The Starry Rift

by James Tiptree Jr

  “Well, if you really want this. But I still think it’s mad.”

  “It’s my chance to be something really ,” she says earnestly, her-large eye almost luminous with the intensity of her enthusiasm. “To be somebody, to make a little name for myself! And don’t think it won’t be hard work. I have no illusions; I could fail. I’ll be dealing with such horrible creatures, too—and Navy regulations...” She looks away, shaking her neatly chiseled head, with its retroussé snout. “And I’ll miss you so, dear Kanak. No, to be honest, I guess I’ll be mostly asleep—but I’ll miss you terribly when I’m not! There’ll be a million problems I’ll wish for your advice on. You have such a wonderful feel for aliens—you should have taken the Aliens office, and been my chief. Probably you’d hate me if I worked for you, always going off on my own tangents! Now, mind you take care of yourself. Can I come ’round to say good-bye to Leiloy?”

  “She’d be most hurt if you didn’t, little one.”

  His workers have been filtering in; time to get at it. As he walks Zillanoy to the door, she says, “Oh! Why, if all goes well, your baby will be born and starting school when I get back. I’ll really miss seeing all the early part.”

  “If all goes well,” he agrees.

  “It will! I just know it.”

  They tap tails in affectionate parting, and she blows him a kiss with one hand-arm as she hurries out.

  His office is on the second floor up; he decides to hop it instead of taking the lift. Must keep fit. As he goes up the long risers, he can feel his pouch beginning to itch slightly.

  His midriff feels heavy, too—a reminder of the sex-animal now growing within him. It seems to be growing even faster than he expected. Does that mean it will be healthy and strong?

  As he passes floor one he has a moment of quiet panic; the oncoming birth of the Mumoo looms up as a terribly painful and frightening ordeal, which he can’t possibly avoid, delay, or hasten. The sex-animal is alive inside him, growing on its own terms – without regard for his desires. But the panicky moment passes quickly as he hops on up. He’s heard in health class that new fathers often have such moods.

  Instead, he turns to wondering what it will look like. What color will it be? Spotted like himself, or white like its mother Leiloy, or golden brown like most? He hopes it will be white. White excites him and would make the final reproductive act go easily. But white is the rarest, too much to hope for. If it isn’t, Leiloy’s whiteness will do for two.

  And then there’s that mysterious final product, their future child. Supposing it’s white, like Leiloy; what a darling picture they would make! If the sex-animal is white—but it would be called a nurser then—the baby would have a better chance of being white, too. But any color will do, just so long as it isn’t spotted, like himself.

  And how mysterious it all is! So complicated yet so precise. If they ever get to the final stages, what a supreme thrill!

  Coming up to his floor, he smiles, remembering the kid’s manual of sex instructions his father had given him. He can see it as if it were yesterday: What You Should Know About Reproduction.

  It told him that his race, the Ziello, was unique. “There are other races which need three partners in order to reproduce, but only in the Ziello the third partner is actually created by the original pair. This is true of all the animal life on the beautiful planet of Zieltan.

  “The first step,” it went on, “is when a male and a female have special body contact, in a way your parents will tell you about. They exchange genetic material, and an embryo begins to grow in the male’s pouch. It is the embryo of a Mumoo, often called a ‘sex-animal.’ The Mumoo is a very important part of the Ziello race, but it isn’t a Ziello. You may remember the Mumoo who nursed you when you were a baby. The Mumoo grows very fast, and as soon as it releases the teat in the male’s pouch it is born—a tiny furry helpless creature who requires care at first, but grows very fast.

  “In only about three years it is full grown, but it doesn’t look much like its Ziello father and mother. It’s much shorter, with a rounded face and ears, rudimentary upper arms, and a short tail. At this point it is ready for the original male and female to undertake another special body-contact with it and each other. They must be the original pair; if one or both of the partners is different, either nothing will happen or a monster will be born.” (Here Kanaklee recalls the shudder of fascinated horror that touched him at those words.)

  “During this second and final contact, more genetic material is exchanged, and the embryo of a Ziello baby begins to grow in the mother’s pouch. It carries full sets of genes from its father and mother, and an incomplete but vital third set of genes originally from them but transmitted via the Mumoo.

  “After about a month, the tiny Ziello infant releases the teat in its mother’s pouch, and she transfers it to the pouch of the Mumoo, who is now called a nurser, because it has developed a special, much stronger milk. The baby Ziello grows to normal baby size in the Mumoo’s pouch, and then begins to release the teat and crawl up into the Mumoo’s arms.

  “The Mumoo cradles it night and day most lovingly, and soon the infant stays permanently outside the pouch. The Mumoo cares for it intensively, sometimes even forgetting to eat and care for itself. Soon the baby is crawling, and the Mumoo teaches it to walk and do the other simple things that it knows. But the Mumoo is now rapidly aging and becoming feeble. At about the time the young Ziello is ready to start nursery school, the Mumoo retreats to a corner and soon dies quietly of old age. Lucky is the child whose nurser lives to help it through the first year of school.

  “In the old, uncivilized days people used to treat the Mumoo callously, as if it were a robot or an animal. And when it aged they cruelly turned it out to die. But now we regard it as an honored member of our race, and educate it up to the level of its abilities, and return its care with love. Some Mumoos have proved surprisingly intelligent, although none are able to speak very well because of the different structure of their mouth and throat.

  “When you meet other races, you will be impressed by our good fortune in having this strange little second life-form, who is incapable of life on its own—Mumoos cannot, of course, reproduce—and who lives only to love and care for us when we are very young.”

  Brooding on these matters, Kanaklee had automatically entered his office and stationed himself at his big desk. His aide follows him in and waits a moment for his absorbed chief to look up.

  “Chief,” he says. Kanaklee rouses and looks up, grinning guiltily. “Chief, we need your guidance. We’ve got to figure a way to handle this big increase in Navy traffic. Look”—he points to a pile on the rolling-stand—“they’re starting already.”

  “I know,” says Kanaklee, definitely guilty now. “We can’t just go running everything over by courier as it comes in. My thought is, ah, that I should contact Captain Navraneen and arrange for them to station a body with us, to sort their traffic right at input. That way there’d be no risk of delaying anything urgent.”

  “Or getting blamed for it,” says his aide with a knowing twinkle. “Great.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Kanaklee tells him. The day is starting well.

  Life at Human FedBase 900 continues well, too. The work of the various offices goes on as usual, long months of routine punctuated by times of high interest. Colony Services oversees the fitting-out and departure of three new Human colonies plus a colony of the space-faring Swain people, and optimistic first reports filter back. It is Federation policy to prevent overpopulation and the degradation of environments by draining off breeding-stock to new planets, so long as the supply holds out; the fringe areas of the Rift show a good number of promising star-systems.

  The Terraforming office is called on to help transform four new worlds, and for a while traffic is heavy between 900 and the new sites. Charts and Navigation fills in a commendable count of blank spaces, in the process discovering a likely group of GO suns. Alien Liaison entertains a steady flow of visit
ors from within the Fed, and one race of water-dwellers from the west who are just making up their minds to join the Federation. Their accommodation in mobile tanks puts demands on Engineering.

  Logistics and Supply services 900 ’s fleet of reconnaissance and work ships; Maintenance keeps them flying and retrofits the older models with the latest modifications. The discovery of a very old space derelict, evidently belonging to an unknown, possibly extinct race, provides a point of excitement. The small Research office has been playing around with an idea to solve the perennial quest for a means of sending message pipes from the surface of a planet, so that missions won’t be out of contact when not space-bome. Their idea suddenly starts to show promise, and the team sends a rep with their data to Fed Central, to see what those massive resources can do with it.

  And all personnel cooperate in the reception of a brilliant new androgyne Gridworld star—it being Federation policy to give the Far Bases first crack at the newest and best in entertainment. His/her troupe puts on shows for several nights and leaves behind a few cases of heartburn in the staff.

  And all through the years, studded in among these zestful activities, comes a trickle of dark spots—a slowly increasing number of reports from FedBase 300, far to the east, on the doings of Black Worlders, of the sightings or traces of an unknown fleet, and, twice, of colony planets suddenly gone dead on the bands and found to have been exploded, whether by natural catastrophe or unknown planet-breaker missiles. Exec Jonne develops a tiny vertical crease between her brows.

  In due course a new communication arrives from Rift-Runner One —this time striped yellow and black, which signifies that it is of interest to Charts alone. They are, it seems, at a point about halfway between Beacon Alpha and their target and making a minor course adjustment toward the center of EM traffic ahead. Their target is now tentatively identified as a world whose transmissions start with the computer-analyzed syllables “Zeel-tan.” No other message or anything bearing on the crew’s hallucinations at Beacon Alpha is included, save for Captain Asch’s scrawled note: “Personnel green—S.Q.A.,” meaning status quo ante. But which “ante,” that of their departure or of Beacon Alpha? No one can tell.

  Exec Jonne continues also to worry over the implications of Rift-Runner One’s first message, which seemed to imply some mental influence from an unknown source. Her deputy is as good as his word; he prepares the ground for her among the other Base Executive offices, so that when she comes to broach the problem to her fellow Execs she gets a serious reception. With the inevitable exception of a couple of the ultra hard-nosed, they all agree that the phenomenon demands close attention, and that if such a capability were to be found in the possession of a hostile race, it would pose a very great threat to the Federation. Central invites all concerned to submit suggestions for devising research on ways of meeting such a mental threat.

  The whole problem is given credence by a colorful fact unearthed by 900’s deputy. He had also promised to look into Captain Asch’s remark about having heard of some sort of similar thing, and he sends out a barrage of inquiries through the Spacers’ and pilots’ network. The answer comes back: the Red Eft Effect.

  It seems that a mission exploring far to the south had once crossed a small region of starlessness, an area of low density like a fragment of the Rift. In it they encountered hallucinations; the crew felt that they were, or should be, lizardlike in form, and bright shiny red in color, like giant versions of the bright little animal known on earth as red efts, or young newts.

  The effect wore off as they came back into normal starfields, but it was a manifestation of something real; another crew who crossed the space on a different course met it also. When it was encountered a third time, a careful charting was made. But nothing was found in the area, beyond two white dwarf stars, the remains of former suns that had gone nova.

  “Do you suppose that a race once lived on planets that were destroyed?” Exec Jonne asks. “And they had the power to form or throw such a field—maybe reflecting their own forms? And the field, or what’s left of it, remains, in that undisturbed starless region?”

  “Sounds plausible,” one of her colleagues replies. “I think we might query Central about sending a couple of strong Sensitives down there. Extraordinary, to think we might be receiving impressions of a bygone race...”

  And so it is left.

  But Exec Jonne has nightmares. She is no Sensitive, only very prescient, and she’s never free from a lurking, shapeless dread. Her nightmares are of planets, green and pleasant, toward which fly dark alien ships with missiles that can tear worlds apart or scorch to ashes every living thing. And other ships attacking these, on and on, until every hand is against every other hand—or fin or flipper or wing or claw... And the innocent faces, Human and alien, of those about to die in a conflagration they had no part in starting, which will have no end until all life is gone. Burnt, disintegrated, poisoned, crushed in an abyss of broken planets, exploding suns, tom to bloody shards and flamed to flecks in lava; gone, dead, extinguished, inanimate, and silent for all time...

  Mostly she associates these dreams with the troubling, enigmatic reports of destruction far to the east. But some of them, she knows, too, center on the tiny spark of Human life driving, all unaware of evil, toward this planet that may be named Zeel-tan.

  During these same years, a young-looking Zillanoy returns to Zieltan from her trip east with the fleet, where she had gone to learn the language of the invading Zhumanor. She arrives at her office in the evening hours and as soon as she can goes calling on her old friend Kanaklee.

  “Zilla! I thought you might be on that warship that landed today. Ah, it’s good to see you back!”

  “Oh, Kanak, how are you? How’s Leiloy? I have so many—” And there follows the mutual outburst of greetings, inquiries, fragments of news, so-much-to-tell-that-we-can’t-get-it-all-out that besets the meetings of star-traveling friends all over the Galaxy. Kanaklee’s child, Zillanoy’s work, events of the day—all tumble out in a frustrated rush, until Kanaklee finally gets out a straight question: “Zilla, did you really succeed in learning enough of the Zhumanor language to justify the years?”

  Zillanoy calms down. “Oh, absolutely, yes. But it was hard, very hard. How much dialogue can you record from a being isolated in a bare metal hexagon? That’s how the Navy keeps its prisoners. There’s nothing to point to and name, unless you bring it. And the fleet’s very strict—they wanted to search me every time I went to the cells. These were the slavers they picked up alive, see. Horrible types. But luckily some of them knew quite a few words of Ziellan, from their Comeno captives.

  “And then the prisoners nearly all died from lack of—you won’t believe this—water! It seems they need it in huge quantities. If I hadn’t been there, they never would have found out. As it was, they lost several, including one of my best subjects, before they recognized it. And when they saw how much was needed—every day —the ship’s lab just gave up and said they couldn’t make that much. So they told me to select one and they’d send the rest to join the Oversoul.

  “But I persuaded them to first let them all mix together, for two days, to talk where I could record it. And in the end Captain Krimheen let me keep two, and I got a he and a she, I think, with enough water. After that I could use the languageteaching kit and things went really well. I have translations of all that group chatter, for instance. But so much of it was slang and swearing, I couldn’t have done a thing without an informant.

  “When they got a new lot in from a ship we captured, I was actually able to converse a little. Our kit is very good, Kanak. It’s the first time it’s ever had such a test—a totally unknown, unrelated language! I have some improvements I’m going to suggest.”

  “I see you haven’t lost a stip of your enthusiasm, little one. And now I must think about closing this office for the day, and arranging when you will come to us for a meal.”

  “Oh, I’d love it!” Zilla is hopping down the stairs, her l
arge eye momentarily thoughtful. “Kanak, they were so loathsome, those Zhumanor. I couldn’t wait for some of them to be sent to the Oversoul. Killed. If you’d seen what they did to those poor Comeno people, and their little colonies. Maximum dishonor isn’t bad enough for them... The Oversoul teaches us not to be revengeful, but I kept wondering if this means creatures like that. Whewf! Well, anyway, you’ll be glad to hear that my work turned out actually useful to the Navy. Captain Krimheen’s people were able to question them and find out where their bases were. And we did discover one fact that’s going to fascinate Life Sciences: They claim that they and all their related life-forms actually derive from salt water; they’re full of it themselves, almost like bags. Yet they’re strictly land-life. Isn’t that weird? And they truly are from across the River, across the River Darkness.”

  “Astonishing.”

  “And, Kanak”—she ducks her head under an upper hand, like a kid—“I got a letter of commend. Beautiful. Isn’t that something?”

  “Why, good for you, my dear little friend.” Kanaklee gives her a playful tail-flip as they reach the doors. “Well! Would you look at that? It’s raining!”

  “Yes, it looked strange when I started out. I brought my gear.”

  “Curse it, I wanted to go to my station by way of the Shrine.”

  “What, haven’t they roofed the Fortunate Way yet?”

  “No. Look, I really must. Is your gear strong enough, or shall I leave you here on the covered way?”

  “It’s fine. I’ll go by the Shrine with you and go to my station from there.”

  “Splendid.”

  They buckle on their tail-sheaths and boots and close up their hooded cloaks.

  When they come out to the covered way it is, of course, crowded, so they hop straight to the nearest stairs to take the open way shortcut above. It is known as the Fortunate because it passes the Shrine, which is a convenient place of worship for the large Zieltan denomination to which both Kanaklee and Zilla adhere, in a tolerant way.