Barbarians

The commander was immersed in a conversation when I arrived in his office. I ordered my drone to stop a respectful distance away and wait.

He complied, but fidgeted as we waited, scratching himself with his left, middle appendage and staring at the other drones, before dropping back down onto his back four legs. He whimpered as he resisted the urge to run over and smell them, then, after a few minutes, he shifted all of his weight onto his backmost appendages, and lowered my pot to his middle set so he could reach one of the small nectar fruits growing among my lower branches.

I nicked one of his fingers with a thorn in reproof. The poor thing let out a soft yip and stuck the injured digit in his mouth, staring at me in confused pain.

It wasn't his fault. I hadn't raised him, or any of my drones, for this kind of work. I was perfectly mobile without them. I had grown several walking vines to that end. Unfortunately the commander believed in old-world manners. His etiquette dictated that a proper plant, one with background and upbringing, never traveled on his own limbs.

It also dictated that one did not allow drones to feed in public.

A few minutes passed before the commander finished his conversation, and his long stemmed underling had his drone carry him out the door.

I waited until the commander wafted a biochemical acknowledgement my way.

My drone carried me up and set me next to my superior.

In my time working under him, I had met with the commander numerous times, but he never stopped intimidating me. Where I needed only one drone to carry me, the commander needed four strong ones. By all rights he should have been transplanted into the forest with the other elders, but he had elected to extend his mobile phase for the sake of his job. He towered over me, easily blocking my access to the simulated sun at the top of the room.

Then there were his nulls. Everyone has a few nulls, but the commander must have hundreds. Pollinating nulls fluttered around the room, some landing lightly on me for a moment before flying off in search of someone who was flowering. Cleaning nulls climbed through his branches and over his leafs, and I detected pheromones from some fertilizing nulls living in his soil. There were even a few large nulls living in hollows of his trunk, darting out occasionally to remove dead leafs and branches. Some of them, I suspected, were purely decorative, making the collection all the more impressive.

I extended a leafy branch which he immediately engulfed with one of his own, communication chemicals flowing rapidly between us.

"Greetings, and thank you for coming." He was formal without seeming too aloof. "I reviewed your reports before you came. They were enlightening."

The chemicals he released indicated a genuine note of respect. Relief flooded me. Though it would be difficult for the commander to remove me from my post, there were a million ways he could make my life more difficult or undercut my authority. Most of the efforts of my people were focused on colonizing our new world. Though I ran a dozen major projects occurring throughout our new solar system, I was considered a rank lower than anyone running any project on our world.

"Thank you, sir."

"Before we discuss the major issue, I'd like to address some smaller concerns. You mentioned some asteroids that might be worth mining?"

"Yes sir. For their minerals. I've been keeping track of the work by the terraforming team, and one of the problems they're having is in the makeup of the soil. We didn't bring enough dirt with us to cover the entire planet, so we have to make something usable with what we have here. I've been keeping an eye out and I discovered an asteroid belt with several rocks rich in nutrients we need."

This particular project didn't interest me as much as some others, but if I could pull it off, then I could prove validity and purpose in my work. Showing the higher ups, like the commander, what advantages there were to paying attention to the entire solar system gave me a shot at getting my hands on the resources I needed for my more interesting projects.

"It'll take a while to get to them and drag them back here," I continued. "But going by the terraforming projects timetable, I can have them here with time to spare."

"My concern is your recommendation to use the asteroids as nurseries as part of the mining effort. It seems more reasonable to me that we assign drones to the project."

"I'd considered that." I made my reply carefully, trying to keep my chemical levels at a low, casual level. Like all older plants, putting any buds in anything that even looked like danger could be a career killer. "The truth is, creating a safe environment for buds would be significantly easier than creating a safe environment for drones. Given the minerals in question, some of these asteroids are ideal for encouraging rapid and healthy growth. As the buds grow, they break the rocks apart with minimal effort, and the lower gravity will actually encourage their development. Using drones we'd be certain to lose at least half, whereas buds could get the same work done with almost no danger."

"Almost no danger?"

"There's always a chance something could go wrong, of course, but statistically it's barely more dangerous than a ship nursery."

"Barely more is still more." The Commander's chemicals were overpowering, brooking no debate. "I'll have the necessary drones transferred to you by the end of the week."

I forced myself to hold back my reply. He'd only tell me that I'd let myself get too attached to my drones, and maybe he'd be right. Still, needless waste made my roots feel like they'd found tainted water.

"You also proposed that we replace our existing calendar with one based on our new solar system?"

"Not replace." I corrected him. "Not yet, anyway. As long as the majority of the population is living on the ship there's no need to switch over completely, but we need to start thinking in the long term. When we complete the terraforming, and begin moving onto the planet, we'll be experiencing shorter days and longer seasons. The researchers and workers on planet are already going through that change. From what I hear, it's fairly stressful for them. I think making some small changes now will ease the transition later. Start keeping track of standard time, and solar time for now. Later, maybe we can look at adjusting the ship's seasons a little."

The commander seemed pleased. "I've been pushing for similar changes, but convincing the forest of elders has proved difficult. They can be as immobile as their roots."

By the standards of those of us who had been born in this new solar system, the commander was virtually intractable, but when you compared him to the plants old enough to remember our home world, he was abnormally progressive.

"I hadn't considered the terraformers and workers on the planet," he continued. "If I can get their support on it, and the support of some of the scientists such as yourself, I might be able to convince some of the older plants to bend on the matter."

"I hope so, sir."

"As do I." He paused. "On to the matter of the inhabited planet."

"Yes sir." I tensed. We were treading on dangerous ground now. Both of us. There were only a dozen or so of us in the entirety of the ship that knew about the inhabited planet.

The discovery had been a complete fluke. The planet in question orbited too close to the sun for us to even consider using it. If not for my asteroid project, we might not have discovered it for centuries.

The probes I sent out were programmed to scan asteroids, collect a sample from it, and attach a marker that would let us track it, and make certain no other probe would waste its time with the same asteroid. Each probe had enough room for about a hundred samples. Once the programming was complete, I sent them all out and turned my attention to other projects. Some of the probes came back before the end of the season. Others still hadn't returned.

Among the most recently returned probes was one which, had passed by the planet in question and, due to a glitch in its programming, scanned it.

To my amazement, the scan showed a planet as active and filled with life as our homeworld.

Evolving on a harsh, hot planet, the arborials of this world had grown into creatures very different from ourselves. They grew faster, and in all kinds of soil, and many of them were radically specialized, but they were life forms, of that there was no doubt.

I took my discovery to the commander who had insisted on secrecy.

"It's a delicate time." He'd insisted. "We're trying to build a new home. Everyone is stressed enough just looking at the immediate future, if you tell them that we might have to compete for this new solar system with its natives, there's no telling what they'll do."

I have never been fond of keeping secrets, but I complied. Outside of two of my assistants who worked on the project full time, and a few of the older trees that the commander felt couldn't be left out, we told no one.

"Your most recent reports are troubling." The commander transferred his chemicals slowly, deep in thought. "They are, at once, sophisticated and creative, building extensive nurseries, erecting monuments, developing land, and simultaneously, barbaric, destroying each other, ravaging the ground itself."

"Actually, their drones are doing all of that." I qualified.

The research I'd done, and the data my assistants and their drones collected had led me to a theory I would soon have to share with the commander. The theory was radical. Some might call it outrageous, and I crafted the reports I sent to him in the hopes he would stumble on the theory himself.

"I suppose. What's your point?"

It seemed my hopes had fallen on senseless stoma.

"The relationship between drones and plants seems to be different there. The drones don't seem to be loyal to just one family. They often travel great distances, for great amounts of time. And the drones who gather from the lesser plants, the field plants, they send out the food almost at random. It often travels as far as the drones do. Then it's distributed with no attention paid to loyalties or lineages."

"I did see that in your report. I meant to ask you, how many times did you observe this behavior? Is it possible there had been some kind of famine? A pestilence, perhaps?"

"The behavior occurred repeatedly. In many instances we watched crops transported from a location which received crops from the very people they sent their food to. Many times."

"Insanity! Perhaps they are not barbarians, simply lunatics."

"Perhaps." I admitted, briefly tempted to let this slide and save my theory for another day. But that was the coward's route. "Or maybe the drones aren't drones."

"What?" Bewilderment flowed into my leafs.

"Their behavior, the drones, it isn't subservient. At a glance they do seem similar to our own, except for being rather smaller in stature and having fewer appendages, but the more they are observed, the more unusual their behavior. They tend to some plants and destroy others, they plant a tree, then chop it down and burn it."

"They lack our sophistication, certainly, and they do seem to turn on one another."

"The plants, you mean."

"Of course."

"But what if it isn't them? This erratic behavior, this random violence. Tearing down forests to plant a new one? Either they are insane, and barbaric, and stupid, all at once, or they're not the ones making the decisions. I think that this world is run by drones."

The commander was silent for so long I was afraid he'd died.

When he finally spoke, though, there was no hesitation in his voice, no question or uncertainty.

"Impossible."

"But, sir, consider the facts."

"No. You consider the facts: When the time comes to tell our people that we're not alone in this system, when the time comes to admit we've known for season after season about a violent, barbaric people who share this star, do you want to tell them that this species, this competition, are underdeveloped cousins, or a race of deadly drones, who having conquered the plants of their own world, might now try to dominate us?"

It was my turn for silence. He was right. Our first encounter with an intelligent alien life form and it was an animal? That wouldn't go over well, not with the general populace.

"I think we should continue our observation," said the commander. "These barbaric arborials need to be watched. We should try to understand them better, if we're going to share this solar system one day. I'm approving your suggestion for a permanent orbiting station. It should be a long term project, but keep it quiet. And when you write your reports, keep in mind that I may have to pass them to my higher ups."

"Yes sir. Of course, sir."