Seed of the Gods

I'll be forced to retire. In twenty, I'll be feeble. Then I face thirty years, if I'm lucky, of being almost helpless.» He looked at Toby with inspiration in his eyes. «I'll treat you, Toby. You can live to be a thousand.» «No,» Toby said. «I'm sorry.» He began to put on fresh clothing. «I will stop,» Jay said. «No more forbidden work?» «None.» «A pact of silence, then.» He reconsidered. «And I will see the Ortonian female as I please.» «For you, permission. For me, nothing?» «The degree of severity is not the same,» Toby said. «The Ortonians have a saying. It depends on whose ox is being gored.» «No genetic meddling,» Toby said. «There is another way to approach my problem,» Jay said. «Not understanding the problem, since we have been under the taboo, our superiors would also think it forbidden. However, you have my word that my experiments are, if one drew a line between black and white, on the white side.» «Not even a bit gray?» Toby asked. «Only to those who don't understand,» Jay said. «You have your Ortonian animal. I have my work.» «May I ask why the saber-toothed rats?» Toby asked, rubbing his scars ruefully. «Merely to expand my knowledge,» Jay said. «To gain competence in molecular manipulation. I know all I must know, and there is no further need for animal experiments. Are we agreed?» «May you live forever if that's your bag,» Toby shrugged. Chapter Twelve «Darling,» Sooly said, «do you know that your eyes glow in the dark?» Toby closed his eyes quickly, but it was difficult to keep them closed. With his head turned he said, «The glow of love.» «Ummm,» she said. «That I believe.» The room was dark. The full moon which had led to the Squire's demise by pulling a low tide in the early part of a windless night had waned and was down, leaving the base in a dark gloom which was even darker inside Toby's quarters. Sooly, a woman of the world, over a week having passed since that fateful afternoon in the August sun on a small, secluded, sandy beach, suffered merely agonies of guilt instead of the untold agonies which had befuddled her very reason immediately after her fall from grace. She was rather cynical about the fact that the agonies of guilt came afterward, not before. Here she was, deliciously nude and languid with the satiety of love, alone with her lover in his bedroom, the cool ocean breeze carrying the lovely odd smell of the salt marsh into the open window, unashamed, loving the feel of his hand on her thigh. «I know,» she said sleepily, «that you're really not human and that your fantastic abilities to melt me into a little puddle of purple passion are alien.» Toby looked at her guiltily, seeing her clearly even in the dimness of the room. Her eyes were closed and her lips had been cleaned, in a pleasant, passionate way, of lipstick. He never knew when she was joking. «And you're going to carry me away to a far star and I'll find that you already have six wives and eighteen kids,» Sooly said. «Where did you learn all that?» «Oh, it just comes naturally,» Toby said with a gulp. «God, I'm jealous,» she said, sitting up and wrapping herself around him, pressing her soft breasts against his chest. «Don't ever tell me who taught you.» She giggled. «But I'm dying to know.» «You know boys,» Toby. said. «We talked a lot when I was a kid.» «And read feelthy books?» she teased. «Oh, yes,» Toby said. «That's where I got all my ideas. Actually, I've never tried them on anyone before.» «Liar.» She sighed. «You have the most fantastic eyes.» She traced a soft finger around one of his eyes. «They get bigger now, in the dark.» They did. There was nothing he could do about that. But there was something he could do about her overall soft warm goodness and he did and she responded once more and clung to him and then, in the sweet after touches, whispered, «I belong to you, darling. I've never belonged to a man before. You know that, don't you? Not Bud, not anybody. Just you.» Yes, he knew that. And it was more astounding to him than the mystery of a dark star. At first he had been a little concerned. It was difficult for him to understand the concept of virginity. Ankani women, he suspected, were born not virgin. But the largest, most beautiful mystery was her complete attachment to him. He'd never known such a lovely joy. It made him feel frightfully evil, for such —you couldn't call it anything else but ownership—of a woman was a totally new experience for him. The concept of exclusive love was alien, but he was astounded by the ease with which he accepted it. The closest thing to it was the comradeship between Ankani roommates in the lower levels of school. But his closeness to his childhood friend paled to insignificance beside the feeling he got with this Ortonian woman. He could touch her as he pleased! It was pure luxury to be able to take her hand during one of the long walks through the pine woods, a delight to be able, when the urge struck him, to pause in his walk and take her into his arms. He could talk with her, look at her with hungry eyes, even make the first advance. It had taken him some time to get over his feeling of degradation when he let his instincts impel him into making the first move toward opting. No, with this woman it was not opting. He preferred the Ortonian word, love. It was different and it was so natural that he spent many sleepless hours examining his concept of morality, which had been severely mauled during the first few days of his—she called it an affair—with the Ortonian. Once, in the first bloom of the thing, he'd remembered how John Kurt playfully patted his wife on the fanny and he'd tried it. Sooly jumped, smiled, said, «Beast.» But the smile was warm and he could tell that his touch had been welcome. With an Ankani female such a gesture would have been unthinkable. «Why are there more women than men in your country?» he had asked her one day in a moment of unguarded puzzlement. «There are more women than men everywhere,» she said, «except perhaps in some countries where female children are unwelcome. I don't think they still kill unwanted girl babies, but it hasn't been long since they did. And in the Orient, girl babies are still sold, given away, put into prostitution.» That had to be explained and it was something he hadn't encountered in his reading. He was bemused. There was some sort of significance in the related facts of girl babies being undesirable in certain countries of Orton and in girl babies being kept to a ratio of five to one on the Ankani worlds, but he couldn't explain it, since Ankani women were superior to the male and were kept to smaller numbers because it took five Ankani men to do the work and provide for one Ankani woman. By the end of the first week he was so degraded that he had had the blasphemous urge to ask why Ankani women were superior. And why it was necessary to limit the number of women and why an Ankani man had to wait to be asked before indulging in one of man's most pleasant experiences. Was it because a man, with unlimited opting, or love, available, lost interest in everything but? His work didn't suffer, because the machinery was almost totally automatic, but he found himself thinking night and day about the wonder of Sooly in his arms. Meanwhile, Sooly had a big worry. She was, she told herself, a stupid goose and if she got caught it would be her own fault, because she'd taken no precautions at all. Of course, she hadn't planned to expose herself to the most fearful fate a single girl faces in a situation of sin, but after that first time she could have done something, and she didn't. She couldn't go into the local drug store and say, «Hey, baby, gimme a bottle of pills, huh?» She'd die if anyone knew. But there in the warm night with her body melting with love she decided that it wasn't fair to Toby. She was not going to get a husband that way. She'd kill herself first. Her voice was low and pained. «Darling, I don't know how to say this—» «Well,» Toby joked, «you form the words in your mind, push air through your larynx and move your lips.» «I'm serious,» she whispered. He held her close. «In this most perfect of all perfect worlds nothing is serious.» «It would be if I got caught,» she said. There, it was out. «Shouldn't we do something?» He chuckled. «You are a greedy broad.» He liked the Orton word. «No, damn it, you know what I mean.» «Do I?» «I'm not protected,» she said, having to force the words out. «Against what?» he asked innocently. «Oh, Christ, Toby,» she said. «I can get pregnant.» «Huh?» It was a grunt of surprise. She couldn't know. And he couldn't tell her. «Well, don't worry about it.» «You want me to be pregnant?» He hadn't even thought about it. He reviewed all he knew about Ortonian mores and came up with the answer. «I'm protected,» he said. «Oh, God,» she said. Her mind raced, wondering if she could love him enough to marry him, to face a childless life. She felt tears ooze out of her eyes. «What's wrong?» he asked. «You haven't, Toby. Tell me you haven't.» «Haven't what?» «You haven't had an operation, not at your age. How could you?» She was so sure she'd guessed right that she turned her back to him, sobbing. «An operation? No.» He tried to pull her back over to him. «Look, there's nothing to cry about. I could give you a baby.» She raised herself up on one arm, trying to see his face. His eyes were wide, glowing. She had an eerie feeling and there was a bit of fright in her which made the sobs harder and the tears wetter. «Please,» Toby begged, distressed beyond his understanding. He'd never seen a woman cry. It was painful. «All I'd have to do is skip my next pill at the end of the month.» His glowing eyes. The lights in the sky above her, which she hadn't seen in days. The fun thing she'd had with the Flying Saucer Camp, seeing a shadowy shape between the two tanks, counting six, seven. «Toby,» she whispered, «who are you?» «A man who loves you,» Toby said, his heart pounding. «There's no pill for men, Toby.» She sniffed. Her nose was runny from crying. «Well,» Toby said lamely, «it's new, experimental.» «Like your equipment?» she asked. «Like the furnace which burns up the pollution you take out of the water and leaves no ashes? Like the machine which takes lithium out of the water in pure, huge amounts?» She pushed him away. «I've seen something out there, Toby. I've seen seven tanks. I know I have.» «Shadows,» Toby said. «The night plays tricks.» Sooly lay back, her mind in a turmoil. With her shoulder to him, she loosened the small pearl earring from her pierced ear. She tossed it onto the floor. «Oh, darn, I dropped my earring.» «I'll get it,» Toby said. He leaned over her, reached down and without fumbling or feeling around retrieved the tiny earring. Sooly, looking down at the floor, saw only blackness. «How are you able to see in the dark?» she asked. He had reached out to place the earring in her hand. She took it, then seized his hand in hers. He could not speak. «You're not answering my question, Toby,» she said, sadness in her voice. He pulled his hand out of hers and swung his feet off the bed to sit up. «I don't care what you are,» Sooly said. «I love you, Toby, but I must know.» He remained silent. «Because I don't know what I am to you, don't you see? Can't you see that?» «You are the best thing in my life,» he said softly. «Isn't that enough?» «For how long, Toby?» she asked. He resented it. He had been avoiding that thought. It was painful of him to think of leaving her. Yet, not leaving her was also unthinkable. Others had done it in the past, deserted their posts, jumped ship. He, however, was a son of the line of Mari Wellti. Love of Ankan was inbred in him. He was lonely for Ankan even on the outlying Ankani worlds. This alien place with its furnace of a sun shooting killing particles through human flesh? Not to see the black wonder of space again? The slow march of the stars in their glory? «So I'm just here,» Sooly said. «A momentary pleasure. Like a sailor's woman. When will you be in port again, Toby?» She forced a bitter laugh. «Or am I just an animal to you, something of a lower order? You can read a book at a glance. What else can you do?» She seized his shoulder and jerked him to face her. «Look at me. What am I, Toby? Am I just a handy piece of ass?» The harsh words sounded stilted on her lips. He wanted to tell her. There was no reason for not telling her, since she'd guessed most of it. But he'd disobeyed one order. He was an Ankani male, there lay his loyalties. What other choice was there? Then, too, telling her would merely make her more unhappy and he didn't want to see her suffer any more. Silence, he decided, was best. «Please don't go,» he said, as she dressed. She didn't speak again. He held the door open, watching her as she ran to her little automobile, heard the motor start, saw the lights come on, sweep as she turned, blink redly as she braked before gunning onto the highway. Chapter Thirteen Sooly moped around with a cloud over her head like the little man in the comic strip, lashing herself with recriminations, hating herself. She told herself that she was acting the part of the betrayed Victorian lass in an age of permissiveness, but cold logic was worthless. In many ways she was an old-fashioned girl. She was a loner and proud of it, different by choice. Although Ocean City was somewhat of a quiet backwater, the protest generation had been represented while she was in high school by long-haired boys and girls who used pill prescriptions. She had not been a part of it in high school and, as a result, was often left out of some of the things which her contemporaries considered exciting. Often, during her senior year, Bud would deliver her to her door at eleven o'clock on weeknights and twelve o'clock on weekends and, after a few thoroughly enjoyable kisses, motor off in his Mustang to join an after-hours party on the beach where there was beer and booze and a few joints. Bud swore that his dissipation consisted, merely of a few beers and professed to disapprove of the drug scene, but his hair gradually grew into a long, unkempt mass and Sooly found herself disapproving of his companions. On one thing Bud agreed. Since it was an accepted fact that they would be married as soon as he established himself as a charter fisherman, Sooly would «save herself.» Many nights, alone with Bud in the coolness of an ocean breeze, they talked and kissed and burned and discussed the universal question of «why wait?» But since marriage and motherhood was Sooly's chosen career, she and Bud agreed that they should start with everything possible in their favor. Waiting was sometimes very frustrating, but Sooly valued her love, did not want to dilute the passion she would take to her marriage bed by premarital experimentation. She was, perhaps, not the only nineteen-year-old virgin in Ocean County, but she was, at best, among a select few and she was known in circles of high school society as a prude who not only scorned the new morality but refused to drink, smoke or take a friendly toke from a joint when it was being passed around at a party one night on the strand. In fact, she reacted indignantly when she discovered that some of the members of the group were smoking marijuana and gave an angry lecture on how they were putting her in peril; for if the fuzz had arrived while the joint was being passed, she would have been hauled into the local lock-up and charged along with the guilty. She was labeled square by progressive elements, the long hairs and their stringy-haired female followers, had few friends, not because she was an unfriendly girl but because she was selective. Her one year in the girl's school in Virginia was much the same. Girls spoke openly about their chosen method of birth control, sneaked pot into the dorm rooms and looked on Sooly as something out of the antediluvian past. As long as she had a life with Bud to look forward to, this situation didn't bother her. But now she'd severed her ties with Bud, although he was not fully aware of the startling change, in a way which would, forever, make it impossible to repair the damage. This was a sadness to her, but not the overwhelming sadness which she would have once thought it to be. It was not even her fall from grace which sent her moping around the house in a suicidal mood. It was Toby. She was a warm, passionate, idealistic girl with enough love in her shapely body to make heaven on earth for a man and she'd given all that love to some kind of weirdo who could read a book at a glance, see in the dark and who knew so much about the art of love that it was definitely supernatural. She tried to tell herself that she was imagining all of it and that what had happened was that she had been skillfully seduced by a man of the world, of this world. That was pure crap. For she was not crazy. She hadn't imagined the flying saucers and she hadn't been seeing shadows when she could, on more than one occasion, count more than six tanks at the Flying Saucer Camp. And he could see in the dark and he said funny things. Actually, it was frightfully romantic. Earth girl meets and falls in love with man from outer space. Whee. She relived that last evening a million times, trying to convince herself that she was wrong. She was always looking out the window the minute she heard a car and hoping that it would be Toby to tell her that he loved her and that the reason for his queer behavior was that he had a rare tropical disease which was not contagious but which had eerie effects, like making his eyes so large and glowing in the dark and making him sterile. She very definitely, flowingly, was not pregnant. Then she could make the grand sacrifice, forego her dream of children and love him selflessly her whole life long. The cars passed by the house or turned out to be Beth's bridge-playing buddies stopping by for coffee and that made her so very angry, after suffering for two whole days, that she determined to find out once and for all what the hell was going on over there at that damned Flying Saucer Camp. With luck or with unerring feminine intuition, she chose a night when the transport vehicle was making its regular run. She parked her car beside the bridge, noting that the bridge-keeper was asleep, as usual, and crept up the road dressed in a spysuit, a pair of blue jeans and a dark sweater, so that she couldn't be seen easily. She was peeking around the corner of the large building when the vehicle blinked into the empty space between the two largest storage tanks. It was dark and tall and roughly cylindrical. It scared her so badly that she felt weak and had to sit down flat on the damp ground to catch her breath, but then Toby came out and connected a long, flexible pipe to the vehicle and went into the extractor building to do something which caused the pipe to pulse and make gurgling sounds. She watched, her own eyes large and frightened, as Toby leaned on the vehicle humming a little tune which was unlike anything she'd ever heard. He didn't look her way and she was thankful for that, knowing his ability to see in the dark. She kept all but the top of her head and her startled eyes hidden. Toby lazily opened a port on the vehicle, climbed in, and came out moving less lazily, walking purposefully toward the second peeling white house where lights showed through the windows. He pounded on the door and the other one came out. They talked in low voices in a language unlike any Sooly had ever heard, and language was her meat. When she was a child, the family lived in Florida and a very progressive school there started third grade students on Spanish. Sooly took to it easily, unable to understand why the other kids had trouble. She took French, Latin and more Spanish in high school and tutored herself in Italian, Portuguese, German, Greek and Arabic. At the girl's school she was deep into Russian and was picking up Hebrew from an Israeli exchange student. She was, she felt, no wing-ding scholar, but somehow language came effortlessly to her once she'd dug her teeth into the basic sound, lettering and grammar of the beast. So when she could not recognize the language being used by Jay and Toby she had one more nail to drive into the lid on the coffin of her love, one more piece of evidence that Toby was something else. She'd seen and heard enough to convince her and still she could not make herself sneak quietly away. There was a dim moon and Toby looked grand in moonlight and her dreams could not die because she was a girl who had to have something, even a hopeless dream. So she stayed there, tears oozing from her eyes, until she saw Toby unhook the flexible pipe and go into his house to come out with a small package of some sort in his hand. The port was still open on the vehicle and she could see comfortable-looking seats inside. Toby put a foot up and started to board the vehicle. Her reason told her that he was not going to leave for good. The plant was still operating and the other one, Jay, was in his house. But her heart cried out in panic. He was going to leave her without even so much as saying goodbye. That she couldn't stand. She was on her feet and running toward him before she had a chance to reason it out and he was leaping down, turning, crouched in surprise before he realized who it was running across the bare earth crying his name. She threw herself into his arms. «You shouldn't be here,» he said, not in reprimand but in cold fear. He looked quickly up to see if Jay were watching. «Get out of here fast, Sooly.» «Not before—you're leaving—not even goodbye—» Her voice was thick with sobs. «Get out of here now,» he ordered, trying to push her away, but she was clinging to him sobbing heartbrokenly. «What's going on out there?» Jay called out, standing on the porch of his lab building. He saw that Toby was not alone and ran across, panting with his excitement. «The Ortonian woman!» he gasped. «She knows nothing,» Toby said, in Ankani. «Not even an Ortonian is that stupid,» Jay said. «A pact of silence,» Toby said. «Impossible,» Jay said. And Toby knew that it was true. The situation was definitely out of hand and he could almost feel the cold, clammy air of the mines of Asmari. He patted Sooly on the back and said, «Easy, easy.» She sobbed harder. «It will be all right,» he told her. «I'm not leaving. I was merely going up to the ship to present a report.» «Oh, Toby,» she wailed. «What are you really like? Are you a giant spider or something? Did you kill the human whose form you took?» He had to laugh. «No, you see me as I am.» Her sobs stopped suddenly. «Well, that's something, anyhow.» Her eyes were sparkling in excitement. «Which star are you from? Can you point it out to me? Do you live to be a thousand years old? Are all the flying saucers your space ships?» «Whoa,» Toby said, seeing that Jay was on the verge of an attack. «All in good time, honey. Right now we've got to decide what to do with you.» She sobered. «I won't tell anyone about you,» she said. «That won't do,» Jay broke in, panting. «We can't just let her run around knowing—» «What do you want to do, kill her and burn her body, as you did to the man?» «Oh, Toby,» Sooly said. «Have you killed someone?» «He broke into Jay's lab and was killed by experimental animals,» Toby said. «It was an accident.» «A funny little man with a pot belly?» Sooly asked. «Yes,» Toby said, still thinking furiously. «The Squire,» Sooly breathed. «And they've been dragging the bay for his body for days.» «We can send her up to the Entil.» Jay said in Ankani, his voice even now, since he'd popped a dose of troleen to make his heart behave. «And what?» Toby asked. «Have the doctor excise the part of her memory dealing with us,» Jay said. «And, in the process, read other memories?» Toby frowned in negation. «We have to trust her.» «I can do it then,» Jay said. «Not on your life,» Toby told him. «You are not a surgeon.» «I have the equipment,» Jay said. «And it is in my interest field. You can help. It's really a simple process. There is no room for error, it is painless and you, yourself, can monitor the memories we're excising.» «No,» Toby said. «The other choice is liquidation,» Jay said. «Look, we're flirting with the mines or worse. You know that.» «I wish you two would speak English,» Sooly said, «you're making me very nervous.» Toby looked at her thoughtfully and was melted inside by the softness, the very femaleness of her. «I would never allow anything to hurt you,» he told her, «but we do have problems.» «I'm good at problems,» she said. «Why don't we sit down somewhere and discuss them?» Both Jay and Toby were accustomed to taking the smallest suggestion of a female as an order. It was natural that they nod in agreement and, before either could think it over, they were seated in Toby's quarters over coffee with Toby giving Sooly the picture. «They'll send you to Siberia because of me?» she asked. «And send me spiraling down into a hot star,» Jay said. «But it's so simple,» Sooly said. «I won't tell.» «Jay is frightened,» Toby said. «His offense is more serious.» «All right, if you won't trust me,» Sooly said to Jay, «what's your suggestion?» «We can simply erase your memories concerning our origin, the vehicle, the man who broke into the lab.» «That simple, huh?» Sooly said. «Just how do you go about this erasing process?» «It's a simple machine used in our educational process,» Jay said. «We locate the particular brain cells involved in the memory—» «Whoa,» Sooly said. «No one's going to go mucking around in my brain.» The more Toby thought about it the more he liked the idea of simply erasing the incriminating memories. «There's no surgery involved,» he said. «And I'll be monitoring the process. We simply find the particular cells involved in memory—» «And destroy them?» Sooly asked, with a wry face. «Oh, no. We simply wipe them clean, so to speak.» «Fine,» Sooly said. «I've very carefully limited my intake of alcohol all my life because if there's one thing I hate it's the thought of little parts of me, my brain, dying off by the hundreds of thousands. It'll be bad enough when I'm thirty and they start ending it all from natural causes.» She looked at Toby and the trust in her eyes made him wince. «Do you want me to do this thing, Toby?» «Sooner or later, Sooly, I must leave,» he said. «And it would be against my orders and my conscience to leave you with the knowledge that we Ankanis were here.» «You could take me with you,» she said, unashamed. «No,» Toby said sadly. She accepted it. «I see. But while you're here? Are you going to make me forget you, too?» «It would be best,» Toby said gently. «Then I won't do it. Look, if it means so much to you, take my memories of the flying saucers. Wipe out the knowledge of your space ship, but leave me you.» «Are you sure?» «Very, very sure.» «Then you're willing?» Jay asked. «Only to protect Toby,» she said. To prove to himself that Jay knew his work, in the lab Toby allowed the headgear to be fitted and told Jay to seek out a particularly irritating little memory involving a childhood prank. The process was quick. The tiny current went out through Toby's brain, stimulated certain chemical changes and the memory was gone. It was as if it had never happened, and Jay's questioning showed that Toby didn't even know he was missing anything. Sooly, knuckles white on the arms of the chair, felt the cap-like gear slip over her head. Toby's presence helped her. Jay began to operate intricate dials and Toby, monitoring, got swift glimpses and flashes of the most serene, happy mind imaginable and then Jay was locked in on the flying saucers and ready to erase. «Make a general survey first,» Toby said. «See if we're going to be able to get all of it before we start erasing piecemeal.» The result brought a frown to Toby's face. It would be possible to erase the saucers and the early, game-like suspicions that there was something between the two tanks which counted up to seven instead of six tanks, but after that it became hopelessly complicated. «I don't understand,» Jay said in Ankani. «There's an incredible muddle in there.» «She is, after all, alien,» Toby said. «Her molecules hold more than a single concept.» «But still we can do the job,» Jay said. But not, Toby realized, without wiping all memory of him from the brain of the girl who sat there quietly, waiting, trusting him implicitly. Astounding as it was, the Ortonian brain, at least as represented by the brain of Sooly, seemed to possess the ability to back-file, to add relevant information to memories already stored. Every memory of Toby was tinged by the knowledge which began to build the night in his quarters when she realized that he could see in the dark. Somehow, Sooly's brain had gone back and planted the nature of Toby, his alien origin, even on the earliest memories, the memories of that first day when he'd told her to leave the dock. «We must do it,» Jay said, preparing to press the proper button. There was no other person in the entire universe, Toby realized, his temperature rising, his heart pounding, who thought of him as Sooly did. Nowhere in the entire, vast emptiness of the cosmos was there another person who loved him. His reaction was instinctive and faster than the approach of Jay's finger to the button. «No,» he shouted, for in erasing those memories of him, Jay would be killing a part of himself, a part which had become, so suddenly and so completely, vital to his very existence. Hands met over the complicated keyboard of an instrument, which should not have been on the surface of Orton, an instrument which was, in Jay's hand, as illegal as his experiments on the DNA molecules of the white rats. A jury-rigged instrument, it was built by Jay from available Orton electronic parts with some vital elements pirated from Ankani gadgets. Usually used only in the event of emergencies, Jay's instrument was programmed to do more than the allowable forced education and was capable of more than wiping away traumatic experiences that contributed to mental ill health. Toby's hand caught Jay's and there was a brief struggle. Jay's knuckle hit a button which sent a tiny beam of energy lancing down into the mysterious portion of Sooly's brain over her right ear, and as the momentary contact was broken she slumped. «You miserable nanna.» Toby gasped, pushing Jay away. «What did you do?» «I didn't mean to,» Jay said, gasping for breath and reaching for his second troleen tablet of the night. «You made me do it.» «What happened?» Toby demanded, bending over the unconscious Sooly. «A surgical beam,» Jay said. «I think I hit the beam.» «Get out,» Toby said, tears forming. «Get out.» Jay left, clutching his heart. Toby, finding it difficult to see, tuned the reader. Nipari squatted on a brown rock, high, pushing her long lank hair out of her face to see the men in the valley below. They had surrounded a grazing herd and were closing in, using cover expertly. Her pink tongue flicked out, gathering the saliva which flowed at the thought of succulent meat roasting over a fire. She had not eaten, save roots and berries, for three days. Far away, across the valley below, she could see the great waters where brown leviathans reared out of the depths and beyond to the bottomless bogs. But her attention returned quickly to the men as Jar, the leader, rose with a hoarse yell and buried his spear into the heaving side of a frightened animal. Others found targets, also, and Nipari danced in joy, her feet bare and brown on the hot, brown rock. Mouth-watering aromas rose from the camp. Her lips were smeared with blood as she tore at half-raw meat, growling contentedly. Hunger satisfied, she danced. Gri, the young male, danced with her. Her blood, hot, pulsed through her veins like fire. At the height of the dance Gri, growling, seized her, into the low cave, struggling, fighting, feeling the fire in her, reluctant to enter into the mystery but urged on by forces so powerful—with the yelps and laughter of the elders, watching from the entrance. A stab of pain and a growling, panting acceptance and outside the raucous laughs changing to screams and mutterings of awe and Gri, his long hair stiffening on his neck, running to meet the threat and up above a fiery beast lowering as the people screamed and ran and Jar, the leader, standing steadfast. A white god came from the bird of fire and spoke to the people. He was tall, pale, had a mane of golden hair and a voice of softness. Finding her fair, he claimed her, after walking the earth like a man for two moons, and she bore him a daughter, writhing in the wholesome pain, a daughter with eyes like moons and skin of lightness and— «Holy shit,» Sooly said, using a word she didn't like, because such words should be saved for extreme emergencies, but she was there, in a chair with the strange thing on her head and there, too, with— «Are you all right?» «I remember everything,» she said. «What went wrong?» She turned her head and went dizzy as her brain swirled. Tigri, woman of the square, dependent of the merchant, Tepe, smiled with pride on the two daughters and four sons she'd given Tepe. Her house of sun-dried mud bricks was not luxurious, but according to the law Tepe provided her with grain, oil and clothing and, since Tepe's wife was barren, Tigri's own offspring would fall heir. She was pleased with her lot. Other women of the square had not been so favored by the gods. Her house stood near the wall of the city. She made her way to the square, her lithe hips swaying, issuing an invitation. The visit of her issue ended, there was business to attend. Atop the ziggurat, the fiery bird of the white gods sat in metallic splendor. One was in the square, waiting. He smiled when he saw her. She arranged the neckline of her garment to show the uplift of her generous breasts, met his smile with invitation. Her eyes, large as the desert moon, seemed to please the god who took her hand and carried her on magic wings to the bitter sea where she lay with him. Her son had pale skin and large eyes and was treated with the respect due to a half-god. «Toby, what's happening to me?» she asked. «There was an accident.» «Am I going mad?» «No.» He could not believe the reading of the machine. The patterns were strange. «Wait, listen,» she closed her eyes. «And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let dry land appear: and it was so.» «It sounds much like your Bible,» Toby said. «I wrote that,» she said, her eyes wide with awe. She shook her head wonderingly. A roaring wave of sickness caused her to swallow deeply, close her eyes. Larsa, wife of Shurup, sat by his side in honor, smiling shyly at the white god who stood tall and blond before them. He spoke their tongue and it was a language she'd never heard, neither Semitic nor Indo-European nor Romance nor Slavic. «The two great rivers.» the god said, «can be your life. The land between is very rich and will grow your grain.» «The gods have made that land poison and deadly,» said Shurup. «The people cannot live there.» «We will help,. We will separate the waters, we will make dry land where there is now bottomless mire.» The white god spread his hands. «The riches of that land will make you strong. No longer will your villages be prey to the barbarians of the hills.» «Toby, Toby, I'm scared.» «There seems to be little damage,» Toby said, feverishly examining, making recordings of Sooly's brain waves. «A few cells, that's all. But I don't understand.» Laga of the moon-like eyes and skin of purest alabaster took the tall, blond god to her and bore him two daughters and flew high over the city in the bird of fire to look down on the two rivers and the bitter sea where the gods dwelt and sent their huge birds to the heavens bearing the salt of the sea. Priestess of Anu, god of the heavens, she kept vigil atop the temple, where the gods came to earth. Her tears dried as the years wrinkled her alabaster skin and the troops of Sargon the Conqueror found her there, faithful, awaiting the second coming of her god. She went to her death with her head high and her body joined others in the trench beside the tombs of the nobles killed in the battle, human sacrifices so that the warriors would not lack servants and the comforts of women. And though she was dead she lived and saw the tall walls of Ur rise and knew the joy of seeing the favor of the gods expand her city to rule all of Sumer, for it was the duty and the privilege of the people to serve the gods, to minister to their comfort and it was the duty of the fairest of the nubile women to lie with them and bear their godlike children, the women of the moon-like eyes and the men of tawny skin and great strength. Priestess of the Moon Temple, she blessed the soldiers who guarded the gates to the land of the gods beside the bitter waters, for man could kill but gods shunned violence. Atop the temple sat the sky bird of the god, Entil, who taught them and spoke with their tongue. The gods smiled upon the city and it prospered and merchants went out to the hinterlands and across the waters and brought back sweet-smelling cedar and soft, wondrous gold. She knew the odd, sweet love of the god and was fruitful and then, on a day of sadness, the gods blessed them and went away into the distant heavens and the city, left without inspiration, fought endlessly against the encroaching, hungry, envious people of the brown hills until the bricks of the temple were stained with blood and she was carried away screaming into slavery, her children slain before her eyes, her city destroyed, her love burning away into a hidden ember as the years passed and she grew old and bent and still he did not come back as he had promised. «Toby, how old are you?» She found that by holding very still and concentrating, she could stop the vivid images. «Sixty of your years,» Toby said. Then it couldn't have been him. She was there, she knew it, but it couldn't have been him. «Have you heard of a place called Ur?» «I am familiar with it in my studies,» he said. «Are you feeling better?» «I'm fine. Something weird is going on, though. Did your people—» and suddenly she was speaking the tongue of the people, a strange, harsh language unlike anything she'd ever heard and he was cocking his head and nodding in wonder. «—gather minerals from the bitter waters into which flow the two great rivers, mothers of life?» It was a strangely accented Ankani. Toby could pick it out, although the phrasing was awkward. «It began seven thousand years ago,» he said, «when you Ortonians were savage hunters.» «And you created the land between the rivers, draining the swamps, teaching the people to build cities.» Her eyes flashed. «Of all the low things. You did it only to have a barrier, a protection between your extraction camps and the barbarian tribes of the hills.» «No, they wanted to help.» «You left them. You pulled them up out of barbarism and deserted them.» She could remember the sadness, the despair, the pain. «You let them carry me off into slavery!» «Not you, Sooly. Not me.» He took her hand. «I don't understand what's happened, but apparently you Ortonians are different, more different than we ever thought. You seem to be able to remember things which happened centuries before you were born.» «You've tampered with us, played with us, seduced our women, stolen our resources,» her voice was not her own; it was fuller, more authoritative, a combination of things. «Our men were lonely and without women,» Toby said. «They wanted only to help. Haven't they helped?» He reached behind him, picked up an Ankani technical manual. «Can you read this?» It was, at first, alien, but she found something, some dark area of her brain and the marks and lines and angles sprang into language. The words were technical and she could not get the meaning, but she recognized it as the cuneiform writing of the city, her city, Ur of the Chaldees. «We would have done it without you,» she spat. «Perhaps,» Toby said, «but not as quickly.» «She was happy,» Sooly said, remembering Nipari, the woman of the hunters. «And she was of Earth.» «And you, evidently, are part Ankani,» Toby said. «Does my being a mongrel make me more acceptable to you?» She reconsidered. «I didn't mean that, Toby. I don't know what to think. This is a little too much for me.» «I love you,» Toby said, remembering his utter horror when he thought that she'd been damaged. «I understand the word now.» «I've loved you for thousands of years,» Sooly said, a happy smile lighting her face. He was removing the gear from her head to take her into his arms when Manto Babra Larkton, having been sent to investigate the sudden emanation of an education machine from the base, stepped forward, having heard the last half of the exchange from the shadows outside the open door. «Bakron Wellti,» she ordered, her voice showing her anger and outrage. «You will take this Ortonian to the vehicle.» «You don't understand, Manto,» Toby said, his voice going servile and pleading. «She's—» «I understand perfectly,» the Manto said. «You have disobeyed a prime directive. You are familiar with the punishment.» «What will you do with her?» Toby asked. «She will make a most interesting study,» the Manto said, «before we erase her memory.» «But extremely large areas of the brain are involved,» Toby protested. «I don't think it's possible—» «It is not for you to think, Bakron,» the Manto said haughtily. «Obey the order.» «You don't have to, Toby,» Sooly said. «You don't have to do what she says.» «Move, Bakron,» Babra said, a blaster appearing in her hand. Toby helped Sooly from the chair. Her knees were weak. «Toby, I don't want to go. I don't want to be made to forget,» she said. «We have no choice,» Toby said, knowing that the blaster was on his back. Jay waited beside the scout ship which was resting in the bare area between buildings. He trembled as the group approached. «Inside,» Babra said, waving her weapon. «You first, Koptol Gagi.» Jay's legs wouldn't work properly. The Manto had seen his illegal equipment. He knew that, under questioning, he'd be forced to tell of his other forbidden experiments. He didn't want to die in the fire of a huge sun. He gathered his strength, took a deep breath, whirled, knocked the weapon from Babra's hand and followed through with a strong right to the Manto's chin. Toby was shocked into a rigid stiffness. Never in his life had he heard of a rating striking a woman and an officer. «Quick,» Jay gasped. «Let's get out of here.» It was crowded in the small scout ship. Toby punched in a random short blink and hoped he didn't blink into an Ortonian mountain or an aircraft. Just before he lost sight of the base as the scout ship faded, he saw the blur of an incoming vehicle. They had made it just in time. Chapter Fourteen Few men had seen such a sight. The Americans and the Russians in their rocket-borne capsules had looked down and watched the march of dawn across the mottled surface of the planet, and, of course, millions had seen it via television, but Sooly was the first woman—no, not the first, for there was in her that other, large-eyed Laga, who flew with her god-lover high above the earth to see two rivers and the sea—but she was the first in thousands of years, the first woman. She flew high above the broad Atlantic and it was narrowed by height to melt into the far shape of her own country and, nearer, the outline of the great mass of Europe and Africa. From that far point, she could not see the mountains of garbage, the discolored rivers, the dead lakes, the cancerous automobile junkyards, the belching smoke of the factories. Instead, she saw the whorl of a tropical depression in the South Atlantic, the billows of clouds, the dark hue of the continents and it was not the good, green Earth, but the beautiful, blue Earth. The strain of The Theme From Exodus kept repeating in her head and the phrase, «This land is mine,» took on a significance which caused tears of beauty-inspired joy to glisten on her lashes. Down there, far off, was Ocean City, so tiny that she could place it only generally on the outline of the continent. Down there was home, the brackish creeks, the white beaches, the glistening white boats plying the waters just off shore, her family, Bem, the fat, tired old dog. A sudden wave of homesickness swept through her. But there was more now. Across the continent of Africa was another home, the parched, arid lands with the ruins of towers which once reached to the sky to bring the people closer to the gods. The gods. She looked at Toby. He was anything but godlike. He was chewing his lower lip in thought. His mane of blond hair was tousled. His eyes were sad. She felt a vast sympathy. Somewhere out there, in the blackness of the space above them, was his home. «Oh, Toby,» she said, taking his hand. «Oh, Toby.» Jay was resting in one of the two rearward seats in the cabin of the scout. His eyes were closed, his breathing labored. The instruments were lettered in cuneiform. She could not get over her astonishment at being able to make out most of it. For a moment she was tempted to probe once again into that newly opened area of her brain and a flash of hot sun and warm wind swept over her and names came to her tongue, Urnammu, first king of the dynasty, Lord of Sumer and Akkad. She shook her head. There would be time for that. «Toby,» she said, «you're in trouble, aren't you?» «Trouble?» he asked, with a bitter laugh. «There's a word in your English. Mutiny. There isn't even a word for it in Ankani.» «Who was she?» Sooly asked. «That beautiful woman. She had eyes like Laga.» The women of Ur. In one of her mother's books was a grouping of votive statues, small figures, male and female, in an attitude of supplication, right hand clasped over left in front of their breasts. One, a tall, mature woman with her hair rounded tightly about her head, had those lovely, large eyes. She had been, most certainly, the daughter of one of the «gods,» one of the tall, fair Ankani men. «She is the Manto, second in command,» Toby said. «Toby, couldn't we explain? Wouldn't they listen?» «They don't know you, Sooly.» He wondered how to tell her. He didn't want to hurt her. «We Ankanis have been in sub-space for three hundred millennia.» «I think I understand,» she said. «We're sort of barbarians?» «The last time an Ankani ship came to Orton it landed on the continent you call South America. The people there were hunting wild beasts with spears and arrows.» «But we've changed,» Sooly said. «We've come a long way.» «Ankan doesn't change,» Toby said. «And Ankani opinions change rarely.» «But your men mixed with our people,» she said. «The astounding thing was that there was not a distance of thousands of years, not in her mind. It was almost as if the ships of the Ankani had landed atop the towers built to honor them only yesterday.» «In those days tankers were crewed by men. Men without women—» He paused. «I see. It was something like an English colonist going native in old Africa, huh?» «Aboard the Entil, studies are being made of the surprising advances you Ortonians have made,» Toby said. «The first opinion seems to be that these advances are the result of an infusion of, pardon the expression, superior Ankani blood.» «Do you feel that way, Toby?» she asked. «Do you think I'm not good enough for you?» He looked at her quickly. «No. I know you.» «I could talk to them.» «You don't know Ankani women,» he said. «You're ruled by women?» He nodded. «Humm,» she teased, trying to lift his spirits. «Maybe I was born on the wrong planet.» He managed a weak smile. «But, honestly, Toby, I wouldn't want to rule anyone. We have minor examples of that here. We say a dominant woman wears the pants in the family. I don't want that, Toby. I want a man I can respect, a man who can tolerate my feminine weaknesses and love me and protect me and—» «You can't know how alien that is to me,» he said. He smiled. «And you can't imagine how beautiful it is to know the meaning of your word love.» Jay moved behind them. He straightened up in his seat. «You both make me sick,» he said. «And you, Bakron, have you forgotten? Doesn't it mean anything to you that we're stranded here on this blasted zoo planet?» «I haven't forgotten,» Toby said. «You're sure you couldn't go back, explain it all?» Sooly asked. «I would be explaining all the way down into the heart of a star,» Jay said. «We can find a place,» Sooly said. «Some small town somewhere. It wouldn't be so bad. You both know enough to do wonderful things. You could work toward them slowly—» «And be fried by a furnace of a sun, if your politicians don't fry us with atomics first,» Jay said. «I wish I'd never seen this girnin-begotten place.» He fell back in his seat. «I'm so sorry, Toby,» Sooly said. Toby shrugged. «It's worse for him. He's old. He has no one.» On the far edge of the world darkness came, a line of shadow moving across. When they were in the shadow the stars gleamed with a brittle sharpness. «We have to find a place to land,» Toby said. «As long as the ship is under power their instruments can track us.» He was studying aerial maps of the surface. «Any suggestions?» A new wave of homesickness swept Sooly. «There are tremendous swamps near Ocean City,» she said. «And advanced means of detecting flying objects just up the coast,» Toby said. «No, I think one of the less developed countries.» «Could we go there?» Sooly asked, feeling strangely unable to voice the idea. He understood. He flew low in the light of a moon. His Ankani eyes saw, apart from cities such as Baghdad, clusters of Bedouin tents, a dam, a pipeline. The rest was wasteland through which ran deep waddies. He lowered the ship into a depression so that it would be hidden from all eyes. For long, awesome moments, Sooly gave herself to the sweep of 7,000 years, knowing scattered glimpses of human life and achievement and heartbreak, then she controlled it. Her first concern was Toby. For her, he was giving up his country, his birthright, everything. Into the chill hours of morning, while Jay slept fitfully, they talked. He told her of his childhood on a distant, dim planet warmed by a distant sun and its own internal fires, a planet called home where his night-seeing eyes cut naturally through the darkness. He told her of the achievements of his race. Sooly had one question which made his brow furrow in thought. «If