Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

that Penser could remember his name out of so many. He stood there and said nothing.
    “Untie his hands,” Penser said.
    Pite undid the cords. Bram flexed his fingers, feeling the circulation come back.
    “I’m told,” Penser said, “that you are a biologist.”
    Bram found his voice. “I’m more of a molecular artisan,” he said. “I haven’t really done much work in macrobiology.”
    “No matter,” Penser said. “I’m also told that you are able to read the touch language.”
    Bram swallowed. “No human can do that,” he said.
    Penser gestured toward the waistwatch that Bram was wearing. “And yet you use one of their instruments,” he said.
    “Telling time is easy,” Bram said. “It’s only a matter of feeling the position of numbers. Simple outlines that don’t change. Any human child could be taught to do it. It’s not the same as understanding the Great Language.”
    “Don’t lie to me,” Penser said softly.
    “I’m not lying.”
    Behind Bram, Pite sighed. “Brammo, we know about all the time you spent stretched out on those tickle machines. Remember? Waller was keeping track of you.”
    Bram tried to make them understand. “I can pick out broad areas of cilia movement, that’s true. Outlines that enclose meaning. Maybe that’s not a common talent. I guess it isn’t, though it ought to be. That’s good enough for numbers, some names, general subject headings that give me the drift of things. I can detect some nuances of emotion that surround the … the essence . . . just as you could tell that a man was angry about a particular something by the tone of his voice and his gestures, even if you didn’t understand language, and from that infer some of his meaning. It’s—it’s like a child who’s too young to read being able to look through his picture book and recognize the shapes of the letters and the limited number of things they’re associated with—‘P’ for ‘potato,’ for instance. But he still can’t read. I guess what I’m saying is that I have a certain amount of pattern recognition, even though the patterns aren’t compatible with the human nervous system.”
    “That may suffice,” Penser said.
    It was hard to resist Penser. As unprepossessing as was his appearance, the man radiated an uncanny force of will that made you want to please him. Bram had to remind himself that Penser’s reasonable tones stood for dead Nar, broken heads, Pite’s firebottles. He shook his head angrily to rid himself of Penser’s influence.
    “I won’t help you,” he said.
    “What did I tell you?” Pite said. “Want me to give him a touch of current?”
    “I don’t think that’s necessary yet,” Penser said. The bruised eyes regarded Bram sorrowfully. “Bram, I hope to persuade you that whether you help me or not will make no difference to the outcome of this affair. You may tell yourself, if you wish, that helping to move the tree out of Nar reach sooner rather than later may save Nar and human lives in the long run. But one way or the other, you will be persuaded.”
    Bram said thickly, “I’m not cooperating, whatever you do. Anyway, I don’t know anything about moving trees.”
    Penser seemed not to have heard him. He turned and stared out the lenticel again with his hands clasped behind him. It was night again outside the oval transparency, after the quarter turn the tree’s crown had made on its axis since Bram had entered the room, and a blurred dappling of stars could be seen through the membrane.
    “It’s a simple matter, really,” Penser said almost to himself, “just a question of overriding the tree’s own tropisms. The first problem is to get it out of low orbit. Light pressure isn’t strong enough for that. Nor can I use the rocket engines of the various vehicles garaged here; the tree’s far too massive to move that way. The tree itself uses its own gases—builds them up and spurts them out under pressure, always orienting itself to break out of orbit. Ordinarily it would have done so by now—trees don’t like to linger near planetary masses. But a chemical inhibitor’s being metered into the tree’s circulatory system through the pumping station. We have to find it and turn it off. But first we have to identify it. We don’t want to go into retrograde orbit and fall through the atmosphere.”
    He said it calmly. Bram was appalled at the risks the man was prepared to take. It was as if Penser wooed death.
    “The next problem,”