The Starry Rift

by James Tiptree Jr

  The Coati-voice says, slowly, “Oh, whew. You mean, you’re afraid you’re going to be grabbed by this mating thing and make spores in my head? And they’ll bore a hole?”

  “Y-yes.” The alien is in obvious misery.

  “Wait a minute. Will it make you go crazy and stop being you, like a Human who gets intoxicated? Oh, you couldn’t know about that. But you’ll act like those untrained young ones? I mean, what will you do?”

  “I may—eat blindly. Oh-h-h... Don’t leave me alone in your cold-sleep!”

  “Well. Well. I have to think.”

  Click—the deputy has halted the machine.

  “I thought we should take a minim to appreciate this young woman’s dilemma, and the dilemma of the alien.” The xenobiologist sighs. “This urge, or cycle, is evidently not so very rare, since instructions are given to the young to combat it. Instructions which unfortunately depend on the mentor being available. But it doesn’t appear to be a normal part or stage of maturing—more like an accidental episode. I suggest that here it was precipitated by the experience with the two Humans infected by untrained young. That awakened what the Eea seem to regard as part of their primitive system.”

  “How fast can they get back to that Eea planet, ah, Nolian?” someone asks.

  “Not fast enough, I gather,” Exec says. “Even if she took the heroic measure of traveling without cold-sleep.”

  “She’s got to get rid of that thing!” Coati’s father bursts out. “Cut into her own head and pull it out if she has to! Can’t somebody get to her and operate?”

  He is met by the silence of negation. The moments they are hearing passed, for good or ill, long back.

  “The alien said it could leave,” the deputy observes. “We will see if that solution occurs to them.” He clicks on.

  As if echoing him, Coati’s voice comes in. “I asked Syl if she could pull out, and park somewhere comfortable until the fit passed. But she says—tell them, Syl.”

  “I have been trying to withdraw for some time. Early on, I could have done so easily. But now the strands of my physical being have been penetrating so very deeply into Coati’s brain, into the molecular and—is ‘atomic’ the word?—structure. So I have attempted to cut loose from portions of myself, but whenever I succeed in freeing one part, I find that the part I freed before has rejoined. I—I have not had much instruction in this technique, not since I was much smaller. I seem to have grown greatly while with Coati. Nothing I try works. Oh, oh, if only another Eea was here to help! I would do anything, I’d cut myself in half—”

  “It’s a gods-cursed cancer,” Coati’s father growls. He perceives no empathetic young alien, but only the threat to his child.

  “But dear Coati Cass, I cannot. And there is no mistake now, the primitive part of myself that contains this dreadful urge is growing, growing, although I am fighting it as well as I can. I fear it will soon overwhelm me. Is there not something you can do?”

  “Not for you, Syl. How could I? But tell me—after it’s all passed, and you’ve, well, eaten my brains out, will you come back to yourself and be all right?”

  “Oh—I could never be all right, knowing I had murdered you! Killed my friend! My life would be a horrible thing. Even if my people accepted me, I could not. I mean this, Coati Cass.”

  “Hmm. Well. Let me think.” The record clicks, off-on. Coati’s voice comes back. “Well, the position is, if we carry out our plan to go back to FedBase, I’ll be a zombie, or dead, when I get there, and you’ll be miserable. And the ship’ll be full of spores. I wouldn’t be able to land it, but somebody’d probably manage to intercept us. And the people who opened it would get infected with your spores, and by the time things got cleared up a lot of Humans would have died, and maybe nobody would feel like taking you back to your planet. Ugh.”

  The alien voice echoes her.

  “On the other hand, if we cut straight for Nolian, even at the best, you’d have made spores and they’d have chewed up my brains, and it’d be impossible for me to bring the ship down and let you out. So you’d be locked up with a dead Human and a lot of spores, flying on to gods know where, forever. Unless somebody intercepted us, in which case the other scenario would take over... Syl, I don’t see any out. What I do see is that this ship will soon be a flying time bomb, just waiting for some non-Eea life to get near it.”

  “Yes. That is well put, Coati-my-friend,” the small voice says sadly. “Oh!”

  “What?”

  “I felt a strong urge to—to hurt you. I barely stopped it. Oh, Coati! Help! I don’t want to become a wild beast!”

  “Syl, honey... It’s not your fault. I wonder, shouldn’t we sort of say our good-byes while we can?”

  “I see... I see.”

  “Syllobene, my dear, whatever happens, remember we were great friends, and had adventures together, and saved each other’s lives. And if you do something bad to me, remember I know it isn’t really you, it’s just an accident because we’re so different. I... I’ve never had a friend I loved more, Syl. So good-bye, and remember it all with joy if you can.”

  A sound of sobbing. “G-good-bye, dear Coati Cass. I am sad with all my being that it is through me that badness has come. Being friends with you has lifted my life to lightness I never dreamed of. If I survive, I will tell my people how good and true Humans are. But I don’t think I will have that chance. One way or another, I will end my life with yours, Coati Cass. Above all I do not wish to bring more trouble on Humans.”

  “Syl...” Coati says thoughtfully. “If you mean that about going together, there’s a way. Do you mean it?”

  “Y-yes. Yes.”

  “The thing is, in addition to what happens to us, our ship will be a menace to anybody, Human or whatever, who gets at it. It’s sort of our duty not to do a thing like that, you know? And I really don’t want to go on as a zombie. And I see that beautiful yellow sun out there, the sun we saw all those days and nights down on the planet... like it’s waiting for us.... Syl?”

  “Coati, I understand you.”

  “Of course, there’re a lot of things I wanted to do, you d-did, too—maybe this is the b-big one—”

  The record lapses to a fuzzy sound.

  “Something has been erased,” the deputy says.

  It comes back in a minim or two with Coati’s voice saying, “—didn’t need to hear all that. The point is, we’ve decided. So—ow! Oh-h-h-ow! What?”

  “Coati!” The small voice seems to be screaming. “Coati, I’m losing—I’m losing myself! Something wants to hurt you, to stop you—to make you go in cold-sleep—I’m fighting it—Oh, forgive me, forgive me—”

  “OW! Hey, I forgive you, but—Oh, Wait, hold it, baby, I just have to set our course, and then I’ll hop right into the chest. I have to set the computer; try to understand.” Undecipherable noise from the alien. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the unmistakable sound of a young Human voice humming fills the room.

  “I know that tune,” the computer chief says suddenly. “It’s old—wait—yes. It’s ‘Into the Heart of the Sun.’ She’s trying to tell us what she’s doing without alerting that maniacal parasite.”

  “We better listen closely,” the deputy observes superfluously. A moment later the humming gives place to a softly sung bar of words—yes, it’s “Into the Heart of the Sun.” It ends in a sharp yelp. “Hey, Syl, try not to, please—”

  “I try! I try!”

  “We’ll get into cold-sleep just as soon as I possibly can. Don’t hurt me, you doppelganger, or I’ll make a mistake and you’ll end up as fried spores—Owwwww! For an amateur, you’re a little d-devil, Syl.” The voice seems to be trying to conceal the wail of real agony. Exec is reminded of the wounded Patrolmen he tended as a young med-aid long ago, during the Last War.

  “I just have to regoogolate the fribiliser that keeps us from penetrating high gee-fields,” says Coati. “You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

  Her own throat growls at her. �
��Hurry.”

  “That’s an old nonsense phrase,” Computer speaks up. “ ‘Googolating the fribiliser’—she’s trying to tell us she’s killing the automatic drive-override. Oh, good girl.”

  “And now I must send this message pipe off. It’s in your interests, Syl, it shows you doing all those useful things. And I have to heat it first—oh, ow—please let me, Syl, please try to let m-me—”

  Sounds that might be a heat oven, roughly handled, punctuated by yelps from Coati. Her father is gripping his chair arms so hard they creak.

  “Yes, I know that big yellow sun ahead is getting pretty hot and bright. Don’t let it worry you. If we go close by it, we’ll save a whole leg of our trip. It’s the only neat way to do. Han Lu Han, anybody there? Here, I’ll pull the bow blinds.

  “And now the cassettes from Boney and Ko go in the pipe—ow! —and where’s that little one from their bow camera? Syl, try to tell your primitive self you’re just slowing me down with those jabs. Please, please—Ah, here it is. And out come the spores, I mean, the seeds that were in there, that pipe is hot!

  “And now it’s time to say good-bye, put this in the pipe, and climb into the chest. I really hope the pipe’s frequency can pull it through these gees. On second thought, maybe I’d like to see where we’re going while it lasts. As long as I can stand the pain, I think I’ll stay out and watch.”

  Loud sounds of the cassette being handled.

  “Good-bye, all. To my folks... Oh, I do love you, Dad and Mum. Maybe somebody at FedBase can explain—ow!! Oh... Oh... I can’t... Hey, Syl, is there anybody you want to say good-bye to? Your mentor?”

  A confused vocalization, then, faintly, “Yes…”

  “Remember Syl. She’s the real stuff, she’s doing this for Humans. For an alien race. She could have stopped me, believe it. Bye, all.”

  A crash, and the record goes to silence.

  “Han Lu Han,” says the xenobiologist quietly into the silence. “He was that boy on the Lyra mission. ‘It’s the only really neat thing to do.’ He said that before he took the rescue-run that killed him.”

  Exec clears his throat. “Myr Cass, we will send a reconnaissance mission to check the area. But I fear there is no reason to believe, or hope, that Myr Coati failed in her plan to eliminate the contagious menace of herself, her passenger, and the ship, by flying into a sun. By the end of the message she was close enough to feel its heat, and it was doubtless the effect of its gravity which delayed this message pipe so much longer than the preceding one, which was sent only a few days earlier. She had moreover carefully undone the precautions which prevent a ship on automatic drive from colliding with a star. Myr Cass, when confronted by a terrifying and painful dilemma capable of causing great harm to others, your daughter took the brave and honorable course, and we must be grateful to her.”

  Silence, as all contemplate the sudden ending of a bright young life. Two bright young lives.

  “But you said she was alive and well when the message was sent.” Coati’s father makes a last, confused protest.

  “Sir, I said that she was compos mentis and probably in her ship,” the deputy reminds him.

  “Thank the gods her mother didn’t come here...”

  “You can pinpoint the star she was headed for?” Exec asks Charts.

  “Oh, yes. The BK coordinates are good.”

  “Then if nobody, has a different idea, I suggest that it be appropriately named in the new ephemeris.”

  “Coati’s Star,” says Commo. People are rising to leave.

  “And Syllobene,” a quiet voice says. “Have we forgotten already?”

  “Myr Cass, I think you may perhaps prefer to be alone for a moment,” Exec tells him. “Any time you wish to see me, I’ll be at your service in my office.”

  “Thank you.”

  Exec leads his deputy out and opts for a quiet lunch in their private small dining room. Added to the list of things that were on his mind before he entered the conference chamber to hear Coati’s message are now the problem of when and how to contact the Eea, how to determine the degree of danger from their seeds, or spores, in space near the promising GO suns,’ the Lost Colony question, whether to quarantine the area, and whether there is any chance of any seeds in FedBase itself from the earlier messages. Also, a sample of the chemical that Syllobene had immunized Coati with would seem to be a rather high priority.

  But behind all these practical thoughts, an image floats in his mind’s eye, accompanied by the sound of a light young voice humming. It’s the image in silhouette of two children, one Human, the other not, advancing steadfastly, hand in hand, toward an inferno of alien solar fire.

  At the Library

  Moa Blue smiles as he sees the two young Comenor approaching; the old text is carefully wrapped in a broidered packing.

  “Well? Did you like it? And did it meet your needs?” Moa inquires.

  “Fascinating!” the Comeno girl breathes. “And we had no idea so young a Human female could, could, well—”

  “Pull off such an exploit!” Her friend finishes for her. Their interlocked upper arms tighten tenderly. “But so sad, at the end.”

  “And did they really name the star after her?”

  “They did. I should have emphasized, whatever is given as fact in these dramatized accounts really is fact. You’ll run across a similar naming in my third tale—all true.” Moa unwraps the documents and sets them carefully aside before he produces another, slightly thicker one.

  “Now here’s your next. Also set in the fringes of the Rift, but quite, quite different. Purely Human interaction, and much more of the dialogue had to be extrapolated from interviews with the participants. It was written up quickly because one—no, two—of the actors achieved considerable celebrity later. You do know what their Gridworld was?”

  Two Comeno brows wrinkle. “Ah... the planet where their entertainment broadcasts originated?” the little female ventures. ‘

  “Right you are. And more, almost a culture of its own. Its name became an adjective for things showy, sensational, slightly meretricious, perhaps. The grid covered the whole Federation and really helped hold it together, by means of shared language, gossip, celebrities, jokes, scandals—we haven’t anything quite like it... yet. At the date of this story, FTL communication was virtually unknown, and FTL transport was used only for emergency; it wasn’t the same system we now use at all. Of course it’s hard to set exact dates on these things, in relation, say, to the Damiem story taking place hundreds of light-years away, because you must remember that Humans for a time borrowed or rented some technology from other races like the Swain, or from the Dhaldiggern, before they so tragically blew themselves up. At any rate, you’ll find here some unusual Human motivations—rather like one of their old grid-shows. And you’ll get your first taste of the Black Worlders.”

  “Oh, yes, we’ve been curious about those. Our texts just say bland things like ‘In those times the Humans from the so-called Black Worlds gave trouble,’ but what does that tell you?”

  “Exactly. Oh, and another thing, if I recall my Comeno biology—you might have to ask a Human specialist exactly why the hero’s choice was so emotionally wrenching. The interviewers and writers, in their haste, have been a bit chauvinistic and perhaps not made things clear enough for races with other reproductive arrangements.”

  The taller Comeno says reflectively, “Professor Imgrenno has already given us a little tutoring on Human reproductive responses. I expect he’d help us. The main thing seems to be the intensity.”

  “Poor things,” the little female puts in. “I know it’s chauvinistic of me, but I always feel so sorry for the two-gender races... Oh, I do hope I don’t offend your species mores, Myr Blue? Terribly rude of me.”

  “Not at all, not at all,” says Moa genially. “True, my race is bipolar, but we spend ninety percent of our time in neuter mode, in which all the passions of coupling, tripling, or what you will, seem quite remote and feverish. You couldn�
��t possibly give offense.”

  The red-furred girl sends him what even Moa can recognize as a melting smile, and her future mate pats her upper hand. “Great are the wonders of the All,” she murmurs.

  A rumbling noise is coming from their other side, where a big Moom student is impatiently awaiting his turn. The rumble is his multiplex gullet working in displeasure. The Comeno boy hastens to transfer the rainproof wrapper to the new text, nodding civilly to the Moom—who as usual makes no reply. Moa and the Comeno couple exchange amused glances; Moom bad manners are known all over the Galaxy and tolerated only because they so rarely mingle with others—and are such eminently reliable drive-ship engineers.

  “I do hope this one lives up to your hopes,” Moa tells them. “Remember, if it seems a little specialized on their love and mating habits—the third one is my special selection for you.”

  They thank him above the Moom’s renewed rumblings and depart, eagerly hugging their next treasure.

  Second Tale

  Good Night, Sweethearts

  Blat-blat-blat beeep blat—

  Far, far out, where Raven lies dreamless in his cold-chest, as near to death as living man may come, a hypo-needle jabs him in his unconscious arse. Then, gently, the chest tumbles him out onto its padding. Raven sits up, the last films of cold-sleep draining quickly from his mind.

  How long is it since he left FedBase 900?

  His panel tells him that while he was in cold-sleep, Blackbird, his salvage tug ship, has carried him the long trip out to Rift-edge and taken up her precomputed patrol toward the five colony planets that are newly on her holocharts, in the fringes of the Rift.