Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon Read Free Book Online Page A

confuse logic and truth, however good the logic. You can stick one end of logic in solid ground and throw the other end clear out of the cosmos without breaking it. Truth’s a little less flexible.” And, “Of course you need to be loved, Tod! Don’t be ashamed of that, or try to change it. It’s not a thing you have to worry about, ever. You are loved. April loves you. And I love you. Maybe I love you even more than April, because she loves everything you are, but I love everything you were and ever will be.”
    And some of the memories were deeper and more important even than these, but were memories of small things—the meeting of eyes, the touch of a hand, the sound of laughter or a snatch of song, distantly.
    Tod descended from memory into a blackness that was only loss and despair, and then a numbness, followed by a reluctant awareness. He became conscious of what, in itself, seemed the merest of trifles: that there was a significance in his pose there against the bulkhead. Unmoving, he considered it. It was comfortable, to be so turned in upon oneself, and so protected, unaware … and Alma would have hated to see him this way.
    He threw up his head, and self-consciously straightened from his fetal posture. That’s over now, he told himself furiously, and then, dazed, wondered what he had meant.
    He turned to look at April. She was huddled miserably against him, her face and body lax, stopped, disinterested. He thumped his elbow into her ribs, hard enough to make her remember she had ribs. She looked up into his eyes and said, “How? How could …”
    Tod understood. Of the three couples standard for each ship of the Sirian project, one traditionally would beget children on the planet; one, earlier, as soon as possible after awakening; and one still earlier, for conception would take place within the Coffin. But—not before awakening, and surely not long enough before to permit of gestation. It was an impossibility; the vital processes were so retarded within the Coffin that, effectively, there would be no stirring of life at all. So—“How?” April pleaded. “How could….”
    Tod gazed upon his own misery, then April’s, and wondered what it must be that Teague was going through.
    Teague, without looking up, said, “Tod.”
    Tod patted April’s shoulder, rose and went to Teague. He did not look into the Coffin. Teague, still working steadily, tilted his head to one side to point. “I need a little more room here.”
    Tod lifted the transparent cube Teague had indicated and looked at the squirming pink bundle inside. He almost smiled. It was a nice baby. He took one step away and Teague said, “Take ’em all, Tod.”
    He stacked them and carried them to where April sat. Carl rose and came over, and knelt. The boxes hummed—a vibration which could be felt, not heard—as nutrient-bearing air circulated inside and back to the power-packs. “A nice normal deliv—I mean, a nice normal batch o’ brats,” Carl said. “Four girls, one boy. Just right.”
    Tod looked up at him. “There’s one more, I think.”
    There was—another girl. Moira brought it over in the sixth box. “Sweet,” April breathed, watching them. “They’re sweet.”
    Moira said, wearily, “That’s all.”
    Tod looked up at her.
    “Alma … ?”
    Moira waved laxly toward the neat stack of incubators. “That’s all,” she whispered tiredly, and went to Carl.
    That’s all there is of Alma, Tod thought bitterly. He glanced across at Teague. The tall figure raised a steady hand, wiped his face with his upper arm. His raised hand touched the high end of the Coffin, and for an instant held a grip. Teague’s face lay against his arm, pillowed, hidden and still. Then he completed the wiping motion and began stripping the sterile plastic skin from his hands. Tod’s heart went out to him, but he bit the insides of his cheeks and kept silent. A strange tradition, thought Tod, that makes it impolite to grieve….
    Teague dropped