"Calling all search parties. John Jordan please answer. Can you hear?"
Jordan's voice came out as a harsh croak. "I hear. Is he—"
"Ricky's safe. He's with me now. Turn everyone home. But—listen. He had a good reason for going off as he did. He had something to do and it's not finished. So I'm not going to tell you where we are."
Jordan shouted something incoherent, but her voice overrode him.
"It's important, John. I don't know if it will come off, but he must have a chance to try. You can probably find out where we are, but—don't come. Do you understand?"
"Ellen, is he really all right? And are you?"
"Sure I'm all right. We're going to remain all right. We'll be back some time next morning. Oh, and Ricky says"—her voice broke off for a moment—"Ricky says he is very sorry to have worried you, honestly he is, but it was urgent, and will you please not do anything to damage that Tree." There was a moment's silence. "John? You haven't done something to it already?"
"I haven't, no."
"Don't let anyone touch it. Good night, John. Sleep well."
"Ellen—"
The speaker clicked and was silent.
The helifliers were designed for sleeping in, in an emergency, but they were not air-conditioned. Ellen felt the compress on her head, which had long ceased to be cold, and envied bitterly Ricky's ability to sleep under these conditions. A faint gleam of light from button-sized surfaces a couple of yards off showed that Big Sword was still sitting and watching as he had been doing ever since they lay down. Ellen wished bitterly that she had had the sense to lie beside the refrigerator so that she could get more cold water without having to lift her aching head.
The gray buttons moved. She felt small, strong fingers tugging gently at the compress. She lifted the pressure of her head and felt it go. There was a sound of faint movement and the click of the refrigerator door, with a momentary blast of lovely cold air. A few minutes later the compress, beautifully cold now, was poked carefully back under her head. She felt the thistledown touch of skinny fingers against her cheek.
"Thank you," she murmured, and then, remembering, she repeated it inside her head, "Thank you, Big Sword."
They had flown at dawn and the heliflier sat among the boulders at the foot of the cliff. Ellen and Ricky sat beside it, shivering a little in the morning cold, and waited.
Ellen looked at Ricky's intent face. He could not hear strange members of the People distinctly, she had gathered, but he could usually detect their presence.
"What does it feel like?" she asked abruptly.
"Hearing thoughts?" Ricky considered. "It feels like thinking. You can't really tell other thoughts from your own—unless they've been specially directed. That's what made it all so very difficult."
"I see." Ellen sighed. What on Earth, or of it, could Ricky's future be? True telepaths would not fit in Earth's scheme of things.
"I used to pick up thoughts all the time," Ricky went on. "I didn't know that until I found out how to shut them off. It was a sort of fuzzy background to my thinking. Do you know, I think all real thinkers must be people with no telepathy, or else they learn to shut it right off. Now I can do that I think much clearer."
"So you don't overhear thoughts accidentally now?" Ellen felt encouraged.
"No, I don't. I only get directed thoughts. I'm not going to overhear anyone ever again, it's just a nuisance."
"Stick to that. I don't think uncontrolled telepathy is much good to a human being."
"It isn't. I tell you what, I think there are two ways of evolving communication, telepathy and communication between senses, and people who are good at the one aren't good at the other. I'll never be a real good communicator like the People, my mind doesn't work the right way. But I'll be good enough to be useful for research. I'm going to—" Ricky broke off, seized his companions' arm and pointed.
Ellen looked up at the cliff. It was about thirty feet high, here, with only a couple of six-inch ledges to break the sheer drop. Black foliage overhung it in places.
"There!" whispered Ricky. Slowly there came into view a black head the size of an egg—a black head in which eyes shone gray.
"Is he coming back?" whispered Ellen. "Has he given up, then?"
There was a faint rustling among the leaves. Ricky's grip tightened painfully on her arm.
A second black head appeared beside the first.
"You see," said Ricky anxiously, "I didn't really think you'd just go and destroy the Tree straight off, but I couldn't be sure. And everyone was angry with me about one thing or another and I didn't know if they'd listen."
"Speaking for myself," said Woodman, "there were one or two moments when if I'd had a blaster handy the Tree would have been done for there and then."
"So you were just taking out insurance," said Jordan.
"Yes, because if we found other Trees the species would continue anyway. Big Sword and I meant to ask you to help about that, later—the Journey, I mean—only then I thought we'd better try that straight away in case I was stopped later. I thought if I could show people it was better than telling them."
"Isn't Big Sword coming?" said another of the party. The whole of the expedition, including even Barney, was seated around a square table raised on trestles in the center of the clearing. Ricky nodded.
"As soon as we're ready," he said. "Now, if you like. But he says if too many people think at him at once it may hurt, so he wants you to be ready to start talking if I give the signal."
"What about?" said Cartwright.
"Anything. Anything at all. Shall I call him?"
There was half a minute's expectant silence. Then lightly as a grasshopper Big Sword flew over Ellen's head and landed with a slight bounce in the center of the table.
There was a simultaneous forward movement of heads as everybody bent to look at him, and he sat up and goggled out of pale bulging eyes. Then—
Most of them felt the sharp protest of discomfort before Ricky waved his hand. Nobody had really thought out what to say and there was a moment of silence, then somebody began to talk about the weather, the statistician began on the multiplication table, Jordan found himself muttering, " 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves ."—after a minute or so only Ricky was still silent.
"He says he'll go to one person after another, but the rest keep talking," reported Ricky presently. "You can ask him to do things if you like."
Solemnly Big Sword went round the table, sitting for a few moments in front of each person, snapping out his membranes, revolving to present his back view, and then going on.
"That's him!" said Barney as Big Sword came to a halt in front of him. "But how did he sting me?"
The spindly hand whipped to Big Sword's flat thigh and flashed back holding a flat gray spike two and a half inches long. He held it out and Barney fingered the point in a gingerly fashion.
"That's the sword, is it?" murmured Woodman. "Do they secrete it, Ricky?"
"I think so, but I haven't asked him."
Woodman breathed out a long sigh.
"This," he said, "is the answer to a biologist's prayer."
Big Sword bounced suddenly back into the middle of the table. "He's tired," said Ricky. "He says he'll send someone else another day." Ricky yawned uncontrollably as Big Sword took a flying leap off the table and hopped across the clearing. He had had a hard day the day before and a very early start this morning and a lot of excitement since.
"Can we just have the story straight?" said the statistician suddenly. "The biological story, I mean. You people may have been able to follow it through all the interruptions, but I didn't. I gathered that Ricky had discovered the female of the species, but that's all. How did they get lost?"
"I'll tell it," said Jordan, looking at Ricky, who was nodding sleepily, "and Ricky can correct me. Big Sword's people are the active and intelligent offspring of an organism which to all intents and purposes is a large tree. They are produced by an asexual budding process
inside pods. When they are a year or so old they are seized by the urge to migrate across the Rift. They never knew why, and probably none of them ever got across. It occurred to Ricky that alternation of generations usually turns out to have sex at the bottom of it. Big Sword's People couldn't reproduce themselves—they simply hatched from the Tree. So Ricky thought that there might be another Tree on the other side of the Rift which produced females. And when I very foolishly considered destroying the Tree because of Woodman's experience, he thought he had to go and find them straight off, so that at least the species would survive. And I'm glad to say he was quite right—they were there."
"You mean to say," said Cartwright, "that the Tree has been producing People for the last fifteen thousand years without a sexual generation at all?"
"Not necessarily," said Woodman. "There may have been several on this side of the Rift at first, and this Tree may be the last offspring of a small population. It must have been an outlier, if so, because the migration was so firmly set for the west."
"And there's another tree on the far side which produces females?"
"There are two female trees and three that bear males, but two of the male ones are very old and have few offspring, and none of the seeds have been fertile for at least fifty generations. Apparently not many come to full maturity at the best of times, but this outcross may really save the species."
"And what exactly is the plan?" demanded the statistician. "To ferry them across? What will they do when we leave?"
"No," said Jordan. "We don't propose to interfere more than we have to. The tragedy of the whole process was that the People who took the Journey almost certainly died on the way. Twelve miles in the sun, with no water, was too much for them. We propose to provide a green belt—a black belt rather—along the migration route. Tiven is looking into the possibilities—"
Tiven looked up from his slide rule. "Easy as π," he said cheerfully. "We can make the channel in a week, once we get the digger from First Base, and a cooker for concrete, and there are any number of streams which run down to the Waste and then vanish underground. It's just a question of training one of them in the way it should go, and protecting it from evaporation in the first year or two until the vegetation gets thick enough."
The conversation flowed on. But Ricky, his head resting on the table, was already asleep.
Jordan stood at the edge of the Rift and looked over the embryo river-valley that Tiven had designed. Seedlings had been planted along the channel, in earth transported for that purpose, and were already taking hold. The revolving sun-cutters designed to protect them at this stage and to stop excessive evaporation gave the whole thing a mechanical air at present, but they would be done within a year or two; they were designed to go to dust then, so that even if the expedition had to leave they would not be left. There are places for poorly-built things!
Two of the People shot down the cliff a little to one side and disappeared into the shade along the channel.
"Are they off on the Journey?" said Ellen Scott.
"I don't think so. They go singly, as a rule. No, I think… look there!"
There were four People now at the end of the line of saplings. Two were presumably the ones who had passed a few minutes before; the other two were linked hand in hand and bore across their shoulders a kind of yoke with a long pod dangling from it. The two from the near side of the Forest had taken the hands of the newcomers and were helping them up the cliff.
"This is the result of your soil report, I think," said Jordan. "Woodman says that one reason for the lack of germination on the other side is the exhaustion of the few pockets of suitable soil. I wonder whether it was the necessity of finding the right soil, as well as of looking after the seedling, that led them to develop intelligence?"
The two newcomers had reached the top of the cliff. They seemed hardly to notice the helpers, nor did the latter seem to expect it. The burdened couple moved slowly along, pausing every now and then to investigate the soil. They stopped close to Ellen's feet and prodded carefully.
"Not here, little sillies!" she murmured. "Farther in."
Jordan smiled. "They've got plenty of time. One couple planted their pod just under one of Branding's tripods; trying not to step on them drove him nearly crazy. He had to move the whole lot in the end. It takes them weeks sometimes to find a spot that suits them."
"Continuing the species," said Ellen thoughtfully. "I always thought it sounded rather impersonal."
Jordan nodded. "The sort of thing you can take or leave," he agreed. "I used to think that you could either explore space or you could well, continue the species is as good a way of putting it as any. Not both."
"I used to think that, too."
"Once it was true. Things have changed, even in the last few years. More and more people are organizing their lives to spend the greater part of them away from Earth. Soon there's going to be a new generation whose home isn't on Earth at all. Children who haven't been to Terrestrial schools, or played in Terrestrial playrooms, or watched the Terrestrial stereos, or—"
"Suffered the benefits of an advanced civilization?"
"Exactly. How do you feel about it, Ellen? Or… that's a shirker's question. Ellen Scott, will you marry me?"
"So as to propagate the species?"
"Blast the species! Will you marry me?"
"What about Ricky?"
"Ricky," said Jordan, "has been careful to let me know that he thinks it would be a very suitable match."
"The devil he has! I thought—"
"No telepathy involved. If everyone else knows I love you, why shouldn't he? Ellen—did I say please, before? Ellen, please, will you marry me?"
There was a silence. Depression settled on Jordan. He had no right to feel so sure of himself. Ellen was ten years younger and had a career to think of. He had made a mess of one marriage already and had a half-grown son. He had taken friendliness for something else and jumped in with both feet much too soon. He had made a fool of himself—probably.
"Well?" he said at last.
Ellen looked up and grinned.
"I was just making sure. I'm not quite certain I could take being married to a telepath—which you are not, my dear. Absolutely not. Of course I'm going to."
Ricky, with Big Sword on his shoulder, was strolling along a path in the sun. He saw his father and Dr. Scott return to the camp arm in arm, and nodded with satisfaction. About time, too. Now perhaps Doc. J. would stop mooning around and get on with his work for a change. He'd had Ricky and Woodman's last report on the biology of the People for two weeks without making the slightest attempt to read it, and it was full of interesting things.
Just for a moment, Ricky wondered what it was like to get all wrapped up in one individual like that. No doubt he'd find out in time. It would have to be somebody interested in real things, of course—not an Earth-bound person like poor Cora.
Meanwhile he was just fourteen and free of the Universe, and he was going to have fun.
Big Sword, from his perch on Ricky's shoulder, noticed the couple with the pod. He saw that this one was fertile, all right—the shoot was beginning to form inside it. One of them was an old friend from this side of the Rift, but it was no good trying to talk to him—his mind would be shut. The whole process of taking the Journey, finding a mate and taking care of one's seedling was still a mystery to Big Sword in the sense that he could not imagine what it felt like. Just now he was not very interested. He had nearly a year in which to find out things, especially things about the Big People who, now they were domesticated, had turned out to be so useful, and he was going to enjoy that and not speculate about the Journey, and what it felt like to take it.
Because, eventually, the call would come to him, too, and he would set off up the new little stream to the other side of the Rift where the trees of the Strangers grew. And then he would know.
FIRST LADY BY J. T. McINTOSH
Once the depths of the Galaxy have been probed and certain p
lanets have been found to be habitable by man, there will be an explosion of exploration from the Center to the Rim.
And perhaps a cautious pattern of exploitation will emerge, encouraged by certain catastrophic events early on in the history of space. First there will be all-male colonization, because the hazards of planet-opening are such that no one would want to expose women to them. Then the colony is expanded and stabilized, still without women, while meticulous medical studies are made.
Then finally comes the introduction of Woman—the Great Mother. And in this last event you have the makings of an awe-inspiring story, here told in beautifully human, quietly understated terms: so that only by giving your full thought to the idea can you comprehend the truly fantastic drama of the concept. This is Big Stuff!
"First Lady" first published in 1953, has been anthologized in the author's home country, England, and also in Germany and the Netherlands. Only now has it "made it" in the United States. It's about time!
We were just a few hours from Lotrin, and I looked at Shirley and Ellen and wondered how we were going to settle the problem in time. It wasn't a life-and-death matter; probably none of us was going to die, whatever happened. It would be one way out, of course, for us all to commit suicide. But I couldn't see any of us doing that, including Shirley, even if she knew what we knew. Suicide is never the answer to a problem, it's only at best a compromise with it.
We weren't just looking at each other. We were talking, arguing, ranting, dramatizing. Ellen was doing the talking, arguing, ranting and dramatizing, now that she had to take an interest again in what was going on. Shirley was never a talker, and I'm a good listener. Besides, the problem was less Ellen's than it was Shirley's and mine, and often the people who talk most are those who are least involved.
I'm one of those people who always have an unconcerned, mildly interested alter ego, observing what's going on, sifting it, hauling up memories and comparing the present with the past. I found it quite easy, while Ellen talked, to run rapidly through our whole association with Shirley, right from the beginning back on Earth.
Another Part of the Galaxy Page 10