Birthright

Next, a number of Greenies were moved not to the ship's greenhouse, but to a patch of ground a few

miles from the other Greenies. They still responded, but slowly, as if they were befuddled. Their confusion increased proportionately with the distance between them and their home colony, until, at exactly 5.127 kilometers, they once again became inert. The next step was to move larger and larger quantities of Greenies 6 kilometers away from the home colony. When some 2,000 were assembled, from a colony of 11,500, they began to react, but again, very slowly and in much obvious confusion. As their number increased, so did their efficiency, until, with 4,367 Greenies present, they functioned as well as they had in the original colony. And, conversely, as the original colony was depleted to where only about 1,500 remained, all reaction to stimuli stopped. The implications were staggering. Here, undoubtedly, was a group mind at work. Each plant acted as a single cell of that mind. With only 1,500 cells, the mind was mere potential; at 2,000 cells, it was kinetic but retarded; and at 4,367 or more cells, it functioned at peak efficiency. The Greenies’ mass mind represented a phenomenon heretofore unknown in the galaxy, even among those few races possessed of telepathy.

The next problem facing the scientists was of equal or even greater import. Granting that the Greenies, as a group, had a mind, was it a sentient one? Simply having a functioning brain was no proof of sentience; for every intelligent life form that Man had found, there were thousands that lacked the power of abstract thought.

The task was an intricate and complex one, for no vegetation had yet been discovered that even hinted at having the Greenies’ capacity for intelligent action. And no one quite knew how to test a plant for intelligence.

Scores of reward situations were devised, usually with rodents Sixth Millennium: Oligarchy 143 native to Bareimus III. In every case, the Greenies devised ways to catch them. But did that make them intelligent, or merely coldly efficient hunters with thousands of outlets for their senses? No one knew. An entire Greenie colony was transported back to the Biology Department and studied. Thousands of botanists and psychologists created literally millions of tests. Most were discarded out of hand; those that were administered could not produce definite results. The Greenies could crack almost every maze or hunting situation devised, but they showed no interest in anything else. They solved feeding problems that would have stumped even Man, but, once fed, they became mentally inert. Nor could any divisiveness be imposed; feeding one half of the colony while starving the other half did not produce a small-scale vegetable war. And, the scientists concluded, how could it? If half a brain lacks blood or oxygen, it doesn't take up arms against the other half. Still, no one was totally convinced that the Greenies were sentient. It was simply a case of nobody being able to guess what kind of thoughts were entertained by a Greenie's mind. Some telepaths from the distant world of Domar were called in; they all agreed that there was some sort of mentality there, but it was so alien that none of them could either make contact with it or begin to figure out how it functioned. That was where matters stood when it was discovered that Bareimus was about to go nova. And since no one knew what the Greenies were or were not, they had thankfully given the problem to Ulice Ston, who had never even seen a Greenie, and knew next to nothing about botany and alien psychology.

Her first step had been to ascertain the cost and the logistics of evacuating the Greenies from Bareimus