It was growing chill now, the streetlights winking on to brighten the long shadows a setting Tau Ceti cast upon the ground. He drew his coat tighter across his shoulders and walked back to his house. It was a lonelier place to be since June had died, but it was still home.
Fumbling with the latch, he pushed the door open and reached around for the light switch. As it flicked on, he froze.
My God.
“Hello, Jase.” The figure was tall and spare, clothes ragged, but greying hair and beard cut squarely. Three of the children were with him.
After all this time…
“Doc…” Jase said, still unbelieving. “It is you, isn’t it?”
The bearded man smiled uncertainly, showing teeth that were white but chipped. “It’s been a long time, Jase. A very long time.”
The three Piths were quiet and alert, sniffing the air of this strange place.
“Are these—?”
“Yes. Jerry and Lori. And Eve. And a small addition.” One of the three—God, could it be Eve? sniffed up to Jase. The soft golden fur on her face was tinged with grey, but she carried a young child at her breast.
Jerry stood tall for a preman, eyeing Jase warily. He carried a sharpened stick in one knobby hand.
Jase sat down, speechless. He looked up into the burning eyes of the man he had known thirty years before. “You’re still officially under a death sentence, you know.”
Doc nodded his head. “For kidnapping?”
“Murder. No one was sure what had happened to you, whether you or any of the children had survived.”
Doc, too, sat down. For the first time the light in his eyes dimmed. “Yes. We survived. I swam to shore after crashing the flyer, and found the place where I had left the children.” He thought for a moment, then asked quietly. “How is Elise? And all the others?”
Jase was unable to raise his eyes from the floor. “She died three years ago, Doc. She was never the same after you left. She thought you were dead. That the children were dead. Couldn’t you have at least told her about your plan? Or gotten her a message?”
Doc’s fingers played absently with his beard as he shook his head. “I couldn’t involve her. I couldn’t. Could you…show me where she’s buried, Jase?”
“Of course.”
“What about the others?”
“Well, none of the people were the same after the children left. Some just seemed to lose purpose. Brew’s dead. Greg drank himself under. Four of the others have died.” Jase paused, thinking. “Do any of the others know you’re here?”
“No. I slipped in just at dusk. I wasn’t sure what kind of a reception I’d get.”
“I’m still not sure.” Jase hesitated. “Why did you do it?”
The room was quiet, save for a scratching sound as Jerry fingered an ear. Fleas? Absurd. Jill had never uncrated them.
“I had to know, Jase,” he said. There was no uncertainty in his voice. In fact, there was an imperious quality he had never had in the old days. “The question was: Would they breed true? Was the Pith effect only temporary?”
“Was it?”
“No. It persisted. I had to know if they were regressing or evolving, and they remained the same in subsequent generations, save for natural selection, and there isn’t much of that.”
Jase watched Lori, her stubby fingers untangling mats in her fur. Her huge brown eyes were alive and vital. She was a lovely creature, he decided. “Doc, what are the children?”
“What do you think?”
“You know what I think. An alien species wants our worlds. In a hundred years they’ll land and take them. What they’ll do with the children is anybody’s guess. I—” He couldn’t bring himself to look at Eve. “I wish you’d sterilized them, Doc.”
“Maybe you do, Jase. But, you see, I don’t believe in your aliens.”
Jase’s breath froze in his throat.
“They might want our world,” said Doc, “but why would they want our life forms? Everything but Man is spreading like a plague of locusts. If someone wants Ridgeback, why haven’t they done something about it? By the time they land, terrestrial life will have an unstoppable foothold. Look at all the thousands of years we’ve been trying to stamp out just one life form, the influenza viruses.
“No, I’ve got another idea. Do you know what a locust is?”
“I know what they are. I’ve never seen one.”
“As individuals they’re something like a short grasshopper. As individuals, they hide or sleep in the daytime and come out at night. In open country you can hear them chirping after dusk, but otherwise nobody notices them. But they’re out there, eating and breeding and breeding and eating, getting more numerous over a period of years, until one day there are too many for the environment to produce enough food.
“Then comes the change. On Earth it hasn’t happened in a long time because they aren’t allowed to get that numerous. But it used to be that when there were enough of them, they’d grow bigger and darker and more aggressive. They’d come out in the daytime. They’d eat everything in sight, and when all the food was gone, and when there were enough of them, they’d suddenly take off all at once.
“That’s when you’d get your plague of locusts. They’d drop from the air in a cloud thick enough and broad enough to darken the sky, and when they landed in a farmer’s field he could kiss his crops goodbye. They’d raze it to the soil, then take off again, leaving nothing.”
Jase took off his glasses and wiped them. “I don’t see what it is you’re getting at.”
“Why do they do it? Why were locusts built that way?”
“Evolution, I guess. After the big flight they’d be spread over a lot of territory. I’d say they’d have a much bigger potential food supply.”
“Right. Now consider this. Take a biped that’s
