N-Space Part 46

The bearded man smiled uncertainly, showing teeth that were white but chipped. "It's been a long time, Jase. A very long time."

The three Piths were quiet and alert, sniffing the air of this strange place.

"Are these-?"

"Yes. Jerry and Lori. And Eve. And a small addition." One of the three-G.o.d, could it be Eve? sniffed up to Jase. The soft golden fur on her face was tinged with gray, but she carried a young child at her breast.

Jerry stood tall for a preman, eyeing Jase warily. He carried a sharpened stick in one k.n.o.bby hand.

Jase sat down, speechless. He looked up into the burning eyes of the man he had known thirty years before. "You're still officially under a death sentence, you know."

Doc nodded his head. "For kidnapping?"

"Murder. No one was sure what had happened to you, whether you or any of the children had survived."

Doc, too, sat down. For the first time the light in his eyes dimmed. "Yes. We survived. I swam to sh.o.r.e after cras.h.i.+ng the flyer, and found the place where I had left the children." He thought for a moment, then asked quietly. "How is Elise? And all the others?"

Jase was unable to raise his eyes from the floor. "She died three years ago, Doc. She was never the same after you left. She thought you were dead. That the children were dead. Couldn't you have at least told her about your plan? Or gotten her a message?"

Doc's fingers played absently with his beard as he shook his head. "I couldn't involve her. I couldn't. Could you . . . show me where she's buried, Jase?"

"Of course."

"What about the others?"

'Well, none of the people were the same after the children left. Some just seemed to lose purpose. Brew's dead. Greg drank himself under. Four of the others have died." Jase paused, thinking. "Do any of the others know you're here?"

"No. I slipped in just at dusk. I wasn't sure what kind of a reception I'd get."

"I'm still not sure." Jase hesitated. "Why did you do it?"

The room was quiet, save for a scratching sound as Jerry fingered an ear. Fleas? Absurd. Jill had never uncrated them.

"I had to know, Jase," he said. There was no uncertainty in his voice. In fact, there was an imperious quality he had never had in the old days. "The question was: Would they breed true? Was the Pith effect only temporary?"

"Was it?"

"No. It persisted. I had to know if they were regressing or evolving, and they remained the same in subsequent generations, save for natural selection, and there isn't much of that."

Jase watched Lori, her stubby fingers untangling mats in her fur. Her huge brown eyes were alive and vital. She was a lovely creature, he decided. "Doc, what are the children?"

"What do you think?"

"You know what I think. An alien species wants our worlds. In a hundred years they'll land and take them. What they'll do with the children is anybody's guess. I-" He couldn't bring himself to look at Eve. "I wish you'd sterilized them, Doc."

"Maybe you do, Jase. But, you see, I don't believe in your aliens."

Jase's breath froze in his throat.

"They might want our world," said Doc, "but why would they want our life forms? Everything but Man is spreading like a plague of locusts. If someone wants Ridgeback, why haven't they done something about it? By the time they land, terrestrial life will have an unstoppable foothold. Look at all the thousands of years we've been trying to stamp out just one life form, the influenza viruses.

"No, I've got another idea. Do you know what a locust is?"

"I know what they are. I've never seen one."

"As individuals they're something like a short gra.s.shopper. As individuals, they hide or sleep in the daytime and come out at night. In open country you can hear them chirping after dusk, but otherwise n.o.body notices them. But they're out there, eating and breeding and breeding and eating, getting more numerous over a period of years, until one day there are too many for the environment to produce enough food.

"Then comes the change. On Earth it hasn't happened in a long time because they aren't allowed to get that numerous. But it used to be that when there were enough of them, they'd grow bigger and darker and more aggressive. They'd come out in the daytime. They'd eat everything in sight, and when all the food was gone, and when there were enough of them, they'd suddenly take off all at once.

"That's when you'd get your plague of locusts. They'd drop from the air in a cloud thick enough and broad enough to darken the sky, and when they landed in a farmer's field he could kiss his crops goodbye. They'd raze it to the soil, then take off again, leaving nothing."

Jase took off his gla.s.ses and wiped them. "I don't see what it is you're getting at."

"Why do they do it? Why were locusts built that way?"

"Evolution, I guess. After the big flight they'd be spread over a lot of territory. I'd say they'd have a much bigger potential food supply."

"Right. Now consider this. Take a biped that's man shaped, enough so to use a tool, but without intelligence. Plant him on a world and watch him grow. Say he's adaptable; say he eventually spread over most of the fertile land ma.s.ses of the planet. Now what?

"Now an actual physical change takes place. The brain expands. The body hair drops away. Evolution had adapted him to his climate, but that was when he had hair. Now he's got to use his intelligence to keep from freezing to death. He'll discover fire. He'll move out into areas he couldn't live in before. Eventually he'll cover the whole planet, and he'll build s.p.a.cecraft and head for the stars."

Jase shook his head. "But why would they change hoc/c Doc?"

"Something in the genes, maybe. Something that didn't mutate."

"Not how, Doc. We know it's possible. Why?"

"We're going back to being gra.s.shoppers. Maybe we've reached our evolutionary peak. Natural selection stops when we start protecting the weak ones, instead of allowing those with defective genes to die a natural death."

He paused, smiling. "I mean, look at us, Jase. You walk with a cane now. I haven't been able to read for five years, my eyes have weakened so. And we were the best Earth had to offer; the best minds, the finest bodies. Chris only squeaked by with his gla.s.ses because he was such a d.a.m.n good meteorologist."

Jase's face held a flash of long-forgotten pain. "And I guess they still didn't choose carefully enough."

"No," Doc agreed soberly. "They didn't. On Earth we protected the sick, allowed them to breed, instead of letting them die . . . with pacemakers, with insulin, artificial kidneys and plastic hip joints and trusses. The mentally ill and r.e.t.a.r.ded fought in the courts for the right to reproduce. Okay, it's humane. Nature isn't humane. The infirm will do their job by dying, and no morality or humane court rulings or medical advances will change the natural course of things for a long, long time."

"How long?"

"I don't know how stable they are. It could be millions of years, or?" Doc shrugged. "We've changed the course of our own development. Perhaps a simpler creature is needed to colonize a world. Something that has no choice but to change or die. Jase, remember the Cold War?"

"I read about it."

"And the Belt Embargo? Remember diseromide, and smog, and the spray-can thing, and the day the fusion seawater distillery at San Francisco went up and took the Bay area with it, and four states had to have their water flown in for a month?"

"So?"

"A dozen times we could have wiped out all life on Earth. As soon as we've used our intelligence to build s.p.a.cecraft and seed another world, intelligence becomes a liability. Some old anthropologist even had a theory that a species needs abstract intelligence before it can prey on its own kind. The development of fire gave Man time to sit back and dream up ways to take things he hadn't earned. You know how gentle the children are, and you can remember how the carefully chosen citizens of Ridgeback acted the night we voted on the children's right to reproduce."

"So you gave that to them, Doc. They are reproducing. And when we're gone they'll spread all over the world. But are they human?"

Doc pondered, wondering what to say. For many years he had talked only to the children. The children never interrupted, never disagreed . "I had to know that too. Yes. They're human."

Jase looked closely at the man he had called friend so many years ago. Doc was so sure. He didn't discuss; he lectured. Jase felt an alienness in him that was deeper than the mere pa.s.sage of time.

"Are you going to stay here now?"

"I don't know. The children don't need me any more, though they've treated me like a G.o.d. I can't pa.s.s anything on to them. I think our culture has to die before theirs can grow."

Jase fidgeted, uncomfortable. "Doc. Something I've got to tell you. I haven't told anyone. It's thirty years now, and n.o.body knows but me."

Doc frowned. "Go on."

"Remember the day Roy died? Something in the Orion blew all the motors at once? Well, he talked to Cynnie first. And she talked to me, before she disappeared. Doc, he got a laser message from Earth, and he knew he couldn't ever send it down. It would have destroyed us. So he blew the motors."

Doc waited, listening intently.

"It seems that every child being born on Earth nowadays bears an uncanny resemblance to Pithecanthropus erectus. They were begging us to make the Ridgeback colony work. Because Earth is doomed."

"I'm glad n.o.body knew that."

Jase nodded. "If intelligence is bad for us, it's bad for Earth. They've fired their stars.h.i.+ps. Now they're ready for another cycle."

"Most of them'll die. They're too crowded."

"Some will survive. If not there, then, thanks to you, here." He smiled. A touch of the old Jase in his eyes. "They'll have to become men, you know."

"Why do you put it like that?"

"Because Jill uncrated the wolves, to help thin out the herds."

"They'll cull the children, too," Doc nodded. "I couldn't help them become men, but I think that will do it. They will have to band together, and find tools, and fire." His voice took on a dreamy quality. "Eventually, the wolves will come out of the darkness to join them at their campfires, and Man will have dogs again." He smiled. "I hope they don't overbreed them like we did on earth. I doubt if chihuahuas have ever forgotten what we did to them."

"Doc," Jase said, urgently, "will you trust me? Will you wait for a minute while I leave? I . . . I want to try something. If you decide to go there may never be another chance."

Doc looked at him, mystified. "Alright, I'll wait."

Jase limped out of the door. Doc sat, watching his charges, proud of their alertness and flexibility, their potential for growth in the new land.

There was a creaking as the door swung open.

The woman's hair had been blond, once. Now it was white, heavy wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, years of hards.h.i.+p and disappointment souring what had once been beauty.

She blinked, at first seeing only Doc.

"h.e.l.lo, Nat," he said to her.

She frowned. "What . . . ?" Then she saw Eve.

Their eyes locked, and Nat would have drawn back save for Jase's insistent hand at her back.

Eve drew close, peering into her mother's face as if trying to remember her.

The old woman stuttered, then said, "Eve?" The Pith c.o.c.ked her head and came closer, touching her mother's hand. Nat pulled it back, eyes wide.

Eve cooed, smiling, holding her baby out to Nat.

At first she flinched, then looked at the child, so much like Eve had been, so much . . . and slowly, without words or visible emotion, she took the child from Eve and cradled it, held it, and began to tremble. Her hand stretched out helplessly, and Eve came closer, took her mother's hand and the three of them, mother, child and grandchild, children of different worlds, held each other. Nat cried for the pain that had driven them apart, the love that had brought them together.

Doc stood at the edge of the woods, looking back at the colonists who waved to them, asking for a swift return.

Perhaps so. Perhaps they could, now. Enough time had pa.s.sed that understanding was a thing to be sought rather than avoided. And he missed the company of his own kind.

No, he corrected himself, the children were his kind. As he had told Jase, without explaining, he knew that they were human. He had tested it the only way he could, by the only means available.

Eve walked beside him, her hand seeking his. "Doc," she cooed, her birdlike singsong voice loving. He gently took their child from her arms, kissing it.

At over sixty years of age, it felt odd to be a new father, but if his lover had her way, as she usually did, his strange family might grow larger still.

Together, the five of them headed into the forest, and home.

This was an early story, and I broke my heart over it. The idea Is a good one, but not a happy one. I didn't know how to handle it. Presently I tossed it in my file cabinet to die.

Ten years later I met Steven Barnes at a LASFS meeting. It struck me that he might be able to do something with "The Locusts."

Take a lesson: this is the only easy way to collaborate. The effort you you put into the story is already lost. The other writer has invested no effort, and need not. "Can you do something with this?" "No." put into the story is already lost. The other writer has invested no effort, and need not. "Can you do something with this?" "No."

Steve said, "Yes."

All of them had craters. At least one crater. Three long, narrow asteroids in succession ... and each had a deep crater at one end. One rock twisted almost into a cashew shape; and the crater was at the inside of the curve. Each asteroid in the sequence had a big deep crater in it; and always a line through the center would have gone through the rock's center of ma.s.s.

Bury felt fear and laughter rising in him. "Yes, I see. You found that every one of those asteroids had been moved into place artificially. Therefore you lost interest."

THE MOTE IN G.o.d'S EYE, 1974 .

From THE MOTE IN G.o.d'S EYE (with JERRY POURNELLE) .

Jerry Pournelle suggested that we try a collaboration. Working with David Gerrold on The Flying Sorcerors The Flying Sorcerors had been had been fun, fun, so. so.

Jerry wouldn't work in Known s.p.a.ce because he couldn't believe in the politics or the history. (He must have changed his mind. "The Children's Hour," by Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Stirling, Is a wonderful tale of the Man-Kzin Wars.) Instead, he offered a thousand years of a future future history that uses the faster-than-light drive designed by our mutual friend Dan Alderson. history that uses the faster-than-light drive designed by our mutual friend Dan Alderson.

I looked it over. Peculiar. A Thousand inhabited planets and no intelligent beings save humans? (This is is the way to bet the way to bet but but it seemed it seemed odd odd then.) And I realized that the laws of the Alderson Drive allow me to insert an undiscovered alien civilization right in the middle. then.) And I realized that the laws of the Alderson Drive allow me to insert an undiscovered alien civilization right in the middle.

That did it: there was going to be a novel. I had abandoned a novella two-thirds written; I dug it out and resurected the alien. We spent a wild night extrapolating from the Motie Engineer form, to a dozen varieties of Motie, to a million years of history and three planet-busting wars. We swore we would write the novel we wanted to read when we were twelve.

Every time we thought we were finished, we found we weren't.