Classic PJ Farmer

by Philip José Farmer

  Why, he pantomimed, why didn’t the escaped male sleep when all his fellows did? The one in the cage evidently slept at the same time as his companions. And the queen’s guards also slept in the belief they were safe from attack.

  Not so, replied Martia. A male who had gotten out of a cage knew no law but fatigue. When he had exhausted himself in his eating and killing, he lay down to sleep. But it did not matter if it was the regular time for it or not. When he was rested, he raged through the tubes and did not stop until he was again too tired to move.

  So then, thought Lane, that explains the area of dead umbrella plants on top of the tube by the garden. Another colony moved into the devastated area, built the garden on the outside, and planted the young umbrellas.

  He wondered why neither he nor the others of his group had seen the dekapeds outside during their six days on Mars. There must be at least one pressure chamber and outlet for each colony, and there should be at least fifteen colonies in the tubes between this point and that near his base. Perhaps the answer was that the leaf-croppers only ventured out occasionally. Now that he remembered it, neither he nor anyone else had noticed any holes on the leaves. That meant that the trees must have been cropped some time ago and were now ready for another harvesting. If the expedition had only waited several days before sending out men in tracs, it might have seen the dekapeds and investigated. And the story would have been different.

  There were other questions he had for her. What about the vessel that was to take them to Ganymede? Was there one hidden on the outside, or was one to be sent to pick them up? If one was to be sent, how would the Ganymedan base be contacted? Radio? Or some—to him—inconceivable method?

  The blue globes! he thought. Could they be means of transmitting messages?

  He did not know or think further about them because fatigue overwhelmed him, and he fell asleep. His last memory was that of Martia leaning over him and smiling at him.

  When he awoke reluctantly, his muscles ached, and his mouth was as dry as the Martian desert. He rose in time to see Martia drop out of the tunnel, a bucket of eggs in her hand. Seeing this, he groaned. That meant she had gone into the nursery again, and that he had slept the clock around.

  He stumbled up and into the shower cubicle. Coming out much refreshed, he found breakfast hot on the table. Martia conducted the communion rite, and then they ate. He missed his coffee. The hot soup was good but did not make a satisfactory substitute. There was a bowl of mixed cereal and fruit, both of which came out of a can. It must have had a high energy content, for it made him wide awake.

  Afterward, he did some setting-up exercises while she did the dishes. Though he kept his body busy, he was thinking of things unconnected with what he was doing.

  What was to be his next move?

  His duty demanded that he return to the base and report. What news he would send to the orbital ship! The story would flash from the ship back to Earth. The whole planet would be in an uproar.

  There was one objection to his plan to take Martia back with him.

  She would not want to go.

  Halfway in a deep knee bend, he stopped. What a fool he was! He had been too tired and confused to see it. But if she had revealed that the base of her people was on Ganymede, she did not expect him to take the information back to his transmitter. It would be foolish on her part to tell him unless she were absolutely certain that he would be able to communicate with no one.

  That must mean that a vessel was on its way and would arrive soon. And it would not only take her but him. If he was to be killed, he would be dead now.

  Lane had not been chosen to be a member of the first Mars expedition because he lacked decision. Five minutes later, he had made up his mind. His duty was clear. Therefore, he would carry it out, even if it violated his personal feelings toward Martia and caused her injury.

  First, he’d bind her. Then he would pack up their two pressure suits, the books, and any tools small enough to carry so they might later be examined on Earth. He would make her march ahead of him through the tube until they came to the point opposite his base. There they would don their suits and go to the dome. And as soon as possible the two would rise on the rocket to the orbital ship. This step was the most hazardous, for it was extremely difficult for one man to pilot the rocket. Theoretically, it could be done. It had to be done.

  Lane tightened his jaw and forced his muscles to quit quivering. The thought of violating Martia’s hospitality upset him. Still, she had treated him so well for a purpose not altogether altruistic. For all he knew, she was plotting against him.

  There was a rope in one of the cabinets, the same flexible rope with which she had pulled him from the mire. He opened the door of the cabinet and removed it. Martia stood in the middle of the room and watched him while she stroked the head of the blue-eyed worm coiled about her shoulders. He hoped she would stay there until he got close. Obviously, she carried no weapon on her nor indeed anything except the pet. Since she had removed her suit, she had worn nothing.

  Seeing him approaching her, she spoke to him in an alarmed tone. It didn’t take much sensitivity to know that she was asking him what he intended to do with the rope. He tried to smile reassuringly at her and failed. This was making him sick.

  A moment later, he was violently sick. Martia had spoken loudly one word, and it was as if it had struck him in the pit of his stomach. Nausea gripped him, his mouth began salivating, and it was only by dropping the rope and running into the shower that he avoided making a mess on the floor.

  Ten minutes later, he felt thoroughly cleaned out. But when he tried to walk to the bed, his legs threatened to give way. Martia had to support him.

  Inwardly, he cursed. To have a sudden reaction to the strange food at such a crucial moment! Luck was not on his side.

  That is, if it was chance. There had been something so strange and forceful about the manner in which she pronounced that word. Was it possible that she had set up in him—hypnotically or otherwise—a reflex to that word? It would, under the conditions, be a weapon more powerful than a gun.

  He wasn’t sure, but it did seem strange that his body had accepted the alien food until that moment. Hypnotism did not really seem to be the answer. How could it be so easily used on him since he did not know more than twenty words of her language?

  Language? Words? They weren’t necessary. If she had given him a hypnotic drug in his food, and then had awakened him during his sleep, she could have dramatized how he was to react if she wanted him to do so. She could have given him the key word, then have allowed him to go to sleep again.

  He knew enough hypnotism to know that that was possible. Whether his suspicions were true or not, it was a fact that he had laid flat on his back. However, the day was not wasted. He learned twenty more words, and she drew many more sketches for him. He found out that when he had jumped into the mire of the garden he had literally fallen into the soup. The substance in which the young umbrella trees had been planted was a zoogloea, a glutinous mass of one-celled vegetables and somewhat larger anaerobic animal life that fed on the vegetables. The heat from the jam-packed water-swollen bodies kept the garden soil warm and prevented the tender plants from freezing even during the forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit of the midsummer nights.

  After the trees were transplanted into the roof of the tube to replace the dead adults, the zoogloea would be taken piecemeal back to the tube and dumped into the channel. Here the jetfish would strain out part and eat part as they pumped water from the polar end of the tube to the equatorial end.

  Toward the end of the day, he tried some of the zoogloea soup and managed to keep it down. A little later, he ate some cereal.

  Martia insisted on spooning the food for him. There was something so feminine and tender about her solicitude that he could not protest.

  “Martia,” he said, “I may be wrong. There can be good will and rapport between our two kinds. Look at us. Why, if you were a real woman, I’d be in
love with you.

  “Of course, you may have made me sick in the first place. But if you did, it was a matter of expediency, not malice. And now you are taking care of rne, your enemy. Love thy enemy. Not because you have been told you should but because you do.”

  She, of course, did not understand him. However, she replied in her own tongue, and it seemed to him that her voice had the same sense of sympatico.

  As he fell asleep, he was thinking that perhaps Martia and he would be the two ambassadors to bring their people together in peace. After all, both of them were highly civilized, essentially pacifistic, and devoutly religious. There was such a thing as the brotherhood, not only of man, but of all sentient beings throughout the cosmos, and…

  Pressure on his bladder woke him up. He opened his eyes. The ceiling and walls expanded and contracted. His wristwatch was distorted. Only by extreme effort could he focus his eyes enough to straighten the arms on his watch. The piece, designed to measure the slightly longer Martian day, indicated midnight.

  Groggily, he rose. He felt sure that he must have been drugged and that he would still be sleeping if the bladder pain hadn’t been so sharp. If ony he could take something to counteract the drug, he could carry out his plans now. But first he had to get to the toilet.

  To do so, he had to pass close to Martia’s bed. She did not move but lay on her back, her arms flung out and hanging over the sides of the bed, her mouth open wide.

  He looked away, for it seemed indecent to watch when she was in such a position.

  But something caught his eye—a movement, a flash of light like a gleaming jewel in her mouth.

  He bent over her, looked, and recoiled in horror.

  A head rose from between her teeth.

  He raised his hand to snatch at the thing but froze in the posture as he recognized the tiny pouting round mouth and little blue eyes. It was the worm.

  At first, he thought Martia was dead. The thing was not coiled in her mouth. Its body disappeared into her throat.

  Then he saw her chest was rising easily and that she seemed to be in no difficulty.

  Forcing himself to come close to the worm, though his stomach muscles writhed and his neck muscles quivered, he put his hand close to its lips.

  Warm air touched his fingers, and he heard a faint whistling.

  Martia was breathing through it!

  Hoarsely, he said, “God!” and he shook her shoulder. He did not want to touch the worm because he was afraid that it might do something to injure her. In that moment of shock he had forgotten that he had an advantage over her, which he should use.

  Martia’s lids opened; her large gray-blue eyes stared blankly.

  “Take it easy,” he said soothingly.

  She shuddered. Her lids closed, her neck arched back, and her face contorted.

  He could not tell if the grimace was caused by pain or something else.

  “What is this—this monster?” he said. “Symbiote? Parasite?”

  He thought of vampires, of worms creeping into one’s sleeping body and there sucking blood.

  Suddenly, she sat up and held out her arms to him. He seized her hands, saying, “What is it?”

  Martia pulled him toward her, at the same time lifting her face to his.

  Out of her open mouth shot the worm, its head pointed toward his face, its little lips formed into an O.

  It was reflex, the reflex of fear that made Lane drop her hands and spring back. He had not wanted to do that, but he could not help himself.

  Abruptly, Martia came wide awake. The worm flopped its full length from her mouth and fell into a heap between her legs. There it thrashed for a moment before coiling itself like a snake, its head resting on Martia’s thigh, its eyes turned upward to Lane.

  There was no doubt about it. Martia looked disappointed, frustrated.

  Lane’s knees, already weak, gave way. However, he managed to continue to his destination. When he came out, he walked as far as Martia’s bed, where he had to sit down. His heart was thudding against his ribs, and he was panting hard.

  He sat behind her, for he did not want to be where the worm could touch him.

  Martia made motions for him to go back to his bed and they would all sleep. Evidently, he thought, she found nothing alarming in the incident.

  But he knew he could not rest until he had some kind of explanation. He handed her paper and pen from the bedside table and then gestured fiercely. Martia shrugged and began sketching while Lane watched over her shoulder. By the time she had used up five sheets of paper, she had communicated her message.

  His eyes were wide, and he was even paler.

  So—Martia was a female. Female at least in the sense that she carried eggs—and, at times, young—within her.

  And there was the so-called worm. So called? What could he call it? It could not be designated under one category. It was many things in one. It was a larva. It was a phallus. It was also her offspring, of her flesh and blood.

  But not of her genes. It was not descended from her.

  She had given birth to it, yet she was not its mother. She was neither one of its mothers.

  The dizziness and confusion he felt was not caused altogether by his sickness. Things were coming too fast. He was thinking furiously, trying to get this new information clear, but his thoughts kept going bacik and forth, getting nowhere.

  “There’s no reason to get upset,” he told himself. “After all, the splitting of animals into two sexes is only one of the ways of reproduction tried on Earth. On Martia’s planet Nature—God— has fashioned another method for the higher animals. And only He knows how many other designs for reproduction He has fashioned on how many other worlds.”

  Nevertheless, he was upset.

  This worm, no, this larva, this embryo outside its egg and its secondary mother… well, call it, once and for all, larva, because it did metamorphose later.

  This particular larva was doomed to stay in its present form until it died of old age.

  Unless Martia found another adult of the Eeltau.

  And unless she and this other adult felt affection for each other.

  Then, according to the sketch she’d drawn, Martia and her friend, or lover, would lie down or sit together. They would, as lovers do on Earth, speak to each other in endearing, flattering, and exciting terms. They would caress and kiss much as Terrestrial man and woman do, though on Earth it was not considered complimentary to call one’s lover Big Mouth.

  Then, unlike the Terran custom, a third would enter the union to form a highly desired and indeed indispensable and eternal triangle.

  The larva, blindly, brainlessly obeying its instincts, aroused by mutual fondling by the two, would descend tail first into the throat of one of the two Eeltau. Inside the body of the lover a fleshy valve would open to admit the slim body of the larva. Its open tip would touch the ovary of the host. The larva, like an electric eel, would release a tiny current. The hostess would go into an ecstasy, its nerves stimulate electrochemically. The ovary would release an egg no larger than a pencil dot. It would disappear into the open tip of the larva’s tail, there to begin a journey up a canal toward the center of its body, urged on by the contraction of muscle and whipping of cilia.

  Then the larva slid out of the first hostess’s mouth and went tail first into the other, there to repeat the process. Sometimes the larva garnered eggs, sometimes not, depending upon whether the ovary had a fully developed one to release.

  When the process was successful, the two eggs moved toward each other but did not quite meet.

  Not yet.

  There must be other eggs collected in the dark incubator of the larva, collected by pairs, though not necessarily from the same couple of donors.

  These would number anywhere from twenty to forty pairs.

  Then, one day, the mysterious chemistry of the cells would tell the larva’s body that it had gathered enough eggs.

  A hormone was released, the metamorphosis begun. The lar
va swelled enormously, and the mother, seeing this, placed it tenderly in a warm place and fed it plenty of predigested food and sugar water.

  Before the eyes of its mother, the larva then grew shorter and wider. Its tail contracted; its cartilaginous vertebrae, widely separated in its larval stage, shifted closer to each other and hardened, a skeleton formed, ribs, shoulders. Legs and arms budded and grew and took humanoid shape. Six months passed, and there lay in its crib something resembling a baby of Homo sapiens.

  From then until its fourteenth year, the Eeltau grew and developed much as its Terran counterpart.

  Adulthood, however, initiated more strange changes. Hor-‘tnone released hormone until the first pair of gametes, dormant these fourteen years, moved together.

  The two fused, the chromatin of one uniting with the chromatin of the other. Out of the two—a single creature, wormlike, four inches long, was released into the stomach of its hostess.

  Then, nausea. Vomiting. And so, comparatively painlessly, the bringing forth of a genetically new being.

  It was this worm that would be both fetus and phallus and would give ecstasy and draw into its own body the eggs of loving adults and would metamorphose and become infant, child, and adult.

  And so on and so on.

  He rose and shakily walked to his own bed. There he sat down, his head bowed, while he muttered to himself.

  “Let’s see now. Martia gave birth to, brought forth, or up, this larva. But the larva actually doesn’t have any of Martia’s genes. Martia was just the hostess for it.

  “However, if Martia has a lover, she will, by means of this worm, pass on her heritable qualities. This worm will become an adult and bring forth, or up, Martia’s child.”

  He raised his hands in despair.

  “How do the Eeltau reckon ancestry? How keep track of their relatives? Or do they care? Wouldn’t it be easier to consider your foster mother, your hostess, your real mother? As, in the sense of having borne you, she is?

  “And what kind of sexual code do these people have? It can’t, I would think, be much like ours. Nor is there any reason why it should be.