Page 57 - Extraterrestrials, Foreign and Domestic

Zaratan or Gaia?

began, so did a series of unexpected phenomena: sudden oscillations
in temperature, barometric pressure and rainfall. Invasions of stinging
and biting insect-like creatures we repelled with chemicals, forays out
of nowhere by several large and deadly predators—you dined on one
of them last night, by the way—and, yesterday afternoon, an
explosion in the pollen count. Again, at first I chalked these things up
to our ignorance of the way things work on this planet.”
“Well,” said Yabbowitz. “What the hell else could it be?”
“The obvious but improbable answer is that the planet is mounting
a defense against our destructive presence. Before you laugh, please
consider that I am a scientist: evidence leads to confirmation of
theory, and nothing else. Action has led to reaction. I searched the
data for some clues, finally widening my net to ideas purely
speculative on Earth. I found the Gaia hypothesis, that life evolves in
concert with the biosphere, ultimately controlling it for optimal
conditions. Thus ocean salinity, atmospheric composition and surface
temperature are in fact modulated by the life-forms which seem to be
passively subject to those conditions. The idea, originally a
personification of the biosphere, became accepted after a period of
time simply as another aspect of natural selection, with ever-larger
groups acting in apparent concert for mutual survival.”
Captain Yabbowitz narrowed his eyes.
“But you think something else is going on here, is that it?”
“Correct. We are witnessing a response across species and
meteorological systems which cannot be accounted for other than as
directed, in the same way antibodies rapidly multiply in our
bloodstream to battle microbial invaders. It does not require
consciousness—merely an evolved interconnectedness capable of
altering facets of the biosphere which on Earth took generations to
accomplish. Here it is happening in hours. That means a kind of
planetary intelligence is at work. If it is centralized, there might be a
way to neutralize it—but that could disable the entire superorganism.
What’s crucial is that it has responded in escalating measure to our
incursions: first by attempting to choke our searing jet engines, then
by throwing a bit of everything at us when we commenced gathering
samples of everything alive within a kilometer.”
“And now?”

56