Martin I. Ricketts
Martin Ricketts, whose first story for New Writings in SF, NEW CANUTE, appearing in Volume 24, presented a memorable approach to the theme of time displacement, writes of his new story herewith that it deals with difficulties of communication between different species of sentient beings, the place of religion in the future, the bounds of biological possibility, of selfishness and self-sacrifice, and adds: ‘But when it comes right down to it, this is mainly about three people, two humans and an alien.’ THE GREEN FUSE also contains a line of dialogue which at the time of my writing this introduction is of agonising consequence, but which, I hope and trust, by the time of publication will be merely history.
* * * *
One
As the coffin hit the water Maria began to cry. I put my arm around her but could think of nothing to say that I hadn’t said already. Her moist eyes looked at me, silently appreciating my lame attempt to give her some sort of comfort.
The little wooden box swung out into the current and sank in a swirl of bubbles. The ripples were carried away and the water became smooth once more, the reflection of the orange sky across its surface making it shine like a river of molten brass.
This water burial, of course, was only a ceremony. Later, after the coffin had been swept downstream to the Pool of Transference, the Priest Chiefs would send someone to dive in after it and break it open so that Kanlin’s body could sink into the mud at the bottom of the pool.
We watched the place where the coffin had vanished, then turned and walked back towards the village. Kordalia, the head Priest Chief, watched us uncertainly.
‘I am sorry,’ he said as we approached. “Mrs. Haines was very close to the young Kanlin. My sympathy is unbound-less.’ He danced in front of us as if in agitation, the five coloured ribbons of rank that were looped around his neck flying with the movement like the tattered remnants of an old harlequin costume. Hardly more than five feet tall, Kordalia was pink-skinned and bald. His double-elbowed arms hung from sagging shoulders and almost touched the ground, the fingers of each of his hands fanning out like prehensile needles. Despite my sadness I still felt vaguely amused by the constant grammatical errors of his speech. The first human visitors to this world—the anthro-ecologists—had learned the Lanaian language and in return had taught many of the Lanaian leaders Earthian. But there were many subtleties, many differences of meaning between our two tongues for which there were no literal translations, and it would take years before we could speak their language properly, or they ours. Kordalia, though, had proved himself adept at picking up the language of man, and despite the manifold difficulties involved in teaching an alien our tongue, his Earthian was becoming increasingly fluent and errorless day by day.
‘Thank you, Kordalia,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calm as he danced awkwardly before us, an unintentionally macabre clown. He threw his arms in the air in the Lanaian gesture of sympathy. Bravely Maria forced a smile for him. Satisfied, he turned and began to waddle rapidly along the path that led back to the village.
At the edge of the village, against a background of squat wooden huts, a circle of Lanaian women watched us in sympathetic silence. To one side another circle of women danced the Dance of Transference, jumping and twisting in the dust, and waving colourful leaves like flat swords around their thin bobbing heads.
We nodded our acknowledgement, then entered our own hut. Here, in the relative quiet, Maria broke down again. She collapsed on to the bed, tears streaming down her beautiful face. I sat beside her and let her lean against me, my fingers stroking her ash-blonde hair. There was nothing I could do. Helplessly I looked out of the window and watched the evening sunlight strike across the low rooftops of the village in flashes of turquoise and gold.
* * * *
Two
We had first arrived on Lanaia three years earlier. Two strangers sent by the government of Earth. Two strangers, from a culture that had swung wildly away from the church and then, just as wildly, had swung back again. Earth: a deeply religious world since the beginning of the twenty-second century. A planet with a church-oriented government. A planet in control of a vast sector of the galaxy. And in that sector, hundreds of planets with backward cultures, cultures that had never heard the word of God, cultures that had to be taught the meaning of Christianity. And here we came, a missionary and his wife, to learn all we could of the Lanaian customs and superstitions. x
We were the second phase in the Earthisation of these people. Whenever a new inhabited world is discovered the anthro-ecologists are the first humans to land and make contact with the dominant sentient species. Their job is to establish friendly relations with the natives and to gather as much data as possible. Also, if possible, they are to teach a number of the natives our language, or failing that, learn theirs. Then they are to leave the planet altogether.
Phase two begins with the Interplanetary Christian Mission : a missionary couple is sent to live among the natives. Here on Lanaia, needless to say, that couple was Maria and myself. Later, after we had completed our tour here. Phase three would be implemented, which would entail church-building and preaching on a relatively large scale. In theory these secondary phases sounded easy; but in fact it often took years of banging one’s head against a brick wall before there even began to be any results at all. Frequently, one had to deal with violence in many forms. But here on Lanaia we were lucky: the natives were an amazingly peaceful race who did not quarrel among them-shelves.
When we first arrived, Maria and I were little more than curiosities: thin, frail, pale-skinned creatures from an incredibly far-away place. Gradually the Lanaians came to accept us, and eventually even came to regard us as their friends. The knowledge we brought was new to them too, and they seemed surprisingly eager to learn of the nature of space and of all the other worlds that were spread like motes across the sprawling empire of Earth.
Although our job was not to preach religion to these people, we did make Christianity known to them. We laid down its principles plainly before those who cared to listen, and we exemplified it as much as possible in our daily routines. In fact we were cutting the ice for the third phase which would begin within two or three years. Eventually, to our surprise, even some of the old dogmatic Priest Chiefs came to listen to what we had to say.
And we, in turn, studied their religion with interest.
It was simple enough. The leaders of the village were very old men who did not preach to their fellows, but merely advised and gave council whenever it was required of them. Despite the apparent looseness of this relationship, there seemed to be an odd indivisible bond between the Priest Chiefs and the rest of the village, a sort of mutual need and interdependence. I knew Maria sensed it as well as I, yet neither of us mentioned it, for it was as inexplicably alien as it was unmistakable. The Priest Chiefs one tangible duty, as far as we could see, was to safeguard the ancient ‘Scroll of Priests’ which was kept housed in a large building at the edge of the village. The priests all lived together in this one hut, and never at any time was the scroll left unguarded.
We had been on Lanaia a little more than a year before we were eventually allowed to see the scroll. Kordalia took us into the gloom of the priest-hut immediately after listening to our discussion of the Ten Commandments.
‘The Scroll of Priests is very ancient,’ he told us. ‘Possibly there was a Lanaian equivalent of your Moses, and perhaps it was delivered to him in a similar manner as the tablets, but that I cannot say; its origin is lost in our history. It is, however, still read and committed to memory by every one of our people. Once learned, it is never forgotten.’
He leaned forward between a pair of crude wooden bunks and lifted a curtain from a curious crib-like table. The scroll nestled inside. It was a thin slice of wood, yellowed and worn, and obviously very old. But the peculiar Lanaian script was surprisingly clear. Together Maria and I read it through, translating with difficulty:
‘And at the height of the season of warm the women shall journey to the Valley of Crimson, there to receive the seed and conceive of offspring. Daughters of plenty shall be born from all, sons of life from but a few. The sons of life, having sprung from seed shall be seed. They shall consume each other and all the senses of the soil, of water, and of the atmosphere. They shall consume the ones who bore them and these shall be sacred. The daughters of plenty shall thrive until the time of womanhood. Thus shall life renew itself and existence remain constant.’
We stood there and said nothing. After a moment I read it through again, then looked at Maria. Her expression told me she didn’t understand it either. Suddenly we felt like intruders. Kordalia must have sensed how we felt, for he smiled at us then, his large nigrescent eyes shining, and led us from the building.
It wasn’t until much later that I came to realise that it was only the nuances, the slight untranslatable differences between our two tongues that made these writings so cryptic and puzzling; in fact the scroll gave us our first clue of what was later to happen. Though, of course, there could never have been any warning for the parts Maria and I were to play in subsequent events.
* * * *
Three
We had been on Lanaia a little under two years when Maria first voiced her uneasiness.
‘Have you noticed, Jim,’ she said across the flat trunk of wood on which we took our meals, ‘how the male children don’t seem to grow?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Take Kanlin, for instance. He was one year old when we first arrived and now, two years later, he’s no bigger than he was then. And he’s still being suckled by his mother ...’
I shook my head. ‘Maria, this planet’s yearly cycle is equal to five of Earth’s. How do you know these people haven’t got a life-cycle correspondingly longer than ours. Don’t forget they’re alien, totally different from-’
She cut me off. ‘Jim! The anthro-ecologists’ report told us everything we needed to know about these people—or so we thought. We know that only females, children and very old men live here in the village, that the majority of the males stay throughout their lives in a place some way south of here called the Valley of Crimson—a place that no human has yet been allowed to visit. We know that each generation of females has to travel to this valley before they can conceive. We know the routine of their lives: how they breathe, what they eat, what makes them laugh or cry. But nowhere in the report does it say what happens when the children get older, about how fast they mature ...’
‘But, darling, the anthro-ecologists were here for only a limited period of time. They collected all the data they considered necessary and then left.’ I smiled. ‘You couldn’t seriously expect them to stay here indefinitely just to watch the children grow!’
‘Oh, Jim!’ She sat back, frowning with annoyance. ‘Are you blind? Can’t you see how only the female children have grown during the time we’ve been here?’ She stood up suddenly. ‘Come here and take a look-’ She walked over to the window. Reluctantly I rose and followed her.
‘There!’ I gazed to where she pointed across the open space that separated the Lanaian huts from our own. Sitting with their backs against one of the huts, eyes closed against the glare of the sun, were two Lanaian women. At their feet their children played in the dust. The children were both the same age, yet the girl was almost twice the size of the boy; she drew childish pictures in the dust with a length of stick, and at times would look up at her mother and smile. In contrast Kanlin, the other child, sat dumbly still, contemplating his toes with babyish concentration.
I looked at Maria and shrugged. ‘So the girls develop faster than the boys. What’s there to get all worked up about?’
Her lips tightened and she glared at me in irritation. ‘Oh, Jim, the girls don’t develop faster than the boys, that’s just it. The boys don’t develop at all!’
‘Now, look-’
‘And there’s something else. There are almost as many girls as there are adult females in this village. How come there are only nineteen boys?’
I stopped dead. A thought clicked into place; the same thought that Maria had obviously been thinking for a long time.
I said, ‘You think the boys are—you think they’re somehow different?’
She nodded slowly. ‘The male Lanaians live in this mysterious Valley of Crimson, don’t they? The females conceive in the valley, but the children are born in the villages. Maybe the male children are taken to the valley not long after they are born, while the female children stay behind with their mothers ...’
‘And you think that these nineteen boys were not taken to the valley because ...’
‘Yes, because they are retarded in some way; either physically or mentally—or perhaps both!’
* * * *
Four
Two days later I tried to prise some answers out of Kordalia.
‘Why are the boys of the village not in the Valley of Crimson?’
Kordalia looked surprised. He blinked.
‘Boys?’
I sighed with irritation; again the differences of language that had been too subtle for the anthro-ecologists’ inadequate translation computor seemed to be setting up their imperceptible barrier.
‘The boys,’ I repeated. ‘There are many daughters here in the village; why are there only nineteen sons? Are they ...’ I fumbled, avoiding the word ‘retarded’, searching for a tactful euphemism ‘... different?’
Kordalia’s frown vanished and he smiled. He suddenly realised what I was trying to say. ‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, they are different. We call them the Chosen Ones.’
I smiled back at him. The Lanaians, it seemed, had euphemisms too. It wasn’t until almost a year later that I was to realise what a monumental misunderstanding it was.
* * * *
A month later the first of the nineteen male children died. The subsequent water burial was the first of many that Maria and I were to witness. Sadly we watched the colourful ceremonial dances; the Dance of Death, the Dance of the Water Mother and the Dance of Transference. It was all very beautiful and very moving.
But the mourning lasted for only a short while. Next day, much to our surprise, the Lanaians were cheerfully applying themselves once more to their various chores. And when, less than a week later, the second boy died there was again a day full of ceremony and again, surprisingly, the mourning lasted for no more than that day.
After the fifth death Maria and I began to feel more than a little uneasy. The Lanaians were taking it all too coolly, as if these boys dying like flies was the most natural thing in the world.
Over the next few days, too, my conviction that the Lanaians came to my debates entirely through an eagerness to learn began to dissipate. A subtle change had come over the village. Now I became certain that they came to the hut that I had somewhat sardonically christened the ‘Schoolhouse’ merely out of curiosity or politeness. They sat and watched me with their dark empty eyes and I knew they weren’t taking the least interest in my words; I might as well have been talking to a congregation of baboons. Yet I carried on as I knew I was obliged to do, consoling myself with the thought that perhaps it was only my uneasiness that made me feel as I did. Maybe, after all, this shifting of attitude was only in my mind...
It was while I was conducting one of these increasingly languid discussions that the bannalia attack came.
Imagine a wolf and imagine a large vulture-clawed bat. Put them both together in one composite creature and you’ll have some idea of what the bannalia look like. The anthro-ecologists’ report had mentioned them. They live in the mountains to the far north and are the Lanaians only real enemy. They are vicious and utterly ruthless. They attack seldom but always in packs, searching the villages for any unattended Lanaian young, and on that day they came suddenly and quickly.
I was finishing my opening speech when a shout of warning came from outside. Puzzled, I went to the window. Everywhere Lanaian females were running across the dust, snatching their offspring from the ground and carrying them into the safety of the huts. A shadow suddenly obscured the sun and I looked up—and there they were, high above the village, hundreds of bannalia circling like a pack of huge predatory locusts.
My congregation were already making for the doors. In rising panic I followed them out. Once a bannalia attack has begun you don’t stand a chance: they fall like bombs and you never hear them until their vast powerful wings cleave the air like scythes above your head. I broke into a run. All around, screaming Lanaians were running across the clearing kicking the dust into palls. But there was just one thought on my mind: I had to find Maria.
I was halfway across the village when they came. With a scream the whole pack fell, swooping and diving across the huts like monstrous pterodactyls. By some miracle I reached our hut unscathed. I saw Maria in the doorway and sagged with relief. I bundled her inside. Heaving my equipment case from under the bunk, I grabbed my flare pistol and ran out into the clearing.
Everywhere the whirling air was filled with the beat, slash and hiss of wing and claw. I fell back against the wall of the hut. Flying dust stung my eyes and I hardly knew what I was doing as, lifting the pistol, I fired.
A star shell moves very, very slowly. It moves slowly enough for a man to duck if he sees one coming. Sometimes, when you want one to move especially fast, it seems trapped forever in an interminable sequence of slow-motion film. That was how this one moved. It lazed gracefully up in the air among the hurtling bannalia, reached the top of its parabola and hung there as if it were never going to come down and for a moment, for a gut-churning moment of despair, I thought it wasn’t going to catch.
And then suddenly it burst. With a tremendous roar it exploded outwards in a vast sheet of sizzling yellow flame that in a moment became a glaring disc of fire whose hard white frozen centre was too bright to look at. As one, the whole bannalia pack shrieked and rose above it in terror.
The flare continued to burn and expand, blazing for what seemed an eternity, and then, as the flames slowly began to shrivel and the glare became less intense, I could see that the bannalia were now circling even higher. Like clumsy bulbous kites they were drifting away on the wind above the village, gliding back towards the mountains of the north and leaving silence to settle slowly with the dust. Silence, save for a lone child’s voice.
In ones and twos Lanaians emerged from their huts. Like apprehensive sheep they gazed nervously into the sky as if in doubt that the attack could have ended so abruptly. And there, sitting alone in the middle of the clearing, was Kanlin. He chortled happily to himself as, nearby, one long pink arm stretching out towards him as if to offer protection, sprawled his mother. She lay face downwards in the dust, a deep crimson pool spreading from beneath her and congealing slowly in the warm air.
The butt of the pistol suddenly felt hot in my hand. All around me, one by one, Lanaians were gradually falling silent. Maria walked out from behind me and then stopped, staring at the body. There was a frozen moment of horror and disbelief; then she stepped forward across the dust.
Now everyone had forgotten the bannalia. I stared at the body, and then at the child. Maria looked up at me, all colour drained from her face, and knelt to lift the boy in her arms. He smiled uncomprehendingly as she cradled him to her.
Suddenly Kordalia was there. The crowd made way for him and he came bobbing through, then stopped when he saw what had happened. His eyes flicked from the body to the child and then to me. I could see then in his glance that he didn’t want to believe it. It wasn’t for this that he had become a Priest Chief. He stood deathly still for a moment as if hoping that it was all a mistake, praying that some deus ex machina would suddenly appear and put things right again. But finally, realising that this deliverance would never come, he shook his head.
‘The mother is dead,’ he announced quietly. ‘Kanlin no longer has a mother. Therefore he no longer has a place in the Pool of Transference. Too bad.’ He lifted his arms in the traditional gesture of sadness and then turned away quickly, ushering the other Lanaians back to their huts.
Maria started after him and then stopped. She looked at me uncertainly, the child cradled against her.
‘Jim ...’
I shook my head and put my arm round her. There was nothing I could do. An odd, almost paradoxical Lanaian tradition declared that a child’s body could not be committed to the Pool of Transference unless his mother was still living. Somehow, at that moment, inexplicably, the knowledge of this loss of Kanlin’s filled me with infinitely more regret than the knowledge of his other loss.
Then suddenly Maria pulled away from me. She ran after Kordalia, calling out to him.
‘Yes, Kordalia. Yes, he does have a mother. Me! I will be his mother!’
Kordalia turned. He stared at her incredulously.
‘You? You will be his mother?’ There was laughter in his voice.
‘Yes.’ She lifted her head. ‘Yes, why not?’
Realising what she was trying to do, I stepped forward, taking her elbow. ‘Yes, Kordalia, why not?’ I said. ‘Kanlin’s mother has been killed; but there is no reason why Maria cannot take her place. On our world, if a child becomes an orphan, another home for him is found, other parents. He is not made an outcast. If Maria wants to be mother to this child, why not let her be? It is the good thing to do, the Christian thing. It is what God would want you to do...’
Kordalia frowned. ‘How strange is your God.’ He shook his head.
‘Look, Kordalia,’ I began; but he waved me to silence.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Mrs. Haines shall be Kanlin’s new mother!’
He turned abruptly and walked away, dismissing the matter with a wave of his curiously jointed arms. For a moment Maria stared at me in surprise. Then she smiled happily and hugged the child to her.
I returned her smile uneasily.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s take him home.’
* * * *
Kanlin, like the other boys, was a sickly child. After the death of his mother, despite the intensive, almost desperate care that Maria lavished on him, his condition deteriorated rapidly. Ten months later he was the only one left of the nineteen boys.
Maria was heartbroken. Her love, I already knew, was too expansive for me alone—the childless emptiness of our marriage was what had eventually decided us to join the ICM—but here on Lanaia she had her own child at last. The tragedy was that we both knew he wouldn’t be hers much longer.
All day she would croon to the boy, touch him and soothe him like some over-indulgent nanny. Each day his condition grew worse, and each day the agony in her eyes was greater.
Then he died.
She took it even harder than I expected. Grief flared long and intensely inside her. She pined like a child, lacking almost completely the will to live. At one point I even thought she was contemplating suicide. But then gradually, several weeks later, her grief began to subside. Very slowly she came back to life.
Then I knew it was over. The price had been paid and it was great. Now Kanlin had his place in the Pool of Transference.
* * * *
Five
Two months after Kanlin’s funeral I walked out among the low hills a little way east of the village.
The life-ship was still there, just as we’d left it. Discreetly out of sight of the village, though not hidden, the little capsule was our only method of escape to the outside. It was standard ICM equipment—to be used only in an emergency. If we ever had to leave this place in a hurry this is what we would use. It had just enough fuel to carry us to the tiny mission satellite that orbited some five hundred miles above the surface of this planet. There we would set up a distress beacon, then wait for someone to come and fetch us.
I climbed up on to the metal cocoon, opened the hatch and dropped into the tiny cabin. I gave the control-console a cursory examination. Satisfied, I climbed out again, locked the hatch behind me and made my way back to the village.
* * * *
A little later I put it to her.
‘Why don’t we leave here, Maria? They could replace us in no time at all.’
She frowned at me. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You need a holiday,’ I insisted. ‘We both do. A month or two on a resort planet somewhere would do us the world of good.’
She looked at me as if she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Leave here ... ? Jim, don’t you realise we’ve got to help these people?’
‘I know we have to try and teach them all sorts of...’
‘No, Jim.’ She rose to her feet, walked over to the wall and then turned to face me. ‘If the Lanaian men were here in this village instead of lazing in that valley of theirs they could have protected the women and children during that bannalia attack, couldn’t they? Kanlin’s mother need never have died ...’
‘Perhaps. But you know there’s nothing we can do.’
‘Can’t we?’ She came forward and leaned on the table. ‘Can’t we? Jim, I think we can! We can persuade them that the way they live is wrong, that it is wholly unchristian. We can persuade them to believe that a man’s place is with his wife and children. He must be their protector and provide for them. We must make them believe in the concept of a united family!’
‘You realise that to do that would be to violate one of the basic rules of the ICM,’ I warned. ‘The time is not yet right for us to try and change their pattern of living. Later, when Phase Three begins-’
‘Oh, damn Phase Three!’ she exploded. ‘Must we wait for another attack by those creatures, stand and watch while more women and children are attacked and killed...?’
I stood up. ‘Listen, Maria-’ I said, then stopped as a look of intense pain flashed abruptly across her eyes. She took a step towards me and opened her mouth as if to call. I frowned. ‘Maria?’ Then suddenly she pitched forward unconscious into my arms. Fighting back the panic, I carried her across to the bunk and felt her forehead: her temperature was way up.
I felt dazed. What had happened? One minute I was talking to her and the next... What was it? Something she had eaten, something alien ? A disease ... ?
I stumbled to the door. Kordalia would know! In rising hysteria I half-fell out into the bright sunlight and sprinted across the clearing towards his hut. Lanaians watched in puzzlement as I lurched to a halt in the doorway.
‘Kordalia!’
His pink face emerged from the gloom. He looked puzzled. ‘Mr. Haines ...’
‘My wife! She’s ill! Quickly ...’
He frowned at me for a moment, then a smile of understanding flickered across his face. He nodded slowly.
‘Please do not worry,’ he said, gently. ‘It is Rudash, nothing more ...’
‘Rudash?’ I stared at him.
‘Young Kanlin was the nineteenth child whose passing is for Rudash.’ He smiled and lifted his arms in the Lanaian gesture of happiness. ‘The new generation is here ...’
I reached out and grabbed him, tugged him savagely out into the sunlight. ‘Don’t just stand there spouting alien gibberish! Can’t you understand ? My wile is ill!’
‘Mr. Haines ...!’
‘Kordalia, whatever’s happening to my wife you seem to know something about it. You’ve got to help her!’
‘No, Mr. Haines!’ He protested as I dragged him across the clearing. ‘She is not ill; it is merely Rudash.’
Around us a crowd of Lanaians was beginning to form. I swung Kordalia around and thrust my face close to his.
‘Listen!’ I seethed. “My wife is lying there ill and all you do is speak words that I don’t understand! Can’t I get any sense out of you? What is this Rudash?’
Kordalia’s dark eyes glanced past me, flicking around the faces watching us, then fastened again on mine.
‘Please, Mr. Haines, your wife asked to be allowed to be Kanlin’s mother ...’
‘Kanlin is dead!’ I yelled. ‘What has he got to do with my wife now? She collapsed just a moment ago. She’s unconscious. Damn you, why won’t you understand ?’
The crowd was beginning to murmur now. I hardly heard them. Kordalia looked perplexed.
‘Kanlin was the last one, therefore the season is complete,’ he said. ‘There are eighteen other women now in a similar coma to your wife’s. They will remain in that state until Transference is complete. Now is the time of Rudash. Kanlin and the others are taking root at the bottom of the Pool-’
‘Taking root?’ I jumped backwards, stumbling against a solid wall of Lanaians. ‘Taking root?’ I swayed. Several pairs of oddly jointed hands supported me. I stumbled forward again. Kordalia’s bewildered eyes gleamed suddenly huge in front of me.
‘A metamorphosis?’ The hairs at the back of my neck began to prickle. ‘You mean they’re changing into plants?’
‘Yes, Mr. Haines. They root in the sediment at the bottom of the pool. They link, all nineteen of them. Eventually they develop a collective consciousness that becomes powerful enough to include that of their mothers ...’
‘Kordalia, do you realise what you’re saying, what you’re expecting me to believe?’
‘Mr. Haines, I know you may not be familiar with the Lanaian cycle of ...’
‘But Maria isn’t a Lanaian!’ I shouted. “How can it happen to her?’
‘Mr. Haines, I do not know. She had very much sympathy with the young Kanlin—they were very close. Perhaps sympathy became empathy, then perhaps something else again ...’
‘Maria!’ I suddenly felt drunk. Turning quickly, I fell sprawling in the dust. I heaved myself upright again and ran back towards our hut. The crowd of Lanaians hastily made way for me, their large orb-like eyes watching me curiously.
Now I realised where I’d come across the word Rudash before—I’d read it on the Scroll of Priests.
She lay where I had left her. Her temperature had risen further. I knelt beside the bunk, grasped her shoulders and pressed my face close to hers. This couldn’t be happening to her, not to my wife ...
‘The male children become plants,’ I whispered, imploringly, oblivious now of the fact that she could neither hear nor see me. She gave no reaction and I jerked her upright, screaming: ‘Wake up! It’s not for you ... It’s alien ... It’ll kill you ...!’ And then finally, realising the uselessness of what I was doing, I let her fall back on the pillow, my rage giving way to a feeling of intense, unbearable helplessness. I slumped down beside her on to the uneven floor, my emotional floodgates burst. Tears filling my eyes, I fell against the bunk and buried my face in my hands.
* * * *
Six
There are some things over which a man has no control, moments in life when trip-wires of physiological change sweep under you and you either jump over them or fall flat. How long I lay there I don’t know. But when I got to my feet it was dark and I realised I must have slept. And sleep, it seemed, had carried me safely over one of those trip-wires. Now my thoughts were crystal-clear. The Lanaians could do as they liked with each other and I would never interfere—but when it affected my wife it was more than I could be expected to endure. I looked down at Maria’s deceptively peaceful face. Gone now was the anger and the self-pity; now I knew exactly what I had to do.
I went to the door of the hut and gazed out across the empty clearing to where Lanaia’s single red moon shone high in the north. Nineteen male children died, I thought, and were buried in the Pool of Transference. But they did not die—it was something else, some kind of metamorphosis. They took root in the Pool, linking together, Kordalia had said. But how? It wasn’t important. The fact remained that this phenomenon also somehow affected their mothers, sending them into some kind of deep comatic fever.
And Maria, although a foster mother, was one of these.
I went back inside, undressed and put on a pair of shorts. I took a large knife from the equipment case, then went back out on to the clearing.
The air was cool against my skin as I moved across the village. The priest house was in total darkness as I crept around it. Once in the open I broke into a run and within a few minutes I was at the life-ship. I unlocked the hatch and dropped into the cabin. I opened the repair locker and took out my heavy rubber vacuum-torch. Then I detached the face-plate from my pressure suit, climbed back outside and relocked the hatch behind me.
To the west the village was still in darkness. I ran away from it, heading southwards. In less than a minute I was on the bank of the river.
I watched the smooth water sliding past my feet, scarlet reflections shimmering across its width like ghosts. The only sound was the soft hiss and lap of water in the reed beds.
I turned, moving quickly beside the river, following its course as it curved away to the south-east. When I was sure it was safe I switched on the torch.
At last the river widened, the flow of water slowing to accommodate the increased capacity of the Pool of Transference. I glanced quickly over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t being followed, then stepped off the bank.
* * * *
The water was icy cold against my ankles. I waded forward and sank up to my knees. The mud sucked at the soles of my feet like glue. I swung the torch, its wide yellow beam probing into the depths of the pool. I took another step forward and sank up to my chest; already my legs were numb with the cold. I spat into the face-plate, rubbed the glass, then washed it out before putting it on. Without a helmet to hold it in place it was loose, but it would have to do. Then I pushed myself forward, took a lungful of air and dived below the surface.
The beam of the torch probed across the bottom, flashing and glinting against smooth round stones and dark clumps of weed. The mud sloped away to my left and I kicked down, my ears starting to hum. There was no sign of what I was looking for.
I came up for air.
On my second dive I found the broken piece of coffin almost immediately. I kicked eagerly forward, swinging the torch from left to right. Then suddenly I saw all nineteen of them, all together in a wide half-circle, half-buried in the mud.
I saw Kanlin and almost gulped with horror. His skin was now a sickly translucent green and his fingers had somehow become elongated, thrusting down into the mud like emaciated worms. His eyes were closed, his mouth lolling open, tiny teeth glinting like diamonds in the wavering light.
I told myself there was no other way. A twinge of conscience swept through me and was gone. I had to save Maria. Despite my religious beliefs, despite my training, despite everything, Maria was all that really mattered to me.
I took the knife from my belt and hacked down. The blade cut through two of Kanlin’s fingers and half a third. Eyes still closed, he instantly began to writhe as if in the grip of some insane nightmare. The others began to writhe too. I hacked at his left wrist, striking it four times before it was severed. Threads of dark oily liquid oozed from the wounds and billowed up through the water.
I came up for air, then dived again.
By now all nineteen of them were writhing frantically. I gripped Kanlin’s shoulders and tried to pull him from the mud. He was stuck firm. I dug away around him with the knife, then pulled again. He moved slightly. I made another effort and suddenly he came—and so did the next child in line!
Their toes had grown in much the same way as their fingers, lengthening like roots and tangling together. In a frenzy of horror I realised that all nineteen of them were connected—if I pulled one from the mud they would all come. I dropped Kanlin and swam round the others.
Hardly knowing what I was doing, I slashed and hacked with the knife. I moved across the whole circle, stabbing from left to right, the water around me clouding with the dark viscous liquid. At last, lungs almost bursting, I thrust up to the surface.
Gulping air, I threshed to the bank and dragged myself out of the water and lay there for a long time on the soft wet grass, panting heavily and sobbing like a child.
* * * *
Seven
I could hear the shrieks as I approached the village. Lanaians were running in all directions, calling frantically to one another like bewildered children. The priest house was ablaze with light.
A mob suddenly surged out of the village and rushed towards me, their eyes glittering in the light from their flaming torches. I stopped. I knew they were not given to violence; but still my hand went to the hilt of my knife. I was suddenly very frightened.
I saw Kordalia detach himself from the mob and hold up his hands. His accusing eyes held mine.
‘You have committed murder.’
His tone was calm, almost matter of fact. I looked at him firmly.
‘I had no choice; I did it for my wife.’
He shook his head. ‘I recognise your values and they fill me with dismay. But perhaps you still do not understand. You have killed us ... I believe your word for it is “genocide”.’
I straightened, took a step forward. ‘Now, look-’
He gazed at me sadly. ‘No, you do not understand. But it is done, nothing anyone does will change it...’
I stared at him in surprise, then at all the others. Abruptly, my surprise turned to contempt. I had mur ... yes, murdered nineteen of their kind, and they accepted it as if I had done nothing more than drown a sackful of kittens. Suddenly I felt superior to these people. At that moment perhaps I even felt proud of myself.
I stepped forward and walked past them, heading towards the village. At the clearing I broke into a run.
Maria sat on the bunk, hands to her forehead. She looked as if she had awakened from nothing more than a few hours’ sleep.
‘Jim!’ She gaped at me. ‘You’re dripping wet! What’s happening?’
I knelt down and gripped her arms. ‘They won’t get you,’ I whispered, smiling with relief. ‘It’s all right!’
She frowned. ‘What in God’s name are you talking about? What’s going on?’
I lifted her to her feet. ‘We’re getting out of here. Now.’ I took her hand and pulled her across the room. I ducked through the doorway. Outside I came face to face with Kordalia.
‘If you wish to leave I cannot stop you,’ he said, gently. ‘But first you must understand that you have not murdered just nineteen of us; you have murdered all of us ...’
Maria stared at me. She looked horrified. ‘Murdered ...?’
Kordalia ignored her. His flashing eyes lanced into mine.
‘There will be no priests to guide the young ones,’ he said. ‘Left to fend for themselves, they will die in the winter or be taken by the bannalia.’
Belligerently, I returned his stare. ‘You’re talking rubbish ...’
‘No, Mr. Haines.’ He gestured towards the other huts of the village. Faint screams drifted through the darkness. ‘Can you not hear them ? Those are the cries of the mothers of the other eighteen you killed. Their minds were -half-occupied by the collective consciousness of their sons— now they are awakened, each with only half a mind, the other half filled with the pain and awareness of death. It is an agony that they will feel until they die also.’
‘Jim!’ Maria stared at me.
‘But what about my wife, Kordalia?’ I shouted. ‘Why does she not suffer this agony you talk of?’
‘Humans and Lanaians are not the same, Mr. Haines. You are alien to us and we are alien to you; there are many differences between us. Perhaps you cannot understand the cycle that our lives follow. But somehow Mrs. Haines fell into that cycle, slotted into a niche that had suddenly become available, and was swept up by it. She had great love for the young Kanlin: somehow her mind was held by that love, and perhaps that was the lever by which the Chosen Ones controlled her mind. But I am only guessing, Mr. Haines. Really it is no longer important ... You have broken that hold; now your wife is returned to you. You have succeeded in what you set out to do.’
I thrust my face towards his. ‘Yes,’ I snarled. ‘I succeeded. And you stand there and whine about what will happen to the young ones ... Well, why don’t you get your young men to come out from where they are hiding and take care of them?’
‘Men?’ Kordalia frowned. He seemed puzzled. ‘There are no men. Surely you know ...’
‘Jim! What’s this all about?’ Maria’s eyes, wide and alarmed, flicked from one to the other of us.
‘Know what?’ I stared at Kordalia.
“Mr. Haines, you are unbelievably stupid,’ he said. ‘Our race is composed entirely of females; the only others are the sexless Chosen Ones who never grow biologically older after they are born, but are instead buried in the Pool of Transference ..
‘Entirely of females?’ I snorted. ‘Then what the hell are you?’
‘Mr. Haines, I was once a mother to a Chosen One. There were twenty-one Chosen Ones in that generation, as there were nineteen in this. My child passed on and was buried in the Pool of Transference—and so were the other twenty. They linked, their dormant awarenesses mingled, became fused. Then that composite awareness entered my mind and the minds of the other mothers. We became comatic until the process was complete. Then we woke to a new life. As mothers we were finished, but our minds were now the important thing. Our offspring had become one with nature, and we had become one with our offspring. We were no longer mothers; now we were the leaders of our people; we were the priests, we were the ones who would guide our people in the true cycle of ...’
His voice trailed off as he realised I was laughing in spite of myself.
‘Kordalia,’ I said, ‘are you trying to tell us you’re a female?’
‘No, Mr. Haines,’ he said, evenly. ‘Not any more. Once the process of Rudash was completed, my role as a mother was over; then I became what I am now—merely a sentient extension of nature itself. My mind was important, not my body. Gradually my breasts withered, my hair fell out and my voice became cracked and broken. I draped myself in the robes of priesthood and became what I am.’
‘Then what are you people?’ I asked him. ‘Partheno-genetics—people with just one sex?’
‘No, Mr. Haines.’ He shook his head sadly as if he thought I never would understand and stood away from the door. Maria looked thunderstruck. For a moment I stood there in bewilderment. Then suddenly the truth hit me like a slap of cold water in the face. And at the same awful, sobering moment I saw that it had been there in front of us all the time if only we’d really looked, if only we’d opened our eyes. ‘Oh my God,’ I muttered. A sick feeling grabbed the pit of my stomach. Turning quickly, I gripped Maria’s wrist and pulled her out of the hut.
We ran through the dust and out across the grass. Lanaians stood aside and watched us go. None tried to follow. Through my mind the sacred words of the Scroll of Priests ran, over and over ... ‘The sons of life, having sprung from seed shall be seed. They shall consume each other and all the senses of the soil, of water and of the atmosphere. They shall consume the ones who bore them and these shall be sacred ...’
Sprung from seed. Sprung from seed. The phrase tumbled through my mind like an equation. I gripped Maria’s arm, leading her away from the village. Completely bewildered and still weak from the coma, she followed unprotestingly.
* * * *
Eight
We reached the life-ship and I unlocked the hatch. We dropped inside and I sagged into the control-couch, enjoying the familiar touch and smell of plastic and metal.
Maria stared around the life-ship in abrupt alarm. She suddenly seemed to come alive. ‘Jim, for pity’s sake! Tell me what’s happening!’
‘It’s Kanlin,’ I said, wondering why she hadn’t already guessed. ‘He was buried in the pool, but he wasn’t dead— not really. He was just changed; he had become something else...’
I reached for the controls, feeling curiously out of place in just my wet shorts.
Maria lurched towards me. ‘I had a dream about Kanlin! I dreamed he was coming back to me. He was standing by the bunk in the hut, and all his friends were there. It was beautiful...’ —
‘Strap in,’ I snapped. ‘We’re taking off ...’
“No, Jim, we can’t go! If Kanlin didn’t die, then I must find him ...’
‘But he is dead!’ I shouted. ‘Can’t you understand? He was taking over your mind. I had to destroy him—him and all the others. I had to stop them from destroying you!’
She recoiled as if I had struck her. At last it was getting through. At last she realised what terrible thing I’d done. ‘You killed-?’
I leapt from the seat and grabbed her arm. ‘Get in that couch!’
‘No!’ Sobbing, she squirmed away from me.
‘Listen to me!’ I yelled. ‘These people are incredibly different from us. We have so much to learn about them before we can even begin to teach them anything! The reports didn’t get all of it. It was assumed that the Lanaian men stayed away from the villages and the women only visited them when they wanted children. But it wasn’t that way at all! You heard what Kordalia said: there are no men! And it was there all the time, there in the Scroll of Priests: “The sons of life, having sprung from seed shall be seed
But Maria wasn’t listening. She was still struggling, weeping hysterically as I dragged her across to the take-off couch. I wanted to scream it at her: scream that the males of this planet were flowers, flowers that probably grew only in the optimum climatic conditions of the Valley of Crimson. Does it sound so impossible—one sex vegetable, one mammal ? But it was there. And it was all laid out before us in the Scroll of Priests, if only we’d understood. “And the height of the season of warm the women shall journey to the Valley of Crimson, there to receive the seed and conceive of offspring...”
‘Don’t you see what it means?’ I yelled. ‘How totally alien these people are? How in God’s name must they copulate ... ? And the women, carrying the seeds back to the village, most of them giving birth to daughters, and a few to sexless things—the Chosen Ones. No wonder I misunderstood for so long. It’s all in the translation of their language. How could these concepts possibly be translated from Lanaian to Earthian? And they misunderstood too: our word for “boy” confused with their word for “Chosen One”.’ I shook my head. ‘How could we fail to misunderstand...’
‘No!’ Maria stared at me. ‘No ...’ Crying, she pulled away and threw herself against the port. In the distance the lights of the village glowed dully against the darkness. There were no Lanaians in sight.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t believe it...’
I gripped her shoulders, tugging her again over to the take-off couch. ‘But it’s true, Maria. There’s no other possibility. Can’t you grasp it?’
‘Kanlin!’ A cold savage light came into her eyes. Suddenly she was fighting against me. ‘You killed Kanlin!’
I slapped her hard across the face and pushed her down into the couch. Before she could react I’d locked the straps into place. I leapt into my own seat and locked myself in. Ignoring her shouts, I pressed the contacts and waited for the power to build up. Then I hit the button.
* * * *
Nine
All the way up I tried to think how I could explain it to her. What words could I use when I could only just grasp it myself—only just grasp how the Chosen Ones were buried in the Pool of Transference where they took root, metamorphosing almost into vegetables, becoming almost like their ‘fathers’, their awarenesses fusing into one, powerful enough to link telepathically with each of their mothers’ minds, as Kordalia had said. And their mothers going through a metamorphosis of their own, becoming Priest Chiefs, go-betweens for mammal and vegetable, leaders of the race. And the female children, growing up, going to the Valley of Crimson to receive the seed, to begin the whole crazy fantastic cycle again ...
Four hundred miles out from Lanaia I released her from the couch. For the next hour her eyes avoided mine. She sat with her back to me, staring through the port.
‘I saved you,’ I told her. ‘I threw away everything to save you.’
She turned to look at me, her eyes circled and dark. Now she was past even tears.
‘Jim,’ she said quietly. ‘The trouble with you is that you have no confidence in yourself. You just drift along on the line of least resistance, convinced that whatever you’re doing you’re doing because you believe in it. You never kick back until you feel threatened—and then you really kick! You hit out in all directions to restore your own personal status-quo and you expect everyone to love you for it. But I’ve got news for you—it’s just not so.’
Horrified, I stared at her. ‘Maria ...’
But she shook her head.
‘I’m committed, Jim. I’m committed and I will be for the rest of my life to the saving of men’s souls—men meaning all sentient beings. But you—you could never be committed to anything other than your own over-inflated ego!’
She gazed at me sadly; but it was a gaze completely without pity. Slowly she turned away. I’d thought I was a true Christian; but I had been able to sacrifice nothing to that faith. In the end I had turned against everything so that I could have the one thing that really mattered to me.
Now I had lost her too.