The Legend of Miaree

Chapter Nine

"We know, dear," said First Mother Piiree, when, with much agitation and self-pleasure, the third-change infant formed her first coherent message in a keening mixture of sweet sounds and labored thoughts. "Concern yourself with the application of the sound eeeeen. Now, now, he is well. He is being watched. He is feeding." Lovely, thought First Mother Piiree, to be fortunate enough to share these lovely children’s first odd and ancient joys. Unfortunate that this group of changelings should have had their wingling stage complicated by the presence of the alien. The trauma of it could color their future lives, and the life of each was a precious jewel to be treasured, protected. Now that the three pleasant worlds of the Artonuee were population-stabilized, the flow of changelings through the Development Center was slow and carefully regulated.

There were times when Piiree wished that she had lived during the period of expansion, when the Artonuee were peopling new worlds. She herself had voted, at the last Public Opinion, to expand Five, cold as it was. She had argued against the quality-of-life advocates, stating with some force that she knew from her personal experience and her graduate research that a one-on-one relationship at the iffling stage was no more desirable than multiple relationships. The age of expansion, she had said, should prove to even the most skeptical that the life force was powerful enough to give being to two, three, even as many as five ifflings. The great Lonwee was a fiveling. It was a terrible waste to allow only one iffling the gift of advancement when an Artonuee came home.

Just last night she had talked about it with the Lady from Nirrar. "It is not as if we are denying them life." the Lady said. "We are merely

postponing it. Look at it this way. In our mythology, the Lady Andee suckled fifty ifflings. Each became great. I agree that it is possible to advance more than one or two ifflings with each homecoming, but is it desirable? Part of our history is the sad story of the age of overpopulation, of rampant changeling mortality. Rather than condoning artificial concern with unfertilized eggs and unadvanced ifflings I, personally, would advise a continuation of careful control, of watchfulness, of Artonueeistic benevolence in regard to those who are allowed the gift of sentient life."

The Lady was high in the government, and in her position, had access to information unavailable to Piiree. She bowed. Moreover, the Lady was carrying a wing load of sorrow. It registered there around her eyes, in the sad purse of her lovely lips.

"Your load is heavy, Lady," Piiree said, in consideration. "I will allow you to retire, with just one more question. The meaning of the alien’s presence on The World, Lady?"

For an unguarded moment, there was a chaos of thought, then the Lady controlled herself. "Great change, First Mother. For good or for ill. At best, your wishes granted in a staggering surplus." Pictures of thousands, millions of changelings. An outflowing of changelings to live great and exciting lives of—Piiree was lost.

"I will wish for it," Piiree said, leaving the chamber as the tired Lady, clad in official purple, keened goodnight.

Still, Piiree resented the presence of the alien, the male. He sat, a malignancy in paradise, atop the Cliffs of Flight, eating the fruit which properly belonged to the trekking changelings. Piiree had a healthy respect for the ability of the male of the species, as long as he stayed in his place. This alien male was definitely out of his place. She was glad, after so many days of suspense and anxious watching, that the government had, at last, sent someone to deal with the situation. All she wanted was for the alien to be removed so that her changelings would not have, as one of their first memories, the image of him in their minds.

Behind her, the Lady could not sleep. To one who knew her, a dullness of eye, there in the outer facets, would have told of her fatigue, and of other things. To a soul mate—one who could, upon invitation, come into her head—all would have been revealed and then tears would have fallen, for the Lady had sacrificed much to be on The World, to hear the eager,

childish voices of the changelings, to smell the drift of the aroma of the pleele flowers and the fuplee forests across the inland sea. The pleele smell saddened her most.

Sleepless, she activated the darkened arcs and, from her carry case, extracted papers and leaned over them as she sat in her bed. Her lips formed sounds, unnatural sounds, guttural and strange and, although systematized, wounding to her ears still. And some of the sounds were incapable of being formed by her frail vocal chords. Some had to be thought, motioned. This gave her doubt. The mind which was the target of these sounds was unknown. Would her mixture of thought and sounds make sense to it?

It was an old worry and she had to live with it for yet a few hours, until the dawn and after the floater trip across the inland sea. And if she could not communicate, then it had all been for nothing. She felt a wave of unaccustomed bitterness.

No. She would not be able to bear failure. She would not even think of failure, not after the long days of work and the sleepless nights and the frightful psychic pain which still, in unguarded moments, smote her with a hurtful blow.

Still, there was the possibility of failure. For the first time in history, the Artonuee were exposed to the concept of linguistics, a term which she herself had coined in the first dramatic days of her study of the alien messages in that section of the Research Quad which had been turned over to her. The Artonuee, of course, had always had language. The libraries of Outworld were filled with the written word of the Artonuee, going back, in the ancient picture form of the language, over three hundred thousand Artonuee years to the days of the first tool users. But even in that early, rudimentary form of the language there was no difficulty, for the written pictures were merely graphic transcriptions of the pictures of the mind. It was thought in University circles that a primitive Artonuee female, from the early days of self-spun nests, would be able to converse with a modem-day Artonuee in basic terms, leaving out the additions to the language caused primarily by technological development.

It was true that in the era of the attempted space communications experiments, some thought had been given to the possibility that another intelligent race, out among the stars, would have different sounds in

communication, even different ways of making communicative sounds.

Yet the early language scientists—if such a title could, indeed, be bestowed upon those who formulated the messages to be sent into space—assumed that mind pictures of universal things, moons, stars, suns, words, people, would be universally understood. So it was that the interstellar messages were sent in primitive Artonuee picture writing.

And so it was that the answers were in basic pictures and, thus, easily understandable. That is, the first answers were in basic pictures, and the newest Artonuee changeling would have been able to see that the pictures indicated a sentient being of a race having two sexes and having young of the same form. From there it was easy. The system of numbers fell into place with a quickness which pleased Miaree. Within days she was able to determine that the speed of the Delanian rays of light was, on a scale accurate to the fifth decimal point, exactly the value of God’s Constant, thus, the speed of light. In another day she knew and reported that the elements of the Delanian periodic table corresponded almost exactly with those of the Artonuee table, with some notable exceptions in the heavy metal end.

So far she was dealing with pictures and with numbers. It was when she waded into the stacked pages of duppaper dealing with language that she ran into problems. In one of her early reports, she illustrated her difficulty by enclosing a copy of an illustration from a Delanian message. Having mastered the Delanian alphabet, she was able to translate the words with the picture of a band of colors. It was labeled The Visible Spectrum. It was composed of waves measuring from 760 millimicrons to 385 millimicrons, and the band itself was labeled with meaningless names: Red, White, Green, Blue. Violet.

The finding had to do with more than language. In her report she wrote: It is obvious that the Delanian eye is an imperfect instrument with limited capability; this basic difference in the structure of a sense organ will make communication difficult, if not impossible, in matters pertaining to the wavelengths of light. Since there is such a basic difference in the physical make-up of this one important sense organ, it is to be assumed that other basic differences will also be present. In this specific instance, how can an Artonuee with diapasonic sight explain what she sees to a being with limited vision?

She was to find, as she plowed into the technical material, that,

although Delanians could not see other wavelengths, they knew of their existence and could measure them with instruments, so that minor difficulty was overcome, but there were others.

Since Delanians saw light differently, she theorized, they would have an entirely different concept of the universe. Such thinking revealed to her one of the basic rules of language, while demolishing the common-language theories of the scientists who had worked on the communications project. She quickly learned that there is no relationship, in alien languages, between any label and the object for which it stands. There was no similarity between the Delanian and Artonuee words for star, for example.

The smaller figure in the three-person picture was called by various names: boy, son, young man, youth. There was no equivalent for any of those terms in the Artonuee language.

As the days passed and the beautiful unrest grew in her body, she began to understand the overwhelming task which awaited her. In desperation, she turned to the sound tapes which had been transmitted from the Delanian driver approaching the system. She had listened, briefly, before, had had her ears jarred by static and by the unmusical, growling, offensive sounds of the Delanian voice. Slowly, painfully, she began to relate the sounds to the Delanian alphabet, for the early broadcasts were, again, language lessons for beginners. And just as she put two sounds together and got star ship for driver, she knew that she would have to put aside the research.

Inside her slim body the eggs were forming, and as she worked, the chemical changes in her body imitated in smell the sweet, potent aroma of the pleele. The most glorious adventure of an Artonuee female called her. She dreamed of the love parks of Outworld. Artonuee males, in the Quad, catered to her, bowed to her, followed her. Small bouquets of pleele appeared on her desk, placed by male assistants, by males with whom she had never come into personal contact. On her brief outings into the city, males would pause, smile, keen a greeting, for she had not loosed her wings from her garment, had not displayed the sign that she had chosen, and in the ancient tradition, she was looking.

The attentions she received were her due. It was the right of any male to state his case. And yet, it interfered with her work and left her breathless and expectant, and she found herself wasting valuable time

watching the flex of the leg muscles of the young male who served her needs in her personal office, lifting, carrying, running.

It was her right, as a young female feeling the strength of nature’s call to fertilization, to freetime. Special transportation awaited her and her chosen. Outworld called. There the entire landscape had been modeled after The World’s mating parks. There the planet was devoted to love and the creation of life and beauty. There the artistic minds of the four habitable worlds gathered and created music and the magic of words and objects of delight and there the lovers strolled and kissed and...

She had already been robbed of a part of it. She had planned her method of selection, from among the artists of Outworld, for she wanted her eggs to carry the seeds of beauty. She should have been on Outworld for weeks, selecting, rejecting, choosing. Her body cried out for love. It was ready, and hours of joy had been stolen from her by the hateful sounds of the Delanian voice on the sound tapes. She would endure no longer.

Yet, when she sent her application for freetime, it was not returned automatically. She had sent her physician’s certificate, telling of her readiness, of her sacrifice in staying with the project to date. Yet the automatic approval did not come. Instead, an official courier brought an oral summons.

She had never known that so many handsome males walked the streets of Nirrar. She had never known that the male smile could be so pleasing.

"Lady," said the roller driver who took her to the Government Quad, "I know it is chill, but either I open the viewer or I faint."

The musky smell of pleele filled the compartment. She smiled and nodded.

The members of the guard were so beautiful they took her breath away. Tall, handsome, strong. They shone in their uniforms like beacons on the road to joy. And, superbly disciplined, they didn’t turn a hair, although, as she wafted past, the delicious smell of pleele perfumed the air, leaving behind the slim, graceful lady a lingering, wistful sadness.

"Mother," she said, without waiting. "I must go. I must. There is so little time."

There was a sadness in Mother Aglee’s eyes. They were alone in the Mother’s office. Mother Aglee did not speak. Instead, she handed Miaree a packet.

"No, no," Miaree said. "I will not look."

"Open it, daughter," Mother Aglee said sadly.

It was, of course, the alien. Duppaper pictures, taken from afar with the long lens of an optical recorder.

"No, no," Miaree keened.

"You were making splendid progress," Mother Aglee said. "It was felt that no additional pressures were needed."

"Someone else will have to take over. There are my notes."

"You have the mind for it, daughter. You are one in a million."

"He survived all this time?" Miaree asked, feeling an interest in spite of the torturing storm in her mind, in her body.

"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.