‘But, darling, the anthro-ecologists were here for only a limited period of time. They collected all the data they considered necessary and then left.’ I smiled. ‘You couldn’t seriously expect them to stay here indefinitely just to watch the children grow!’
‘Oh, Jim!’ She sat back, frowning with annoyance. ‘Are you blind? Can’t you see how only the female children have grown during the time we’ve been here?’ She stood up suddenly. ‘Come here and take a look-’ She walked over to the window. Reluctantly I rose and followed her.
‘There!’ I gazed to where she pointed across the open space that separated the Lanaian huts from our own. Sitting with their backs against one of the huts, eyes closed against the glare of the sun, were two Lanaian women. At their feet their children played in the dust. The children were both the same age, yet the girl was almost twice the size of the boy; she drew childish pictures in the dust with a length of stick, and at times would look up at her mother and smile. In contrast Kanlin, the other child, sat dumbly still, contemplating his toes with babyish concentration.
I looked at Maria and shrugged. ‘So the girls develop faster than the boys. What’s there to get all worked up about?’
Her lips tightened and she glared at me in irritation. ‘Oh, Jim, the girls don’t develop faster than the boys, that’s just it. The boys don’t develop at all!’
‘Now, look-’
‘And there’s something else. There are almost as many girls as there are adult females in this village. How come there are only nineteen boys?’
I stopped dead. A thought clicked into place; the same thought that Maria had obviously been thinking for a long time.
I said, ‘You think the boys are—you think they’re somehow different?’
She nodded slowly. ‘The male Lanaians live in this mysterious Valley of Crimson, don’t they? The females conceive in the valley, but the children are born in the villages. Maybe the male children are taken to the valley not long after they are born, while the female children stay behind with their mothers ...’
‘And you think that these nineteen boys were not taken to the valley because ...’
‘Yes, because they are retarded in some way; either physically or mentally—or perhaps both!’
* * * *
Four
Two days later I tried to prise some answers out of Kordalia.
‘Why are the boys of the village not in the Valley of Crimson?’
Kordalia looked surprised. He blinked.
‘Boys?’
I sighed with irritation; again the differences of language that had been too subtle for the anthro-ecologists’ inadequate translation computor seemed to be setting up their imperceptible barrier.
‘The boys,’ I repeated. ‘There are many daughters here in the village; why are there only nineteen sons? Are they ...’ I fumbled, avoiding the word ‘retarded’, searching for a tactful euphemism ‘... different?’
Kordalia’s frown vanished and he smiled. He suddenly realised what I was trying to say. ‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, they are different. We call them the Chosen Ones.’
I smiled back at him. The Lanaians, it seemed, had euphemisms too. It wasn’t until almost a year later that I was to realise what a monumental misunderstanding it was.
* * * *
A month later the first of the nineteen male children died. The subsequent water burial was the first of many that Maria and I were to witness. Sadly we watched the colourful ceremonial dances; the Dance of Death, the Dance of the Water Mother and the Dance of Transference. It was all very beautiful and very moving.
But the mourning lasted for only a short while. Next day, much to our surprise, the Lanaians were cheerfully applying themselves once more to their various chores. And when, less than a week later, the second boy died there was again a day full of ceremony and again, surprisingly, the mourning lasted for no more than that day.
After the fifth death Maria and I began to feel more than a little uneasy. The Lanaians were taking it all too coolly, as if these boys dying like flies was the most natural thing in the world.
Over the next few days, too, my conviction that the Lanaians came to my debates entirely through an eagerness to learn began to dissipate. A subtle change had come over the village. Now I became certain that they came to the hut that I had somewhat sardonically christened the ‘Schoolhouse’ merely out of curiosity or politeness. They sat and watched me with their dark empty eyes and I knew they weren’t taking the least interest in my words; I might as well have been talking to a congregation of baboons. Yet I carried on as I knew I was obliged to do, consoling myself with the thought that perhaps it was only my uneasiness that made me feel as I did. Maybe, after all, this shifting of attitude was only in my mind...
It was while I was conducting one of these increasingly languid discussions that the bannalia attack came.
Imagine a wolf and imagine a large vulture-clawed bat. Put them both together in one composite creature and you’ll have some idea of what the bannalia look like. The anthro-ecologists’ report had mentioned them. They live in the mountains to the far north and are the Lanaians only real enemy. They are vicious and utterly ruthless. They attack seldom but always in packs, searching the villages for any unattended Lanaian young, and on that day they came suddenly and quickly.
I was finishing my opening speech when a shout of warning came from outside. Puzzled, I went to the window. Everywhere Lanaian females were running across the dust, snatching their offspring from the ground and carrying them into the safety of the huts. A shadow suddenly obscured the sun and I looked up—and there they were, high above the village, hundreds of bannalia circling like a pack of huge predatory locusts.
My congregation were already making for the doors. In rising panic I followed them out. Once a bannalia attack has begun you don’t stand a chance: they fall like bombs and you never hear them until their vast powerful wings cleave the air like scythes above your head. I broke into a run. All around, screaming Lanaians were running across the clearing kicking the dust into palls. But there was just one thought on my mind: I had to find Maria.
I was halfway across the village when they came. With a scream the whole pack fell, swooping and diving across the huts like monstrous pterodactyls. By some miracle I reached our hut unscathed. I saw Maria in the doorway and sagged with relief. I bundled her inside. Heaving my equipment case from under the bunk, I grabbed my flare pistol and ran out into the clearing.
Everywhere the whirling air was filled with the beat, slash and hiss of wing and claw. I fell back against the wall of the hut. Flying dust stung my eyes and I hardly knew what I was doing as, lifting the pistol, I fired.
A star shell moves very, very slowly. It moves slowly enough for a man to duck if he sees one coming. Sometimes, when you want one to move especially fast, it seems trapped forever in an interminable sequence of slow-motion film. That was how this one moved. It lazed gracefully up in the air among the hurtling bannalia, reached the top of its parabola and hung there as if it were never going to come down and for a moment, for a gut-churning moment of despair, I thought it wasn’t going to catch.
And then suddenly it burst. With a tremendous roar it exploded outwards in a vast sheet of sizzling yellow flame that in a moment became a glaring disc of fire whose hard white frozen centre was too bright to look at. As one, the whole bannalia pack shrieked and rose above it in terror.
The flare continued to burn and expand, blazing for what seemed an eternity, and then, as the flames slowly began to shrivel and the glare became less intense, I could see that the bannalia were now circling even higher. Like clumsy bulbous kites they were drifting away on the wind above the village, gliding back towards the mountains of the north and leaving silence to settle slowly with the dust. Silence, save for a lone child’s voice.
In ones and twos Lanaians emerged from their huts. Like apprehensive sheep they gazed nervously into the sky as if in doubt that the attack could have ended so abruptl
y. And there, sitting alone in the middle of the clearing, was Kanlin. He chortled happily to himself as, nearby, one long pink arm stretching out towards him as if to offer protection, sprawled his mother. She lay face downwards in the dust, a deep crimson pool spreading from beneath her and congealing slowly in the warm air.
The butt of the pistol suddenly felt hot in my hand. All around me, one by one, Lanaians were gradually falling silent. Maria walked out from behind me and then stopped, staring at the body. There was a frozen moment of horror and disbelief; then she stepped forward across the dust.
Now everyone had forgotten the bannalia. I stared at the body, and then at the child. Maria looked up at me, all colour drained from her face, and knelt to lift the boy in her arms. He smiled uncomprehendingly as she cradled him to her.
Suddenly Kordalia was there. The crowd made way for him and he came bobbing through, then stopped when he saw what had happened. His eyes flicked from the body to the child and then to me. I could see then in his glance that he didn’t want to believe it. It wasn’t for this that he had become a Priest Chief. He stood deathly still for a moment as if hoping that it was all a mistake, praying that some deus ex machina would suddenly appear and put things right again. But finally, realising that this deliverance would never come, he shook his head.
‘The mother is dead,’ he announced quietly. ‘Kanlin no longer has a mother. Therefore he no longer has a place in the Pool of Transference. Too bad.’ He lifted his arms in the traditional gesture of sadness and then turned away quickly, ushering the other Lanaians back to their huts.
Maria started after him and then stopped. She looked at me uncertainly, the child cradled against her.
‘Jim ...’
I shook my head and put my arm round her. There was nothing I could do. An odd, almost paradoxical Lanaian tradition declared that a child’s body could not be committed to the Pool of Transference unless his mother was still living. Somehow, at that moment, inexplicably, the knowledge of this loss of Kanlin’s filled me with infinitely more regret than the knowledge of his other loss.
Then suddenly Maria pulled away from me. She ran after Kordalia, calling out to him.
‘Yes, Kordalia. Yes, he does have a mother. Me! I will be his mother!’
Kordalia turned. He stared at her incredulously.
‘You? You will be his mother?’ There was laughter in his voice.
‘Yes.’ She lifted her head. ‘Yes, why not?’
Realising what she was trying to do, I stepped forward, taking her elbow. ‘Yes, Kordalia, why not?’ I said. ‘Kanlin’s mother has been killed; but there is no reason why Maria cannot take her place. On our world, if a child becomes an orphan, another home for him is found, other parents. He is not made an outcast. If Maria wants to be mother to this child, why not let her be? It is the good thing to do, the Christian thing. It is what God would want you to do...’
Kordalia frowned. ‘How strange is your God.’ He shook his head.
‘Look, Kordalia,’ I began; but he waved me to silence.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Mrs. Haines shall be Kanlin’s new mother!’
He turned abruptly and walked away, dismissing the matter with a wave of his curiously jointed arms. For a moment Maria stared at me in surprise. Then she smiled happily and hugged the child to her.
I returned her smile uneasily.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s take him home.’
* * * *
Kanlin, like the other boys, was a sickly child. After the death of his mother, despite the intensive, almost desperate care that Maria lavished on him, his condition deteriorated rapidly. Ten months later he was the only one left of the nineteen boys.
Maria was heartbroken. Her love, I already knew, was too expansive for me alone—the childless emptiness of our marriage was what had eventually decided us to join the ICM—but here on Lanaia she had her own child at last. The tragedy was that we both knew he wouldn’t be hers much longer.
All day she would croon to the boy, touch him and soothe him like some over-indulgent nanny. Each day his condition grew worse, and each day the agony in her eyes was greater.
Then he died.
She took it even harder than I expected. Grief flared long and intensely inside her. She pined like a child, lacking almost completely the will to live. At one point I even thought she was contemplating suicide. But then gradually, several weeks later, her grief began to subside. Very slowly she came back to life.
Then I knew it was over. The price had been paid and it was great. Now Kanlin had his place in the Pool of Transference.
* * * *
Five
Two months after Kanlin’s funeral I walked out among the low hills a little way east of the village.
The life-ship was still there, just as we’d left it. Discreetly out of sight of the village, though not hidden, the little capsule was our only method of escape to the outside. It was standard ICM equipment—to be used only in an emergency. If we ever had to leave this place in a hurry this is what we would use. It had just enough fuel to carry us to the tiny mission satellite that orbited some five hundred miles above the surface of this planet. There we would set up a distress beacon, then wait for someone to come and fetch us.
I climbed up on to the metal cocoon, opened the hatch and dropped into the tiny cabin. I gave the control-console a cursory examination. Satisfied, I climbed out again, locked the hatch behind me and made my way back to the village.
* * * *
A little later I put it to her.
‘Why don’t we leave here, Maria? They could replace us in no time at all.’
She frowned at me. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You need a holiday,’ I insisted. ‘We both do. A month or two on a resort planet somewhere would do us the world of good.’
She looked at me as if she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Leave here ... ? Jim, don’t you realise we’ve got to help these people?’
‘I know we have to try and teach them all sorts of...’
‘No, Jim.’ She rose to her feet, walked over to the wall and then turned to face me. ‘If the Lanaian men were here in this village instead of lazing in that valley of theirs they could have protected the women and children during that bannalia attack, couldn’t they? Kanlin’s mother need never have died ...’
‘Perhaps. But you know there’s nothing we can do.’
‘Can’t we?’ She came forward and leaned on the table. ‘Can’t we? Jim, I think we can! We can persuade them that the way they live is wrong, that it is wholly unchristian. We can persuade them to believe that a man’s place is with his wife and children. He must be their protector and provide for them. We must make them believe in the concept of a united family!’
‘You realise that to do that would be to violate one of the basic rules of the ICM,’ I warned. ‘The time is not yet right for us to try and change their pattern of living. Later, when Phase Three begins-’
‘Oh, damn Phase Three!’ she exploded. ‘Must we wait for another attack by those creatures, stand and watch while more women and children are attacked and killed...?’
I stood up. ‘Listen, Maria-’ I said, then stopped as a look of intense pain flashed abruptly across her eyes. She took a step towards me and opened her mouth as if to call. I frowned. ‘Maria?’ Then suddenly she pitched forward unconscious into my arms. Fighting back the panic, I carried her across to the bunk and felt her forehead: her temperature was way up.
I felt dazed. What had happened? One minute I was talking to her and the next... What was it? Something she had eaten, something alien ? A disease ... ?
I stumbled to the door. Kordalia would know! In rising hysteria I half-fell out into the bright sunlight and sprinted across the clearing towards his hut. Lanaians watched in puzzlement as I lurched to a halt in the doorway.
‘Kordalia!’
His pink face emerged from the gloom. He looked puzzled. ‘Mr. Haines ...’
‘My
wife! She’s ill! Quickly ...’
He frowned at me for a moment, then a smile of understanding flickered across his face. He nodded slowly.
‘Please do not worry,’ he said, gently. ‘It is Rudash, nothing more ...’
‘Rudash?’ I stared at him.
New Writings in SF 25 - [Anthology] Page 16