Foreigner

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Standing near him on the deck of the Dasheter were Babnol and Captain Keenir. There was no way for them to keep in touch with Toroca once he left the ship. They’d simply agreed that the Dasheter would sail farther out, then return to this spot in twenty days to pick up Toroca; if he did not rendezvous with them, Keenir would then set sail for home, rather than risk further disastrous contact.

  Babnol’s tone was full of concern. “Be careful, Toroca.”

  Toroca looked at her wistfully. He’d always wanted their relationship to be so much closer. “I will.”

  “We’ll be back for you, lad,” said Keenir.

  “Thank you.”

  Toroca moved to the side of the ship and began to climb down the rope ladder that led to the shore boats tethered below. He could have paddled one of those to the island instead of swimming in, but the boats were pretty big for one person to manage; swimming would be easier and faster. When he got to the bottom, he managed a little tip of his torso and saw, up on deck, Keenir and Babnol likewise executing ceremonial bows.

  The waves were high enough that Toroca had been splashed up the calf by the time his foot reached the bottom rung. Without further ado, he let go and slipped beneath the waves.

  They were far enough north that the water was cooler than what Toroca was used to, but it wasn’t cold enough to pose a hazard. He put his arms flat at his sides, stretched his legs out behind, and undulated his tail. His body sliced through the water. He passed a school of silvery fish at one point and later saw a couple of limpid floaters bobbing on the surface. The Face of God waned visibly during the course of the long swim in, and the sun moved closer and closer to its edge.

  In the distance, Toroca could see a few of the Others’ own sailing ships, but they tended to stay close to shore. That wasn’t surprising; the Others presumably long ago determined that there was nothing except empty water for thousands of kilopaces around.

  Even from far away, Toroca was surprised by how different the Others’ ships looked. Quintaglio vessels had diamond shaped hulls, square sails, and an even number of masts (the Dasheter had four). The ship passing Toroca far to the left had a rounded hull, three masts, and overlapping triangular sails.

  Toroca was now a hundred paces from shore. He was approaching what seemed to be a small coastal city made of wooden buildings. Right off, that seemed alien. Quintaglios normally built from adobe or stone; surely wooden buildings were at risk of fire from lamp flames. And these buildings were such odd shapes! The Others seemed to avoid right angles; it was hard to tell from this vantage point, but most of the buildings appeared to have eight sides.

  Toroca stopped swimming for a moment. There were fifty or sixty people walking along a broad wooden pier built along the contours of the water’s edge. So many! Why, it was as if they had no territoriality at all. And then Toroca saw something that amazed him: two individuals walking side by side down the pier. He could see them clearly, and there could be no doubt about what they were doing.

  Holding hands.

  Incredible, thought Toroca. Absolutely incredible.

  He began to swim again, his tail propelling him over the remaining distance.

  Finally, somebody noticed him. He saw a hand pointing in his direction, and a shout went up. Others turned to look out at the waters. More arms pointed at him. One person turned and ran toward the octagonal buildings. Two large Others grabbed a juvenile and, against the juvenile’s apparent wishes, dragged the child away from the edge of the pier. One Other was shouting gibberish. Two Others shouted back; more gibberish. Toroca was about ten paces from the pier now.

  Someone pointed a blackened metal tube at Toroca. A flash erupted from its open end and a sound came from it like the bellow of a shovelmouth. The water exploded next to Toroca as something crashed into the waves. Someone ran to the Other holding the tube and motioned angrily for him to put it down.

  There was a rope ladder dangling from the side of the pier into the water. Toroca grabbed it. The rope itself was of a material Toroca had never seen—perhaps some kind of waterweed fiber—and the knots along its length were tied in a complex style he’d likewise never encountered. Still, it was clearly meant for accessing the pier from the water, or vice versa, and so he pulled himself up, rung after rung, his body feeling cool as the air ran over his wet form. At last he was up on the pier; it, too, was bizarre, made of long planks that went lengthwise instead of crosswise, the way a Quintaglio would have built it.

  Toroca stood there, dripping, hands on hips, looking at the Others, and they stood looking at him. Some were pointing at his swimmer’s belt, and Toroca was reminded of how he had made much of the fact that the first Other they’d encountered had been wearing jewelry. They must know he was intelligent. These Others all sported copper jewelry, but some were also wearing vests made of a material that looked too pliable to be leather.

  The Other with the metal tube was near the front of the crowd. He held the tube in such a way that he could raise it again in a fraction of a beat.

  One of the Others stepped forward and spoke, a string of nonsense syllables emanating from its mouth.

  At the back of the crowd, Toroca could see someone trying to get through. Incredibly, he was actually tapping people on the shoulder to get them to move, or gently pushing them aside. On Land, this fellow’s throat would have been ripped out by now, but people were gladly making way for whoever this was. Once he’d gotten to the front, Toroca saw that this Other also was brandishing a metal tube, but it was smaller and more compact. He was wearing black bands around both his arms; no one else had such bands.

  “Hello,” said Toroca, and then he bowed. The moment seemed to call for some sort of speech, but if the Others’ language sounded like gibberish to Toroca, his words would likely sound the same to them. “Hello,” he said again, simply.

  The Other with the armbands said “Hello” back at him. For a moment, Toroca thought that the Other understood him, but it was soon clear that he’d simply repeated the sound Toroca had made.

  If this Other had been a Quintaglio, he’d have been a good piece younger than Toroca, but none of the Others seemed as large as an old Quintaglio. Either this wasn’t a location frequented by the elderly, or Others simply didn’t grow as fast or as big as Quintaglios.

  Toroca made a gesture toward the city, indicating, he hoped, that he wished to go there. The Other with the black armbands looked warily at Toroca, then stepped aside. Toroca began to walk down the pier, and this Other walked silently beside him. There was a hubbub among the spectators. Some had claws out; others had them sheathed. If these were Quintaglios, that would mean some were frightened and others were just curious—exactly the mix of emotions Toroca himself was feeling as he continued down the pier.

  Chapter 7

  “Normally, I sit where the patient can’t see me,” said Mokleb. “Otherwise, they spend too much time watching for my reactions. Therapy is not a performance, and I am not an audience. Also, there may be times when the most effective response to something you say may not in fact be the truth. By sitting out of view, the patient cannot see my muzzle. In any event, since you are blind, it doesn’t matter where I sit. However, you should be as comfortable as possible. That rock you are straddling is your favorite, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Afsan.

  “You should relax as much as possible. Rather than sitting up, you may find it more comfortable to lie on your belly. Why don’t you try that?”

  Afsan obliged, settling himself down on the top of the boulder, his arms and legs dangling a bit over the sides and his tail, semi-stiff, sticking up into the air.

  “Good. Now, I’m going to sit on another boulder. I take copious notes; using a system of simplified glyphs, I can record both sides of our conversation verbatim. You’ll occasionally hear the sound of my fingerclaw dipping into a pot of ink or solvent, or the sound of me getting a new sheet of paper. Pay no attention, and don’t worry about whether I’m writing something down or not. I assu
re you, I will dutifully record everything—there’s no telling what is important. And I further assure you that my notes will be kept confidential. Do you understand all that?”

  Afsan nodded.

  Mokleb dipped her left middle fingerclaw into ink and started writing. “In our early sessions, I may do a lot of talking, but as the therapy progresses I may go for great lengths without saying anything. Fear not: I am listening intently, and if I have something to say, I will. You must adopt the same principle: if you have something to say, don’t worry about manners. Interrupt me freely. Let no thought, however fleeting, escape. Understood?”

  Again, Afsan nodded.

  “Good. Now, to your dreams. As you may know, dreams serve one fundamental purpose: they prolong sleep.”

  “Mine certainly aren’t doing that,” said Afsan. “It’s the dreams that are waking me up.”

  “It only seems that way. If it weren’t for dreams, we’d constantly be waking, perhaps thrashing over in our minds something that had been worrying us the previous day, or else we’d awaken because we feel vulnerable and want to look around and make sure we’re still safe. Dreams prevent this from happening, and, since sleep is necessary to life, in a very real sense dreams allow us to go on living.”

  “But my dreams, Mokleb, are preventing me from getting a good night’s sleep.”

  “Ah, yes. So it appears. I’ll come back to that. First, though, let me ask if you’ve ever had a dream that went something like this: you are trying to get somewhere or do something, but are frustrated in your attempts. Nonetheless, you keep trying, and keep being frustrated.”

  “Oh, sure. I suppose everyone has dreams like that. One I recall is trying to find my way out of a corridor. The corridor was the standard kind, zigzagging to keep other users out of sight. I kept trying to open doors along that corridor, but they wouldn’t work. One would have rusted hinges, another had a broken opening bar, a third was obviously barricaded from the other side, and so on.”

  “And yet, eventually, you woke up.”

  “Obviously.”

  “And what did you do immediately after awakening?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I’ll tell you exactly what you did; next time you have such a dream, observe for yourself and you’ll see that you’ll do the same thing then, too. You pushed up off the floor, left your sleeping chamber, found your household bucket, and urinated into it.”

  “So? Nothing unusual about that.”

  “No, of course not. But don’t you see the function the dream was performing? Your bladder was uncomfortably full. Part of you wanted to get up so you could relieve yourself. But your low mind constructed a dream that said, in its most basic form, ‘I’m aware there’s a problem, and I’m trying to deal with it.’ That keeps you from waking up, thereby prolonging sleep.”

  “But at some point I did wake up.”

  “Exactly. For a while, the attempts in the dream to solve the problem placate the real physical need, but eventually the urge to urinate overpowers the dream, and you find yourself no longer sleeping.”

  “But what about the bad dreams I’m having? How can such horrible images be attempts to prolong sleep?”

  “You know that stage actors wear face masks?”

  “Of course. They have to; otherwise the audience would be distracted by the performers’ muzzles turning blue whenever they spoke an untrue line.”

  “Precisely. Dreams are like those masks: they disguise the truth of things. Your dream of the corridor is an example. Your mind was fooling itself that you were dealing with the desire to urinate. It was masking the fact that you were just lying there, resting, with a story of you trying to find a working doorway. The bad dreams you are having likewise are masks. The dreams obliquely represent, in ways your mind finds easier to deal with, the underlying things that really distress you. The dreams may seem horrible, but I stand by what I said earlier—they are attempts to prolong your sleeping state. However unpleasant the dreams appear, the real thing that torments you, beneath the mask of those images, is something your mind finds even more unpleasant, and therefore refuses to face directly. We must remove the mask, Afsan, and see the true face of your dreams.”

  The sky above Fra’toolar was a mix of sun and cloud. Novato was straddling a broken tree trunk on the beach, a piece of drawing leather on top of a board resting on her knees. She was sketching the cliff face and its metamorphosis from rock into the blue material.

  Garios approached to within about twenty paces. Ten would have been a normal territorial buffer, especially considering how long, and how well, they had known each other. Added distance often indicated hesitation about broaching a subject.

  Novato saw him approaching; whenever possible, one always approached so as to be visible well before arrival.

  “Hello, Novato,” he said. “I cast a shadow in your presence.”

  “Greetings, Garios. But hahat dan, for goodness’ sake. Come a little closer.”

  Garios took a few steps nearer, then said awkwardly, “I have a question to ask you.”

  Novato put her charcoal drawing stick in a pouch on her sash. “Oh?”

  “Yes,” said Garios, his long muzzle tipped down at her. “You are now thirty-six kilodays old.”

  Novato clicked her teeth. “Aye, and these old bones are feeling every bit of it.”

  “We’ve known each other for a long time,” said Garios. He paused. “Indeed, we’ve known each other well for eighteen kilodays.” He paused again. “A year.”

  “Yes,” said Novato.

  “And now you are two years old.”

  “Yes,” she said again.

  “Soon,” said Garios, “you will call for a mate.”

  “I imagine so,” she said, “although I feel no stirrings yet.”

  “Eighteen kilodays ago, when you were completing your first year of life, you called for a mate, as well.” He paused. “And I responded.”

  Novato’s voice seemed a little wary. “You did, yes.”

  “Normally,” said Garios, “that would have been your first mating.”

  “Normally,” repeated Novato.

  “But you had mated once before, a couple of kilodays prior to your normal time.”

  “It’s not all that unusual,” said Novato, a defensive note in her voice.

  “Of course not. Of course not. But you mated with Afsan.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is not, ah, out of the ordinary for a female to mate twice with the same individual.”

  “It is the female’s choice,” said Novato. “Some do it one way, some another.”

  “Indeed. But now that you are coming into receptivity again, I, ah, I’ve been wondering if you will mate with one of your previous partners.”

  “The thought has crossed my mind,” said Novato.

  “Normally, at this stage in your life, I would have been your only previous partner.”

  “That’s true.”

  “But you have had, ah, two previous partners: Afsan and myself.”

  “Yes.”

  “You laid clutches of eggs by both of us.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know who your children by Afsan were; they were spared the culling of the bloodpriest.”

  Novato nodded.

  “And after your second clutch was culled, one of the egglings went on to be a member of Capital Pack; that person would be a young adult now. Of course, we don’t know which one of the Pack members he or she is.”

  Novato looked as though she were about to say something, but checked herself. A moment later, her tone devoid of emotion, she simply repeated the old saw “Children are the children of the Pack.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Garios. “Forgive me, I’m just rambling. Anyway, when you mate again, good Novato, you, ah, have three choices, no? You could call for Afsan, call for me, or call for someone new. I know it is premature, and it’s wrong for me to ask regardless, but the thought plagues me. Whom will you call for
?” He wrinkled his long muzzle. “I, ah, I hope it will be me.”

  “Garios, we have worked together for a long time. We are friends. My thoughts toward you are always warm.”

  “But?”

  “But nothing. I don’t yet feel the stirrings, although I imagine they will start soon. Who knows how I’ll feel then? I honestly don’t know whom I’ll call for.”

  “But I’m in the running?”

  “You are intelligent and strong and good of heart. Of course you are in the running.”

  “Thank you,” said Garios. “Thank you very much.”

  The Other with the black armbands took Toroca to one of the octagonal buildings. As soon as he got inside, Toroca understood how they could safely use wood as a building material; the roof was made of glass, letting in light from outside. Since there was never total darkness here beneath the Face of God, there was no need for open-flame lamps.

  Toroca had to wait a long time. An Other brought flagons of water and a pink transparent liquid with bubbles in it. He’d had his fill of water on the swim over and was reluctant to try the pink liquid, afraid it might be some kind of plant juice. The Other also brought a platter covered with small pieces of meat. At first glance, Toroca thought the meat was dried—he was used to such fare—but then he realized it had been ruined by exposure to heat. And yet the Other waiting with him had no compunctions about eating the stuff. Toroca decided to be sociable and tried a small piece. It was still warm, but not with the warmth of a freshly killed body. Toroca changed his mind about the water, downing a massive gulp.

  Finally, whoever they’d been waiting for arrived. Toroca tried to imagine who would have greeted a stranger who swam up to the docks on Land. Emperor Dybo? Surely not at first. The imperial guards? Maybe. He’d now gathered that all those wearing black armbands—this particular octagon was full of them—were the equivalent of that. Toroca remembered when a huge tentacled mollusk had washed up after a big storm many kilodays ago, its shell a good four paces across. It was a savant who was summoned, old Osfik, the Arbiter of the Sequence. Perhaps this new arrival was likewise a respected thinker, come to puzzle out the nature of the green apparition that had appeared in their midst.