Dis was a floating golden ball, looking like a schoolroom globe in
space. No clouds obscured its surface, and from this distance it seemed
warm and attractive set against the cold darkness. Brion almost wished
he were back there now, as he sat shivering inside the heavy coat. He
wondered how long it would be before his confused body-temperature
controls decided to turn off the summer adjustment.
Delicate as a dream, Lea's reflection swam in space next to the planet.
She had come up quietly behind him in the spaceship's corridor, only her
gentle breath and mirrored face telling him she was there. He turned
quickly and took her hands in his.
"You're looking better," he said.
"Well I should," she said, pushing her hair in an unconscious gesture
with the back of her hand. "I've been doing nothing but lie in the
ship's hospital, while you were having such a fine time this last week.
Rushing around down there shooting all the magter."
"Just gassing them," he told her. "The Nyjorders can't bring themselves
to kill any more, even if it does raise their own casualty rate. In fact
they are having difficulty restraining the Disans led by Ulv, who are
happily killing any magter they see as being pure _umedvirk_."
"What will they do when they have all those frothing magter madmen?"
"They don't know yet," he said. "They won't really know until they see
what an adult magter is like with his brain-parasite dead and gone.
They're having better luck with the children. If they catch them early
enough, the parasite can be destroyed before it has done too much
damage."
Lea shuddered delicately.
"I hate to think of a magter deprived of his symbiote," she said. "If
his system can stand the shock, I imagine there will be nothing left
except a brainless hulk. This is one series of experiments I don't care
to witness. I rest secure in the knowledge that the Nyjorders will find
the most humane solution."
"I'm sure they will," Brion said.
"Now what about us," she said disconcertingly.
This jarred Brion. He didn't have her ability to put past horrors out of
the mind by substituting present pleasures. "Well, what about us?" he
said with masterful inappropriateness.
She smiled and leaned against him. "You weren't as vague as that, the
night in the hospital room. I seem to remember a few other things you
said. You can't claim you're completely indifferent to me, Brion Brandd.
So I'm only asking you what any outspoken Anvharian girl would. Where do
we go from here? Get married?"
There was a definite pleasure in holding her slight body in his arms and
feeling her hair against his cheek. They both sensed it, and this
awareness made his words sound that much more ugly.
"Lea ... darling! You know how important you are to me--but you
certainly realize that we could never get married."
Her body stiffened and she tore herself away from him.
"Why you great, fat, egotistical slab of meat," she screamed. "What do
you mean by that? I like you Lea, we have plenty of fun and games
together, but surely you realize that you aren't the kind of girl one
takes home to mother!"
"Lea, hold on," he said. "You know better than to say a thing like that.
What I said has nothing to do with how I feel towards you. But marriage
means children, and you are biologist enough to know about Earth's
genes--"
"Intolerant yokel!" she cried, slapping his face. He didn't move or
attempt to stop her. "I expected better from you, with all your
pretensions of understanding. But all you can think of are the horror
stories about the worn out genes of Earth. You're the same as every
other big, strapping bigot from the frontier planets. I know how you
look down on our small size, our allergies and hemophilia and all the
other weaknesses that have been bred back and preserved by the race. You
hate--"
"But that's not what I meant at all," he interrupted, shocked, his voice
drowning hers out. "Yours are the strong genes, the viable
strains--_mine_ are the deadly ones. A child of mine would kill itself
and you in a natural birth, if it managed to live to term. You're
forgetting that you are the original Homo sapiens. I'm a recent
mutation."
Lea was frozen by his words. They revealed a truth she had known, but
would never permit herself to consider.
"Earth is home, the planet where mankind developed," he said. "The last
few thousand years you may have been breeding weaknesses back into the
genetic pool. But that's nothing compared to the hundred millions of
years that it took to develop man. How many newborn babies live to be a
year of age on Earth?"
"Why ... almost all of them."
"Earth is home," he said gently. "When men leave home they can adapt to
different planets, but a price must be paid. A terrible price in dead
infants. The successful mutations live, the failures die. Natural
selection is a brutally simple affair. When you look at me you see a
success. I have a sister--a success too. Yet my mother had six other
children who died when they were still babies. And at least fifteen
others that never came to term. You know these things, don't you Lea?"
"I know, I know...." she said sobbing into her hands. He held her now
and she didn't pull away. "I know it all as a biologist--but I am so
awfully tired of being a biologist, and top of my class and a mental
match for any man. But when I think about you, I do it as a woman, and
can't admit any of this. I need someone Brion, and I needed you so much
because I loved you." She sniffed and pushed at her eyes. "You're going
home, aren't you? Back to Anvhar. When?"
"I can't wait too long," he said, unhappily. "Aside from my personal
wants I find myself remembering that I'm a part of Anvhar. When you
think of the number of people who suffered and died--or adapted--so that
I could be sitting here now. Well, it's a little frightening. I suppose
it doesn't make sense logically that I should feel indebted to them. But
I do. Whatever I do now, or in the next few years, won't be as important
as getting back to Anvhar."
"And I won't be going back with you." It was a flat statement the way
she said it, not a question.
"No, you won't be," he said.
Lea was looking out of the port at Dis and her eyes were dry now. "Way
back in my deeply buried unconscious I think I knew it would end this
way," she said. "If you think your little lecture on the Origins of Man
was a novelty, it wasn't. Just reminded me of a number of things my
glands had convinced me to forget. In a way I envy you your weightlifter
wife-to-be, and your happy kiddies. But not very much. Very early in
life I resigned myself to the fact that there was no one on Earth I
would care to marry. I always had these teen-age dreams of a hero from
space who would carry me off, and I guess I slipped you into the pattern
without realizing it."
* * * * *
"Don't we look happy," Hys said, shambling towards them.
"Fall dead and make me even happier then," Lea snapped bitterly.
Hys ignored the acid tone of her answer and sat down on the couch next
to them. Since leaving command of his rebel Nyjord Army he seemed much
mellower. "Going to keep on working for the Cultural Relationships
Foundation, Brion?" he asked. "You're the kind of man we need."
Brion's eyes widened as the meaning of the last words penetrated. "Are
you in the C.R.F.?"
"Field agent for Nyjord," he said. "I hope you don't think those
helpless office types like Faussel or Mervv really represented us there?
They just took notes and acted as a front and cover for the
organization. Nyjord is a fine planet, but a gentle guiding hand behind
the scenes is needed, to help them find their place in the galaxy before
they are pulverized."
"What's your dirty game, Hys?" Lea asked, scowling. "I've had enough
hints to suspect for a long time that there was more to the C.R.F. than
the sweetness-and-light-part I have seen. Are you people egomaniacs,
power hungry or what?"
"That's the first charge that would be leveled at us, if our activities
were publicly known," Hys told her. "That's why we do most of our work
under cover. The best fact I can give you to counter the charge is
_money_. Just where do you think we get the funds for an operation this
size?" He smiled at their blank looks. "You'll see the records later so
there won't be any doubt. The truth is that all our funds are donated by
planets we have helped. Even a tiny percentage of a planetary income is
large--add enough of them together and you have enough money to help
other planets. And voluntary gratitude is a perfect test, if you stop to
think about it. You can't talk people into liking what you have done.
They have to be convinced. There have always been people on C.R.F.
worlds who knew about our work, and agreed with it enough to see that we
are kept in funds."
"Why are you telling me all this super-secret stuff," Lea asked.
"Isn't that obvious? We want you to keep on working for us. You can name
whatever salary you like, as I've said there is no shortage of ready
cash." Hys glanced quickly at them both and delivered the clinching
argument. "I hope Brion will go on working with us, too. He is the kind
of field agent we desperately need, and it is almost impossible to
find."
"Just show me where to sign," she said, and there was life in her voice
once again.
"I wouldn't exactly call it blackmail," Brion smiled, "yet I suppose if
you people can juggle planetary psychologies, you must find that
individuals can be pushed around like chess men. Though you should
realize that very little pushing is required this time."
"Will you sign on?" Hys asked.
"I must go back to Anvhar," Brion said, "but there really is no pressing
hurry."
"Earth," said Lea, "is overpopulated enough as it is."