Part 1

THE TIES THAT BIND

By Walter Miller, Jr.

Illustrated by Kelly Freas

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _The Earth was green and quiet. Nature had survived Man, and Man had survived himself. Then, one day, the great silvery ships broke the tranquillity of the skies, bringing Man's twenty-thousand-year-lost inheritance back to Earth...._]

"_Why does your brand sae drop wi' blude, Edward, Edward? Why does your brand sae drop wi' blude, And why sae sad gang ye, O?" "O I hae kill'd my hawk sae gude, Mither, mither; O I hae kill'd my hawk sae gude, And I had nae mair but he, O._"

--ANONYMOUS

The Horde of sleek ships arose in the west at twilight--gleaming slivers that reflected the dying sun as they lanced across the darkling heavens. A majestic fleet of squadrons in double-vees, groups in staggered echelon, they crossed the sky like gleaming geese, and the children of Earth came out of their whispering gardens to gape at the splendor that marched above them.

There was fear, for no vessel out of space had crossed the skies of Earth for countless generations, and the children of the planet had forgotten. The only memories that lingered were in the memnoscripts, and in the unconscious _kulturverlaengerung_, of the people. Because of the latter half-memory, the people knew, without knowing why, that the slivers of light in the sky were ships, but there was not even a word in the language to name them.

The myriad voices of the planet, they cried, or whispered, or chattered in awed voices under the elms....

The piping whine of a senile hag: "The ancient gods! The day of the judging! Repent, repent...."

The panting gasp of a frightened fat man: "The alien! We're lost, we're lost! We've got to run for the hills!"

The voice of the child: "See the pretty birdlights? See? See?"

And a voice of wisdom in the councils of the clans: "The sons of men--they've come home from the Star Exodus. Our brothers."

The slivers of light, wave upon wave, crept into the eclipse shadow as the twilight deepened and the stars stung through the blackening shell of sky. When the moon rose, the people watched again as the silhouette of a black double-vee of darts slipped across the lunar disk.

Beneath the ground, in response to the return of the ships, ancient mechanisms whirred to life, and the tech guilds hurried to tend them. On Earth, there was a suspenseful night, pregnant with the dissimilar twins of hope and fear, laden with awe, hushed with the expectancy of twenty thousand years. The stargoers--they had come home.

* * * * *

"_Kulturverlaengerung!_" grunted the tense young man in the toga of an Analyst. He stood at one end of the desk, slightly flushed, staring down at the haughty wing leader who watched him icily from a seat at the other end. He said it again, too distinctly, as if the word were a club to hurl at the wingsman. "_Kulturverlaengerung_, that's why!"

"I heard you the first time, Meikl," the officer snapped. "Watch your tongue and your tone!"

A brief hush in the cabin as hostility flowed between them. There was only the hiss of air from the ventilators, and the low whine of the flagship's drive units somewhere below.

The erect and elderly gentleman who sat behind the desk cleared his throat politely. "Have you any further clarifications to make, Meikl?" he asked.

"It should be clear enough to all of you," the analyst retorted hotly. He jerked his head toward the misty crescent of Earth on the viewing screen that supplied most of the light in the small cabin. "You can see what they are, what they've become. And you _know_ what _we_ are."

The two wingsmen bristled slightly at the edge of contempt in the analyst's voice. The elderly gentlemen behind the desk remained impassive, expressionless.

The analyst leaned forward with a slow accusing glance that swept the faces of the three officers, then centered on his antagonist at the other end of the desk. "You want to _infect_ them, ThaĆ¼le?" he demanded.

The wingsman darkened. His fist exploded on the desktop. "Meikl, you're in contempt! Restrict yourself to answering questions!"

"Yes, sir."

"There will be no further breaches of military etiquette during the continuance of this conference," the elderly gentleman announced icily, thus seizing the situation.

After a moment's silence, he turned to the analyst again. "We've got to refuel," he said flatly. "In order to refuel, we must land."

"Yes, sir. But why not on Mars? We can develop our own facilities for producing fuel. Why must it be Earth?"

"Because there will be _some existing facilities_ on Earth, even though they're out of space. The job would take five years on Mars."

The analyst lowered his eyes, shook his head wearily. "I'm thinking of a billion earthlings. Aren't they worth considering, sir?"

"I've got to consider the men in my command, Meikl. They've been through hell. We all have."

"The hell was our own making, baron."

"_Meikl!_"

"Sorry, sir."

Baron ven Klaeden paused ominously, then: "Besides, Meikl, your predictions of disaster rest on certain assumptions not known to be true. You assume that the recessive determinants still linger in the present inhabitants. Twenty thousand years is a long time. Nearly a thousand generations. I don't know a great deal about culturetics, but I've read that _kulturverlaengerung_ reaches a threshold of extinction after about a dozen generations, if there's no restimulation."

"Only in laboratory cultures, sir," sighed the analyst. "Under rigid control to make certain there's no restimulant. In practice, in a planet-wide society, there's constant accidental restimulation, unconsciously occuring. A determinant gets restimulated, pops back to original intensity, and gets passed on. In practice, a kult'laenger linkage never really dies out--although, it can stay recessive and unconscious."

"That's too bad," a wingsman growled sourly. "We'll wake it up, won't we?"

"Let's not be callous," the other wingsman grunted in sarcasm. "Analyst Meikl has sensitivities."

The analyst stared from one to the other of them in growing consternation, then looked pleadingly at the baron. "Sir, I was _summoned_ here to offer my opinions about landing on Earth. You asked about possible cultural dangers. I've told you."

"You discussed the danger to earthlings."

"Yes, sir."

"I meant 'danger' to the personnel of this fleet--to their esprit, their indoctrination, their group-efficiency. I take it you see none."

"On the contrary, I see several," said the analyst, coming slowly to his feet, eyes flashing and darting among them. "Where were you born, Wingman?" he asked the officer at the opposite end of the desk.

"Lichter Six, Satellite," the officer grunted after a moment of irritable silence.

"And you?"

"Omega Thrush," said the other wingsman.

All knew without asking that the baron was born in space, his birthplace one of the planetoid city-states of the Michea Dwarf. Meikl looked around at them, then ripped up his own sleeve, unsheathed his rank-dagger, and pricked his forearm with the needle point. A red droplet appeared, and he wiped at it with a forefinger.

"It's common stuff, gentlemen. We've shed a lot of it. And each of us is a walking sackful of it." He paused, then turned to touch the point of his dagger to the viewer, where it left a tiny red trace on the glass, on the bright crescent of Earth, mist-shrouded, chastely wheeling her nights into days.

"It came from there," he hissed. "She's your womb, gentlemen. Are you going back?"

"Are you an analyst or a dramatist, Meikl?" the baron asked sharply, hoping to relieve the sudden chill in the room. "This becomes silly."

"If you land on her," Meikl promised ominously, "you'll go away with a fleet full of hate."

Meikl's arm dropped to his side. He sheathed his dagger. "Is my presence at this meeting still imperative, sir?" he asked the baron.

"Have you anything else to say?"

"Yes--_don't land on Earth_."

"That's a repetition. No further reasons?--in terms of danger to ourselves?"

The analyst paused. "I can think of nothing worse that could happen to us," he said slowly, "than just being what we already are."

He snapped his heels formally, bowed to the baron, and stalked out of the cabin.

"I suggest," said a wingsman, "that we speak to Frewek about tightening up the discipline in the Intelligence section. That man was in open contempt, Baron."

"But he was also probably right," sighed the graying officer and nobleman.

"_Sir--!_"

"Don't worry, Wingsman, there's nothing else to do. We'll have to land. Make preparations, both of you--and try to make contact with surface. I'll dictate the message."

When the wingsmen left, it was settled. The baron arose with a sigh and went to peer morosely at the view of Earth below. Very delicately, he wiped the tiny trace of blood from the glass. She was a beautiful world, this Earth. She had spawned them all, as Meikl said--but for this, the baron could feel only bitterness toward her.

But what of her inhabitants? I'm past feeling anything for them, he thought, past feeling for any of the life-scum that creeps across the surface of a world, any world. We'll go down quickly, and take what we need quickly, and leave quickly. We'll try not to infect them, but they've already got it in them, the dormant disease, and any infection will be only a recurrence.

Nevertheless, he summoned a priest to his quarters. And, before going to the command deck, he bathed sacramentally as if in preparation for battle.

"_Your hawk's blude was never sae red, Edward, Edward; Your hawk's blude was never sae red, My dear son, I tell thee, O." "O I hae kill'd my red-roan steed, Mither, mither; O I hae kill'd my red roan steed, That erst was sae fair and free, O._"

--ANONYMOUS

False dawn was in the east when the slivers of light appeared once again out of the eclipse shadow to rake majestically across the heavens, and again the children of Earth crowded in teeming numbers from the quiet gardens to chatter their excitement at the wonder in the sky. But this time, a message came. The men of the tech clans who tended the newly activated mechanisms heard it, and the mechanisms memorized it, and played it again and again for the people, while the linguists puzzled over the unidentified language used in the transmission.

PROPAUTH EARTH FROM COMMSTRAFEFLEET THREE, SPACE, KLAEDEN COMM, PRESENTS GREETINGS!

IF YOU HAVE RECORDS, OUR USE OF ANCIENT ANGLO-GERMANIC SHOULD MAKE OUR IDENTITY CLEAR. HAVE YOU FUELING FACILITIES FOR 720 SHIPS OF THOR-NINE CLASS? IF NOT, WE SHALL DEVELOP FACILITIES FROM LOCAL RESOURCES, WITH, WE TRUST, YOUR PEACEFUL COOPERATION. THIS CADRE NOT REIMMIGRATING, BUT EN ROUTE TO URSAN STARS. REQUEST LANDING SUGGESTIONS, IN VIEW OF OUR FUELING NEEDS.

REQUEST INTELLIGENCE CONCERNING PRESENT LEVEL OF TERRESTRIAL CULTURE. OUR ORIBITAL OBSERVATIONS INDICATE A STATIC AGRARIAN-TECHNICAL COMPLEX, BUT DETAILS NOT AVAILABLE. WE COME IN ARMS, BUT WITHOUT ENMITY. PLEASE REPLY, IF POSSIBLE.

ERNSTLI BARON VEN KLAEDEN, COMMANDING STRAFEFLEET THREE, SPACESTRIKE COMMAND, IMPERIAL FORCES OF THE SECESSION

* * * * *

So it came, repeated continuously for an hour, followed by an hour of silence, and then by another hour of repetition. The linguists were unable to discern meanings. Thousands of memorizers were consulted, but none knew the words of the harsh voice from the ships. At last, the sages consulted the books and memnoscripts in the ancient vaults, pouring over tomes that had been buried for countless centuries. After hours of hurried study....

"It is found, _it is found_, a tongue of the ancients!" a joyous cry in the glades and the garden pathways.

Happily, the sages recorded the linguistic structure of the forgotten tongue on memnoscript, and gave it to a servo translator. Outmoded mechanisms were being brought out of wraps and prepared for use. The servos supplied a translation of the message, and the sages studied it.

"It is badly understood," was the curious mutter along the garden pathways.

"Many words have no words to match them, nor any thoughts that are similar," was the only explanation the sages could give.

In translation the message seemed meaningless, or unfathomable. Only one thing was clear. The sons of Man meant to descend again upon the world of their ancestors. There was a restless unease in the gardens, and groups of elders gathered in the conference glades to mutter and glance at the sky. "Invite our brothers to land," was the impetuous cry of the young, but there were dissenters.

In the Glade of Sopho, a few thoughtful clansmen of Pedaga had gathered to muse and speak quietly among themselves, although it was not ordinarily the business of tutors to consider problems that confronted society as a whole, particularly problems arising outside society itself. The Pedaga were teachers of the very young, and deliberately kept themselves childlike in outlook in order to make fuller contact with the children in their charge.

"I think we should tell them to go away," said Letha, and looked around at the others for a response.

She got nothing in reply but a flickering glance from Marrita, who sat morosely on a cool rock by the spring, her chin on her bare knees. Evon gave her a brief polite smile, to acknowledge the sound of her voice, but he returned almost at once to absently tearing twigs and glancing up at the bits of sky that showed through the foliage of the overhanging trees. Iak and Karrn were whispering together at the far end of the glade, and had not heard her.

Letha shrugged and leaned back against the tree trunk again, sitting spraddle-legged this time in the hope of catching Evon's eye. She was a graceful girl, and while gracefulness is sometimes feline, Letha's was more nearly kittenish. She was full-bodied and soft, but well-shaped in spite of a trace of plumpness. Thick masses of black hair fell over baby-skin shoulders in a pleasing contrast, and while her face was a bit too round, it radiated a gentle, winning grin, and the sympathetic gaze of gray-blue eyes. Now she seemed ready to pout. Evon remained self-absorbed.

"I think we should tell them to go away," she repeated a little sharply. "They'll all be big and swashbuckling and handsome, and the children will become unmanageable as soon as they see them. All the little girls will swoon, and all the little boys will want to go with them."

Evon glanced at her briefly. "It's up to the elders of the Geoark," he muttered without interest, and prepared to return to his own meditations.

"And all the _big_ girls will run away with them," she purred with a tight smile, and stretched a languorous leg out in front of her to waggle her foot.

Evon shot her a quick glance, held it for a moment, then looked skyward again. She pursed her lips in irritation and glared at him. Gradually, she forgave him. Evon was distraught. He _must_ be--because she hadn't seen him sit still this long in years. He was _always_ doing something, or looking for something to do. It wasn't like Evon just to sit still and think. He was a restless, outgoing fellow, nearly always reacting boisterously, or laughing his staccato laugh. Now he just sat there and looked puzzledly in the direction of the sky-fleet. Looking puzzled didn't fit his face, somehow. It was a bony brown face, slightly oily, with a long narrow jaw that jutted forward like a plowshare under an elastic smirk. It was a rubbery kind of a face, the kind that could twist into horrid masks for the amusement of the young. Now it just drooped.

She stirred restlessly, driven to seek sympathetic understanding.

"You wonder what it's like, Evon?" she asked.

He grunted at her quizzically and shook his head.

"To be one of the children of the Exodus, I mean," she added.

"_Me?_ What _are_ you thinking of, Letha?"

"Of your face. It looks suddenly like a nomad's face. You remind me of an old schnorrer who used to wander through our gardenboro every year to play his fiddle, and sing us songs, and steal our chickens."

"I don't fiddle."

"But your eyes are on the sky-fleet."

Evon paused, hovering between irritation and desire to express. "It's strange," he murmured at last. "It's as if I know them--the star-birds, I mean. Last night, when I saw them first, it was like looking at something I expected to happen ... or ... or...."

"Something familiar?"

"Yes."

"You think he has the genemnemon, Marrita?" she asked the blonde girl who sat on the cool rock by the spring.

Marrita looked up from dabbling her toes in the icy trickle. "I don't believe in the genemnemon. My great grandfather was a thief."

"How silly! What's that to do with it?"

"He buried a fortune, they say. If there was a genemnemon, I'd remember where he buried it, wouldn't I?" She pouted, and went back to dabbling a club toe in the spring.

Evon snorted irritably and arose to stretch. "We lie around here like sleepy pigs!" he grumbled. "Have the Pedaga nothing to do but wait on the Geoark to make up its mind?"

"What do you think they'll do?"

"The Geoark? Invite the strangers to land. What else could they do?"

"Tell them to go away."

"And suppose they chose not to go?"

The girl looked bewildered. "I can't imagine anyone refusing the Geoark."

"Maybe they've got their own Geoark. Why should they cooperate with ours?"

"_Two_ Geoarks? What a strange idea."

"Is it strange that you and I should have two brains? Or were you aware that I have one too?"

"Evon! What a _strange_ idea."

He seized her by the ankles and dragged her squealing to the spring, then set her down in the icy trickle. Marrita moved away, grumbling complaints, and Letha snatched up a switch and chased him around the glade, shrieking threats of mayhem, while Evon's laughter broke the gloomy air of the small gathering, and caused a few other Pedaga to wander into the clearing from the pathways.

"I think we should prepare a petition for the Geoark," someone suggested.

"About the sky-fleet? And who knows what to say?"

"I'm afraid," said a girl. "Somehow I'm suddenly afraid of them."

"Our brothers from the Exodus? But they're _people_--such as you and I."

So went the voices. After an hour, a crier came running through the glade to read another message received from the sky-fleet.

PROPAUTH EARTH FROM COMMSTRAFEFLEET THREE, SPACE, KLAEDEN COMM, PRESENTS GREETINGS!

HAVING RECEIVED NO ANSWER TO OUR PREVIOUS COMMUNICATION, WE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO LAND AT ONCE. I AM IMPOSING AN INFORMATIONAL QUARANTINE TO AVOID RESTIMULATING POSSIBLE RECESSIVE KULTURVERLAENGERUNG, BUT SUGGEST YOU GUARD YOURSELVES. OUR CULTURES HAD A COMMON ORIGIN. WE COME IN ARMS, WITHOUT ENMITY.

ERNSTLI BARON VEN KLAEDEN, COMMANDING STRAFEFLEET THREE, SPACESTRIKE COMMAND IMPERIAL FORCES OF THE SECESSION

This was even more mystifying than the previous one, even less meaningful in translation. One thing was clear, however: the fleet was going to land, without invitation.

Embarrassed, the elders of the Geoark immediately called the tech clans. "Can you revive the devices that speak across space?" they asked.

"They are revived," answered the tech clans.

"Then let us speak to our brothers from space."

And so it was that the people of the gardens of Earth sang out:

BRETHREN TO BRETHREN, PRESENT LOVE LOVE LOVE.

WE WELCOME YOU TO OUR GLADES AND TO OUR PLACES OF FEEDING AND OUR PLACES OF SLEEPING. WE WELCOME YOU TO THE BOSOM OF THE WORLD OF BEGINNING. AFTER TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS, EARTH HAS NOT FORGOTTEN. COME AMID REJOICING.

THE ELDERS OF THE GEOARK

"I'm afraid Earth will remember more than it wants to," growled Ernstli Baron ven Klaeden, as he issued the command to blast into an atmospheric-braking orbit.

And there was thunder in a cloudless sky.

"_O your steed was auld and ye hae mair, Edward, Edward. O your steed was auld and ye hae mair, And some other dule ye dree, O." "O I hae kill'd my ain father dear, Mither, mither; O I hae kill'd my ain father dear, Alas and woe is me, O._"

--ANONYMOUS

* * * * *

In accordance with the rules of invasion strategy for semi-civilized planets, the fleet separated itself into three groups. The first group fell into atmospheric braking; the second group split apart and established an "orbital shell" of criscrossing orbits, timed and interlocking, at eight hundred miles, to guard the descent of the first wave of ships, while the third wave remained in battle formation at three thousand miles as a rear guard against possible space attack. When the first wave had finished braking, it fell into formation again and flew as aircraft in the high stratosphere, while the second wave braked itself, and the third wave dropped into the orbital shell.

From the first wave, a single ship went down to land, and its telecameras broadcast a view of a forest garden, slightly charred for a hundred yards around the ship, with fires blazing along its edges.

"No signs of the natives yet," came the report. "No signs of technology. No evidence of hostility."

A second ship descended to land a mile from the first. Its telecamera caught a fleeting glimpse of a man waving from a hilltop, but nothing more.

One at a time the ships came, with weapon locks open and bristling with steel snouts. The ships came down at one-mile intervals, the first wave forming a circle that enclosed an area of forty-six hundred square miles. The second wave came down to land in a central circle of fifteen miles diameter. The third wave remained in its orbital shell, where it would stand guard as long as the fleet was on the ground.

In accordance with the rules of officer's conduct, Baron ven Klaeden, who had ordered the landing, was the first to expose himself to the enveloping conditions outside the flagship. He stood in an open lock, sniffing the autumn air of Earth in late afternoon. It was full of jet-fire smoke, and smelled of burning brush. The automatic extinguishers had quenched the flames, but the blackened trees and brush still roasted and sparked and leaked smoke across the land. Somewhere a bird was singing through the sunlit haze. Baron ven Klaeden recognized the sound as made by a living thing, and wondered if the recognition was born into his bones.

Three hundred and fifty yards to the north, a wingship towered in the sun, its guns trained outward from the inner circle, and to the south, another wingship. The baron glanced down at the earth beneath the flagship. The jets had reduced to ashes something that might have been a low wooden structure. He shrugged, and glanced across the blackened area toward the orderly forest. Trees and shrubs, and a carpet of green turf below, broken here and there by rain-worn rocks and clusters of smaller fragile leafy stuff that might be food-plants. Vivid splashes of color blossomed in the shady forest, scarlets and blues and flashes of brilliant lemon that lived in profusion in the foliage of the shrubbery. Some of the trees were living masses of tiny flowers, and when the wind stirred them, petals showered to the ground in fragrant gusts. The wind changed, and the air that breathed about the commander's face was full of perfume.

I feel nothing, he thought. Here is beauty and warmth, here is the home of Man, and almost an Eden, but I feel nothing. It is just another mote that circles a minor sun, and to me it is only an exploitable supply dump of Nature, a place to accomplish Procedure 76-A, "Refueling Method for Terrestroid Planets Without Facilities, Native Labor Exploitable."