“No,” Ty continued, “to answer your question, it’s the same thing that led your ancestors to trade victuals across the line.”
“A craving for greater variety in the diet,” Bard said. “More powerful in the end than sex.”
“Yes. Early on we had nothing more to offer them than fresh vegetables.”
“Up there?!”
“Summer days are long—you can grow a lot in a crude plastic greenhouse. Later, as the ecosystem spun up, it was meat from small animals, berries, and a few luxury goods like furs.”
A thought occurred to Bard. “And how far would your people range in search for those things?”
He was referring, as Ty understood, to Kath Two’s story about the camouflaged Indigen in the trees. For she had by now shared this with the others.
“Not that far,” Ty said.
IN THE VAST AND ANCIENT UNDERTAKING CALLED THE TERREFORM, Survey was a small department, sometimes viewed as a receptacle for eccentric or troublesome personnel. Its outposts were small and, because they needed to be sited along rapidly changing frontiers, makeshift and temporary. TerReForm bases, by contrast, tended to be much larger and more permanent. As a rule they were sited on islands off the coasts of continents. There was a logical scientific reason for doing it thus, but as Doc himself freely admitted, the real reason was more aesthetic and symbolic. Most of the sophisticated genetic sequencing laboratories, and the staff needed to make them work, were up in the ring, where space was tight but brains were plentiful. TerReForm installations on the surface were of a more practical character, and they sprawled over territory in a way that looked extravagant and unruly to habitat dwellers. They combined the functions of botanical garden, experimental farm, arboretum, zoo, and microbiology lab. Small samples, cuttings, or populations of bugs, plants, or beasts that had been developed and nurtured on the ring were dropped in such places to be propagated and observed before being shipped in quantity to the biomes where they would be allowed to run wild. Placing the bases on islands was a simple method for limiting the spread of plants and animals that had escaped from their assigned habitats. It was very far from being foolproof, but it was simple, easy, and fairly effective: an easy fit, in other words, for the Get It Done school.