I walked down toward where she'd dropped the moccasins. I still stared at the distant Barbi, her long golden legs flashing in the sunlight, but my thoughts were on my older sister Beth. Beth had died, at about Barbi's present age, of a tumor—radiation again. My picture of her was of a slight, heavy-eyed girl who moved quietly about the Temple, avoiding the patches of direct sunlight from the windows. There were no clocks still operating in the Village, but I didn't need to time Barbi's dash to the Temple to draw quite a clear comparison between her and Beth. Or between her and me.
So. Either Barbi was nearly immune to radiation, like the Folk, or else her health had been spared so far by her living farther away from the City. And the second possibility didn't count for much—this long after the War, the radioactivity was pretty much universal, I was sure, though of course weaker in intensity.
I stood waiting for Barbi. She was racing uphill toward me, at the same rate she'd gone down. She was beautiful to watch, as long as I didn't think about it.
When she got to me she was smiling. Just a gentle, unassuming smile, reflecting the fact that she had made her point in the discussion. I smiled too, shaking my head ruefully, and handed her the moccasins, which she put on again without objection.
It was just as well the discussion had to wait a few moments for Barbi to catch her breath. I wanted time to think. Just at that point I was a little afraid of Barbi.
"That makes it more difficult," I remarked finally, as we stepped through the door into the sudden darkness of the Temple's interior.
"What's 'difficult'?"
"Oh . . . it means 'hard to understand', in this case. You remember what we were talking about before we went up to see the City?"
"Why we're different. But you told me why." She added, "Partly."
"What I've told you partly is why I am different. As for you—" I sat down, wearily; Barbi stood in front of me, arms folded. "Your parents were both Folk—unless the Chief captured you from another tribe."
"He never said that."
"No . . . I suppose he was your father, all right. You see, Barbi, the child is usually like its parents. The cattle on the plains—you have seen the high-shoulders and the short legs?"
"Yes."
"Do two short legs ever have a calf that grows as tall as a man?"
"Don't know."
"Oh. Well, it almost never happens. Sometimes the big cattle have short-leg calves. The Folk have seen them running with the herds. If you have a high-shoulder bull and cow, and know what calves their parents and grandparents had, you can say whether it's possible they will have short-leg calves, and you will be almost sure to be right."
"You haven't tried it."
"No."
"It's in the books."
"That's right."
"Then why don't— Oh no. The books don't say about Folk and Elders because there weren't Folk then. But there were two kinds of cattle then?"
"I don't even know whether there were or not."
"What!"
There was a frown of puzzlement on her impassive face for the first time. I laughed apologetically. How could Barbi be expected to grasp what I'd been driving at: that there were general principles of genetics? The only "general principles" she'd ever have run into would be of the sort that you don't need to state explicitly, or the sort you can state in terms of familiar objects. And here I was trying to tell her about dominant and recessive genes! About the problem of whether Folk differed from human in more than one gene: about the strong reasons for thinking it was only one; about the evidence her existence gave—the highly confusing evidence, now that she'd proved she was not altogether human.
If I'd thought a little further, I'd have realized she'd showed pretty acute intelligence, just now, in seeing that she didn't understand what I was driving at. I'd have been a little more afraid of her than I was.
But she was my wife, and the Elder Barbi, and I'd already decided I was going to teach her. I said: "Many things in the books are still true, even though so much is changed now. By reading them you can figure out a lot of things you couldn't otherwise."
" 'Reading'—that means finding out what the books say."
"That's right. It's hard to learn how, though. Shall I teach you?"
Apparently her curiosity had been aroused by the disjointed conversation; she answered, "Yes," without hesitation.
So I began the job of teaching Barbi to read.
Not that that was the only thing I had to occupy my time that fall. After harvesting and threshing were done there was the storing of grain, seed, and silage. Later on three cows were slaughtered, at intervals, and their hides hung up to cure. The—rather tough—meat I found welcome, as did the Folks, but it reminded me again how much better it would be to have a larger herd of cattle and an adequate refrigeration system. All in good time.
When Jenkins and the other farmers would come to me to ask about the routine affairs of the Village, or to discuss the building of two new houses planned for next year, Barbi would usually put down the book she was struggling with at the time and turn to listen. She never said anything; just sat there on the floor beside me, her arms crossed on her raised knees, one thumb holding her place in her book, her dark eyes alert and thoughtful. She always listened when Jenkins came alone to report in his capacity as unofficial head of the secret service. The first few times Jenkins had been visibly uncomfortable about speaking before her, but after all she was an Elder. These reports of Jenkins' were generally encouraging. I hadn't expected them to be. As a matter of fact I had rather expected it might occur to Old Red and some of the others who felt chronically cooped up and bored in the Village that the Chief had the right idea. However, none of the Folk left the Village, and Jim Jenkins reported only two or three remarks tending to this direction.
Which may have been because winter was coming on, the best season to be in the Village, or because the dissidents among the Folk had learned who not to talk to!
In any case, the dissatisfaction was still there. Wherever it was possible without losing face, I made concessions. At the same time I was more careful than ever about not losing face.
The principal concession was in allowing an Elder-sanctioned party to go out to bring back the canned goods Old Red had found previously. Among those who went were several of Old Red's adherents. At the same time I saw to it that these were outnumbered by Folk I could count on—people who would just as soon have stayed at home. The expedition was successful and caused no more friction than was to be expected; a large store of prewar canned goods was brought back and added to our winter provisions.
In the face-preserving line, I kept a Temple Guard on duty all the time, as my parents had done. The Guards chosen were Tony Shelton, Tim Marvic, and Jane Anderson. All three enjoyed the job for its prestige, and got a kick out of the rigamarole I prescribed for Villagers who came to see the Elder. It was a new game, just complicated enough not to pall quickly, and they carried it off with considerable dignity.
There was one more worry—the Chief. Old Red had routed him once, but that didn't mean much. Hunters who made their livelihood from the bow and arrow could be expected to use the weapon better than the Folk here. They were a danger. On the other hand, they had the whole continent for their hunting ground, probably with no human competition anywhere, so there wasn't too much reason for them to turn this way. I was more concerned about dangers close to home.
I remember it was in November, after the first wood-chopping parties had left, that it became definite that Barbi was pregnant. The fact seemed neither to inconvenience her nor excite her. In fact it was only shortly after that she began to attack the Temple's library with remarkable single-mindedness.
Reading came astonishingly easily to her; in fact the principal hurdle seemed to be accustoming her eyes to focusing at the same distance, and such a short distance, after a life spent outdoors. From December on she got along without tutoring. The dictionary got plenty of use, but she had also a special skill fo
r scanning a half-understood passage and extracting the meat.
By this time, of course, the Temple's glassless windows had been shuttered for the winter; so, on all but the coldest days, Barbi would save candles by reading outside. With her cloak of pieced-together rabbit pelts pulled around her and over her ears, with her feet drawn up on and edge of the cloak to keep them out of the snow, she would sit there in the lee of the house for hours, glancing up occasionally to rest her eyes, but never once coming inside to thaw out. I made no attempt to duplicate her performance.
Or else the two of us would sit and talk in the half-light of the boarded-up Temple—about her life in the tribe, about some prewar subject or other which it was hard to get from the books, or about the Village. Barbi rarely expressed an opinion, but I was more than eager to know what she was thinking, on that last subject particularly. There was just once when I got a hint.
We were in the Temple's main room, and the candles had been lighted in honor of the talk I was giving her on cell structure, which required diagrams. When I came to a stopping place, she got up and began to pace the floor.
"You've always been here and been boss?"
"Yes. Well, my parents were—"
"I know. But you were always boss after them and never did work."
"I couldn't do much work with my hands and back if I tried. Too bad, but there it is."
"Would you if you could?"
"Well—maybe not. Once the Elders were Elders, it wasn't too good an idea to be working with the others."
"Dignity of the Elders," she said, smiling a little. "Like the Lords in that book—can't soil your hands. Aristocrats."
"Aristocrats," I corrected, "Yes, that's it exactly."
"You never had any wife?"
"No. My mother said it was all right, but my father told me no. Said I shouldn't have a wife from the Folk till I was sure I couldn't find one of my own race."
"If you got a Folk wife, that'd make you too much like the rest."
"That's right."
"Can't be like the rest, can't do work. Aristocrats, Different from the Chief," she added suddenly.
"Not entirely," I said. "If people hadn't been willing to obey your father, they could have got a new Chief. Somebody could have fought your father for it. But from what you've told me, nobody ever did."
She stopped her pacing, sat down on the floor. A heavy lock of black hair fell across one cheek, shadowing her face. "You're right," she answered, turning her face up into the candlelight again. "Nobody really thought of changing things. He was a good Chief."
I leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Same with us. We're the Elders—'Elders' with a capital 'E', even though the Folk can't write—the Folk don't think of changing things. And we're good Elders. We earn our food. We know things they don't, we can figure out things they can't, we can rule them best for their own good."
"For your own good."
"For our good and theirs." I didn't mention how completely the Folk were left out of my mental picture of the world two hundred years from now. Better to give her the picture of myself as benevolent despot.
"Why can't they go hunting all the time the way my people—the Chief's people do?"
"It may seem to you the Folks are being held back. I suppose that's true, in a way. But how are we going to build up the civilization people had before the War if we don't have something like the Village and the Elders? Start from nothing? Without the Elders it would have taken the Folk many thousand years to get where they are now. If they all scattered in bands of hunters now, the Temple library wouldn't have anyone to read it, and people would forget the ways of getting food from wheat, vegetables, and tame cattle. The Folk would suffer in the long run from forgetting all this."
"And you'd suffer. Even if they didn't forget you'd suffer."
"That, too. But they'd forget."
"I'll think about it."
And I knew she would.
Chapter Two
Barbi's son was born in July, almost two weeks premature.
The fact that he was premature was fortunate in one way at least. It saved me a lot of worrying. As it was, the whole thing broke quite unexpectedly. Barbi announced, calmly as ever but quite positively, that things were about to happen: the Temple Guard went to the Village to fetch a midwife; the midwife retired upstairs to Barbi's bed; and I was left alone downstairs to catch up on the worrying which normally would have been begun some time before the event.
There was enough to worry about. Even objectively, this was a darned important child that was being born. And subjectively I was nervous as all get out.
I waited, in silence. After a time, there were conclusive sounds from upstairs; I still waited. Crickets shrilled through the warm night.
Finally I could go up. The midwife met me at the door of the room. "Boy, Elder Stevan." She stood aside to let me in. Barbi lay on the old, rusted bedstead in the corner. Her covers looked oppressive in the heat; sweat was standing on my own face. Hers was streaked, but unlined. I stroked her cheek, and she smiled—not a brave smile, but a perfectly spontaneous one; there was nothing to be brave about.
The midwife came up with the child in her arms, wrapped in a single piece of rough linen cloth. I turned to look at him.
Now any newborn child has a disconcerting similarity to a young pig; that I knew from the picture in the books, which—believe me!—I had studied. And I understand that a newborn chimp looks practically human. None the less, the distinction can be made, and you'd have to be pretty short-sighted to hesitate in making it. What's more, racial characteristics if pronounced enough, even sometimes family resemblances, can be distinguished in the walnut-wrinkled faces of the newborn. I had no difficulty at all in perceiving that Barbi's son was Folk.
Did the midwife know? Probably not. But Barbi— Well, she'd never seen a young human, but she could look at the books' pictures as well as I could. If she didn't suspect, she would, and soon.
I said nothing about it to either of them, but fought the problem out with myself.
The father—Elder Stevan—human. The mother— Elder Barbi—human. The child: Folk. High-shoulder and short leg—
All right then. There must be at least one gene in which I was distinguished from the Folk. Were there more than one?
My grandfather had thought not. Since the Folk strain had been unknown before the War, it must have originated at the time of the City's bombing, so my grandfather assumed. Now the percentage of mutations which are able to live at all is so extremely low that it's stretching probabilities too far to assume that more than one gene was changed—whether in the same or in different children. This one gene might be one which appeared in several different forms among humans, of course; but among the Folk there was only the one allele at this particular point on this particular chromosome—the mutated form.
On the other hand, my grandfather hadn't known about Barbi. Suppose there were actually two genes wherein the two races differed. Suppose Barbi had the human gene in one case—so that she looked like me—but didn't have the other human gene, which would have made her susceptible to radiation poisoning. Then consider only the first gene, in which Barbi and I agreed. Then in order for us to have a child which, as regards this gene, was Folk—let's see. The Folk gene would have to be recessive, for if it were dominant one of the parents would have to be Folk in appearance. But if the Folk gene was recessive, then both parents must be heterozygous! There must be Folk in my ancestry as well as in Barbi's.
There were other difficulties in the theory, when I thought it over; but at least it held promise that our next child would probably—seventy-five percent probability—be human.
Anyhow, the theory was not true. There was another birth in the Village only a week later—Paul and Grace Pomroy had their first child, a daughter. She was human.
I made no attempt to conceal my agitation from Jim Jenkins, the child's grandfather, when he brought me the news. "Are you sure?" I asked unsteadily.
"I saw the Elder Stevan when he was a child. Think I know—"
"Are you sure!"
"Yes."
"Has this ever happened before, Jim Jenkins?"
His heavy pepper-and-salt eyebrows drew together in thought. It wasn't just the effort of remembering, I was sure. His answer was, "Yes, Elder Stevan."
"When?"
He bit his lip. "My sister, she named Grace, too."
"Yes, Tim Marvic's mother."
"Yes. Her second child looked like Elders. They killed it."
"What? Why didn't they tell the Elder?"
Imperial Stars 1-The Stars at War Page 21
