The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Chester S. Geier

  She spoke slowly, dreamy contentment in every inflection of her voice. A contentment that Ral felt within himself. Different from anything he had felt before, just as everything in the world seemed different now.

  Suddenly a sound startled him. His head jerked up. He looked about him, aware of his surroundings for the first time in a very long time.

  Every way he looked there was a close wall of humans standing there, watching . . .

  He sprang to his feet with a grunt of alarm. Lahl was on her feet also, and his arm went about her, drawing her against his side, his eyes staring challenge and defiance.

  But no one stepped forward to answer his challenge. The faces that stared back at him were peculiarly expressionless. One after another started to turn away under his continued stare. The crowd began to move off about its business again.

  WITHOUT thinking, Ral and Lahl began hunting for signs of impending birth together. They bent to stare into the pools at the lazily moving Vairn, staying so close that their sides touched. When they chanced upon a new human just being born it was Lahl who reached down to bring it out of the water, and it was Ral who expertly severed and tied the birth cord.

  As soon as the cord was tied Lahl turned the infant over and spanked it sharply. It cried. Lahl glanced up from her task, her eyes meeting Ral’s. For no accountable reason they laughed together. Then they were running toward the reception station together, a strangely natural intimacy holding them together.

  After they had handed the baby over to one of the waiting attendants they started back toward the general area where they had been, trotting smoothly side by side.

  Someone ran past them very swiftly, closely pursued by another. Ral noted that the one being pursued was of the other type, while the one after her was of his own type.

  He and Lahl had stopped. They looked at each other now and laughed knowingly, then hurried forward again, hand in hand. Screams came from off to the side, frantic, then dying off abruptly.

  Lahl frowned in alarm and started toward the direction of the sound. Ral restrained her.

  “Let them alone,” he said. “They’re discovering why there are the chasers and the chased.”

  REST PERIOD and work period followed each other in rapid succession. They were no longer as they had been before. More and more of the two types were pairing off and working as pairs.

  Ral and Lahl paid little attention to the others. They were finding something new to explore in their life as a pair with each rest period and work period. Where before they had been accustomed to sleeping completely alone, they learned that they found greater comfort even in sleep when close together.

  They found in each other an appreciative audience for their own thoughts, a more sympathetic audience for their single fears and problems.

  And often they explored the miracle that they had been the first to discover.

  Even when they disagreed on what they planned on doing at any time, such as when Ral wished to go one direction and Lahl wished to go a different one, they argued about it without considering the possibility of separating and each going a different direction.

  There came the day when another of the same type as Ral tried to chase Lahl . . .

  “Ral!” Lahl screamed, dodging behind him.

  But Ral didn’t even hear her. A new something posessed him, controlling him far more violently than had the emotions of that first discovery with Lahl.

  Even as Lahl screamed and dodged behind him Ral was leaping toward the human, his hands and knees pounding on the surprised and somewhat stupified man.

  The man made no attempt to defend himself. Instead, when he recovered from his surprise he beat a hasty retreat, blood staining his skin from scratches inflicted by Ral’s fingernails.

  Ral stared after him, letting him go, and amazed at the intensity of his attack. Suddenly he was realizing that he would rather die than allow Lahl to be shared by another.

  “Why?” he asked, turning questioning eyes to Lahl.

  But she was in no mood to analyze his feelings. She came to him and huddled, close to him, feeling strangely subdued. The fear that had posessed her was replaced by a feeling of security in Ral’s presence.

  Suddenly she felt dizzy. She swayed and would have fallen, if Ral hadn’t caught her and lowered her gently.

  “What’s the matter, Lahl?” he asked anxiously.

  “I—I don’t know,” she whispered, looking up at him with large eyes.

  They huddled together for a long time, until Lahl felt better. Finally she felt herself again. They rose and went to hunt for new babies again.

  THE WORK and rest periods continued their progression. At times Lahl became irritable for no reason. Ral studied her with disquiet, trying to understand what possessed her.

  Then one day as they were coming back from having delivered a baby to the receiving station he stopped suddenly. Lahl noticed he had stopped and came back. He was staring at her with surprise.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “You’re different, Lahl,” he said wonderingly. “Have you noticed you’re getting big in the middle?”

  “No!” she said, surprised. She looked down at herself, twisting her body to get different views of herself. “Why—I believe I am!” She gasped. “What’s the matter with me?”

  Ral had no answer. And gradually they grew less alarmed about it. When they discovered that many others of the same human type as Lahl were also growing big in the middle they were much relieved.

  It was shortly after this that they met Grul as he was returning from having brought another new worker.

  “Kan Grul!” Ral called happily.

  “Oh, hello, Kan Ral,” Grul said, stopping. He looked at Lahl curiously.

  “Remember, Kan Grul,” Ral said, a note of gloating in his voice, “when I came to you with so many questions you couldn’t answer? We, Lahl and I, have discovered one answer—why there are two types of humans. It is so that they can find greater pleasure together than could either alone.”

  “I’ve observed that, Kan Ral,” Grul said.

  Ral frowned suddenly. “But,” he said hesitatingly, “in finding that out we have found another mystery to get an answer to. Why are the others like Lahl getting big? At times it scares us.”

  “Have you noticed,” Grul said slowly, “the resemblance the new shape has to the shape of the Vairn? I’ve been wondering if perhaps this new shape, is not the first preparation of our life form for the birth of the next?”

  He looked at the expression of dawning surprise on Ral’s face, then turned and hurried on.

  “THAT CAN’T be so!” Ral exclaimed, staring at Grul’s departing back. “It—it’s never happened before. It can’t happen.”

  He waited for Lahl to answer. When she remained silent he turned his head to look at her.

  “It isn’t so!” he shouted. “Tell me you agree with me!”

  “No, Ral,” Lahl said. “I’m afraid it is so. Already I feel the movement of another life inside. It’s so—and I’m afraid!”

  “Then if it’s so,” Ral gulped, “it’s so. But don’t be afraid. I’ll be with you all the time. I wonder what it will look like. Will it be as different from us as we are from the Vairn? Probably.”

  “Probably,” Lahl echoed miserably.

  “It should be interesting to see what it’s like when it comes,” Ral said. “And the others. An awful lot of your type is getting big now, and every one will produce one. Then maybe they’ll keep running around taking them away from us so we won’t eat them, like we do with the babies of the Vairns.”

  “Some of the Vairn babies, are Vairns,” Lahl said. “I hope—” She stopped, biting her lips.

  “I hope it isn’t like us,” Ral said. He frowned. “Or do I? What would we care if it was like us? I want to be the new type of life.”

  “I don’t,” Lahl said. “I want it to be just like you, Ral.”

  “Like me?” Ral said incredulously. “But how co
uld it? I don’t have anything to do with it.”

  “That’s true,” Lahl agreed. “Only—you’re the only human I really like and I think I will like this one, so I want it to look like you.”

  “We’ll have to keep watch for it,” Ral said. “The minute an opening appears in your side you must lie down and be very quiet so you won’t hurt. If it hurts you I’ll kill it no matter what it is.” He frowned threateningly at her enlarged middle.

  “You will not,” Lahl said firmly. “After all, you have hurt me yourself, and it only drew us together.”

  “This isn’t the same,” Ral said.

  “It is,” Lahl said . . . .

  GRUL’S WORDS spread rapidly. An air of excitement settled. Everywhere humans were pausing in their work to discuss the coming new race and speculate on what its shape would be, and how it would affect the rather stable state of life that existed at present.

  No one doubted that the new form would be infinitely superior to the human. As superior as the human was to the Vairn.

  And everyone waited tensely for the first sign of birth, the opening of a wound in the side of one of the enlarged humans.

  Lahl enlarged more and more. Ral worried about it.

  “Maybe you will burst,” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” Lahl said serenely. Then, to turn his thoughts into safer chanels, “Have you noticed, Ral, that the only ones to get big in the middle are my type of human?”

  “No!” Ral said. “I’m sure you’re wrong. Not long ago I’m sure I saw one of my type that way. In fact—” He became silent, brooding.

  “What’s the matter now?” Lahl asked after this had gone on some time.

  “I wonder if I’m going to get big too,” Ral said. “I don’t think I’d like it.”

  Lahl laughed, shaking all over with her mirth.

  “What are you laughing at?” Ral scowled.

  “I was trying to picture you getting big in the middle,” Lahl gasped. “I—I can’t even imagine it.”

  Ral looked speculatively at his middle.

  “I think I’m getting a little big already,” he said.

  “It’s only my type that’s big,” Lahl insisted.

  “I’ll find one of my type that’s big and prove you’re wrong,” Ral said.

  But he searched in vain and finally had to admit grudgingly that Lahl was right. All the humans with big middles were of her type of human.

  And though he studied his middle wistfully, it didn’t enlarge.

  The rest periods and work periods passed by. Lahl found it more and more tiring to-keep up with Ral. She didn’t complain, but he noticed her lagging behind, and slowed his pace to match her own.

  Their teamwork in rescuing newly born babies slowly changed until he was again doing it all by himself except for one task. Lahl cut the cord with her fingernails and tied the knot in it.

  Other than that she merely followed him around or kept within a few steps of him while he darted from pool to pool without wandering away from her.

  THEN ONE day while he was bent over reaching for a newly born baby he heard her scream. Thinking it was another of his type chasing her he dropped the baby back into the water to drown and leaped to his feet. But she was alone.

  He rushed to her. “What is it?” he demanded anxiously.

  “I don’t know,” she groaned. “It was pain. Terrible pain. Here.” She pointed to her bulge.

  “I’ll slap it and make it stop hurting you,” Ral said, raising his hand.

  “No!” Lahl said sharply. “You’ll do nothing of the kind.”

  She gasped suddenly and ground her teeth together with a sound that sent shudders down Ral’s spine. He’ stared helplessly.

  When she swayed weakly and would have fallen, he caught her and lowered her gently. She lay gasping in lungsful of air, her chest heaving spasmodically. Finally the pain stopped. She smiled weakly up at him.

  “I think the new creature is going to be born,” she whispered.

  “No,” Ral said, looking at the tightly stretched skin of the bulge. “I can’t see any wound opening up so—”

  He gasped audibly, then shouted at the top of his voice. Others ran toward him, gathering around and watching curiously . . .

  Mysteriously, Grul appeared through the crowd and came forward to take charge. Ral glanced at him gratefully, then concentrated on comforting Lahl. He held one of her hands, patting her cheek clumsily with his free hand, and wiping the perspiration from her forehead when it flowed into her eyes.

  He heard Grul’s interested hmms and grunts, but after a brief glance at what was happening he didn’t have the courage to look again. His thoughts were full of self recrimination and self torture, for, though he didn’t understand the how or why, he now knew that in some way he was responsible for what, was happening to Lahl.

  Finally her features relaxed. She was so still that Ral thought she must be dead. Then she opened her eyes and smiled at him weakly.

  Seeing the misery reflected on his, face her smile changed to tender pity. With tears blinding him he smiled at her, trying to match her courage.

  Abruptly their attention was diverted by the familiar squall of a baby. Lahl half lifted her head and Ral jerked around in the direction of the sound. Grul stood there grinning at them, a perfectly normal, baby in his hands.

  Lahl held out her arms, an intense yearning shining from her eyes. An impulse that he later puzzled over made Grul stoop down and gently place the baby in her arms.

  He stood up, watching Lahl hug the baby close, a tenderness in her features that had never before been on the face of any human.

  And abruptly, from high above, an intense light bathed the plane, causing everything to stand out in stark brightness. As one, every eye turned upward toward the source of the light.

  It was far away and incredibly large. Larger than all the known world. It held their attention for a long silent minute, then as their eyes adjusted to the light they turned their heads away from it to something even more startling.

  A sagging surface of transparent luminosity hung suspended over them, smoother than anything they had ever before seen. Behind it, inverted so that it seemed to hang upside down far above the strange film, was a world similar, to their own.

  And in back of that, seemingly at the very end of space itself, holding within its depths, its bright blue depths, a light of supreme intelligence, was a solitary eye . . .

  “LOOK AT this!”

  “Get that fat Head of yours, away from the field microscope so I can then, Jim,” Dick Blanchard said goodnaturedly. “Let me see.”

  Jim Archer kept his eye glued to the low-powered instrument another few seconds, then reluctantly drew back to make room for his companion.

  Dick placed his eye over the lense. Almost instantly he drew in his breath sharply in surprise.

  “People!” he grunted. Then he straightened up and turned to Jim. “I get it now,” he said. “It’s a nice trick. For a minute I thought I saw human beings in that bit of coral.”

  “It’s no trick,” Jim Archer said. “Believe me, it isn’t. If that isn’t people of microscopic size down there I’ll eat the whole damn atoll.”

  Dick took another look. The view was equivalent to that of looking down at normal-sized people from a height of about three hundred feet. There the similarity ended, however, because the movements of the people he was watching were jerky and too swift to follow.

  He did a bit of mental arithmetic and came to the conclusion that people as small as these must be would be living at a speed inversely proportional to their size, roughly, and would therefore move that way.

  He lifted his head from the eyepiece more than a trifle dazed. Jim nervously brushed him aside and peered through the microscope again.

  “I was right,” he said excitedly. “Did you notice how fast they move? Just like little bugs!”

  “Yes, I noticed, Jim,” Dick said. “Keep your eye on them, and for God’s sake don’t move
that microscope even a hair. If you do we might never find them again. I’m going back to base and get more equipment. Another field microscope like this one, and the camera attachment so that we can get some pictures.” He started away, then paused. “I just thought of something horrible,” he said. “Suppose this whole reef is covered by these little people. Maybe I’m killing millions of them with every step.”

  But Jim Archer didn’t hear him. His entire attention was focused on the girl in the center of the image of the microscope. She alone of all the people stood, out in complete detail, because only she lay flat on her back.

  Hugged to her breast was a newborn baby, glowing pinkly in the light from the microscope object light. From her position and her condition it was obvious the baby had just been born.

  Her face was beautiful. More beautiful, Jim decided, than that of any woman he had ever seen. Or was it that way because she was holding her child in her arms and had just come through the painful ordeal of child-birth? Maybe that was it, he decided. Memory came to his mind’s eye of the ethereal beauty of a girl he had once known who was dying of tuberculosis.

  The cluster of people about her began abruptly to move away, the individual dots jerking in erratic paths across the image, and almost immediately there was only the girl and her baby, and two other dots that were unmistakeably top views of people.

  “No clothes,” Jim muttered. “But where the hell would they get them?” He chuckled. It was the chuckle of a man who has, at last, seen everything under the sun.

  “IT’S ABOUT time you got back, Dick,” Jim growled impatiently. “That baby that was born when you left is full grown now.”

  “In just, two hours?” Dick Blanchard said in surprise. Then he interpreted the grin on his companion’s face correctly. “I imagine their life span is only a few days, though,” he said. “This makes me nervous. Do you realize that at high tide they could be destroyed by one wave washing over onto this side of the reef?”

  “I doubt it,” Jim Archer said. “Surface tension, you know. In fact, now that I think of it, I wonder how the human shape could be possible in anything so small. Surface tension plays a pretty dominant part in the makeup of microscopic things.”