Robert Silverberg - The Outbreeders

“It was my fault. I started the whole thing.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I did, when I brought up the topic of—”

He smiled and touched a finger lightly to her lips. “Look,” he said.

She looked. Davud and Melena had drawn to one side, standing on a moist, moss-covered patch of ground within the field of spray and foam of the waterfall. They were talking softly. It wasn’t difficult to see by their faces what the topic of discussion was.

“We’ll have to forget about ancient history now,” Joanne said. “Forget all about what happened between Jarl Clingert and Thomas Baille four centuries ago.”

Ryly took her hand. “We’ll go somewhere else on The World,” he said. “Start all over, build a new settlement. Just the four of us. And maybe we can recruit some others, if I can lure a few Bailles out here to meet Clingerts.”

“And vice versa. The Clingert men hate the Bailles now too, you know. But that can stop. We’ll breed the feuding out.”

Ryly looked over at Davud and Melena, then back at Joanne. Everything looked incredibly lovely at that moment—the angular red leaves of the overhanging trees, the white spray of the falls, prismatically colored blue and gold by the sunlight, the quiet green clouds drifting above. He wanted to fix that moment in his mind forever.

He smiled. His mind was still full of insidious Clanfather-instilled legends of the early days on The World as seen through Baille eyes. But he could start forgetting them now.

Soon there would be a third clan on The World—a hybrid clan, both fair and dark, both short and tall.

And someday his descendants would be spinning legends about him, and how he had helped to found the clan, back in the misty time-shrouded days of the remote past.