Rescued From Paradise

by Robert L. Forward

  "Then the woman can refuse your stamen?" asked Seetoo.

  "You better believe it, buster!" snapped Cinnamon.

  "I don't use you casually! For God's sake, we have a child together!"

  "I'm not the only one. You and Shirley have a baby, too. Why don't you go ask her to service your needs ... scientific and otherwise."

  "I did ask her," Nels grumbled.

  "What!"

  "I just thought," he said, trying to explain, "since the three of us were all linked by the children, when we get back from this visit it might be a good idea for the five of us all to move in together. She said she liked you too much to consider it. I still don't understand what she meant."

  "You spoke to Shirley about the three of us living together?"

  Emboldened by Cinnamon's calm tone, Nels felt free to air his grievance. "You women weren't the only ones upset by Josephine's mistake," he complained. "If I had wanted to be a father I would have done it the right way. Just when the courting started to get serious the computer pulled the rug out from under all of us. I would probably have settled with you—"

  "Settled?"

  The edge to her voice made him retreat. "Settled down with you, I mean. After all, we have so much in common and now we have Eve, but I love Dirk, too. Can you blame me for wanting to have it all?"

  "So you spoke to Shirley."

  "Yes, but ..."

  "But not to me."

  "Oh, I knew that you'd go along with it—" Nels didn't even see it coming. The roundhouse slap struck him across the face with enough force to propel him into the Jolly's roots, and when he regained his bearings, Cinnamon was gone.

  "Does this mean her flowers aren't in bloom?" asked Seetoo as the Jolly chief gently extended a limb to help Nels return to his feet.

  THE HUMANS spread out around the village to learn what they could about the Jolly culture and occasionally to pass on information if it would benefit the Jollys and they desired it. Arielle went to the weaver's hut to watch Waathoo at work, while David visited the potter, Pootee. Reiki went to observe Teeloot teaching at the Youngling school, while Richard left the village by the upper gate and headed upstream to watch Faafee working on the irrigation ditches. While Nels continued his conversation on genetics and culture with Seetoo, Cinnamon calmed herself by visiting the seedling bed, where the seedling trainer, Shoowhaa, welcomed her.

  "I am honored by your presence, Assistant Levibotanist Ceeneemaan," said Shoowhaa. The Jolly was shuffling slowly through the gravel bed, its rootlike feet turning the stones while its gatherers quickly picked up any weed seeds or sprouts that were turned up and put them in a basket to feed the jookeejooks. The six seedlings that Shoowhaa was tending were mere sprouts. They were only a meter tall and consisted only of a single trunk topped with a canopy of blue-green fronds.

  "These must be the youngest ones," said Cinnamon, pointing and making sure she held her position until her arm and finger had been seen by Shoowhaa's nested eye.

  "They were planted shortly after you landed in your noise machine."

  "That was about a year and a half ago," mused Cinnamon. She took out her recorder and did a calculation. "That's about five hundred Eden days ago. I notice that they all seem to be the same size."

  "They would, of course," replied Shoowhaa. "They were planted all at the same time at the Plucking Ceremony. The fruits on their parents had ripened. The chief plucked the best of the fruits from each parent during the Plucking Ceremony, and with all in the tribe watching, planted them here."

  "So all the fruits ripened at the same time," said Cinnamon, mildly puzzled, since the difference in seasons on Eden was not strong, and it was slightly unusual to have all six fruits ripen on the same day. There would have to be some other timing event for the fertilization of the fruit than just a seasonal change.

  "Of course," replied Shoowhaa. "The parents were all fertilized at the same time in the Fertilization Ceremony—shortly after the last midday flood wave."

  "Flood wave?" repeated Cinnamon.

  "When the Nightlight God and Oceanraiser are above in the sky and the Daylight God and Groundshaker are halfway through their journey under the ground, the tide in the ocean rises into a wave that floods the valley. With the wave come the terrible ..." the gatherer, speaking from Shoowhaa's mouth, didn't finish the sentence. Shoowhaa reattached that gatherer to load up the next sentence and released another gatherer, who dropped its teat and Whistled softly the single terrible word: "... Aaeesheesh." At the same time the gatherer spoke, Shoowhaa's fronds trembled, and the Jolly's nested eyes fluttered nervously, while the rootlike feet raised up off the ground one after another, as if they were trying to avoid having to step on something unpleasant.

  The Jolly was obviously in distress, so Cinnamon didn't continue that line of questioning. Besides, she didn't want to get into a discussion of the Fertilizing Ceremony with Shoowhaa. Nels would probably get that information in one of his frank discussions about genetics and sex with Seetoo—if not—she would. She switched the conversation back to the seedlings.

  "How long do the seedlings stay in the bed?" she asked.

  "Nearly four flood waves," replied Shoowhaa. "The seeds are fertilized after a midday flood wave, and after three more flood waves, a midnight, a midday, and a midnight, they mature a few sixdays before the fifth flood wave—a midday one. They pull up their roots and are led to Seedling School."

  Cinnamon did some more calculations and mused to herself, "Hmmm. If the seedlings stay in their bed for nearly four maximum tides, then that's about twenty-five hundred Eden days—twenty-five Eden years, or more than eight human years. Sort of like being stuck at your desk through nursery school and primary school, then graduating and walking off to junior high."

  They came to the next ragged row of seedlings in the bed. There was an obvious gap between two of the plants in the ragged row of five plants. These five had reached a height of about two and a half meters, taller than she was. The single root at the base of these older seedlings had divided into six main roots that raised the trunk "body" up out of the ground until the seedling looked somewhat like a small swamp cypress. A hole had developed in the trunk, just above the point where the roots joined onto the main trunk. From the hole came six tentaclelike prehensile mobile roots. The roots were swollen at the ends and the swollen ends each had six rootlets extending from them. The mobile root-tip "gatherers" were picking up pieces of food from a feeding trough with their two rootlet front "arms" and using the other four rootlet "legs" to carry them back into the hole "mouth". Hanging from the fronds were drooping "flowers" with centers that looked like translucent ping-pong balls. The one flower "eye" above the active root followed it as it returned from the feeding trough.

  "Fascinating!" said Cinnamon as she set her recorder to capture single video frames and took some pictures of the immature gatherers and eyes. "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. But here it does it right out in the open where you can see it, instead of being hidden inside a womb."

  "Some of your words are new to me," said Shoowhaa.

  "I should not have used such technical terms," Cinnamon apologized. "I merely meant to say that these fat mobile root tips with six rootlet legs are obviously the first stage of evolution that will ultimately lead to a freely moving gatherer, while the light-sensitive organs hanging from the fronds of the seedling are obviously the first stage of freely flying eyes with a clear lens, iris, and eyelids." She pausea at the gap in the row. "I notice that there are only five seedlings in this planting."

  "There were six originally," said Shoowhaa. "One, however, did not open its eyes when the others did. It was the fruit of Pootee, the potter."

  Cinnamon didn't want to ask what happened to the body of the seedling that had been "thinned" out from the crop. Probably fed to the jookeejooks, she thought to herself. Out loud she asked, "I presume Pootee will be allowed to contribute another fruit next time?"

  "Only six are allowed to dance in the Fertilization Ce
remony with the chief," replied Shoowhaa. "Pootee will not be one of them for a long time, if ever."

  "So the chief is the father," said Cinnamon, beginning to understand the workings of the sex life of the Jollys.

  "Of all those in this bed," confirmed Shoowhaa, releasing an eye that encircled the seedling area and returned. "Only those that are the strongest and wisest are allowed to participate in the Fertilization Ceremony, and the chief, being the strongest and the wisest, is the one who spreads the pollen for the others."

  "The seedling that didn't open its eyes had two parents then. Chief Seetoo and Pootee, the potter. How do you know that the failure was not due to Chief Seetoo?"

  "The others did well," replied Shoowhaa. "So the failure was not due to the chief. If two failures occur in a crop, or the six dancers in the Fertilization Ceremony are not laden with fruit at the time of the Plucking Ceremony, then a new chief is chosen and the old chief retires to the Hut of the Elders."

  Cinnamon resolved to talk to Seetoo about getting permission to come to observe the Fertilization and Plucking Ceremonies. There would have to be reciprocation, of course, as Nels had suggested. But not so blatantly—even she knew that the mere fact of observation usually changed behavior. She slow-walked along as Shoowhaa shuffled in its tripod motion to the last row of seedlings.

  There were six in this row. The gatherers and the eyes of the seedlings were now fully formed and had functional limbs, wings and eyes, but they were still permanently attached to the seedlings. The gatherers were connected by flexible umbilicals, while the eyes were at the ends of wirelike supports about a meter long.

  "These seedlings look very much like a large joo-keejook," remarked Cinnamon, then instantly regretted the casual remark. The fronds on Shoowhaa rustled loudly as they shook violently in response, and all of the Jollys eyes fluttered out of their nests, chirping and whistling in annoyance.

  "No!" "Not at all!" "Very different!" loudly whistled three gatherers one after another from Shoowhaa's mouth. The behavior of Shoowhaa reminded Cinnamon of an old-fashioned creationist denying the similarities between an ape and a human. There were major differences, especially in intelligence levels, but it was also obvious that the jookeejook was a distant genetic relative of the Jollys. Even the name, jookeejook, which meant roughly "person who is not a person" in Jolly language, showed that the Jollys recognized the relationship, even as they denied it.

  "The seedlings are doing well," remarked Cinnamon, trying to change the subject.

  "The eyes are now fully formed on both their gatherers and eyes," said Shoowhaa. "The views coming into their brains have awakened them and they are now aware. It is time for training. I will show you."

  Shoowhaa placed a tasty morsel of food just out of reach of the gatherer of one of the seedlings. The gatherer strained at the end of its umbilical cord attached to the inside of the seedlings mouth, but couldn't quite reach the food. The seedling swayed its trunk on its roots in a vain attempt to give its gatherer a little more leash.

  "Let go ..." Shoowhaa urged the seedling. "Let go ..."

  Finally the seedling let its gatherer go by disconnecting the umbilical at the point where it entered the back of the gatherer's head. The gatherer paused for a second, a little disoriented now that it was on its own. Then it remembered the desire and the plan that had been implanted in its sub-brain by the seedling. It scampered forward, grasped the food in its two front paws and backed up, until the searching umbilical, guided oy the seedling's nested eyes, could reattach itself to the mouth-hole in the back of the gatherer's head.

  Cinnamon watched and commented on the training session until Barnard was nearly overhead and about to go behind Gargantua for the midday eclipse. Eve was getting restless in her backboard. It was time for lunch and the midday siesta. She started to excuse herself when she noticed a fluttering of eyes along the lower portion of the thook barrier at the gate opening to the trail that led down the river to the beach. As she watched, the thorny loops of thook vine slowly contracted and pulled back. Through the opening stumped two tall Jolly stronglimbs. They moved even slower than normal for a Jolly since they were coming uphill under a load. Between them was the cart that Shirley had made as a gift for the Jollys a year ago. It was basically just a deep bin with two wheels in the back and two drawbars in front. The large spoked wheels had wide rims in order to move more easily over the rough ground. There was a belt between the drawbars that went around the waist of the Jolly pulling the cart so it could use all six limbs for walking. The Jollys had modified the cart, putting a crossbar in the rear so another Jolly could push. Cinnamon couldn't tell who the two stronglimbs were, since the Jollys looked so much alike, but she suspected, from the nets stacked on top of the seaweed, they were the tribal fishermen, Beefoot and Haasee.

  "A load of seaweed fertilizer for the seedling bed," explained Shoowhaa. "Necessary for growing strong limbs and clear eyes. I must go."

  BACK AT their group of huts, the humans gathered for lunch together. Cinnamon pointedly ignored Nels, and went off with Reiki and Arielle into Arielle's hut to nurse babies, while the men prepared the meal. Each spoke of what they had learned during their morning visits with the various Jolly workers.

  Richard took a bite of a carrotlike root he was scraping clean and slicing up with an obsidian hand-knife. "This would sure taste better cooked."

  "So would a lot of things," replied Nels, cutting up some fruit. "But with the Jollys' well-deserved fear of fire, we knew when we came that we would be eating cold food during our visit."

  "There is one Jolly that is willing to experiment with fire," interjected David, cracking another nut and picking out the pieces. "Pootee the potter explained to me how the Jollys waterproof their water pots with sap from a feebook plant. It's not very satisfactory. The water tastes funny and after a while it penetrates the sap layer and the sun-dried clay turns to mud. I explained that firing the clay in a kiln would make it hard and waterproof. Pootee believed me—told me about finding hardened clay after a forest fire had passed. I drew a diagram of a kiln oven. Since the fire is completely enclosed, Pootee is willing to try it and is now building a kiln out of clay bricks. This afternoon, we'll load it with clay pots and wood and I'll light the fire with Cinnamon's bow and tinder while Pootee watches."

  "I don't think Pootee's gatherers are up to handling the bow at the speeds that are needed," said Nels dubiously.

  "Doesn't matter," replied David. "Pootee will only be doing a firing every couple of weeks, and once the kiln is loaded and ready, I can come and light it."

  "Speaking of forest fires heating up clay banks," said Richard, changing the subject, "this riverbank was pretty hot itself once."

  "How's that?" asked Nels.

  "As I was walking upstream to help Faafee work on the irrigation ditch, I noticed evidence in the riverbed of a collapsed lava tube. Sometime in the distant past, a large flow of lava came down this river valley, and the outer crust formed a stone tube while most of the liquid lava flowed down the inside until it reached the sea. Must have been a spectacular sight at the time."

  "That sounds dangerous," remarked David. "Even if the lava didn't overflow the riverbanks, it would have been close enough to the Jolly village that the heat would have baked the Jollys or set them on fire."

  "Especially the seedlings," said Nels. "They're right by the riverbank so the used irrigation water can drain off back into the river. I'm concerned."

  "I wouldn't be," said Richard. "I can't tell for sure without an isotopic dating analysis, but I would suspect that lava flow occurred thousands of years ago. If it had happened in recent Jolly memory, they wouldn't be settled here now."

  After a vegetarian lunch of root slices, nuts, and fruit, and a long rest during the midday eclipse, the humans scattered to resume their observations of Jolly daily life. Nels decided to follow the two fishermen as they set off upstream to the distant Sulphur Lake at the other end of a wide valley with a meandering stream, one of the
many streams feeding the main river that flowed by the Jolly village.

  "I have some questions to ask Seetoo about some ceremonies connected with the seedlings," said Cinnamon, heading off to Seetoo's hut.

  "Let me have your bow and tinder before you go," said David. "I've got a fire to light."

  THAT EVENING, when Nels returned to the hut assigned to him and Cinnamon, he was relieved to see that Cinnamon was there. He entered slowly, uncertain of his welcome. A permalight was hanging from a ceiling pole and focused into a spot in the center of the hut. On in one corner, Eve, hanging in her backboard, slept quietly in the shadows. The evening was clear, and a slight breeze flowed in through the door and out a vent flap that had been opened in the back of the tall hut, up in the dark recesses under the roof-line. Through the vent hole, Nels could hear the breeze quietly rustling through the fronds of a nearby tree. In the pool of light, Cinnamon was lying on her sleeping pallet, entering figures in her recorder. She laid the recorder down and moved over slightly as Nels approached, giving him room to sit beside her.

  "Cinnamon," said Nels after a long pause. "I am so sorry. I didn't realize how much I was hurting you by taking you for granted. And I was taking advantage. We've always gotten along so well that I didn't think anything needed to be said. I didn't even think about it, or try to understand it, and I was complacent. But when you lost your temper earlier ... in all the years I've known you, I've never seen you so angry. For a moment I was afraid. I thought that you might never want to be with me again and the idea terrified me. You've just quietly become such a big part of my life, I didn't realize how much I need you, how much I love you. I never meant to hurt you, if that helps, and I just wanted you to know how much the thought of losing you hurt me."

  Cinnamon rose to her knees and kissed him strongly. Nels allowed her to push him back onto the bed. "Foolish man," she said, looking at him, her long unbound hair cascading down to tickle his bare chest. "This is a very small island. Where did you think I would go?"