Enemies of the System by Brian W. Aldiss Read Free Book Online

hundreds of millions of years ago. We are as good as stuck in the past, long before Biocom was thought of. We need to understand that situation as clearly as possible. Rubyna Constanza, you’re the guide—give us a quick summary of planetary conditions as we have to face them in this Rift Valley.”
    Constanza had finished bandaging the badly wounded man. She rose to her feet and faced them. After a swift glance at Kordan, the Outourist girl spoke as if still delivering an address on her consigned vehicle.
    â€œThe evidence for Lysenka’s having just emerged from a Devonian Age is complex, and has much to do with the state of the local sun. But geological and biobotanical evidence reinforce a general picture. Essentially, we have here a world of primitive life. In the oceans are fish some meters long with bony head armor. Also trilobites. System scientists have discovered bones of tetrapod amphibians in this valley which resemble a terrestrial rhipidistian order. That is to say, not fossil bones—the creatures existed recently but were all eaten by the invaders. In other parts of the planet, toward the tropics, they still exist, haunting the shores of the Borodinian Lakes.
    â€œThe plant life is of a matching antiquity, as we would expect. You may see dragonflies of up to seventy centimeters’ wing span. They are becoming extinct because their larvae in the rivers are regarded by the animals as a delicacy. They lived particularly in the swamp region to the west of this road, where there are forests of giant-scale trees. Such forests are more frequent near the equator. Here you will mostly find cage trees, horsetails, calamites, maybe some gingkoes, and of course fern trees and fern, with no seed-bearing plants. There are no flowers on Lysenka II, a fact which some of our visitors have complained about. There are also giant sequoias, bearing their stiff wooden flowers or cones.
    â€œThus we see that the only brains on the planet are dim and instinct-driven. No creature at all resembling mankind could possibly have emerged for millions of years, if it had not been for the capitalist ship which crash-landed in this region so long ago.”
    The tourists had listened attentively if anxiously to all this. Running a hand through his sandy hair, Takeido said, “Yes, I would like to amplify briefly what Rubyna Constanza has been saying. I am an exobotanist with five years’ field-work on the planet Sokolev. As Constanza implies, here on Lysenka nature has yet to invent the angiosperm. That’s seeds in an encased ovary, the opposite of gymnosperms. An angiosperm is a nutritious little food-package which supports seeds in the primary stage of their life. Spores or unpackaged seeds have no such advantage—they fend for themselves and their mortality rate is high. You can’t eat spores. But angiosperms—those little food-packages are what caused the first proliferation of mammals over the face of Earth. They can make a world get up and go. So this world is a non-starter—as yet, at least. Thank you.”
    â€œAs for the question of grass,” began Regentop, but Dulcifer cut her off.
    â€œThat’s the essence of it. There are no grasses on this world, no cereals, no high-energy packets for animals to eat—no basic requisite for the support of a grazer-predator system such as grew up on Earth and Sokolev and elsewhere. Lysenka has not yet reached a stage where it can naturally support anything called animal life.”
    â€œYou talk a great deal, Utopianist Dulcifer,” said Fererer, and pointed to the dead mole-creature, “but this animal you brought here—”
    â€œYou should not lead even a sedentary committee,” said Dulcifer, pointing a finger at Fererer, “if you have not grasped the salient point that there was reason for our being screened before we were allowed on Lysenka II. This is not an animal. There are no real animals on Lysenka