A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “You mean to say,” said Cartwright, “that the Tree has been producing People for the last fifteen thousand years without a sexual generation at all?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Woodman. “There may have been several on this side of the Rift at first, and this Tree may be the last offspring of a small population. It must have been an outlier, if so, because the migration was so firmly set for the west.”

  “And there’s another tree on the far side which produces females?”

  “There are two female trees and three that bear males, but two of the male ones are very old and have few offspring, and none of the seeds have been fertile for at least fifty generations. Apparently not many come to full maturity at the best of times, but this outcross may really save the species.”

  “And what exactly is the plan?” demanded the statistician. “To ferry them across? What will they do when we leave?”

  “No,” said Jordan. “We don’t propose to interfere more than we have to. The tragedy of the whole process was that the People who took the Journey almost certainly died on the way. Twelve miles in the sun, with no water, was too much for them. We propose to provide a green belt—a black belt rather—along the migration route. Tiven is looking into the possibilities—”

  Tiven looked up from his slide rule. “Easy as it,” he said cheerfully. “We can make the channel in a week, once we get the digger from First Base, and a cooker for concrete, and there are any number of streams which run down to the Waste and then vanish underground. It’s just a question of training one of them in the way it should go, and protecting it from evaporation in the first year or two until the vegetation gets thick enough.”

  The conversation flowed on. But Ricky, his head resting on the table, was already asleep.

  Jordan stood at the edge of the Rift and looked over the embryo river-valley that Tiven had designed. Seedlings had been planted along the channel, in earth transported for that purpose, and were already taking hold. The revolving sun-cutters designed to protect them at this stage and to stop excessive evaporation gave the whole thing a mechanical air at present, but they would be done within a year or two; they were designed to go to dust then, so that even if the expedition had to leave they would not be left. There are places for poorly built things!

  Two of the People shot down the cliff a little to one side and disappeared into the shade along the channel.

  “Are they off on the Journey?” said Ellen Scott.

  “I don’t think so. They go singly, as a rule. No, I think . . . look there!”

  There were four People now at the end of the line of saplings. Two were presumably the ones who had passed a few minutes before; the other two were linked hand in hand and bore across their shoulders a kind of yoke with a long pod dangling from it. The two from the near side of the Forest had taken the hands of the newcomers and were helping them up the cliff.

  “This is the result of your soil report, I think,” said Jordan. “Woodman says that one reason for the lack of germination on the other side is the exhaustion of the few pockets of suitable soil. I wonder whether it was the necessity of finding the right soil, as well as of looking after the seedling, that led them to develop intelligence?” The two newcomers had reached the top of the cliff. They seemed hardly to notice the helpers, nor did the latter seem to expect it. The burdened couple moved slowly along, pausing every now and then to investigate the soil. They stopped close to Ellen’s feet and prodded carefully.

  “Not here, little sillies!” she murmured. “Farther in.”

  Jordan smiled. “They’ve got plenty of time. One couple planted their pod just under one of Branding’s tripods; trying not to step on them drove him nearly crazy. He had to move the whole lot in the end. It takes them weeks sometimes to find a spot that suits them.”

  “Continuing the species,” said Ellen thoughtfully. “I always thought it sounded rather impersonal.”

  Jordan nodded. “The sort of thing you can take or leave,” he agreed. “I used to think that you could either explore space or you could . . . well, continue the species is as good a way of putting it as any. Not both.”

  “I use to think that, too.”

  “Once it was true. Things have changed, even in the last few years. More and more people are organizing their lives to spend the greater part of them away from Earth. Soon there’s going to be a new generation whose home isn’t on Earth at all. Children who haven’t been to Terrestrial schools, or played in Terrestrial playrooms, or watched the Terrestrial stereos, or—”

  “Suffered the benefits of an advanced civilization?”

  “Exactly. How do you feel about it, Ellen? Or . . . that’s a shirker’s question. Ellen Scott, will you marry me?”

  “So as to propagate the species?”

  “Blast the species! Will you marry me?”

  “What about Ricky?”

  “Ricky,” said Jordan, “has been careful to let me know that he thinks it would be a very suitable match.”

  “The devil he has! I thought—”

  “No telepathy involved. If everyone else knows I love you, why shouldn’t he? Ellen—did I say please, before? Ellen, please, will you marry me?”

  There was a silence. Depression settled on Jordan. He had no right to feel so sure of himself. Ellen was ten years younger and had a career to think of. He had made a mess of one marriage already and had a half-grown son. He had taken friendliness for something else and jumped in with both feet much too soon. He had made a fool of himself—probably.

  “Well?” he said at last.

  Ellen looked up and grinned.

  “I was just making sure. I’m not quite certain I could take being married to a telepath—which you are not, my dear. Absolutely not. Of course I’m going to.”

  Ricky, with Big Sword on his shoulder, was strolling along a path in the sun. He saw his father and Dr. Scott return to the camp arm in arm, and nodded with satisfaction. About time, too. Now perhaps Doc. J. would stop mooning around and get on with his work for a change. He’d had Ricky and Woodman’s last report on the biology of the People for two weeks without making the slightest attempt to read it, and it was full of interesting things.

  Just for a moment, Ricky wondered what it was like to get all wrapped up in one individual like that. No doubt he’d find out in time. It would have to be somebody interested in real things, of course—not an Earth-bound person like poor Cora.

  Meanwhile he was just fourteen and free of the Universe, and he was going to have fun.

  Big Sword, from his perch on Ricky’s shoulder, noticed the couple with the pod. He saw that this one was fertile, all right—the shoot was beginning to form inside it. One of them was an old friend from this side of the Rift, but it was no good trying to talk to him—his mind would be shut. The whole process of taking the Journey, finding a mate and taking care of one’s seedling was still a mystery to Big Sword in the sense that he could not imagine what it felt like. Just now he was not very interested. He had nearly a year in which to find out things, especially things about the Big People who, now they were domesticated, had turned out to be so useful, and he was going to enjoy that and not speculate about the Journey, and what it felt like to take it.

  Because, eventually, the call would come to him, too, and he would set off up the new little stream to the other side of the Rift where the trees of the Strangers grew. And then he would know.

  THE PURE OBSERVERS

  B.J. Rogers

  The history of space-flight begins before man. While our planet still lay wrapped in its dream of isolation, other intelligences watched from above—minds pure, undying, noble—and pathetically vulnerable . . .

  NOVNA, MY DEAR, I am writing this as a release for my conscience. Those things which trouble me are not such as one exchanges with vigil companions, or indeed with anyone not bound by ties like ours.

  If I were at home with you I would exchange with your soul in a moment the feeling of my own, but distance permits
no such consolation and it is not suitable for me to exchange so familiarly with my colleagues.

  I find myself questioning the value of our customary refusal to communicate thoughts of a delicate and sensitive nature. The Earth people, who speak their thoughts, perhaps are less primitive than we like to imagine. They seem to have no sense of the danger of overwhelming the soul of another with unwanted confidences. The purely vocal nature of their communication does not admit an excessive degree of emotion to their relationships. They do not have to erect any artificial barriers between each other, as we must who exchange on a mental level.

  These doubts of mine never could have arisen if we men of Hainos had not presumed to observe the alien ways of those creatures on the third Earth, so like ourselves and yet so remote, though we have hovered above them, listening and watching, for twelve of their generations.

  This vigil, though it is to last but one journey around the sun, has seemed longer and less fruitful than all the others. I think I shall not come again, but leave such work to those who can remain efficient and disinterested Observers, unmoved by doubt and anxiety. Novna, you must begin to think what we two shall do with the rest of our eternity, for now that I have spent some small portion of mine in fifty vigils, I find they have become distasteful. We might go to the Palace of Art and study to be poet-priests. My last vigil has convinced me that I am more fitted for that life than this.

  When our mission left Hainos for the third Earth, there was aboard our ship the poet-priest Gven. You must remember the many nights we sat beneath the rocks by the ocean, listening as his soul gave ours his songs. Innocent they were, and filled with talk of purity and light, though Gven is as old as the rest of us, even if he is as different from you and me as the Earth child is from its parents.

  “You have never seen him, I think. He is smaller than I, slight of build and tender-faced. How out of place he looked among the ship’s sturdy men of science, with their ages of discipline and austerity written indelibly into their features. They did not want him. They told the commissioner that they did not want him.

  “Let him stay at home,” they said, “and sing his songs to those who wish to listen.”

  But the commissioner himself, and, I suspect, the commissioner’s wife, was as fond as any of Gven and his songs, so he said Gven was to come if he liked.

  Poor Gven tried hard enough to make us like him. He offered us the only gift he had, that of his songs, but no one cared to hear them except me, and I was ashamed to say so. In the end he was reduced to sitting for hours, looking out into the night through which the ship bore us, saying nothing to anyone, for fear of our scorn. He would have liked us to tell him about the Earth people, for his studies at the Palace fitted him sadly for a scientific expedition.

  Of the Earth people, however, we hesitated to speak freely, even among ourselves, for all of us feel strongly about them, in one way or another. Our exchanges on the matter have always been burdened with emotion; and we find we cannot share easily our thoughts about Earth people, unless we banter lightly and say little of what we really feel.

  When our long-ship drew near the third Earth, we were transferred into the round-ship in which we were to carry on our observations. I could see Gven was limp with excitement, but as always, I would not exchange with him for fear of the others, not even to drain off that excess of feeling which was to prove so dangerous to him.

  Perhaps he thought it would be different, once we had established ourselves in our designated area of observation. Then we might warm toward him, giving him the comforts of our experience. If such were his expectations, he was disappointed. Whatever he gathered from us was purely accidental, information that we exchanged among ourselves as we worked. Only in this way did he learn of those few bonds we had forged with the Earth people.

  It is our custom, as you know, for each man to select one of the Earth people as his subject. This is not part of our work, it is only a device to drive away the tedium that descends upon men far from home and bound to exacting work in a confined place. We begin to feel quite passionately concerned with our subjects, and occasionally find it difficult to return to our primary concerns.

  For some time I had been spending my free hours in the world of a gentle old merchant named Jacobs. I lived his life with him briefly, seeing his wife and children as he saw them, going with him to his store. His memories were good ones, filled with hard work and simple pleasures. One day, when I had left the computing tables to prepare for dinner, I sought the mind of Jacobs. He was crossing the street and as he turned his head, he saw the shining lights of an automobile just before it struck him. I withdrew from his mind in a shower of pain and darkness.

  “Oh, he is dead,” my mind cried out to my vigil companions before I could smother the shock and emotion in it. They looked up at me, questioning. Then I exchanged with them more coolly, “My man Jacobs has been killed crossing the street.”

  Gven, the fuel technician, reached my mind first. “A pity, I lost a subject myself that way not long ago. It is a bad death for them, poor things. They might build overpasses, mightn’t they? A pity.”

  It has never failed to unsettle me, the way my companions have come to accept the idea of death so easily. To me it is always a horror, unnatural and alien. You cannot quite see how it is, Novna, for you have never been in the mind of one who dies.

  I withdrew for a little while to mourn my man Jacobs, for my sorrow was not to be shared with the others. It was while I sat thinking of the dead Jacobs that Gven approached hesitantly and sat near me.

  “Is it possible,” he asked, “that one can read the soul of an Earth man? Could I? Or perhaps that would not be permitted to me?”

  His eagerness made me ashamed of the silence I had maintained between us. “It is certainly possible for you to try, though it cannot always be done. You need ask no one for permission.”

  The delight in his eyes made me forget Jacobs a little. “I may try anyone at all?”

  “I advise you to search about a little. Don’t seize on the first one you contact as a subject. You have less time than the rest of us for this sort of thing.”

  Gven thanked me shyly and went away. Later I saw him sitting at the open panels, looking down at the cloud-topped mountains and sandy valleys over which we circled. His face was still and pale as he concentrated.

  The next day at dinner, Gven sat playing with his food, looking up at the rest of us frequently, as if his fear of our coldness were contending with his wish to open his mind to us. I was not the only one to notice his excitement, but the rest sat looking at their plates stonily. They liked Gven even less than they had at first, and preferred to ignore his presence altogether. At last I lifted my head defiantly and my thought streamed across the table into the mind of Gven with such energy and violence that the others raised their eyes from their food in quick surprise.

  “It must be that you have found a subject. I should like to hear about it.”

  At once Gven let his thoughts explode in undisciplined profusion. The men drew back a little, shocked by the unfamiliar impact of another’s passion on their minds.

  “The very first mind I sought was that of a girl who calls herself Maria Dolores. Often her mind turns in upon itself and she reflects like this, ‘Maria Dolores, you have behaved badly to your papa today. Now you must go and ask him to forgive you and give him a kiss.’ In this way she scolds herself for small misdemeanors. Her world is composed of happy, innocent trivialities, though as her purity touches on them and causes them to glow briefly before they are left behind, it seems that there are no more divine and lovely things in existence than those in the world of my Maria Dolores.”

  Gven blushed and paused for a moment, then rushed on. “I sense that her father and mother have barricaded her from everyone else. They are strict with Maria Dolores and sometimes she wishes she could go out to dances as the other girls do. But she is not sad for long, and goes to gather flowers for the dinner table. She sets them in long
silver dishes, that reflect the pink and red glow of the sunset slanting through the window. This pleases Maria Dolores and she stands watching for a long time.”

  Gven would have said more, but all at once Corven, the cultural researcher, interrupted, looking at me. “Noven, what have you brought upon us by your curiosity? We are being buried in an avalanche of poetic fancies.”

  After this, Gven sat silent, his face burning, and the rest of us began to talk of the relation between the sites of mines and the locations of proving grounds.

  For many days, I watched Gven covertly. He no longer seemed to care about our rebuffs, nor did he show any desire to ask us questions. He only sat by the panels, his expression withdrawn and intent, while the rest of us hustled busily and a little self-consciously around him. I came to notice a certain perplexity in his face after a time, and felt that I should ask if he needed any assistance. But I was awkward and unsure of myself, so I only watched him and said nothing. At last he came to me, having built up a powerful reserve of feeling that overflowed with the more violence for having been repressed so long.

  “There is something that is to happen in the life of my Maria Dolores,” Gven began directly.

  Unaccountably, I tensed and tried to suppress the warmth I felt toward him. “Well, what is it then?” I answered.