Rescued From Paradise

by Robert L. Forward

  ◊We will be meeting the humans soon,◊ said Clear◊White◊Whistle. ◊They do not speak like we do.◊

  ☼Humans DUMB!☼ complained Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion. ☼Can only make one tone at a time.☼

  ◊But they are our friends, so we will speak the way they do.◊ Clear◊White◊Whistle extended out a pseudopod toward the pink youngster. ◊Here. Taste this. It will remind you how to speak like a human.◊

  Warm*Chirring*Pink extended a pseudopod, and taste memories were passed from the adult to the youngster, to augment the memories about the human language which he had inherited from his three parents.

  "Hello. I am verrrrry pleased to meet you," practiced Warm*Chirring*Pink.

  □Sound like human Reiki.□

  ◊That was very good,◊ said Clear◊White◊Whistle encouragingly. ◊I believe we are ready to meet the humans.◊

  ☼I hear humans walking along shore and talking!☼

  The four swam into the lagoon near the human camp and waited in the shallows. The three adults formed eyes and extended them up above the water to look onto the shore, and saw Reiki and Richard. Richard was carefully carrying a wrapped object.

  He saw the colorful bodies of the flouwen in the surf and came down into the water until he was wading through the red jelly that made up Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion's body.

  "I've got something to show you, Little Red," said Richard. "Our baby." He unwrapped the baby and gently laid it on top of Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion, who gave it a quick scan with his sonar. The baby gave a loud cry at the change in support.

  "Make sure you keep his mouth and nose out of the water," warned Richard.

  "Is that the noisy part?" asked Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion, passing the squirming creature over to Clear◊White◊Whistle with a ripple-wave along his surface. "I could hear that from the outer edge of the lagoon!"

  Clear◊White◊Whistle scanned the baby thoroughly. "It certainly is built like a miniature human." The vibrations from Clear◊White◊Whistle's sonar soothed the baby and it began to make soft oo-ing sounds. "Except the head is too big for the body, and some of the smaller sticks inside are still soft."

  Warm*Chirring*Pink, intrigued by the sounds, pushed his pink body between Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion and Clear◊White◊Whistle.

  "Wherrre small noisy thing?" he said in a quite acceptable human voice.

  Strong□Lavender□Crackle could see through his eye the response of the humans. Both of their heads turned quickly to look at Warm*Chirring*Pink, while Reiki's mouth gaped open and a gasp came out—very unlike her usual calm demeanor. "Reiki, Richard, this is our youngling!" Strong□Lavender□Crackle explained.

  "Rrrrreiki, Rrrrricharrrd?" repeated Warm*Chirring*Pink.

  The human Reiki responded with strange small sounds, quickly followed by the smile she used while other humans would be laughing.

  Clear◊White◊Whistle explained. "It will learn better speech, but it does say that particular sound in a repetitive way. We call this youngling, Warm Chirring Pink."

  "We all have younglings now," said Strong□Lavender□Crackle, as he carefully placed the tiny pink human child on top of the large pink flouwen youngster so he too could scan the baby.

  "Our young bigger than your young!" bragged Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion.

  "Be quiet, Little Red!" chided Clear◊White◊Whistle in human. "That is not polite!"

  Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion ignored the reproof. "Our young can talk!" he said proudly. "Human young can't talk. Human young DUMB!"

  Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion glided the baby off Warm*Chirring*Pink and back into Richard's hands, then started moving off toward the mouth of the lagoon.

  "Come on!! I feel a storm coming up ... let's go SURF!!!!"

  As the four swam away to the mouth of the lagoon, they could hear the human Reiki calling after them. "Watch out for the sharks!"

  JOLLYS

  AFTER the arrival of their six babies, the human parents struggled to resume their normal routine. It soon became apparent, however, that things were never going to be the same. Throughout her pregnancy Reiki had continued fishing, spending hours all alone on her tiny boat, diving in the shallow water a few hundred feet from the shore for peekoo and other shellfish, or tossing weighted nets into the deeper waters for oosheesh. But, while Freeman was an extraordinarily quiet baby, Reiki could not leave him alone on the deck while she swam below the surface. Jinjur tried carrying young Adam on her back while she hunted, but if he managed to stay quiet enough for her to catch any game, she rapidly became overloaded and had to return to the camp. Domestic chores doubled, and it was some time before the scientists could once again devote some of their time to exploring the planet and getting to know its residents.

  Eventually, arrangements were made for a visit to the Jollys' village. David and Arielle, Nels and Cinnamon, and Reiki and Richard, along with their children, planned to spend several days as guests of the chief of the Keejook Tribe, Seetoo. Shirley, Jinjur, Carmen, John, and the other three children stayed at their encampment near their crash site on Crater Lagoon. The human camp was some distance from the Keejook village on a nearby river, so it took a number of hours to get there. Halfway, there was a narrow ravine through which ran a constant flow of hot lava, blocking the path. When they first passed this way, they had built a bridge of vines and planks, strong enough to support the weight of an adult Jolly, but the vines did not last long in the baking heat rising from the lava flow below. The bridge had to be rebuilt each time a Jolly wanted to use it, but as the walking plants were timid about staking their lives on the swinging span, only the bravest were willing to take this route. Most of the Jollys, instead, took the long detour which allowed them to cross the lava flow down near the ocean, where it had spread out and cooled enough to form a firm but hot crust.

  For their own use, the humans had strung two metal cables between boobaa trees on opposite sides of the ravine, the cable having being salvaged by the flouwen from the lowering winches of the submersed rocket lander. The humans slid down one of the cables riding on a wheeled seat, its wheel formerly the winch pulley. On the way back, they used the second cable, located a few meters above the first, which sloped in the other direction. Nels was the first across, his long hairy legs dangling from the T-bar of the swing. After he arrived at the far side, Richard pulled the swing back by its lanyard.

  "What a ride!" called Nels across the ravine. Dutifully Cinnamon tightened the straps holding Eve to her back, fastened the safety line around her, and pushed off. She didn't look down, but kept her eyes on Nels as she slid swiftly across. Only a few seconds later she was in Nels's arms and he was helping her down.

  "Is me next!" called Arielle, handing Shannon to David. The graceful pilot launched herself over the void. As she glided rapidly down the cable, she leaned far backward against the safety line, her arms spread out behind her like wings. "Wheee! Am flying!"

  "Be careful, dear!" called David from the launching point.

  "Oh, pooh!" Arielle called back as she came in for a landing. "He worries only that he will have to feed Shannon hisself," she told Cinnamon. She turned and took the baby from David's arms as he completed a more sedate crossing, arms firmly gripping both Shannon and the T-bar.

  Reiki was the next one over, with Freeman in a backboard similar to the one on Cinnamon's back. Both women had decided the best way to keep their children safe was to wrap them securely and fasten them to a stiff frame that they could carry with them. Diapered with absorbent peethoo leaves, the babies were comfortable and dry. The baby, frame and all, could be carried everywhere and propped up, so the child could watch its parents work. Eve and Freeman were quiet, watchful babies and enjoyed observing everything around them.

  Reiki was uneasy on the high swing. She tried to relax, knowing that Richard would come to her rescue, hand-over-hand if necessary, should the unthinkable happen and her swing stopped halfway across, but still she held her breath until she was safely across. It wasn't the height
as much as knowing how foolish she would feel, hanging there, if her swing should stall.

  Richard came swooping over behind her, unconcerned as always about heights. Still, he knew that Reiki didn't like to cross, or even to watch him cross, so the instant he landed, he kissed her. The others ignored her startled squeak; they knew that Reiki felt more comfortable believing that the others hadn't noticed how much she and Richard were in love.

  Now that they were across, they had another hour of hiking before they came to the Jolly village. The trail they were following weaved its circuitous way between large dense groves of trees on either side. The grove to the right of the trail consisted of a single peethoo tree, the banyan tree of Eden. Each large low tree covered many acres. The long, thick limbs from the main trunk at the center were supported along their lengths by "saplings" that grew down from the bottom of the limbs to the ground. Shirley had found that the long, thin, branchless saplings made excellent poles for her various construction projects. The leaves of the peethoo tree were large and spongy, and were spread out to form a multilayer canopy that absorbed not only all the sunlight and moonlight that fell on the area occupied by the tree, but also all the rainwater. The rainwater was loaded with hydrocarbon molecules, which had fallen in on Eden from the outskirts of the torus of smog surrounding Zouave's orbit. It was a major source of nourishment for the tree, and the leaf canopy had evolved an ability to block all the light and capture all the rain before it touched the ground.

  No plant life could survive under a peethoo tree, but it was the home of many smaller animals and mobile plants that hid in the thicket of saplings to elude their larger predators, such as the Jollys and the humans.

  On the opposite side of the trail was a tall stand of boobaa trees; the Eden equivalent of a coconut palm tree. The boobaa was very tall, with a bare trunk, large leafy crown, and large spongy tough fruits. The trees lived in interconnected "families". Their crowns met at their edges and they too covered acre-sized areas. Like most plant life on Eden, they lived on the energy-rich nutrients in the rainwater. When one of the boobaa trees was attacked by a climber vine, attempting to suck the tree dry of sap while climbing its trunk to take over the canopy area, the tree under attack would pass on its stored resources to its neighbors through their interconnected root system; then deliberately shrink in size to let the neighboring boobaa trees grow to shade it, killing off the vine. Like the peethoo tree, the clump of boobaa trees engaged in underground trench warfare with neighboring groves.

  "It's remarkable how clear of vegetation 'no-man's-land' is, here between the groves," remarked Richard, looking down at the dirt trail which was bare of even grass or moss.

  "Not completely clear," said David, as he stooped to look at the trail in front of him. "You must have stepped on a buried keekoo tree thread hidden in the trail. Its broken through the surface and is already starting to fatten up to catch whatever it was that disturbed it."

  "It'll have to move faster than that to catch me," said Richard with disdain.

  Arielle turned back to see what David had found. "It cute!" she said, looking at the slowly writhing root, now the size of a garden snake. "I feed it something." She went into the boobaa tree grove, brought back a fallen fruit, and dropped it in the coils of the blindly searching root. In response to the touch of the fruit, the distant keekoo tree pumped more resources through its long, thin thread, and the snakelike portion grew thicker. The root captured the fruit in its coils and started to move off up the trail—not by physically moving, but by shifting its swollen portion along the root thread, dragging the trapped fruit along with it. Bemused, the six humans watched the fruit pass through their group, then followed as it moved slowly along the trail. Behind them on the trail, other keekoo tree coils were erupting from the surface where they had stepped.

  As they approached the Jolly village, an owl-like bird with blue-green feathers and one huge eye flew down the trail. When it spotted the group of humans, it circled around them.

  "Don't forget to hold still while the eyebird is looking at us," David reminded them. "Seetoo and the others often complain that trying to make sense of a worldview with fast-moving humans moving around in it makes their brain-knots ache—we're often seen in two or three places at the same time."

  Once the eyebird had obtained a view of the group from all sides, it came down close and hovered in front of each person, observing them. After looking at the adults, the bird also hovered in front of each baby. Eve was annoyed by the flapping noise and the large solemn eye. Her face crinkled up and she glowered at it from under dark brows. The bird finally flew off down the trail in the direction of the Jolly village.

  "That's probably one of Seetoo's eyes," said David "He'll soon know we're almost there."

  MY LAST eye finally returned and joined the five others resting in their nests in my fronds. As it nourished itself from its nest teat, I extracted the images it had gathered for me. There were many images showing the group of humans coming along the trail. I looked up with one of my nested eyes at the Daylight God. It was approaching the thin illuminated edge of the Nightlight God, whose eye was nearly closed. The midday darkness would soon come. It was time for me to retire to my hut and have my eyes emulate the Nightlight God during the period of darkness, while I added the images my eyes had gathered for me to my worldview.

  I opened my mouth and used my inside gatherer to whistle a return call to my other five gatherers. They had been busy mending my game net, carrying threads over and under and tying knots at the proper places. They left the net at the whistled command, clambered up my front limb and into my mouth, where each reattached itself to its mouth-teat. I fed three of them, then turned them off to let them rest, while sending two others out to bring back my midday meal. Soobeek, the herder, had butchered a jookeejook earlier in the day and had set aside two of the meaty limbs for me. Following the view map I had inserted into them, my two gatherers crossed the compound and soon returned, each one holding a jookeejook limb grasped firmly by the claws of its two front legs, while their other four legs trotted busily across the swept dirt, up my front limb, and into my mouth, where they placed the meat in my crop at the back. Before starting to eat, I reached up with two of my side limbs and lowered my mouth apron.

  To assure that my appearance was befitting that of a chief, I send out one of my eyes to look at me to make sure my apron properly covered my mouth. Upon its return, I viewed the image it had collected and was pleased. Daaveed had painted the soft thick cloth apron with a geometric pattern in bright colors. A trick of coloring made the pattern seem almost three dimensional. It made the others nervous to see something obviously flat appear to be made of cubes, but as chief, it pleased me that my mouth apron disturbed the others.

  With my mouth properly covered, I contentedly ground away with my gizzard at the tough but tasty jookeejook meat, swallowing the juices and bits of flesh with pleasure, while my eyes and gatherers fed themselves from their teats and rested. Darkness came, and while my gizzard kneaded away, I closed up my fronds and retired into my mind to refresh my worldview with the new images my eyes had brought to me.

  As tribal chief, my first concern was the safety of the village. I first viewed the periphery of the thook barrier around the tribal compound. All was secure. I viewed around the inside of the camp. The jookeejook were safe in their pens, eating greedily from the slop troughs and sprouting many ripe fruits between their fronds. The seedling beds along the river bank were doing nicely. One of the older seedlings had even succeeded in releasing an eye and nesting it again without help. Everyone in the tribe was contentedly busy with their tasks.

  I replayed the exits and entrances of the members of the tribe through the three gates, then added the views that my eyes had gathered as they returned along the trails for their midday rest period. Along one trail, leading up the riverbank to Wide Pond, was the watermaster, Faafee, dredging the irrigation ditch that brought fresh water from Wide Pond down to the village and th
rough the seedling beds and jookeejook pens. This was grimy work that could not be done with gatherers, and Faafee was in the ditch, limbs lifting rootfulls of mud out of the bottom of the ditches and depositing it along the sides. The second trail, leading down to the mouth of the river and the ocean beaches, was empty except for a wild jookeejook crossing from one tree grove to another. Down on the beach, Beefoof and Haasee were using the ocean raft to harvest seaweed for fertilizing the seedling bed. Beefoof would pole the raft out into the seaweed beds and drop a length of thorny thook vines weighted at the ends, and Haasee would pull the vines ashore and unload the harvested seaweed into the two-wheeled cart that the human Shiirlee had made for us.

  Along the third trail leading inland were the humans. They moved so rapidly that I had three views of them at almost the same time. One as they left their encampment, one as they crossed Lava Ravine—using their shiny unbreakable vines to fly across the ravine almost like eyes, and one as they approached the compound. They would probably be arriving at the thook barrier during the midday darkness, using their tiny light-Gods to illuminate their way along the trail.

  I scanned through the views my eye had collected of the group of humans and consolidated them. The humans were hard to tell apart unless one looked carefully at the differences in their features. They had only four limbs, and instead of using three of them to maintain a secure balance while moving the fourth, they instead precariously staggered from one bottom limb to the next. They had only two eyes that were always nested in sockets just under their stringlike fronds. The fronds seemed to be purely decorative, since they were obviously of little use for collecting either sunlight or rainwater. The differences in eye and frond color, however, helped to distinguish one individual from the other.

  Fortunately, they came in two different types, males and females, which cut the problem of identification in half. The females wore cloths around their whole trunk, while the males only wrapped the bottom portion. None of them had the decency to cover their mouths. It was not clear why the women covered the bulges on the front of their trunks near their upper arm attachment points while the men didn't. It certainly wasn't because of the size of the bulges. Although most of the human females had large bulges, the human males Reechaard and Naals had bulges that were bigger than those of the human females Aareeaal and Ceeneemaan.