“Perhaps you haven’t done too well in the contest between all intelligent species,” Aaron said. “But considering that you’re starting out without any manual dexterity at all, you’re really doing very well.”
The Samian was silent for a moment. Then he said, “People usually don’t allude to the fact that we have no limbs, fingers, toes, or even tentacles. It isn’t polite. It’s like pointing at a hunchback’s hunch, to use an example culled from your own literature.”
“I could also point out,” Aaron said, “that not only do you Samians not have manual dexterity, you also don’t have any vocal apparatus. A small synthesizer is producing your voice. Is that your idea of intelligent?”
The Samian said slowly, “I think this is what you Erthumoi call humor. Or am I mixing it up with candor?”
“They often go together,” Aaron said. “But in this case, you’re quite right. We all have our problems, Erthumoi, Samians, Naxians, Cephallonians, Locrians, and so on. I suppose even the mighty Seventh Race had their difficulties, too; otherwise, why did they vanish?”
“I must confess,” the Samian said, “that much of what I was saying to you was also what we Samians consider humor. I appreciate your own effort in that direction. It makes it less difficult for me to say that we Samians have been trying to remodel ourselves. We are very good at self-engineering, you know. It takes a long time before an idea lodges with us, but after a while we take it up with tenacity. Seeing how fast other species were, we retooled our synaptic responses. We also introduced a mild taste for aggression into our somatotype. Anything to get back into the competition, as it were.”
It was strange for Aaron to hear these ideas come from an individual shaped like a large, slightly irregular rectangular oblong, or parallelepiped, of bacon, colored a dark brown or a bronze, and with very little about it with which to individuate.
Aaron wrote to Sara:
By the time we reached Myryx, you can imagine the state we were in, Octano Halfbarr and I. Trying to be good fellows toward each other, each trying to display the frankness of his character, and neither of us sure what the hell was going on. And the officers of Artemis, Captain Franklyn and the others, were no help. I suppose they had ferried diplomatic missions composed of more than one species before. They conducted themselves toward the Samian and me with strict impartiality. You could see they didn’t want to get involved with either of us. Octano and I were getting a little tired of each other, too. I confess I never became accustomed to talking to a person who resembled a side of bacon. I suppose his view of me was equally unflattering.
And then Myryx came up on the horizon, and it was time to thank the officers of the Artemis. They were going to stay with the ship, keeping it in geosynchronous orbit, while the Samian and I descended to the surface. In my innocence I asked Captain Franklyn if we would be brought down directly to the alien city.
“I’m afraid the situation is a bit more complicated than that,” Franklyn said. He seemed absurdly young to be given the responsibility of piloting an official ship equipped with hyperjump and all the latest communications equipment. But then, they say that the young have the quick reflexes necessary in matters of moral judgment as in matters of physical danger.
“More complicated?” I asked. “What could be complicated about dropping us off at the alien city?”
“There are formalities to be gone through,” Captain Franklyn said. “You must go through the official channels.”
“How could there be official channels?” I asked. “No one claims possession of Myryx.”
“I’m afraid that has changed recently,” Franklyn said tactfully.
Aaron and the Samian both elected to descend to the surface of Myryx by spinner. Aaron knew that spinner descents had been written about extensively as a source of extraordinary insight. There was something about the slow undulations of the pod, turning and twisting in the glow of twining gases, that was hypnotic without being enervating. By the time they reached the surface, both Aaron and Octano were feeling mild and peaceful, and certainly in no mood to cope with a half-regiment of belligerent officialdom. When the bureaucrats finally accepted the fact that the Erthuma and the Samian were representatives of the Council, their attitude became more reasonable.
“I know that we have no right by charter to operate a Customs and Immigration Service on Myryx,” the tall, florid human who called himself Captain Darcy Drummond said, “but something had to be done to maintain law and order and public confidence. I don’t think you know what a strange situation Myryx is in. Three years ago there wasn’t anybody here. Not even me, truth be told. Then the Sarpedon expedition arrived and discovered Alien City Four. And then people started arriving. Not just Erthumoi. Individuals from all the Six Races came here. From the beginning a series of compromises had to be made on this world which is owned by none, yet which plays host to the Six Races. For example, we maintain as much water as land out of respect to the aquatic races, and we keep the atmosphere as thick as possible to aid the fliers. Naturally we can’t give everyone what he wants, since some of the demands are mutually contradictory. And there’s no changing the gravity. Still, in spite of inconveniences, the species come here and adapt.”
“The alien city draws them,” Aaron suggested.
“Of course. But the alien city is also an excuse for a get-together, a symbol of the need for intelligence, on its highest level, to recognize the commonality of all thinkers.”
There was a great deal of such talk. The officials seemed to feel a need to justify their existences and inflate their own sense of self-importance. Aaron wondered if there were not something unhealthy about their excitement, something sickly about their feeling that they were living at the center of great events.
Aaron thought he was not entirely himself at this period. It was strange, this feeling of self-alienation. Although he expected his mood to pass quickly, nevertheless, it persevered. He began to wonder why the Council had trusted him to pass a judgment on events too complex for him to be certain about. Were they merely trying to take the necessity of choice out of their own hands?
It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t felt physically unwell. He hesitated to say that he was sick. Is there something else that can afflict the body and is neither a state of being sick nor of being well? Aaron was afraid he was going to find out.
The officials found a room for him in the Hotel Sola. It was evident that someone had just vacated it. The bed seemed to have been hastily stripped, and the mattress was half off the frame. Under the bed he found a doll. It was a harlequin about half a foot tall, with bandit mask and Spanish floppy hat. And there was another doll behind the curtains, a fat little pig doll made of straw and covered with calico. Aaron sat down on a little stair beside a window, winded from the climb up here, but eager to get to work.
Just then there was a little knock at the door and a girl came through, about ten or eleven, smudgy round face, big pouting lower lip.
“Did I leave my doll in here, sir?”
“Is it one of these?”
She came and looked at both dolls. Then took the fat little pig doll and ran out of the room.
There were a lot of flies in the room. Aaron put in a requisition for the necessary things to bring his situation up to galactic standard. Because even a newly-discovered and as yet but imperfectly explored alien planet is required to keep up to the standards of hotel keeping. There can be no traveling around the galaxy in anything like security to say nothing of comfort if minimum standards are not met. And if minimum standards are not met in this, how will mankind handle the big challenge, the long-awaited extragalactic trips?
Aaron went down for dinner soon after that, almost tripping on the dark stairs over half a dozen dolls of various shapes and sizes, all sharing the qualities of indiscernibility and ubiquitousness.
And from then on, Aaron could go no place without stumbling over dolls.
They came in a never-ending series of names, shapes, and n
umbers; thousands of them; some of such classical shapes as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse; some of them from the Cephallonian Toy Conglomerate. What were they doing here? Did they mean something? It was inevitable that Aaron should ask himself: Is someone toying with me?
Aaron said, “Why don’t you tell me about the old civilization?”
“Haven’t a clue, old boy,” said Octano.
“Tell me who you are?”
“Just another creature, old boy.”
“A different species?”
Octano leaned back his head and laughed. It was only later that Aaron found the first of the great doll factories where gnomelike people manufactured the endless assortment of dolls that threatened to contaminate the previously agreed-upon reality. The dolls were an insult to common sense. Maladaptive transformation. They had to stick around and watch. The gods were capricious—simulators of intelligence rather than users of it. In terms of intelligence, they were like great winged dinosaurs in the days before true birds.
“You humans think the intelligence is inevitable,” the Samian said. “But I can assure you, nature tried many different experiments. The last word isn’t spoken on intelligence yet. It seems to be holding its own, but you can never tell. The universe isn’t biased. It’s as likely that nothing will work out as that everything will. I mean that as a matter of logic; you can expect things to work out about as often as they don’t. Not even reality escapes the dichotomies.”
“What could control the universe, if not intelligence?”
“You seem to think it important that things be understood. Why should it be? What does it matter to events if there’s someone there to understand them?”
The dolls kept on reappearing, and they depressed everyone.
The powers that be had no choice in the matters. It didn’t matter that things had run down. It was important to keep the dolls in mind by gentle nudging of their handles. That’s how the human felt, besieged by strange and uncomfortable thoughts. For some, it began to look like not such a bad idea to get back to the home planet for a while. There are more dangers out there than being ripped with a laser. In the future, between the stars, there will be terrors as great as the spaces they signify. And then Aaron remembered to continue, to pick himself up wherever he found himself, and, taking matters in hand, tried to get to the heart of the matter. Trying to resolve it.
Sometimes he knew what he meant; other times he couldn’t be sure. He was in the Sola, which had the curious property of appearing simultaneously familiar and exotic; like a drunken uncle returning from distant ports, perhaps. It was just before the monsoon rains, and the countryside around the alien city glowed with a sort of incandescence. The skinny juniper trees, planted at intervals along the long, bone white roads, drooped in a heat so ubiquitous as to take on hierarchical dimensions. Or was that the arrack talking through him? He hadn’t even noticed when he’d begun drinking the stuff, probably soon after his arrival at the control point in Myryx, outside the alien city. Perhaps he hadn’t even known at first it was alcohol, or whatever it was. Something to kill yourself with, a voice within him said. He didn’t recognize the voice as his own. But whose could it be?
It was strangely difficult to keep in mind what he had come here for. Of course, that was because he was sick. But what would he be doing if he weren’t sick? He supposed it was being sick that prevented him from knowing. And being sick prevented him from making much sense out of his talks with Sara. Because she started to visit him. But he knew that was impossible. Sara wasn’t here; Sara was on the farm slightly smaller than Italy. Growing runner beans. Raising her child. What was its name? Waiting for Lawrence, or for him?
Sara started having conversations with him. He knew she was not really there. But this made it no easier. She seemed to be there. Tall, grave, gray-eyed. Her full underlip. Wisps of electric black hair escaping the clasp. A scent of the sea about her. Aaron worried about his sanity, but not much; he was too sick to worry.
“You see the problem?” Sara asked him.
“No, I don’t see a thing,” Aaron said. “Tell me what is happening. What does it mean?”
“Poor Aaron,” Sara said. “Which is more important, what is happening or what it means?”
“But aren’t they the same, what a thing is and what it means?”
“He’s been asking to see you,” Sara said.
“Who? Is it Lawrence?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” a familiar voice said.
The Samian came into his room in his own special little tubular car. To Aaron he looked like something much better than a side of bacon. Without getting all Disney about it, he looked like a person. Someone you could get to like.
“Greetings,” the Samian said. “How’s tricks! I have been studying nonchalance. I am not so bad at it, do you think? But I do want to know if your health is improving.”
“It is indeed,” Aaron said.
“I had a slight indisposition myself,” the Samian said.
“Indeed?”
“Yes. It colored my perspective for a while.”
“But now?”
“I am ready to continue on to Alien City, if you are. I have obtained the necessary papers. Our departure awaits only your word.”
“Let’s take off in the morning,” Aaron said. But it was not to be as simple as that.
In the morning, Aaron turned up at the Stromsky Gate which was the nearest point to Alien City. There were several Erthumoi around, as well as a few of the other species too. The gate through which he was to pass was high, made of wood, reinforced with strips of hammered iron. He wanted to ask someone why it was called the Stromsky Gate, but everyone seemed to be in a rush. And yet, no one wanted to allude directly to the journey Aaron was about to take. They said, “You’ll be all right, no doubt,” and looked away, in a manner which left no doubt what they thought of the safety of this enterprise. And he asked what was wrong, but in vain; they pretended not to understand: nothing is wrong; go right ahead.
“Where is the Samian?” he asked. But everyone became suddenly evasive—What Samian? Who are you talking about? No one wanted to discuss it, until one young man, little more than a child, said, “Your friend will catch up with you later.” And that answer raised almost more questions than it answered, but there was no time to go into it. Someone threw open the gate; willing hands pushed Aaron toward the opening; and then, suddenly, just like that, he was through.
Even with this step taken, a step that should have been definitive, Aaron knew he wasn’t all the way into the alien city. He had a small apartment. When he walked into Alien City, he seemed to be at the outskirts. Just ahead of him was a tall stone arch, a sort of gate, he supposed. Looking through it, Aaron could see a tangle of streets. Cobblestoned; yet he had the impression that the builders had used their materials for aesthetic purposes. Cobblestones give a nice feeling, especially when they are shining after a rain. And everyone likes the clop-clop a horse’s hooves make as they cross cobblestones. It is a nice protected feeling you get in this place. Alien City is not so alien after all.
“Who are you?” Aaron asked.
“I’m Miranda,” the girl said. She was small, tanned, and her hair was a bright tangle. Her mouth was small, kissable. Humans have to think in these terms, Aaron thought, trying to forgive himself for his sexual attitude.
“And this is Alien City?” Aaron said.
“Yes. Well, no, not exactly.”
“Where is it then, exactly?”
“They call it an interface zone. It’s not the same as the rest of this planet. But it’s also not exactly what Alien City is, either. Here you will have a chance to rest, acclimatize yourself, so to speak.”
“But I’m in a hurry,” Aaron said. “The Council sent me. I’m supposed to look over this place, come to some conclusions.”
“Yes, I understand,” Miranda said. “What would you like for dinner?”
“I’m not hungry,” Aaron said. But he realized that he was, and
Miranda must have known it too, because she ignored his words and led him inside one of the houses whose bay windows beetled out onto the street.
Within he followed her through several rooms to a dining area in back. Here at a small table a white tablecloth had been set, and there were silverware and napkins.
Just beyond, in the kitchen, Aaron could see pots steaming on a wood stove. “Can you tell me what this is all about?” Aaron asked.
“First eat,” Miranda said. “There’s plenty of time for explanations later.”
The food was good. There was a cured ham, fresh eggs, a homemade loaf of bread. The butter seemed fresh churned. There was milk as well as a steaming coffeelike substance in low cups. Miranda wouldn’t sit down herself. She hovered over him, however, making sure that he ate his fill, and occasionally darting into the kitchen for something she had forgotten: stewed fruits, preserves, biscuits.
After he had finished, Aaron had questions to ask. But Miranda looked out the window and suddenly saw someone coming down the street. Her expression brightened.
“Oh, look,” she said to Aaron. “It is Mika, my uncle. He will bring us news of the Darfid.”
“The what?” Aaron said.
“I forgot. You don’t know the Old Tongue. Darfid refers to the meeting of the Lords of Diet.”
“What does that mean?”
“It will all become clear to you,” Miranda said. “Come, let us greet my uncle.”
Mika seemed to be quite an old man. Aaron estimated that he must have used up his allotted cycles and be running on reserve now. On his own world of Sestes, Aaron had occasionally seen one of the very old ones. People looked at them with awe.
There was no reason why Aaron should have found himself with Miranda and her uncle Mika, but that was what had happened and he had to accept it, for the present, anyway. It was time to take stock of his situation. He was within Alien City, he thought, though he wasn’t sure. It was important for him to find out. He suspected he wasn’t really in Alien City because he never saw any of the others. There were supposed to be others here. He wanted to ask Miranda and Mika about the others. But it was curious, whenever he thought about asking them, they seemed to be absent. Miranda was always going into the fields outside the city walls. They were rolling meadowland, and she must have kept a vegetable patch there, because she always returned with delicious things to eat. And Mika, where did he go? Aaron had the feeling that Mika went deeper into the city, to a bar somewhere, a tavern, where he drank with his cronies. Aaron didn’t know why he never brought those cronies to the house so that Aaron could meet them, too.
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