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.
Far 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, smilingly. 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, Ryly thought—they were all more or less equal, anyway. 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 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 guidesign 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 trailmarks 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 scale-like 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 with each frantic step.
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 pouting 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 an affirmative.
“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 raw-boned 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.
“It’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.”
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.
&nbs
p; 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 big bounds 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 attitudes, 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, the same thinness of earlobe. Ryly hoped Davud’s mental make-up now was similar as well.
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 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 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; he realized that by this conversation he had effectively cut himself off from the Bailles forever.
“You’re not going.”
Davud grabbed Ryly’s collar, but he pulled away. “Don’t try to stop me, Davud.”
Without replying, Davud gripped the fleshy part of his arm. Calmly, Ryly pivoted and smashed his fist into the face that was so much like his own. Davud blinked, bewildered, and started to mutter something.
Ryly stood poised indecisively for a second, watching with some astonishment the flow of blood from his phenotype-brother’s broken nose. Then he turned and dashed through the doorway, out into the dark courtyard, and ran as hard as he could for the forest road.
He listened for the shouts of pursuers but could hear none yet. He wondered if perhaps he had hit Davud too hard.
Ryly spent an uneasy night in the forest not too far from the edge of the Baille’s territory; when morning came, he struck out at a rapid pace for the Baille-Clingert border. Joanne would be at the waterfall by Dorisrise—he hoped. For an instant he considered what would become of him if she had been playing him false, but he reached no answer.
The day grew warmer as he half-trotted through the forest, following the series of trailmarks he had left to guide himself. When he reached the trysting-place, it was not yet Dorisrise; Thomas alone was in the sky
. Ryly sat by the water’s edge and splashed himself to clean away the sweat of travel.
He heard footsteps. He looked up, hoping it might be Joanne. But it was Davud who appeared.
“So you followed me?”
Davud nodded. “I had to, Ryly.”
“And I suppose you brought the whole tribe behind you, all of them foaming at the mouth and ready to stone me.” Ryly sighed. “I guess I didn’t hit you hard enough, then. You woke up too soon.”
Davud’s nose was swollen and slightly askew. He said, “I came alone. I want to try to talk you out of this crazy thing, Ryly. Nobody else knows about it yet.”
“Good. Now you go back and forget anything I said to you last night.”
“I can’t do that,” Davud said. “I can’t let you mate with a—a Clingert. I came to bring you back to Baille land with me.”
Ryly clenched his fists. He had no desire to fight with his phenotype-brother a second time, but if Davud was going to insist—
“Get away from me, Davud. Go back alone.”
It was almost Dorisrise time, now. Ryly hoped he would be able to get Davud out of the way before Joanne reached their rendezvous. But Davud was shaking his head stubbornly. “Baille and Clingert shall not breed. Thomas set that law down for us in the beginning, and it can never be broken. It is—”
He stopped, jaw sagging, and pointed. Slowly Ryly turned. The first rays of Doris glinted blue in the flowing waterfall, and Joanne stood behind him.
“Which one of you is Ryly?” she asked plaintively.
Ryly unfroze first. “I am,” he said. “This is my phenotype-brother Davud. He came with me to—meet you. Davud, this is Joanne.”
“Is this a Clingert?” Davud asked slowly. “But—but—Clanfather always said they were ugly! And—”
Ryly began to smile. Good old Davud was a true phenotype-brother after all; his reaction to Joanne on first sight was identical to Ryly’s. It was heart-warming to see him react that way.