Limits by Larry Niven (tohfa e dulha read online TXT) 📗

the rocket sleds?” His face softened, and they could see that he was afraid to have hope. “Yes. Maybe that. Maybe on one of the sleds.”

They nodded to each other, and they and the other colonists spent long hours on the telescope hoping, and praying.

But there was nothing alive up there now. Ridgeback was entirely alone.

Cynnie never recovered. She would talk only to her brother, refusing even to see her child. She was morose and ate little, spending most of her time watching the sky with something like terrified awe in her eyes.

And one day, seven months after the accident, she walked into the woods and never returned.

Doc hadn’t seen Jerry for three weeks.

The children lived in a community complex which had some of the aspects of a boarding school. The colonists took turns at nursing duty. Jill spent most of her time there since she and Greg were on the outs. Lately, Elise had taken up the habit too. Not that he blamed her; he couldn’t have been very good company the last few months.

Parents took their children out to the T-shaped complex whenever they felt like it, so that some of the children had more freedom than others. But by and large they all were expected to live there eventually.

Brew was coming out of the woods with a group of six children when Doc stumbled out into the sunlight and saw Jerry.

He wore a rough pair of coveralls that fit him well enough, but he would have looked ludicrous if there had been anything to laugh about. Soft brown fur covered every inch of him. As Doc appeared he turned his head with a bird-quick movement, saw his father, and scampered over. Jerry bounced into him, wrapped long arms tight about his rib cage and said, eagerly, “Daddy.”

There was a slight pause.

“Hello, Jerry.” Doc slowly bent to the ground, looking into his son’s eyes.

“Daddy Doc, Daddy Doc,” he chattered, smiling up at his father. His vocabulary was about fifteen words. Jerry was six years old and much too big for his age. His fingers were very long and strong, but his thumbs were small and short and inconsequential. Doc had seen him handle silverware without much trouble. His nose pugged, jaw massive with a receding chin. There were white markings in the fur around his eyes, accentuating the heavy supraorbital ridges, making the poor child look like—

The poor child. Doc snorted with self-contempt. Listen to me. Why not my child?

Because I’m ashamed. Because we lock our children away to ease the pain. Because they look like—

Doc gently disengaged Jerry’s fingers from his shirt, turned and half-ran back to the ship. Shivering, he curled up on one of the cots and cursed himself to sleep.

Hours later he roused himself and, woozy with fatigue, he went looking for Jase. He found him on a work detail in the north fields, picking fruit.

“I’m not sure,” he told Jase. “They’re not old enough for me to be sure. But I want your opinion.”

“Show me,” said Jase, and followed him to the library.

The picture on the tape was an artist’s rendering of Pithecanthropus erectus. He stood on a grassy knoll looking warily out at the viewer, his long-fingered hand clutching a sharp-edged throwing rock.

“I’ll smack your head,” said Jase.

“I’m wrong, then?”

“You’re calling them apes!”

“I’m not. Read the copy. Pithecanthropus was a small-brained Pleistocene primate, thought to be a transitional stage between ape and man. You got that? Pith is also called Java Man.”

Jase glared at the reader. “The markings are different. And there is the fur—”

“Forget ’em. They’re nothing but guesswork. All the artist had to go on were crumbling bones and some broken rocks.”

“Broken rocks?”

“Pith used to break rocks in half to get an edged weapon. It was about the extent of his tool-making ability. All we know about what he looked like comes from fossilized bones—very much like the skeleton of a stoop shouldered man with foot trouble, topped with the skull of an ape with hydrocephalus.”

“Very nice. Will Eve’s children be fish?”

“I don’t know, dammit. I don’t know anything at all. Look, Pith isn’t the only candidate for missing link. Homo Habilis looked a lot more like us and lived about two million years ago. Kenyapithecus Africanus resembled us less, but lived eighteen million years earlier. So I can’t say what we’ve got here. God only knows what the next generation will be like. That depends on whether the children are moving backwards or maybe sideways. I don’t know, Jase, I just don’t know!” The last words were shrill, and Doc punctuated them by slamming his fist against a wire window screen. Then, because he could think of nothing more to say, he did it again. And again. And—

Jase caught his arm. Three knuckles were torn and bleeding. “Get some sleep,” he said, eyes sad. “I’ll have them send Earth a description of Eve the way she is now. She’s oldest, and best developed. We’ll send them all we have on her. It’s all we can do.”

Momentum and the thoroughness of their training had kept them going for eight years. Now the work of making a world slowed and stopped.

It didn’t matter. The crops and the meat animals had no natural enemies on Ridgeback. Life spread along the continent like a green plague. Already it had touched some of the islands.

Doc was gathering fruit in the groves. It was a shady place, cool, quiet, and it made for a tranquil day’s work. There was no set quota. You took home approximately a third of what you gathered. Sometimes he worked there, and sometimes he helped with the cattle, examining for health and pregnancy, or herding the animals with the nonlethal sonic stunners.

He wished that Elise were here with him, so they could laugh together, but that was growing infrequent now. She was growing more involved with the nursery, and he spent little of his time there.

Jill’s voice hailed him from the bottom of the ladder. “Hey up there, Doc. How