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THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

Since Emily had died I had become exceedingly restless, unable to settle to my own work—indeed, I no longer found it possible to think of writing articles for Blackwood’s and the Monthly Review as “work”—and equally unable to take solace in the genius of other men that was stored in my father’s library.

My father was in London, fully absorbed by the duties of his military career, but I was glad of that, for his innocently cheerful presence would have seemed an insult. Had he not lost the love of his life too, albeit twenty-and-one years before? How could he tolerate his own comfortable contentment, with that kind of void at the core of his existence? How could he bear to look at me, let alone love me, knowing that it was in giving birth to me that his wife had died?

Emily, dear heart, had not lived long enough to celebrate our wedding, let alone to give birth to my child, but that did not make my pain one whit less intense. I felt that my soul had been ripped apart, and could never be healed

I had taken to wandering on the moors every day, whatever the weather. At first, I had done so merely in order to walk from our isolated house at Stonecroft to the village churchyard in Haughtonlin, where Emily was buried, but it had become so very difficult to tear myself away from my meditation in order to return to the awful normality of home that I had taken to going further on rather than reversing my direction. Nor did I stick to the path that wound around the hillside before crossing the beck at the little wooden bridge and making its way back to the York road. Instead, I plunged into the wilderness of gorse and heather, punctuated by hawthorn spinneys and outcrops of black rock, which dressed the slopes above the bog, forming a basin whose broken granite rim served as a source for rills that combined their trickling waters lower down to form the beck.

It was desolate land, impossible to cultivate, into which sheep were reluctant to stray, and it suited the temper of my moods very well. The cloud which, by some freak of nature, always dressed the summit of Arnlea Moor came to see strangely welcoming, although I usually refrained from going so far up the hill as to immerse myself in its mists.

My father had hoped that I might make a soldier, like him, but I had no appetite at all for the looming conflict in the Crimea. My childhood dreams had been fantasies of exploration, following in the footsteps of James Cook or Mungo Park. Had I not fallen in love with Emily, I might have taken ship for the Pacific isles or the shores of darkest Africa, but she had kept me at home, and kept me still now that she had been laid to rest in the soil of Arnleadale. It was easy enough, however, to imagine myself as an explorer whenever I ventured into the upper reaches of the vale, struggling through what was, in a literal though perhaps rather trivial sense, trackless wilderness. There were foxes and pheasants living wild on the heath, but no hunt or shooting-party ever came this far from either of the manor houses that presided like Medieval forts over the valley’s neck. Stonecroft, which had once belonged to one of Lord Arnlea’s stewards but had been sold off fifty years before, was the limit at which sport stopped and untroubled Nature began.

My father, a devotee of natural theology, had often said that there was more to be learned about the mysterious mind of God in the bleak and misty head of the valley than there was from its carefully tamed and excessively man-handled mouth. I was not so sure that what was revealed there was the mind of God, but I had thought the judgment likely to be truthful even before I lost my lovely Emily. Afterwards, I became convinced. Even so, I had difficulty following my father’s perennial advice to see the Divine Plan in everything that existed or occurred upon the Earth. What kind of divinity could possibly manifest itself in the premature death of such a charming soul as Emily?

I was never intimidated in my excursions by the weather, although the moor could become a direly dismal place when the ever-present cloud turned to drizzle, or when a brisk west wind brought darker clouds scurrying from the distant Atlantic Ocean to unleash a deluge on the slopes. There was no man-made shelter in the wilderness, but there were natural coverts formed by overhanging rocks, and clefts that sometimes extended back into the hillside to become pot-holes. I knew many of them, though by no means them all, and regarded them as my own…until, one day, I raced to the remotest of them all to escape a sudden squall, and found it already occupied, by a young woman dressed in black.

I had never seen her before, and was quite at a loss to understand how she had got there, since I would surely have caught a glimpse of her had she come by way of Haughtonlin. When I saw her, I hesitated at the mouth of the cave, and was actually about to turn around and go back into the storm when she spoke.

“There’s no need to get wet on my account,” she said, in a soft and strangely musical voice. “The shelter is narrow, but there’s room enough for two. The shower cannot last long at this level of violence.”

I hesitated still, studying her carefully. Her coat was long, and bulky enough to conceal the precise contours of her body her walking-boots sturdy. Her bonnet was as black as her coat, and so was the hair tucked up within it. Her complexion was pale—which made her eyebrows stand out remarkably—and her eyes were grey, completing the strange impression that she was a figure drawn in monochrome, a charcoal sketch rather than a portrait in oils.

Eventually, I bowed, and said: “I’m Edward Grayling of Stonecroft. I apologize for my rudeness, but I was startled to find anyone abroad in this lonely region—especially a woman.”

“My name is Mary McQueen,” she said, lightly. “I fear that I’m a little lost. I’m staying at Raggandale Hall, and I do not know the county at all.”

“Raggandale Hall! Why, that’s six miles away, even as the crow flies. You must have come over the crest of the moor, through the fog. Did no one warn you not to come this way? The ridge is rarely free from its shroud of low-lying cloud, and the damp ground on this side is treacherous even for sheep.”

“No,” she said, “no one warned me. I’m quite used to taking six-mile walks at home, although I will admit that the ground is much flatter there, and I never lose my bearings to the extent of not knowing when and how to turn around. The mist on the heights of the moor is very deceptive, and I was surprised to find that I had come out on the opposite side”

“I’ll take you home when the squall blows over,” I said, compelled to play the gallant in spite of my dark mood, “but it’s a long way, and far from easy. There’s very little chance of reaching Raggandale by nightfall.” I paused again, for reflection, and then said: “In fact, it would be foolish to attempt it. You must come the other way, at least as far as Haughtonlin. The innkeeper at the Black Bull has a fly, and might be willing to lend you his servant to take you home by road. It’s a long way round, but it’s safe. If the fly’s hired out or the servant can’t be spared, you can stay overnight at the inn—or come back to Stonecroft with me, if you prefer. The scullion can be pressed into temporary service as a chambermaid. I can drive you home myself tomorrow.”

“That’s very kind,” she said, “but quite unnecessary. I’m sure that I can find my own way home.”

“I’m perfectly sure that you cannot,” I told her, insistently. “I know how different this moorland is from most of England. Whether you know it or not, Miss McQueen, you’re in an alien land here. This rain is not the first we’ve had this week, and the bog will be exceedingly treacherous for some time to come. There’s no question of your going back that way this evening. You must come with me, at least as far as Haughtonlin.”

“Very well,” she said. “Since you insist, I must bow to your superior knowledge of this alien land, and accept your guidance. I shall stay the night in Haughtonlin, if there is room at the inn, and make my way home tomorrow. If the weather is fine, though, I shall go on foot. I may be resident in the vicinity for some time, if my cousins at Raggandale are willing to accommodate me, and I ought to get to know the country—especially its dangerous regions.”

I had to be content with that, for the time being, but we continued chatting. I told her something of myself—my education, my father’s military adventures, my adventures in journalism—but I said nothing about Emily or my current state of mind. It seemed to me that she might be hiding something too, although she gave me abundant news of my acquaintances at Raggandale and described her impressions of the estate in some detail. When I eventually left her at the Black Bull, I told her that I would return in the morning, and that if she really was intent on going up to the head of the valley and over the clouded moor, I would go with her, to make sure that she got safely back to Raggandale Hall.

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Grayling,” she said. “I would doubtless benefit from the services of a guide, and I shall therefore accept your offer to see me safely home, if I will not be causing you any inconvenience.”

“None at all,” I assured her. “I come to Haughtonlin every day, and walk further up the valley whenever the whim takes me. It might be to my advantage to pioneer a trail that might take me all the way to Raggandale in future.” I said it carelessly, and only realized afterwards that it must have sounded like an expression of my intention to visit her there—but she only thanked me courteously, and smiled.

I was back in Haughtonlin bright and early, but I went to the graveyard before presenting myself at the Black Bull. I was kneeling by Emily’s grave, oblivious to all else, when I was interrupted by a voice from behind, which said: “I thought it was you, Mr. Grayling.”

I turned to look at Mary McQueen. In her all-black outfit she seemed every inch the mourner. Her expression was equally somber.

“I would have come to the Black Bull within the quarter-hour,” I said, a little stiffly. “There was no need to come to find me.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied, “but I felt a little uncomfortable at the inn. Even though you were so kind as to explain my situation last evening, the landlord and his wife seemed a trifle put out by the presence of a female guest with neither chaperone nor luggage. I can’t imagine why—this is Victorian England, after all, when ladies may take the Grand Tour unescorted.”

“This is Yorkshire,” I reminded her. “An alien land.”

She nodded in vague agreement, and then looked pointedly at Emily’s grave.

“She was my fiancée,” I felt bound to explain, although she had not voiced a question. “She died of a fever shortly before her nineteenth birthday. I wanted to bury her at Stonecroft, next to my mother, but her parents would not hear of it.”

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you in your mourning,” she said, politely—although she made no move to leave. “I thought that you seemed unhappy yesterday, but I could not fathom the reason why.”

“There is no reason for me to inflict my unhappiness on others,” I replied, as I got to my feet. I walked back with her to the Black Bull, where I had a brief word with the landlord to make sure that he understood the reason for my presence and why I was heading the wrong way along the valley in the young lady’s company. There was gossip enough about me in the region, without generating more of a less respectful sort.

The day was bright enough when we started out, but the cloud-cap on the ridge was even lower than usual, and we were surrounded by mist even before we had reached the lip of the granite basin that held the bog. The light of the sun made the white mist sparkle slightly, but the vapor was so thick that we could hardly see the ground beneath our feet, and I knew that navigation would be direly difficult. I thought that I had been there often enough in recent weeks to find my way, at least until we cleared the moist ground and had to clamber up the remaining rocky slopes to the crest of the moor, but I was too optimistic. By the time that the hands of my watch indicated noon I was quite lost, and no longer knew in which direction the ridge lay.

Had I been alone, I would have turned back a hour earlier, when I was still sure in which direction Haughtonlin lay, but I had represented myself to Mary McQueen as a guide, and had promised to get her home; pride delayed me until I had no idea where I might be. I was about to call a halt and take stock of whatever clues I could find, hoping to recover my bearings, when I found myself confronted by a wall of granite, so dark in hue as to be almost black. It loomed up at least ten feet, and then was lost in the mist. I was sure that I had never seen it before—nor had I ever seen the crevice that gave access to a cave not unlike the one in which I had found Mary McQueen sheltering the day before.

“We had better rest for a little while,” I said. “The sun is at its zenith now, and there is a chance that the cloud will lift, or even dissipate altogether, giving us an opportunity to see where we are.”

The woman in black laughed softly, but not unkindly. “It’s a poor explorer who forgets his compass,” she remarked. Without any hesitation, she stepped into the dark opening in the rock-face.

I started to protest, on the grounds that it would be pitch dark inside the cave, and that I had no more brought a lantern than a compass, but her black form had already vanished into the interior. Instead of calling after her, I followed her into the darkness.

I had expected it to be cold inside the cave, but no sooner was I within it than my face was bathed by a draught of warm air. If that were not surprising enough, the air was strangely scented, not with the animal reek of a fox’s den or a wildcat’s lair, but with a curiously sweet perfume, like the odor of warm honey. I stopped dead, but I did not turn back towards the silvery mist. Instead, I said: “I must confess, Miss McQueen, that I am quite lost. I have let you down, and I’m sorry.”

I heard her laugh again, but the sound seemed to come from a distance, and it was as much a trill as a laugh, more akin to birdsong than any familiar expression of human merriment.

“I must confess, Mr. Grayling,” she said, then, the words flowing like a cradle-song, “that I have not been entirely honest with you. Although I really am in residence at Raggandale at present, I am no stranger to this cloud. I am not lost at all—but I hope that you will forgive me for my deception very soon.”

I had not the least idea what to make of this speech, and my confusion was further augmented by a strange sensation that stole over me, which I attributed to the effects of the sickly air that I was breathing in. I felt unnaturally calm—inwardly more peaceful than I had felt in months, certainly since Emily had died and perhaps far longer than that. When a hand took mine and drew me further forward into the darkness, I went meekly, with not the slightest pang of anxiety.

The floor of the cave sloped downwards, and felt somewhat slick underfoot, but I did not slip or stumble as the invisible hand drew me on. My calmness lapsed by degrees into a near-somnolence, and I lost track of time and direction, although I feel sure that the path we followed as by no means straight. The tunnel was broad, though, and I never had to stoop to save my head from being bumped or scraped. It was almost as if it had been deliberately hollowed out in order to accommodate the passage of human beings—or something of similar size. The air grew warmer, and sweeter still, until I had the feeling that I was no longer breathing air at all, or moorland mist, but something infinitely richer and more nourishing to body and soul alike.

We walked for a long time in total darkness, although I cannot estimate whether it was for tens of minutes or several whole hours. Eventually, though, we came into a part of the cave where the tunnel broadened much further, into a series of chambers, which were illuminated by a soft bioluminescence produced by some kind of fungus that grew thickly upon the walls and roofs. The light was faint, but perfectly white; once my eyes had adjusted to its magnitude, it was like seeing by starlight on a cloudless but moonless night. The return of visual sensation dispelled my somnolence, without threatening my tranquility in the least.

My guide was little more than a silhouette against the background radiance, and her pale face did not seem to reflect the light with any distinctness at all, being little more than a dull grey blur atop her thick-clad body. She was no longer alone, and I realized that we had probably had invisible company for some time. The further we progressed through the sequence of chambers, the more individuals of the same kind I saw, passing along the pathway we were following in the same or the opposite direction. Somehow, I formed the impression that I was in some kind of religious community, and that the creatures swarming around me were devotees: a company of nuns, apparently, who had retired from the civilized world to live in closer proximity with their deity.

Eventually, Mary McQueen invited me to rest, and showed me a covert in which I might sit down.

“If this really is a nunnery,” I said to her, “it is surpassingly strange. So far as I know, no one in the neighborhood even suspects its existence.”

“It is not exactly a nunnery,” she replied, calmly. “You might obtain a slightly better understanding of its nature if you likened it to a formicary. Although my sisters and I are certainly more human than insect, in body and soul alike, I like to think that we combine the best features of both those kinds of Earthly creature.”

As the implications of this speech sank into my consciousness I was slightly surprised to discover that I was not in the least astonished or afraid. I felt, in fact, that I was no longer capable of amazement or fear—or grief either. It seemed to me that a state of Platonic ataraxia had somehow been thrust upon me, making the empire of my reason fully secure for the first time in my brief existence, fully liberating my consciousness from the animal instincts that we call emotions. I was, however, reasonable enough to remind myself that the impression might well be an illusion, and that I must be very careful not take everything that I saw or heard on trust.

“So this is a hive rather than a community of cenobites,” I said, lightly, “and your mother superior is a queen. I understand the significance of your pseudonym now. Why have you brought me here?”

“I brought you here because you seemed lonely and desolate,” she said, “and because you have a status and abilities that might be useful to us.”

I took no offence at the first part of this answer, nor was I moved to any keen curiosity by the second. “How might I be of service?” I asked.

“I shall explain momentarily,” she said, “but I must emphasize first that you are quite free to refuse our offer. While you are here you will be able to exercise a purer kind of reason than the one to which human beings are normally heir, in order that you might be unswayed by instinctive animal revulsion, but it is not our intention to compel your cooperation.”

“That’s very kind of you, I’m sure,” I said. “Am I right in assuming that your species is not part of the Earth’s Divine Plan, and no evidence of any aspect of the mind of our Creator?”

“We are not native to this planet,” Mary McQueen confirmed, “nor even this solar system—but if you believe in a Creator, you may take my word for the fact that we are far more representative of the common state of his mind and the apparent ambition of his Divine Plan than your own species.”

The notion that I was dealing with the intelligent indigenes of another world intrigued me; I was as incapable of reflexive incredulity as I was of instinctive terror. “How many other human beings have you and your sisters brought here before me?” I asked, interestedly. “How many have accepted the offer that you are about to make to me, and how many have refused it?”

“Our form of governance is far from democracy,” she retorted, “although I think, on due reflection, that you might have been wise to think in terms of a Mother Superior rather than a queen. At any rate, we are uninterested in matters of majority. Since you ask, though, you are the nineteenth person to be welcomed into this particular nest. If all our Earthly nests are taken into consideration, the number of our human recruits is presently something over a thousand. We have only been on your planet for little more than seven centuries. Of all the humans to whom we have made the offer of recruitment, not one has yet refused.”

There seemed nothing startling in any of these figures, in my newly-remade estimation.

“Very well, then,” I said, with perfect equanimity. “Explain what you want from me.”

My seducer explained, very patiently, that I might be useful to her species’ long-term plans by virtue of my education and my nascent vocation as a writer. It was, she told me, highly desirable that her sisters might infiltrate themselves by slow degrees into the upper echelons of human society, recruiting human males who might confer useful socially status by means of the institution of marriage, and might serve as prudently-deployed instruments of political and ideological influence. There was, however, a much more intimate function that I might serve in the first instance, whose fulfillment would equip me far better to serve in other ways and would provide highly desirable existential rewards.

I would, my guide informed me, be asked to serve as a foster-parent to one of the infants of her species, and to nourish it with the utmost care. The vermiform infant would live within me—not merely in my gut, like an ascarid worm or a tapeworm, but actually within my abdomen, sharing the circulation of my blood like any other organ and deriving its nutrition therefrom. While there, it would grow slowly, undergoing the first phase of a long and complex process of maturation.

The infant would not merely integrate itself into my circulatory system, however; it would also integrate itself into my nervous system. It would gradually take on the form and functions of a massive ganglion: a second brain, equal in complexity and capability to my own, and capable of exchanging information with my own. I would, in some measure, become responsible for the elementary education of the nascent mind within that brain, assisting its gradual transformation from a creature of pure appetite to a creature of considerable intelligence.

In order that this metamorphosis might be achieved, Mary McQueen told me, it would be necessary for the original infant to be gradually transformed, molecule by molecule and cell by cell, into a kind of flesh more closely akin to mine. By the same token, though, it would assist me—and, in particular, my brain—in a similar metamorphosis, so that my flesh would become more akin to that of the extraterrestrial visitors. Although the continuity of my consciousness would be perfectly preserved, allowing for the normal and inevitable lapses of sleep, its containing vessel would be strengthened in various ways.

The visitors could not offer me immortality, but they could offer me a much-extended lifespan, potentially measurable in tens of thousands of years. Although I would always remain vulnerable to the possibility of destruction by catastrophic injury, my body would acquire much greater powers of self-repair, and would become virtually invulnerable to the ravages of disease. In addition to these vulgar material benefits, the quality of my experience of the world would be altered in several ways.

In the first place, the ataraxia that I was now experiencing would become a perennially and voluntarily recoverable state of mind. I would remain able to savor the existential rewards of emotion, if and when I so wished, but I would also be able to rid myself of its more exacting claims. The empire of reason would be secured, not by the extermination of emotion but by its careful subjugation; emotions would become my loyal and contented servants, no longer bidding for mastery of my consciousness or posing any anarchic threat to my peace of mind.

In the second place, my mind would no longer be isolated, capable of making contact with other minds only through the media of sight and sound, by means of language and image-making. The intimate connection that I would gradually establish with the infant to which I was playing host would eventually be severed when the time came for the child to move on to the next phase in its development, but that link would be replaced, initially by another infant of the same sort, but eventually—as my own slow metamorphosis moved into other phases—by a series of children that were already more advanced in their development. I would never again be without companionship of the most intimate sort imaginable, nor would I be restricted to the company of new-borns.

When the time came for me to play foster-parent to children of a more advanced sort, I would be able to take the opportunity to leave my homeworld, because I would then be capable of the kind of dormancy required by long interstellar journeys. I would become a citizen of a vast interstellar culture, capable of the kinds of radical metamorphosis that were frequently necessary to facilitate life on other worlds. In time, perhaps, I might even be equipped for intergalactic travel.

My interlocutor also took the opportunity to explain the logic of this way of life, in evolutionary terms. Among the books in my father’s library was the Chevalier de Lamarck’s Philosophie zoologique, which my father had acquired from a French acquaintance, who had received it from the author’s own hand after attending one of his lectures in the Jardin des Plantes. I was, therefore, aware of the Chevalier’s assertion that every living creature is possessed of an innate urge to improvement, whose cumulative effects, expressed across the generations, result in the gradual progressive evolution of new species. Mary McQueen told me that the sense in which this was true of Earthly species was more metaphorical than literal, but that there was indeed a universal process of natural selection that tended to favor the survival and reproduction of some individuals in every generation of every species, while others less fitted for survival and successful reproduction made proportionately less contribution to the following generation.

Although such vulgar modifications as fleshly resilience, the ability to avoid predators and efficiency in gathering food were all favored by natural selection, my informant told me, the most important factors thus favored—and hence the most progressive, in Lamarckian terms—were those promoting better parental care. Humans, she said, deserve to be reckoned the most advanced members of the native biosphere because their infants benefit from far better and more varied parental care, and are thus enabled to embrace much slower and far more intricate processes of maturation.

By comparison with the extraterrestrial visitors, of course, human maturation remains relatively rapid and primitive; the visitors had taken the process to a much more elaborate extreme. One of the gifts of the extra measure of progress they were thus permitted was, of course, to develop processes of personal and collective evolution that were authentically Lamarckian, allowing every individual of their species—including individuals of other kinds recruited into their company—to embark on a process of individual progressive evolution, in which the possibilities were multitudinous.

There were, of course, many matters of further detail that my scrupulous educator took it upon herself to enumerate and explain. I asked numerous questions, all of which were answered to my complete satisfaction. In the end, though, the force of the argument was simply and manifestly overwhelming. What I was being offered, with the utmost generosity, was a chance to transcend the vestigial primitive aspects of my own humanity: an opportunity to become, by slow degrees, a much higher kind of being, less closely akin to apes than my fellow men, more nearly reminiscent of angels.

I was not in the least surprised, when I understood my situation, that not one of the more-than-a-thousand human males to whom this offer had formerly been made had turned it down. No creature in whom the empire of reason was secure could ever have done otherwise.

“Yes,” I said, gladly, when the offer was confirmed.” I will certainly agree to join you in the capacity of foster-parent, with a view to becoming one of your company, to the full extent of my eventual abilities.”

“Thank you, Mr. Grayling,” the shadowy Mary McQueen replied. “I felt sure that you would be able to see and appreciate the logic of the situation.”

In order to be invested with my foster-child I had, of course, to meet the extraterrestrial Mother Superior whose daughter Mary was. Because my preconceptions had been partly shaped by the analogy Mary had drawn between the world within the moor and an ant-hive, I half-expected to encounter an individual of gargantuan size lodged in some vast central chamber, perpetually attended by hordes of workers dutifully transporting her nourishment and incessantly bearing away the eggs that she laid. That aspect of the analogy was, however, misleading in the extreme.

In spite of their tentative investment in the arts of parental care, the reproductive strategy of Earthly ants is essentially crude, involving the production of large numbers of offspring. The extraterrestrial visitors did indeed combine the best features of Earthly mammals with those of Earthly insects—indeed, as the description of their existential condition that I have just given will readily testify, they were no longer prisoners to any kind of taxonomic classification. At any rate, their rate of reproduction was essentially sedate. They had been present on the Earth for seven centuries without having had the need to recruit many more than a thousand human males to their cause.

The Mother Superior’s quarters were, in fact, relatively modest, as befitted her modest size. She was only a little larger than Mary McQueen, and although she was certainly plump, she was by no means obese. She was, however, intensely committed to her role as a specialist in reproduction, to the extent that she seemed almost to radiate maternal love.

Thus far in the course of my adventures in the underworld my emotions had been subject to a kindly but generalized suppression. When I was ushered into the Mother Superior’s gloomy apartment, however, there was a noticeable change in the atmosphere. Its warm sickly sweetness was replaced by something more refreshing and bracing, which had the seemingly-paradoxical effect of reigniting at least some of my emotions and appetites. I did not feel that I was at all out of control, but when I came into the presence of the Mother Superior and felt the radiance of her love, I also felt free to return it.

Although I had never known my own mother, and my father had never made any effort to provide me with any kind of substitute, I had never felt unduly deprived in consequence, and I did not feel that the Mother Superior’s welcoming attitude was rushing to fill any kind of experiential void. I did, however, relish the opportunity to return her affection: to lavish upon her all the stored-up affection that I might, in happier circumstances, have been able to lavish upon my own mother for twenty-and-one years.

I could not tell, with any degree of certainty, what the extraterrestrial Mother Superior looked like. Her chamber was not blessed with much illumination, and her face was as vague as my guide’s had become, although she certainly had eyes with which to study me, and doubtless saw me far more clearly than I saw her. She was clad in black, like her sisters, and I do know that her coat—which was presumably some kind of tegument integral to her bodily structure—was soft and warm, with a texture not unlike that of wool. She was capable of standing erect and of sitting down, and she had five-fingered hands that were both expressive and tender, but I had the impression that her form was not such a close imitation of human physique as Mary’s. Mary’s outward form had, of course, to be a very close imitation in order for her to pass for a cousin of the Raggandales.

The Mother Superior’s voice was very musical, but her command of English was somewhat limited; unlike Mary, she had never been up to the surface to insinuate herself, however briefly, into the human social world. Even so, we talked, not about biology and evolution but about more personal matters. In particular, we talked about Emily, and the tragedy of her death. While remaining intensely sympathetic, the Mother Superior explained to me how futile it is to mourn the deaths of creatures which are by nature ephemeral, and why it is a perverted use of emotion to surrender oneself to grief so completely that one becomes impotent in the more elevated sphere of intellectual ability. She was right, of course, but that was not all that mattered to me: what mattered more was that she was kind, that she was helping me to explore the perversities of my own sentiments in order that I might become calmer, happier and better equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of existence.

Longevity, the Mother Superior told me, is not necessarily a good thing. In order to reap the benefits of the condition, one must adapt one’s frame of mind to its demands as well as its possibilities. I was grateful for her generosity in making time to give me that advice, and very grateful indeed for the tenderness of her explanations. When the time came for her to give me her new-born infant to care for, I was more than ready to receive it.

Unlike Earthly ant-queens, alien Mothers Superior do not lay eggs; like humans, they nurture their young in embryo for some considerable time. They give birth by means of a special kind of kiss, which transfers the infant directly into the gut of a recipient host, from whose small intestine it makes its own patient way to the site of its temporary integration.

I had kissed Emily more than once, but I had never experienced anything remotely like the kiss of the Mother Superior. Modesty forbids me to give a more detailed description, but it is only appropriate for me to report that the experience changed my life, and showed me what the true value of emotion is, to an intellect capable of its wise control.

I was taken away from the Mother Superior’s quarters by the same guide that had brought me. Mary led me up through the bowels of the hill, back to the surface of the Earth and the interior of the near-perpetual cloud that sat atop Arnlea Moor, which was now dark grey in the gathering twilight. Indeed, she led me further than that, taking me down the slope until we were completely clear of the mist, and accompanying me almost to the bounds of Haughtonlin.

“You had best make your own way from here,” she said. “It will soon be dark, but I think you can find your way back to Stonecroft without difficulty. The moon is three-quarters full and untroubled by clouds at present.”

“I can find my way, now that I’ve a path to guide me,” I assured her. “Shall I see you again?”

“Of course you will,” she said. “You must visit me at Raggandale very soon, so that we might become good friends.”

I was glad, at the time, to hear that we were to become good friends, although I realized almost immediately that it was a necessary provision, to protect both of us from the hazards of loneliness. My gladness was slightly compromised, however, by the anxiety that any new friendship might be seen as a betrayal of Emily’s love and Emily’s memory.

I felt compelled, in consequence, to go directly to Emily’s grave and kneel beside it, in order to offer her an apology and an explanation.

“I am not the man that I used to be, Emily,” I told her. “I have grown, and it is time for me to move on. I’m a foster-father now, and I have new responsibilities. I want to know, though, that I have not forgotten you and never will. I am capable, still, of every emotion in the human spectrum, and I shall treasure my grief as I shall treasure my love for you, which will never be emulated or replaced. In time, I suppose, Mary and I might marry. Perhaps we shall take the Grand Tour together. We might even range much further, in time, although it will doubtless be prudent to wait until more nests have been established in Africa and the Far East, before we take the slightest risk with the welfare of the infant. I always yearned to be an explorer, as you know, and now I shall be able to take my explorations further than I ever dreamed.”

I hesitated momentarily after pronouncing that word, which produced a faint echo of doubt in my mind—but the echo was immediately overridden by my newly-sanitized intellect. “No, Emily,” I continued, “what happened on the moor today was no dream. There will be no idle dreaming for me, from now on; all my dreams will be ordered and constructive. I shall have a great deal of work to do, in furthering the cause of my adoptive folk by every means available to me, including my pen, although my first and foremost duty will be to the child whose primary education is my current mission in life. I shall love and cherish the Mother Superior’s child, Emily, and I shall be loved and cherished in my turn. I still have a duty, of course, to the ephemerae of our own kind, towards whose permanent liberation from the frailties of primitive flesh I shall work tirelessly, through centuries to come. The work will be slow, and it will be painstaking, but in the end, it will all be worthwhile. In the fullness of time, the entire evolutionary legacy of Earth’s biosphere will be incorporated into the flesh and spirit of our adoptive cousins, ready for exportation to the worlds of other stars. Everyone, then, will have the best of both our worlds.”

Emily could make no reply, of course, but I had known her well, and I was certain that she would have judged what I had told her to be a wonderful prospect. She would have understood, and would have given me her blessing.

“I shall make a permanent record of what has happened to me, Emily,” I told her, “in order that our secret will have an objective existence of its own. In two or three hundred years time, if the Mother Superior permits, it might become possible to publish it, or at least to show it to my children…which is to say, my foster-children. I doubt that you have any cause to be jealous of Mary, in that regard.”

I had a sudden vision, then, of looking into Emily’s tender blue eyes, and my eyes filled with tears. I did not blink the tears away immediately, but savored their implications to the full. Then, by a voluntary effort, I supplemented the vision with another, of looking into Mary’s much darker eyes.

Mary’s pupils seemed so utterly black as to be windows into the infinity of interstellar space.

“Tomorrow, or the next day,” I told my dead beloved, “I’ll ride to Raggandale to pay my formal respects.”

Emily smiled, at least in my imagination, and again I savored the tingle of emotion, which was followed by a faint but distinct echo in the other soul that now dwelt within me, in blissful harmony with my own.

At last, I thought, I have begun not merely to perceive but to comprehend the Divine Plan, in all its richness, promise and beauty. Father would be proud of me—and Mother too.