Life Cycle Read online

  The dragons snapped at them but didn’t dare attack. There was a moment of fury, then the humans were out on the plaza. They began running.

  “Now we’ve got to beat them back to the ship,” panted Kingsbury.

  “More than that,” said Navarro. “We must reach safety before they come near enough to call the hive and have us intercepted. I wonder if we can.”

  “A man might try,” said Kingsbury.

  The forward port showed some thousands of armed Mercurian females. They ringed in the ship, waiting, too rational to batter with useless clubs at the hull and too angry to depart. There were more of them arriving every minute.

  “I wonder—” Antella peered out. He spoke coolly, but his feathers stood erect with tension. “I wonder if they can do worse to us than they have already done. We will starve no faster besieged in here than walking freely around.”

  “They can get to us if they want to work at it,” said Kings-bury. “And I think they do. They could rig up some kind of battering ram—”

  Navarro lighted his pipe and puffed hard. “It is our task to persuade them otherwise,” he said. “Do you believe they will listen?”

  Kingsbury went over to the ship’s radio and sat down and operated the controls with nervous fingers. “Let’s hope so. It’s our only chance. Do you want to talk to “em?”

  “Go ahead. You are better with the English language than I. I will perhaps put in an oar.”

  Kingsbury switched on the speaker and brought his lips to the microphone. “Hello, out there,” he said.

  His voice cut through the seething of Mercurian tones. It was weird how they snapped off all at once. English, clear and grammatical and subtly distorted, answered him:

  “What do you wish to say? You have violated the temple. The gods order that you must die.”

  “The gods would say that,” replied Kingsbury. “But they are not gods at all. They want to get rid of us because we can tell you the truth. They’ve lied and cheated you for I don’t know how many centuries.”

  “Truth, lie, cheat. Those are words we do not know.”

  “Well… uh… truth is a correct statement, a statement of what is real. A lie is a statement which is not truth, but made on purpose, knowing it to be false. Cheating is… well… curse it, I wish we had a dictionary along! The gods have lied to you so you would do what they wanted. That’s cheating.”

  “We think we understand,” said the toneless voice. “It is a new concept to us, but a possible one. The gods do not speak so we can hear them. They—” Conference, presumably recalling what the first expedition had told about radio—“they use a different band. They communicate with us by gestures only. So are you implying that they are not what they claim to be and have made life unnecessarily difficult for us?”

  “That’s it, pal.” Kingsbury still didn’t like the Twonks much, but he was grateful they were so quick on the uptake. “Having seen what goes on in the temple, we know what these self-appointed gods are. They’re nothing but the males of your own species.”

  “What does the word ‘male’ denote?”

  “Well—” Kingsbury ground to a halt. Precisely how did you explain it in nickel words when Junior asked where he came from? He gave Navarro a helpless look. The Basque grinned, leaned over the microphone, and gave a simple account.

  The-female collectivity thought about it for a while, standing in burnished motionlessness, then said with an unaccustomed slowness: “That is logical. We have long observed that certain of the animals go through the same motions of fertilization as we with the gods. But whether you wish to call them gods or males makes no difference. They are still the great ones who give life.”

  “They don’t give any more life than you do,” snapped Kingsbury. “They need you just as much as you need them. In fact… they are yourselves !”

  “That is an irrational statement.” Was there a defensive overtone in the voice? “Our eggs bring forth only females, so it is reasonable to suppose that the gods are born directly of the sun. A Mercurian hatches from an egg after the god-male has given life. She grows up and in her turn visits the god-males and brings forth eggs. At last, grown old, she goes to the sunlands and dies. There is no missing period in which she could become a god-male.”

  “Oh, yeah? What about after she’s gone sunside?”

  Mercurian language gabbled at them.

  Kingsbury spoke fast: “We went out there ourselves and found the shells of those you thought-had died. But the shells were empty! You know you have muscles, nerves, guts, organs. Those ought to remain in a dried-out condition. But I repeat, the shells were empty!”

  “Then—But we have only your statement.”

  “You can check up on it. We can rebuild a space suit for one of you, furnish enough protection from the sun for you to go out there a while, long enough to see.”

  “But what happens? What is the significance of the empty shells?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, you dunderheads? You’re a kind of larval stage. At the proper time, you go out into the sun. Its radiation changes you. You’re changed so much that all memory of your past state disappears—your whole bodies have to be reconstructed, to live on Dayside. But when the process is finished, you break out of the shell—and now you’re male.

  “You don’t know that. The male comes out as if newly born—hatched, I mean. Probably his kind meet him and help him and teach him. The males discovered the truth somehow… well, it was easy enough for them, since they can watch the whole life cycle. Instead of helping you females, as nature intended, they set themselves up as gods and lived off you, taking more than they gave. And when they learned about us, they forbade you to have dealings with us—because they were afraid we’d learn the truth and expose them.

  “But they need you! All you have to do is refuse to visit the temples for a few sunrises. Then see how fast they come to terms!”

  For a time, then, the radio hissed and crackled with the thinking of many minds linked into one. Antella sat unmoving, Navarro fumbled with his pipe, Kingsbury gnawed his lips and drummed on the radio panel.

  Finally: “This is astonishing news. We must investigate. You will provide one of us with a suit in which to inspect Dayside.”

  “Easy enough,” said Kingsbury. His tone jittered. “And if you find the shells really are empty, as you will—what then?”

  “We shall follow your advice. You will be given admittance to your supplies, and we will discuss arrangements for the mining of those ores which you desire.”

  Navarro found himself uncontrollably shaking. “St. Nicholas, patron of wanderers,” he whispered, “I will build you a shrine for this.”

  “The males may make trouble,” warned Amelia.

  “If their nature is as you claim,” said the Twonk horde, “they will not be difficult to control.”

  Kingsbury, the American, wondered if he had planted the seeds of another matriarchy. Underneath all the rejoicing, he felt a vague sense of guilt.

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