Daughters of Earth and Other Stories

by Judith Merril

  It was fantastic, but fantastic only by the standards of the familiar world. Mother and consort bring the young pair, male and female, to a new home; and in the fires of landing, the parent-creatures die ... must die before the young pair can develop.

  She thought a while soberly, trying this fact and that to fit the theory, and each Strange-shaped piece of the puzzle fitted the next with startling ease.

  Perhaps if a world became too crowded, after many Households had grown up, some life-form of this kind might evolve, and ... yes, of course! ... that would explain as well the efforts at migration over vast distances across the glaring sky.

  The Lady was prepared now to discover what lay behind the door; her sons were waiting on her wishes.

  XXIII

  PETEY WAS CHASING a young bug just a little bit bigger than he was round and round a mushroom shape that stood as high as Dee herself. Out of the foot-wide base of the great plant, a lacy network of lavender and light green tendrils sprouted. Deborah watched them play, the bug-child scampering on all sixes, Petey on all fours; and she didn't worry even when they both got tired and stopped and lay down half-sprawled across each other, to stick on adjoining juicy tendrils.

  One of the nurses had already told her that Petey had tried some of the fungus juice when he first came out to the garden. That must have been a couple of hours ago, at least. Dee wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep, there in the Mother-bug's room, but she thought it was getting on towards evening now. And she knew that a baby's digestion works much more quickly than a grown-up's; if the stuff was going to hurt him, he'd be acting sick by now.

  Probably she shouldn't have let him try it at all, until she tested some first herself. She still didn't really want to, though; and when the Mother said it was all right for him, she hadn't thought to worry about it.

  She couldn't keep on fussing over him every minute, anyhow. Besides, that wasn't good for babies either. You have to let them take chances or they'll never grow up ... where did I hear that? ... somebody had said that...

  She shook her head, then smiled, watching the two kids, Petey and the bug, playing again. Petey was chortling and laughing and drooling. She decided it was probably pretty safe to trust what-ever the Mother-bug said.

  The Strange Mother and her consort were indeed inside the ship, behind the door the child wouldn't see; and they were most certainly dead.

  'It is ... they look ...' Her son had not liked it, looking at them. 'I think the fire's heat did as the teaching-nurse had told us might happen when we go above the tree-tops, if we fly too long or too high in the dry sun's heat.' He had had trouble giving a clear visimage to her, because he did not like to look at what he saw. But the skin, he said, judging by that of the children was darkened, and the bodies dehydrated. They were strapped in-to twisted couches, as though to prevent their escape. That and the locked door ... the taboo door?

  Each item fitted into the only theory that made sense. Ft)] some biologic reason, or some reason of tradition on an over crowded home-world, it was necessary that the parents die as soon as a nesting place for the young couple was found. And the curious conflict in the Strange daughter's mind—the wish that her Mother was burned, with refusal to accept her Mother's death...

  After all, many a winged one about to depart forever from the childhood home—not knowing whether happiness and fertility will come, or sudden death, or lonely lingering starvation ... many a one has left with just such a complex of opposite-wishes.

  But Daydanda could not tell, from what her son had said, or what he showed, whether the parents were burned, within the child's meaning of the word. The son was not too certain, even that the heat had been responsible for death, directly. The room, when he first opened up the door, was filled with a thick grey cloud which dispersed too quickly to make sure if his guess was right; but he took it to be smoke ... cold smoke. No one could breathe and live through a dozen heartbeats in that cloud, he said.

  Whether the cloud formed first, or the heat did its work beforehand, the two were surely dead when their children came back from the first swift trip into the forest, that much was sure.

  Whether they had themselves locked the door, and placed a taboo on opening it, or whether the daughter had obeyed the custom of her people in sealing it off, was also impossible to determine—now.

  This much, however, was clear: that the children had had ample opportunity to learn the truth for themselves if they wished, or if it were proper for them to do so. There had been no difficulty opening the door, not even for her sons who were unused to such mechanisms. The daughter knew how to do it; the daughter would not do it. Finally: the daughter had been purposefully set free to develop without the protection of her Mother.

  If Daydanda had been certain that the protection of a foster-Mother would also inhibit the growth of the Strange children, she might have hesitated longer. As it was, she asked her consort what he thought, and he of course replied: `It might be, my Lady, my dear, that these Strange people live only as parasitesin the Houses of such as ourselves. See how their Wings are a semi-House, not settled in one location, but designed for transport. See how they chose a landing place almost equidistant from ourselves and our neighbours, as if to give the young ones a little better chance to find a Household that would accept them. It would seem to me, my dear, my Lady, that our course is clear.'

  Daydanda was pleased with his advice. And it was time for the Homecalling. The Lady sent out her summons, loud and clear and strong for all to hear: a warning to unfriendly neighbours; a promise and renewal to all her children, young and old.

  Dee lay on her mat in the chamber she still shared with Petey, and watched the T-Z, but she did not watch it well. Her mind was too full of other things.

  The Mother wanted them to stay and ... `join the Household.' She wasn't sure just what that would mean. Doing chores, probably, and things like that. She didn't mind that part; it would be kind of nice to belong someplace ... until the rescue party came.

  That was the only thing. She hoped the Mother understood that part, but she wasn't sure. They couldn't just stay here, of course.

  But it might be quite a while before anybody came after them, and meanwhile ... she looked at Petey, sleeping with a smile on his small fat face, and on his round fat bottom a new kind of diaper, made by the bug-people the same way they made the sleeping mats, only smaller and thinner. That was so she wouldn't have to bother with cleaning the cloth ones any more.

  Petey was certainly happier here, but she'd have to watch out, she thought. If the rescue party took too long to come, he'd be more like a bug than a human!

  She went back to watching the T-Z set. She had to learn a lot of things, in case she was the only person who could teach Petey anything. Tomorrow, the very next day, she was going to start really teaching him to talk. He could say words all right, if he tried. And with the bugs just in and out of your head, the way they were, he'd never try if she didn't get him started right away.

  She turned back the reel, and started the film from the beginning again, because she'd missed so much.

  The Lady of the House was pleased.

  THE FUTURE OF HAPPINESS

  First publication: January 1979.

  TOMORROW WILL BE better? Better than what? Which way?

  Depends on what you're looking for. Health? "Freedom"? (What's that?) Material comfort? Convenience? "Beauty"? (What's that?) Knowledge? "Relationships"? (Eh?) Just plain happiness?

  Whether you use crystal balls, clairvoyants, or computer simulations to predict the future, there are only two clear answers.

  First, tomorrow will be different. Our society, like our biosphere, is unstable. It can only stabilize through change.

  Second, the future will bring dizzying heights of happiness - and dismal depths of despair. And everything in-between. Even as now. Even as ever. Delight and discontent are relative and related. One is a measure of the other, and the stimuli that produce them vary for every society, and for e
ach individual.

  (Did you really experience more sheer joy with your first orgasm than with your first true-love teenage kiss? Or: after the orgasm, can the kiss still bring the same burst of heaven?)

  Happiness comes in every color of the rainbow. Like the rainbow, it can be experienced, perceived, pursued - but never possessed, prepared for, or reliably predicted. Like the rainbow, it is an event dependent on the percipient's position in a particular environment. Like the rainbow, it is more likely to manifest itself after a storm.

  For the last 100 years or so, it has been fashionable to predict the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Utopian socialists, technocrats, people's revolutionaries, transcendental meditators have come up with formulas for glowing happiness for all—all the time. The briefly more credible of these happy prophecies were based on the reasonable assumption that when everyone had enough of the necessities, and at least some of the luxuries, joy would reign.

  Not so. The happiness of affluence is always over the next hill because our definitions change. "Necessity" means new soles for shoes one decade, color televisions the next.

  And how about the year after tomorrow? Where to find happiness in 50 years, or 100? In the unexpected moment, as always.

  The year is 2029. A half century ago, everybody talked about energy and population and pollution, but nobody did anything constructive. Every year the shortages of food, fuel, water, shelter, space grew worse. When the bottom finally dropped out of the world economy in the 1990s, the industrialized world, with its complex production and delivery systems, completely collapsed. There were riots and bloodbaths in New York and Tokyo, Amsterdam and Moscow, Berlin and Buenos Aires.

  The great cities died. But handfuls of refugees survived in scattered settlements, and on the rebuilt foundations of abandoned family farms.

  Martha draws her ragged blanket around her, shivering, as she opens the peepholes of the dugout, one by one. All quiet. No sign of feral dog packs, no scent of feral human marauders. No sign of Will and the boys either. If the wild dogs have moved on, game must be even scarcer than before.

  She cannot endure another day inside. The sun is bright and brilliant through the peepholes; it will be warm and beautiful outside. At the back of the dugout, the baby wakes, wailing. The cry is too thin. So is Martha's milk. She picks up the baby and, defiantly, recklessly, steps out into the sunlit clearing, undefended.

  She sits on a cushion of skins on the ground nursing her child in spring sunshine. And then she sees. Six feet from where she sits, the plot of land she turned over so painfully with the broken spade last week is covered with green.

  Green!

  For eight years (the births of seven children, the deaths of four), she has dug and planted some of the stock of hoarded seeds, and watched as the poisoned land refused to bring forth.

  And now - green - tiny seedlings sprouting promise across 15 square feet of sun-warmed soil!

  The baby squalls, but Martha lifts her with a smile, and points. She is trying to remember which seeds she planted. Beans? Carrots? Squash?

  She can almost taste the sweet fibrous starchiness of the squash. Let there be squash! she prays, and sings happily to her baby, sitting warm in the sun, on sweet lifegiving soil. In the distance there is an animal's cry.

  No. It is six-year-old Bart's high voice, carrying across the valley. They are on their way home. There will be meat. And milk for the babe. And greens. And summer, soon, at last.

  Right. That same year marked the beginning of another careful harvest. Not all of the planet had suffered as severely as Noramerica. Some of the medium-size, medium-growth, modest population countries (particularly in the Caribbean and central Africa) had been able to retain enough technology and leadership to begin a cautious reconstruction based on the use of recycled materials and energy from wind, water and the sun.

  But the fossil fuels were gone, and memories of enemy attacks on nuclear power plants made uranium technology virtually taboo. In 2029, the first meeting was held, somewhere in Senegal, to begin planning the construction of a solar-power satellite - the only hope of an energy source adequate for major re-industrialization.

  Then, in 2079 -

  Estrella wriggles out of the duty-seat, turns over the monitoring board to Sergiu, and edges out of the cramped cabin, feeling an unquenchable yearning for a long soapy shower-as unnecessary in the dustless, smokeless, moisture-and-temperature controlled canned air as it is unavailable. On the Station, water is for drinking.

  She shoves off along the companionway toward the only slightly less-cramped and equally predictable leisure quarters at the opposite side of the space satellite. The glamour of space! Fifteen years of studying, sweating, bitterly competing to win a job on the Station! She can still remember that old film, the startling image of an astronaut named Edward H. White tumbling free in space, that started it all for her.

  She stops at an open terminal, checks out her request with the computer, gets clearance, and walks down a different passage.

  Twenty minutes later, she is standing in the airlock, performing the ritualized rundown on suit and helmet.

  Then the outer lock-cycles open; she steps forward; hooks her lifeline to the ring next to the lock, and - tumbles. Tumbles, soars, swirls, careens - exults!

  All the work, all the training, all the boredom and discomfort - this is what it was all about - weightless, free, in love with the universe in the glory of space!

  Two steps forward, one step sideways. A different 2079. The collapse never quite happened. Instead, the practical application of nuclear fusion power led to a global economy based on unlimited energy. After a period of wildly unpredictable social, political and economic upheavals, the world settled down to the experience of total automated affluence. Computerized planning of servo-mechanism production and distribution systems and the development of recyclable biodegradable synthetics now make it possible for 95 per cent of the planet's population to live out their lives as luxury consumers. In fact, the declining death rate (the result of computerized diagnostics and universal preventive medical care delivery) has people packed so tightly over the earth's surface, there is literally no work space available, except for an elite corps of computer attendants and programmers.

  The good news is that the birth rate is finally falling as fast as the death rate, due to the increasing tendency of the consumers to automate their leisure time as well.

  Zelda reclines in her contoured massagecouch. She has just experienced a hard-fought victory in the world chess championships. Triumphantly, she flicks channels, rejects folksingers and helicopter-racing options, is tempted by a new experimental religious ecstasy program. Then she opts for Lady Of The Lagoon. (She has always thought of herself as basically an outdoor type.)

  Green leaves rustle in the gentle breeze of her sylvan bower, touching her sun-warmed skin with the gentlest of air pressures. A spicy scent - she frowns, and makes a small adjustment, and lemon whiffs up over cinnamon. She focuses outward, and the gleaming shape on the horizon shows itself to be a gilded catamaran, crimson-sailed. On the ship's deck a bronzed figure is now visible. The sail tightens against the wind.

  Shivering deliciously, Zelda makes another small adjustment. Diaphanous clouds of gauzy silk enfold her limbs. Music? No. Realism, she decides, is better: the breeze in the leaves and the lapping of waves are all the sound she needs. She pushes the button for Play-through .. .

  . . . and as the moon rises over the lagoon, Zelda savors the taste of roast pork and pineapples still on her tongue, and revels in the marvelous torpor suffusing her body. Night dew patters on the bower of palm fronds arched over her couch of balsam and pine. The gentle night wind blows softly through.

  The tube to the intravenous needle falls limp, the sleep-tapes murmur satisfaction, the couch kneads her flaccid muscles in restorative massage, and Zelda sleeps in total joy.

  Or perhaps 2001?

  In the garden, Jan contentedly ties up dahlias. The warming sun, the glowing co
lors, the faint scent of baking bread wafting from the open kitchen door to mix with the fragrance of roses and petunias, the baby's babbling nonsense syllables - Jan stops a moment and feels - this is purest pleasure in a classical pattern feels simple gratitude to a bountiful universe.

  A tug at jeans leg: the baby is silent now, lips com pressed, face intent, she clutches parental cloth, pulls herself clownishly erect, chortles with glee, lets go, and stands alone!

  Jan sits back on haunches, breathless, fearful even to stir the air, hand held cautiously to be grabbed when -

  When needed - now! Baby overbalances, grabs, holds, and steps into Jan's exultant embrace!

  He tosses her up in the air, hoists her to his shoulder, and bounces her into the house.

  Checks the time.

  Noriko's big meeting should be over by now. He dials, beaming.

  "Noriko, she took her first step!"

  *

  All the colors of the rainbow. How do you measure red against blue? Baby's first step or a twirl in space? Is the joy of the triumphant chess master greater or less than that of the long distance swimmer? Is religious ecstasy more or deeper than the delight of the three-year-old with a shiny new red ball?

  Will tomorrow's happiness be bigger or better or brighter than yesterday's? No. Just different - the way it always has been.

  THAT ONLY A MOTHER

  First Published: October 1948.

  Margaret reached over to the other side of the bed where Hank should have been. Her hand patted the empty pillow, and then she came altogether awake, wondering that the old habit should remain after so many months. She tried to curl up, cat-style, to hoard her own warmth, found she couldn't do it any more, and climbed out of bed with a pleased awareness of her increasingly clumsy bulkiness.