NABC Book 5: Chapter 54: Education
Book 5: Chapter 54: Education
Book 5: Chapter 54: Education
Icarus
August 2337
Roanoke
Isauntered casually along a tree-lined boulevard, admiring the flowers and various pieces of artwork. Okay, they weren’t really trees, although they filled a similar ecological niche. But the flowers were really flowers, and they seemed to have insect pollinators. Or something that filled that niche.
I sighed and decided to stop overanalyzing. This was an alien ecosystem, with its own evolutionary history. But so far, every biological environment the Bobs had examined followed the same general patterns. At the base of the ecosystem was something plantlike that converted energy to biomass. It didn’t have to be sunlight—even on Earth, entire fumarole-based ecologies had evolved around chemosynthesis—but the idea was the same.
Then something would evolve to eat the plants. Then something else would evolve to eat the plant eaters. Then something would evolve to parasitize everyone in sight. Viruses, microbes of every kind, fungi ... Life followed certain patterns, probably simply because they were the paths of least resistance.
But because of all of this, I was enjoying a stroll down a tree-lined path on a totally alien planet.
“I can’t believe we haven’t done this before,” Dae said beside me. “The mannies are just so much more real than VR.”
“Mm, yeah, but we knew that from Howard’s blog, if nothing else. We’ve just never stopped long enough to smell the, uh ... ” I made a helpless gesture at some nameless bed of flowers.
Dae stopped and took a deep breath. “I suppose from a strict efficiency point of view, this is a pointless distraction. But it’s not like we’re on a schedule.”
I frowned. “I’m not entirely sure we aren’t. The whole vanished civilizations thing does lend a little urgency to our investigation.”
“Yeah, okay, point taken. How’s the scanning going?”
I pointed in the direction of the library, for that was what it had turned out to be, and we headed that way. “Children’s books,” I said. “Gotta love ‘em. See Dick run. See Jane run. Dick sees Jane. Run, Jane, run.”
“No shortage of animals,” Dae said.
“Hmm?”
“There are no Roanokians anywhere. No corpses, no vehicles abandoned in mid-street, no evidence of a hasty exit or mass death. And the plants and animals seem to be unaffected. No matter how I parse it, Icky, this looks like a planned exodus.”
“Assuming they aren’t all in stasis pods in some underground bunker.”
Dae started to reply, then caught himself. “I was about to say how dumb that is, but we are dealing with aliens. Maybe let’s do a SUDDAR sweep.”
*****
We wanted to get it right, so the sweep took three days. A polar orbit, doing orange-slice passes as the planet rotated, eventually resulted in a thorough sensor map of the planet to several miles in depth.
“Nothing,” Dae muttered, slapping his video window. It obediently spun on its axis, then settled back into place.
“Well, lots of interesting stuff, but I know what you mean,” I replied. “No trace of a Roanokian population hiding in caves.”
“Uh-huh. So I can’t see any other conclusion. Voluntarily or otherwise, the entire population of the planet just up and left, in an orderly manner.”
“Which you could put down to species psychology if it was just the Roanokians, but every planet we’ve visited, with any number of different intelligent species, is the same.”
Dae shook his head slowly. “I have a bad feeling we won’t like the explanation.”