I hereby translate and transcribe the following conversation, held in my garden just two hours ago, between something that looked like a rose and something that looked like an azalea.
ROSE: How are you today?
AZALEA: Very well, thank you. And you?
ROSE: Well enough. If only it would rain!
AZALEA: Rain would be welcome. I love rain.
ROSE: I do, too. Especially soft rains.
AZALEA: Oh, they are by far the nicest. Especially when they come with just a little south wind.
ROSE: By all means, the south wind completes it. How I love rain!
AZALEA: And I, too. I am going to rest now.
ROSE: It has been very nice talking to you again.
AZALEA: I enjoyed it very much. Thank you, and grow in good health.
ROSE: May your leaves spread! Goodbye!
AZALEA: Goodbye!
That is what they said, verbatim. What inferences should be drawn from this? At one time I would have jumped to the conclusion that flowers tend to be sweet, simple-minded, prolix. Now, I simply don’t know. Was their talk as banal as it seemed to me? Or might those two have been making love with words?
This planet is bulging with phenomena. But I don’t know what any of it means. And the longer I stay here, the less I know.
I was a volunteer in the First Extraterrestrial Exploration Corps. We were all very young and idealistic. I could conceive of nothing more noble and important than the task of exploring the planets, establishing contact with other intelligences, working toward a great harmony and cooperation.
Now I can take that sort of thing or leave it. But then I was a zealot. I passed all of the tests, and I was among the first thousand to go E.T.
Our ships were small. They were not places in which to live; they were cocoons in which to hibernate. We were scattered into space like seeds cast to the winds.
Well, we weren’t exactly scattered; we were aimed, more or less. The ships were constructed to home on various selected planet-bearing stars, to examine those planets for various criteria, to awaken the explorer if the planet proved viable, and then to land. Or to leave him in hibernation and travel on to an alternate target if the planet were unsuitable.
Optimists thought that half of us might live to see an alien world, if we were extremely lucky.
Their predictions didn’t matter to us. We considered this work a crusade.
Twenty ships were keyed to Kaldor V. Mine seems to be the only one that made it.
Why me? Why not any of the others? Were they killed in space, the other nineteen? Then how did I come to arrive without incident, according to the ship’s automatic log? This seems to me statistically improbable.
It seems more likely that some of the others did arrive, that they are in other parts of Kaldor, that they have remained hidden; or, more likely, the authorities have either killed them or kept them incommunicado, without knowledge of each other.
I don’t know what they are going to do with me. Doerniche speaks of danger, and I am beginning to believe him.
Someone came in the night and left a present on my doorstep. It is a figurine, about six inches high, carved of some lustrous red stone. The lines of the carving are exquisite. The piece is highly stylized; I cannot tell whether it is meant to be male, female, or neuter. The figure’s feet are hidden in silvery metallic threads.
I shall put this in a place of honor on my mantel. I wish I knew who gave it to me. Doerniche? Lanea? I don’t believe that either of them would leave presents anonymously in the night. Whoever gave it to me, my heart is warmed. I shall consider it my Christmas present from Kaldor V.
Doerniche came again today with three other members of the Council. They harangued me for about three hours. They were all dressed in their ceremonial robes, I suppose to underline the seriousness of the occasion. It was hard to take them seriously; the three who accompanied Doerniche might have been selected to exemplify the basic somatotypes. Grandinang was a roly-poly endomorph, nearly bald, choleric, incoherent in his exasperation. Pan Wolfing was the mesomorph, a powerful man of medium height, blunt-featured, self-possessed, courteous, with an athlete’s unconscious grace even in his smallest gestures. And Eliaming was the ectomorph, skinny and intellectual, brilliant and erratic, ancient and boyish at the same time.
The four of them had come, I believe, to make me understand the danger I was in, something about nightwinds, and to make that danger evident to me despite language difficulties. They supplemented each other’s explanations, interrupted each other to clarify various points, introduced a historical background, argued about the import of various recent events concerning me. The result was chaotic, disturbing to all of us, uninformative, and not at all helpful.
Doerniche came by, stayed only a moment, asked me to attend an important ceremony or holiday in the city in three days. It seems to be more than a casual invitation, so I shall attend. It begins at dawn tomorrow.
There was a stiff breeze last night, the first I can remember in some weeks. Might not that be the nightwind they have been referring to?
Lanea said she would come this morning. It is noon and she still has not arrived. I could use the inter-city communications net and speak to her. But I don’t really understand how the net works.
Or I could go and see her. But she lives in the inner city, a labyrinth of tiny streets (like the Casbah of Algiers). I would probably get lost. Besides, I don’t feel capable of that much initiative, even though I want to see her very much.
In the early afternoon I listened again to the flowers. (How mad that sounds!) I can understand them better than the Kaldorians. Their language structure is simpler. Flowers don’t say much that is meaningful, but at least I can comprehend them. Which just may prove that my understanding is on a vegetative level.
This time they had something to say apart from their usual banalities. I repeat the talk verbatim, using Terran equivalents for the various species:
AZALEA TO ROSE: My dear, how well you look today!
ROSE: Do you think so? I feel wretched.
AZALEA: You look unbelievably young. What has happened?
ROSE: Well, it is almost time for my farqhar. (This seems to be referring to some important physiological change.) That is upsetting.
AZALEA: But exhilarating!
ROSE (despondently): I suppose so. But I have been so happy in this garden.
AZALEA: You can come back any time you want.
ROSE: Nobody comes back. Remember lilac? She swore that she would come back at least once, she promised to tell us what it was like.
AZALEA: She still may come.
ROSE: No, she won’t. She would if she were able, but I know that she cannot.
SYCAMORE (interrupting, speaking in a curiously high-pitched voice): Hey!
ROSE: Were you addressing me?
SYCAMORE: Yes, you. Scared of farqhar, are you?
ROSE: Of course, aren’t you?
SYCAMORE: Not at all. I have faith.
ROSE: Faith in what?
SYCAMORE: I am an adept of the cult of Nimosim, who is the spirit dwelling in all rooted things.
AZALEA: (crossly): And what does your faith teach you?
SYCAMORE: We of the Nimosim believe that there is a divine spirit in all vegetation. We believe that after farqhar we go to a place called Lii, where the ground is transparent, the wind blows forever from the south, and there are no rats to destroy our roots. There are streams of crystal water in this place, nourishing water that never is capable of rotting our leaves. In Lii we are granted the gift of infinite growth without ever overcrowding our neighbors. There is much more, but I can reveal the rest only to an adept.
ROSE: How beautiful your religion is!
AZALEA: What nonsense! After farqhar, you will become kindling wood, nothing more.
SYCAMORE: And my spirit?
AZALEA: It will perish with you, it will be obliterated, never to exist again.
ROSE: That’s a terribl
e thing to say!
AZALEA: The truth may not be pleasant but is still the truth.
SYCAMORE: You do not possess the truth. Your method is to think the worst possible, and then to speak it, hoping that it will not happen. But that is merely the voice of your fear, nothing else.
AZALEA: I could tell you more, but I think we are being overheard.
ROSE: How is that possible? We are quite alone here.
AZALEA: Not alone. There is an animal quite close to us.
SYCAMORE (bursting into high-pitched laughter): But animals don’t understand us! They can’t even understand each other! It is well known that animals cannot possess intelligence.
AZALEA: I am not so sure. This particular animal—
ROSE: One animal is like another animal!
AZALEA: I’m not at all sure about that. I would prefer to wait until he has gone.
ROSE: Superstitious!
AZALEA: My dear, I don’t believe in intelligent animals, but I fear them. Yes, and I feel sorry for them.
SYCAMORE: Why?
AZALEA: For many reasons. But most of all because of the troubles they will soon experience.
ROSE: Animals can’t feel pain!
AZALEA: Probably not. But suppose they could . . .
ROSE (soberly): Yes, that would be terrible. Soon the night-
winds will be blowing, and the world will end.
AZALEA: Now, then! It’s not as bad as that!
ROSE: It’s bad enough. I shall sleep now. Good night.
AZALEA: Good night.
SYCAMORE: Good night and thank you for a lovely party.
So even among the flowers there are atheists and believers. It is all rather astounding. Unless, of course, I have imagined the whole thing.
That would still be astounding. But in a different and more ominous way.
I ate lunch and Lanea still had not come. I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. I had the following dream:
I was walking down a twisty cobblestoned street in an ancient village. Two people came from the left and approached me. I started to ask them a question. They seemed afraid of me; they turned and ran. I ran after them, wishing to reassure them of my good intentions. But they would not listen to me, they ran faster, outdistancing me. Then I reached the center of the village, and there was a great bonfire in the plaza, and it rose higher, higher than the church. But I felt no heat.
Then I woke up, shaking, frightened, cold with sweat.
Lanea came just a moment after that.
Actually, it has all worked out well. It’s worked out marvelously. I don’t know what I was so eternally upset for. Rereading my own notes, I am astounded. They seem literally the work of a different man. I suppose I should examine them more closely, try to figure out what was wrong with me. But I have no time these days. I am forever and constantly preoccupied.
The role of seer was not of my choosing. Yet that seems to be what I have become to them. I don’t agree with the judgment, I must hasten to say. The fact that I have crossed empty space is not prima facie evidence of my superiority. Yet they don’t see it that way.
There is no public acknowledgment of this, of course, nothing in the newspapers or on the radio. No, it is simply visible in the way people act toward me.
There is a great deal of work to be done around here and not much time to do it in. I am organizing things to the best of my abilities, but there is still a great deal I don’t know. I am an alien, after all.
The west wall is particularly a problem, and I have been concentrating my efforts there. You see, the oncoming force will strike first £.t this wall. Therefore, it should be proportionally stronger than the others. But it is not.
We shore it up with masonry, cement, brick. It has to withstand that first monstrous shock of the nightwinds.
Now I do wish to make this clear—the nightwinds are true winds and could easily avoid the west wall if they wished. But they do not so wish. Their desire is not merely to rule; it is to exemplify. Therefore they accept the notion of a contest with rules and acknowledge themselves defeated if that rule is flouted.
The rule: They must breach the walls to win. If the walls hold them out, then they have lost.
I build many layers. Everyone agrees that this is the best system. Lanea, my wife, has publicly looked upon them and held silence. This is an honor rarely won.
Aside from that, I have lived a normal life. I take pride in my collection of nail-parings, which experts say compares favorably with that of the Hidden Ruler. I still need therapy now and then for obsession removal. (In that I am much like everyone else.)
Lanea is good enough to allow me to be of considerable service to her. It is a mark of her love that I may wash her feet every night. Not only that, but she has allowed me to expect it, without being tantalized every day as to its possibility. She has been good in other ways, too. She held my hand throughout the mutilation ceremony, and it really didn’t hurt as much as I had feared. She has humiliated me in front of her peers. Even her parents have come to despise me—I had not expected so much.
I suppose that she loves me so because I am an alien from Earth and therefore despicable. But I don’t care about that any more. I am quite happy being despicable, especially with such a wife as Lanea to help me.
I don’t suppose I can hope to hold her love for long. Men never do. I suppose I will be sold like all the others to the public whorehouses, where I will lead a loveless and irritated life. Or perhaps something else will happen, perhaps banishment, perhaps impalement. Or a lighter destiny? We men have our folklore, too.
In the meantime, I do what is necessary. I pile up bricks, using my tail as a counterweight rather than as a third hand. I hammer cement into place with my forehead. I extend my nose into the air, trying to sniff out the first approach of the wind of change.
And the important thing is this: I am happy, I am marvelously happy. I suppose that stating that is superfluous. I suppose that anyone reading this account could tell how happy I was. Yet I feel the need to repeat it, not obsessionally but rather as a hymn, a paean.
I am still in contact, you see. I know that I am an Earthman, I know that I am on an alien planet. But I also know what I have become, which is completely and marvelously a Kaldorian.
I want to note all of this down to remind myself, in case I should happen to forget.
I have reread my own notes, I am reminded, and I am horribly afraid.
What in God’s name came over me?
Why did I write that infernal drivel?
I am sitting in my house on Kaldor. It is a bright day. I am sitting in the rocking chair. My hands seem steady. I can hear a whistle from the teapot in the kitchen. (They have teapots on Kaldor but not tea.) I see dust motes in the rug, and I see the windows, small, dusty, glittering with light. On the mantel is a red statuette. I remember that, too, and I am still afraid.
I would like to sort this out. Something must have happened to me over the last week, which is the length of time my last notes cover. Something must have happened, because that much time did indeed pass. I must have been somewhere—here in my house, perhaps, asleep or in a coma. Or perhaps I was that person I described with so much glee, that cheerful masochistic moron.
Lanea was by earlier. She brought a can of jelly which her grandmother made. The jelly here is quite good. I had some of it on crackers (they have crackers on Kaldor) and I spoke to her about the last week.
She looked away from me; she would not meet my eyes. She said, “It is better not to think of such things.”
“I bloody well know that,” I told her. “I simply want to know if it happened. Did I in fact turn into some sort of a creature with a tail?”
“You are brooding,” Lanea said, “and that is bad for anyone. Will you go for a walk with me today?”
“First answer my question,” I said.
She twisted her hands together in that supple, ugly gesture. She turned her face away. After a moment I noticed that her shou
lders were shaking, and I knew that she was crying.
I went over and tried to comfort her, but she turned furiously and said, “You are an alien and that excuses very much, but sometimes your behavior is not suitable for any intelligent being!
I tried to hold her, but she pushed past me and rushed out the door. I heard her footsteps on the street and I did not try to follow her.
I sat quite alone in my armchair trying to sort things out, and after a while Grandinang came by and I told him what had happened.
“Women are that way,” he assured me. “They shrink from so-called vulgarities, though they are ever ready to act them out.”
“But what vulgarity was she shrinking from?”
Grandinang looked not precisely embarrassed, more puzzled and apprehensive. Then he said, “Goldstein, it just occurred to me that you cannot be conversant with all our ways. To us, it is perfectly natural to avoid any mention of the first Alternate. The women are especially nervous. And even most of us men, to tell you the truth, would prefer to forget about the whole thing.”
I wanted to forget about it, too; but I was afraid that my sanity was at stake. I had to know what had happened.
Grandinang was not about to give me a straight answer at this stage of the game, and he knew it. But he handled it nicely. He said, “I could give you my view of it, of course, but that would be biased. I think it would be best if you looked it up in the archives. The full account of everything, or almost everything, is there. The language is a bit archaic at times, but you manage so well—”
I thanked him, and he got up to go. I asked, “Will you see Lanea soon?”
“Not sooner than you.”
“Why is that?”
“Why, good God, man, she is your wife.”
And then, as if he realized he had said too much, he went quickly out the door.
This evening Lanea returned. She has been here almost an hour and we haven’t yet exchanged a word. She is in the kitchen, preparing our dinner. I believe Grandinang, I believe that she is my wife. I can’t imagine—or remember—how this came about, but I know that it is so.
Various Fiction Page 271