The Starry Rift

by James Tiptree Jr

  “Oh, oh, oh—” But it’s the other voice that begins sobbing frankly now. The record blurs in a confusion of, “Syl! What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” and, “Oh, I was afraid, oh, I’m afraid, oh, Coati, it’s terrible—”

  “Yeah, it’s ugly. That’s not the way Humans really mate, Syl.”

  “No,” says Syl’s tones, “I don’t mean that, I mean we—oh, oh—” and she’s sobbing again.

  “Listen, Syl!” Coati gulps back alien tears, cuts her off. “I think you know something you aren’t telling me! You tell me what’s frightening you this instant, or I’ll—I’ll bash my own brains so hard it’ll shake you loose. See?”

  There’s the sound of a hard slap on flesh and then a sudden sharp outcry.

  “Hey—what—You hurt me, Syl. I th-thought you never—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” the alien voice moans. “I p-panicked when you said you would harm yourself—”

  “Or harm you, huh? Look, I can stand a lot of pain if I have to. You tell me right now what’s got into those men. Look, they’ve collapsed again. Tell me!”

  “It—it’s the young ones.”

  “The young what?”

  “The young Eea—from s-seeds in th-the ship.”

  “But you said there were grown-up Eea in each of the men. Didn’t they keep the seeds off, like you did for me?”

  “They—Oh, Coati, I told you, they were very old. They must have died, and the seeds went in the men. I saw them getting feeble. That’s when I got frightened and 1-left. Before the Humans went in cold-sleep... Oh, Coati, it’s so horrible—I feel so bad—”

  “Hush up now, Syl, and let me understand. What could seeds do?”

  “Seeds hatch, when they’re in—they hatched into young ones. With no mentors, no one to train them. They’re like wild animals. They grow. They eat—they eat anything. And then in the cold-sleep some of them must have matured. No teachers, no one to teach them discipline. Oh, the others should have known the seeds and spores would seek hosts, they should have seen those visitors who went with them were too old. B-but nobody knew how long, how far... When I began to understand how long a time it was going to be, I knew something bad would happen. And I c-couldn’t do anything, they wouldn’t listen to me. So I-I ran away...” The alien is convulsing Coati with sobs.

  “Well-11.. Long sigh from Coati. “Oh, dear gods, the poor men. You mean the young ones just ate their brains out?”

  “Y-yes, I fear so. As if they were Dron. Worse, because no teachers.”

  “And that sex stuff—that was the mature ones making them do it?”

  “Yes! Oh, yes! Like wild animals. We’re taught strictly to control it, we’re shown. It takes much training to be fully Eea. Even I am not fully trained... Oh, I wish I’d died there in space, instead of seeing this—”

  “Oh, no. Brace up, Syl. It’s not your fault. Nobody who isn’t used to space could grasp how long the distances are. They probably thought it would be like a long trip in your country... Oh, look—the men have gotten up. Gods, they’re holding each other up, their legs keep going out of control. Motor centers gone, maybe. They’re going—they went up that path north, only it wasn’t a path then. They’re making the path, trampling... That’s where we go, Syl, unless this shows them coming back. It’ll have to be soon, we’re almost at where the camera stopped. I wish I knew how long ago this was. The sun looks kind of different, and the colors of the vegetation, but that could be the camera. I’m going to speed up. Syl, stop crying, honey, it’s not your fault.”

  Rapid clicking from the record.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Coati’s voice says. “Still nothing. I doubt they came back. Nothing—Wait, what’s that? Oh, my goodness, it’s the wake—it’s our ship landing. Well! I don’t think I want to see us, do you? Let’s go.”

  Click.

  In the Executive office, the deputy stops the recorder for a moment.

  “Is all that clear to everyone?”

  Grunts of assent answer him.

  “I think this casts a new light on the potentials of Coati’s little friend’s race,” the medical officer says. “I suggest that we all keep a sharp eye open for anything that looks like grains of yellow powder, in case the young woman’s heat treatment did not completely clean out this pipe. Or the preceding one. Her initial precautions were very wise.”

  ’ Before he’s finished speaking, Exec had turned on stronger lights. There is a subdued shuffling as people look themselves over, brushing at imaginary golden spots.

  “Gods, if a pipeful of that stuff had got loose in here, and nobody warned!” Xenology mutters. “Hmm... Boney and Ko.”

  “Yes.” Exec understands Xenology’s shorthand. “If we get any indication that their ship lifted off, we have some hard decisions to make. I gather the seeds can affix themselves to the outside of space vessels, too. Well, we’d best continue and see what our problem is.”

  “Right.” The deputy douses the top light, restarts the ’corder.

  “We are now proceeding north on the trail left by Boney and Ko,” says Coati’s voice. “We’ve come about five kiloms. The trail is very plain, because the vegetation, or whatever this is, is very delicate and frail. I don’t think it’s built to have animals walk over it or graze. But the trail isn’t all that fresh because there’re little tips of new growth. We haven’t seen any animals or birds, only plantlike things and an occasional insect going by fast, like a bullet. It’s a pretty cold, quiet, weird place. The ground is almost level, but I think we’re headed roughly for one of those lakes we saw from above.

  “Syllobene is so shook up by what happened to the men that she won’t talk much. I keep trying to tell her it’s not her fault. One thing she said shows you—she said the grown-up Eea must have assumed that we could make ourselves immune to the seeds, just as they can, since we’re so complete. They can’t get used to the idea of whole, single animals born that way. And the ship, we had so many wild, powerful things. It never occurred to them that the men would be as vulnerable as Drons... Syl, do you hear what I’m telling my people? Nobody’s going to think for a minim that you’re at fault. Please brace up, honey, it’s awfully lonesome here on this primordial tundra or whatever it is.”

  “After you saved my life,” murmurs the Syllobene voice sadly.

  “Oh-h-h! Listen, hey—Syl, you saved my life, too, for the lords’ sake. Don’t you realize?”

  “I? How?”

  “By being on that message pipe, dopus. It was full of seeds, remember? If you hadn’t been there, at the risk of your life, if you hadn’t been there to keep them off me, I’d have gone just like Boney and Ko. They’d have eaten my brains out. Now will you cheer up? You’ve personally saved my life, too. Hey, Syl, how about that? Hello!”

  “Hello...Oh, dear Coati Cass—”

  “That’s my Syl. Listen, I’ve about had the hiking for today; these boots aren’t the greatest. I see a little hummock ahead, maybe it’s drier. I’ll tramp down a flat place and lay out my bag and screen—I don’t want one of those bullet-bugs to hit me. I don’t think this sun is going to set, either; it must be summer up here, with a big axial tilt.” She chuckles. “I’ve heard of the lands of the midnight sun! Now I’ve seen one. This is Coati Cass, en route to I don’t know where, signing off.”

  “Your daughter is a remarkable young woman, Myr Cass,” Exec says thoughtfully. Cass grunts. Looking more carefully at him, Exec sees his eyes are wet.

  The record continues with a few words by Coati on awakening. Apparently she—they—had slept undisturbed.

  “Green, on we go. Now, Syl, I hope you feel better. Think of me, having to lug a Weeping Willie—that means a sad lump of a person—all over the face of this godlost planet. Hey, don’t you know any songs? I’d really like that.”

  “Songs?”

  “Oh, for the gods’ sake. Well, explaining and demonstrating will give me something to do. But I don’t think our audience needs it.”

  Click.
r />   In an instant her voice is back again, sounding tired. “We’ve been walking eighteen hours total,” she says. “My pedometer says we’re sixty-one kiloms from the ship. The trail is still visible. We’re nearing an arm of one of the glaciers that extend south from the ice cap. I can see a line of low clouds—yes, with rainbows in them!—like a miniature weather front. The men seem to have been making straight towards it. Syl says the seeds have a primitive tropism to cold. That they can live a very, very long time if it’s cold enough. I don’t think anybody should come near this planet for a very, very long time. All right, onward.”

  Click, off. Click, on.

  “The glacier edge and a snowbank are right ahead. I think I see them—I mean, their bodies... There’s a cold wind from under the glacier, it smells bad.”

  Click... Click.

  “We found them. It’s pretty bad.” The voice sounds drained. “I did what I could. They’re like frozen, they crawled under the edge of the ice, it stands off the ground and makes a cave there, with deep green light cracks. Nothing had been at them that I could tell, but they both have big, nasty-looking holes above their noses, where the sinuses are.

  “I don’t know their last names, so I just scratched ‘Boney and Ko, brave Spacers for the Federation, FedBase Nine hundred’ on a slatey piece.

  “Oh—they left a message, on the same sort of rock. It says, ‘Danger. We are Infetked. Fatel,’ all misspelled, like a kid. I guess the... things... kept eating their brains out.

  “And there are seeds all over around here, like gold dust on the snow. They rise up in a cloud when a shadow falls on them. Syllobene says these are new seeds and spores that the young Eea formed, they mated when the men did and the seeds grew while the men walked here. Anyway, those holes in their faces are where the new seeds spouted out in a big clump or stream.

  “I got out my glass and looked at a group of seeds. That gold color is their coat or sheath. Syl says it is just about impermeable from outside. There’s a big difference in the seeds, too—some are much, much larger and solid-looking, others are more like empty husks. Syl says the big ones beat out the others, when competing for a host, and the earliest big one takes all.” A sigh.

  “Let’s see, have I said everything? Oh, maybe I should add that I don’t think those holes were bad enough to cause the men’s deaths. It must have been what went on inside. I didn’t see any other wounds, except scratches and bruises from falling down, I think. They... they were holding each other by the hand. I fixed them up, but I didn’t change that.

  “Now I guess that’s all. I don’t want to sleep here, I’m going to get as far back toward the ships as I can tonight. It may not be night, I told you the sun doesn’t set, but it makes some pretty reddish-glow colors. Syl is so sad she’ll hardly talk at all... Signing off now, unless something drastic happens.”

  The deputy clicked the ’corder off.

  “Is that all?” someone asks.

  “Oh, no. I merely wanted to know if everyone is satisfied that they’re hearing clearly so far. Did everyone get enough on the men’s conditions, or would Doc like me to run back over that?”

  “Not at present, thanks,” says Medical. “I would assume that the action of forming a large number of embryos requires extra energy, and consequently, during the men’s last walk, their parasites were consuming nutrients—brain tissue and blood—at an ever-increasing rate. As to the exact cause of death, it could be a combination of trauma, hypothermia, malnutrition, and loss of blood, or perhaps the parasites attacked brain structures essential to life. We won’t know until we can—I guess we won’t know, period.”

  “Anyone else?” says the deputy in his “briefing session” manner.

  Coati’s father makes an ambiguous throat-clearing noise but says nothing. No one else speaks, despite the sense of large unuttered questions growing in the room.

  “Oh, get on with it, Fred,” Exec says.

  “Right.”

  “We’re back at the ship resting up,” says Coati’s voice. “Syl, you’ve been very quiet for a long time. Are you all right? Are you still shook from seeing what the young ones did?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, push it aside, honey. If I can, you can. Try.”

  “Yes...”

  “You don’t sound like you’re trying. Listen, I can’t carry a melancholy, dismal person in my head all the way back to FedBase. I’ll go nutters, even in cold-sleep. Don’t you think you could cheer up a little? Wasn’t it fun when we tried singing?... After all, the men all happened a long time back, it’s all over. There’s nothing you can do.”

  In the room at Far Base, Coati’s father recognizes a piece of his own advice to his daughter in long-ago days, and blinks back a tear.

  “And we’ve done something useful—actually invaluable, because only you and I are safe on this planet. Right? So maybe we’ve saved the lives of whoever might have come to look.”

  “Umm...”

  “She’s right,” says Exec.

  “Of course, it’s only Human lives, but it was the Human men made you sad, wasn’t it, Syl. So really it’s all even. And those two had a really nice time on your planet first. Hey, think how good you’ll feel when you get home. Would it make you feel better if I showed you the scenes from Nolian when we get going?”

  “Yes... Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Syl, you’re hopeless. Or is something else bothering you? I’m getting hunches... Anyway, we’ve done everything we can here, I’m taking CC-One up. I collected Boney and Ko’s last charting cassettes, I’ll put them in a pipe with this, and with the little cassette from the bow camera. I don’t think they have left anything else of v-value. I closed the door and wrote a sign on the port to stay out. If you at the Fed want to salvage that ship, you’re going to have to go in with flamers. Or get an Eea to go in with you. Personally I’d think it wasn’t worth the danger, some seeds could be on the outside, and get left wherever you went with it. Hey, something I’ve been thinking—I wonder if possibly this could be the plague that wiped out the Lost Colony? Seeds drifting in from space. This whole great group of suns could be dangerous. Oh, lords. What a blow... Hey, that’s something that Syl and I could check someday! Syl, after you get home and have a nice rest-up, how would you like to come with me on another trip? If they’d let me—I’m sure they would, because we’d be their only seed-proof scouts! Only, my poor folks. That reminds me, my father may have messaged Far Base, it’d be great if somebody could message him and Mother collect that all’s well and I’m coming back. Thanks a million. My address at Cayman’s Port and all is on record there. Syl, there’s another thing we could do—how’d you like to meet my folks? You could learn all about families, and go back and be a big mentor on Nolian. They’d love to meet you, I know... I guess. Green, I’m taking the ship up now.”

  Click. Click.

  “We’re up, and I’m setting in course for the first leg back to Far Base. Whew, these yellow suns are really beautiful. But Syl is still in a funk. It can’t be because of what we saw on the planet. I keep feeling sure there’s something you aren’t telling me, Syl. What is it?”

  “Oh, no, I—”

  “Syl! Listen, you’re thinking with my brain, and I can sense something! Like every time I suggested something we could do, I got drenched in some kind of sadness. And there’s a feeling like a big thing tickling when you won’t talk. You’ve got to tell me, Syl. What it?”

  “I... Oh, I am so ashamed!”

  “See, there is something you’re hiding! Ashamed of what? Go on, Syl, tell me or I’ll—I’ll bash us both. Tell me!”

  “Ashamed,” repeats the small voice. “I’m afraid, I’m afraid. My training... Maybe I’m not so completely developed as I thought. I don’t know how to stop—Ohhh,” Coati’s voice wails, “I wish my mentor was here!”

  “Huh?”

  “I have this feeling. Oh, dear Coati Cass, it is increasing, I can’t suppress it!”

  “What?... Don’
t tell me you’re about to have some kind of primitive fit? Did that mating business—?”

  “No. Well, maybe, yes. Oh, I can’t—”

  “Syl, you must.”

  “No. All will be well. I will recollect all my training and recover myself.”

  “Syl, this sounds terrible... But, face it, you’re all alone—we’ re all alone. You can’t mate, if that’s what’s coming over you.”

  “I know. But—”

  “Then that’s it. The sooner we get going, the sooner we’ll be at FedBase and you can start home. I was going to take a nice nap first, but if you’ve got troubles, maybe I better just go right into the chest. Couldn’t you try to sleep, too? You might wake up feeling better.”

  “Oh, no! Oh, no! Not the cold! It stimulates us.”

  “Yes, I forgot. But look, I can’t live through all those light-years awake!”

  “No—not the cold-sleep!”

  “Syl. Myr Syllobene. Maybe you better confess the whole thing right now. Just what are you afraid of?”

  “But I’m not sure—”

  “You’re sure enough to be glooming for days. Now you tell Coati exactly what you’re afraid of. Take a deep breath—here, I’ll do it for you—and start. Now!”

  “Perhaps I must,” the alien voice says, small but newly resolute. “I don’t remember if I told you: If the mating cycle overtakes us when an Eea is alone, we can still... reproduce. By—I know your word—spores. Just like seeds, only they are all identical with the parent. And the Eea grows them and gives birth like seeds, as you s-saw. Then the Eea comes back to itself.” Syl’s words are coming in a rush now, as from relief at speaking out. “It’s very rare, because of course we are taught to stop it when the feeling begins. I—I never had it before. I’m supposed to seek out my mentor at once, to be instructed how to stop it, or the mentor will visit the young one and make it stop. But my mentor is far away! I keep hoping this is not really the feeling that begins all that, but it won’t go away, it’s getting stronger. Oh, Coati, my friend, I am so afraid—so fearful—” The voice trails off in great sobs.