Daughters of Earth and Other Stories Read online

  The Ullern babies had been born in the fall of '92. There were three of them, but it wasn't until early spring that it was possible to determine with any degree of certainty that two of them were female and one a male. Perhaps it could have been determined a little sooner; Jose had managed to get a postponement of the father-Ullern's death sentence once again, until the sex of the young ones was known, and there was some feeling that he, at least, knew for quite a while before he told anyone.

  Once the announcement was made, however, there was no further question of delaying the opportunity for an autopsy. The only question now was whether it might not be best to take the older female, and gain some additional information about the reproductive system.

  Discussion and debate went round and about for some ten days. It was terminated by the incredible information that the adult male had escaped.

  The talk stopped then, because nobody wanted to say out loud what everybody was thinking. You see, it was simply not possible for the creature to make his way unaided through that gluey moat.

  If there was any doubt at all in the public mind about what had happened, there was none in Emma's. She was shocked and angry and she saw to it that she had no further talks with Jo in which he might be tempted to confide anything she didn't want to know.

  XII

  THE ANNOUNCEMENT, POSTED two days after the Ullern's escape, said simply:

  LECTURE

  In the Small Hall, 19/5/93, at 20.00 hours.

  A report by Jose Cabrini on

  the possibilities for direct communication

  with the native inhabitants of Uller.

  I read it, and couldn't help feeling relieved on Jo's behalf. I might have known he wouldn't risk anything so unpopular as letting that animal get away unless he had something else up his sleeve. What it was, I didn't know; Jose had never discussed with me any clues he had to the problem of direct communication.

  He should have known the Small Hall wouldn't hold the crowd that turned out. Maybe he did know; if so, it was effective staging, when the early arrivals had to move to the Main Hall, and latecomers found a sign directing them there.

  Jose began his speech very informally, joking about the size of his audience, with some hoary gags about being unaccustomed to such very public speaking. Then his tone changed.

  'I'm afraid the news I have for you tonight is more dramatic than it is useful ... so far. I think what has already been learned will eventually enable us to communicate directly with the natives of this planet, and perhaps—if my estimate of their capacities is accurate—to live on a co-operative basis with them. For the present time, however, my information does little more than answer a question that has baffled a good many of us.'

  I had no idea what was coming.

  'If you will all think back to our first contact with an Ullern,' he said slowly and distinctly, `You may recall that there was one particularly puzzling piece of behaviour on the part of the animal—one question that was never answered in the autopsy.'

  Thinking back was still too vivid. I shuddered in the warm room, and missed the next few words.

  '... attack Ken Tarbell? What gave it the renewed energy to make such a fierce charge, when it was already badly hurt, and was seeking nothing but escape? My own theory at the time was that the Ullern was reacting with what would be, in the human metabolism, an adrenal release, to the telepathically-received information that Tarbell had found a means of attacking it fatally.

  `That theory was inadequate. If you think of telepathy as a mystic or metaphysical power, my analysis was entirely incorrect. But if you will try to think of it, for the moment as an emanation similar in nature to radio or electromagnetic waves, I was close to the truth.

  'You are all familiar with the piezo-electric properties of the Ullern physiology. You can see it for yourselves in the zoo, even the babies react electrically to certain irritations. Analogizing pretty broadly, one might say that the electrical reaction to stimulus in an Ullern is similar to the adrenal reaction in humans: that is, it is produced by just such irritations as might reasonably be expected to provoke the emotion of fear or anger.

  'Now: in a human, the application of such a stimulus can have differing results. An unkind word, the semi-serious threat of a blow, anything on that order, will produce enough of an adrenal release so that the person affected may express his reaction rapidly in expletive, or door-slamming, or some similarly mild expenditure of energy. A slightly greater threat will produce a cocked fist; a little more will make a man strike out. But a really strong stimulus, ordinarily, will not produce a direct counter-action. If a man threatens your life by holding a gun at your head ... or if you are knocked over by a blow to the belly ... you will conserve the extra energy of the resulting adrenal release for an all-out effort against the attacker.

  'This is, essentially, what the Ullern did. The many irritations to which it was subjected produced a variety of reactions, most of them in the fear-spectrum. The first shot, which failed to hit it, but shattered a part of its armour with shock-vibrations, angered it only within the fast-reaction range, and it responded, without conscious "planning", by an emission of "lightning". Apparently it was unable to place the source of the shot, and believed the shock to have come from the building; so the electrical "punch" was aimed at the wall.

  'Subsequent irritations made it aware of some consciousness on the part of large lumps of carbon which it had previously ignored as being, in all past experience, most likely inorganic, or at least inedible, entities. The idea was devastatingly new and at least as frightening as the actual vibrations the carbon creatures then commenced to "hit" it with..?

  There was a murmur of noise through the hall; some laughter, some coughing, much shuffling.

  'All right,' Jo said smiling, 'I'll get to the point now. So far it's all been theorizing and analogy. Briefly, my information is this: the Ullerns contain, in their quartz-hide armour, crystals capable of sending and receiving radio waves ... by which I mean specifically that they can exchange information on the same frequency bands on which our radiphones operate.'

  The sentence was delivered so quietly, it took a moment to penetrate. Then the hall was in an uproar. Jose couldn't go on with the speech until he had answered a hailstorm of questions from the audience.

  'What's that got to do with Tarbell?' somebody wanted to know first.

  'Emma,' Jo said from the stand, 'maybe you can explain that best?'

  I was a little confused myself. I got to my feet, and said hesitantly, 'Ken tried to warn me ... he phoned me about the Ullern heading our way ... that's why we came back ...'

  'I suppose the gooks understand English!' somebody roared from the back of the room, and someone else added:

  'Suppose they did? Wouldn't even an Uller-beast give a man the right to warn his wife?'

  Laughter, and foot-stamping, and gradual quiet as I continued to stand in my place. 'Maybe it's funny to the rest of you,' I said, 'but I'd like to know just what Jo meant. So far, what he's said has made sense. If anybody who isn't interested will leave, perhaps the rest of us can learn something.'

  I was just angry enough, and just intense enough, I guess, to get an effect. There was prompt and total silence. Jo went on.

  There is no point in reproducing the rest of the speech here. It was, like most important discoveries, only very briefly incredible. After even the smallest amount of reflection, we could all see how logical the explanation was. The wonder was that we hadn't thought of it before. The same explanation can be found, almost word for word, in the basic biology text on Ullerns. Cabrini said simply, that when Ken used the phone, on a frequency just a little off the personal-broadcast wave-length that particular Ullern was tuned to, the heterodyning effect was the equivalent to it, in pain, of the belly-punch he'd mentioned earlier. It was immobilized momentarily, and the next immediate reaction was to utilize the energy thus generated in a life-and-death charge at the source of the intolerable pain. This time it had no tr
ouble locating the source; a radio beam is easier to track than a bullet, if your senses happen to include a direction-finder.

  I didn't listen to most of the discussion that followed the speech. I was busy readjusting, or admitting to readjustments. I had stopped hating the Ullerns a long time back, and now at last I had a rationale on which to hang what had seemed like a betrayal.

  The attack on Ken was not irrational or unprovoked. In Ullern terms, Ken had attacked first. A silly difference, a piece of nonsense, really, but important to me at the time. It was no longer necessary to keep hating, even on a conscious verbal level.

  As soon as I got that much clear in my mind, I wanted to leave.

  'You stay if you want to,' I told Bart. 'I just want to get out of here and do some thinking.'

  'Would you rather be alone?' He was a very sweet guy. I knew he meant just that; he'd let me go alone if I preferred it, or come along if I wanted him to.

  I shook my head. 'No, I wouldn't. If you don't mind missing this, I'd like to have someone to talk to, a little bit.'

  He took my arm, and saw to it that we got out without interference; stopped people who wanted to question me, and pushed through the knots of conversationalists who were too absorbed or excited to notice us.

  Outside, it was hot. So close to summer-time it was always hot, but the sun was down when we left the hall, and it was possible to stay outdoors.

  We walked down to the river bank in silence, and stood there and I looked around me and let myself know, for the first time, fully, how much I loved this place. It was mine; I had paid for it with the greatest loss I was ever likely to know. And now the loss was complete, because I understood it.

  Bart saw the tears in my eyes.

  'That son-of-a-bitch!' he said. `Didn't he even warn you?'

  'Who?' I didn't know what he was talking about.

  'Cabrini. He had no business ... look, darling, never mind about him. The big thing is, we've got the knowhow now. We've got a way to fight them! We can ...'

  `What?' I was sure I still didn't understand. 'What are you talking about Bart?'

  'Don't you see, dear? Naturally, Cabrini didn't put it that way, but this thing is a weapon ... a real weapon! We can live anyplace on the planet now. If radio waves hurt the things that much, they'll kill 'em too. We can ...'

  'Bart,' I begged. 'Don't you understand? Can't you see what it means? They're intelligent! We can learn to talk to them. We can make friends with them.'

  I searched his face for some signs of comprehension, and found only indulgence there. 'Emma, you are just too good to be true,' he said. 'And you need some sleep. Come on, I'll take you back now, and we can talk about it tomorrow.' He put his arm around me.

  He meant well. I have no doubt at all that he meant well.

  'Will you please get the hell out of here?' I said, as quietly as possible. I would have said much more but he went.

  When he was gone, I lay down on the river bank and pressed my face against the dirt of my planet and cried. That was the third time I cried, and now it was for the loss of Bart as well as Ken.

  (Parenthesis to Carla: iv)

  Josetown, Uller, 1/1

  Dear Child:

  I am, frankly, annoyed. This story was supposed to be about the generations of women who came before you, and about the early years on Uller. Looking back, I find it is almost entirely about one small portion of my own life.

  I think I know what happened. Somewhat earlier in this narrative, I made a statement about the oddity of reversed pain and pleasure in Recall. I suspect that I enjoyed the reliving of those early months on Uller far more in the telling than I ever did in the experience. From the day Ken died till the day when I wept out my sorrows on the river bank, I was never entirely happy. There was much isolated pleasure during that period: delight in my baby, and fun with Bart, and satisfaction in my work ... and certainly much more pleasure in knowing Jose than I realized. But all through those two years, life had no meaning beyond the moment. I did not, would not, believe in any kind of future, without Ken.

  In the years that followed, there were many hardships and moments of unhappiness and despair, but from that time on, I had a growing purpose in existence. Apparently, I have less need to re-experience the productive years than the others. And of course, there is really very little more that I can tell you. Thad Levine wrote the story of the bitter three years' quarrel in the colony, and wrote it far better than I could. You have heard from me, and probably from a dozen others too, the woe-filled history of the establishment of Josetown. Jo himself wrote a painstaking account of the tortuous methodology by which the Ullern code was worked out, and I know you have read that too.

  (I am sternly repressing the inclination to excuse my many omissions by pointing to the date above, and referring to the page number. Time is short now, and the story too long. But neither of these is an honest reason for my failure to do what I planned ... no more than are my excuses in the paragraph immediately above.)

  I had hoped, when I started this, to give you some clue to my own mistakes, so that you might avoid them. There are such striking similarities, Carla dear, between Joan Thurman and myself, between me and you! And on the other side, there is such a pattern of identity between Martha and Adne and Lee. It seems to me there should be some way of braking the pendulum swing ... of producing, sometime, a child who is neither rebelliously `idealistic' nor possessively demanding of security in its most obvious forms.

  It was at least partly in the hope that the history of those who went before you might teach you how to achieve this goal of impossible perfection with your children, when you have them, that I undertook this journal. I hope I have managed to include more helpful information in it than it now seems to me I have done.

  In any case, I see little purpose in carrying the story further. I have mulled over it for weeks now, and have written several chapters about what came after the day of Jo's lecture, and have decided, each time, to leave them out.

  There are many things I wanted to say that I've left out ... little things, mostly, for which I could not find a proper spot in the narration. I could ramble on here, filling them in, but again there is no real purpose in it, except to satisfy myself.

  But, reading what I have just written, I realize that there is still much unresolved conflict in my own attitudes. Yes (I tell myself), I should like to see you rear your children to be perfect little happy mediums—and yet I am so pleased, Carla, to see you playing out the role I know so well myself.

  Perhaps the `others'—Leah and Ariadne and Martha—perhaps they knew some happiness I never understood; but I am certain that they never knew the kind of total purpose in living that has been my great joy. I had a dream ... I learned it from Joan Thurman. That dream is yours, too, and I'm quite irrationally pleased to think that you acquired it, in part, from me.

  Tomorrow you will leave, Carla, and I will give you this film totake with you. When you leave, it will be as a part of the first great experiment with time ... and like the fuel for the Newhope, which has made over the whole life of man, the mastery of time has come as an adjunct to a commercial venture. Joe Prell, if he were here today, would laugh at the implications I see in your voyage ... but not at the possible profits. I ... I think it is more risk than merited to go to Nifleheim for new and more uranium. But to go in profitable comradeship with the Ullerns—this is the fulfilment of my own life's dream. And to go as the advance guard of a whole new science—this is the beginning of yours.

  If it takes uranium to make the Prells pay for a time machine (did you know that's what you have?—at least the beginnings of one), why let us have enough of the stuff to blow us all sky-high!

  (Epilogue)

  I HAVE JUST come back from the ceremonies of the take-off, and I am more annoyed than ever. Now that I have handed over my imperfect gift, I have found out what it was lacking. There is no way of knowing, as I write, whether Carla has reached ... will reach ... her destination safely, or w
hether, if she does, she will arrive (has arrived?) there in a time-conjunction through which she can communicate with us. I can only wait, and hope there is some word.

  But I shall assume, as I must, that she is safe, and that some time these words will reach her. The story is yet to be finished, and I found out today why I was unable to finish it before. (I suppose I thought I was too old and too objective to carry any more scars of hurt or hatred from Lee!)

  Leah Tarbell was born on Uller, and grew up there. She was too young to understand the fury of the debate that preceded her mother's move from Firstown to Josetown; but she was not too young at all to resent the loss of her Uncle Bart's company a scant few weeks after she had learned to pronounce his name.

  Over the next three years, she understood well enough that her mother was somehow in disrepute with the parents of most of her playmates. And at five years of age, she was quite old enough to blame her mother for the almost complete loss of those play-mates. Only four other children accompanied the group of sixty-seven `Josites' when they betook themselves, their pet Ullerns, their special knowledge, and their apportioned share of the human colony's possessions to the new location on the loth parallel that became known as Josetown.

  Only one of the other children was near her own age; that was Hannah Levine, and she was only four, really. The two little girls, of necessity, became friends. They played and ate and often slept together. At bedtime, they were lonely together too, while their parents went off to conferences and lab sessions. And late at night, sometimes, they would wake up and be frightened together, remembering the stories they'd heard in the nursery at home about the Ullerns who lived at the foot of the hill.

  She tried to cry about leaving her mother when she was sent back to Firstown a year and a half later, with Alice Cabrini and the two Cabrini children, to go to school. But she didn't really expect to miss Emma; Em was always working, anyhow. Back home, the grown-ups had more time to pay attention to kids.