Robert Silverberg - The Outbreeders

They walked together to the place where the waterfall cascaded in a bright foaming tumble down the mountainside, and they talked. And Ryly discovered that Clingerts were not quite so frightening as he had been led to believe.

His wanderings had brought him close to Clingert territory; Joanne had been but an hour from home when she had met him. But he nervously declined an offer to come to the Clingert settlement with her. That would be carrying things much too far.

After a while the Clingert said, “Do you hate me yet?”

“I don’t think I’m going to hate you,” Ryly told her. “I think I like you. And particularly every time I think of Hella—”

“Hella?” The Clingert’s eyes flashed angrily.

“The Baille who was my betrothed.” He accented the was. “Clanfather gave her to me last month. We were supposed to be married when I returned to the settlement. I thought I was looking forward to it too. Until—until—”

A wabbler mooed somewhere deeper in the forest. Ryly stared helplessly at the Clingert, realizing now what was happening to him.

He was falling in love with the Clingert.

Ever since the days when Thomas and Doris Baille first came to The World, Baille and Clingert had kept firm boundaries. Baille had mated only with Baille. And now—

Ryly shook his head sadly. In the blue-and-gold brilliance of the afternoon, this Clingert seemed infinitely more desirable to him than any Baille woman ever had.

She touched his hand gently. “You’re very quiet. You’re not at all like the Clingert men.”

“I guess I’m not. What are they like?”

She made a little face. “Much shorter than you are, with ugly straight dark hair and black eyes. Their muscles bunch up in knots when they draw bows; your arms are long and lean. And Clingert men get bald at a very young age.” Her hand lightly ruffled his Baille-yellow hair. “Do Bailles lose their hair young?”

“Bailles never get bald. Clanfather’s hair is still as yellow as mine, and he’s past fifty.” Ryly fell silent again, thinking of Clanfather and what he would say if he knew what had taken place out here.

Not since the days when Thomas cast the first Clingert from his sight has this happened, he would probably intone in a deep, sententious voice.

Ryly remembered a time far away in his childhood when a Baille woman had birthed a dark-haired son. Clanfather had driven child and parents out into the forest, and there other Bailles had stoned them. Ryly was not anxious to share that fate. But yet—

He scrambled to his feet. The Clingert looked at him in alarm. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Back. To the Baille settlement.”

There was a moment of silence between them. Finally Ryly took a deep breath and said, “I’ll return. Meet me at this place three days from now, at Dorisrise—I mean, when Secundus rises. Will you be here?”

Uneasiness glimmered in her dark eyes. “Yes,” she said.

He reached the familiar Baille territory near nightfall the next day, having covered the outlying ground as rapidly as he could and with as few stops along the way as possible. He ducked back onto the main road around the time of Thomasset on Fiveday. He had had little difficulty in locating the tree that bore his name in its bark. Only the blue sun shone now, and it was low above the horizon; the moons were beginning their procession across the twilight-dimmed sky.

Ryly stole into the settlement on the back road. That route brought him past the crude little cabin which Thomas had built with his own hands as a place for Doris and himself to live, long ago when the first Baille had tumbled out of the sky and settled on The World. Ryly quivered a little as he passed the dingy old shrine; the sort of betrayal he was contemplating did not come easy to him.

Above all, he did not want to be seen. Not until he had spoken with his phenotype-brother Davud.

A cat mewled. Ryly ducked into the concealing darkness of a vine bower and waited. A stiff-necked old man passed by: Clanfather. Ryly held his breath until the old one had entered the Clan house; he slipped out of his shelter, then padded silently across the main courtyard, and ran into the open archway that led to Davud’s cabin.

The light was on. Davud was inside, drowsing in a chair. Ryly tiptoed through the rear door. He sprang across the room in four bigbounds and clapped his hands over Davud’s mouth before the other had fully come awake.

“It’s me—Ryly. I’m back.”

“Mmph!”

“Keep quiet and don’t make any loud noises. I don’t want people to find out I’m here yet.”

He stepped back. Davud rubbed his lips and said, “What in Thomas’ name made you want to scare me like that? For a second I thought it was a Clingert raid.”

Ryly winced. He stared intently at Davud, wondering if it was safe to tell him. Davud, of all the Bailles, was closest to him in physique and in attitude, which was the reason Clanfather had designated them phenotype-brothers even though they had different parents. Among the Bailles, actual parentage meant little, since genetically every clan member was virtually identical to every other.

He and Davud were uncannily alike, though: both standing six-three, the Baille-norm height, both with the same twist to their unruly blond hair, the same sharpness of nose, and the same thinness of earlobe.

He poured a beaker of thick yellow bryophyte wine and sipped it slowly to steady his nerves. “I have to talk to you, Davud. Something very important has happened to me.”

Ignoring that, Davud said, “You weren’t supposed to come back until tomorrow morning. I saw Hella around Thomasset, and she said she couldn’t wait to see you again.” Davud grinned. “I told her I was enough like you to do, but she wouldn’t listen to the idea.”

“Don’t talk about Hella. Listen to me, Davud. I went into Clingert territory on my trip. I met a Clingert girl. I…love her…I think.”

Davud was on his feet in an instant, facing Ryly, brow to brow, chin to chin. His nostrils were quivering. “What did you just say?”

Very quietly Ryly repeated his words.

“I thought that was it,” Davud muttered. “Ryly, are you out of your head? Marry a Clingert? That filth?”

“But you haven’t seen—”

“I don’t need to see. You know the old stories of how the first Clingert quarreled with Thomas until Thomas was forced to drive him away. You know what sort of creatures the Clingerts are. How can you possibly—”

“Love one? Davud, you don’t know how easy it is. The Baille girls are so damned big and brawny! Joanne is—well, you’d have to see her to know. The fact that Thomas and the first Clingert had some silly quarrel hundreds of years ago—”

Davud’s face was a white mask of indignation. “Ryly! Get hold of yourself! You’re talking nonsense, man—absolute nonsense. Baille and Clingert must never breed. Would you want to pollute our line with theirs?”

“Yes.” Defiantly.

“You’re mad, then. But why did you come back here to tell me about all this? Why didn’t you simply stay with your Clingert?”

“I wanted someone to know. Someone I could trust—like you.”

“You made a mistake in that case,” Davud said. “I’m going to tell Clanfather the whole story, and when they stone you I’ll be glad to take part. That’s what they did the last time this happened, fifteen years ago, if you remember. When Luri Baille had a baby that looked like a Clingert. The line has to be kept pure.”

“Why?”

“It—it has to, that’s all,” Davud said weakly. As Ryly started to walk out, he added, “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

“Back to the forest,” Ryly said in a bitter voice. “I promised her I’d be back. I should never have come here in the first place.” He was shaking and perspiring heavily; somewhat to his own surprise he realized that by this conversation he had effectively cut himself off from the Bailles forever.