. . . Not the last. Not at all, let’s not forget all those fleets of ships, they’ll start from Earth when the green signal gets there. And they’ll keep on coming for a while, anyway. . . . The green got sent, didn’t it, no matter how we tried? The goal of man’s desiring. No way to stop it. No hope at all, really.
But of course it’s only a handful, the ones that will ever make it to the planet, compared to the total population of Earth. About the proportion of one ejaculandum to total sperm production, wouldn’t you say? Should compute sometime, great scientific interest there. So most of the egg-creatures will die unfertilized, too. Nature’s notorious wastefulness. Fifty million eggs, a billion sperm—one salmon . . .
. . . What happens to the people who don’t go, the ones who stay on Earth, all the rest of the race? Let us speculate, Dr. Kaye. What happens to unused sperm? Stuck in testes, die of overheating. Reabsorbed. Remind you of anything? Calcutta, say. Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles . . . Previews. Born too soon or too late—too bad. Rot away unused. Function fulfilled, organs atrophy. . . . End of it all, just rot away. Not even knowing—thinking they were people, thinking they had a chance. . . .
Dr. Kaye is getting rather conclusively intoxicated, friend. Dr. Kaye is also getting tired of talking to you. What good will it do you on your way up the pipe? Can you stop, man? Can you? Ha ha. As—someone used to say. . . . Goddamn it, why can’t you try? Can’t you stop, can’t you stay human even if we’re—Oh, lord, can a half of something, can a gamete build a culture? I don’t think so. . . . You poor doomed bastard with a load in your head, you’ll get there or die trying—
Excuse me. Lory stumbled a lot today. . . . Little sister, you were a good sperm, you swam hard. You made the connection. She wasn’t crazy, you know. Ever, really. She knew something was wrong with us. . . . Healed, made whole? All those months . . . a wall away from heaven, the golden breasts of god. The end of pain, the queen couzy . . . fighting it all the way . . . Oh, Lory, stay with me, don’t die—Christ, the pull, the terrible sweet pull—
. . . This is Dr. Aaron Kaye signing off. Maybe my condition is of deep scientific interest . . . I don’t dream anymore.
WE WHO STOLE THE DREAM
THE CHILDREN could survive only twelve minims in the sealed containers.
Jilshat pushed the heavy cargo loader as fast as she dared through the darkness, praying that she would not attract the attention of the Terran guard under the floodlights ahead. The last time she passed he had roused and looked at her with his frightening pale alien eyes. Then, her truck had carried only fermenting-containers full of amlat fruit.
Now, curled in one of the containers, lay hidden her only-born, her son Jemnal. Four minims at least had already been used up in the loading and weighing sheds. It would take four more, maybe five, to push the load out to the ship, where her people would send it up on the cargo conveyor. And more time yet for her people in the ship to find Jemnal and rescue him. Jilshat pushed faster, her weak gray humanoid legs trembling.
As she came into the lighted gate the Terran turned his head and saw her.
Jilshat cringed away, trying to make herself even smaller, trying not to run. Oh, why had she not taken Jemnal out in an earlier load? The other mothers had taken theirs. But she had been afraid. At the last minute her faith had failed. It had not seemed possible that what had been planned so long and prepared for so painfully could actually be coming true, that her people, her poor feeble dwarf Joilani, could really overpower and subdue the mighty Terrans in that cargo ship. Yet there the big ship stood in its cone of lights, all apparently quiet. The impossible must have been done, or there would have been disturbance. The other young must be safe. Yes—now she could make out empty cargo trucks hidden in the shadows; their pushers must have already mounted into the ship. It was really and truly happening, their great escape to freedom—or to death. . . . And now she was almost past the guard, almost safe.
“Oy!”
She tried not to hear the harsh Terran bark, hurried faster. But in three giant strides he loomed up before her, so that she had to halt.
“You deaf?” he asked in the Terran of his time and place. Jilshat could barely understand; she had been a worker in the far amlat fields. All she could think of was the time draining inexorably away, while he tapped the containers with the butt of his weapon, never taking his eyes off her. Her huge dark-lashed Joilani gaze implored him mutely; in her terror, she forgot the warnings, and her small dove-gray face contorted in that rictus of anguish the Terrans called a “smile.” Weirdly, he smiled back, as if in pain too.
“I wo’king, seh,” she managed to bring out. A minim gone now, almost two. If he did not let her go at once her child was surely doomed. Almost she could hear a faint mew, as if the drugged baby was already struggling for breath.
“I go, seh! Men in ship ang’ee!” Her smile broadened, dimpled in agony to what she could not know was a mask of allure.
“Let ‘em wait. You know, you’re not bad-looking for a Juloo moolie?” He made a strange hahnha sound in his throat. “It’s my duty to check the natives for arms. Take that off.” He poked up her dingy jelmah with the snout of his weapon.
Three minims. She tore the jelmah off, exposing her widehipped, short-legged little gray form, with its double dugs and bulging pouch. A few heartbeats more and it would be too late, Jemnal would die. She could still save him—she could force the clamps and rip that smothering lid away. Her baby was still alive in there. But if she did so, all would be discovered; she would betray them all. Jailasanatha, she prayed. Let me have love’s courage. O my Joilani, give me strength to let him die. I pay for my unbelief.
“Turn around.”
Grinning in grief and horror, she obeyed.
“That’s better, you look almost human. Ah, Lord, I’ve been out too long. C’mere.” She felt his hand on her buttocks. “You think that’s fun, hey? What’s your name, moolie?”
The last possible minim had run out. Numb with despair, Jilshat murmured a phrase that meant Mother of the Dead.
“Joobly-woobly—” His voice changed. “Well, well! And where did you come from?”
Too late, too late: Lal, the damaged female, minced swiftly to them. Her face was shaved and painted pink and red; she swirled open a bright jelmah to reveal a body grotesquely tinted and bound to imitate the pictures the Terrans worshiped. Her face was wreathed in a studied smile.
“Me Lal.” She flirted her fingers to release the flower essence the Terrans seemed to love. “You want I make fik-fik foh you?”
The instant Jilshat felt the guard’s attention leave her, she flung her whole strength against the heavy truck and rushed naked with it out across the endless field, staggering beyond the limit of breath and heart, knowing it was too late, unable not to hope. Around her in the shadows the last burdened Joilani filtered toward the ship. Behind them the guard was being drawn by Lal into the shelter of the gatehouse.
At the last moment he glanced back and scowled.
“Hey, those Juloos shouldn’t be going into the ship that way.”
“Men say come. Say move cans.” Lal reached up and caressed his throat, slid skillful Joilani fingers into his turgid alien crotch. “Fik-fik,” she crooned, smiling irresistibly. The guard shrugged, and turned back to her with a chuckle.
The ship stood unwatched. It was an aging amlat freighter, a flying factory, carefully chosen because its huge cargo hold was heated and pressurized to make the fruit ferment en route, so that some enzyme the Terrans valued would be ready when it made port. That hold could be lived in, and the amlat fruit would multiply a thousandfold in the food-converter cycle. Also, the ship was the commonest type to visit here; over the decades the Joilani ship cleaners had been able to piece together, detail by painful detail, an almost complete image of the operating controls.
This one was old and shabby. Its Terran Star of Empire and identifying symbols were badly in need of paint. Of its name the first word had been eroded away, leaving
only the alien letters: . . . N’S DREAM. Some Terran’s dream once; it was now the Joilani’s.
But it was not Lal’s Dream. Ahead of Lal lay only pain and death. She was useless as a breeder; her short twin birth channels had been ruptured by huge hard Terran members, and the delicate spongy tissue that was the Joilani womb had been damaged beyond recovery. So Lal had chosen the greater love, to serve her people with one last torment. In her hair flower was the poison that would let her die when the Dream was safely away.
It was not safe yet. Over the guard’s great bulk upon her Lal could glimpse the lights of the other ship on the field, the station’s patrol cruiser. By the worst of luck, it was just readying for its periodic off-planet reconnaissance.
To our misfortune, when the Dream was loaded, the Terran warship stood ready to lift off, so that it could intercept us before we could escape by entering what the Terrans called tau-space. Here we failed.
Old Jalun hobbled as smartly as he could out across the Patrol’s section of the spaceport, to the cruiser. He was wearing the white jacket and female jelmah in which the Terrans dressed their mess servants, and he carried a small napkin-wrapped object. Overhead three fast-moving moonlets were converging, sending triple shadows around his frail form. They faded as he came into the lights of the cruiser’s lock.
A big Terran was doing something to the cruiser’s lock tumblers. As Jalun struggled up the giant steps, he saw that the spacer wore a side arm. Good. Then he recognized the spacer, and an un-Joilani flood of hatred made his twin hearts pound. This was the Terran who had raped Jalun’s granddaughter, and broken her brother’s spine with a kick when the boy came to her rescue. Jalun fought down his feelings, grimacing in pain. Jailasanatha; let me not offend Oneness.
“Where you think you’re going, Smiley? What you got there?” He did not recognize Jalun; to Terrans all Joilani looked alike. “Commandeh say foh you, seh. Say, celeb’ation. Say take to offiseh fi’st.”
“Let’s see.”
Trembling with the effort to control himself, smiling painfully from ear to ear, Jalun unfolded a corner of the cloth.
The spacer peered, whistled. “If that’s what I think it is, sweet stars of home. Lieutenant!” he shouted, hustling Jalun up and into the ship. “Look what the boss sent us!”
In the wardroom the lieutenant and another spacer were checking over the microsource charts. The lieutenant also was wearing a weapons belt—good again. Listening carefully, Jalun’s keen Joilani hearing could detect no other Terrans on the ship. He bowed deeply, still smiling his hate, and unwrapped his packet before the lieutenant.
Nestled in snowy linen lay a small tear-shaped amethyst flask.
“Commandeh say, foh you. Say must d’ink now, is open.”
The lieutenant whistled in his turn, and picked the flask up reverently.
“Do you know what this is, old Smiley?”
“No, seh,” Jalun lied.
“What is it, sir?” the third spacer asked. Jalun could see that he was very young.
“This, sonny, is the most unbelievable, most precious, most delectable drink that will ever pass your dewy gullet. Haven’t you ever heard of Stars Tears?”
The youngster stared at the flask, his face clouding.
“And Smiley’s right,” the lieutenant went on. “Once it’s open, you have to drink it right away. Well, I guess we’ve done all we need to tonight. I must say, the old man left us a generous go. Why did he say he sent this, Juloo boy?”
“Celeb’ation, seh. Say his celeb’ation, his day.”
“Some celebration. Well, let us not quibble over miracles. Jon, produce three liquor cups. Clean ones.”
“Yessir!” The big spacer rummaged in the lockers overhead.
Standing child-size among these huge Terrans, Jalun was overcome again by the contrast between their size and strength and perfection and his own weak-limbed, frail, slope-shouldered little form. Among his people he had been accounted a strong youth; even now he was among the ablest. But to these mighty Terrans, Joilani strength was a joke. Perhaps they were right; perhaps he was of an inferior race, fit only to be slaves. . . . But then Jalun remembered what he knew, and straightened his short spine. The younger spacer was saying something.
“Lieutenant, sir, if that’s really Stars Tears I can’t drink it.”
“You can’t drink it? Why not?”
“I promised. I, uh, swore.”
“You’d promise such an insane thing?”
“My—my mother,” the youngster said miserably.
The two others shouted with laughter.
“You’re a long way from home now, son,” the lieutenant said kindly. “What am I saying, Jon? We’d be delighted to take yours. But I just can’t bear to see a man pass up the most beautiful thing in life, and I mean bar none. Forget Mommy and prepare your soul for bliss. That’s an order. . . . All right, Smiley boy, equal shares. And if you spill one drop I’ll dicty both your little pnonks, hear?”
“Yes, seh.” Carefully Jalun poured the loathsome liquor into the small cups.
“You ever tasted this, Juloo?”
“No, seh.”
“And never will. All right, now scat. Ah-h-h . . . Well, here’s to our next station, may it have real live poogy on it.”
Jalun went silently back down into the shadows of the gangway, paused where he could just see the spacers lift their cups and drink. Hate and disgust choked him, though he had seen it often: Terrans eagerly drinking Stars Tears. It was the very symbol of their oblivious cruelty, their fall from Jailasanatha. They could not be excused for ignorance; too many of them had told Jalun how Stars Tears was made. It was not tears precisely, but the body secretions of a race of beautiful, frail winged creatures on a very distant world. Under physical or mental pain their glands exuded this liquid which the Terrans found so deliciously intoxicating. To obtain it, a mated pair were captured and slowly tortured to death in each other’s sight. Jalun had been told atrocious details which he could not bear to recall.
Now he watched, marveling that the hate burning in his eyes did not alert the Terrans. He was quite certain that the drug was tasteless and did no harm; careful trials over the long years had proved that. The problem was that it took from two to five minims to work. The last-affected Terran might have time to raise an alarm. Jalun would die to prevent that—if he could.
The three spacers’ faces had changed; their eyes shone.
“You see, son?” the lieutenant asked huskily.
The boy nodded, his rapt gaze on nowhere.
Suddenly the big spacer Jon lunged up and said thickly, “What?” Then he slumped down with his head on one outstretched arm.
“Hey! Hey, Jon!” The lieutenant rose, reaching toward him. But then he too was falling heavily across the wardroom table. That left only the staring boy.
Would he act, would he seize the caller? Jalun gathered himself to spring, knowing he could do little but die in those strong hands.
But the boy only repeated, “What? . . . What?” Lost in a private dream, he leaned back, slid downward, and began to snore.
Jalun darted up to them and snatched the weapons from the two huge lax bodies. Then he scrambled up to the cruiser’s control room, summoning all the memorized knowledge that had been gained over the slow years. Yes—that was the transmitter. He wrestled its hood off and began firing into its works. The blast of the weapon frightened him, but he kept on till all was charred and melted.
The flight computer next. Here he had trouble burning in, but soon achieved what seemed to be sufficient damage. A nearby metal case fastened to what was now the ceiling bothered him. It had not been included in his instructions—because the Joilani had not learned of the cruiser’s new backup capability. Jalun gave it only a perfunctory blast, and turned to the weapons console.
Emotions he had never felt before were exploding in him, obscuring sight and reason. He fired at wild random across the board, concentrating on whatever would explode or melt, n
ot realizing that he had left the heavy-weapons wiring essentially undamaged. Pinned-up pictures of the grotesque Terran females, which had done his people so much harm, he flamed to ashes.
Then he did the most foolish thing.
Instead of hurrying straight back down through the wardroom, he paused to stare at the slack face of the spacer who had savaged his young. His weapon was hot in his hand. Madness took Jalun: he burned through face and skull. The release of a lifetime’s helpless hatred seemed to drive him on wings of flame. Beyond all reality, he killed the other two Terrans without pausing and hurried on down.
He was quite insane with rage and self-loathing when he reached the reactor chambers. Forgetting the hours of painful memorization of the use of the waldo arms, he went straight in through the shielding port to the pile itself. Here he began to tug with his bare hands at the damping rods, as if he were a suited Terran. But his Joilani strength was far too weak, and he could barely move them. He raged, fired at the pile, tugged again, his body bare to the full fury of radiation.
When presently the rest of the Terran crew poured into the ship they found a living corpse clawing madly at the pile. He had removed only four rods; instead of a meltdown he had achieved nothing at all.
The engineer took one look at Jalun through the vitrex and swung the heavy waldo arm over to smash him into the wall. Then he replaced the rods, checked his readouts, and signaled: Ready to lift.
There was also great danger that the Terrans would signal to one of their mighty warships, which alone can send a missile seeking through tau-space. An act of infamy was faced.
The Elder Jayakal entered the communications chamber just as the Terran operator completed his regular transmission for the period. That had been carefully planned. First, it would insure the longest possible interval before other stations became alarmed. Equally important, the Joilani had been unable to discover a way of entry to the chamber when the operator was not there.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) Page 45