"On The World. He was there three days before the disturbance in the thought flow alerted us. He was gravely injured."
"And you didn’t pick him up immediately?"
Mother Aglee smiled. "Would our physicians have known how to heal him? Look."
Miaree saw the terrible wound, scabbed. She saw the broken, useless limb. "He is made from the same stuff, but his flesh is different," Mother Aglee said. "He loosed two ifflings, forced them from him, survived."
"No one looses an iffling." Miaree said. "He is different."
"He was healing when we found him. He was being fed by winglings, and nectar and fruit and flesh seemed to allow him to thrive. We thought to move him and submit him to the artificial foods of the adults could be worse than leaving him. The climate was mild. The rains tended to cleanse him. He is possessed of a powerful body with some unknown means of healing itself. We thought that his nature, even on an alien world, would
know more than we. But now he is healed. He awaits on the Cliffs of Flight. Once he attempted to swim the island sea, and we feared that we would have to save him before you were ready, but he quickly saw the impossibility of swimming against the wind and the currents and turned back."
"Mother, I am not ready. I know barely two words of his language. I cannot communicate."
"That is why, my daughter, I must ask you to make the ultimate sacrifice."
Weakened, shocked, Miaree sat heavily.
"He is disturbing the wakening ids of the changelings, but that is a small matter. He grows impatient, but that, too, is not our concern. We received this," Mother Aglee said, handing over a single duppaper, "only yesterday. I would like you to confirm my impressions."
Miaree looked, and, with sinking heart, nodded. "Yes," she said, with dull resignation. "It means what you think."
The pictures showed a fleet of Delanian drivers moving through space in stylized simplicity. An inset showed the inside of a driver. Many Delanians, males, females, young.
Mother Aglee smiled weakly. "The fact that we have not invited them to visit us in such numbers seems irrelevant. I see this fleet as a threat. You know that we are limiting the advancement of ifflings to mere replacements. Now our worlds are pleasant. We have room to breathe and walk and the leisure to fly. What will our people say if they are told that they must share our life, our good worlds, with thousands of aliens? What is the rate of population growth with these aliens? How strong are they? Will they ask, or will they demand? Can we say no or will we be forced?"
"No, no," Miaree said, absorbing the words, but thinking, very privately, of herself. "Oh, no."
"My daughter," Mother Aglee said, standing, moving to put a soft hand on Miaree’s shoulder. "We must talk with this alien. We must find out all we can about his people. How I wish I could say, ’Look, the fleet will not be here for a year; go to Outworld, daughter, and love.’ But I cannot. Judging
from the messages and the time element with the first driver, we cannot take that risk. It is the future of our race, of our system that we face, Miaree. I must ask. Yes, I have no choice. I must."
"I understand." Miaree said.
The simple operation was performed by the best doctors in the most modern hospital in the system. Lady Jonea was by her side. The Mother, herself, greeted her when she awoke from the mild, induced sleep.
"Miaree," Mother Aglee said, with deep emotion. "Oh, my daughter."
And from inside her, from an emptiness, came a vast, keening wail.
Chapter Ten
"Animals," she gasped, when she finally got the meaning. "They are animals."
"An interesting word," said her assistant, Lady Belfae. "A word out of prehistory."
"Their young are." She hesitated, searching for an Artonuee word. "Changed alive. They are ripped from the mother’s body alive."
"Animals," agreed Lady Belfae.
It was the only analogy. The early writings told of them. Small, scurrying things on the old World, things which preyed on the unhatched eggs of the Artonuee. Things which, in self-defense, they exterminated.
She was healed. The operation left no scars. It had merely removed her unfertilized eggs artificially. But there was a scar inside, on her mind.
She hated them, the Delanians. Loathesome, animalistic, ugly.
Not true. Not ugly.
Before her, to help her understand, were pictures. The alien at rest,
walking, moving, undressed showing his maleness, standing on the Cliffs of Flight looking out over the inland sea. Not ugly. Tall, powerful, graceful in his way. Not much thicker in torso than an Artonuee male and possessed of the same general features, although his eyes were small and his legs longer, seemingly made for the covering, in a short time, of vast distances.
But not ugly.
And, in all fairness, it was his evolution which determined that he would be ripped alive from his mother’s body like an animal.
"That there is evolution is undeniable," a consultant told her. "Fossil remains show us our ancestors, incredibly ancient, small, ill-formed, brains the size of a jenk seed. And there are other evidences. The forms of the exterminated animals of the old World changed over the ages. In defense of your alien, I wonder what the ages would have done to the animals if we had not destroyed them?"
"He is an intelligent being," she told herself, listening to a voice on the tapes, the grating sounds no longer so painful. "In many ways he must be superior to us, at least in technology, for he has traveled the stars. I must give him his due. I must approach him as an equal."
And, when she could think in Delanian, although that term was no longer relevant, since she now knew the names with which the aliens labeled themselves, she told herself that she was ready. She had learned much.
The existence of two sexes was more important to the Delanians than to the Artonuee. Language was feminine in the Artonuee system. The Delanians differentiated in their language. Hers and his were the same, only different. Since there was no evidence of being able to share thoughts among the Delanians, their language was far more complicated. Concepts which were expressed among the Artonuee with one quick picture—perhaps, in some cases, combined with sound—required long, complicated, roundabout explanation in the words of the Delanians.
It was only with the help of the Research Quad main computer and through long, hard hours of concentration that she was able to board the driver to The World with some confidence that she would be able to converse intelligently with the alien.
And on the night prior to the meeting, there was still some doubt in her mind. She tried to master it. Then she tried to sleep with that aching loneliness inside her, that feeling of loss. She awoke irritable, feeling the effect of planet change. On New World, she would be in the middle of a work day. Here at home—this merely a phrase, since she had not seen the surface of The World since her days as a changeling—it was dawn. The sun was warmer, more friendly. As it began to light the darkness, it seemed to be more powerful, dimming the evil fire of the collisions in its brilliance. She bowed to the shrine provided in each guest room.
"Be with me, Mother." The prayer was brief, but in a very real way, her very thoughts were a continuation of her supplication. Perhaps the priests of her youth were right. Perhaps it was possible for God to forgive. Old Jarvel, senior member of the male minority in the Interplanetary Council, called in to hear the astounding news that the Artonuee were not alone in facing God’s Fires, paled, fell to his knees.
"They are God’s messengers," old Jarvel said, spittle running down his chin. He was long overdue for his homecoming, but his importance as the leading spokesman for Artonuee males seemed, somehow, to put renewed life into his ancient carcass. "If it is indeed true that they have bested God’s Constant, that must be construed as a sign."