The Gods Themselves (17 page)

Since that first time in the rock, she had gone twice more to the Hard-caverns. Twice more, unnoticed, she had buried herself in rock, and each time she sensed and
knew,
and each time when Odeen would explain matters to her, she knew in advance what it was he would explain.

Why couldn't they teach her, then, as they had taught Odeen? Why only the Rationals? Did she possess the capacity to learn only because she was a Left-Em, a perverted mid-ling? Then let them teach her, perversion and all It was
wrong
to leave her ignorant.

Finally, the words of the Hard One were breaking through to her. Losten was there, but it was not he speaking. It was a strange Hard One, in front, who spoke. She did not know him, but she knew few of them.

The Hard One said, "Which of you have been in the lower caverns recently: the Hard caverns?"

Dua was defiant. They found out about her rock-rubbing and she didn't care. Let them tell everybody. She would do so herself. She said, "
I
have. Many times."

"Alone?" said the Hard One calmly.

"Alone. Many times," snapped Dua. It was only three times, but she didn't care.

Odeen muttered, "I have, of course, been to the lower caverns on occasion."

The Hard One seemed to ignore that. He turned to Tritt instead and said sharply. "And you, right?"

Tritt quavered, "Yes, Hard-sir."

"Alone?"

"Yes, Hard-sir."

"How often?"

"Once."

Dua was annoyed. Poor Tritt was in such a panic over nothing. It was she herself who had done it and she was ready for a confrontation. "Leave him alone," she said. "I'm the one you want."

The Hard One turned slowly toward her. "For what?" he said.

"For whatever it is." And faced with it directly, she couldn’t bring herself to describe what she had done after all. Not in front of Odeen;

"Well, we'll get to you. First, the right. . . . Your name is Tritt, isn't it? Why did you go to the lower caverns alone?"

"To speak to Hard-One-Estwald, Hard-sir."

At which again Dua interrupted, eagerly, "Are
you
Estwald?"

The Hard One said briefly, "No."

Odeen looked annoyed, as though it embarrassed him that Dua didn't recognize the Hard One. Dua didn't care.

The Hard One said to Tritt, "What did you take from the lower caverns?"

Tritt was silent.

The Hard One said, without emotion, "We know you took something. We want to know if you know what it was. It could be very dangerous."

Tritt was still silent, and Losten interposed, saying more kindly, "Please tell us, Tritt. We know now it was you and we don't want to have to be harsh."

Tritt mumbled. "I took a food-ball."

"Ah." It was the first Hard One speaking. "What did you do with it?"

And Tritt burst out. "It was for Dua. She wouldn't eat It was for Dua."

Dua jumped and coalesced in astonishment.

The Hard One turned on her at once. "You did not know about it?"

"No!"

"Nor you?"— to Odeen.

Odeen, so motionless as to seem frozen, said, "No, Hard-sir."

For a moment the air was full of unpleasant vibration as the Hard Ones spoke to each other, ignoring the triad.

Whether her sessions at rock-rubbing had made her more sensitive, or whether it was her recent storm of emotions, Dua couldn't tell, and wouldn't have dreamed of trying to analyze; she simply knew she was catching whiffs -—not of words—but of understanding—

They had detected the loss some time ago. They had been searching quietly. They had turned to the Soft Ones as possible culprits with reluctance. They had investigated and then turned to Odeen's triad with even greater reluctance. (Why? Dua missed that.) They did not see how Odeen could have had the foolishness to take it, or Dua the inclination. They did not think of Tritt at all.

Then the Hard One who had so far not said a word to the Soft Ones recalled seeing Tritt in the Hard-caverns. (Of course, thought Dua. It was the day she had first entered the rock. She had sensed him then. She had forgotten.)

It had seemed unlikely in the extreme, but finally, with all else impossible and with the time lapse having grown intolerably dangerous, they came. They would have liked to consult Estwald, but by the time the possibility of Tritt arose, he was unavailable.

All this Dua sensed in a gasp and now she turned toward Tritt, with a feeling of mingled wonder and outrage.

Losten was anxiously vibrating that no harm had been done, that Dua looked well, that it was a useful experiment actually. The Hard One to whom Tritt had spoken was agreeing; the other still exuded concern.

Dua was not paying attention to them only. She was looking at Tritt.

The first Hard One said, "Where is the food-ball now, Tritt?"

Tritt showed them.

It was hidden effectively and the connections were clumsy but serviceable.

The Hard One said,
” Did
you do this yourself, Tritt?"

"Yes, Hard-sir."

"How did you know how?"

"I looked at how it was done in the Hard-caverns. I did it exactly the way I saw it done there."

"Didn't you know you might have harmed your mid-mate?"

"I
didn’t.
I
wouldn’t.
I—" Tritt seemed unable to speak for a moment. Then he said, "It was not to hurt her. It was to feed her. I let it pour into her feeder and I decorated her feeder. I wanted her to try it and she did. She ate! For the first time in a long while she ate well. We melted." He paused, then said in a huge, tumultuous cry. "She had enough energy at last to initiate a baby-Emotional. She took Odeen's seed and passed it to me. I have it growing inside me. A baby-Emotional is growing inside me."

Dua could not speak. She stumbled back and then rushed for the door in so pell-mell a fashion that the Hard Ones could not get out of the way in time. She struck the appendage of the one in front, passing deep into it, and then pulled free with a harsh sound.

The Hard One's appendage fell limp and his expression seemed contorted with pain. Odeen tried to dodge around him to follow Dua, but the Hard One said, with apparent difficulty. "Let her go for now. There is enough harm done. We will take care."

4b

Odeen found himself living through a nightmare. Dua was gone. The Hard Ones were gone. Only Tritt was still there; silent

How could it have happened, Odeen thought in tortured fashion. How could Tritt have found his way alone to the Hard-caverns? How could he have taken a storage battery charged at the Positron Pump and designed to yield radiation in much more concentrated form than Sunlight and dared—

Odeen would not have had the courage to chance it. How could Tritt; stumbling, ignorant Tritt? Or was he unusual, too? Odeen, the clever Rational; Dua, the curious Emotional; and Tritt, the daring Parental?

He said, "How could you do it, Tritt?"

Tritt retorted hotly. "What did I do? I fed her. I fed her better than she had ever been fed before. Now we have a baby-Emotional initiated at last. Haven't we waited long enough? We would have waited forever, if we had waited for Dua."

"But don't you understand, Tritt? You might have hurt her. It wasn't ordinary Sunlight. It was an experimental radiational source that could have been too concentrated to be safe."

"I don't understand what you're saying, Odeen. How could it do harm? I tasted the kind of food the Hard Ones made before. It tasted bad. You've tasted it, too. It tasted just awful and it never hurt us. It tasted so bad, Dua wouldn't touch it. Then I came on the food-ball. It tasted
good.
I ate some and it was delicious. How can anything delicious hurt. You see, Dua ate it. She liked it. And it started the baby-Emotional. How can I have done wrong?"

Odeen despaired of explaining. He said, "Dua is going to be very angry."

"She'll get over it"

"I wonder. Tritt, she's not like ordinary Emotionals. That's what makes her so hard to live with, but so wonderful when we
can
live with her. She may never want to melt with us again."

Tritt's outline was sturdily plane-surfaced. Then he said, "Well, what of it?"

"What
of
it?
You
ask. Do you want to give up melting?"

"No, but if she won't she won't. I have my third baby and I don't care any more. I know all about the Soft Ones in the old days. They used to have two triad-births sometimes. But I don't care. One is plenty."

"But, Tritt, babies aren't all there is to melting."

"What else? I heard you say once you learned faster after you melted. Then learn slower. I don't care. I have my third baby."

Odeen turned away, trembling, and flowed jerkily out of the chamber. What was the use of scolding Tritt? Tritt wouldn't understand. He wasn't sure he understood himself.

Once the third baby was born, and grown a little, surely there would come a time to pass on. It would be he, Odeen, who would have to give the signal, who would have to say when, and it would have to be done without fear. Anything else would be disgrace, or worse, and yet he could not face it without melting, even now that all three children would have been formed.

Melting, somehow, would eliminate the fear.... Maybe it was because melting was like passing on. There was a period of time when you were not conscious, yet it did not hurt. It was like not existing and yet it was desirable. With enough melting, he could gain the courage to pass on without fear and without—

Oh, Sun and all the stars, it wasn't "passing on." Why use that phrase so solemnly? He knew the other word that was never used except by children who wanted to shock their elders somehow. It was
dying.
He had to get ready to die without fear, and to have Dua and Tritt die with him.

And he didn't know how.... Not without melting...

4c

Tritt remained alone in the room, frightened, frightened, but sturdily resolved to remain unmoved. He had his third baby. He could feel it within.

That was what counted.

That was all that counted.

Yet why, then, deep inside, did he have a stubborn faint feeling that it
wasn’t
all that counted?

5a

Dua was ashamed almost beyond endurance. It took a long time for her to battle down that shame; battle it down enough to give herself room to think. She had hastened— hastened—moving blindly out and away from the horror of the home-cavern; scarcely caring that she did not know where she was going or even where she was,

It was night, when no decent Soft One would be on the surface, not even the most frivolous Emotional. And it would be a considerable time before the Sun rose. Dua was glad. The Sun was food and at the moment, she
hated
food and what had been done to her.

It was cold, too, but Dua was only distantly aware of it Why should she care about cold, she thought, when she had been fattened in order that she might do her duty— fattened, mind and body. After that, cold and starvation were almost her friends.

She saw through Tritt. Poor thing; he was so easy to see through; his actions were pure instinct and he was to be praised that he had followed them so bravely. He had come back so daringly from the Hard-caverns with the food-ball (and she—she herself had sensed him and would have known what was happening if Tritt hadn't been so paralyzed at what he was doing that he had dared not think of it, and if
she
had not been so paralyzed at what
she
was doing and at the new depth of sensation it brought her that she would not take care to sense what most she needed to).

Tritt brought it back undetected and had arranged the pitiful booby trap, decorating her feeder to entice her. And she had come back, flushed with awareness of her rock-probing thinness, filled with the shame of it and with pity for Tritt. With all that shame and pity, she ate, and helped initiate birth.

Since then she had eaten but sparingly as was her custom and never at the feeder, but then there had been no impulse to. Tritt had not driven her. He had looked contented (of course) so there was nothing to reactivate the shame. And Tritt left the food-ball in place. He didn't dare risk taking it back; he had what he wanted; it was best and easiest to leave it there and think of it no more.

—Till he was caught.

But clever Odeen must have seen through Tritt's plan, must have spied the new connections to the electrodes, must have understood Tritt's purpose. Undoubtedly, he said nothing to Tritt; that would have embarrassed and frightened the poor right-ling and Odeen always watched over Tritt with loving care.

Of course, Odeen didn't have to say anything. He needed only to fill in the gaps in Tritt's clumsy plan and make it work.

Dua was under no illusions now. She would have detected the taste of the food-ball; noticed its extraordinary tang; caught the way in which it began to fill her while giving her no sensations of fullness—had it not been that Odeen had occupied her with talk.

It had been a conspiracy between the two of them, whether Tritt was consciously part of it or not. How could she have believed that Odeen was suddenly a careful, painstaking teacher? How could she have failed to see the ulterior motive? Their concern for her was their concern for the completion of the new triad, and that in itself was an indication of how little they thought of her.

Well—

She paused long enough to feel her own weariness and she worked herself into a crevice in the rock that would shield her from the thin, cold wind. Two of the seven stars were in her field of vision and she watched them absently, occupying her outer senses in trivia so that she might concentrate the more in internal thought.

She was disillusioned.

"Betrayed," she muttered to herself. "Betrayed!" Could they see no further than themselves? That Tritt would be willing to see all destroyed if he were but secure in his babies was to be taken for granted. But he was a creature of instinct. What of Odeen?

Odeen reasoned, and did that mean that for the purpose of exercising his reason, he would sacrifice all else? Was everything produced by reason its own excuse for being— at any cost? Because Estwald had devised the Positron Pump, did it have to be used in order that the whole world, Hard and Soft alike, be placed at its mercy, and at the mercy of the people of the other Universe? What if the other people stopped and if the world was left without a Positron Pump and with a dangerously cooled Sun?