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.processtext.com/abclit.html"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 abad mistake.I'm not able to coexist with nine other neuroticVaster Than Empires and More Slow"^.117personalities at close quarters.I was wrong to volunteer for Extreme Survey, and the Authority waswrong to accept me."No one spoke; but Tomiko saw, with certainty this time, the flinch in Osden's shoulders and thetightening 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 Ipick up empathic effects 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 theirmercy.If they disliked him he had to be hateful; if they mocked him he became grotesque; if they listenedto 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 knockedabout from one to another's whim.He could not find coherence.Even as he spoke and held them,some-body's attention would wander Olleroo perhaps was think-ing that he wasn't unattractive, Harfexwas seeking the ulterior motive of his words, Asnanifoil's's mind, which could not be long held by theconcrete, was roaming off towards the eternal peace of number, and Tomiko was distracted by pity, byfear.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 HainishDescent on Earth.None.""You're not seeing the forest for the trees, as they say on Earth," Mannon put in, smiling elfinly; Harfexstared at him."What about those root-nodes weVe been puzzling about for twenty days eh?"118JT BUFFALO GALS"What about them?""They are, indubitably, connections.Connections among the trees.Right? Now let's just suppose, mostimprobably, that you knew nothing of animal brain-structure.And you were given one axon, or onedetached glial cell, to examine.Would you be likely to discover what it was? Would you see that the cellwas capable of sentience?""No.Because it isn't A single cell is capable of mechani-cal response to stimulus.No more.Are youhypothesizing 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 andby 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 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlisn'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 connectedcells.It is, in a sense, the connection: the connectedness.It doesn't exist I'm not trying to say it exists.I'monly guessing that Osden might be able to de-scribe it"And Osden took him up, speaking as if in trance."Sen-tience without senses.Blind, deaf, nerveless,moveless.Some irritability, response to touch.Response to sun, to light, to water, and chemicals in theearth around the roots.Nothing comprehensible to an animal mind.Presence without mind.Awareness ofbeing, without object or sub-ject Nirvana.""Then why do you receive fear?" Tomiko asked in a low voice."I don't know.I can't see how awareness of objects, of others, could arise: an unperceiving response.But there was an uneasiness, for days.And then when I lay between the two trees and my blood was ontheir roots " Osden'sVaster Than Empires and More Slow^-119face glittered with sweat."It became fear," he said shrilly, "only fear.""If such a function existed," Harfex said, "it would not be capable of conceiving of a self-moving, materialentity, or responding to one.It could no more become aware of us than we can *become aware' ofInfinity."" The silence of those infinite expanses terrifies me,'" muttered Tomiko."Pascal was aware of Infinity.Byway of fear.""To a forest," Mannon said, "we might appear as forest fires.Hurricanes.Dangers.What moves quicklyis danger-ous, to a plant The rootless would be alien, terrible.And if it is mind, it seems only tooprobable that it might become aware of Osden, whose own mind is open to connection with all others solong as he's conscious, and who was lying in pain and afraid within it, actually inside it.No wonder it wasafraid ""Not 'it,'" Harfex said."There is no being, no huge crea-ture, no person! There could at most be only afunction ""There is only a fear," Osden said.They were all still a while, and heard the stillness outside."Is that what I feel all the time coming up behind me?" Jenny Chong asked, subdued.Osden nodded."You all feel it, deaf as you are.Eskwana's the worst off, because he actually has someempathic capacity.He could send if he learned how, but he's too weak, never will be anything but amedium.""Listen, Osden," Tomiko said, "you can send.Then send to it the forest, the fear out there tell it thatwe won't hurt it Since it has, or is, some sort of affect that translates into what we feel as emotion, can'tyou translate back? Send out a message, We are harmless, we are friendly.""You must know that nobody can emit a false empathic message, Haito.You can't send something thatdoesn't exist" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html120JT BUFFALO GALS"But we don't intend harm, we are friendly.""Are we? In the forest, when you picked me up, did you feel friendly?""No.Terrified.But that's it, the forest, the plants, not my own fear, isn't it?""What's the difference? It's all you felt Can't you see," and Osden's voice rose in exasperation, "why Idislike you and you dislike me, all of you? Can't you see that I retrans-mit every negative or aggressiveaffect you've felt towards me since we first met? I return your hostility, with thanks.I do it in self-defense.Like Porlock.It is self-defense, though; it's the only technique I developed to replace my original defenseof total withdrawal from others.Unfortu-nately it creates a closed circuit, self-sustaining andself-reinforcing.Your initial reaction to me was the instinctive antipathy to a cripple; by now of course it'shatred.Can you fail to see my point? The forest mind out there transmits only terror, now, and the onlymessage I can send it is terror, because when exposed to it I can feel nothing except terror!""What must we do, then?" said Tomiko, and Mannon replied promptly, "Move camp.To anothercontinent If there are plant-minds there, they'll be slow to notice us, as this one was; maybe they won'tnotice us at all." ||"It would be a considerable relief," Osden observedi stiffly.The others had been watching him with anew curijf osity.He had revealed himself, they had seen him as he was, a helpless man in a trap.Perhaps,like Tomiko, they had seen that the trap itself, his crass and cruel egotism, was their own construction,not his.They had built the cage and locked him in it, and like a caged ape he threw filth out through thebars
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