“Now, here are some more protozoans that are kind of interesting. If you look down in the water just outside to the right, you’ll see a bunch of what look like green goldfish squirming around—or should that be greenfish?”
They had stopped on a rock shelf by a grotto formed under a roof of scaly arches sprouting leaves the size of tennis courts. The voice of the young man—Amy had judged him to be about fifteen or sixteen—came over the audio circuit that they were all tuned into, its youthful quality contrasting with the visual effect of the surrogate’s painted mustache. But he was doing a good job, Amy thought.
“They belong to the class known as flagellates, on account of the filament that they use to propel themselves along, which you might just be able to make out. This particular kind is called Euglena, typically five to ten thousandths of an inch long. They’re responsible for the green scum that you get on ponds, when they get too numerous. They live by photosynthesis. The red patches are rudimentary eye spots that enable them to seek light.”
“What are those?” The sandy-haired man in the gray sweater at the front waved a hand painted china-doll pink. He was really a newsman from NBC, and had a ginger beard.
The driver shifted in his seat to look back. “Where?”
“There, a bit farther out—the Tinkertoy beach balls.” There was no need to carry a camera on this assignment. Everything they saw through their micromec eyes could be recorded automatically at the push of a virtual button. The NBC man was pointing at a cluster of what looked like spherical cages, each a foot or so across. Their surfaces consisted of greenish blobs stretched into five-pointed stars by bars attaching to their neighbors, the result being a lattice of triangles.
“They’re pretty interesting too,” the driver answered. “Volvox. It’s a colony of thousands of flagellates similar to Euglena, embedded in the surface of a jelly ball. The flagella form a kind of fuzz around the outside, but you can’t see them too well from here. They move the ball about through the water. What’s interesting is that the same side is always forward when it swims, so it’s got a definite front and a back. The only way to explain that is that the activities of all the members are subordinated to the colony as a whole. Nobody really knows how that works. If they all just did their own thing independently, the ball would never get anywhere.”
“You could view that as the beginnings of individuality, maybe,” somebody commented on the circuit.
“That’s exactly what it is—a first step toward what you see in the higher animals—distinct individuals made up of millions of cells.”
“Where did you learn all this at your age?” Amy couldn’t help asking.
“You gonna be a biology major?” the NBC man asked.
The bus pulled away and followed below a wooden cliff on which spiky and squirmy life-forms were moving beneath fungal circus tents of brown and orange. “As a matter of fact my specialty is computers and electronics. But you get into just about everything when you’ve got a scientist for a father, especially one like Eric—even tour guiding.” There were a couple of laughs.
“Anyhow, this ride will have given you an initial feel of what it’s all about. I’m going to stop a little farther ahead, and we’ll zap you all back to the theater for a coffee break and a presentation on the technology. We thought it would help you frame questions if you’d had a chance to sample the experience first. Then, after that, we’ll come back down here, and that’s when you’ll be able to get out and walk around. We’ll use the bus to visit a few places where we’ve got some short hikes prepared. . . . Okay, are there any other points for now?”
There weren’t. Everyone seemed content just to gawk. Amy pointed at an icon on the top edge of her visual field as they had been briefed, and it unrolled a choice of simple command options. She indicated Commentary to switch her speech input from the common circuit to a private channel, and resumed recording.