JAMES TIPTREE, JR
Love Is the Plan
the Plan Is Death
"Why do mankind flatter themselves that they alone are gifted with a spiritual and immortal principle?… I am persuaded that if a peacock could speak he would boast of his soul, and would affirm that it inhabited his magnificent tail," (Voltaire). "My first act of free will is to believe in free will," said William James. Illusions, a Skinnerian might reply. The perfect joy, the perfect love will ensue only if one accepts and embraces one's.destiny. I choose-because I must. This is a story of joy and love and destiny. Remembering-Do you hear, my little red? Hold me softly. The cold grows.
I remember:
— I am hugely black and hopeful, I bounce on six legs along the mountains in the new warm!… Sing the changer, Sing the stranger! Will the changes change forever?… All my hums have words now. Another change!
Eagerly I bound on sunward following the tiny thrill in the air. The forests have been shrinking again. Then I see. It is me! Me Myself, MOGGADEET-I have grown bigger more in the winter cold! I astonish myself, Moggadeet-the-small!
Excitement, enticement shrilling from the sun-side of the world. I come!… The sun is changing again, too. Sun is walking in the night! Sun is walking back to Summer in the warming of the light!… Warm is Me Moggadeet Myself. Forget the bad-time winter.
Memory quakes me.
The Old One.
I stop, pluck up a tree. So much I wanted to ask the Old One. No time. Cold. Tree goes end over end down cliff, I watch the fat climbers tumble out. Not hungry.
The Old One warned me of the cold-I didn't believe him. I move on, grieving… Old One told you, The cold, the cold will hold you. Chill cold! Kill cold. In the cold I killed you.
But it's warm now, all different. I'm Moggadeet again.
I bound over a hill and see my brother Frim.
At first I don't know him. A big black old one! I think. And in the warm, we can speak!
I surge toward him bashing trees. The big black is crouched over a ravine, peering down. Black back has shiny ripples like-It IS Frim! Frim-I-hunted-for, Frim-run-away! But he's so big now! Giant Frim! A stranger, a changer-"Frim!"
He doesn't hear me; all his eye-turrets are under the trees. His end is sticking up odd like, all atremble. What's he hunting?
"Frim! It's me, Moggadeet!"
But he only quivers his legs; I see his spurs pushing out. What a fool, Frim! I remind myself how timid he is, I try to move gently. When I get closer I'm astonished again. I'm bigger than he is now! Changes! I can see right over his shoulder into the ravine.
Hot yellow-green in there. A little glade all lit with sun. I bend my eyes to see what Frim is after: and all astonishments blow up the world.
I see you.
I saw you.
I will always see you. Dancing in the green fire, my tiny red star! So bright! So small! So perfect! So fierce! I knew you-Oh yes I knew you in that first instant, my dawnberry, my scarlet minikin. Red! A tiny baby red one, smaller than my smallest eye. And so brave! -
The Old One said it. Red is the color of love.
I see you swat at a hopper twice your size, my eyes bulge as you leap after it and go rolling, shrilling Lililee! Lilileee-ee! in baby wrath. Oh my mighty hunter, you don't know someone is looking right into your tender little love-fur! Oh yes! Palest pink it is, just brushed with rose. My jaws spurt, the world flashes and reels.
And then Frim, poor fool, feels me behind him and rears up.
But what a Frim! His throat-sacs are ballooning purple-black, his plates are engorged like the Mother of the storm-clouds! Glittering, rattling his spurs! His tail booms! "It's mine!" he bellows-I can hardly understand him. He jumps straight at me!
"Stop, Frim, stop!" I cry, dodging away bewildered. It's warm how can Frim be wild, kill-wild?
"Brother Frim!" I call gently, soothingly. But something is badly wrong! My voice is bellowing too! Yes, in the warm and I want only to calm him, I am full of love-but the kill-roar is rushing through me, I too am swelling, rattling, booming! Invincible! To crush-to rend
Oh, I am shamed.
I came to myself in the wreckage of Frim, Frimpieces everywhere, myself is sodden with Frim. But I did not eat him! I did not! Should I take joy in that? Did I defy the Plan? But my throat was closed. Not because it was Frim but because of darling you. You! Where are you? The glade is empty! Oh fearful fear, I have frightened you, you are run away! I forget Frim. I forget everything but you my heartmeat, my precious tiny red.
I smash trees, I uproot rocks, I tear the ravine open! Oh, where are you hiding? Suddenly I have a new fear: Has my wild search harmed you? I force myself calm. I begin questing, circling, ever wider over the trees, moving cloud-silent, thrusting my eyes and ears down into every glade. A new humming fills my throat. Oooo, Oo-oo, Rum-a-looly-loo, I moan. Hunting, hunting for you.
Once I glimpse a black bigness far away and I am suddenly up at my full height, roaring. Attack the black! Was it another brother? I would slay him, but — the stranger is already vanishing. I roar again. Noit roars me, the new power of black. Yet deep inside, Myself-Moggadeet is watching, fearing. Attack the black-even in the warm? Is there no safety, are we truly like the fatclimbers? But at the same time it feels-oh, right! Oh, good! Sweet is the Plan. I give myself up to seeking you, my new song longing Ooloo and Looly rum-a-loo-oo-loo. And you answered! You!.
So tiny you, hidden under a leaf! Shrilling Li! Li Lililee! Trilling, thrilling-half-mocking, already imperious. Oh, how I whirl, crash, try to look under all my feet, stop frozen in horror of squashing the Lilild Lee! Rocking, longing, moaning Moggadeet.
And you came out, you did.
My adorable firemite, threatening ME!
When I see your littlest hunting claws upraised my whole gut melts, it floods me. I am all tender jelly. Tender! Oh, tender-fierce like a Mother, I think! Isn't that how a Mother feels? My jaws are sluicing juice that isn't hunger-juice-I am choking, with fear of frighting you or bruising your tininess-I ache to grip and knead you, to eat you in one gulp, in a thousand nibbles
Oh the power of red-the Old One said it! Now I feel my special hands, my tender hands I always carry hidden-now they come swelling out, come pushing toward my head! What? What?
My secret hands begin to knead and roll the stuff that's dripping from my jaws.
Ali, that arouses, you, too, my redling, doesn't it?
Yes, yes, I feel-torment-I feel your shy excitement! How your body remembers even now our lovedawn, our very first moments of Moggadeet-Leely. Before I knew You-Yourself, before you knew Me. It began then, my heartlet, our love-knowing began in that very first instant when your Moggadeet stared down at you like a monster bursting. I saw how new you were, how helpless!
Yes, even while I loomed over you marvellingeven while my secret hands drew and spun your fate-, even then it came to me in pity that long ago, last year when I was a child, I saw other little red ones among my brothers, before our Mother drove them away. I was only a foolish baby then; I didn't understand. I thought they'd grown strange and silly in their redness and Mother did well to turn them out. Oh stupid Moggadeet!
But now I saw you, my flamelet-I understood! You were only that day cast out by your Mother. Never had you felt the terrors of a night alone in the world; you couldn't imagine that such a monster as Frim was hunting you. Oh my ruby nestling, my baby red! Never, I vowed it, never would I leave you-and have I not kept that vow? Never! I, Moggadeet, I would be your Mother.
Great is the Plan, but I was greater!
All I learned of hunting in my lonely year, to drift like the air, to leap, to grip so delicately-all these learnings became for you! Not to bruise the smallest portion of your bright body. Oh, yes! I captured you whole in all your tiny perfection, though you sizzled and spat and fought me like the sunspark you are. And then