by Isaac Asimov
The idiotic nickname, almost forgotten, caught him off balance for a moment, but he knew exactly what he wanted to say.
“This school you want to send him to is for maladjusted children. It takes complete responsibility, replacing parents—you wouldn’t be allowed to see him for the next three years at least.”
“It’s a very fine school, Threejay. Camillo insisted we should send him to the best one available.”
Camillo must be the new husband.
“Why?” repeated Jordan.
The welcome had drained right out of Cora’s manner. “May I ask why this sudden uprush of parental feeling? You’ve never shown any interest in Ricky before. You’ve left him to me. I’m not asking you to take any responsibility. I’m just asking you to sign that form.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s unbearable! Because I won’t have him in the house! He pries round—there’s no privacy. He finds out everything and then uses it to make trouble. He’s insulted half our friends. Camillo won’t have him in the house and neither will I. If you don’t want him to go to that school, perhaps you’ll suggest an alternative.”
Jordan was shaken, but tried not to show it. “I’d like to see him, Cora.” •
As swiftly as it had arisen Cora’s rage sank out of sight. “Of course you can see him, Threejay!” She turned to the wall-speaker and murmured briefly into it. “Who knows, maybe the sight of a really, true father is all he needs! You can just have a nice fatherly chat with him before you have to catch your flier back, and then he’ll settle down and turn into a model citizen.”
The door slid open and a boy came quietly in. He was a very neat and tidy boy, small for his age, with a serious, almost sad expression. He said gently, “Good morning, Cora.”
Cora spoke over her shoulder. “Ricky, dear, who do you think this is?”
Ricky looked at the visitor and his eyes widened.
“You . . . you’re Dr. Jordan, aren’t you? You wrote that book about Cranil—it’s called ‘The Fossil Planet.’ And I saw you on the stereo two nights ago. You were talking about that place where all the forests are gray and black. And—” Ricky stopped with his mouth half open. His face went blank.
“That’s who I am,” said Jordan gravely.
“I know,” Ricky swallowed. “But you’re here ... I mean . . . this sounds silly, but I suppose ... I mean, you wouldn’t be my father, would you?”
“Don’t put on an act, Ricky,” said Cora harshly. “You know perfectly well he’s your father.”
Ricky turned rather white. He shook his head. “No, honestly. I knew my father’s name was Jordan, but I just didn’t connect it up. I say—” he stopped short.
“Yes, Ricky?”
“I suppose you wouldn’t have time to talk to me a little? About Lambda, I mean. Because I really am interested—not just kid stuff. I want to be a xeno-biologist.”
Cora laughed, a delicate metallic sound.
“Why be so modest, Ricky? After all, he’s your father. He’s apparently decided it’s time he took an interest in you. He’s due back to that place that fascinates you so much in a week or two, so I don’t see how he’ll do that unless he takes you with him. Why not ask him to?”
Ricky went scarlet and then very pale. He looked quickly away, but not before Jordan had had time to see the eager interest in his face replaced by sick resignation.
“Why shouldn’t you take him, Threejay?” went on Cora. “These Mass-Time ships have lots of room. You’ve decided that it’s time you were responsible for him instead of me. Those books he reads are full of boys who made good in space. Why don’t you—”
“Yes, why don’t I?” said Jordan abruptly.
“Don’t!” said Ricky sharply. “Please, don’t! Honestly, I know it’s a joke ... I mean I don’t read that kid stuff now . . . but—”
“No joke,” said Jordan. “As Cora says, there’s lots of room. Do you want to come?”
And I’d had my psycho check only the week before, reflected Jordan, and they didn’t find a thing.
* * *
He noticed suddenly that a report was moving through the scanner on his desk—the latest installment of Woodman’s researches on the sexual cycles of Lambdan freshwater organisms. He’d intended to read that tonight instead of mulling over all this stuff about Ricky.
He pushed the switch back to the beginning, but it was no use. He remembered how he had felt—how Cora’s needling had made him feel—and how Ricky had looked when he grasped that the proposal was serious. No chance at all of backing out then—not that he had wanted to. It was true that, with Mass-Time flight, there was plenty of room; one feature of the drive was that within certain limits the bigger the ship the faster it would go. And he had complete authority over the selection of personnel for this second expedition, which was to reinforce the team already settled on Lambda. Ricky’s inclusion was taken with a surprising lack of concern by the rest of the staff. And it had looked as though his insane action was working out all right. Until the last two days Ricky had been no trouble at all.
If anything, Ricky had been too desperately anxious to keep out of the way and avoid being a nuisance, but he had seemed completely happy. Jordan’s project of getting to know him had never got very far, because his time was fully occupied, but Ricky had spent the weeks before blast-off mainly in the Inter-stellar Institute, chaperoned by young Woodman, who had taken a fancy to him. Jordan had taken time out once or twice during that period to worry over the fact that he was hardly seeing the boy, but once they got aboard ship it would be different.
Once aboard ship, absorbed in checking stores and setting up projects to go into operation as soon as they landed, it wasn’t—once the party’s settled and working, it’ll be different. He’d have some time to spare.
Unfortunately that hadn’t been soon enough. He should have paid some attention to Cora. She wouldn’t have got worked up like that over nothing. She had said Ricky made trouble. He’d done that all right. And Jordan had known nothing about it till it attained the dimensions of a full-blown row.
Rivalry on the expedition was usually friendly enough. Unfortunately Cartwright and Penn, the two geologists, didn’t get on. They had different methods of working and each was suspicious of the value of the other’s work. But without Ricky they wouldn’t have come to blows on it.
Quite accidentally the riot had been started by Ellen Scott. As soil specialist she had an interest in geology. Talking to Cartwright she had happened to say something about the date of the Great Rift. Cartwright had shot out of his chair.
“Ellen—where did you get that idea? Who told it to you?”
Ellen looked surprised.
“I thought you did, Peter. The Great Rift’s your pet subject. If you didn’t, I suppose it was Penn.”
“I haven’t mentioned it to anyone. I only worked it out a couple of days ago. It’s in my notes now, on my desk. Penn must have been going through them. Where is he?”
“Calm down, Peter!” Ellen got to her feet in astonishment. “Probably he worked it out too—you may have mentioned something that set him on the track. He must have mentioned it to me in the last few days, I think . . . that is, if he was the one who told me.” She looked puzzled. “I don’t remember discussing it with him. No, I believe—” she broke off suddenly and refused to say any more. Cartwright, unmollified, strode off to look for Penn. Dr. Scott departed in search of Ricky.
“Ricky, do you remember a day or two ago we were talking about the Great Rift?”
Ricky looked up from the microscope he was using.
“Sure,” he said. “Why?” His smile faded and he began to look worried. “What’s happened?”
“You remember you said something about the date— that it was about fifteen thousand years ago? You did say that, didn’t you?”
Ricky’s expression had faded to a watchful blank, but he nodded.
“Well, who told you that? How did you know?”
“
Somebody said it,” said Ricky flatly. He did not sound as though he expected to be believed.
Ellen Scott frowned.
“Listen, Ricky. Dr. Cartwright’s got the idea that somebody must have looked through the papers on his desk and read that date. He says he didn’t mention it to anyone. There may be trouble. If you did get curious and took a look at his notes—well, now is the time to say so. It’s not a good thing to have done, of course, but nobody’ll pay much attention once it’s cleared up.”
“I didn’t look,” said Ricky wretchedly. “I don’t remember how I knew, but I didn’t look. Honestly not.”
Unfortunately by that time Cartwright and Penn had already started arguing which ended with both of them crashing through the wall of the dining cabin— which had not been built to take assaults of that kind— and throwing Barney the cook into a kind of hysterics. After that Jordan came on the scene.
Ricky had come and told him about it all. At least, he’d said that he had somehow learned that the date of the Great Rift had been fixed, and had mentioned it to Dr. Scott while they were talking about geology. He didn’t know how he had learned it. He denied looking through Cartwright’s papers.
It was something that he had told the story, but then he must have thought that Ellen Scott would if he didn’t.
Jordan’s thoughts wandered off to Ellen for a moment. She was another person who believed that people who chose to work on alien planets must avoid personal ties. How right she was.
Nothing more had happened. Cartwright and Penn seemed to be on somewhat better terms, having purged their animosity. But Ricky had been going round with a haunted and hopeless look on his face and Jordan was going crazy trying to think up an approach to the matter which would not drive the boy still further away from him. But if he really made a habit of prying into private papers—and Cora had accused him of just that, after all—something must be done about it.
But what?
Jordan sighed, turned the viewer back to the beginning again and started to concentrate on Woodman’s report. He had read three frames when the silence was split by a terrified bellow from the direction of the forest.
“Uelph! Uelph! Dewils. Uelph!”
Jordan shot through the door, grabbing a flashlight on the way. It was hardly needed: three moons were in the sky and their combined light was quite enough to show him the huge shape blundering among the cabins.
“Barney!” he shouted. “Stand still! What’s the matter?”
Barney—seventeen stone on Earth, over twenty on Lambda—came to a halt and blinked at the flashlight. He put up a huge hand, feeling at his face. He seemed to be wearing some sort of mask or muffler over his mouth—otherwise he was draped in flannelette pajamas of brilliant hue and was barefooted. He ripped off the muffler—whatever it was—and threw it away. His utterance was a little clearer, but not much.
“Dewils in a voresh. Caught eee. Woot ticky tuff on a wouth.”
He was gasping and sweating and Jordan was seriously worried. Barney was a superb cook, but he was apt to get excited and the extra gravitation of Lambda produced a slight strain on his heart. At that moment Ricky appeared like a silent shadow at his father’s elbow.
“What’s the matter with him?” As usual the boy looked neat and alert, although at the moment he was wearing pajamas and a robe. Jordan gestured toward his cabin.
“Take Barney in there and see what’s sticking his mouth up.” Several other people had appeared by this time, including Ellen Scott in a brilliant robe and Woodman in rumpled pajamas. Jordan sent Ellen to switch on the overhead floods and organized a search party.
Half an hour later Barney’s mouth had been washed free from the gummy material which had been sticking his lips together and he was in some shape to explain.
“I woke up suddenly lying out in the forest. All damp it was.” He groaned faintly. “I can feel my lumbago coming on already. I was lyin’ flat on my back and there was somethin’ over my arms—rope or somethin’. My mouth was all plastered up and there was a thing sittin’ on my chest. I got a glimpse of it out of the crack of me eyes, and then it went. There was more of them round. They was shoutin’.”
“Shouting?” repeated Jordan. “You mean just making a noise?”
“No, sir, they was shouting in English. I couldn’t hear what, but it was in words all right. They said ‘People.’ That was the only word I got, but that’s it right enough. ‘People.’ Then I got my arms free and started to swipe around. I got hold of one of them and it stung me and I let it go.”
He pointed to a neat puncture wound in the flesh at the base of his thumb. Jordan got out antiseptics and bathed it.
“I got up and ran back,” Barney went on. “I was only a little way into the forest—I could still see the lights here. I ran as hard as I could but me feet kept slippin’.” The light of remembered panic was in his eyes. “They stuck somethin’ over me mouth—I couldn’t breathe. It took me hours to get it off. I dunno what it was.”
“It was a leaf,” said Woodman. He produced a large leaf, perhaps twenty inches long: it was dark gray and one surface was smeared with a dully shining substance. “It’s been coated with some kind of vegetable gum.”
“But how did you get into the forest, Barney?” demanded Dr. Scott.
Barney shook his head miserably.
“He walked,” said another of the party. “On his own.
Tracks of his feet in the mud. You’ve been sleepwalking, Barney.”
“Then where did he get the gag?” demanded Woodman. “This gum comes from a plant which is quite rare and there aren’t any within a hundred yards of the clearing. Besides, we found the place where he’d been lying. A couple of saplings were bent over and the ends shoved in the mud—those were used to hold his arms down, I reckon. No, he was attacked all right, but what did it?”
“I suppose,” said Dr. Scott slowly, “this couldn’t have been somebody’s idea of a joke?”
There was a brief silence. Ricky looked up suddenly and caught his father’s eye. His face went rigid, but he said nothing.
“We shall have to assume it wasn’t,” said Jordan. “That means precautions. We always assumed that Lambda was a safe planet. Apparently we were wrong. Until we know what happened no one goes out alone. Those of you who have observations to make outside will have to work in pairs and with your radios turned on. We’ll arrange for a monitor on all the individual frequencies. The floods had better stay on tonight and we’ll have a patrol—three men keeping in touch. Two hours for each of us. Doc, will you see to Barney?”
The medical officer nodded and took Barney off to his cabin, and its specially strengthened bunk. Jordan looked thoughtfully at his son.
“You’d better get back to bed, Ricky. Unless you have anything to contribute.”
Ricky was standing stiffly upright. “I haven’t,” he said.
“Get along, then. Now about this patrol—”
Jordan put himself on the first shift of the patrol— he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Why in Space had he brought Ricky? Either he had brought him into danger or—worse—Ricky was somehow at the bottom of this. He spent a good deal of time running errands for Barney. He had not seemed to mind it, but how did you tell what a boy was thinking? Might he have thought it funny to send big Barney lumbering in panic through the forest? And how could he have done it?
Jordan remembered that Ricky had once been found reading the article on hypnosis in the Terrestrial Encyclopedia.
And if Ricky was innocent, what could be at the bottom of that ludicrous and inefficient attack?
In the top of the tallest tree, Big Sword waited for daylight and brooded over the failure of his plan.
It was easy enough to get the biggest of the Big Folk into the forest. He had discovered that for part of the time they lay folded out flat in their enclosures, with their eyes shut, and during this time they were more sensitive to suggestion than when they were active. Big Sword, whose own eyes had an internal sh
utter, found eyelids rather fascinating: he had been tempted to experiment with Barney’s but had refrained. He thought bitterly that he might as well have done so.
He had summoned twelve of the People and all of them thinking together had got the Big Person to its feet and walking. It had occurred to Big Sword that the receptiveness of the Big Person might be improved if they got it to lie down again. He had further decided that in view of the blanking-out of thought when the creatures began to blow through their face-split, this aperture had better be shut.
That, he now knew, had been a mistake. No sooner was the gummed leaf in place on the Big Person’s face than its eyes had popped open and showed every sign of coming right out of its face. There had been just warning enough in its thoughts for the band of People to hop out of range, except for Big Sword, who had had to use his pike for the first time in his life, to get free. Then the great arms had swung dangerously about and the creature had thrashed to its feet. After that there was no hope of making contact. Its mind was in a turmoil, making the People actively uncomfortable: they had retreated as far as they could, until the interwoven lives of trees and other forest creatures were sufficiently interposed to reduce the Big Person’s thought to a comfortable intensity.
Big Sword had been surprised by the low level of intelligence shown by the Big Person. It had made no effort at all to understand him—its thoughts were a much worse muddle than any of the others he had investigated. Perhaps he had made a mistake? Perhaps size among these monsters was not directly connected with intelligence? Or perhaps it was an inverse relationship?
Big Sword was suddenly desperately thirsty and tired. He slid into the rain-filled cup of an enormous leaf—to soak up water through the million mouths of his skin and make his plans afresh.
The camp next morning was subdued and rather weary. Nobody had got their full sleep. Now there was all the awkward business of rearranging a full-time research program so that nobody should have to go into the forest alone. The lurking menace which last night had provided a formidable thrill, this morning was nothing more than a vague, dreary uneasiness. Furthermore there was always the possibility that it would turn out to be nothing more than the work of an ingenious kid with a distorted sense of humor. And nobody liked to think what that would do to Jordan.
