Bright Segment (11 page)

April smiled with her lips, while her eyes poured pity. “Yes, yes, she’ll be all right. It wasn’t too bad.”

Carl whooped and pushed past her. She caught his arm, and for all her frailty, swung him around.

“Not yet, Carl. Teague says to tell you first—”

“The babies? What about them? How many, April?”

April looked over Carl’s shoulder at Tod. She said, “Three.”

Carl’s face relaxed, numb, and his eyes went round. “Th—what? Three so far, you mean. There’ll surely be more …”

She shook her head.

Tod felt the laughter explode within him, and he clamped his jaws on it. It surged at him, hammered in the back of his throat. And then he caught April’s pleading eyes. He took strength from her, and bottled up a great bray of merriment.

Carl’s voice was the last fraying thread of hope. “The others died, then.”

She put a hand on his cheek. “There were only three. Carl … don’t be mean to Moira.”

“Oh, I won’t,” he said with difficulty. “She couldn’t … I mean it wasn’t her doing.” He flashed a quick, defensive look at Tod, who was now glad he had controlled himself. What was in Carl’s face meant murder for anyone who dared laugh.

April said, “Not your doing either, Carl. It’s this planet. It must be.”

“Thanks, April,” Carl muttered. He went to the door, stopped, shook himself like a big dog. He said again, “Thanks,” but this time his voice didn’t work and it was only a whisper. He went inside.

Tod bolted for the corner of the building, whipped around it and sank to the ground, choking. He held both hands over his mouth and laughed until he hurt. When at last he came to a limp silence, he felt April’s presence. She stood quietly watching him, waiting.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. But … it
is
funny.”

She shook her head gravely. “We’re not on Earth, Tod. A new world means new manners, too. That would apply even on Terra Prime if we’d gone there.”

“I suppose,” he said, and then repressed another giggle.

“I always thought it was a silly kind of joke anyway,” she said primly. “Judging virility by the size of a brood. There isn’t any scientific basis for it. Men are silly. They used to think that virility could
be measured by the amount of hair on their chests, or how tall they were. There’s nothing wrong with having only three.”

“Carl?” grinned Tod. “The big ol’ swashbuckler?” He let the grin fade. “All right, Ape. I won’t let Carl see me laugh. Or you either. All right?” A peculiar expression crossed his face. “What was that you said? April! Men never had hair on their chests!”

“Yes, they did. Ask Teague.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” He shuddered. “I can’t imagine it unless a man had a tail too. And bony ridges over his eyes.”

“It wasn’t so long ago that they had. The ridges, anyway. Well—I’m glad you didn’t laugh in front of him. You’re nice, Tod.”

“You’re nice too.” He pulled her down beside him and hugged her gently. “Bet you’ll have a dozen.”

“I’ll try.” She kissed him.

When specimen-hunting had gone as far as it could, classification became the settlement’s main enterprise. And gradually, the unique pattern of Viridian life began to emerge.

Viridis had its primitive fish and several of the mollusca, but the fauna was primarily arthropods and reptiles. The interesting thing about each of the three branches was the close relationship between species. It was almost as if evolution took a major step with each generation, instead of bumbling along as on Earth, where certain stages of development are static for thousands, millions of years.
Pterodon
, for example, existed in three varieties, the simplest of which showed a clear similarity to
pteronauchis
, the gliding newt. A simple salamander could be shown to be the common ancestor of both the flapping frog and massive
Parametrodon
, and there were strong similarities between this salamander and the worm which fathered the arthropods.

They lived close to the truth for a long time without being able to see it, for man is conditioned to think of evolution from simple to complex, from ooze to animalcule to mollusc to ganoid; amphibid to monotreme to primate to tinker … losing the significance of the fact that all these co-exist. Was the vertebrate eel of prehistory a
higher
form of life than his simpler descendant? The whale lost his
legs; this men call recidivism, a sort of backsliding in evolution, and treat it as a kind of illegitimacy.

Men are oriented out of simplicity toward the complex, and make of the latter a goal. Nature treats complex matters as expediencies and so is never confused. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Viridis colony took so long to discover their error, for the weight of evidence was in error’s favor. There was indeed an unbroken line from the lowest forms of life to the highest, and to assume that they had a common ancestor was a beautifully consistent hypothesis, of the order of accuracy an archer might display in hitting dead center, from a thousand paces, a bowstring with the nock of his arrow.

The work fell more and more on the younger ones. Teague isolated himself, not by edict, but by habit. It was assumed that he was working along his own lines; and then it became usual to proceed without him, until finally he was virtually a hermit in their midst. He was aging rapidly; perhaps it hurt something in him to be surrounded by so much youth. His six children thrived, and, with Carl’s three, ran naked in the jungle armed only with their sticks and their speed. They were apparently immune to practically everything Viridis might bring against them, even
Crotalidus’s
fangs, which gave them the equivalent of a severe bee-sting (as opposed to what had happened to Moira once, when they had had to reactivate one of the Coffins to keep her alive).

Tod would come and sit with him sometimes, and as long as there was no talk the older man seemed to gain something from the visits. But he preferred to be alone, living as much as he could with memories for which not even a new world could afford a substitute.

Tod said to Carl, “Teague is going to wither up and blow away if we can’t interest him in something.”

“He’s interested enough to spend a lot of time with whatever he’s thinking about,” Carl said bluntly.

“But I’d like it better if he was interested in something here, now. I wish we could … I wish—” But he could think of nothing, and it was a constant trouble to him.

Little Titan was killed, crushed under a great clumsy
Parametrodon
which slid down a bank on him while the child was grubbing for the scarlet cap of the strange red mushroom they had glimpsed from time to time. It was in pursuit of one of these that Moira had been bitten by the
Crotalidus
. One of Carl’s children was drowned—just how, no one knew. Aside from these tragedies, life was easy and interesting. The compound began to look more like a
kraal
as they acclimated, for although the adults never adapted as well as the children, they did become far less sensitive to insect bites and the poison weeds which first troubled them.

It was Teague’s son Nod who found what was needed to bring Teague’s interest back, at least for a while. The child came back to the compound one day, trailed by two slinking
Felodons
who did not catch him because they kept pausing and pausing to lap up gouts of blood which marked his path. Nod’s ear was torn and he had a green-stick break in his left ulna, and a dislocated wrist. He came weeping, weeping tears of joy. He shouted as he wept, great proud noises. Once in the compound, he collapsed, but he would not lose consciousness, nor his grip on his prize, until Teague came. Then he handed Teague the mushroom and fainted.

The mushroom was and was not like anything on Earth. Earth has a fungus called
schizophyllum
, not uncommon but most strange. Though not properly a fungus, the red “mushroom” of Viridis had many of the functions of
schizophyllum
.

Schizophyllum
produces spores of four distinct types, each of which grows into a genetically distinct, completely dissimilar plant. Three of these are sterile. The fourth produces
schizophyllum
.

The red mushroom of Viridis also produced four distinct heterokaryons or genetically different types, and the spores of one of these produced the mushroom.

Teague spent an engrossing earth-year in investigating the other three.

VI

Sweating and miserable in his integument of flexskin, Tod hunched in the crotch of a finger-tree. His knees were drawn up and his head was down; his arms clasped his shins and he rocked slightly back
and forth. He knew he would be safe here for some time—the fleshy fingers of the tree were clumped at the slender, swaying ends of the branches and never turned back toward the trunk. He wondered what it would be like to be dead. Perhaps he would be dead soon, and then he’d know. He might as well be.

The names he’d chosen were perfect and all of a family: Sol, Mercury, Venus, Terra, Mars, Jupiter … eleven of them. And he could think of a twelfth if he had to.

For what?

He let himself sink down again into the blackness wherein nothing lived but the oily turning of
what’s it like to be dead?

Quiet, he thought.
No one would laugh
.

Something pale moved on the jungle floor below him. He thought instantly of April, and angrily put the thought out of his mind. April would be sleeping now, having completed the trifling task it had taken her so long to start. Down there, that would be Blynken, or maybe Rhea. They were very alike.

It didn’t matter, anyway.

He closed his eyes and stopped rocking. He couldn’t see anyone, no one could see him. That was the best way. So he sat, and let time pass, and when a hand lay on his shoulder, he nearly leaped out of the tree. “Damn it, Blynken—”

“It’s me. Rhea.” The child, like all of Alma’s daughters, was large for her age and glowing with health. How long had it been? Six, eight … nine Earth years since they had landed.

“Go hunt mushrooms,” Tod growled. “Leave me alone.”

“Come back,” said the girl.

Tod would not answer. Rhea knelt beside him, her arm around the primary branch, her back, with his, against the trunk. She bent her head and put her cheek against his. “Tod.”

Something inside him flamed. He bared his teeth and swung a heavy fist. The girl doubled up soundlessly and slipped out of the tree. He stared down at the lax body and at first could not see it for the haze of fury which blew and whirled around him. Then his vision cleared and he moaned, tossed his club down and dropped after it. He caught up the club and whacked off the tree-fingers which probed
toward them. He swept up the child and leapt clear, and sank to his knees, gathering her close.

“Rhea, I’m sorry, I’m sorry … I wasn’t … I’m not—
Rhea!
Don’t be dead!”

She stirred and made a tearing sound with her throat. Her eyelids trembled and opened, uncovering her pain-blinded eyes. “Rhea!”

“It’s all right,” she whispered, “I shouldn’t’ve bothered you. Do you want me to go away?”

“No,” he said. “No.” He held her tight.
Why not let her go away?
a part of him wondered, and another part, frightened and puzzled, cried,
No! No!
He had an urgent, half-hysterical need to explain.
Why explain to her, a child? Say you’re sorry, comfort her, heal her, but don’t expect her to understand
. Yet he said, “I can’t go back. There’s nowhere else to go. So what can I do?”

Rhea was quiet, as if waiting. A terrible thing, a wonderful thing, to have someone you have hurt wait patiently like that while you find a way to explain. Even if you only explain it to yourself … “What could I do if I went back? They—they’ll never—they’ll laugh at me. They’ll all laugh. They’re laughing now.” Angry again, plaintive no more, he blurted, “April!
Damn
April! She’s made a eunuch out of me!”

“Because she had only one baby?”

“Like a savage.”

“It’s a beautiful baby. A boy.”

“A man, a real man, fathers six or eight.”

She met his eyes gravely. “That’s silly.”

“What’s happening to us on this crazy planet?” he raged. “Are we evolving backward? What comes next—one of you kids hatching out some amphibids?”

She said only, “Come back, Tod.”

“I can’t,” he whispered. “They’ll think I’m … that I can’t …” Helplessly, he shrugged. “They’ll laugh.”

“Not until you do, and then they’ll laugh
with
you. Not at you, Tod.”

Finally, he said it, “April won’t love me; she’ll never love a weakling.”

She pondered, holding him with her clear gaze. “You really need to be loved a whole lot.”

Perversely, he became angry again. “I can get along!” he snapped.

And she smiled and touched the nape of his neck. “You’re loved,” she assured him. “Gee, you don’t have to be mad about that. I love you, don’t I? April loves you. Maybe I love you even more than she does. She loves everything you are, Tod. I love everything you ever were and everything you ever will be.”

He closed his eyes and a great music came to him. A long, long time ago he had attacked someone who came to comfort him, and she had let him cry, and at length she had said … not exactly these words, but—it was the same.

“Rhea.”

He looked at her. “You said all that to me before.”

A puzzled small crinkle appeared between her eyes and she put her fingers on it. “Did I?”

“Yes,” said Tod, “but it was before you were even born.”

He rose and took her hand, and they went back to the compound, and whether he was laughed at or not he never knew, for he could think of nothing but his full heart and of April. He went straight in to her and kissed her gently and admired his son, whose name was Sol, and who had been born with hair and two tiny incisors, and who had heavy bony ridges over his eyes …

“A fantastic storage capacity,” Teague remarked, touching the top of the scarlet mushroom. “The spores are almost microscopic. The thing doesn’t seem to want them distributed, either. It positively hoards them, millions of them.”