Riya's Foundling Read online

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  Riya's Foundling

  By ALGIS BUDRYS

  [Transcriber note: This etext was produced Science Fiction Stories 1953.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyrighton this publication was renewed.]

  [Sidenote: _Now, if the animal we know as a cow were to evolve into acreature with near-human intelligence, so that she thought of herself asa "person" ..._]

  The loft of the feed-house, with its stacked grainsacks, was a B-72, afort, a foxhole--any number of things, depending on Phildee's moods.

  Today it was a jumping-off place.

  Phildee slipped out of his dormitory and ran across the yard to thefeed-house. He dropped the big wooden latch behind him, and climbed upthe ladder to the loft, depending on the slight strength of his youngarms more than on his legs, which had to be lifted to straining heightsbefore they could negotiate the man-sized rungs.

  He reached the loft and stood panting, looking out over the farm throughthe loft door, at the light wooden fences around it, and the circlingantenna of the radar tower.

  Usually, he spent at least a little time each day crouched behind thegrainsacks and being bigger and older, firing cooly and accurately intocharging companies of burly, thick-lipped UES soldiers, or going over onone wing and whistling down on a flight of TT-34's that scattered likefrightened ducks before the fiery sleet of his wing rockets.

  But today was different, today there was something he wanted to try.

  He stood up on his toes and searched. He felt the touch of Miss Cowan'smind, no different from that of anyone else--flat, unsystematic.

  He sighed. Perhaps, somewhere, there was someone else like himself. Fora moment, the fright of loneliness invaded him, but then faded. He tooka last look at the farm, then moved away from the open door, letting hismind slip into another way of thinking.

  His chubby features twisted into a scowl of concentration as hevisualized reality. The scowl became a deeper grimace as he negated thatreality, step by step, and substituted another.

  _F is for Phildee._ _O is for Out._ _R is for Reimann._ _T is for Topology._ _H is for heartsick hunger._

  Abruptly, the Reimann fold became a concrete visualization. As thoughprinted clearly in and around the air, which was simultaneously botharound him and not around him, which existed/not existed in spacetime,he saw the sideslip diagram.

  He twisted.

  * * * * *

  Spring had come to Riya's world; spring and the thousand sounds of it.The melted snow in the mountaintops ran down in traceries of leapingwater, and the spring-crests raced along the creeks into the rivers. Theriverbank grasses sprang into life; the plains turned green again.

  Riya made her way up the path across the foothills, conscious of hershame. The green plain below her was dotted, two by two, with thefigures of her people. It was spring, and Time. Only she was alone.

  There was a special significance in the fact that she was here on thispath in this season. The plains on either side of the brown river wereher people's territory. During the summer, the couples ranged over thegrass until the dams were ready to drop their calves. Then it became thebulls' duty to forage for their entire families until the youngsterswere able to travel south to the winter range.

  Through the space of years, the people had increased in numbers, thepressure of this steady growth making itself felt as the yearlingsfilled out on the winter range. It had become usual, as the slow driftnorthward was made toward the end of winter, for some of the people tosplit away from the main body and range beyond the gray mountains thatmarked the western limits of the old territories. Since these wandererswere usually the most willful and headstrong, they were regarded asquasi-outcasts by the more settled people of the old range.

  But--and here Riya felt the shame pierce more strongly than ever--theyhad their uses, occasionally. Preoccupied in her shame, sheinvoluntarily turned her head downward, anxious that none of the peoplebe staring derisively upward at the shaggy brown hump of fur that wasshe, toiling up the path.

  She was not the first--but that was meaningless. That other femalepeople had been ugly or old, that the same unforgotten force that urgedher up the mountain path had brought others here before her, meant onlythat she was incapable of accepting the verdict of the years that hadthinned her pelt, dimmed her eyes, and broken the smooth rhythm of hergait.

  In short, it meant that Riya Sair, granddam times over, spurned by everymale on the old range, was willing to cross the gray mountains and riskdeath from the resentful wild dams for the thin hope that there was amale among the wildlings who would sire her calf.

  She turned her head back to the path and hurried on, cringing in inwardself-reproach at her speed.

  Except for her age, Riya presented a perfect average of her people. Shestood two yards high and two wide at the shoulders, a yard at thehaunches, and measured three and a half yards from her muzzle to therudimentary tail. Her legs were short and stumpy, cloven-hooved. Hermassive head hung slightly lower than her shoulders, and could belowered to within an inch or two of the ground. She was herbivorous,ruminant, and mammalian. Moreover, she had intelligence--not of a veryhigh order, but adequate for her needs.

  From a Terrestrial point of view, none of this was remarkable. Manyyears of evolution had gone into her fashioning--more years for her onespecies than for all the varieties of man that have ever been.Nevertheless, she did have some remarkable attributes.

  It was one of these attributes that now enabled her to sense whathappened on the path ahead of her. She stopped still, only her long furmoving in the breeze.

  * * * * *

  Phildee--five, towheaded, round faced, chubby, dressed in a slightlygrubby corduroy oversuit, and precocious--had his attributes, too.Grubby and tousled; branded with a thread of licorice from one corner ofhis mouth to his chin; involved in the loss of his first milk-tooth, ashe was--he nevertheless slipped onto the path on Riya's world, thehighest product of Terrestrial evolution. Alice followed a white rabbitdown a hole. Phildee followed Reimann down into a hole that, at the sametime, followed him, and emerged--where?

  Phildee didn't know. He could have performed the calculation necessaryto the task almost instantly, but he was five. It was too much trouble.

  He looked up, and saw a gray slope of rock vaulting above him. He lookeddown, and saw it fall away toward a plain on which were scattered pairsof foraging animals. He felt a warm breeze, smelled it, saw it blow dustalong the path, and saw Riya:

  _B is for big brown beast._ _L is for looming large, looking lonely._ _B? L? Bull? No--bison._ _Bison:_

  bison (bi'sn) _n._ The buffalo of the N. Amer. plains.

  Phildee shook his head and scowled. No--not bison, either. What, then?He probed.

  Riya took a step forward. The sight of a living organism other than aperson was completely unfamiliar to her. Nevertheless, anything thatsmall, and undeniably covered--in most areas, at least--with some kindof fur, could not, logically, be anything but a strange kind of calf.But--she stopped, and raised her head--if a calf, then where was thecall?

  Phildee's probe swept past the laboring mind directly into hertelepathic, instinctual centers.

  Voiceless, with their environment so favorable that it had never beennecessary for them to develop prehensile limbs, female people hadnevertheless evolved a method of child care commensurate with theircomparatively higher intelligence.

  Soft as tender fingers, gentle as the human hand that smooths the awryhair back from the young forehead, Riya's mental caress enfoldedPhildee.

  Phildee recoiled. The feelin
g was:

  _Warm_ _Soft_ _Sweet_ Not _candy in the mouth_

  _Candy in the mouth_ _Familiar_ _Good_ _Tasty_ _Nice_

  _The feeling was_ _Not Familiar_ _Not Good_ _Not Tasty_ _Not Nice_

  _WHY?_:

  _M is for many motionless months._ _T is for tense temper tantrums._ _R is for rabid--NO!--rapid rolling wrench._

  _MTR. Mother._

  Phildee's mother wanted Phildee's father. Phildee's mother wanted greengrass and apple trees, tight skirts and fur jackets on Fifth Avenue, mento turn and look, a little room where nobody could see her. Phildee'smother had radiation burns. Phildee's mother was dead.

  He wavered; physically. Maintaining his position in this world was aprocess that demanded constant attention from the segment of his minddevoted to it. For a moment, even that small group of brain cells almostbecame involved in his reaction.

  It was that which snapped him back into functioning logically. MTR wasMother. Mother was:

  _Tall_ _Thin_