The Gene Wizards

Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Enter the Chars

"So the Crones are up to their usual navel-gazing tricks again, I hear?" chuckled Banto Dill, who was busy sprinkling the contents of his compost bin with water, and grunting as he pressed down some of the garden clippings. He wanted to get the job done quickly before the already setting sun of Doon made it too dark to see what he was doing.

"It would seem so!" grinned his wife Gamara, who was stretching her chubby arm out to tame the tendrils of some beans that had got a little out of hand in the recent spell of humid weather. She was in for a bumper harvest that would almost certainly provide them with enough protein to see them through the cooler months.

"We'd better finish off and get inside, Banto," said Gamara. "The scent of those flowers is getting so overpowering they're beginning to make me feel giddy!"

"All right," said Banto, stretching up and bashing the lid back down on the compost bin. "Let's get inside and pour ourselves a glass of wine!"

The group of the Philosophers' Guild known as the Chars were much admired by the Crones for their wine-making abilities. Among other things they had revived an ancient technology still in use in the Caucasus and once used all over the Mediterranean region.

Leaving their gardening gloves and tools on the shelf in the small entrance to their home, Banto and Gamara sat down in their glasshouse to enjoy the last rays of the sun over their wine.

The Char people had always lived peacefully with their Crone fellows, but the two ethnic groups were markedly different from each other. The Chars tended to be sturdy, practical, good-humoured, and uncomplicated. This apparent simplicity and lack of sophistication belied the nuanced intelligence they shared with the Crones, however. The Crones were earnest and rather formal in their manner - except when in 'character' on Earth, where they were at such pains not to seem remotely glamorous that they sometimes went a little too far in the opposite direction. Crones tended to focus on the theoretical, the global and the aesthetic side of life, whereas the Chars were good-natured, humorous and exuberantly grounded in their practicalities – their gardens, their numerous pets, and their handicrafts. They enjoyed poking fun at the serious-minded Crones, even though at heart they respected them greatly.

It was not widely known that the Chars were also involved in the Philosopher Guild's agenda. While the Crones were planting fairy tales to cultivate an alternative to the potentially fatal effects of egocentrism, the Chars were benign cultural 'moles', modelling practical ways of living that reflected the Philosopher Guild's emphasis on service, connectedness, interdependence and caring for others. Indeed, there were many thousands of Chars working in jobs that people considered to be beneath them. They often worked as domestic servants, pastoral workers, cleaners, janitors and carers of the elderly and disabled, in jobs that were as necessary to the functioning of the community as they were disregarded and disrespected by it. Their inelegant, squat build made them seem all the more absurd to many of the local Earth people. But, as we have already seen, the Philosopher groups, both the Crones and the Chars, were firm believers in the ancient adage that we are most vulnerable to what we look down on. Their lack of glamour enabled the Chars to slip under the cultural radar. It amused them to think that in English the word 'char' could mean 'to blacken', because they saw themselves as black operatives. In fact, however, the Chars had been active for many centuries prior to the emergence of the English language, and etymologically their name was closer in meaning to the Sanskrit word meaning 'to do'. For this is how the Chars saw themselves: they were the 'doers', while the Crones were the thinkers. It was a perfect arrangement. And it amused the serenely cheerful Chars to think that they were helping to transform the egocentrism of Earth with the sheer subversiveness of their humility. Like their more cerebral cousins the Crones, the Chars had a great taste for irony. As one popular Char saying went: "Those who shovel the most shit will end up with the biggest heap of manure." It was typical of Philosopher thinking that this adage could be seen as either a good thing or a bad thing - or indeed even both at the same time.