateful; if they
mocked him he became grotesque; if they listened to him he was the storyteller.
He was helplessly obedient to the demands of their emotions, reactions, moods.
And there were seven of them, too many to cope with, so that he must be
constantly knocked about from one to another's whim. He could not find
coherence. Even as he spoke and held them, somebody's attention would wander:
Olleroo perhaps was thinking that he wasn't unattractive, Harfex was seeking
the ulterior motive of his words, Asnanifoil's mind, which could not be long
held by the concrete, was roaming off towards the eternal peace of number, and
Tomiko was distracted by pity, by fear. Osden's voice faltered. He lost the
thread. 'I ... I thought it must be the trees,' he said, and stopped.
'It's
not the trees,' Harfex said. 'They have no more nervous system than do plants
of the Hainish Descent on Earth. None.'
'You're
not seeing the forest for the trees, as they say on Earth,' Mannon put in,
smiling elfinly; Harfex stared at him. 'What about those root-nodes we've been
puzzling about for twenty days - eh?'
'What
about them?'
'They
are, indubitably, connections. Connections among the trees. Right? Now let's
just suppose, most improbably, that you knew nothing of animal brain-structure.
And you were given one axon, or one detached glial cell, to examine. Would you
be likely to discover what it was? Would you see that the cell was capable of
sentience?'
'No.
Because it isn't. A single cell is capable of mechanical response to stimulus.
No more. Are you hypothesizing that individual arboriformes are
"cells" in a kind of brain, Mannon?'
'Not
exactly. I'm merely pointing out that they are all interconnected, both by the
root-node linkage and by your green epiphytes in the branches. A linkage of
incredible complexity and physical extent. Why, even the prairie grass-forms
have those root-connectors, don't they? I know that sentience or intelligence
isn't a thing, you can't find it in, or analyze it out from, the cells of a
brain. It's a function of the connected cells. It is, in a sense,
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