Kroudar felt such a love for her then that he wondered if it went up through her fingers into her body.
'We filled the boats,' he said.
'I was told today that we'll soon need more storage huts,' she said. 'They're worried about sparing the labor for the building.'
'Ten more huts,' he said.
She would pass that word along, he knew. Somehow, it would be done. The other technicians listened to Honida. Many among the scientists scoffed at her; it could be heard beneath the blandness of their voices. Perhaps it was because she had chosen Kroudar for mate. But technicians listened. The huts would be built.
And they would be filled before the trodi run stopped.
Kroudar realized then that he knew when the run would stop, not as a date, but almost as a physical thing which he could reach out and touch. He longed for the words to explain this to Honida.
She gave his back a final kneading, sat down beside him and leaned her dark head against his chest. 'If you're not too tired,' she said, 'I have something to show you.'
With a feeling of surprise, Kroudar became aware of unspoken excitement in Honida. Was it something about the hydroponic gardens where she worked? His thoughts went immediately to that place upon which the scientists pinned their hopes, the place where they chose the tall plants, the beautiful, engorged with richness from Mother Earth. Had they achieved something important at last? Was there, after all, a clear way to make this place arable?
Kroudar was a primitive then wanting his gods redeemed. He found himself full of peasant hopes for the land. Even a sea peasant knew the value of land.
He and Honida had responsibilities, though. He nodded questioningly toward the twins' bedroom.
'I arranged ... ' She gestured toward their neighbor's cubicle. 'They will listen.'
She had planned this, then. Kroudar stood up, held out his hand for her. 'Show me.'
They went out into the night. Their town was quieter now; he could hear the distant roistering of the river. For a moment, he thought he heard a cricket, but reason told him it could only be one of the huts cooling in the night. He longed wordlessly for a moon.
Honida had brought one of the rechargeable electric torches, the kind issued to technicians against emergency calls in the night. Seeing that torch, Kroudar sensed a deeper importance in this mysterious thing she wanted to show him. Honida had the peasant's hoarding instinct. She would not waste such a torch.
Instead of leading him toward the green lights and glass roofs of the hydroponic gardens, though, she guided their steps in the opposite direction toward the deep gorge where the river plunged into the harbor.
There were no guards along the footpath, only an occasional stone marker and grotesqueries of native growth. Swiftly, without speaking, she led him to the gorge and the narrow path which he knew went only down to a ledge which jutted into the damp air of the river's spray.
Kroudar found himself trembling with excitement as he followed Honida's shadowy figure, the firefly darting of her light. It was cold on the ledge and the alien outline of native trees revealed by the torch filled Kroudar with disquiet.
What had Honida discovered-or created?
Condensation dripped from the plants here. The river noise was loud. It was marsh air he breathed, dank and filled with bizarre odors.
Honida stopped, and Kroudar held his breath. He listened. There was only the river.
For a moment, he didn't realize that Honida was directing the orange light of the torch at her discovery. It looked like one of the native plants-a thing with a thick stem crouched low to the land, gnarled and twisted, bulbous yellow-green protrusions set with odd spacing along its length.
Slowly, realization came over him. He recognized a darker tone in the green, the way the leaf structures were joined to the stalk, a bunching of brown-yellow silk drooping from the bulbous protrusions. 'Maize,' he whispered.
In a low voice, pitching her explanation to Kroudar's vocabulary, Honida explained what she had done. He saw it in her words, understood why she had done this thing stealthily, here away from the scientists. He took the light from her, crouched, stared with rapt attention. This meant the death of those things the scientists held beautiful. It ended their plan for this place.
Kroudar could see his own descendants in this plant. They might develop bulbous heads, hairless, wide thick-lipped mouths. Their skins might become purple. They would be short statured; he knew that.
Honida had assured this-right here on the river-drenched ledge. Instead of selecting seed from the tallest, the straightest stalks, the ones with the longest and most perfect ears-the ones most like those from Mother Earth-she had tested her maize almost to destruction. She had chosen sickly, scrawny plants, ones barely able to produce seed. She had taken only those plants which this place influenced most deeply. From these, she had selected finally a strain which lived here as native plants lived. This was native maize.
She broke off an ear, peeled back the husk.
There were gaps in the seed rows and, when she squeezed a kernel, the juice ran purple. He recognized the smell of the bread.
Here was the thing the scientists would not admit. They were trying to make this place into another Earth. But it was not and it could never be. The falcons had been the first among their creatures to discover this, he suspected.
The statement Honida made here was that she and Kroudar would be short-lived. Their children would be sickly by Mother Earth's standards. Their descendants would change in ways that defied the hopes of those who had planned this migration. The scientists would hate this and try to stop it.
This gnarled stalk of maize said the scientists would fail.
For a long while, Kroudar crouched there, staring into the future until the torch began to dim, losing its charge. He aroused himself then, led the way back out of the gorge.
At the top, with the lights of their dying civilization visible across the plain, he stopped, said: 'The trodi run will stop ... soon. I will take one boat and ... friends. We will go out where the falcons go.'
It was one of the longest speeches he had ever made.
She took the light from his hand, extinguished it, pressed herself against him.
'What do you think the falcons have found?'
'The seed,' he said.
He shook his head. He could not explain it, but the thing was there in his awareness. Everything here exuded poisonous vapors, or juices in which only its own seed could live. Why should the trodi or any other sea creature be different? And, with the falcons as evidence, the seed must be slightly less poisonous to the intruders from Mother Earth.
'The boats are slow,' she said.
He agreed silently. A storm could trap them too far out for a run to safety. It would be dangerous. But he heard also in her voice that she was not trying to stop him or dissuade him.
'I will take good men,' he said.
'How long will you be gone?' Honida asked.
He thought about this for a moment. The rhythms of this place were beginning to make themselves known to him. His awareness shaped the journey, the days out, the night search over the water where the falcons were known to sweep in their low guiding runs-then the return.
'Eight days,' he said.
'You'll need fine mesh nets,' she said. 'I'll see to having them made. Perhaps a few technicians, too. I know some who will go with you.'
'Eight days,' he said, telling her to choose strong men.
'Yes,' she said. 'Eight days. I'll be waiting on the shore When you return.'
He took her hand then and led the way back across the plain. As they walked, he said: 'We must name this place.'
'When you come back,' she said.
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Seed Stock Page 2
