Birthright

The Bureau of Education and Welfare didn't know what it could do to help, but should anyone find a

way of communicating with the Greenies, they'd be happy to do whatever they could. And in the meantime, could she possibly spring loose some of Botany's and Psychology's findings so that the Greenies could be incorporated into some of the textbooks and tapes.... Only the media came to her aid. They took up the Greenies’ case with a single-minded vengeance. Within weeks every planet had its “Save the Greenies” committees, and three campuses actually erupted in violence over the Oligarchy's refusal to commit itself. As for the alien races, they had their own problems, and weren't about to stick their necks out fighting for the right to life of a plant species which might or might not be sentient. Besides, they were as far removed from the intellectual state, if any, of the Greenies as Man was.... So the problem remained in her department, on her desk. She was tempted at times to declare that Greenies were nonsentient and wash her hands of the whole affair, except that, like everyone else, she had a sneaking suspicion that they were indeed capable of thought. After all, who could know what kind of thoughts occupied the mind of a plant? There was no doubt that sooner or later Psychology and Botany between them would determine the Greenies’ status. However,later wouldn't do the Greenies any good. Given the amount of time it would take to get the wheels of evacuation and planet-building going, plus a safety factor in case Bareimus went nova a little sooner than expected, she figured that she had, at most, three months in which to break through the mile upon mile of red tape and get the project off the ground. Psychology was doing its best, to be sure, but in this case its best just wasn't good enough. Aware of the time factor, they had leaped ahead to trying to force the Greenies to show a capacity for creative thought. They supplied them with all the requisite tools and apparatus for creating artificial light, and then cut off their sunlight. Fully one-third of the Greenie colony died before they called a halt to the experiment. They cut the Greenies’ food rations by eighty percent and tried to get them to breed their remaining rodents and insects rather than eat them on contact. A quarter of the remaining Greenies died of starvation before that experiment was called off. They injected DNA molecules from similar plants into a number of Greenies; those that didn't die immediately showed absolutely no change whatever. They kept the Greenies under constant surveillance in an attempt to discover how they communicated, and were unable to determine their method. They introduced an especially poisonous species of vegetarian wasp from Balok VII, hoping to force the Greenies into displaying some defense mechanism other than flight, and destroyed five hundred more Greenies before the wasps were removed. They tried everything their combined minds could think of with no visible effect, and yet were unable to state conclusively that the Greenies didn't think, or even that they simply didn't think along those particular lines. Then, two months prior to Ulice's deadline, Psychology made its first real breakthrough. Experimenting with ultrasonic vibrations, they discovered that the sounds had a soothing effect on the Greenies. A number of buttons and levers were set up, and the Greenies immediately figured out how to manipulate them to produce more ultrasonic waves. Then different frequencies were added, and within a matter of three days the Greenies were creating melodies of greater and greater complexity. They were beyond the range of human hearing, to be sure, but oscilloscopic instruments were able to detect every note, every variation, every subtle nuance of the orchestrations. Anxious to either begin the evacuation or abandon it, Ulice started pressing her demands for a decision as to the Greenies’ intellectual capacity. It seemed obvious to her that any being capable of producing such intricate symphonic arrangements must be sentient, but Psychology still wasn't willing to commit itself. After all, they pointed out, numerous birds on Earth and myriads of other planets also created