The Starry Rift

by James Tiptree Jr

  “Good-o.” She eats a bit more, finishing the course set. “That reminds me, what do you call your race? And you, you must have a name. We should get better acquainted!” She laughs for two; all sense of trouble has gone.

  “I am of the Eea, or Eeadron. Personally I’m called Syllobene.”

  “Hello, Syllobene! I’m Coati Cass. Coati.”

  “Hello, Coati Cass Coati.”

  “No, I meant, just Coati. Cass is my family name.”

  “Ah, ‘family.’ We wondered about that, with the other Humans.”

  “Sure, I’ll be glad to explain. But later—” Coati cuts herself off. “I mean, there’ll be plenty of time to explain everything, while we slowly approach the planet orbiting that star. And I think I’m entitled to your story first, Syllobene, since I’m providing the body. Don’t you agree that’s fair?”

  “Oh, yes. I must take care not to be selfish, when you do so much.”

  Somehow this speech, for the first time, conveys to Coati that her passenger really is a young, almost childish being. The big words it had found in her mind had kept misleading her. But now Syllobene sounds so much like herself reminding herself of her manners. She chuckles again, benignly. Could it be that they are two kids—even two females—together, out looking for adventure in the starfields? And it’s nice to have this unexpected companion; much as Coati loves to read and view, she’s beginning to get the idea that a lot of space voyaging consists of lonely sitting and waiting, when you aren’t in cold-sleep. Of course, she guiltily reminds herself, she could be checking the charts to see if all the coordinates of the relatively few stars out here are straight. But Boney and Ko have undoubtedly done all that—after all, this was their second trip to this sun; on the first one they merely spotted planets. And learning about an alien race is surely important.

  She leans back comfortably, and asks, “Now, what about your planet? What does it look like? And your hosts—how does that work? How did such a system ever evolve in the first place? Hey, I know—can you make me see an image, a vision of your home?”

  “Alas, no. Such a feat is beyond my powers. Making speech is the utmost I can do.”

  “Well, tell me about it all.”

  “I will. But first I must say, we have no such—no such material equipment, no such technology as you have. What techniques we have are of the mind. I am filled with amazement at all you do. Your race has achieved marvels! I saw a distant world when I looked through your device—a world! And you speak of visiting it as casually as we would go to a lake or a tree farm. A wonder!”

  “Yes, we have a lot of technology. So do some other races, like the Swain and the Moom. But I want yours, Syllobene! To start with, what’s this business of Eea and Eeadron?”

  “Ah. Yes, of course. Well, I personally, just myself, am an Eea. But when I am in my proper host, which is a Dron, I am an Eeadron. An Eea by itself is almost nothing. It can do nothing but wait, depending on its primitive tropisms, until a host comes by. It is very rare for Eea to become detached as you found me—except when we are visiting another Eeadron for news or instruction. And then we leave much of ourselves in place, in our personal Dron, to which we return. I, being young, was able to detach myself almost completely to go with the Humans as one of their visitors.”

  “Oh—were there other Eeas inside Boney and Ko when they took off?”

  “Yes—one each, at least.”

  “What would you call that—Eeahumans?” Coati laughs.

  But her companion does not seem to join in. “They were very old,” she hears herself mutter softly. And then something that sounds like, “No idea of the length of the trip...”

  “So you came away when they messaged. Whew—wild act! Oh, Syllobene, I’m so glad I intercepted it and saved you.”

  “I, too, dear Coati Cass.”

  “But now we’ve got to get serious about this crazy system of yours. Are you the only people on your planet that have their brains in separate bodies? Oh, wait. I just realized we should record all this, we’ll never be able to go over it twice. Hold while I put in a new cassette.”

  She gets set up and bethinks herself to make it sound professional with an introduction.

  “This is Coati Cass recording, on board the CC-One, approaching unnamed planet at—” She gives all the coordinates, the standard date and time, and the fact that Boney and Ko were last reported to be headed toward this planet.

  “Before that, they landed on a planet at thirty-twenty north and reported a First Contact with life-forms there. Their report is in a message forwarded to Base before I came here. Now it seems that when they left that planet, some of the life-forms came with them, specifically two at least of the almost invisible Eea, in their heads. And some seeds, and another Eea, a very young one, who came along, she says, for the adventure. This young Eea moved to the message pipe, not realizing how long the trip would be, and was almost dead when I opened the pipe. She—I call it she because we haven’t got sexes, if any, straightened out yet—she moved over to me when I opened the pipe, and is right now residing in my head, where she can see and hear through my senses, and speak with my voice. I am interviewing her about her planet, Nolian. Now, remember all the voice you hear will be mine—but I myself am the one asking the questions. I think you will be soon able to tell when Syllobene—that’s her name—is speaking with my voice; it’s higher and sort of constricted, and she uses words I didn’t know I knew. She learned all that while I was in cold-sleep coming here. Now, Syllobene, would you please repeat what you’ve told me so far, about the Eea and the Eeadron?”

  Coati has learned to relax a little while her own voice goes on, and she hears Syllobene start with a nice little preface: “Greetings to my Human hearers!” and go on to recite the Eea-Eeadron system.

  “Now,” says Coati, “I was just asking whether the Eea are the only life-forms on their planet to have their brains in separate animals, so to speak.”

  “Oh, no,” says her Syllobene voice, “it is general in our, ah, animal world. In fact we are still amazed that there is another way. But always in other animals the two are very closely attached. For instance, in the Enquaalons, the En is born with the Quaalon, mates when it mates, gives birth when it does, and dies when it dies. The same for all the En—that is what we call the brain-animal, except for ourselves, the Eea. Only the Eea are so separate from the Dron, and do not die when their Dron dies... But we have seen aged Endalamines—that is the nearest animal to the Eeadron—holding their heads against newborn Dalamines, as though the En was striving to pass to a new body, while the seed-Ens proper to that newborn hovered about in frustration. We think in some cases they succeed.”

  “So you Eea can pass to a new body when yours is old! Does that make you immortal?”

  “Ah, no, Eea too age and die. But very slowly. They may use many Dron in a lifetime.”

  “I see. But tell about your society, your government, and how you get whatever you eat, and so on. Are there rich and poor, or servants and master Eeadron?”

  “No, if I understand those words. But we have farms—” And so by random stages and probings, Coati pieces together a picture of the green-and-golden planet that Syllobene calls Nolian, with its sun, Anella, all ruled over by the big white Eeadron, who have no wars and only the most rudimentary monetary system. The climate is so benign that housing is largely decorative, except for shelter from the nightly mists and drizzles. It seems a paradise. Their ferocious teeth, which had so alarmed Boney and Ko, derive from a forgotten, presumably carnivorous past; they now eat plant products and fruits. (Here Coati recollects that certain herbivorous primates of antique Earth also had fierce-looking canines.)

  As to material technology, the Eeadron have the wheel, which they use for transporting farm crops and what few building materials they employ. And long ago they learned to control fire, which they regard almost as a toy except for some use in cooking. Their big interest now appears to be the development of a written code for their l
anguage; they picked up the idea from Ponz and Leslie. It’s a source of great pleasure and excitement, although some of the older Eea, who serve as the racial memory, grumble a bit at this innovation.

  Midway through this account, Coati has an idea, and when Syllobene runs down she bursts out, “Listen! Oh—this is Coati speaking—you said you cleaned out my arteries, my blood tubes. And you cure other hosts. Would you—I mean, your race—be interested in being healers to other races like mine, who can’t heal themselves? We call such healers doctors. But our doctors can’t get inside and really fix what’s wrong, without cutting the sick person up. Why, you could travel all over the Federation, visiting sick people and curing them—or, wait, you could set up a big clinic, and people, Humans and others, would come from everywhere to have the Eea go into them and fix their blood vessels, or their kidneys, or whatever was wrong. Oh, hey—and they’d pay you—you’re going to need Federation credits—and everybody would love you! You’d be the most famous, valuable race in the Federation!”

  “Oh, oh—” replies the Syllobene voice, sounding breathless, “I don’t know your exclamations! We would say:” She gives an untranslatable trill of excitement. “How amazing, if I understand you—”

  “Well, we can talk about that later. Now, you learned about Humans from what you call visiting, in the brains of Boney or Ko, is that right?”

  “Yes. But if I had not had the experience of visiting my mentor and a few other Eeadron, I would not have known how to enter and live there without causing damage. You see, the brains of the Dron are just unformed matter; one can go anywhere and eat anything without ill effect in the host’s brain. In fact, it is up to the Eea to form them... And, I almost forgot, my mentor was old; and was one of those who had known the living Humans, Ponz and Leslie. The two who landed violently and died. They were beyond our powers to cure them, but we could abolish their pain. I believe they mated before they died, but no seeds came. My mentor told me how your brains are, with everything developed and functioning. We are still amazed.”

  “Why do you visit other Eeadron?”

  “To learn many facts about some subject in a short time. We send out tendrils—I think you have a word, for your fungus plants—mycelium. Very frail threads and knots, permeating the other brain—I believe that is what I look like in your brain now—and by making a shadow-pattern in a certain way, we acquire all sorts of information, like history, or the form of the landscapes, and keep it intact when we withdraw.”

  “Look, couldn’t you learn all about Humans and the Federation by doing that in my head?”

  “Oh, 1 would not dare. Your speech centers alone frightened me with their complexity. I proceeded with infinite care. It was lucky I had so much time while you slept. I wouldn’t dare try anything more delicate and extensive and emotion-connected.”

  “Well, thanks for your consideration...” Coati doesn’t want to stall the interview there, so she asks at random, “Do you have any social problems? Troubles or dilemmas which concern your whole race?”

  This seems to puzzle the Eea. “Well, if I understand you, I don’t think so. Oh, there is a heated disagreement among two groups of Eeadron as to how much interest we should take in aliens, but that has been going on ever since Ponz. A panel of senior councillors—is that the word for old wise ones?—are judging it.”

  “And will the factions abide by their judgment?”

  “Oh, naturally. It will be wiped from memory.”

  “Whew!”

  “And ,.. and there is the problem of a shortage of fruit trees. But that is being solved. Oh—I believe I know one social problem, as you put it. Since the Eea are becoming personally so long-lived, there is arising a reluctance to mate and start young. Mating is very, ah, disruptive, especially to the Dron body. So people like to go along as they are. The elders have learned how to suppress the mating urge. For example, I and my siblings were the only young born during one whole season. There are still plenty of seeds about, you saw them, but they are becoming just wasted. Wasted... I think I perceive something applicable in your verbal sayings, about nature.”

  “Huh? Oh—‘Nature’s notorious wastefulness,’ right?”

  “Yes. But our seeds are very long-lived. Very. And that golden coat, which is what you see, is impervious to most everything. So maybe all will be well.”

  Her informant seems to want to say no more on this topic, so Coati seizes the pause to say, “Look, our throat—my throat—is about to close up or break into flames. Water!” She seizes the flask and drinks. “I always thought that business of getting a sore throat from talking too much was a joke. It isn’t. Can’t you do something, Doctor Syllobene?”

  “I can only block off some of the inflamed channels, and help time do its work. I could abolish the pain, but if we used it, it would quickly grow much worse.”

  “You sound like a doctor already,” Coati grumbles hoarsely. “Well, we’ll just cut this off here—oh, I wish I had one of those message pipes! Ouch... Then we’ll have some refreshments—I got some honey, thank the gods—and take a nap. Cold-sleep doesn’t rest us, you know. Could you take a sleep, too, Syllobene?”

  “Excellent idea.” That hurts.

  “Look, couldn’t you learn just to nod my head like this for ‘yes’ or like this for ‘no’?”

  Nothing happens for a moment, then Coati feels her head nod gently as if elfin fingers were brushing her chin and brow, yes.

  “Fantastic,” she rasps. “Ouch.”

  She flicks off the recorder, takes a last look through the scope at the blue-green-white planet—still far, far ahead—sets an alarm, and curls up comfortably in the pilot couch.

  “Sleep well, Syllobene,” she whispers painfully. The answer is breathed back, “You, too, dear Coati Cass.”

  Excitement wakes her before the alarm. The planet is just coming into good bare-eye view. But when she starts to speak to Syllobene, she finds she has no voice at all. She hunts up the med-aid kit and takes out some throat lozenges.

  “Syllobene,” she whispers. “Hello?”

  “Wha—er, what? Hello?” Syllobene discovers whispering.

  “We’ve lost our voice. That happens sometimes. It’ll wear off. But if it’s still like this when we get on the planet, you’ll have to do something so we can record. You can, can’t you?”

  “Yes, I believe so. But you must understand it will make it worse later.”

  “Green.”

  “What?”

  “Green... means I understand, too. Listen, I’m sorry about your turn to ask questions. That’ll be later. For now we’ll just shut up.”

  “I wait.”

  “Go.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, green, go—that means, understood and we will proceed on that course.” Coati can scarcely force out the words. “Ah, informal speech... most difficult...”

  “Syl, this is killing me. We shut up now, green?”

  A painful giggle. “Go.”

  Some hot tea from the snack pack proves soothing. Meanwhile, the enforced silence gives Coati a chance to think things over, for the first time. She is, of course, entranced by the novelty of it all and seriously stirred by the idea that Syllobene’s race could provide the most astounding, hitherto inconceivable type of medical help to the others. If they want to. And if a terrible crowd jam doesn’t ensue. But that’s for the big minds to wrestle out.

  And, like the kid she is, she relishes the sensation she fancies her return will provoke—with a real live new alien carried in her head! But gods, they won’t be able to see Syllobene—suppose they jump to the obvious conclusion that Coati’s gone nutters and hustle her off to the hospital? She and Syl better talk that over before they get home; Syllobene has to be able to think of some way to prove she exists.

  Funny how firmly she’s taken to thinking of Syllobene as “she,” Coati muses. Is that just sheer projection? Or—after all, they’re in pretty intimate contact—is this some deep instinctive perception, lik
e one of Syl’s “primitive tropisms”? Whatever, when they get it unscrambled, it’ll be a bit of a shock if Syl’s a young “he”... or, gods forbid, an “it” or a “them.” What was that Boney had said about the Dron, that some of them had two sets of “private parts”? That’d be his modest term for sex organs; he must have meant they were like hermaphrodites. Whew. Well, that still doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the Eea.

  When they can talk, she must get things straightened out. And until then, not get too romantically fixated on the idea that they’re two girls together.

  All this brings her to a sobering sense of how little she really knows about the entity she’s letting stay in her head—in her very brain. If indeed Syl was serious about being able to leave... With this sobriety comes, or rather, surfaces, a slight, undefined sense of trouble. She’s had it all along, she realizes. A peculiar feeling that there’s more. That all isn’t quite being told her. Funny, she doesn’t suspect Syl herself of some bad intent, of being secretly evil. No. Syllobene is good, as good as she can be; all Coati’s radar and perceptions seem to assure her of that. But nevertheless this feeling persists—it’s coming clearer as she concentrates—that something was making the alien a little sad and wary now and then—that something troubling to Syl had been touched on but not explored.

  The lords know, she and Syl had literally talked all they could, Syl had answered every question until their voice gave out. But Coati’s sense of incompleteness lingers. Let’s see, when had it been strongest?... Around that business of the seeds in the message pipe, for one. Maybe every time they touched on seeds. Well, seeds were being wasted. That meant dying. And a seed is a living thing; an encysted, complete beginning of a new life. Not just a gamete, like pollen, say. Maybe they’re like embryos, or even living babies, to Syllobene. The thought of hundreds of doomed babies surely wouldn’t be a very cheerful one for Coati herself.

  Could that be it? That Syl didn’t want to go into the sadness? Seems plausible. Or, wait—what about Syl herself? By any chance did she want to mate, and now she can’t—or, had she—and that’s the mystery of where those seeds in the message pipe had come from? Whew! Is Syl old enough, is she sexually mature? Somehow Coati doesn’t think so, but again, she knows so little—not even that Syl’s a she.