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.
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
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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
A cat mewled. Ryly ducked into the concealing darkness of
a vine bower and waited. A stiff-necked old man passed by:
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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.
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“I thought that was it,” Davud muttered. “Ryly, are you out
of your head? Marry a Clingert? That filth?”
“But y
ou 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.
“You’re not going, Ryly. I won’t let you.”
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, half believing, and started
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to mutter something. Ryly quickly jerked his arm free and hit
Davud a second time. Davud sagged to the floor.
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 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. Could he return to the
Bailles and marry Hella after all? He didn’t think so.
The day grew warmer as he half trotted through the forest,
following the series of trail-marks 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
pheno-type-brother a second time, but if Davud was going to
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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 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—”
Joanne laughed, her special Clingert sort of laugh that Ryly
had already grown to love. “He seems stunned. Just as stunned
as you were, three days ago. Do all of you Bailles think we’re
ogres?”
Davud sat down heavily on a rotting stump. His face was
very pale by the light of the double suns; he was shaking his head
reflectively and seemed to be talking quietly to himself. At length
he said, “All right. I apologize, Ryly. Now I see what you were
talking about. Now I see!”
There was an overenthusiastic note in Davud’s tone of voice
that irked Ryly, but he refrained from voicing any annoyance.
“What about Thomas and his laws now, Davud?” he said. “Now
that you’ve seen a Clingert?”
“I take everything back,” Davud murmured. “Everything.”
Ryly glanced from his phenotype-brother to Joanne. “I guess
we have his blessing; then. If—if you’re willing to become an
outcast from the Clingerts, that is.”
Now it was Joanne’s turn to look startled. “Outcast? For
fulfilling the aim of the first Clingert?”
“What’s that?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
Ryly shook his head. “I don’t have the faintest idea of what
you’re talking about.”
“When it all started,” she said patiently. “When the spaceship
exploded and the Clingerts and Bailles were thrown free and
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landed on The World, hundreds of years ago, Jarl Clingert
wanted to interbreed, but Thomas Baille wouldn’t have any of it.
He wante
d to keep his line pure. So there hasn’t been very much
contact between Clingert and Baille since then, ever since the
time the first Baille threatened without provocation to kill Jarl
Clingert if he came within ten miles of—”
“Hold it,” Ryly said. “It was Clingert who tried to kill
Thomas Baille and marry Doris, but Thomas drove him off
and—”
“No,” said Joanne. “You’ve got it all backward. It was
Baille’s fault that—”
“Let’s discuss ancient history some other time,” Davud
interjected suddenly. There was a curiously pained expression on
his face. “Ryly, do you mind if I talk to you alone a moment?”
“Why—all right,” Ryly said, surprised.
They drew a few feet farther away, and Ryly said, “Well?
What do you think of her?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Davud whispered
harshly. “I think she’s far and away above the Baille women.
She’s so— different. Gentle but not weak, small but not flimsy—
” “I knew you’d like her, Davud.”
“Not like,” Davud groaned. “Love. I love her too, Ryly.”
*
It came like a blow across the face. Ryly’s eyes widened and
stared into the equally blue ones of his phenotype-brother. The
Baille genes had been duplicated perfectly among them, it
seemed. In every respect.
“You can’t mean that,” Ryly said.
“I do. Dammit, I do. How can I help it?”
“We can’t both have her, Davud. And I think I have priority.
I—”
Davud gasped and seized him suddenly, spinning him
around. Ryly looked, shut his eyes, touched his fingers lightly to
his eyelids, and looked again. The mirage was still there. It was
no illusion.
He saw two Joannes.
“Ryly? Davud? Meet Melena. Melena Clingert.”
“Is she—your sister?” Ryly asked hoarsely. The two
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Clingerts were, at this distance, identical.
“My cousin,” Joanne said. “I don’t have any sisters.” She
grinned. “Melena was hiding near the far side of the waterfall. I
brought her along to have a peek at Ryly.”
Ryly and his phenotype-brother exchanged astonished
glances.
“Of course,” Ryly said softly. “We Bailles all look alike; why
shouldn’t the Clingerts? Three hundred years of inbreeding.