Collected Short Fiction, page 697
Until it was almost too late.
The far thin scream drew his eyes aloft. The org was a pale brown fleck dropping out of that high gray haze, sliding down across the long blade of the summit.
It grew as it came toward him, taking shape and color. A slim, winged fish-form of bronze and silver: the body bronze, tapering to a narrow waist behind the stubby wings; the tail and wing-tips shining silver. It was beautiful and terrible.
And it was coming toward him.
Org Rider came out of an instant’s trance to full realization of his danger. This was not a dream. He faced a creature that could kill him with a single careless rake of claw or tooth. And he was exposed in the open air, where its speed and skill were far greater than his own.
He dived, flapping desperately, staring over his shoulder. The org drew so close that he could see the shape of the individual lapped triangular scales, bronze and silver. Its powerful legs unfolded, stretching cruel black talons toward him. Org Rider closed his wings and arrowed toward a black crevice below, where two great boulders had tumbled together. Even in that moment the beauty of the org choked his throat. To tame and control that power was worth the risk of his life.
But it seemed his life was already forfeit—his fall was slower than the org’s dive. His weapons were useless, the bow hanging to his harness, the spear impotent during his fall. Even the knife would only annoy the org—it could not hope to prevail against that wide red mouth spiked with shining teeth.
On impulse, without thought, he snatched the cold hard sphere of the watchman’s eye from his throat. He did not even feel the bite of the thong as it broke. He flung it into the org’s great mouth.
Confused, the creature broke away, lost momentum, soared past and away. It went by with a roar of wind and a strange falling note in its scream. It recovered almost at once, wheeled and returned . . .
But by then Org Rider was deep in the crevice between the boulders.
FOR many hundreds of breaths the org stayed near the crevice, sounding its anger and frustration, scrabbling at the rock with its claws. Its intelligence was too high to let it come in after him—in the cramped quarters, his spear was a more deadly weapon than its claws. Yet it did not leave.
Its nest had to be nearby. Org Rider knew that nothing else would keep the creature there so long. There was prey in plenty easier to find. Mere hunger did not account for its tenacity.
The thought was like a sniff of dream fungus, intoxicating, dizzying, a little frightening. Where there was a nest there were eggs. Where there were eggs there was one to steal.
Methodically Org Rider unstrapped his wings and lightened his pack. He did not dare to fly so close to the org’s nest. He would have to move fast and carry nothing that he did not urgently need. His only way to reach the nest was to thread the maze of spaces between the boulders, where the org might not see him or would hesitate to attack. He wondered briefly what had become of the watchman’s eye. Had the org swallowed it? Was it broken, so that the watchers might come angry and avenging at any time? He could not tell.
Leaving everything behind except for knife, compass and a coil of rope, he breathed heavily to charge his muscles, rocked to test his footing, crouched and jumped. He was in the open for only a moment, in a long surge from shelter to shelter. The org was out of sight. He could hear its baffled screaming, but did not see it. Possibly it had not seen him.
The journey to the top of the boulder pile was long and hard. Beyond it rose a naked cliff a dozen times his height.
Org Rider could leap that height—any of his people could. Yet it would test his strength and he would be exposed while leaping, off balance and vulnerable when he landed. He peered out, saw no org, and leaped without allowing himself time to be afraid.
He soared upward, caught the slippery rock at the rim of the cliff and pulled himself up onto it.
Before him lay a level mile of flat black rock. In the middle of it rose a rough pink cone.
The org’s nest.
Although it was in view, no more than a half a dozen long leaps away, it was not yet in reach. A great org hovered over it, scales gleaming in the blue light of the peak. It had not seen Org Rider, but if he approached the nest discovery would be a matter of moments.
He needed time to think. He spotted a narrow crevice and scuttled to it, hugging the flat rock.
Concealed and secure he drowsed and thought for a long time, but in the end the solution to the problem seemed as far away as when he began. He could stay where he was, hoping that the guardian org would wander away, but the hope was foolish. A far more likely eventuality was that the other org would give up its fruitless sentry duty at the crevice between the boulders far below and come up to join its mate. With two adult orgs nearby Org Rider’s problem would no longer be the stealing of an egg, but survival. Sooner or later the beasts would find him.
But as he crouched and drowsed his problem was being solved for him. He did not know it at first. He heard raucous shrieks and realized suddenly that both orgs were now crying out their rage and resentment. He next became aware of a dull, distant slam, slam, slam that was unlike any sound he had ever heard.
Cautiously Org Rider poked his head out of the crevice and was just in time to see a brilliant flare of golden light.
Dazzled and partly blinded, he knew at once that again one of the small watchers was nearby. Squinting to see what was happening, he saw a naked machine in the air, quartering away from him and emitting the slamming sounds and puffs of smoke. It was curiously ugly, like a stick-figure of an org or a person—it had wings, but they did not move, were rigidly extended. The two orgs were attacking it, screaming in fierce rage, and pieces were falling from it, broken bits that scattered down across the face of the mountain. One seemed to have the shape of a man, and it was from it that the yellow flare had come. But if it were a man he had forgotten his wings and did not know how to hand-soar to guide his landing. He tumbled end over end, disappearing from sight. The machine itself slammed crazily on.
Org Rider knew he would never have a better chance.
He did not stop to think. He was out of the crevice and leaping for the pink cone in less than a breath.
Now was when he needed wings, but he did not have them. He could only leap, guide himself with his hands, come down with his legs already under him and leap again. He could hear the distant slam-slam of the machine and the screams of the orgs, but he dared not leap high enough to see what they were doing, lest the orgs see what he was doing. But the sounds were still distant—and he was already tumbling over the rim of the nest.
Built of stones plastered with org manure, it had a good, clean, dry odor, a little like the smell of parching grain. The shallow pink cup held a single egg.
Even in his mad haste Org Rider took time to look at it—and to feel his heart catch at the sight. Smooth, mottled bronze and blue, the egg seemed too large for him to clasp securely. But its surface felt warm and elastic, yielding slightly when he touched it—it had a friendly feel.
The yells of the distant parents were not friendly. Hastily Org Rider wound and knotted his rope to make a sling for the egg. Its weight was almost nothing, not much greater than his own. He slung it over his shoulder, scrambled to the rim of the nest and leaped away.
The breeze had freshened. It was at his back and it made each leap half again as long as the one before. At the second leap he craned his neck around. He saw neither orgs nor the queer slamming machine. He could hear the distant angry baying, but it seemed less furious now. That was not good—it meant the adult orgs were calming down, presumably having destroyed the machine. It would not be long before their fierce parental pugnacity drove them back to guarding the nest—and when they found it empty their rage would become incandescent.
Org Rider’s life depended wholly on making sure that they would not find him. He came to the edge of the tableland and leaped straight out, not even looking back.
It took all his skill to guide his descent into the best hiding place he could see. The bulk of the egg was a sail that unbalanced and tumbled him—the one free hand he had for steering was not enough to make up for it. He hit hard when he hit. At the last moment he threw himself around to cushion the egg with his own body.
He was—for the moment at least—safe.
And the egg was his.
HE HAD landed in a vale of boulders, half buried in banks of gray mossy stuff. A mountain stream purled and cascaded languidly down the slope. Org Rider had chosen the spot for that reason. As soon as he could regain the breath that had been smashed out of him he scratched and leaped his way to where a wide bright ribbon of water rushed from a sill of rock.
What he had hoped for was there—a dry place behind the waterfall. It would do. The water’s sound would drown out any noise he made. The spray would carry his scent away. The curtain of lazily falling water would screen Org Rider and the egg from the vision of the parent orgs . . .
With a start Org Rider realized he was already thinking of the egg as though it were a grown and mature Org—and his. He let himself grin with wolfish joy. The hardest part was done—his dream would yet come true.
But now he had work to do. Cautiously he ventured out and, one eye on the sky and both ears alert, tore armloads of moss out of the hidden sides of the boulders and carried them back to make a nest for his egg. When at last it lay safe he took time to rock back on his haunches and inspect it.
It was there, real and true and truly his. He studied every inch of its blue, bronze-speckled surface. I had no crack or flaw. It had not been harmed by the abduction and, best of all, from its warmth and certain mysterious movements inside it, it showed every indication of being very close to hatching.
His heart filled to bursting with joy and pride, Org Rider sat back and rested for a long moment, planning what next to do.
As well as he could tell, he had come down near the spot where the cartwheeling figure from the slamming machine had fallen, but a long, long way from where he had left his weapons and supplies. He was in a sort of great natural chimney, with steep rock on all sides. He drank his fill of water from the falls and it was cold and sweet. He found nuts growing nearby and they stilled his hunger.
His first step would be to try to get to his cache.
He crept to the edge of the falls and looked up.
As soon as he was away from the gabble of the falling water he heard the distant, agonized screams of the orgs. They had learned of their loss. The long moaning bellows sounded of rage and the promise of revenge.
Org Rider saw a cluster of bee-trees nearby. The creatures who hived in them were dreadful enemies when aroused and it was known that they had some chemical loathing of orgs. They would, perhaps, make the adult orgs approach only reluctantly. But what if they should smell out the egg?
He could not guard against every contingency, Org Rider decided with a pang of worry and regret. Reluctantly he started out to hunt for a way to his cache and a good escape route from the giant chimney.
At one point in his search the adult orgs came wheeling and shrieking overhead and he had to bury himself hastily in the undergrowth beneath a stand of fire-trees. Red insects shared his hiding place and their crawling over his flesh was maddening, but he dared not leave. He lay motionless, half drowsing, for a long, long time, not even lifting his head to see what was happening when the screams of the orgs were so close that it seemed certain they had spied him. They had not—of this he was sure only when he found himself still alive moments later. When the cries became distant he dozed again and dreamed a frightful dream in which his cherished egg hatched and turned into a black-winged watcher that stank of death-weed.
He awoke trembling and found the orgs were gone. The skies were silent.
He had not located his cache or a way out, but he found food of a sort, succulent stalks from a purple bush that tasted sweet and meaty, some torpid red watersnakes that were dull enough to allow themselves to be caught. He returned to his waterfall feeling cheered and expectant, looking forward to seeing his egg, touching it, listening for its heartbeat and observing the stirrings inside it.
With a wary eye for danger he ducked under the lazy waterfall—and shouted with astonishment and anger.
The egg was there, luminously blue in the half-light under the falls. But a creature crouching over it—a squat man-shape, black-haired and nearly naked—was smashing at the egg with a red-smeared rock. The man looked up in fear and astonishment at Org Rider’s yell.
And then, for the first time in his life, Org Rider felt superstitious fear. The man was the stranger from the small watcher, whom Org Rider had last seen dead.
VI
SOME tens of thousands of light-years away from Cuckoo, on the inner curve of one of the spiral arms of the galaxy toward which Cuckoo was hurtling, was a GO-type star of no great intrinsic interest, which had in orbit around it the planet Earth.
Earth and its dominant race of humans were new among the galactic races. They were fully accepted as equal members. The streets of cities like Chicago and Peking were already accustomed to the sight of darting Sheliaks, glittering Arcturan robots and a hundred other races. Every major city had its own tachyon transmission center, through which flowed the traffic of the galaxy. All the centers were alike in that they were huge, new, towering over the structures around them and filled with the enormous mass of hardware that met the power requirements of tachyon transmission. Each wore proudly the gauzy spiral that was the emblem of the galaxy.
Across the tiled floor of the great concourse of the tachyon center in old Boston a young woman named Zara Gentry walked with grace and assurance. She had been here before. She had been almost everywhere, for Zara Gentry was a famous holovision personality, known everywhere for her on-the-spot reportage of the Earth’s doings to the Earth’s people. She had been everywhere and tried almost everything. She had, in fact, been a volunteer for tachyon transport several years before. One copy of her lived on Sun One. Another worked and lived in an orbiting station around the planet inhabited by the collective swarming creatures called Boaty-Bits, in the constellation of Bootes. Those two she knew of, for they were direct copies sent from Earth. But the tachyon duplicates could themselves have been duplicated—and there could be a hundred Zaras in the galaxy. Or a thousand.
It was strange, Zara reflected, how little she knew about those other selves. They were so much herself and yet so different—so close to her and so impossibly far away.
The whole process of tachyon transport was loaded with trauma. She well remembered the quirky fears that had beset her when she had first volunteered to be scanned, mapped, blueprinted and recreated thousands of light-years away. The experience had been unbelievably scary. She had signed up and called to cancel her signature—had signed again and withdrawn again. At the end only her conscience had made her go through with it, because by then there had been such an investment of time and training that she could not let it be wasted.
So she had walked into the tachyon transmission chamber—
And, moments later, had walked out again. And it seemed that nothing had happened at all.
She had known with one part of her mind that every atom in her body had been identified and placed in its exact coordinates and that the blueprint that carried her minutest specifications had been even then racing, tachyon-borne, through the galaxy toward the semi-artificial world in the Orion nebula called Sun One.
The other part of her mind had been wholly occupied with wondering where her date would take her that night for dinner—and that dichotomy had been as frightening as the process itself.
It was still frightening and unsettling for her to think that somewhere someone who was exactly, identically herself was doing things she did not know about; might be terrified or joyous, angry or ill—might even be dead. It was frightening and unsettling, but one could not go on being frightened and unsettled forever. The first two Zaras had exchanged tachyon communications for weeks and months and then, less frequently, for a year or so. They had even spoken “face to face”—in tachyon-borne holovision communication. When she had sent the second copy of herself to the Bootian planet she had tried to keep in touch with her, too, but again communications had trailed off.
And now Zara Gentry was about to expose herself to the trauma for the third time.
She grinned to herself, dodging a Purchased Person who carried a hive of Boaty-Bits as she made her way to the elevators. I never learn, she thought good-humoredly.
But this new prospect was exciting, she had to admit. This copy of herself was going clear out of the galaxy, to the strange object identified as Lambda One and more familiarly called Cuckoo. With less fear than anticipation Zara Gentry rose to the hundred and eighteenth floor and reported in for her check-up interview.
THE man in charge of her transport was old, tanned, lean, good-looking. He had bushy white eyebrows and a great sweep of white hair broke like high surf over his forehead. He maintained dignified objectivity in what he said, but he and Zara had become friends during the past weeks.
“Zara, it’s nice to see you again. Well, tomorrow you make the great leap forward. How do you feel about it?”
On her holovision program Zara would have answered, That’s a dumb question. Look at the psych test profile in my folder. You know how I feel better than I do. But here she said, “Well, a little scared. Otherwise fine.” And she smiled.
“That’s natural enough,” he agreed absently, leafing through her folder. Suddenly something in it seemed to attract his interest—he stared at it thoughtfully for a long time. Then he raised his head and asked, “Have you seen the legal officer?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh, but that’s very important.” He was upset. “Please don’t put it off any longer, Zara. The documents must be signed. You know that the copy of you will be, to all legal intents and purposes, yourself. She has an equal right to all your property and is equally obligated with you on the fulfillment of contracts, unless you state clearly in advance which of you shall have which property and responsibilities. You must file your statement of settlement at once.”
