The Best of (19 page)

So either we must come home—or stay there to die early."

"You mean, you think that Jannessa—"

"I don't know what may have happened—but I have thought about it. I don't think you have thought about it at all. Frank."

"I've thought of little else these last seventeen years."

"Surely 'dreamed' is the word, Frank?" Forbes looked across at him, his head a little on one side, his manner gentle. "Once upon a time something, an ancestor of ours, came out of the water on to the land.

It became adapted until it could not go back to its relatives in the sea. That is the process we agree to call progress. It is inherent in life. If you stop it, you stop life, too."

"Philosophically that may be sound enough, but I'm not interested in abstractions. I'm interested in my daughter."

"How much do you think your daughter may be interested in you? I know that sounds callous, but I can see that you have some idea of affinity in mind. You're mistaking civilized custom for natural law, Frank. Perhaps we all do, more or less."

"I don't know what you mean."

"To be plain—if Jannessa has survived, she will be more foreign than any Earth foreigner could possibly be."

"There were eleven others to teach her civilized ways and speech."

"Ifany of them survived. Suppose they did not, or she was somehow separated from them. There are authenticated instances of children reared by wolves, leopards and even antelopes, and not one of them turned out to be in the least like the Tarzan fiction. All were subhuman. Adaptation works both ways."

"Even if she has had to live among savages she can learn."

Dr. Forbes faced him seriously.

"I don't think you can have read much anthropology. First she would have to unlearn the whole basis of the culture she has known. Look at the different races here, and ask yourself if that is possible. There might be a veneer, yes. But more than that—" He shrugged.

"There is the call of the blood—"

"Is there? If you were to meet your greatgrandfather would there be any tie—would you even know him?"

Franklyn said, stubbornly:

"Why are you talking like this, Jimmy? I'd not have listened to another man. Why are you trying to break down all that I've hoped for? You can't, you know. Not now. But why try?"

"Because I'm fond of you, Frank. Because under all your success you're still the young man with a romantic dream. I told you to remarry. You wouldn't—you preferred the dream to reality. You've lived with that dream so long now that it is part of your mental pattern. But your dream is offinding Jannessa — not of having found her. You have centred your life on that dream. If youdo find her, in whatever condition you find her, the dream will be finished—the purpose you set yourself will have been accomplished. And there will be nothing else left for you."

Franklyn moved uneasily.

"I have plans and ambitions for her."

"For the daughter you know nothing of? No, for the dream daughter; the one that exists only in your mind, whatever you may find, it will be a real person—not your dream puppet, Frank."

Dr. Forbes paused, watching the smoke curl up from his cigarette. It was in his mind to say: "Whatever she is like, you will come to hate her, just because she cannot exactly match your dream of her," but he decided to leave that unspoken. It occurred to him also to enlarge on the unhappiness which might descend on a girl removed from all that was familiar to her, but he knew that Franklyn's answer to that would be—there was money enough to provide every luxury and consolation. He had already said enough—perhaps too much, and none of it had really reached Franklyn. He decided to let it rest there, and hope. After all, there was little likelihood that Jannessa had either survived or would be found.

The tense look that had been on Franklyn's face gradually relaxed. He smiled.

"You've said your piece, old man. You think I may be in for a shock, and you want to prepare me, but I realize all that. I had it out with myself years ago. I can take it, if it's necessary."

Dr. Forbes' eyes dwelt on his face for a moment. He sighed, softly and privately.

"Very well," he agreed, and started to talk of something else.

"You see," said Toti, "this is a very small planet—"

"A satellite," said Jannessa. "A satellite of Yan."

"But a planet of the sun, all the same. And there is the terrible cold."

"Then why did your people choose it?" Jannessa asked, reasonably.

"Well, when our own world began to die and we had to die with it or go somewhere else, our people thought about those they could reach. Some were too hot, some were too big—"

"Why too big?"

"Because of the gravity. On a big planet we could scarcely have crawled."

"Couldn't they have... well, made things lighter?"

Toti made a negative movement of his head, and his silver hair glistened in the fluorescence from the walls.

"An increase in density can be simulated; we've done that here. But no one has succeeded in simulating a decrease—nor, we think now, ever will. So you see our people had to choose a small world. All the moons of Yan are bleak, but this was the best of them, and our people were desperate.

When they got here they lived in the ships and began to burrow into the ground to get away from the cold. They gradually burnt their way in, making halls and rooms and galleries, and the foodgrowing tanks, and the culture fields, and all the rest of it. Then they sealed it, and warmed it, and moved in from the ships and went on working inside. It was all a very long time ago."

Jannessa sat for a moment in thought.

"Telta said that perhaps I came from the third planet, Sonnal. Do you think so?"

"It may be. We know there was some kind of civilization there."

"If they came once, they might come again—and take me home."

Toti looked at her, troubled, and a little hurt.

"Home?" he said. "You feel like that?"

Jannessa caught his expression. She put her white hand quickly into his slatyblue one.

"I'm sorry, Toti. I didn't mean that. I love you, and Telta, and Melga. You know that. It's just... oh, how can you know what it's like to be different—different from everyone around you? I'm sotired of being a freak, Toti, dear. Inside me I'm just like any other girl. Can't you understand what it would mean to me to be looked on by everyone as normal?"

Toti was silent for a while. When he spoke, his tone was troubled: "Jannessa, have you ever thought that after spending all your life here this really is your world? Another might seem very... well, strange to you."

"You mean living on the outside instead of the inside. Yes, that would seem funny."

"Not just that, my dear," he said, carefully. "You know that after I found you up there and brought you in the doctors had to work hard to save your life?"

"Telta told me." Jannessa nodded. "What did they do?"

"Do you know what glands are?"

"I think so. They sort of control things."

"They do. Well, yours were set to control things suitably for your world. So the doctors had to be very clever. They had to give you very accurate injections—it was a kind of balancing process, you see, so that the glands would work in the proper proportions to suit you for life here. Do you understand?"

"To make me comfortable at a lower temperature, help me to digest this kind of food, stop overstimulation by the high oxygen content, things like that," Telta said.

"Things like that," Toti agreed. "It's called adaptation. They did the best they could to make you suited for life here among us."

"It was very clever of them," Jannessa said, speaking much as she had spoken years ago to Telta. "But why didn't they do more? Why did they leave me white like this? Why didn't they make my hair a lovely silver like yours and Telta's? I wouldn't have been a freak then—I should have felt that I really belong here." Tears stood in her eyes.

Toti put his arms around her.

"My poor dear. I didn't know it was as bad as that. And I love you—so does Telta—as if you were our own daughter."

"I don't see how you can—with this!" She held up her pale hand.

"But, we do, Jannessa, dear. Does that really matter so very much?"

"It's what makes me different. It reminds me all the time that I belong to another world, really. Perhaps I shall go there one day."

Toti frowned.

"That's just a dream, Jannessa. You don't know any world but this. It couldn't be what you expect. Stop dreaming, stop worrying yourself, my dear. Make up your mind to be happy here with us."

"You don't understand, Toti," she said gently. "Somewhere there are people like me—my own kind."

It was only a few months later that the observers in one of the domes reported the landing of a ship from space.

"Listen, you old cynic," said Franklyn's voice, almost before his image was sharp on the screen.

"They've found her—and she's on the way Home."

"Found—Jannessa?" Dr. Forbes said, hesitantly.

"Of course. Who else would I be meaning?"

"Are you—quite sure, Frank?"

"You old sceptic. Would I have rung you if I weren't? She's on Mars right now. They put in there for fuel, and to delay for proximity."

"But can you be sure?"

"There's her name—and some papers found with her."

"Well, I suppose—"

"Not enough, eh?" Franklyn's image grinned. "All right, then. Take a look at this."

He reached for a photograph on his desk and held it close to the transmitting screen.

"Told them to take it there, and transmit here by radio," he explained. "Now what about it?"

Dr. Forbes studied the picture on the screen carefully. It showed a girl posed with a rough wall for a background. Her only visible garment was a piece of shining cloth, draped around her, rather in the manner of a sari. The hair was fair and dressed in an unfamiliar style. But it was the face looking from beneath it that made him catch his breath. It was Marilyn Godalpin's face, gazing back at him across eighteen years.

"Yes, Frank," he said, slowly. "Yes, that's Jannessa. I... I don't know what to say, Frank."

"Not even congratulations?"

"Yes, oh yes—of course. It's... well, it's just a miracle. I'm not used to miracles."

The day that the newspaper told him that the Chloe, a research ship belonging to the Jason Mining Corporation, was due to make ground at noon, was spent absentmindedly by Dr. Forbes. He was sure that there would be a message from Franklyn Godalpin, and he found himself unable to settle to anything until he should receive it. When, at about four o'clock the bell rang, he answered it with a swift excitement. But the screen did not clear to the expected features of Franklyn. Instead, a woman's face looked at him anxiously. He recognized her as Godalpin's housekeeper.

"It's Mr. Godalpin, doctor," she said. "He's been taken ill. If you could come—?"

A taxi set him down on Godalpin's strip fifteen minutes later. The housekeeper met him and hurried him to the stairs through the rabble of journalists, photographers and commentators that filled the hall.

Franklyn was lying on his bed with his clothes loosened. A secretary and a frightenedlooking girl stood by. Dr. Forbes made an examination and gave an injection.

"Shock, following anxiety," he said. "Not surprising. He's been under a great strain lately. Get him to bed. Hot bottles, and see that he's kept warm."

The housekeeper spoke as he turned away.

"Doctor, while you're here. There's the... I mean, if you wouldn't mind having a look at... at Miss Jannessa, too."

"Yes, of course. Where is she?"

The housekeeper led the way to another room, and pointed.

"She's in there, doctor."

Dr. Forbes pushed open the door and went in. A sound of bitter sobbing ended in choking as he entered. Looking for the source of it he saw a child standing beside the bed.

"Where—?" he began. Then the child turned towards him. It was not a child's face. It was Marilyn's face, with Marilyn's hair, and Marilyn's eyes looking at him. But a Marilyn who was twentyfive inches tall—Jannessa.

#7 The Best Of John Wyndham

John Wyndham

(1951)

WhenI called round at Sally's I showed her the paragraph in theWestwich Evening News.

"What do you think of that?" I asked her.

She read it, standing, and with an impatient frown on her pretty face.

"I don't believe it," she said, finally.

Sally's principles of belief and disbelief are a thing I've never got quite lined up. How a girl can dismiss a pack of solid evidence as though it were kettle steam, and then go and fall for some advertisement that's phoney from the first word as though it were holy writ, I just don't... Oh well, it keeps on happening, anyway.

This paragraph read:

MUSIC WITH A KICK

Patrons of the concert at the Adams Hall last night were astonished to see a pair of legs dangling kneedeep from the ceiling during one of the items. The whole audience saw them, and all reports agree that they were bare legs, with some kind of sandals on the feet. They remained visible for some three or four minutes, during which time they several times moved back and forth across the ceiling. Finally, after making a kicking movement, they disappeared upwards, and were seen no more. Examination of the roof shows no traces, and the owners of the Hall are at a loss to account for the phenomenon.

"It's just one more thing," I said.

"What does it prove, anyway?" said Sally, apparently forgetful that she was not believing it.

"I don't know that—yet," I admitted.

"Well, there you are, then," she said.

Sometimes I get the feeling that Sally has no real respect for logic.

However, most people were thinking the way Sally was, more or less, because most people like things to stay nice and normal. But it had already begun to look to me as if there were things happening that ought to be added together and make something.

The first man to bump up against it—the first I can find on record, that is—was one Constable Walsh.