Jason had to force back a smile as he looked at their dumbfounded expressions. He also had to prove his point quickly, before even his allies began to think him insane.
“Here is how it works. I said Pyrran life was telepathic-and I meant all life. Every single insect, plant and animal. At one time in this plan.
ct’s violent history, these psionic mutations proved to be survival types. They existed when other species died, and in the end I’m sure they cooperated in wiping out the last survivors of the non-psi strains. Cooperation is the ke~r word here. Because while they still competed against each other under normal conditions, they worked together against anything that threatened them as a whole. When a natural upheaval or a tidal wave threatened them, they fled from it in harmony. You can see a milder form of this same behavior on any planet that is subject to forest fires. But here, mutual survival was carried to an extreme because of the violent conditions. Perhaps some of the life forms even developed precognition like the human quakemen. With this advance warning, the larger beasts fled. The smaller ones developed seeds, or burrs or eggs, that could be carried to safety by the wind or in the animals’ fur, thus insuring racial survival. I know this is true because I watched it myself when we were escaping a quake.”
“Admitted-all your points admitted,” Brucco shouted. “But what does it have to do with us? So all the animals run away together, what does that have to do with the war?”
“They do more than run away together,” Jason told him. “They work together against any natural disaster that threatens them all. Some day, I’m sure, ecologists will go into raptures over the complex adjustments that occur here in the advent of blizzards, floods, fires and other disasters. There is only one reaction we really care about now, though. That’s the one directed toward the city people. Don’t you realize yet-they treat you all as another natural disaster!
“We’ll never know exactly how it came about, though there is a clue in that diary I found, dating from the first days on this planet. It said that a forest fire seemed to have driven new species toward the settlers. Those weren’t new beasts at all-just old ones with new attitudes. Can’t you just imagine how those protected, overcivilized settlers acted when faced with a forest fire? They panicked, of course. If the settlers were in the path of the fire, the animals must have rushed right through their camp. Their reaction would undoubtedly have been to shoot the fleeing creatures down.
“When they did that, they classified themselves as a natural disaster. Disasters take any form. Bipeds with guns could easily be included in the category. The Pyrran animals attacked, were shot, and the war began. The survivors kept attacking and informed all the life forms what the fight was about. The radioactivity of this planet must cause plenty of mutations-and the favorable, survival mutation was now one that was deadly to man. I’ll hazard a guess that the psi function even
instigates mutations, some of the deadlier types are just too onesidec to have come about naturally in a brief three hundred years.
“The settlers of course fought back, and kept their status as a natura disaster intact. Through the centuries, they improved their killing meth ods, not that it did the slightest good, as you know. You city people their descendants, are heirs to this heritage of hatred. You fight anc are slowly being defeated. How can you possibly win against the bio logic reserves of a planet that can recreate itself each time to meet an~ new attack?”
Silence followed Jason’s words. Kerk and Meta stood white-faced a the impact of the disclosure sunk in. Brucco mumbled and checkec points off on his fingers, searching for weak spots in the chain o:
reason. The fourth city Pyrran, Skop, ignored all these foolish word that he couldn’t understand-or want to understand-and would hav~ killed Jason in an instant if there had been the slightest chance oJ success.
It was Plies who broke the silence. His quick mind had taken in th factors and sorted them out. “There’s one thing wrong,” he said. “Wha about us? We live on the surface of Pyrrus without perimeters or guns Why aren’t we attacked as well? We’re human, descended from thi same people as the junkmen.”