Robert Silverberg - The Outbreeders

The week before his wedding, Ryly Baille went alone into the wild forests that separated Baille lands from those of the Clingert clan. The lonely journey was a prenuptial tradition among the Bailles; his people expected him to return with body toughened by exertion, mind sharp and clear from solitary meditation. No one at all expected him to meet and fall in love with a Clingert girl.

He left early on a Threeday morning; nine Bailles saw him off. Old Fredrog, the Baille Clanfather, wished him well. Minton, Ryly’s own father, clasped him by the hand for a long, awkward moment. Three of his patrilineal cousins offered their best wishes. And Davud, his dearest friend and closest phenotype-brother, slapped him affectionately.

Ryly said good-bye also to his mother, to the Clanmother, and to Hella, his betrothed. He shouldered his bow and quiver, hitched up his hiking trousers, and grinned nervously. Overhead, Thomas, the yellow primary sun, was rising high; later in the day the blue companion, Doris, would join her husband in the sky. It was a warm spring morning.

Ryly surveyed the little group: six tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed men, three tall, red-haired, hazel-eyed women. Perfect examples all of Baille-norm, and therefore the highest representatives of evolution.

“So long, all,” he said, smiling. There was nothing else to say. He turned and headed off into the chattering forest. His long legs carried him easily down the well-worn path. Tradition required him to follow the main path until noon, when the second sun would enter the sky; then, wherever he might be, he was to veer sharply from the road and hew his own way through the vegetation for the rest of the journey.

He would be gone three days, two nights. On the third evening he would turn back, returning by morning to claim his bride.

He thought of Hella as he walked. She was a fine girl; he was happy Clanfather had allotted her to him. Not that she was prettier than any of the other current eligibles—they were all more or less equal. But Hella had a certain bright sparkle, a way of smiling, that Ryly thought he could grow to like.

Thomas was climbing now towards his noon height; the forest grew warm. A bright-colored, web-winged lizard sprang squawking from a tree to the left of the path and fluttered in a brief clumsy arc over Ryly’s head. He notched an arrow and brought the lizard down—his first kill of the trip. Tucking three red pinlike tail feathers in his belt, he moved on.

At noon the first blue rays of Doris mingled with the yellow of Thomas. The moment had come. Ryly knelt to mutter a short prayer in memory of those two pioneering Bailles who had come to The World so many generations ago to found the clan, and swung off to the right, cutting between the fuzzy grey boles of two towering sweetfruit trees. He incised his name on the forestward side of one tree as a guide-sign for his return, and entered the unknown part of the forest.

He walked till he was hungry; then he killed an unwary bouncer, skinned, cooked, and ate the meaty rodent, and bathed in a crystal-bright stream at the edge of an evergreen thicket. When darkness came, he camped near an upjutting cliff, and for a long time lay on his back, staring up at the four gleaming little moons, telling himself the old clan legends until he fell asleep.

The following morning was without event; he covered many miles, carefully leaving trail-marks behind. And shortly before Dorisrise he met the girl.

It was really an accident. He had sighted the yellow dorsal spines of a wabbler protruding a couple of inches over the top of a thick hedge, and decided the wabbler’s horns would be as good a trophy as any to bring back to Hella. He strung his bow and waited for the beast to lift its one vulnerable spot, the eye, into view.

After a moment the wabbler’s head appeared, top-heavy with the weight of the spreading snout-horns. Ryly fingered his bowstring and targeted on the bloodshot eye.

His aim was false; the arrow thwacked hard against the scalelike black leather of the wabbler’s domed skull, hung—penetrating the skin for an instant—and dropped away. The wabbler snorted in surprise and anger and set off, crashing noisily through the underbrush, undulating wildly as its vast flippers slammed the ground.

Ryly gave chase. He strung his bow on the run, as he followed the trail of the big herbivore. Somewhere ahead a waterfall rumbled; the wabbler evidently intended to make an aquatic getaway. Ryly broke into a clearing—and saw the girl standing next to the wabbler, patting its muscular withers and murmuring soothing sounds. She glared up at Ryly as he appeared.

For a moment he hardly recognized her as human. She was slim and dark-haired, with great black eyes, a tiny tilted nose, full lips. She wore a brightly colored saronglike affair of some batik cloth; it left her tanned legs bare. And she was almost a foot shorter than Ryly; Baille women rarely dipped below five-ten in height.

“Did you shoot at this animal?” she demanded suddenly.

Ryly had difficulty understanding her; the words seemed to be in his language, but the vowels sounded all wrong, the consonants not harsh enough.

“I did,” he said. “I didn’t know he was your pet.”

“Pet! The wabblers aren’t pets. They’re sacred. Are you a Baille?”

Taken aback by the abrupt question, Ryly sputtered a moment before nodding.

“I thought so. I’m Joanne Clingert. What are you doing on Clingert territory?”

“So that’s it,” Ryly said slowly. He stared at her as if she had just crawled out from under a lichen-crusted rock. “You’re a Clingert. That explains things.”

“Explains what?”

“The way you look, the way you talk, the way you…” He moved hesitantly closer, looking down at her. She looked very angry, but behind the anger shone something else—

A sparkle, maybe. A brightness.

Ryly shuddered. The Clingerts were dreaded alien beings of a terrible ugliness, or so Clanfather had constantly reiterated. Well, maybe so. But, then, this Clingert could hardly be typical. She seemed so delicate and lovely, quite unlike the rawboned, athletic Baille women.

A blue shaft of light broke through the saw-toothed leaves of the trees and shattered on the Clingert’s brow. Almost as a reflex, Ryly sank to his knees to pray.

“Why are you doing that?” the Clingert asked.

“lt’s Dorisrise! Don’t you pray at Dorisrise?”

She glanced upward at the blue sun now orbiting the yellow primary. “That’s only Secundus that just rose. What did you call it— Doris?”

Ryly concluded his prayer and rose. “Of course. And there’s Thomas next to her.”

“Hmm. We call them Primus and Secundus. But I suppose it’s not surprising that the Bailles and Clingerts would have different names for the suns. Thomas and Doris…that’s nice. Named for the original Bailles?”

Ryly nodded. “And I guess Primus and Secundus founded the Clingerts?”

She laughed—a brittle tinkling sound that bounced prettily back from the curtain of trees. “No, hardly. Jarl and Bess were our founders. Primus and Secundus only mean first and second, in Latin.”

“Latin? What’s that? I—”

Ryly shut his mouth, suddenly. A cold tremor of delayed alarm passed through him. He stared at the Clingert in horror.

“Is something wrong?” the Clingert asked. “You look so pale.”

“We’re talking to each other,” Ryly said. “We’re holding a nice little conversation. Very friendly, and all.”

She looked indignant. “Is anything wrong with that?”

“Yes,” Ryly said glumly. “I’m supposed to hate you.”