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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/34420-h.zip b/34420-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..92a68e9 --- /dev/null +++ b/34420-h.zip diff --git a/34420-h/34420-h.htm b/34420-h/34420-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..86aa356 --- /dev/null +++ b/34420-h/34420-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1066 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Riya's Foundling, by Algis Budrys. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; +} /* page numbers */ + +.linenum { + position: absolute; + top: auto; + left: 4%; +} /* poetry number */ + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.sidenote { + width: 20%; + padding-bottom: .5em; + padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; + padding-right: .5em; + margin-left: 1em; + float: right; + clear: right; + margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; + color: black; + background: #eeeeee; + border: dashed 1px; +} + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold;} + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.figleft { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0; + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-right: 1em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +.figright { + float: right; + clear: right; + margin-left: 1em; + margin-bottom: + 1em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-right: 0; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + +/* Poetry */ +.poem { + margin-left:10%; + margin-right:10%; + text-align: left; +} + +.poem br {display: none;} + +.poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + +.poem span.i0 { + display: block; + margin-left: 0em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; +} + +.poem span.i2 { + display: block; + margin-left: 2em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; +} + +.poem span.i4 { + display: block; + margin-left: 4em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; +} + .poem span.i16 {display: block; margin-left: 16em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i19 {display: block; margin-left: 19em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i7 {display: block; margin-left: 7em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Riya's Foundling, by Algirdas Jonas Budrys + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Riya's Foundling + +Author: Algirdas Jonas Budrys + +Release Date: November 23, 2010 [EBook #34420] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIYA'S FOUNDLING *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + + +<h1>Riya's Foundling</h1> + +<h2>By ALGIS BUDRYS</h2> + +<p>[Transcriber note: This etext was produced Science Fiction Stories 1953. +Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright +on this publication was renewed.]</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="sidenote"><i>Now, if the animal we know as a cow were to evolve into a +creature with near-human intelligence, so that she thought of herself as +a "person" ...</i></div> + + +<p>The loft of the feed-house, with its stacked grainsacks, was a B-72, a +fort, a foxhole—any number of things, depending on Phildee's moods.</p> + +<p>Today it was a jumping-off place.</p> + +<p>Phildee slipped out of his dormitory and ran across the yard to the +feed-house. He dropped the big wooden latch behind him, and climbed up +the ladder to the loft, depending on the slight strength of his young +arms more than on his legs, which had to be lifted to straining heights +before they could negotiate the man-sized rungs.</p> + +<p>He reached the loft and stood panting, looking out over the farm through +the loft door, at the light wooden fences around it, and the circling +antenna of the radar tower.</p> + +<p>Usually, he spent at least a little time each day crouched behind the +grainsacks and being bigger and older, firing cooly and accurately into +charging companies of burly, thick-lipped UES soldiers, or going over on +one wing and whistling down on a flight of TT-34's that scattered like +frightened ducks before the fiery sleet of his wing rockets.</p> + +<p>But today was different, today there was something he wanted to try.</p> + +<p>He stood up on his toes and searched. He felt the touch of Miss Cowan's +mind, no different from that of anyone else—flat, unsystematic.</p> + +<p>He sighed. Perhaps, somewhere, there was someone else like himself. For +a moment, the fright of loneliness invaded him, but then faded. He took +a last look at the farm, then moved away from the open door, letting his +mind slip into another way of thinking.</p> + +<p>His chubby features twisted into a scowl of concentration as he +visualized reality. The scowl became a deeper grimace as he negated that +reality, step by step, and substituted another.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>F is for Phildee.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>O is for Out.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>R is for Reimann.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>T is for Topology.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>H is for heartsick hunger.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Abruptly, the Reimann fold became a concrete visualization. As though +printed clearly in and around the air, which was simultaneously both +around him and not around him, which existed/not existed in spacetime, +he saw the sideslip diagram.</p> + +<p>He twisted.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>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 leaping +water, and the spring-crests raced along the creeks into the rivers. The +riverbank grasses sprang into life; the plains turned green again.</p> + +<p>Riya made her way up the path across the foothills, conscious of her +shame. The green plain below her was dotted, two by two, with the +figures of her people. It was spring, and Time. Only she was alone.</p> + +<p>There was a special significance in the fact that she was here on this +path in this season. The plains on either side of the brown river were +her people's territory. During the summer, the couples ranged over the +grass until the dams were ready to drop their calves. Then it became the +bulls' duty to forage for their entire families until the youngsters +were able to travel south to the winter range.</p> + +<p>Through the space of years, the people had increased in numbers, the +pressure of this steady growth making itself felt as the yearlings +filled out on the winter range. It had become usual, as the slow drift +northward was made toward the end of winter, for some of the people to +split away from the main body and range beyond the gray mountains that +marked the western limits of the old territories. Since these wanderers +were usually the most willful and headstrong, they were regarded as +quasi-outcasts by the more settled people of the old range.</p> + +<p>But—and here Riya felt the shame pierce more strongly than ever—they +had their uses, occasionally. Preoccupied in her shame, she +involuntarily turned her head downward, anxious that none of the people +be staring derisively upward at the shaggy brown hump of fur that was +she, toiling up the path.</p> + +<p>She was not the first—but that was meaningless. That other female +people had been ugly or old, that the same unforgotten force that urged +her up the mountain path had brought others here before her, meant only +that she was incapable of accepting the verdict of the years that had +thinned her pelt, dimmed her eyes, and broken the smooth rhythm of her +gait.</p> + +<p>In short, it meant that Riya Sair, granddam times over, spurned by every +male on the old range, was willing to cross the gray mountains and risk +death from the resentful wild dams for the thin hope that there was a +male among the wildlings who would sire her calf.</p> + +<p>She turned her head back to the path and hurried on, cringing in inward +self-reproach at her speed.</p> + +<p>Except for her age, Riya presented a perfect average of her people. She +stood two yards high and two wide at the shoulders, a yard at the +haunches, and measured three and a half yards from her muzzle to the +rudimentary tail. Her legs were short and stumpy, cloven-hooved. Her +massive head hung slightly lower than her shoulders, and could be +lowered to within an inch or two of the ground. She was herbivorous, +ruminant, and mammalian. Moreover, she had intelligence—not of a very +high order, but adequate for her needs.</p> + +<p>From a Terrestrial point of view, none of this was remarkable. Many +years of evolution had gone into her fashioning—more years for her one +species than for all the varieties of man that have ever been. +Nevertheless, she did have some remarkable attributes.</p> + +<p>It was one of these attributes that now enabled her to sense what +happened on the path ahead of her. She stopped still, only her long fur +moving in the breeze.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Phildee—five, towheaded, round faced, chubby, dressed in a slightly +grubby corduroy oversuit, and precocious—had his attributes, too. +Grubby and tousled; branded with a thread of licorice from one corner of +his mouth to his chin; involved in the loss of his first milk-tooth, as +he was—he nevertheless slipped onto the path on Riya's world, the +highest product of Terrestrial evolution. Alice followed a white rabbit +down a hole. Phildee followed Reimann down into a hole that, at the same +time, followed him, and emerged—where?</p> + +<p>Phildee didn't know. He could have performed the calculation necessary +to the task almost instantly, but he was five. It was too much trouble.</p> + +<div class="figright"> +<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + + +<p>He looked up, and saw a gray slope of rock vaulting above him. He looked +down, and saw it fall away toward a plain on which were scattered pairs +of foraging animals. He felt a warm breeze, smelled it, saw it blow dust +along the path, and saw Riya:</p> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>B is for big brown beast.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>L is for looming large, looking lonely.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>B? L? Bull? No—bison.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Bison:</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2">bison (bi'sn) <i>n.</i> The buffalo<br /></span> +<span class="i2">of the N. Amer. plains.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<p>Phildee shook his head and scowled. No—not bison, either. What, then? +He probed.</p> + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + + +<p>Riya took a step forward. The sight of a living organism other than a +person was completely unfamiliar to her. Nevertheless, anything that +small, and undeniably covered—in most areas, at least—with some kind +of 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 the +call?</p> + + + +<p>Phildee's probe swept past the laboring mind directly into her +telepathic, instinctual centers.</p> + +<p>Voiceless, with their environment so favorable that it had never been +necessary for them to develop prehensile limbs, female people had +nevertheless evolved a method of child care commensurate with their +comparatively higher intelligence.</p> + +<p>Soft as tender fingers, gentle as the human hand that smooths the awry +hair back from the young forehead, Riya's mental caress enfolded +Phildee.</p> + +<p>Phildee recoiled. The feeling was:</p> + +<table width="60%"> +<tr><td><i>Warm</i></td><td>Not <i>candy in the mouth</i></td></tr> +<tr><td><i>Soft</i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i>Sweet</i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i></i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i></i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i></i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i></i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i>Candy in the mouth</i></td><td><i>Familiar</i></td></tr> +<tr><td></td><td><i>Good</i></td></tr> +<tr><td></td><td><i>Tasty</i></td></tr> +<tr><td></td><td><i>Nice</i></td></tr> +<tr><td><i></i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i></i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i></i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i></i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i>The feeling was</i></td><td><i>Not Familiar</i></td></tr> +<tr><td></td><td><i>Not Good</i></td></tr> +<tr><td></td><td><i>Not Tasty</i></td></tr> +<tr><td></td><td><i>Not Nice</i></td></tr> +</table> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>WHY?</i>:<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>M is for many motionless months.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>T is for tense temper tantrums.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>R is for rabid—NO!—rapid rolling wrench.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>MTR. Mother.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Phildee's mother wanted Phildee's father. Phildee's mother wanted green +grass and apple trees, tight skirts and fur jackets on Fifth Avenue, men +to turn and look, a little room where nobody could see her. Phildee's +mother had radiation burns. Phildee's mother was dead.</p> + +<p>He wavered; physically. Maintaining his position in this world was a +process that demanded constant attention from the segment of his mind +devoted to it. For a moment, even that small group of brain cells almost +became involved in his reaction.</p> + +<p>It was that which snapped him back into functioning logically. MTR was +Mother. Mother was:</p> + +<table width="60%"> +<tr><td><i>Tall</i></td><td><i>"In Heaven's name, Doctor,</i></td></tr> +<tr><td><i>Thin</i></td><td><i>when will this thing be over?"</i></td></tr> +<tr><td><i>White</i></td><td></td></tr> +<tr><td><i>Biped</i></td><td></td></tr> +</table> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">BL was Riya. Riya was:<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Big brown beast, looming large, looking lonely.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>BL=MTR</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Equation not meaningful, not valid.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Riya—Riya bore a strong resemblance to an intelligent cow. In any +physiological sense, she could no more be his mother than—</p> + +<p>The second caress found him not unaccustomed to it. It enfolded his +consciousness, tenderly, protectingly, empathetic.</p> + +<p>Phildee gave way to instinct.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><i>Big warm wall of brown fur.</i></p> + +<p><i>Cool, happy nose.</i></p> + +<p><i>Happy, happy, eyes.</i></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>But all that was nothing. What did it matter? The Time had been, and for +another season, she was a dam.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Phildee walked beside her down the path, one fist wrapped in the fur of +her flank, short legs windmilling.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>With the same unconcern, she nudged Phildee into the center of the group +of people, and, ignoring them, began teaching her calf to feed.</p> + +<p><i>Eat. (Picture of Phildee/calf on all fours, cropping the plains +grass.)</i></p> + +<p>Phildee stared at her in puzzlement. Grass was not food. He sent the +data emphatically.</p> + +<p>Riya felt the tenuous discontent. She replied with tender understanding. +Sometimes the calf was hesitant.</p> + +<p><i>Eat. (Gently, understandingly, but firmly. [Repetition of picture.])</i> +She bent her head and pushed him carefully over, then held his head down +with a gentle pressure of her muzzle. <i>Eat.</i></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>He felt himself pushed forward again. <i>Eat.</i></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>In probing, too, he found the visualization of his life with her ready +at the surface of Riya's mind.</p> + +<p>There was no shelter on the plain. His fur was all the shelter +necessary.</p> + +<p><i>But I don't have any fur.</i></p> + +<p>In the fall, they would move to the southern range.</p> + +<p><i>Walk? A thousand miles?</i></p> + +<p>He would grow big and strong. In a year, he would be a sire himself.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Riya stiffened in alarm. The calf was straying. The knowledge was +relayed from her mother-centers to the telepathic functions.</p> + +<p><i>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.</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>His mind accepted the data, and computed.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The knowledge and computations were fed in Phildee's rational centers. +The Universe—and Earth—were closed to him. He must remain here.</p> + +<p>But human children could not survive in this environment.</p> + +<p>He had to find a solution—instantly.</p> + +<p>He clinched his fists, feeling his arm muscles quiver.</p> + +<p>His lower lip was pulled into his mouth, and his teeth sank in.</p> + +<p>The diagram—the pattern—bigger—stronger—try—try—this is not +real—<i>this</i> is real: brown earth, white clouds, blue sky—try—mouth +full of warm salt ...</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>F is for Phildee!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>O is for Out!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>R is for Riya!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>T is for Topology!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>H is for happiness and home!</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>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 tower, the concrete shoulders of the air raid bunkers. She saw +antiaircraft quick-firers being hastily cranked around and down at her, +heard Phildee's shout that saved her life, and understood none of it.</p> + +<p>But none of it mattered. Her strange calf was with her, standing beside +her with his fingers locked in her fur, and she could feel the warm +response in his mind as she touched him with her caress again.</p> + +<p>She saw the other little calves erupting out of the low dormitory +buildings, and something within her crooned.</p> + +<p>Riya nuzzled her foundling. She looked about her at the War Orphans' +Relocation Farm with her happy, happy eyes.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Riya's Foundling, by Algirdas Jonas Budrys + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIYA'S FOUNDLING *** + +***** This file should be named 34420-h.htm or 34420-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/4/2/34420/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Riya's Foundling + +Author: Algirdas Jonas Budrys + +Release Date: November 23, 2010 [EBook #34420] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIYA'S FOUNDLING *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +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. copyright +on this publication was renewed.] + + +[Sidenote: _Now, if the animal we know as a cow were to evolve into a +creature with near-human intelligence, so that she thought of herself as +a "person" ..._] + + +[Illustration] + + +The loft of the feed-house, with its stacked grainsacks, was a B-72, a +fort, 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 the +feed-house. He dropped the big wooden latch behind him, and climbed up +the ladder to the loft, depending on the slight strength of his young +arms more than on his legs, which had to be lifted to straining heights +before they could negotiate the man-sized rungs. + +He reached the loft and stood panting, looking out over the farm through +the loft door, at the light wooden fences around it, and the circling +antenna of the radar tower. + +Usually, he spent at least a little time each day crouched behind the +grainsacks and being bigger and older, firing cooly and accurately into +charging companies of burly, thick-lipped UES soldiers, or going over on +one wing and whistling down on a flight of TT-34's that scattered like +frightened 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's +mind, no different from that of anyone else--flat, unsystematic. + +He sighed. Perhaps, somewhere, there was someone else like himself. For +a moment, the fright of loneliness invaded him, but then faded. He took +a last look at the farm, then moved away from the open door, letting his +mind slip into another way of thinking. + +His chubby features twisted into a scowl of concentration as he +visualized reality. The scowl became a deeper grimace as he negated that +reality, 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 though +printed clearly in and around the air, which was simultaneously both +around 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 leaping +water, and the spring-crests raced along the creeks into the rivers. The +riverbank grasses sprang into life; the plains turned green again. + +Riya made her way up the path across the foothills, conscious of her +shame. The green plain below her was dotted, two by two, with the +figures 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 this +path in this season. The plains on either side of the brown river were +her people's territory. During the summer, the couples ranged over the +grass until the dams were ready to drop their calves. Then it became the +bulls' duty to forage for their entire families until the youngsters +were able to travel south to the winter range. + +Through the space of years, the people had increased in numbers, the +pressure of this steady growth making itself felt as the yearlings +filled out on the winter range. It had become usual, as the slow drift +northward was made toward the end of winter, for some of the people to +split away from the main body and range beyond the gray mountains that +marked the western limits of the old territories. Since these wanderers +were usually the most willful and headstrong, they were regarded as +quasi-outcasts by the more settled people of the old range. + +But--and here Riya felt the shame pierce more strongly than ever--they +had their uses, occasionally. Preoccupied in her shame, she +involuntarily turned her head downward, anxious that none of the people +be staring derisively upward at the shaggy brown hump of fur that was +she, toiling up the path. + +She was not the first--but that was meaningless. That other female +people had been ugly or old, that the same unforgotten force that urged +her up the mountain path had brought others here before her, meant only +that she was incapable of accepting the verdict of the years that had +thinned her pelt, dimmed her eyes, and broken the smooth rhythm of her +gait. + +In short, it meant that Riya Sair, granddam times over, spurned by every +male on the old range, was willing to cross the gray mountains and risk +death from the resentful wild dams for the thin hope that there was a +male among the wildlings who would sire her calf. + +She turned her head back to the path and hurried on, cringing in inward +self-reproach at her speed. + +Except for her age, Riya presented a perfect average of her people. She +stood two yards high and two wide at the shoulders, a yard at the +haunches, and measured three and a half yards from her muzzle to the +rudimentary tail. Her legs were short and stumpy, cloven-hooved. Her +massive head hung slightly lower than her shoulders, and could be +lowered to within an inch or two of the ground. She was herbivorous, +ruminant, and mammalian. Moreover, she had intelligence--not of a very +high order, but adequate for her needs. + +From a Terrestrial point of view, none of this was remarkable. Many +years of evolution had gone into her fashioning--more years for her one +species 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 what +happened on the path ahead of her. She stopped still, only her long fur +moving in the breeze. + + * * * * * + +Phildee--five, towheaded, round faced, chubby, dressed in a slightly +grubby corduroy oversuit, and precocious--had his attributes, too. +Grubby and tousled; branded with a thread of licorice from one corner of +his mouth to his chin; involved in the loss of his first milk-tooth, as +he was--he nevertheless slipped onto the path on Riya's world, the +highest product of Terrestrial evolution. Alice followed a white rabbit +down a hole. Phildee followed Reimann down into a hole that, at the same +time, followed him, and emerged--where? + +Phildee didn't know. He could have performed the calculation necessary +to 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 looked +down, and saw it fall away toward a plain on which were scattered pairs +of foraging animals. He felt a warm breeze, smelled it, saw it blow dust +along the path, and saw Riya: + +[Illustration] + + _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 a +person was completely unfamiliar to her. Nevertheless, anything that +small, and undeniably covered--in most areas, at least--with some kind +of 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 the +call? + +Phildee's probe swept past the laboring mind directly into her +telepathic, instinctual centers. + +Voiceless, with their environment so favorable that it had never been +necessary for them to develop prehensile limbs, female people had +nevertheless evolved a method of child care commensurate with their +comparatively higher intelligence. + +Soft as tender fingers, gentle as the human hand that smooths the awry +hair back from the young forehead, Riya's mental caress enfolded +Phildee. + +Phildee recoiled. The feeling 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 green +grass and apple trees, tight skirts and fur jackets on Fifth Avenue, men +to turn and look, a little room where nobody could see her. Phildee's +mother had radiation burns. Phildee's mother was dead. + +He wavered; physically. Maintaining his position in this world was a +process that demanded constant attention from the segment of his mind +devoted to it. For a moment, even that small group of brain cells almost +became involved in his reaction. + +It was that which snapped him back into functioning logically. MTR was +Mother. Mother was: + + + _Tall_ + _Thin_ + _White_ + _Biped_ + + _"In Heaven's name, Doctor, when will this thing be over?"_ + + BL was Riya. Riya was: + _Big brown beast, looming large, looking lonely._ + _BL=MTR_ + _Equation not meaningful, not valid._ + + * * * * * + +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 tower, the concrete shoulders of the air raid bunkers. She saw +antiaircraft quick-firers being hastily cranked around and down at her, +heard Phildee's shout that saved her life, and understood none of it. + +But none of it mattered. Her strange calf was with her, standing beside +her with his fingers locked in her fur, and she could feel the warm +response in his mind as she touched him with her caress again. + +She saw the other little calves erupting out of the low dormitory +buildings, and something within her crooned. + +Riya nuzzled her foundling. She looked about her at the War Orphans' +Relocation Farm with her happy, happy eyes. + +[Illustration] + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Riya's Foundling, by Algirdas Jonas Budrys + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIYA'S FOUNDLING *** + +***** This file should be named 34420.txt or 34420.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/4/2/34420/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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