This time I would defy!
This time I have you.
"Don't take me there, my Moggadeet!" You begged, fearful of the strangeness. "Don't take me to the cold!"
"Never, my Leelyloo! Never, I vow it. Am I not your Mother, little redness?"
"But you will change! The cold will make you forget. Is it not the Plan?"
"We will break the Plan, Lilli. See, you are growing larger, heavier, my fireberry—and always more beautiful! Soon I will not be able to carry you so easily, I could never carry you to the cold Trails. And I will never leave you!"
"But you are so big, Moggadeet! When the change comes you will forget and drag me to the cold."
"Never! Your Moggadeet has a deeper Plan! When the mists start I will take you to the farthest, warmest cranny of this cave, and there I will spin a wall so you can never never be pulled out. And I will never never leave you. Even the Plan cannot draw Moggadeet from Leelyloo!"
"But you will have to go hunting for food and the cold will take you then! You will forget me and follow the cold love of winter and leave me there to die! Perhaps that is the Plan!"
"Oh, no, my precious, my redling! Don't grieve, don't cry! Hear your Moggadeet's Plan! From now on I'll hunt twice as hard. I'll fill this cave to the top, my fat little blushbud, I will fill it with food now so I can stay by you all the winter through!"
And so I did, didn't I my Lilli? Silly Moggadeet, how I hunted, how I brought lizards, hoppers, fatclimbers, and banlings by the score. What a fool! For of course they rotted, there in the heat, and the heaps turned green and slimy—but still tasting good, eh, my berry? —so that we had to eat them then, gorging ourselves like babies. And how you grew!
Oh, beautiful you became, my jewel of redness! So bursting fat and shiny-full, but still my tiny one, my sun-spark. Each night after I fed you I would part the silk, fondling your head, your eyes, your tender ears, trembling with excitement for the delicious moment when I would release your first scarlet limb to caress and exercise it and press it to my pulsing throat-sacs. Sometimes I would unbind two together for the sheer joy of seeing you move. And each night it took longer, each morning I had to make more silk to bind you up. How proud I was, my Leely, Lilliloo!
That was when my greatest thinking came.
As I was weaving you so tenderly into your shining cocoon, my joyberry, I thought, why not bind up living fatclimbers? Pen them alive so their flesh will stay sweet and they will serve us through the winter!
That was a great thinking, Lilliloo, and I did this, and it was good. Fatclimbers in plenty I walled in a little tunnel, and many, many other things as well, while the sun walked back toward winter and the shadows grew and grew. Fatclimbers and banlings and all tasty creatures and even—oh, clever Moggadeet! —all manner of leaves and bark and stuffs for them to eat! Oh, we had broken the Plan for sure now!
"We have broken the Plan for sure, my Lilli-red. The fatclimbers are eating the twigs and bark, the banlings are eating juice from the wood, the great runners are munching grass, and we will eat them all!"
"Oh, Moggadeet, you are brave! Do you think we can really break the Plan? I am frightened! Give me a banling, I think it grows cold."
"You have eaten fifteen banlings, my minikin!" I teased you. "How fat you grow! Let me look at you again, yes, you must let your Moggadeet caress you while you eat. Ah, how adorable you are!"
And of course—Oh, you remember how it began then, our deepest love. For when I uncovered you one night with the first hint of cold in the air. I saw that you had changed.
Shall I say it? Your secret fur. Your Mother-fur.
Always I had cleaned you there tenderly, but without difficulty to restrain myself. But on this night when I parted the silk strands with my huge hunting claws, what new delights met my eyes! No longer pink and pale but fiery red! Red! Scarlet blaze like the reddest sunrise, gold-tipped! And swollen, curling, dewy—Oh! Commanding me to expose you, all of you. Oh, how your tender eyes melted me and your breath musky-sweet and your limbs warm and heavy in my grasp!
Wildly I ripped away the last strands, dazed with bliss as you slowly stretched your whole blazing redness before my eyes. I knew then—we knew! —that the love we felt before was only a beginning. My hunting-limbs fell at my sides and my special hands, my weaving hands grew, filled with new, almost painful life. I could not speak, my throat-sacs filling, filling! And my lovehands rose up by themselves, pressing ecstatically, while my eyes bent closer, closer to your glorious red!
But suddenly the Me-Myself, Moggadeet awoke! I jumped back!
"Lilli! What's happening to us?"
"Oh, Moggadeet, I love you! Don't go away!"
"What is it, Leelyloo? Is it the Plan?"
"I don't care! Moggadeet, don't you love me?"
"I fear! I fear to harm you! You are so tiny. I am your Mother."
"No, Moggadeet, look! I am as big as you are. Don't be afraid."
I drew back—oh, hard, hard! —and tried to look calmly.
"True, my redling, you have grown. But your limbs are so new, so tender. Oh, I can't look!"
Averting my eyes I began to spin a screen of silk, to shut away your maddening redness.
"We must wait, Lilliloo. We must go on as before. I don't know what this strange urging means; I fear it will bring you harm."
"Yes, Moggadeet. We will wait."
And so we waited. Oh, yes. Each night it grew more hard. We tried to be as before, to be happy. Leely-Moggadeet. Each night as I caressed your glowing limbs that seemed to offer themselves to me as I swathed and unswathed them in turn, the urge rose in me hotter, more strong. To unveil you wholly! To look again upon your whole body!
Oh, yes, my darling, I feel—unbearable—how you remember with me those last days of our simple love.
Colder … colder. Mornings when I went to harvest the fatclimbers there was a whiteness on their fur and the banlings ceased to move. The sun sank ever lower, paler, and the cold mists hung above us, reaching down. Soon I dared not leave the cave. I stayed all day by your silken wall, humming Motherlike, Brum-a-loo, Mooly-mooly, Lilliloo, Love Leely. Strong Moggadeet!
"We'll wait, fireling. We will not yield to the Plan! Aren't we happier than all others, here with our love in our warm cave?"
"Oh, yes, Moggadeet."
"I'm Myself now. I am strong. I'll make my own Plan. I will not look at you until … until the warm, until the Sun comes back."
"Yes, Moggadeet … Moggadeet? My limbs are cramped."
"Oh, my precious, wait—see, I am opening the silk very carefully, I will not look—I won't—"
"Moggadeet, don't you love me?"
"Leelyloo! Oh, my glorious one! I fear, I fear—"
"Look, Moggadeet! See how big I am, how strong!"
"Oh, redling, my hands—my hands—what are they doing to you?"
For with my special hands I was pressing, pressing the hot juices from my throat-sacs and tenderly, tenderly parting your sweet Mother-fur and placing my gift within your secret places. And as I did this our eyes entwined and our limbs made a wreath.
"My darling, do I hurt you?"
"Oh, no, Moggadeet! Oh, no!"
Oh, my adored one, those last days of our love!
Outside the world grew colder yet, and the fatclimbers ceased to eat and the banlings lay still and began to stink. But still we held the warmth deep in our cave and still I fed my beloved on the last of our food. And every night our new ritual of love became more free, richer, though I compelled myself to hide all but a portion of your sweet body. But each dawn it grew hard and harder for me to replace the silken bonds around your limbs.
"Moggadeet! Why do you not bind me! I am afraid!"
"A moment, Lilli, a moment. I must caress you just once more."
"I'm afraid, Moggadeet! Cease now and bind me!"
"But why, my lovekin? Why must I hide you? Is this not some foolish part of the Plan?"
"I don't know, I feel so strange. Moggadeet, I
—I'm changing."
"You grow more glorious every moment, my Lilli, my own. Let me look at you! It is wrong to bind you away!"
"No, Moggadeet! No!"
But I would not listen, would I? Oh, foolish Moggadeet-who-thought-to-be-your-Mother. Great is the Plan!
I did not listen, I did not bind you up. No! I ripped them away, the strong silk strands. Mad with love, I slashed them all at once, rushing from each limb to the next until all your glorious body lay exposed. At last—I saw you whole!
Oh, Lilliloo, greatest of Mothers.
It was not I who was your Mother. You were mine.
Shining and bossed you lay, your armor newly grown, your mighty hunting limbs thicker than my head! What I had created. You! A Supermother, a Mother such as none have ever seen!
Stupefied with delight, I gazed.
And your huge hunting-limb came out and seized me.
Great is the Plan. I felt only joy as your jaws took me.
As I feel it now.
And so we end, my Lilliloo, my redling, for your babies are swelling through your Mother-fur and your Moggadeet can speak no longer. I am nearly devoured. The cold grows, it grows, and your Mother-eyes are growing, glowing. Soon you will be alone with our children and the warm will come again.
Will you remember, my heartmate? Will you remember and tell them?
Tell them of the cold Leelyloo. Tell them of our love.
Tell them … the winters grow.
The End
© 1973, 2001 by the Estate of Alice B. Sheldon aka James Tiptree, Jr.; first appeared in The Alien Condition, edited by Stephen Goldin; used by permissions of the author's Estate and the Estate's agents, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
By the Falls
Harry Harrison
It was the rich damp grass, slippery as soap, covering the path, that caused Carter to keep slipping and falling, not the steepness of the hill. The front of his raincoat was wet and his knees were muddy long before he reached the summit. And with each step forward and upward the continuous roar of ground grew louder. He was hot and tired by the time he reached the top of the ridge—yet he instantly forgot his discomfort as he looked out across the wide bay.
Like everyone else he had heard about The Falls since childhood and had seen countless photographs and films of them on television. All this preparation had not readied him for the impact of reality.
He saw a falling ocean, a vertical river—how many millions of gallons a second did people say came down? The Falls stretched out across the bay, their farthest reaches obscured by the clouds of floating spray. The bay seethed and boiled with the impact of that falling weight, raising foam-capped waves that crashed against the rocks below. Carter could feel the impact of the water on the solid stone as a vibration in the ground but all sound was swallowed up in the greater roar of The Falls. This was a reverberation so outrageous and overpowering that his ears could not become accustomed to it. They soon felt numbed from the ceaseless impact but the very bones of the skull carried the sound of his brain, shivering and battering it. When he put his hands over his ears he was horrified to discover that The Falls were still as loud as ever. As he stood swaying and wide-eyed one of the constantly changing air currents that formed about the base of The Falls shifted suddenly and swept a wall of spray down upon him. The inundation lasted scant seconds but was heavier than any rainfall he had ever experienced, had ever believed possible. When it passed he was gasping for air, so dense had been the falling water.
Quivering with sensations he had never before experienced, Carter turned and looked along the ridge toward the gray and water-blackened granite of the cliff and the house that huddled at its base like a stony blister. It was built of the same granite as the cliff and appeared no less solid. Running and slipping, his hands still over his ears, Carter hurried toward the house.
For a short time the spray was blown across the bay and out to sea, so that golden afternoon sunlight poured down on the house, starting streamers of vapor from its sharply sloping roof. It was a no-nonsense building, as solid as the rock against which it pressed. Only two windows penetrated the blankness of the front that faced The Falls—tiny and deep, they were like little suspicious eyes. No door existed here but Carter saw that a path of stone flags led around the corner.
He followed it and found—set into the wall on the far side, away from The Falls—a small and deepset entry. It had no arch but was shielded by a great stone lintel a good two feet in diameter. Carter stepped into the opening that framed the door and looked in vain for a knocker on the heavy, iron-bolted timbers. The unceasing, world-filling, thunder of The Falls made thinking almost impossible and it was only after he had pressed uselessly against the sealed portal that he realized that no knocker, even one as loud as cannon, could be heard within these walls above that sound. He lowered his hands and tried to force his mind to coherence.
There had to be some way of announcing his presence. When he stepped back out of the alcove he noticed that a rusty iron knob was set into the wall a few feet away. He seized and twisted it but it would not turn. However, when he pulled on it, although it resisted, he was able to draw it slowly away from the wall to disclose a length of chain. The chain was heavily greased and in good condition—a fair omen. He continued to pull until a yard of chain emerged from the opening and then, no matter how hard he pulled, no more would come. He released the handle and it bounced against the rough stone of the wall. For some instants it hung there. Then, with a jerky mechanical motion, the chain was drawn back into the wall until the knob once more rested in place.
Whatever device this odd mechanism activated seemed to perform its desired function. In less than a minute the heavy door swung open and a man appeared in the opening. He examined his visitor wordlessly.
The man was much like the building and the cliffs behind it—solid, no-nonsense, worn, lined and graying. But he had resisted the years even as he showed their marks upon him. His back was as straight as any young man's and his knob-knuckled hands had a look of determined strength. Blue were his eyes and very much the color of the water falling endlessly, thunderously, on the far side of the building. He wore knee-high fisherman's boots, plain corduroy pants and a boiled gray sweater. His face did not change expression as he waved Carter into the building.
When the thick door had been swung shut and the many sealing bars shoved back into place the silence in the house took on a quality of its own. Carter had known absence of sound elsewhere—here was a positive statement of no-sound, a bubble of peace pushed right up against the very base of the all-sound of The Falls. He was momentarily deafened and he knew it. But he was not so deaf that he did not know that the hammering thunder of The Falls had been shut outside. The other man must have sensed how his visitor felt. He nodded in a reassuring manner as he took Carter's coat, then pointed to a comfortable chair set by the deal table near the fire. Carter sank gratefully into the cushions. His host turned away and vanished, to return a moment later with a tray bearing a decanter and two glasses. He poured a measure of wine into each glass and set one down before Carter, who nodded and seized it in both hands to steady their shaking. After a first large gulp he sipped at it while the tremors died and his hearing slowly returned. His host moved about the room on various tasks and presently Carter found himself much recovered. He looked up.
"I must thank you for your hospitality. When I came in I was—shaken."
"How are you now? Has the wine helped?" the man said loudly, almost shouting, and Carter realized that his own words had not been heard. Of course, the man must be hard of hearing. It was a wonder he was not stone deaf.
"Very good, thank you," Carter shouted back. "Very kind of you indeed. My name is Carter. I'm a reporter, which is why I have come to see you."
The man nodded, smiling slightly.
"My name is Bodum. You must know that if you have come here to talk to me. You write for the newspapers?"
"I was sent here." Carter coughed—th
e shouting was irritating his throat. "And I of course know you, Mr. Bodum—that is I know you by reputation. You're the Man by The Falls."
"Forty-three years now," Bodum said with solid pride, "I've lived here and have never been away for a single night. Not that it has been easy. When the wind is wrong the spray is blown over the house for days and it is hard to breathe—even the fire goes out. I built the chimney myself—there is a bend part way up with baffles and doors. The smoke goes up—but if water comes down the baffles stop it and its weight opens the doors and it drains away through a pipe to the outside. I can show you where it drains—black with soot the wall is there."
While Bodum talked Carter looked around the room at the dim furniture shapes barely seen in the wavering light from the fire and at the two windows set into the wall.
"Those windows," he said, "you put them in yourself? May I look out?"
"Took a year apiece, each one. Stand on that bench. It will bring you to the right level. They're armored glass, specially made, solid as the wall around them now that I have them anchored well. Don't be afraid. Go right up to it. The window's safe. Look how the glass is anchored."
Carter was not looking at the glass but at The Falls outside. He had not realized how close the building was to the falling water. It was perched on the very edge of the cliff and nothing was to be seen from this vantage point except the wall of blackened wet granite to his right and the foaming maelstrom of the bay far below. And before him, above him, filling space, The Falls. All the thickness of wall and glass could not cut out their sound completely and when he touched the heavy pane with his fingertips he could feel the vibration of the water's impact.
The window did not lessen the effect The Falls had upon him but it enabled him to stand and watch and think, as he had been unable to do on the outside. It was very much like a peephole into a holocaust of water—a window into a cold hell. He could watch without being destroyed—but the fear of what was on the other side did not lessen. Something black flickered in the falling water and was gone.
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 1 Page 46
