Short Fiction by Algis Budrys (good story books to read .txt) 📕

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.

Desire No More

“Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.⁠ ⁠…”

Chaucer

The small young man looked at his father, and shook his head.

“But you’ve got to learn a trade,” his father said, exasperated. “I can’t afford to send you to college; you know that.”

“I’ve got a trade,” he answered.

His father smiled thinly. “What?” he asked patronizingly.

“I’m a rocket pilot,” the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks.

His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. “Yeah,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle.

“A rocket pilot!” His father’s derision hooted through the quiet parlor. “A ro⁠—oh, no!⁠—a rocket pilot!”

The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell