"Not necessarily," Barger said. "They could be good biologists or botanists and nothing much else. We've run into that sort of uneven culture before."
"Ha!" Allardyce snorted. "That shows how little you know about experimental biology. Anybody able to do with plants what these people do would have to know genetics and growth principles, biochemistry, mathematics, engineering and physics."
"Maybe they had it once and lost most of it," I suggested. "They wouldn't be the first culture that's gone retrograde. We did it after the Atomic Wars and we were several thousand years recovering. But we hadn't lost the skills—they just degenerated into rituals administered by witch doctors who handed the formulas and techniques down from father to son. Maybe it's like that here. Certainly these people give no evidence of an advanced civilization other than these trees and their native intelligence. Civilized people don't hunt with spears or live in tribal groups."
Barger nodded. "That's a good point, Skipper."
"Well, there's no sense speculating about it; maybe we'll know if we wait and see," Allardyce summed up.
I set sentries, three hours on and nine off, to keep Dan informed of our situation, and since rank has its privileges, I took the first watch. We were all tired from our walk through the woods; the others turned in readily enough. I was sufficiently worried about the hints and implications in the native culture to keep alert—but nothing happened. I checked in with Dan back at the ship and went to awaken Alex, who had drawn the second watch, and turned in to the bedroom allotted to me. Normally I can sleep anywhere, but I kept thinking about houses grown from trees and upholstery grown from fungus, about spear-carrying savages who understood the working principle of a menticom.
It was all wrong and my facile explanation of a regressed culture didn't satisfy me. Superior technology and savagery simply didn't go together. Even in our Interregnum Period, islands of culture and technology had remained, and men hadn't reverted to complete savagery. But there were no such islands on this world—or none that were apparent.
Such enclaves couldn't have escaped our search mechanisms, which are designed precisely to locate such things. And besides, an advanced biological technology would have no need for hunting or spears. They could grow all the food they needed. Any damn fool knew that. Then why the noble savage act? For if our analysis was right, it must be an act. Why were they trying to hoodwink us? The only answer was that there was a high civilization here that was being deliberately hidden from us. The only mistake they had made was in underestimating us—the old story of civilized men sneering at savages, but in reverse.
The trees, therefore, must be such old and primitive techniques that they thought nothing of them, deeming them so inconsequential that even savages like us would know of them and not be suspicious. At that, they probably didn't have too much time after they detected us orbiting and intending to land. And if that were true, there could be only one place where their civilization was hidden.