The Outbreeders by Robert Silverberg

The week before his wedding, Ryly Bailie went alone into the wild forests that separated Bailie lands from those of the Clingert clan. The lonely journey was a prenuptial tradition among the Bailies; his people expected him to return with body toughened by exertion, mind sharp and clear from solitary meditation. No one at all expected him to meet and fall in love with a Clingert girl.
He left early on a Threeday morning; nine Bailies saw him off. Old Fredrog, the Bailie Clanfather, wished him well. Minton, Ryly's own father, clasped him by the hand for a long, awkward moment. Three of his patrilineal cousins offered their best wishes. And Davud, his dearest friend and closest phenotype-brother, slapped him affectionately.
Ryly said good-bye also to his mother, to the Clan-mother, and to Bella, his betrothed. He shouldered his bow and quiver, hitched up his hiking trousers, and grinned nervously. Overhead, Thomas, the yellow primary sun, was rising high; later in the day the blue companion, Doris, would join her husband in the sky. It was a warm spring morning.
Ryly surveyed the little group: six tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed men, three tall, red-haired, hazel-eyed women. Perfect examples all of Bailie-norm, and therefore the highest representatives of evolution.
"So long, all," he said, smiling. There was nothing else to say. He turned and headed off into the chattering forest. His long legs carried him easily down the well-worn path. Tradition required him to follow the main path until noon, when the second sun would enter the sky; then, wherever he might be, he was to veer sharply from the road and hew his own way through the vegetation for the rest of the journey.
He would be gone three days, two nights. On the third evening he would turn back, returning by morning to claim his bride.
He thought of Hella as he walked. She was a fine girl; he was happy Clanfather had allotted her to him. Not that she was prettier than any of the other current eligibles—they were all more or less equal. But Hella had a certain bright sparkle, a way of smiling, that Ryly thought he could grow to like.
Thomas was climbing now toward his noon height; the forest grew warm. A bright-colored, web-winged lizard sprang squawking from a tree to the left of the path and fluttered in a brief clumsy arc over Ryly's head. He notched an arrow and brought the lizard down—his first kill of the trip. Tucking three red pinlike tail feathers in his belt, he moved on.
At noon the first blue rays of Doris mingled with the yellow of Thomas. The moment had come. Ryly knelt to mutter a short prayer in memory of those two pioneering Bailies who had come to The World so many generations ago to found the clan, and swung off to the right, cutting between the fuzzy gray boles of two towering sweetfruit trees. He incised his name on the forestward side of one tree as a guide-sign for his return, and entered the unknown part of the forest.
He walked till he was hungry; then he killed an unwary bouncer, skinned, cooked, and ate the meaty rodent, and bathed in a crystal-bright stream at the edge of an evergreen thicket. When darkness came, he camped near an upjutting cliff, and for a long time lay on his back, staring up at the four gleaming little moons, telling himself the old clan legends until he fell asleep.
The following morning was without event; he covered many miles, carefully leaving trail-marks behind. And shortly before Dorisrise he met the girl.
It was really an accident. He had sighted the yellow dorsal spines of a wabbler protruding a couple of inches over the top of a thick hedge, and decided the wabbler's horns would be as good a trophy as any to bring back to Hella. He strung his bow and waited for the beast to lift its one vulnerable spot, the eye, into view.
After a moment the wabbler's head appeared, top-heavy with the weight of the spreading snout-horns. Ryly fingered his bowstring and targeted on the bloodshot eye.
His aim was false; the arrow thwacked hard against the scalelike black leather of the wabbler's domed skull, hung— penetrating the skin for an instant—and dropped away. The wabbler snorted in surprise and anger and set off, crashing noisily through the underbrush, undulating wildly as its vast flippers slammed the ground.
Ryly gave chase. He strung his bow on the run, as he followed the trail of the big herbivore. Somewhere ahead a waterfall rumbled; the wabbler evidently intended to make an aquatic getaway. Ryly broke into a clearing -- and saw the girl standing next to the wabbler, patting its muscular withers and murmuring soothing sounds. She glared up at Ryly as he appeared.
For a moment he hardly recognized her as human. She was slim and dark-haired, with great black eyes, a tiny tilted nose, full lips. She wore a brightly colored saronglike affair of some batik cloth; it left her tanned legs bare. And she was almost a foot shorter than Ryly; Bailie women rarely dipped below five-ten in height.
"Did you shoot at this animal?" she demanded suddenly.
Ryly had difficulty understanding her; the words seemed to be in his language, but the vowels sounded all wrong, the consonants not harsh enough.
"I did," he said. "I didn't know he was your pet."
"Pet! The wabblers aren't pets. They're sacred. Are you a Baille?"
Taken aback by the abrupt question, Ryly sputtered a moment before nodding.
"I thought so. I'm Joanne Clingert. What are you doing on Clingert territory?"
"So that's it," Ryly said slowly. He stared at her as if she had just crawled out from under a lichen-crusted rock. "You're a Clingert. That explains things."
"Explains what?"
"The way you look, the way you talk, the way you ..." He moved hesitantly closer, looking down at her. She looked very angry, but behind the anger shone something else—
A sparkle, maybe. A brightness.
Ryly shuddered. The Clingerts were dreaded alien beings of a terrible ugliness, or so Clanfather had constantly reiterated. Well, maybe so. But, then, this Clingert could hardly be typical. She seemed so delicate and lovely, quite unlike the rawboned, athletic Bailie women.
A blue shaft of light broke through the saw-toothed leaves of the trees and shattered on the Clingert's brow. Almost as a reflex, Ryly sank to his knees to pray.
"Why are you doing that?" the Clingert asked.
"It's Dorisrise! Don't you pray at Dorisrise?"
She glanced upward at the blue sun now orbiting the yellow primary. "That's only Secundus that just rose. What did you call it—Doris?"
Ryly concluded his prayer and rose. "Of course. And there's Thomas next to her."
"Hmm. We call them Primus and Secundus. But I suppose it's not surprising that the Bailies and the Clingerts would have different names for the suns. Thomas and Doris . . . that's nice. Named for the original Bailies?"
Ryly nodded. "And I guess Primus and Secundus founded the Clingerts?"
She laughed—a brittle tinkling sound that bounced prettily back from the curtain of trees. "No, hardly. Jarl and Bess were our founders. Primus and Secundus only mean first and second, in Latin."
"Latin? What's that? I—"
Ryly shut his mouth, suddenly. A cold tremor of delayed alarm passed through him. He stared at the Clingert in horror.
"Is something wrong?" the Clingert asked. "You look so pale."
"We're talking to each other," Ryly said. "We're holding a nice little conversation. Very friendly, and all."
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 Keila—"
"Hella?" The Clingert's eyes flashed angrily.
"The Bailie 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 felling in love with the Clingert.
Ever since the days when Thomas and Doris Bailie first came to The World, Bailie and Clingert had kept firm boundaries. Bailie had mated only with Bailie. 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 Bailie woman ever had.
She touched his hand gentry. "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 Bailie-yellow hair. "Do Bailies lose their hair young?"
"Bailies never get bald. Clanfather's hair is still as yellow as 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 Bailie woman had birthed a dark-haired son. Clanfather had driven child and parents out into the forest, and there other Bailies had stoned them. Ryly was not anxious to share that fete. But yet—
He scrambled to his feet. The Clingert looked at him in alarm. "Where are you going?" she asked.
"Back. To the Bailie 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 Bailie 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 Bailies 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 with his phenotype-brother Davud.
A cat mewled. Ryly ducked into the concealing darkness of a vine bower and waited. A stiff-necked old man passed by: 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 big bounds 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 Bailies, 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 Bailies, 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.
"I thought that was it," Davud muttered. "Ryly, are you out of your head? Marry a Clingert? That filth?"
"But you 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 Bailie 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. Bailie 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 Lun Bailie 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 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 Bailie 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 Bailies 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 Bailie land with me."
Ryly clenched his fists. He had no desire to fight with his phenotype-brother a second time, but if Davud was going to 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. "Bailie 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 Bailies 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 Bailies were thrown free and landed on The World, hundreds of years ago, Jarl Clingert wanted to interbreed, but Thomas Bailie wouldn't have any of it. He wanted to keep his line pure. So there hasn't been very much contact between Clingert and Bailie since then, ever since the time the first Bailie 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 Bailie and marry Doris, but Thomas drove him off and—"
"No," said Joanne. "You've got it all backward. It was Battles 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 Bailie 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 Bailie 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 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 Bailies all look alike; why shouldn't the Clingerts? Three hundred years of inbreeding. Lord, they must all be identical!"
"More or less," Joanne said. "There are some minor variations but not many. Most of the unfixed genes in the clan were lost generations ago. As probably happened in your clan too. This was the thing that Jarl Clingert wanted to avoid, but when Thomas Bailie refused to—"
"It was Clingert's treacherous ways that caused the whole thing," Ryly snapped. "Let's get that straight right now. Why, it's common knowledge I"
"Among whom? Among the Bailies, that's who—whom!" Joanne's eyes were blazing again, with the fury Ryly loved so much to see. "But why don't you listen to the Clingert side of the story for a change? You Bailies were always like that, shutting your ears to anything important. You—" She stopped in mid-breath. Very quietly she said, "I'm sorry, Ryly."
"It was my fault. I started the whole thing."
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I did, when I brought up the topic of—"
He smiled and touched a finger lightly to her lips. "Look," he said.
She looked. Davud and Melena had drawn to one side, standing on a moist, moss-covered patch of ground within the field of spray and foam of the waterfall. They were talking softly. It wasn't difficult to see by their faces what the topic of discussion was.
"Well have to forget about ancient history now," Joanne said. "Forget all about what happened between Jarl Clingert and Thomas Bailie four centuries ago."
Ryly took her hand. "We'll go somewhere else on The World," he said. "Start all over, build a new settlement. Just the four of us. And maybe we can recruit some others, if I can lure a few Bailies out here to meet Clingerts."
"And vice versa. The Clingert men hate the Bailies now too, you know. But that can stop. We'll breed the feuding out."
Ryly looked over at Davud and Melena, then back at Joanne. Everything looked incredibly lovely at that moment—the angular red leaves of the overhanging trees, the white spray of the falls, prismatically colored blue and gold by the sunlight, the quiet green clouds drifting above. He wanted to fix that moment in his mind forever.
He smiled. His mind was still full of insidious Clanfather-instilled legends of the early days on The World as seen through Bailie eyes. But he could start forgetting them now.
Soon there would be a third clan on The World—a hybrid clan, both fair and dark, both short and tall.
And someday his descendants would be spinning legends about him, and how he had helped to found the clan, back in the misty time-shrouded days of the remote past.