The Future Is Female!: 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin

JOHN JAY WELLS & MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY Another Rib

“REMEMBER, you requested it,” Fanu murmured. The little alien’s pronunciation was as toneless, as flat as ever, and yet, somehow, it carried sympathy and distress. “I am sorry, John.”

John Everett slumped before the film viewer. At last, reluctantly, he leaned forward and underlined his shock with a second view. “When—when did you take this?” he asked.

“A—I do not know your words for it—a revolution ago. Do you wish for a current view, my friend?”

“No. God, no! This is bad enough. You’re—sure of your identification?”

Fanu’s three-fingered hand riffled expertly for a sheet of co-ordinates. Shaking, forcing his eyes and mind to activity, Everett checked the data, glancing back now and then at the viewer to verify. There was no doubt. That was Sol—that had been the Sun—that vast incandescent swirl covering… oh God, covering a range well beyond Pluto!

He became aware that he had been sitting quite still for many long minutes, stiff muscles and sluggish circulation forcing themselves, at last, even through the numbness of his brain. Fanu was waiting.

Fanu was always waiting. The alien had waited aeons. Not Fanu himself, of course, but his kind. Waiting; always waiting for other life forms, other intelligences, new civilizations—new enthusiasms. They had waited too long. There weren’t many left.

“Looks like we’ve joined you,” Everett muttered, bitterly, at last.

“I do not quite understand—?”

“You said—” he paused, groping for a kind word, “that your people were becoming extinct. Looks like mine are—already.”

“Survivors—”

He got to his feet so quickly he knocked over the chair, and spent fumbling minutes setting it right. “But there are no survivors. We were the first probe. Out to the stars. All the way to Proxima Centauri. For what? An Earth-type planet. Fine, we found one—but for what? For whom? Oh, God, for whom!”

“John,” softly, a three-fingered hand falling on his shoulder. “You are not alone, not as I am. You have your friends, your—your crew.”

Everett walked over to the window, and stared out at the valley, dotted with the tiny huts of the expedition. “For now, yes. Sixteen men—a good crew. But we’re mortal, Fanu. Human life is pitifully short, compared with yours. We’re mortal—and we’re all male. By your standards, we’re—here today and gone tomorrow.”

“Are you quite sure that need be, John?”

Everett turned to look into the alien’s large green eyes, cursing the inevitable semantic differences, the inability to get a point across in a hurry. Suddenly the shock, the numbness broke into stark horror. He couldn’t stand here painstakingly explaining the differences in the word men and the word male to a friendly alien, when he’d just found out… found out… his voice strangled. “Just take my word for it, Fanu,” he said thickly, “in fifty years, homo sapiens will be a lot more extinct than your people. Now I’ve got to go and—and tell them—”

He stumbled blindly away and fumbled for the door, conscious of the big green eyes still fixed compassionately on his back.

He had managed to calm himself and speak quietly, but the men were as shocked as he had been, first numb in silent horror, then moving close together as if to draw comfort from their group, their solidity.

“There’s—no mistake, Cap’n?” Chord asked timidly. He always spoke timidly; incongruous for such a giant.

“I’ve seen the plates myself, and the co-ordinates, Chord. And I have no reason to doubt Fanu’s—the alien’s—data. From what I’ve been able to gather, it must have happened about six months after we left. His equipment’s superior to ours, but pretty soon we’ll be able to see it for ourselves.”

Somewhere in the back row of the group of men, there was a muffled sob. He could see the anguish on the other faces, men struggling with the idea of a future that was no future at all. Young Latimer from the drive room—the one they all called Tip—had bent over and buried his face in his hands. It was Tsen, the young navigator, who finally managed the question on all their minds.

“Then it’s—just us, sir?”

“Just us.” Everett waited a moment, then turned away, dismissing them with his back. It wasn’t a thing you could make speeches about. One way or another, they’d have to come to terms with it, every man for himself.

He heard the rustle of Fanu’s garments, and turned to smile a greeting. The two stood side by side on the hilltop, looking down at the men working in the little valley. “What is it to be?” Fanu finally inquired.

“It’s—” Everett could not suppress an amused smile, “a hospital for you—and Garrett, the pharmacist’s mate.”

“Oh?” Fanu’s features could not duplicate a smile, but his eyes blinked rapidly with pleasure. “That is most kind. Most kind.”

“Hardly. It just takes care of one problem. The two of you can keep us in good health, I’m sure.”

“Your race is so strong!” Fanu’s toneless voice gave, nevertheless, an impression of amazement and awe. “My own people, under such a sentence as yours, gave themselves over to despair.”

“You think we didn’t?” Everett’s jaw tightened, remembering the first few weeks; the dazed men, Garrett stopped in the very act of slashing his wrists. Then he straightened his back. “We’ve found that hard work is a remedy for despair, or at least—a good defense against it.”

“I see,” remarked the alien. “Or at least—I understand that it might be so. But how long can you work? Will you fill the valley with your superbly constructed buildings? For sixteen of your race?”

Everett shook his head, bitterly. “We’ll all be dead before we can fill the valley. But at least we’ll make ourselves comfortable, before we—go.”

“There is no need to die.”

He swung around to face the alien. “You’ve been hinting that and hinting that for the last two months! If there’s one thing worse than despair it’s false hope! Even if your people were immortal, and they’re not—”

“I did not mean to anger you, John.” The strange little paw uplifted in apology.

“Then quit hinting and say something.”

“Mammals—” Fanu began, then halted, obviously groping for the proper terminology.

“Yes, we’re mammals, technically,” Everett snorted, “the mammalian characteristic perished with our solar system, though.”

“That is not true—or it need not be true.”

Everett stared at the alien, wishing for the thousandth time that he could read that dark expression. Fanu went on, “I have observed your race in undress, compared the information from your study reels—from your ship—the material you brought to me so graciously—I cannot thank you—”

“Yes, yes!” he broke in. Fanu was so damned polite. He liked the alien, but the only one of the Earthmen who really got along with him perfectly was Tsen, who was used to all this overdone courtesy.

“Forgive me, what I mean is, your… two sexual groups are so close together…”

Everett’s eyes widened. Then he laughed, embarrassed. “You just lost me. I mean, I don’t understand your statement, Fanu.”

“Your two sexual types are so exceptionally similar—”

“Oh, lord, vive la difference!” Everett laughed aloud, and some of the men in the valley glanced up, curious, pleased to see their captain laughing with the omnipotent, knowing alien. “If you mean our—females had two arms, two legs, and a head, yes, we were very similar, but—”

Fanu regarded John with compassion. “No, not that. I mean that, compared to our race, your own sexual differences seem mi­nute. It would be a relatively simple matter to convert one to the other. I recall in the tapes several instances in which this sort of change occurred naturally, and others in which the changes were brought about medically.”

Everett knew his eyes were bulging, and he felt the anger rising in his throat. He beat it down. Fanu wouldn’t know. He could read about the taboos of another race without fully appreciating… in spite of his revulsion, Everett gave a spluttering laugh. “Yes, yes, I see your point, Fanu. It’s an interesting theory, but even if it would work, it, well, it wouldn’t work that way.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s a matter of—my men wouldn’t stand for it. We’re not guinea pigs,” he finished, testily.

“No.” The voice was compassionate again. “You are a race doomed to extinction, with a possible way out. My race had no such second chance.”

Fanu glided away toward the laboratory and Everett stared after him, one thought drumming through his mind. “My God! He wasn’t theorizing! He—he meant it!”

The slight noise finally made him look up. He hadn’t heard anyone come in, and started involuntarily at seeing Chord’s great hulk before him.

“Sorry to disturb you, Cap’n.”

“That isn’t necessary, Chord. What can I do for you?”

The big man smiled sheepishly. “Hard to break habits, sir. Guess I never will.” Despite his size and demeanor, Chord was not stupid, though hampered by poor education and embarrassment for his giant clumsy body. Now he shifted uneasily from foot to foot as he mumbled. “I—guess I’ve been picked out as a representative, sir. For—for the men.”

“Gripe committee? Look, I’m not really your superior any more, Chord. We’re all together now.”

“Yes, sir, but—you’re still Captain.”

Everett sighed, waited for the big man to continue. “Some—some of us would like to build private quarters, sir. I mean—not fights, or anything like that, we just—we’d like some privacy—you know—homes, sir, like—”

“Like back on Earth?” Chord nodded dumbly and Everett said, “Well, I see no objection to that. You didn’t need to consult me.”

“It’s just—well, sir, some of the guys thought you might get the wrong idea, sir.”

“Wrong idea?” Everett asked stupidly, startled by Chord’s red face.

“Well, you know, a couple of men living alone. It’s nothing like that, sir. Honest.”

He waited until Chord left before he permitted the embarrassed amusement to boil over into his face; and knew that the amusement covered some strange unease that was almost fear.

“He actually worried about it,” he laughed, telling Fanu later.

“Shouldn’t he?” Fanu inquired gently. “John, don’t stare. I’m not sure of the word in your tongue, but I think your people sense that the—the last person to approve of such a matter would be yourself.”

Everett got to his feet, angrily. “Are you implying that my men would actually—”

“You said they were free agents. You said they were not your men.”

Everett turned away, rubbing a tired hand across his eyes. “Yes, so I did. Habit.”

“Habit in morals too, John?”

“Fanu! Look, I appreciate that you don’t know our taboos, probably they’re idiotic, but—they’re ours. As for the men—”

“Do you know them, John?”

“Of course.”

“How long did you expect to be here?”

He opened his mouth, then paused to consider, mentally counting. “Six months on planet, eight months coming, eight months back.”

“How long have you been here now?”

“Eighteen—months.” His face worked, remembering some of the material on those cursed tape reels. “Fanu, you’re my friend, but what you’re suggesting is ridiculous. You haven’t known Earthmen long enough to make an adequate appraisal.”

Fanu shook his head solemnly. “There is a folk saying on your tapes—we have a similar one—that one may be too close to the forest to see the trees.” He gestured John to the window and pointed. “Count them, John. Seven small huts, and three are smaller than the others. Why?”

Trying to swallow the horror in his throat, the suspicion that both frightened and sickened him, he shook his head in denial. “They’re friends. You wouldn’t understand.”

“No?” The voice sounded very sad. “Don’t you think we had friends among our own? But you are blessed with bodies that will permit friends to become mates.”

“Stop it!” Everett felt like screaming the words; he held a picture of a large whitewashed wall disintegrating before his eyes, of himself trying to hold it together with his bare hands, of his men standing by, staring at him. Fanu was gesturing again. Unwillingly, his eyes followed the pointing paw. The men had organized an impromptu ball game of some sort, rough house, much laughing, shouting, pushing and tussling. Two of them stumbled and fell together. They were slow in getting up and they moved apart with both reluctance and a touch of conscious guilt.

He jerked away from the window, trying to blot out the sight. The wall had large holes in it, the ravages of inevitability. His mind worked feverishly with brush and plaster; children, horseplaying, a reversion to adolescence—

“Put the question to your men!” For the first time, Fanu’s tones were tense with the beginnings of anger. “You have a second chance, John! They have the right to choose for themselves if they want to die! You can’t decide for them all! Put it to your men, or—” he swung around, to see that the little alien was actually trembling, “or I shall do so on my own initiative.”

Everett felt a sour taste in his mouth. “All right,” he shouted, “I’ll put it to them—but don’t blame me if they tear you to pieces afterward!”

The looks on their faces had been enough. The men knew Fanu, certainly. He was one of them now. They knew the tragic history of his people, respected his knowledge, even loved him. But he was an outsider, and he’d proved it. He didn’t understand mankind.

The knock on the doorframe went through him like a shock.

It was Chord, and another man. Everett blinked in the half light, trying to pick him out. Young Latimer—the apprentice, the one they called Tip—just a kid—my God! Under his nose, right under his nose!

“Cap’n—” Chord began, then trailed off. The big man looked sick, stricken, and Everett became aware that his own expression must be one of outright condemnation. He—the mighty tolerant, benevolent skipper. We’re all together now, eh? In a pig’s eye! Did he think he was God? Everett suddenly hated his own guts, and struggled to bring his face to order. With a new humility, he said, “Come in, Chord. You too, Lat—Tip. What can I do for you?”

“About—about what you said, a couple of days ago. You know, about… the… about what Dr. Fanu said. Did he mean it?”

“Really mean it?” Tip added. Everett shifted his glance. Young, yes; but there was nothing simpering about him. Clear-eyes, unashamed, he met the Captain’s eyes; a good-looking kid, the athletic, All-Academy type, but not too good-looking. Calloused hands. A faint residue of old acne scars along his jawline.

“Well,” Everett said slowly, trying to keep his voice impersonal, “he says he means it.”

“Dr. Fanu doesn’t strike me as a joker,” the boy continued. The alien had become “Doctor” to them after repairing several broken ribs and a fractured knee or ankle in the last few months.

“No, I don’t think he was joking.”

“How does he—I mean—”

“I didn’t get the details,” Everett cut in quickly. “But if he says he can—his race is advanced enough, biologically—he may be able to do what he says. Let us reproduce.”

“Have babies,” Tip amended. The bluntness shocked Everett. He’d never put it quite that way even to himself. “Will you—let us talk to him, Captain?”

Chord broke in, shamble-speeched as always. “Tip and me, we talked this over a long while. Funny part, we always—well—thought about something like this, then Dr. Fanu came along and said—thing is—well, will you take us to talk with him?”

He got up slowly, nodding. “If that’s what you want.” They nodded silently and he started toward the door, then turned, still torn by doubt and incredulity.

“Would you answer—one rather blunt question? Have you two—is this something that developed between you here on Prox, or were you—were you like this before touchdown?”

Both men suddenly looked dismayed, disgusted, their faith in an intelligent commander suddenly cracking across the top. Chord’s lips curled in rage, but it was the boy who blurted out “For God’s sake, sir, what do you think we are?”

“Sorry,” he said quickly, “I—sorry. It’s good of you to volunteer.” He turned and led them toward the hilltop laboratory, but in his thoughts the unspoken answer drummed, over and over. “God in Heaven, I don’t know! I honestly don’t know! And what’s worse, I don’t know what you’re going to be, and neither will God!”

“It’s really an elementary process from a surgical point of view,” Fanu began academically.

Everett squirmed, his eyes straying toward the closed door of the hospital room, as Fanu went on. “Chemically, of course, we’re on less sure ground. The hormones must be reproduced synthetically, pituitary stimulation, a great deal of chanciness. It’s fortunate that your sexes produce enough of the hormones of each so that I could test them for synthesis. But there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.”

He glared at the alien, taking out his emotion in fury at the scientific coldness of that voice. “In other words, they’re just laboratory animals! Guinea pigs!”

“Not at all. It will work. It may take time for adjustment of the glandular system, and much will depend on physical adjustment. Now if I had been able to get him younger, before puberty—”

“Why Tip?” he demanded, interrupting, wanting to shift the attention from disgusting medical matters, hang on to his sanity. “I’d think Chord was so much bigger, he’d be better able to—”

“To carry a fetus? Not at all. Unfortunately it’s a matter of pelvic development. Chord is much too masculine, his pelvis much too narrow to accommodate—”

Everett exploded in hysterical laughter. “Too masculine! That’s a jolt, isn’t it! Too masculine!”

“I can give you a sedative,” the alien said tonelessly. “You sound as if you needed one.” But the hand on his shoulder was faintly comforting. Everett pulled himself together a little, and Fanu said “John, it must be. If your race is to survive—”

“Maybe we shouldn’t survive!” he snarled. “Wouldn’t it be more decent to die, die clean and human and what we were intended to be, than as some—some obscene imitation of—it’s not natural!”

“Neither is the presence of your race on this planet.”

“That’s different,” he countered weakly. “That’s mechanics. This—”

“You bred domestic animals into alternate phenotypes for your own use. You bred humans to some extent, with your limitations on marriage, compulsory sterilization for defective types—”

“I opposed that!” Everett defended. “That was different—”

“And so is your situation—different from anything that ever happened to your race,” the alien said. The Earthman stared bleakly, his prejudices and his intelligence warring. “I asked you to put it to your men, John. You did. You considered it only fair that they should make their own decision. They did. Now you oppose it.”

“I brought them here, didn’t I?”

“Yes, and I thank you for that. Some day you shall thank yourself.”

“I doubt that. Oh, I know by your reasoning, I’m an anachronism, but I still can’t—” he trailed off, glancing back at the hospital door. “Why both of them, if you can only—convert one?”

Fanu blinked in surprise. “For their physical pleasure, John. I understand that is quite important to your species, whether or not as a means of reproduction. Certain anatomical rearrangements—”

“Spare me!” He saw the alien did not understand the phrase and made some elaboration.

“Oh,” the alien murmured an apology. “I thought you would wish to know.”

“I—” Everett swallowed. “I’d rather know about the scientific part of it. I still don’t understand. I mean, there are males and there are females, and that’s that.”

“Not at all, not in your species. There are members, like your crew, with predominantly male organs and vestigial female organs, and—presumably, I’ve only seen films—predominantly female organs and only rudimentary male organs.” He paused. “Shall I go on?”

The Captain found that he wanted a stiff drink, but nodded for Fanu to continue.

“There are vestigal organs, as I say, and certain common elements. The DNA factor can be cross-stimulated by hormones, certain chemicals—it was done long ago, to a limited extent, by your own scientists.” Everett watched the alien doctor pick up a phial and hold the contents to the light. “It’s most fortunate that your race comes equipped with pairs of everything, including the reproductive organs.”

“It gives you a guinea pig expendable.”

If Fanu had been capable of human expression, he would probably have looked hurt; Everett, increasingly sensitive to the alien gestures and intonations, knew he was wounded. He blinked solemnly. “It makes it possible for him, guinea pig if you prefer, to be both sexes. What must be done is to transfer one set of lobes, and the nature of these makes it possible to separate, and increase the chances of success. We can subject the interstitial tissue to massive doses of hormones, and DNA mutating materials.” Everett evidently looked skeptical, for Fanu hurried to the laboratory animal cages and extracted a furry little native mammal, about the size of a squirrel. “It works, John. It works. This is proof. Not changed at infancy or at puberty, but as a full-grown male!”

Everett stroked the animal absently, glumly. “Yes, but it’s not human. And—will they be?”

Fanu didn’t answer. Everett hadn’t expected him to answer.

A few of the comments were lewd, as he’d expected, but most of the men were kind. He had gone down to the recreation hall, gotten a glass of their home-brewed ale and listened, fading into the background. No more than three or four of the men had made cracks, and they were the ones who’d make cracks about anything, simply for lack of anything better to do. Good workers, but dense in the empathy department.

“May I sit down, sir?”

It was Tsen. Everett gestured and watched the little navigator seat himself. Tsen made an expression of distaste toward the gossipers. “You do not approve, either, of what Chord and the youngster have done?”

“It’s not a question of approval, Tsen. It’s a question of survival. They feel, and Fanu feels, it’s the only way.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “They’re right, of course.”

“But you do not approve.”

He took a long pull at his glass and muttered “I was taught it was a sin. The sin.”

“It? Homosexuality?” Everett winced, saw Tsen’s expression and tried to depersonalize himself. “But, Captain, wasn’t the very base of that sinfulness, the fact that they could not reproduce?”

He stared. He knew his jaw was dropping, but he stared, anyway.

“Do you think Doctor Fanu would accept me as a second—volunteer?”

“You!” He looked around quickly and lowered his voice. “Tsen, I never suspected that—”

“That I am human, sir? We’ve been here nearly two years, and we are not monks, not ascetics. If anyone here has been reared in such a tradition of asceticism, it is myself. Yet affection, physical need—they overwhelm some people. We are not all blessed with your control, sir. Some seek satisfaction from themselves. For some, it requires an attraction to others, and if the others happen to be of the same sex, that is unfortunate, but—under these circumstances—unavoidable, sir.”

Everett flinched. That was getting it straight between the eyes. “Who, if I might ask?”

“Would it make you feel better, sir, or only more bitter?” Everett, trapped in his own prejudice, could not look into the dark eyes. “Will Doctor Fanu accept me for consideration? Are things—well with Chord and Tip?”

“Fanu seems satisfied, and if he isn’t, no one will be.” Everett tilted up his glass, drained the dregs and set it down hard. “Yes, I’m sure Fanu will consider you. You think alike, modern. You should get along very well.”

He hadn’t thought about the situation for weeks. Tsen was out of the hospital, and there were other things to consider. Supplies from the ship were running out. Everett applied all his skill and energy to working out substitute methods, converting some machinery, utilizing native products. The men continued to surprise him with jury riggings and inspired minor inventions. The planet offered a mild climate and two growing seasons a year. Still, as their equipment disintegrated, they were forced to resort to native beasts of burden, and to do more manual labor.

How long had Chord been doing the work of two men on the community farm? He confronted the giant late one afternoon as they straggled back to the mess hall.

“I can handle it, Cap’n. I grew up on a farm.”

“That’s not the point, Chord. Where’s Tip?”

“At home.” There was no apology and no anger, mere honest confusion.

“Chord, it’s not fair for you to do his work. I don’t care if you’re the strongest man here. He’s imposing on you.”

“No sir. No, he’s not. He’s sick. Doctor Fanu—”

But Everett was already striding purposefully toward the small hut shared by Chord and young Latimer. The big man loped behind him, protesting, but the Captain could think of nothing but the rotten laziness of the younger man, who would let his lover do his work, and idle here—

The hut was darkened, and for a moment he could not make out the shapes of things, Chord’s words a muttered undercurrent in the background. He stepped over the high threshold, and looked around, finally making out the form on the bed in the corner.

“Latimer!”

The boy raised himself part way, pulling a blanket close around him. A blanket? Lord, it must be eighty-five or ninety in here! “What the hell is this—letting Chord do your assigned work?”

“Sir, I didn’t—I can’t get up!” The voice was pathetic, and Everett had to force himself to remember that the kid was malingering. “Has Garrett seen you yet?”

“N—no, sir. I—I—”

Everett pulled at the blanket, but the boy pulled it around himself with savage strength, shouting “Leave me alone!” then suddenly burst into tears and fell back on the bed. Chord grabbed Everett’s arm. “Damn it, leave him alone!” Fury trembled the big man’s voice. “Leave him alone—sir.”

Tip’s sobs from beneath the blanket were high, muffled, hysterical. Everett pulled his bruised arm loose from Chord’s great fingers, looking down at the form beneath the blanket; a form strangely, unbelievably distorted—

“Oh, my God,” he said, and left the hut almost running, heading for Fanu’s hillside laboratory.

“But of course it worked, John. Didn’t you believe me?”

Everett paced the floor, running his hands through his hair again and again. “My God, no, no, I—I didn’t. I thought it was some sort of cruel, monstrous joke, a—a ghastly nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.”

“Do you want to?”

“Want to? Oh, Lord, Fanu, haven’t you been listening? This is monstrous, it’s—unholy!”

“The word is without meaning to me, John. It is without meaning to the men who wished this done.”

He stopped pacing and sat down. “If you can do this, why can’t you—test tubes—anything but this!”

“It might be possible.”

“It might—then why in God’s name this—blasphemy?”

“John, the word does not exist for me. I could create a fertilized ovum in that matter, but gestation would be tremendously difficult outside its natural element. It would require every moment of two or three men’s time for the entire gestation period. And even if we had so many men at our disposal—”

“But—”

“Hear me out, John. Tip was a poor choice for the—first. I would not have consented. I warned them of the dangers, but Tip insisted. Chord had many reservations, but the younger man won out. He will have difficulty. But even so, incubating a fetus in his body is much safer and surer than any amount of laboratory work.”

“Safer for the fetus.”

“That’s true.”

He lunged to his feet, confronting the alien, furious. “You’re gambling with that boy’s life!”

“Yes, and he knows it. He said—he said that he wanted Chord’s inheritance combined with his.”

Everett turned away, hands to his face. “Oh, God, what am I trapped in? Why didn’t the ship crash coming in?”

“Ask your God, John.”

He jerked around, stunned.

“If you accept your deity’s omnipotence, mustn’t you accept the fact that he has permitted this development?”

“If that boy dies—Fanu, if you’d seen him—”

The alien blinked, solemnly. “Hysteria is perhaps natural,” he confirmed. “Even though he has been prepared for this there is some amount of emotional shock remaining. You must remember, there is a certain chemical imbalance. Tsen will have an easier time.”

John sat down again. The nightmare was rising above his ears, drowning him in its terrifying black waters. He didn’t hear the alien go out.

The jokes had ceased. They concerned too many men now. The men who were concerned and still able did not look too kindly on lewd comments about their partners. Emotional patterns were developing, friendships becoming deeper, the new way of life more and more ingrained. Everett sometimes thought that he sounded like a reactionary preacher, mumbling to himself. They were all against him now. They knew how he felt, and they had stopped discussing it in his hearing. They made their reports when they must, and that was all, a habit not yet broken.

He kept his log. Some day he would either run out of paper or learn to make a substitute. That was something to consider. The one grain they’d been able to grow—he’d have to consult the record tapes; how did you make rice paper? Maybe among his study materials, Tsen had something that would tell him—the hell with Tsen! Why bother? He’d be dead, they’d all be dead before they ran out of paper. Then what use would the log be to any of them?

The rainy season between the two growing seasons was well under way when someone beat on his door, one night. He mumbled admission, not turning.

“Sir!”

“What? Chord, what is it?” The giant looked wild, his hair tousled, his eyes wide. “What is it, man?”

“It’s Tip, sir. He’s awful sick!”

“Hasn’t he been, all along?”

“This is—no, sir, this is different. He… he hurts. He’s in awful pain.”

Everett gasped and had to suppress a hysterical laugh. “Oh. Well, isn’t that just what you’ve been waiting for? He ought to have thought of that before he took Fanu’s offer.” He wondered insanely if he ought to offer congratulations.

The big man dug his thumbs into Everett’s shoulders with painful force, his face livid with anger and fear. “Look, sir, I’ve had about enough of your—” he stopped and gulped and said, quite meekly for him, “Look, sir, I’m scared. It—it’s not time yet. Not for about six weeks. And I’m—I’m scared, sir,” he finished pitifully.

The two men hurried to Chord’s hut through the blowing rain, and Everett suppressed another burst of crazy hysteria. Those corny old videocasts on a vanished world! Rainstorms, the black of night, a hurried summons—he found himself dismissing irrelevant, ribald thoughts of a midnight delivery of a… child… by two men.

But when he stepped into the hut the thoughts fled, beaten away by the pain of the youth on the bed. He was incredibly pale, sweating badly, trying desperately to muffle his outcries and not succeeding very well. His lips were white and blood-specked where he’d chewed on them. Everett found himself concerned, involved; whatever the cause, he could not ignore the agony in the young face. Tip gave the Captain one look, turned his face away and shut his eyes. “Couldn’t you get—Garrett,” he said weakly, and gasped.

“When did this start?” Everett asked, running over his memory quickly for things that would help, and for the first time wishing he’d listened more closely to Fanu’s explanations.

“While ago.” Tip made a smothered sound.

“How long ago?” he snapped, trying to be sympathetic in spite of his worry.

“Couple… couple hours.” The boy suddenly threw his head back, muffling a groan, trembling violently. Everett glanced at his chronometer. The spasm lasted nearly two minutes. He kept his eyes averted from the swollen body, its distortion no longer concealable by the blanket. Tip, breathing hoarsely, murmured “How did our women ever—” then his eyes widened in surprise and he slumped back on the bed, unconscious.

“Tip! Tip! Wake up, kid—please,” Chord pleaded, bending over the boy, shaking him gently, stroking the sweat-bathed forehead.

“That’s no help.” Everett felt frantic. Fanu would have to straighten this out. He had to. He couldn’t let the boy die, not after a—sacrifice—like this!

“Can you carry him?” He helped Chord wrap the blanket around the unconscious figure, that still twisted silently, spasmodically beneath their hands. Chord picked him up, and they hurried through the rain, up toward the beacon lights of the alien laboratory.

“And he’d been conscious until then?” Fanu questioned gently, moving around the moaning figure.

“Yes, all the time,” Chord answered. “It isn’t time, is it? It isn’t time? That’s what he was scared of. He was afraid to say anything. He said it’d go away… all those books and tapes he read… he… by God, if he dies, I’ll kill you!”

“I am not your God,” Fanu said quietly, sadly. “Life and death are not in my hands, but I will do all that I can.”

“Fanu—” Everett began, dragging his eyes away from the obscenely swollen body. He hadn’t seen any of the… experiments… in clear light until now, and the sight stunned him, brought all this brutally home. Maybe he had been a fool. Why had he, alone, been kept in the dark? He realized only now; there had been a conspiracy of sorts, to keep Tip, and Tsen, and young Reading, the ComCon man, out of his way.

“You’ve got to do something. Chord says it isn’t time.”

“Seven and a half or better of your gestation counts. Better than I hoped.”

“Fanu… the human male was never designed for… this…” he found himself wanting to giggle, more with fright than amusement. Tip was regaining consciousness, moaning slightly, grunting like an animal. Garrett was there, white-coated, his hand reassuring over Tip’s, calm and matter of fact as he explored the boy’s body briefly with a stethoscope. “Heartbeat fine so far, Dr. Fanu. But we can’t monkey around too long.”

“Chord, carry him in there. I must operate this time, I am afraid.” As Tip’s eyes focused on him, the alien’s voice—and it no longer sounded toneless to Everett—said kindly “I’m sorry, Tip. You are too masculinely constructed. Remember, I warned you.”

The boy nodded wordlessly, biting his lip. Then, as Chord picked him up, he gasped between his teeth “If it comes to a choice—remember what you promised me, Doc—”

Everett sank down in a chair and buried his face in his hands, and consciousness was swamped in black nightmare. The next thing he knew, Chord stumbled out of the operating room door, and Everett, feeling nightmarishly idiotic, watched him give a startling performance of expectant fatherhood.

“Female,” Fanu announced, his tiny mouth curving in the nearest approach to a smile he could manage. Chord caught at the alien’s clothing.

“Tip? Tip?”

“He’s all right. Very weak, but fine. You can go in and see him. Be very gentle, though.”

Chord’s face went limp all over. “Oh, thank God,” he muttered, “thank God! Cap’n, that idiot kid made the Doc promise—to save the kid if it came a choice—”

He pushed past them into the other room.

“Female?”

“Female,” Fanu confirmed. “I arranged things that way—with all of them.”

“But—”

“Did you think this was permanent?”

“Well—well, yes, I did.”

Fanu made a sound of alien amusement. “That’s what’s been troubling you. No, John. In fifteen years your planet will have four or five nubile females, at least. The climate will aid precocity. In two generations you will be on firm footing. Your race is intelligent, hardy, ingenious, young—all the things mine wasn’t. Tip’s case was the most difficult. He’ll have to wait two years before attempting this again.”

“Again?” Everett gaped.

“His own request. I had difficulty making him agree even to that, or I should have taken measures to end it now. I shall, next time. When the females are grown, his chore will be done.”

“When the females are grown—what happens to the—to the converted men then? The—attachments, the—the lovers, Fanu?”

Fanu blinked sadly. “I don’t know, John. I shall not be here. I am old, John—old. But I’m sure you’ll solve it.”

Everett turned and walked over to the window, staring down at the twinkling lights from the huts, the rebirth of homo sapiens. Somewhere behind him he could hear an infant wailing. The rain had stopped, and stars were coming out, the strange stars of a strange world.

“All right,” he said softly, “I was wrong. Now, for Your sake, tell us what’s next?”