by Isaac Asimov
“You mean to say,” said Cartwright, “that the Tree has been producing People for the last fifteen thousand years without a sexual generation at all?”
“Not necessarily,” said Woodman. “There may have been several on this side of the Rift, at first, and this Tree may be the last offspring of a small population. It must have been an outlier, if so, because the migration was so firmly set for the west.”
“And there’s another tree on the far side which produces females?”
“There are two female trees and three that bear males, but two of the male ones are very old and have few offspring, and none of the seeds have been fertile for at least fifty generations. Apparently not many come to full maturity at the best of times, but this outcross may really save the species.”
“And what exactly is the plan?” demanded the statistician. “To ferry them across? What will they do when we leave?”
“No,” said Jordan. “We don’t propose to interfere more than we have to. The tragedy of the whole process was that the People who took the Journey almost certainly died on the way. Twelve miles in the sun, with no water, was too much for them. We propose to provide a green belt—a black belt rather—along the migration route. Tiven is looking into the possibilities—”
Tiven looked up from his slide rule. “Easy as pi,” he said cheerfully. “We can make the channel in a week, once we get the digger from First Base, and a cooker for concrete, and there are any number of streams which run down to the Waste and then vanish underground. It’s just a question of training one of them in the way it should go, and protecting it from evaporation in the first year or two until the vegetation gets thick enough.”
The conversation flowed on. But Ricky, his head resting on the table, was already asleep.
Jordan stood at the edge of the Rift and looked over the embryo river-valley that Tiven had designed. Seedlings had been planted along the channel, in earth transported for that purpose, and were already taking hold. The revolving sun-cutters designed to protect them at this stage and to stop excessive evaporation gave the whole thing a mechanical air at present, but they would be done within a year or two; they were designed to go to dust then, so that even if the expedition had to leave they would not be left. There are places for poorly built things!
Two of the People shot down the cliff a little to one side and disappeared into the shade along the channel.
“Are they off on the Journey?” said Ellen Scott.
“I don’t think so. They go singly, as a rule. No, I think . . . look there!”
There were four People now at the end of the line of saplings. Two were presumably the ones who had passed a few minutes before; the other two were linked hand in hand and bore across their shoulders a kind of yoke with a long pod dangling from it. The two from the near side of the forest had taken the hands of the newcomers and were helping them up the cliff.
“This is the result of your soil report, I think,” said Jordan. “Woodman says that one reason for the lack of germination on the other side is the exhaustion of the few pockets of suitable soil. I wonder whether it was the necessity of finding the right soil, as well as of looking after the seedling, that led them to develop intelligence?”
The two newcomers had reached the top of the cliff. They seemed hardly to notice the helpers, nor did the latter seem to expect it. The burdened couple moved slowly along, pausing every now and then to investigate the soil. They stopped close to Ellen’s feet and prodded carefully.
“Not here, little sillies!” she murmured. “Farther in.”
John smiled. “They’ve got plenty of time. One couple planted their pod just under one of Branding’s tripods; trying not to step on them drove him nearly crazy. He had to move the whole lot in the end. It takes them weeks sometimes to find a spot that suits them.”
“Continuing the species,” said Ellen thoughtfully. “I always thought it sounded rather impersonal.”
Jordan nodded. “The sort of thing you can take or leave,” he agreed. “I used to think that you could either explore space or you could . . . well, continue the species is as good a way of putting it as any. Not both.”
“I used to think that, too.”
“Once it was true. Things have changed, even in the last few years. More and more people are organizing their lives to spend the greater part of them away from Earth. Soon there’s going to be a new generation whose home isn’t on Earth at all. Children who haven’t been to Terrestrial schools, or played in Terrestrial playrooms, or watched the Terrestrial stereos, or—”
“Suffered the benefits of an advanced civilization?”
“Exactly. How do you feel about it, Ellen? Or . . . that’s a shirker’s question. Ellen Scott, will you marry me?”
“So as to propagate the species?”
“Blast the species! Will you marry me?”
“What about Ricky?”
“Ricky,” said Jordan, “has been careful to let me know that he thinks it would be a very suitable match.”
“The devil he has! I thought—”
“No telepathy involved. If everyone else knows I love you, why shouldn’t he? Ellen—did I say please, before? Ellen, please, will you marry me?”
There was a silence. Depression settled on Jordan. He had no right to feel so sure of himself. Ellen was ten years younger and had a career to think of. He had made a mess of one marriage already and had a half-grown son. He had taken friendliness for something else and jumped in with both feet much too soon. He had made a fool of himself—probably.
“Well?” he said at last.
Ellen looked up and grinned.
“I was just making sure. I’m not quite certain I could take being married to a telepath—which you are not, my dear. Absolutely not. Of course I’m going to.”
Ricky, with Big Sword on his shoulder, was strolling along a path in the sun. He saw his father and Dr. Scott return to the camp arm in arm, and nodded with satisfaction. About time, too. Now perhaps Doc J. would stop mooning around and get on with his work for a change. He’d had Ricky and Woodman’s last report on the biology of the People for two weeks without making the slightest attempt to read it, and it was full of interesting things.
Just for a moment, Ricky wondered what it was like to get all wrapped up in one individual like that. No doubt he’d find out in time. It would have to be somebody interested in real things, of course—not an Earthbound person like poor Cora.
Meanwhile he was just fourteen and free of the Universe, and he was going to have fun.
Big Sword, from his perch on Ricky’s shoulder, noticed the couple with the pod. He saw that this one was fertile, all right—the shoot was beginning to form inside it. One of them was an old friend from this side of the Rift, but it was no good trying to talk to him— his mind would be shut. The whole process of taking the Journey, finding a mate and taking care of one’s seedling was still a mystery to Big Sword in the sense that he could not imagine what it felt like. Just now he was not very interested. He had nearly a year in which to find out things, especially things about the Big People who, now they were domesticated, had turned out to be so useful, and he was going to enjoy that and not speculate about the Journey, and what it felt like to take it.
Because, eventually, the call would come to him, too, and he would set off up the new little stream to the other side of the Rift where the trees of the Strangers grew. And then he would know.
The Gift
by Ray Bradbury
Here is a story that answers the question “What will be tomorrow's Statue of Liberty for immigrants into space?”
* * *
It would be Christmas tomorrow, and even while the three of them rode to the rocket port the mother and father were worried. It was the boy’s first flight into space, his very first time in a rocket, and they wanted everything to be perfect. So when, at the custom’s table, they were forced to leave behind his gift, which exceeded the weight limit by no more than a few ounces, and the li
ttle tree with the lovely white candles, they felt themselves deprived of the season and their love.
The boy was waiting for them in the Terminal room. Walking toward him, after their unsuccessful clash with the Interplanetary officials, the mother and father whispered to each other.
“What shall we do?”
“Nothing, nothing. What can we do?”
“Silly rules!”
“And he so wanted the tree!”
The siren gave a great howl and people pressed forward into the Mars Rocket. The mother and father walked at the very last, their small pale son between them, silent.
“I’ll think of something,” said the father.
“What . . . ?” asked the boy.
And the rocket took off and they were flung headlong into dark space.
The rocket moved and left fire behind and left Earth behind on which the date was December 24, 2052, heading out into a place where there was no time at all, no month, no year, no hour. They slept away the rest of the first “day.” Near midnight, by their Earth-time New York watches, the boy awoke and said, “I want to go look out the porthole.”
There was only one port, a “window” of immensely thick glass of some size, up on the next deck.
“Not quite yet,” said the father. “I’ll take you up later.”
“I want to see where we are and where we’re going.”
“I want you to wait for a reason,” said the father.
He had been lying awake, turning this way and that, thinking of the abandoned gift, the problem of the season, the lost tree and the white candles. And at last, sitting up, no more than five minutes ago, he believed he had found a plan. He need only carry it out and this journey would be fine and joyous indeed.
“Son,” he said, “in exactly one-half hour it will be Christmas.”
“Oh,” said the mother, dismayed that he had mentioned it. Somehow she had rather hoped that the boy would forget.
The boy’s face grew feverish and his lips trembled. “I know, I know. Will I get a present, will I? Will I have a tree? You promised—”
“Yes, yes, all that, and more,” said the father.
The mother started. “But—”
“I mean it,” said the father. “I really mean it. All that and more, much more. Excuse me, now I’ll be back.”
He left them for about twenty minutes. When he came back he was smiling. “Almost time.”
“Can I hold your watch?” asked the boy, and the watch was handed over and he held it ticking in his fingers as the rest of the hour drifted by in fire and silence and unfelt motion.
“It’s Christmas now! Christmas. Where’s my present?”
“Here we go,” said the father and took his boy by the shoulder and led him from the room, down the hall, up a rampway, his wife following.
“I don’t understand,” she kept saying.
“You will. Here we are,” said the father.
They had stopped at the closed door of a large cabin. The father tapped three times and then twice in a code.
The door opened and the light in the cabin went out and there was a whisper of voices.
“Go on in, son,” said the father.
“It’s dark in there.”
“I’ll hold your hand.”
They stepped into the room and the door shut, and the room was very dark indeed. And before them loomed a great glass eye, the porthole, a window four feet high and six feet wide, from which they could look out into space.
The boy gasped.
Behind him, the father and mother gasped with him, and then in the dark room some people began to sing.
“Merry Christmas, son,” said the father.
And the voices in the room sang the old, familiar carols, and the boy moved forward slowly until his face was pressed against the cool glass of the port. And he stood just looking and looking out into space and the deep night at the burning and the burning of ten billion white and lovely candles. . . .