LITMIR.BIZ

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      Almost resolved, only a few traces of the initial conflict remained. Phildee put the tips of his right fingers to his mouth. He dug his toe into the ground, gouged a semicircular furrow, and smoothed it over with his sole.

      Riya continued to look at him from where she was standing, two or three feet away. Haltingly, she reached out her mind again—hesitating not because of fear of another such reaction on Phildee’s part, for that had been far beyond her capacity to understand, but because even the slightest rebuff on the part of a child to a gesture as instinctive as a Terrestrial mother’s caress was something that none of the people had ever encountered before.

      While her left-behind intellectual capacity still struggled to reconcile the feel of childhood with a visual image of complete unfamiliarity, the warm mind-caress went gently forth again.

      Phildee made up his mind. Ordinarily, he was immune to the small emotional problems that beclouded less rational intellects. He was unused to functioning in other than a cause/effect universe. Mothers were usually—though sometimes not—matronly women who spent the greater part of roughly twenty years per child in conscious pre-occupation with, and/or subconscious or conscious rejection of, their offspring.

      In his special case, Mother was a warm place, a frantic, hysteric voice, the pressure of the spasmodically contractile musculature linked to her hyperthyroid metabolism. Mother was a thing from before birth.

      Riya—Riya bore a strong resemblance to an intelligent cow. In any physiological sense, she could no more be his mother than—

      The second caress found him not unaccustomed to it. It enfolded his consciousness, tenderly, protectingly, empathetic.

      Phildee gave way to instinct.

      *

      The fur along the ridge of Riya’s spine prickled with a well-remembered happiness as she felt the hesitant answering surge in Phildee’s mind. Moving surely forward, she nuzzled his face. Phildee grinned. He ran his fingers through the thick fur at the base of her short neck.

       Big warm wall of brown fur.

       Cool, happy nose.

       Happy, happy, eyes.

      Great joy welled up in Riya. No shameful trot across the mountains faced her now. No hesitant approach to the huddled, suspicious wildlings was before her. The danger of sharp female hooves to be avoided, of skulking at the edge of the herd in hope of an anxious male, was a thing no longer to be half-fearfully approached.

      With a nudge of her head, she directed Phildee down the path to the old range while she herself turned around. She stood motionless for a sweeping scan of the plain below her. The couples were scattered over the grass—but couples only, the females as yet unfulfilled.

      This, too, was another joy to add to the greatest of all. So many things about her calf were incomprehensible—the only dimly-felt overtones of projected symbology that accompanied Phildee’s emotional reactions, the alien structure—so many, many things. Her mind floundered vainly through the complex data.

      But all that was nothing. What did it matter? The Time had been, and for another season, she was a dam.

      *

      Phildee walked beside her down the path, one fist wrapped in the fur of her flank, short legs windmilling.

      They reached the plain, and Riya struck out across it toward the greatest concentration of people, her head proudly raised. She stopped once, and deliberately cropped a mouthful of grass with unconcern, but resumed her pace immediately thereafter.

      With the same unconcern, she nudged Phildee into the center of the group of people, and, ignoring them, began teaching her calf to feed.

       Eat. (Picture of Phildee/calf on all fours, cropping the plains grass.)

      Phildee stared at her in puzzlement. Grass was not food. He sent the data emphatically.

      Riya felt the tenuous discontent. She replied with tender understanding. Sometimes the calf was hesitant.

      Eat. (Gently, understandingly, but firmly. [Repetition of picture.]) She bent her head and pushed him carefully over, then held his head down with a gentle pressure of her muzzle. Eat.

      Phildee squirmed. He slipped out from under her nose and regained his Feet. He looked at the other people, who were staring in puzzlement at Riya and himself.

      He felt himself pushed forward again. Eat.

      Abruptly, he realized the situation. In a culture of herbivores, what food could there be but herbiage? There would be milk, in time, but not for—he probed—months.

      In probing, too, he found the visualization of his life with her ready at the surface of Riya’s mind.

      There was no shelter on the plain. His fur was all the shelter necessary.

       But I don’t have any fur.

      In the fall, they would move to the southern range.

       Walk? A thousand miles?

      He would grow big and strong. In a year, he would be a sire himself.

      *

      His reaction was simple, and practiced. He adjusted his reality concept to Reimannian topology. Not actually, but subjectively, he felt himself beginning to slip Earthward.

      Riya stiffened in alarm. The calf was straying. The knowledge was relayed from her mother-centers to the telepathic functions.

       Stop. You cannot go there. You must be with your mother. You are not grown. Stop. Stay with me. I will protect you. I love you.

      *

      The universe shuddered. Phildee adjusted frantically. Cutting through the delicately maintained reality concept was a scrambling, jamming frequency of thought. In terror, he flung himself backward into Riya’s world. Standing completely still, he probed frantically into Riya’s mind.

      And found her mind only fumblingly beginning to intellectualize the simple formulization of what her instinctive centers had computed, systematized, and activated before her conscious mind had even begun to doubt that everything was well.

      His mind accepted the data, and computed.

      Handless and voiceless, not so fast afoot in their bulkiness as the weakest month-old calf, the people had long ago evolved the restraints necessary for rearing their children.

      If the calf romped and ran, his mother ran beside him, and the calf was not permitted to run faster than she. If a calf strayed from its sleeping mother, it strayed only so far, and then the mother woke—but the calf had already long been held back by the time her intelligence awoke to the straying.

      The knowledge and computations were fed in Phildee’s rational centers. The Universe—and Earth—were closed to him. He must remain here.

      But human children could not survive in this environment.

      He had to find a solution—instantly.

      He clinched his fists, feeling his arm muscles quiver.

      His lower lip was pulled into his mouth, and his teeth sank in.

      The diagram—the pattern—bigger—stronger—try—try—this is not real—this is real: brown earth, white clouds, blue sky—try—mouth full of warm salt ...

       F is for Phildee!

       O is for Out!

       R is for Riya!

       T is for Topology!

       H is for happiness and home!

      Riya shook herself. She stood in the furrows of a plowed field, her eyes vacant with bewilderment. She stared uncomprehendingly at the walls and the radar

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