The two men came out onto an exposed field of roughened stone. It covered an area of several acres. The surface was of pinkish coloration, honeycombed with openings, spaced irregularly, but seldom less than two feet apart and seldom more than five.
Ral noticed many men scattered over the area, some motionless, others running with small objects in their arms. He started to ask Grul about them.
“Here!” Grul exclaimed suddenly, dropping to his knees beside one of the ragged holes. “Watch now. This will be a good one to break you in on.”
Ral glanced curiously into the hole. Greenish soapy water filled it to within an inch or two of the top. The interior widened out roomily.
There was movement in the depths, just under the water’s surface. Something living, though Ral had never seen anything alive except a human.
Suddenly interested, he dropped down beside Grul. The queer creature under the water was not humanoid in any respect. It was slightly larger in bulk, a whitish bulge from which extended a thick long tube that weaved about in a suggestion of searching.
The thick tube was trying to turn down and contact the bulbous body. A wound in the body was growing slowly, opening, like a mouth.
“It may be like its parent,” Grul was explaining. “If so, leave it alone.”
Something emerged from the wound-like opening. It looked remarkably like a hand. A human hand.
“No!” Grul said. “Now watch! It has to be gotten out of the water in a matter of seconds or it’ll die.”
The wound abruptly became a gaping hole, and from it struggled a freakish looking form. Ral watched Grul’s hands dip in the water, reaching down, until his fingers gripped the human and drew it to the surface. A long slender strand from the human’s belly draped down into the wound of the strange creature.
“Watch closely,” Grul said sharply.
Holding the human with one hand, he pinched the cord with thumb and fingernail. The severed end dropped into the water and drew back into the wound, which was already growing smaller.
“Now,” Grul grunted. He rose from his knees and squatted, laying the small human on his lap, then tying the severed cord into a tight knot.
This done, he turned the human over on its belly and brought the flat of his hand down on its rump sharply but lightly. Nothing happened. He repeated the slap. And suddenly the human was emitting strange sounds.
“THERE you are,” Grul said, rising to his feet with the human in his hands. “A baby.”
“A what, Kan Grul?” Ral asked politely.
“A baby!” Grul repeated. “What all humans start out as. You were like this once. So was I.”
“You mean,” Ral said unbelievingly, “that this is the way I—began?”
“Of course,” Grul said. “We all did. I hope you see what. I mean by shorthanded. As our numbers increase we’ll have more of us rescuing the babies before their mothers eat them or they drown. Now come with me. And watch your step so that you don’t fall. The openings are sharp. You’d cut yourself badly. Die, maybe.”
“Die?” Ral echoed.
“Cease to live,” Gral said. “Go to sleep and never wake up.”
“Oh,” Ral said, his head spinning from this rush of new ideas and things.
He followed Grul to a far side of the large area. Other humans were rushing in the same direction, converging upon them, and almost everyone carried what Grul had called a baby.
Ral could make out the destination now. It was a rather large opening into a raised mound of white stone, and there other humans were taking the babies from the humans who rushed forward, arid were then rushing through the large opening, with them, carrying them to some unknown destination.
“You came this way when you were a baby,” Grul said. From his tone he was evidently getting great satisfaction from the series of surprises he was springing on Ral.
Grul left the baby with a waiting stranger and turned back without pause to the business at hand.
“You saw what. I did, Ral,” he said. “Do the same. Run from hole to hole. When you see one of the Vairns developing the birth opening wait—until you gain the experience to estimate the time—and rescue the baby if it is one. If it’s just an infant Vairn forget about it. I’ve got to get back to the entrance and be there when the next recruit shows up.”
“Wait!” Ral called after him. “For how long must I do this?”
But Grul didn’t seem to hear him.
“Until the overseer tells you to quit for the day,” a voice beside him said musically.
HE JERKED his head in the direction of the sound. It was another human, but shaped differently from himself or any of the others he had grown up with. He studied the differences with a mixture of feelings he couldn’t analyze.
“Are you human?” he asked.
“Yes,” the creature said, smiling. “I belong to the other type of human. You’ll get used to me. My name is Lahl. What’s yours?”
“Ral,” he said, still staring.
“I like my shape better than I would yours,” Lahl said. “I wonder why there are two different shapes. It seems odd.”
“Your shape is—different,” Ral said. “I like it—but I’m glad, you have it, not me.”
Lahl’s skin turned pink. She turned and ran, shouting over her shoulder, “I’ll see you at rest period.”
Ral watched her run away, frowning at the strange feelings he was experiencing. Then, remembering Grul’s instructions, he hurried in a different direction.
He paused at a nearby opening. A shout made him look up. It was another human shaped like himself, waving him on and telling him to find an area of his own.
He ran on until he was well away from all the others, then started peering down into hole after hole. At the tenth he spied the telltale birth opening appearing on the Vairn. He squatted and watched.
After a long time the opening expanded. A ropelike thing appeared. It was followed by a slightly bulging end. It was a small replica of the Vairn.
He watched it for several moments as it wiggled around the pool. Its parent sensed its presence and began exploring for it with its thick elongation. Instinctively the baby evaded it, and finally the baby darted through a small opening in the floor of the pool and vanished.
Ral stood up and went to another hole. There was a human baby. It was clamped by suction to the end of the thick trunk of its parent. It was dead.
He watched in fascination as the Vairn slowly swallowed it. It was, he saw shaped something like Lahl, though its chest was more like his own.
Now, suddenly, he realized that if he had been running from hole to hole as Grul told him to he might have discovered it in time to rescue it.
He began running rapidly from hole to hole. He found a Vairn with a small birth opening. He made a mental note of the hole and dashed on. After a quick look at several pools without finding another he returned to the Vairn about to give birth, and waited.
Finally a tiny hand appeared. A few moments later he had safely rescued the baby. It was shaped like himself, in the differences between the two types of humans.
He ran with it to the place where he was supposed to take it. When he neared it he looked around for Lahl. It wasn’t until after he had given up his cargo that he spied her bringing in one of her own.
He waited for her. After she had given up the baby she had brought in she came to him.
“I got one too, Lahl,” Ral said proudly.
“That’s good,” she said.
A loud shout sounded.
“That’s the signal for the rest period, Ral,” Lahl said.
“Then we can rest together,” he said eagerly. “I want to study why we are different. Where will we go?”
“You will follow those of your own kind,” Lahl said. “It isn’t permitted for the two types to be together.”
“Why?” Ral asked.
“If you must know,” Lahl said, “your type has been known to chase after my type. There’s no telling whether your
type would kill my type or not, but they certainly chased us.”
“That must be true,” Ral said. “I myself feel an urge to chase and catch you, though whether I would kill you if I caught you I don’t know.”
“Then why don’t you?” Lahl taunted.
Ral took a quick step toward her. She ran swiftly away, looking back over her shoulder at him in alarm. There was fear also, and something else. And suddenly Ral realized her face mirrored the same feelings he himself was experiencing. It slowly dawned on him, uncomfortably, that he was finding it harder to keep from chasing Lahl.
“I wonder why I want to do that?” he muttered.
RAL QUICKLY caught onto the finer points of his task of rescuing babies before they had a chance to drown. There was a reason for this. With each baby he had an excuse to run to the receiving station. The more he ran to the receiving station the more opportunities he had to see Lahl.
But somehow she never seemed to be there when he was. And each disappointment added another log to the fire consuming him.
He tried to understand this strange inner fire. If he had had the concept of insanity in his meager collection of ideas he might have put it down to that.
“Why do I want to chase and catch Lahl?” he asked himself over and over again. Each time he asked himself that, the visualization of running after her and reaching her possessed him, sending shivers up his back-and causing perspiration to erupt on his forehead.
“Do I want to kill her?” he asked himself. And in the visualization of catching her all he could picture was encircling her with his arms and dragging her to the ground while she struggled against him, that strange expression on her face. An expression that revealed the same inner tension and fire that raged within his own being.
The work periods and rest periods passed slowly. And finally, a gradual change came about in the world. The ever present Light began to fade. It became harder to see into the depths of the pools where the Vairn mothers rested. The translucence of the white rock structure of the world lessened until it became a dead white.
It became necessary to go slower. More and more other workers were having accidents, becoming incapacitated with badly cut legs or even dying while their blood fled from their body through open gashes. At the same time there was an ever-growing influx of new humans so that it became necessary to cover fewer and fewer of the pools in the constant patrol to find babies being born.
At last the waning Light reached a stable low and remained there. It was no longer possible to see clearly as far as the receiving station, but it was possible still to see into the pools well enough to determine if birth was about to take place, and be there to rescue the human if the offspring happened to be human.
Ral’s inner fire had also settled into a stable low in intensity. For long periods he didn’t even think of Lahl. Instead, his thoughts concerned the babies. In the rest periods he learned more and more of the whole setup of things. The babies were taken to nurseries where they were fed and taken care of until they could learn to take care of themselves. Then they were allowed to grow up, which they did quickly. Ral could remember enough of his youth to know what happened from then on. Life became a continual game. And eventually the growing humans were taken from their group and sent to areas where they would perform tasks such as the one he had been assigned to.
RAL BECAME curious about it all. One day during a rest period, he went back to the room where he had first met Grul. Grul didn’t remember him at first.
“Oh, yes, Ral,” he said when memory returned. “I remember you now. What brings you to visit me?”
“I want to know more about things,” Ral said. “What is the purpose of things? How did things begin? Why are our mothers so different from us? Why aren’t all their offspring human? Why are there two types of humans?”
“Wait a minute!” Grul laughed. “One question at a time. You’re like all the rest, asking questions that have no answers. I’ve asked them myself, without finding an answer.”
“Oh,” Ral said, disappointed.
“But I’ve found what I thought might be some of the answers,” Grul went on. “I’ll tell them to you, Kan Ral. You may believe them or not, as you please.”
“I’ll believe them, Kan Grul,” Ral said eagerly.
“We’ll see,” Grul said tolerantly. “The beginning, is hot too far back, so far as I can find out. I was told that once, though he is dead now, there was one human all alone. Where he came from he didn’t know, but one day he watched a human being born. He saw it gasp and drown. After that he watched, for others, and finally managed to rescue several. He took care of them, and as they grew up he saw the similarity between them and himself, and realized that he had begun in the same way.
“But when they grew to full size trouble developed. They began to have trouble between the two types, and finally he separated them, keeping them apart and setting up police groups within each group to keep them separated.
“And all the time the principal task was to rescue the new humans from being drowned.
“As to the why of things, we’ve built up a theory that life progresses in stages. The form that gives birth to us is the lesser stage. Some day it will vanish. And someday we will go on to a still higher form of life, the new creature springing from our side just as we sprang from the side of the Vairn. Though how that will come about and when it will begin there is no way of knowing.”
Ral’s eyes were round with awe and fascination at the grand conception being unfolded by Grul’s words.
“I wonder what the Vairn sprang from?” he said.
“We don’t know,” Grul said. “There are other forms of life. We’ve seen them from time to time. Some even think that the food we eat is alive. It’s somewhat similar to the Vairn, though much smaller and without a long neck. But it’s the same food the Vairn consumes, so perhaps it isn’t alive.”
“Why do the two types of humans fear each other?” Ral asked.
“Each other?” Grul asked. “It’s mostly, that the other type fears us. I don’t know why that is. I myself have felt the urge to chase the other type, and have never been able to discover why.”
“Has any of us ever caught one of the others?” Ral asked eagerly.
“Yes,” Grul said. “They had big fights, and each type came to the rescue of its fellow, separating them. Afterwards they didn’t know why they did it, and were too ashamed to talk about it.”
“I—” Ral began. But he stopped. How could he confess he felt the same urge? Grul would laugh at him, or even worse, take him away from where he could occasionally see Lahl as she paused, watching him warily, ready to flee if he took a step toward her . . .
THE LIGHT was growing stronger. Slowly but noticeably. Ral could remember that a few rest periods ago it was less strong than now. He reached down into the pool and expertly scooped up the newborn human, noting idly that it was of the other type, and placed it on his lap while he cut the cord and tied it into a knot. Then the turning over of the infant and administering of a quick slap to start it to making its sounds. It squalled.
Ral started to rise to his feet, then paused, startled into motionlessness. Lahl stood not more than ten feet from him, her eyes large and round, her nostrils flickering from rapid breathing.
What was she doing here, deliberately courting trouble?
Ral slowly laid the new human on the rock floor beside, him and stood up, careful to make no sudden movement that might send Lahl into precipitate flight. The fire that had smouldered for so long was rising within him like a blazing inferno, but with supreme control he remained calm outwardly, not even speaking.
His eyes dared to leave Lahl for brief glances over the surrounding field. None of the other humans seemed to notice them. They were all intent on their tasks.
Slowly Ral took a step toward Lahl. Except for an increase in her trembling she didn’t move.
Did she want him to catch her? He viewed the question with amazement. It had been unthinkabl
e, yet now it seemed a possibility. Did she want to die? The idea dismissed itself as being even more incredible than the reality.
He took another step toward her, no longer aware of his surroundings, aware only of Lahl, her large round eyes staring at him, her trembling body.
Another step, and Lahl was sinking to her knees, her breath coming in audible sobs that spoke of fear and inability to flee, and in some indescribable way of something beyond experience, a drawing toward what she couldn’t flee from.
Another step, and she was on her knees, her arms held up to ward him off, her body arched backward in an effort to keep as far from him as possible. She planted her knees farther apart, drawing back from him, whimpering, her red lips open in an oval.
Another step, and he was bending over her, weakness taking his own body. Weakness and a fire at white heat.
He dropped to his knees, hearing his own breath in its heavy gasping as it bellowed through his mouth in gusts too fierce for his nostrils. Lahl drew back further as he leaned toward her, reached for her.
Minutes or hours or eternities later as he lay exhausted by the miracle of discovery her soft laugh came to his ears. He lifted his head from her soft breast to see the cause of her laugh. Her eyes were no longer round and filled with fear. They were alive with a strange light that held no hint of fear.
Her hand playfully rumpled his hair. He stared in surprise for a second, then grinned and tried to rise. Lahl pulled him down, forcing his head to rest against her breast again. When he let it lie there she stroked his hair slowly, absently. When he stole a look upward at her face her eyes were closed as though she were asleep.
But he knew she wasn’t.
A long time later she said almost inaudibly, “Ral . . .”
“Yes?” he said, not moving from the comfort of his position.
“We must tell the others.”
“No!” Ral said, lifting his head in alarm. “They would separate us.”
“No they wouldn’t,” Lahl said, her voice dreamy but supremely confident. “Nothing will ever separate us. I will never run from you again and you will never chase me, for I will come to you. Often.”
The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 23