Doctor Koresz was the first adult to die, six years after their arrival on Ishtar.
It did not come as a surprise, for he had known for months he was dying.
"I do not know why, really," he had told them, lying on his pallet in the hut which the doctor shared with Janet and Hector. "I have only been able to scratch the surface, when it comes to understanding life and death on Ishtar. I shouldn't be dying, of course. I am only forty-two years old, and if I had not been in perfect health the Society would never have approved me for the Magellan. But—as Julius never tires of reminding us—facts are stubborn things. And the fact is that I am dying."
All of the adults were gathered around, except Adams, who had drawn more and more apart from the colony as time went on. He was the only one of the adults who still lived in the landing boat. All the others had long since moved into the huts which Janet had designed from native vegetation. The children were housed in four large barracks (no, "long houses," Indira had named them, after the Iroquois).
Except for Adams, the adults lived in two separate huts: Indira and Julius in one, the doctor and Janet and Hector in the other. The ménage à trois into which Hector, Koresz and Janet had happily settled, within a few months after the crash, was a logical enough arrangement under the circumstances. And sexual mores on Earth in the 22nd century were characterized by considerable latitude and tolerance.
Julius immediately named their hut "Sodom and Gomorrah." And he demonstratively refused to come near it, fearing, or so he claimed, the wrath of God.
"You don't even believe in God!" Indira had once protested.
Julius chewed his lip. "No, I don't. But you never know. And if He does exist, He has two outstanding characteristics. Judging, at least, from the Old Testament."
"Which are?"
"He's the most hot-tempered, narrow-minded, mean-spirited, intolerant, anal-compulsive, bigoted redneck who ever lived. And, what's more to the point, he's a lousy shot."
"It's true!" he insisted, in the face of Indira's laughter. "Read the Book yourself. Somebody pisses Him off, does He nail 'em right between the eyes like Buffalo Bill? Hell, no! He drowns everything. Or He blasts whole cities, or drops seven lean years on entire nations. Indiscriminate, that's what He is. The Sawed-off Shotgun In The Sky. So I ain't getting anywhere near that den of iniquity."
And he hadn't, until he realized that Koresz was really dying.
"But why?" demanded Janet. She wiped away tears. "If it's a disease, maybe you can find a cure. You've done miracles, Vladimir! Not just with us, with the owoc too."
Koresz shook his head weakly.
"It is not a disease, Janet. At least, not in the sense that you are using the term. It is—call it massive systemic shock."
"Explain," said Julius softly.
"I cannot, Julius. Not clearly. There is still an enormous amount we do not understand about life. Organisms are adapted by evolution to a particular environment. Some are more finicky about it than others, but any organism only has a certain tolerance range. Humans do quite well, in that regard, compared to most animals. But we have long known that totally new environments place a tremendous stress on organisms. In unforeseen ways, often. Did you ever read any of those old science fiction classics, written before humanity actually got into space?"
Julius shook his head.
"It is fascinating, really. The writers all thought that weightlessness would improve human health. Seemed like a logical idea at the time, I suppose. Gravity does wear our bodies down. But we are adapted to gravity. And when we finally got into space, we discovered that we cannot survive weightlessness. Not for really extended periods of time. Bone loss; muscle atrophy; eventually, Kabakov's syndrome and death."
He levered himself to a semi-erect position.
"But we can survive weightlessness for quite some time before we succumb. And that, I think, is a good analogy to what is happening to me. My body lasted for years, but it is finally just giving up."
Indira gasped. "Does that mean—?" She swallowed. "The kids—"
Koresz shook his head. "I believe the children will be fine. Young animals are more adaptable than adults. The ones who survive, that is to say. Typically, young animals either survive or they die quickly. But the ones who make it—"
He stopped, turned pink with embarrassment. "I'm sorry, Julius. Indira. My big mouth."
The biologist's face was pale, as was Indira's. But Julius smiled his lopsided smile, and said:
"S'okay, Vladimir. It was a long time ago. My daughter—oh, hell, if I'd left the poor kid on Earth she would have been all right. But here—" He sighed heavily. "Nobody ever said natural selection was kind."
He shook his head sharply, clearing away the memory.
"But what's important now is that I think you're right. A few of the kids who died in the first year, like Indira's, died of trauma. But most of them—just died. Nothing we could do to stop it, as hard as we tried. Lost almost twenty percent, the first year. A few the next year. But since then, they seem to be doing just fine. And you think they'll be okay from now on—and their kids, too, I assume?"
Koresz nodded. "Basically. Oh, I expect there will be a high child mortality rate. But the colony will survive that, especially if the children follow nature's age-old strategy. Be fecund."
He cleared his throat. "Which brings up something I have been meaning to raise. I have not said anything about it before, because it was a moot point. But the children are just about at the age where they discover a fascinating new game."
He gave them a hard stare. "I do not know what cultural prejudices may still be lurking deep within the recesses of your nasty little minds—"
"This—from you?" demanded Julius. "The pervert who's going to fry for eternity?"
When the laughter died down, Koresz continued.
"You must allow the children maximum sexual freedom. More than that. You must positively encourage promiscuity. This is not the time and place for the nuclear family and sexual fidelity. The gene pool is small enough as it is. I believe we have a large enough gene pool—barely—if the genes are mixed up constantly. Even then, genetic drift is going to loom large. I suspect we shall see the resurgence of all sorts of recessive traits. Hemophilia, that sort of thing."
His face grew harsh. "Natural selection will do its job, like always. But we want the genetic mayhem to be as small as possible. That means—"
"Swingers' paradise," snorted Julius. "Rome of the Caesars."
Koresz smiled. "Not so bad as all that, Julius. At least, I have not seen much of a sadistic streak among the children."
He looked at Indira. "Why the big frown, Indira? You never struck me as the sexually-repressive type." A chuckle. "Even though you and Julius have selfishly refused to share your treasures with us sinners."
Indira smiled, faintly. "It's not that, Vladimir. I have no moral problems with allowing the kids to develop a sexually permissive culture. I'm in favor of it, actually. It'll avoid a lot of social neuroses. No, it's just . . ."
She took a deep breath.
"It's just that up until now the boys and the girls have been on a equal footing. They understand that there's a difference between the sexes, of course. But they don't think much of it. Their games are completely integrated, and a number of the girls are emerging as leaders. But if they start having lots of kids, well . . ."
She fell silent. Koresz seemed puzzled.
"I still don't—"
"She's worried about the rise of the patriarchy, Vladimir," explained Julius. "She's mentioned it to me before, in private. Indira says that if the colony were to remain in the state of primitive hunters and gatherers that it wouldn't be a problem. Primitive cultures, she says, are generally characterized by sexual equality."
Indira interrupted. "There's always a division of labor between the sexes, but it rarely translates into a relationship of dominance and subjugation. But the point is that we're not primitive hunters and gatherers. We've already developed agriculture, of a sort—a kind of modified pastoralism, without the migration—and with everything else we've taught the kids they're well on their way toward civilization, of a basic sort. And throughout human history, the rise of civilization was always accompanied by a transformation in the relationship between the sexes. What's called the patriarchy."
She tightened her jaws. "Which was always very oppressive to women. Suttee. Purdah. Kinder, Küche, Kirche. You name it."
Janet interrupted. "But, Indira, that's all in the past. Really, it is. Oh, yeah, sure, you still run across a few guys with some Neanderthal notions, but it's never a real problem."
Indira was shaking her head.
"That's beside the point, Janet. You're right—today. But the modern equality between the sexes is only possible because of the vast wealth of twenty-second century civilization. Even then, it didn't come without long and bitter struggle. But our kids aren't going to be living in that kind of world. They'll be living in the Bronze Age—"
"If I can find any bronze," muttered Julius.
"—and abstract ideas have very little power in the face of social forces that emerge out of the material circumstances of real life."
She chewed her lip, unconsciously imitating Julius.
"I'll have to give it some thought. We won't have much maneuvering room, but there'll be some. Socioeconomic forces are the locomotives of history, but they're not impervious to cultural influence. And there was always a lot of variation in human history, within a range. I'd have much rather been a woman among the Iroquois, for instance, than a woman in ancient India.
"Or—" she frowned at Julius "—among the Hebrews."
"Bad enough I catch hell for what I do," complained the biologist. "Now I got to catch hell for what my ancestors did three thousand years ago?"
Unexpectedly, Hector intervened in the discussion.
"I think you might be worrying too much, Indira. There's something you're overlooking. I don't know much about history, but I know for sure that there's a factor in the equation here that never existed on Earth."
He jerked his head, toward the south.
"The owoc."
Indira was puzzled. "I don't get it, Hector. The owoc won't be able to stop—oh, hell, I wish Julius would stop calling them 'dimbulbs,' even in jest, but I can't deny that they aren't exactly mental giants."
Hector was shaking his head.
"You're missing the forest for the trees, Indira. It's not anything that the owoc would do. It's—just the fact that they are."
He gazed at the blank faces staring at him.
"Don't you see? The kids already think they're half-owoc. Hell, they're even starting to speak in their own dialect—English, basically, with a hefty dose of Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. And lots and lots of hoots. Sometimes, I can't understand what the kids are saying anymore."
He sighed. They still didn't understand.
"Look, folks. Just three days ago, I saw one of the littler boys—Kenny Wright—climb up onto Ludmilla's neck. For all the world like he was a tiny male owoc looking for his favorite spot. He didn't fit, of course, and at first I was afraid Ludmilla would beat him into a pulp. But she just seemed to take it for granted. Even carried Kenny around like that for half an hour.
"So maybe you're right, Indira. You know human history, I don't. But what I do know is that our kids aren't—they aren't just human, anymore. They're something a little different. Something new."
Indira was doubtful. But a small hope was born in her heart that day, at the deathbed of Vladimir Koresz. A small and faint glimmer, under the growing tidal wave of an historian's fear.
They buried Koresz three days later, near the kolocluster. All the humans in the colony attended, even Adams. And it seemed that every owoc in the valley was there also. Several of them owed their wellbeing to Koresz, who had over the years managed to find cures for a number of the illnesses which afflicted the creatures. The owoc, of course, did not understand the means by which Koresz worked his magic. Nor did they seem to care. They simply called him, in their hooting language, "the Stroke of Slow Beauty." (Humans, thought Indira, would have said: "the Touch of Long Life.")
Fortunately, not all of Koresz's skill went with him into the grave. Janet would never be his equal as a doctor, of course. Neither her own keen mind nor his careful tutorship could make up for the years which the doctor had spent learning his craft. But she was still very good. Much better—much, much better—than the medical practitioners which the human race had possessed for all but the last three centuries of its existence. And Janet had drawn around her four children who showed a deep interest in medicine. She believed that at least one of them, Maria De Los Reyes, had the potentiality for becoming a great doctor.
It was fortunate, and not a moment too soon. For, just as Koresz had foreseen, the children soon learned a new and vastly entertaining game. Less than a year later, the first babies began arriving.
They lost many of the babies, of course. But they lost none of the young mothers, although it was a close call with Keiko Watanabe. Janet performed her first Caesarean, and it was a success. Keiko and her child survived, although the girl would never bear another.
Indira was aghast at the child mortality rate, but Julius was (bleakly) satisfied.
"Twenty-five percent after one year," he said. "That's horrible, by modern Terran standards, I agree. But look, Indira—and please don't accuse me of being a cold-hearted biologist—it's better than what the human race put up with for most of its existence. In fact, a twenty-five percent child mortality rate is incredibly good, when you consider they're being born on an alien planet."
Indira knew he was right, but the knowledge didn't help much. Not when she had to help bury the pitiful little bodies. And then look at the hurt and bewildered faces of the children who had borne them.
But, over time, the children—teenagers, now—came to accept the facts of life. Here, of course, they were helped by the attitude of the owoc. Over time, Indira would be both appalled and fascinated by the way in which the inter-penetration of the two species' cultures would produce a unique hybrid. The humans would never share the owoc indifference toward new-born babes, of course. That was biologically precluded. They would care for them, and caress them, and nurse them, and pamper them. But they would withhold the core of their hearts, until the infants began to walk.
Eighteen months. That seemed to be the critical point. If a child could survive that long, and struggle to its uncertain little feet, he or she stood an excellent chance.
Janet Mbateng was the next to die. She knew it was coming months before it finally happened, just as Koresz had known.
"It's like something turned off, inside," she explained to them. "I'm just going through the motions, now."
She groped for words. "I can't explain it. It's not that I want to die, or anything like that. It's just—I don't know. Somehow I can just tell my body's given up."
The final weeks of her life, Janet spent every hour of the day surrounded by her pupils. (The nights, of course, were given to Hector; who held her wasted body in his arms, until he cried himself to sleep.) Hour after hour, passing on to them everything she had learned from Koresz. Hector tried to convince her to rest, but the little woman—no bigger than a child herself, now—adamantly refused.
In the end, she was satisfied she had done all she could. The day before her death, she administered the Hippocratic Oath to Maria De Los Reyes, and urged her other students to continue their efforts so that they too could become Doctors. (And they all did, over time.)
The last night, and day, she gave to Hector.
Hector followed her into the grave soon after. He claimed that he felt the same sensations that Janet and Koresz had described. Indira believed him, but Julius knew he was lying. The pilot's muscular physique never showed more than a trace of the horrible wasting symptoms which Janet and Koresz had exhibited. True, he grew very thin. But Julius knew that Hector hardly ate anything.
No, Julius knew the truth. Hector Quintero had become the closest friend he'd ever had. Over the years, working side by side, he had come to cherish the man's intelligence, cheerfulness, wit and courage. Inexhaustible courage, it had seemed.
But courage comes in different ways, to different people. Hector could face anything, except the empty vision of a future without Janet.
Francis Adams, strangely, seemed indestructible. The physicist was a total recluse—had been since before Koresz's death. And for at least a year prior to that, he had stopped giving classes to the children. (Which Indira regretted not at all; Adams had been an unbelievably bad teacher, totally incapable of explaining things in a way which would be comprehensible to his students.) He dwelt by himself, as he had for years, alone in the landing boat. The last time Julius saw the portion of the boat where Adams lived, the place looked like a pigsty. Adams himself—formerly so fastidious—looked like a complete savage. He acted like one, too. He had screeched at Julius, his voice filled with fear and rage, ordering him to leave. The physicist had even seized a spear which he had secreted in his lair, brandishing it in a manner which would have been frightening if it hadn't been so pitifully awkward.
But Julius obeyed. There was no purpose to be served in doing otherwise.
For years, now, the only time the colonists saw Adams was at mealtimes. These had become the central institution of daily social life for the colony—a time of festivity and relief from the morning's labor in the upunu fields and the afternoon's labor in the large longhouse which served as a school. Twice a day, mid-morning and late afternoon, the entire colony would gather in the center of the valley. There, in a cleared space surrounded on three sides by the long houses and the adults' huts, and on the fourth side by an oruc grove, a line of owoc would slowly enter. Each in turn would regurgitate her childfood into six huge basket/tureens, made of ruporeeds coated with dried resin.
The baskets had been Indira's invention. She felt that receiving the childfood directly into little personal bowls was undignified and wasteful, since much of it slopped over the sides. (It also made her nauseous.) Once the childfood was in the tureens, each human would approach with a bowl and scoop out their own portion. Before retiring to eat in animated circles, the humans would stand before the watching owoc, bowing deeply. The gesture of respect had not been taught to the human young. They had invented it themselves, drawing on some deep pool of cultural inheritance.
Indira herself never scooped her own bowl. She insisted on having a bowl brought to her, so that she could put out of her mind (more or less) the knowledge of where it came from. She was the only member of the human colony who felt that way, but the others had long since accepted her wishes.
Almost always, Julius was the one who brought her bowl. She wished it were otherwise, but she never said so, knowing it would hurt his feelings. Much as she loved Julius, she would have preferred another bowl-bringer, one who wouldn't smack his lips in anticipation of the meal, and make gross remarks such as: "Hey, the barf's good today!"
Adams would always make his appearance after the owoc left. The half-crazed physicist would emerge from his lair and scurry down the hillside. He would stop at the edge of the clearing, hunched, glaring at nothing in particular, saying not a word.
After a moment, Joseph would arise from whichever circle he was eating with and scoop out a bowl. He would approach Adams slowly and solemnly, and extend the bowl. After a moment, Adams would take the bowl and devour the contents like a wolf. Then, he would return the bowl and scuttle back to his lair.
The ritual was one of the many ways—unconsciously, thought Indira—that Joseph had established his position as the unquestioned leader of the younger generation. The children were afraid of Adams, she knew. The fear was not rational. Adams had never been a physically prepossessing man, even in his prime. Any number of the teenagers, of either sex, could have easily handled him. Jens Knudsen, who already had the size and musculature of a heavyweight wrestler, could have broken him with one hand. Ludmilla might have needed two hands.
No, it was not a physical fear. It was that the teenagers knew there was something deeply wrong about Adams, something that was utterly unlike anything else they had encountered. People fear the unknown.
But Joseph did not. He had not feared Adams as a boy. He did not fear him now.
His fearlessness, like the fear which the other teenagers felt, had little to do with physique. In that respect, of course, Adams posed no danger. The time when Adams could loom threateningly over Joseph Adekunle was long gone. Instead, Joseph towered over the physicist—and would have, even were Adams erect. At the age of seventeen, he was already almost two hundred centimeters tall. And while Indira thought that he would not grow much taller, she knew that his frame—already muscular—would fill out even further. By the time Joseph was twenty, he would be as magnificent a physical specimen as the human race had ever produced. Joseph would never have the sheer brute strength that Jens Knudsen possessed, but Indira had noted that he beat Jens as often as Jens beat him whenever they engaged in one of their frequent (and good-natured) wrestling matches. Joseph's speed, reflexes, and balanced poise were positively awesome.
But, as she watched the scene, Indira knew that the essence of it was not physical, but spiritual. The calm, confident serenity that exuded from Joseph's person as he watched the physicist take and gobble down his food did not stem from simple confidence in his muscles. They stemmed from the very soul of the boy.
Indira recognized what she was seeing. It was that vision the human race had always possessed of youth in its glory. Not arrogant, not callous, not vainglorious—simply the calm certainty of young strength and courage. Utter fearlessness in the face of danger; total willingness to stand against it.
The vision was found in all human cultures, expressed in a myriad ways. But Indira thought it had been completely captured only once, by the greatest artist the human race perhaps ever produced.
The superficial appearance was, of course, different. Joseph's skin was black; his hair was kinky; his features were African. But those were meaningless things. The soul of the boy was the same as that captured by the artist's genius.
The young shepherd, guarding his flock. Sling in hand. Poised, yet not tense; calmly gazing forward, secure in his youth, ready to deal with whatever horrors might come over the horizon. Lions; or bears; or perhaps even a giant. Whatever. It made no difference, for he would slay the monster without fail.
She had seen it once, that vision. In Florence.
The David, by Michelangelo.
David had not failed. Nor did Joseph, when the monsters came to his people, three months after Hector died.
The long years of the colony's peaceful existence ended, and gave way to the washing of the spears.