complicated . . . with variations in structure that you don’t get in crystals.”
He gestured at the sample in the cold chamber. “That’s a part of one of the
legs. It does have a rudimentary vascular system to transport nutrients for
renewing itself, an arrangement of contractile tissues that enable it to move,
and a network of conductive fibers that transmit electrical discharges in
response to applied mechanical force. And that’s about all. What it suggests is
that the complete structure could respond by moving itself if something pulled
it—a kind of passive friction-reducer.”
“An organic wheel,” Thelma said.
Spearman grinned. “Sure—that’s just about what it is.”
“But it couldn’t do anything else, like reproduce itself or something like
that?” Crookes asked.
Spearman shook his head. “No way. As I said, it can move and regenerate its
form—parts of it anyway. But there’s no way you could say it’s alive.”
Thelma frowned to herself. “So how could something like that ever have evolved
in the firsi place if it can’t reproduce itself?” she asked.
“It couldn’t have,” Spearman replied simply.
“So where did it come from?”
“The only thing we can suggest is that the Taloids created it.”
Thelma and Crookes exchanged puzzled glances. “But how could they have?” Crookes
protested. “I mean, their technology is back in the Middle Ages. You’re talking
about something that might be crude compared to the living cells we know, but
surely it’s still a pretty impressive feat of bioengineering.”
“Astonishing,” Spearman confirmed. “In fact I don’t think any genetic
engineering of ours could touch it—not without naturally occurring
macromolecules already available to work with, anyhow.”
“Well, that’s the point,” Thelma said. “How could the Taloids have done it?”
Spearman moved a few paces across the lab, then turned and spread his hands.
“We’ve already found plenty of examples of quite complex hydrocarbons and
nitrogenous compounds in the soil, very much like the molecules believed to have
been precursors of life on Earth. But apparently they never progressed much
further on Titan, probably because of the low temperature and absence of strong
ionizing radiation and other mutagenic stimulants. Well, our best guess is that
the Taloids somehow learned to manipulate such raw materials, and over a period
of time developed techniques for manufacturing the kind of thing you see here.”
He waved toward the cold chamber again. “And I mean manufacturing. That stuff
didn’t grow naturally. It accounts for their peculiar houses too, as well as a
lot of other things we’ve seen.”
John Webster, an English genetic engineering consultant from the Cambridge
Institute for Molecular Biology, nodded from a stool in front of a cluttered
workbench jammed into a corner among shelves of bottles and racks of electronic
equipment. “That’s the way it looks. It’s our culture turned upside down. We
grow our food and our offspring, and make artifacts out of metals that we
extract from rocks; the Taloids’ food and offspring are produced on assembly
lines, while they grow artifacts—developed from organic substances which they
discovered in their rocks and soils. That explains all those ‘plantations’ that
we’ve been wondering about: They’re Taloid factories.”
“That’s right—they did the same as we did, but the other way around,” Spearman
said. “Man learned to make mechanical devices to mimic the actions of living
organisms in his familiar environment—to lift weights and move loads, and so on.
The Taloids found they could manufacture artificial devices too—organic ones—to
mimic the only form of life they knew.”
“It’s a good way of looking at it,” Crookes agreed. “But that still doesn’t
explain how the Taloids could engineer processes at the molecular level when
their culture is centuries behind ours.” He gestured to indicate the banks of
instrumentation and equipment all around them. “We had to invent all this before
we even knew what a protein was, never mind how to splice genes into plasmids.
The Taloids couldn’t make anything even remotely comparable to all this stuff.”
“They never needed to,” Spearman said. “They’re surrounded by it already.”
It took Thelma a moment to grasp what he was saying. “You’re kidding,” she said
incredulously.
Spearman shook his head. “Man learned how to use enzymes and bacteria to make