She saw his brief, forgiving smile, and felt her temper stir. “Look, third-unsatisfactory-husband, biology admitted it was lost when the first sampler returned from Mars! You-” She stopped, warned by the look on his face. Just because he’d been so darn busy having all that knowledge piped into the grey goop that this was his first marriage . . . jealousy with such a primitive character trait . . . but at least it proved they hadn’t programmed and imprinted all the natural responses out of Hammond.
The sullen look faded. “Irma, there are certain basic biological principles common to all life-chains, such as the synthesis of energy compounds in the presence of sunlight-” He stopped, and she knew he was afraid of losing her again.
“Why does synthesis have to take place? It looks just like a tiny sun. Maybe it gets energy directly from the big sun up there.”
Hammond could only shake his head. This was totally outside his imprinted experience, a situation unique in history. Since only solid objects could exceed the speed of light there was no possible way to contact Earth for further instructions. Irma watched him sweat helplessly for a while and then suggested he catch the thing in a specimen box and put it through the analyser.
Hammond looked so grateful for the obvious idea that she wondered what he would do if she came up with something brilliant one day.
She watched her husband approach the little sun—son of a sun?—through the viewscreen. It was hovering at head-height. Hammond walked directly to it, opened the box and brought it up underneath the creature, and slammed the magnetically-sealed lid. She saw the bright flames of an angry excrescence as it vanished inside.
Hammond started back to the scout, triumph in his walk. Tomorrow he would be referring to this as his idea.
A corner of the box turned red, rippled like water and melted into sludge. She heard Hammond’s surprised yell, saw him hurl the hot box violently away just as the butterfly emerged, its bright wings angrily swirling. She saw Hammond backing away as the beautiful flaming creature moved towards him and suddenly realized that he was very near death. She screamed once and then little Dickie was standing by her and screaming louder than she, but he had turned on the outside mike first. His amplified child’s voice rolled from the top of the scout into the shuddering air and it was an angry command not to hurt his daddy.
The miniature sun hesitated, its more violent colours fading. The flaming wings slowed, looked less like bearing pinions. After a moment it rose swiftly and in seconds had merged with the brighter sunlight in the cloudless sky.
“It’ll come back,” said Dickie placidly; he might never have screamed in his life. “It’s ‘dopted me.”
Hammond must have finally been convinced it had indeed adopted Dickie. During the three-day hop to the next planet he spent his free time building a gadget for which she could see no immediate use. When she tried to question him about it he gave her an angry look and refused to answer. He even ate the terrible chops she concocted from some old leaf-mould without a single comment.
This time it was no surprise when Dickie went out and the flaming butterfly shortly appeared and hovered above his young head. They were on another obviously dead world, all rock and diamonds, with very little air. Dickie wore his suit cheerfully, since there was no alternative and he and the butterfly were playing some odd game they had devised when she saw Hammond emerge from the workroom carrying his newest toy. It was a grey box with a large crystal rod mounted on top, similar to some very primitive lasers she had seen.
“What’s that?” she asked in some alarm. Hammond’s face had a grimly determined look she did not like.
“A light wave-form disruptor. I’m going to see if that thing out there can stand up to a little photon jarring.”
Irma wanted to cry out that he was being cruel, that the little white sun-child had done him no harm, but the words stuck in her throat. The attempt to capture it had been her idea. In a way she had been responsible for the blow to Hammond’s pride. And it was a dangerous little fire-pot. If it should get angry with Dickie in one of their games . . . She watched him approach it calmly, knowing that his device, whatever it was, would work. She saw him aim the crystal rod in its general direction and press a button. A beam of life leaped from one end and flew by the butterfly, burning its way into the sky. Hammond moved the box slightly and the beam shifted, engulfing the small central body. And it flared, grew, brightened intolerably in a soundless explosion of light . . . and died to a dim memory of glory on the edge of her retina. As it faded to nothingness she thought she saw a black lump of—was it coal?—fall to the ground at little Dickie’s feet.
“That takes care of that,” said Hammond’s voice on the radio. It sounded more defeated than satisfied. She saw him stoop to pick up the black lump.
It had happened so fast Dickie’s young mind was slow in grasping the fact that his friend and pet was dead. He had just started a rising wail of protest when Irma saw two circles of light appear at the top of the view-screen, falling fast. She felt a sudden dread clutch at her throat
Hammond saw them also. He lifted the disruptor in alarm, his finger stabbing the button. The killing beam lashed out just before the dropping small suns reached him. It cut the air by one of the flaming balls and before Hammond could shift it a similar beam shot from the body of the second butterfly and melted the box into shapeless slag. The disrupting light vanished.
The two creatures halted just above little Dickie’s head and Irma saw strong orange and delicate lavender beams flashing back and forth between them. She did not need Hammond to tell her they were communicating and her own intuition told her what it was about. In a near paralysis of terror she watched the weirdly beautiful judges weigh their decision of life or death and not for a moment did she doubt they were both judge, jury and executioner, and capable of all three tasks.
Dickie was staring at them with wide-eyed interest, apparently completely unafraid. Hammond’s face had turned pale. He edged slowly closer to Dickie, with some vain idea of protecting him if the decision went against them.
* * * *
Orange-Beam-of-Anger: He disrupted our young-flame! Our young-flame! They are powerful but cruel, cruel! Their bodies are jelly of death-liquid and death lives in their minds, minds! I kill!
Lavender-Beam-of-Restraint: No! No! He did not understand, understand! You caused us to attach away our young-flame when we fled here for safety! Ours no longer! Think, Think! The Wild-Flames have not discovered the birth-power locked in stone! They came not this far from Hot-Home! It is safe to make another young-flame, another! We have built our heat again, we can create, create!
Orange-Beam: It will weaken us, for purpose, what purpose?
Lavender-Beam: For the aliens, dull-flame! Attach it to the largest one, let it be his child!
Orange-Beam: To kill again, to kill again?
Lavender-Beam: They are not primitives! We must make ties, ties! Sense you not his regret? He thought to protect his young, as we, as we! We must make friends, get aid, fight savages! Their machines move between Hot-Homes and we cannot! Powerful friends, when we return to drive Barbarians from our Hot-Home! See Low-Burner, see Low-Burner?
Orange-Beam: We will see who Burns-Low! Give me your White, your White!
White-Beam-of-Creation: In joy of being, in love tender-yielding, I give you White!
White-Beam-of-Creation: And I return, in strength of love, in happiness conscious, the White, the White!
* * * *
The light beam colloquy abruptly stopped. Irma’s gaze shifted downward. Dickie was holding up a large diamond, its rough exterior glittering in the brightness of Alpha Cruris.
A new beam of brilliant white flashed between the butterflies, held, and they moved towards each other and the extended diamond. When they were quite close Dickie finally dropped it and withdrew his hand. The small suns followed the crystal to the ground, still connected by the beam of pure white light. Irma saw them almost merge when they reached opposite sides of the di
amond. She knew the purpose of that beam of blended white and that Dickie had seen it once before. She felt like a Peeping Tom in the bedroom of Zeus and Hera and could not tear her eyes away.
The white light seemed to grow, to widen and deepen until it covered the central bodies of both butterflies, hiding the other colours and the frozen glitter of the diamond. Both Hammond and Dickie had backed away a few feet and were watching through slightly polarized face-plates. The rock in the immediate vicinity of the strange mating was charring. The whiteness grew more intense, almost unendurable in its brilliance. There was an abrupt flare in the centre of the merged lights, a tone of vivid orange, and then the parent butterflies moved apart, the beam broken, their sun-heats fading to a more normal temperature. Where the diamond had rested an orange flame burned, slowly brightening.
Some dim fragment of memory came to Irma, something about the intense pressure matrices inside a diamond, the immense forces necessary to heat and compress carbon until it reached that state of final beauty. If those matrices could be made to yield their imprisoned energy...
The parent butterflies lifted slowly, moved behind Hammond, gently urged him forward, until he was standing quite close to the burning orange. Their new-born child grew brighter and brighter. Hammond, apparently no longer afraid, waited in front of it and an older meaning of the word “imprint” dawned on Irma, the original psychological one. Some new-born creatures adopted the first living animal they saw as their mother, regardless of its shape or form.
Dickie had got the situation somewhat confused. The first butterfly had not adopted him. He had unknowingly adopted the butterfly!
The thought sent her into a burst of laughter and when she realized how near to hysteria it was she cut it off abruptly and stood there trembling in silent relief. When she looked again her husband and son were slowly approaching the scout. The new butterfly, now flying, hovered close by Hammond’s head.
* * * *
“Of course little Brightstar isn’t the protoplasmic type of intelligence we were looking for, but I think Earth will be too thrilled to care,” said Hammond cheerfully as he made the last adjustment on his current toy. He had assured Irma that when their second child learned to use it properly he could activate any of its thirty-six cells by a light-beam and produce one of the basic sounds of speech in its attached radio. With the intelligence little Brightstar displayed it should be a short step from there to true speech.
“I’m happy just to get home five years early.” Irma really couldn’t have cared less about the type of intelligence her adopted child had. Dickie-bird needed a brother and now he had one. She glanced at the chronometer. About time for another meal for Brightstar, and for Dickie’s nap. It had been very pleasant, watching the two of them tumble about outside the ship during the last feeding, but Brightstar would have to eat alone this time. She called Dickie and asked Hammond to drop to sub-light and pull in close to the next star.
When both children were attended to she asked, “Is the search really over, Hammond? Will this satisfy the people who insist there just has to be more intelligence in the universe?”
He turned from the controls in mild surprise. “Why, no, of course not. The search must go on. Baby suns aren’t all the answer. But we’ll leave the new trips to others. Except . . .” he hesitated, and Irma made her face cloud up and prepare to rain. Not again!
He saw her look, and grinned. “Oh no, not another major trip. Just a little expedition to home base, so to speak. To Sol. It occurs to me that Bright and his kind may not be as rare as we thought. They were obviously born in some star originally. We may have intelligence a darn sight closer to home than we’ve ever dreamed.”
Irma sighed in relief. Why of course! And a good thing too. The way children grew up before your eyes, they had to be thinking about Brightstar’s future. No child of her’s was going to grow up a bachelor!
She smiled reflectively, already seeing her grandchildren burning before her eyes.
<
* * * *
THEY SHALL REAP
David Rome
The closed environment story usually applies to a situation where Man has to take his natural conditions with him in order to survive. Australian author David Rome, however, shows that it could well apply to a normal community right here on Earth.
* * * *
We pulled up under the big red-on-white sign that said: rich valley development co. and sat in silence for a moment. Outside, the sunlight was slanting over the mountains in cool yellow shafts. But in the car we were in serious mood. Even the kids.
“Well,” I said at last. “Everybody sure this is what we want?”
In grave voices, the kids said it was. And Eve met my eyes and nodded quickly. Her eyes were big and soft and she looked like she might cry at any second.
“Our own farm, Adam.”
“It’ll be hard work.”
“We’ll never have the chance again. Not at this price. Not at half the price.”
“Still, all our money will be in there. No backing out. You know what the agreement says—we stay, or forfeit our purchase price.”
“They’re giving people such a wonderful chance,” Eve said. “People like us. You can’t blame them for trying to discourage the sort who might not stay. Rich Valley ...” Eve said softly, looking down the misty green V of country beyond the building which contained the Development Company offices. The sun rested like a cool steel disc on the high mountains in the west. It began to melt and run across darkening slopes towards us.
“Come on,” I said. “This is where the Rice family belongs.”
The kids were out of the car before I finished the words. Pete led Trisha, his voice a wild whoop that sharded on the grey-green mountain slopes. She followed more sedately, dark hair loose and heavy on her thirteen-year-old shoulders.
“Pete will have room to run out here,” I said, pressing Eve’s hand. “Really run. Like the little savage he is.”
She smiled happily and nodded. We stopped as the kids waited impatiently for us, looked down the valley again. Smoke from the settlements spaced along the valley sent thin spirals up against the purpling sky. Peace. Room to breathe.
“We’re lucky, Adam,” Eve murmured. “Lucky to have the chance.”
“Well, we passed the tests. They wanted us to come.”
“And all the others living down there, they’ll be people like us, Adam. People who believe in kindness and goodness.”
“They’ll be good people, honey. It’ll be a good place to bring up the children.”
Trisha’s big grey eyes were watching us in the gathering dusk. We smiled and she smiled back. Pete danced on one foot and waved to us to hurry.
All of a sudden lights came on in the Rich Valley Development offices. Warm and welcoming lights.
We sat in a semi-circle around Judge Whymore’s desk while he completed the agreements. Judge Whymore had told us on our first visit to Rich Valley that he didn’t act as a judge any longer.
He and four others, who had owned the whole of the valley between them, had founded the Development Company. Their aim, he had told us, had been to build a community of people who were looking for escape, escape from violent cities and the seething pressures of suburban life. People who coveted tranquillity.
We had taken a written psychology test and an exhaustive—and for Eve and Trisha embarrassing—medical examination as the first steps towards securing one of the two hundred farms in Rich Valley.
I suspected that ours had been a borderline case, the balance weighed by Eve and Trisha, both creatures of inner peace and self-containment.
I considered myself honest and practical, too honest and practical to succeed in a business world of dishonest contracts and speculation. But my streak of rebellion had been inherited by Pete, neither of us completely tamed by the angelic women of our family.
“You’re extremely fortunate,” Judge Whymore told us. “You are our final family.”
; His broad and happy face beamed at us.
“You’re all prepared?”
I nodded. “House sold, furniture too. Just clothes and a few personal things in the car there.”
“We will make our clothes in the valley,” the Judge smiled. “But, of course, you will want your own things for a while.”
He rose, tall and twinkling-eyed.
“I’ll drive down with you. Help you settle in.”
“Thank you,” Eve said.
He smiled and placed his hand on the soft darkness of Trisha’s hair. “Thank you, Mrs. Rice.”
We drove down the dark and winding road which led to the valley farms. In the oblong of my mirror I watched the yellow lights of Judge Whymore’s car following us.
The mountains seemed to bend down over us from the silver-mercury sky. Lights pinpricked the darkness of the foothills every mile or so.
New Writings in SF 8 - [Anthology] Page 9