The ones who sat isolated from the group at the back of the room were larger. He wondered if size was an indicator of age up to a certain point in the life of the life of these creatures as it was with a majority of the species living back on Earth that he knew anything about, including human beings.
While thinking about that, he wondered about the sicknesses and infirmities of these creatures? Did they get sick? Were some infirm compared to the rest? And, while on the subject, he wondered how long they lived and what dying was like and whether the death of some or all was commemorated in some way, as happened among humans and perhaps some other primates and perhaps even elephants on Earth and perhaps a few other species.
He wondered if what was going on out in the big room had something to do with the death of one of the creatures. He vowed to remember these questions and bring them up tonight, either at dinner or later with Sylvia. “Perhaps she knows the answers,” he mused.
He noticed that some of the creatures in the classroom, even the littlest ones, had motorized carts behind their chairs though all sat in high-backed chairs with the peculiar seats that included slots into which they could insert the pointed end of their carapaces.
He noticed too that the creatures, especially the little ones, seemed especially fidgety or nervous. Their round bulging eyes attached to long stalks coming out of the top pointed place on their carapaces kept turning around. They looked in every possible direction but especially towards the door. And sometimes they’d point with one or both of their uppermost arms in the direction of the door while making their peculiar noises.
He wondered if he was doing too much anthropomorphizing by thinking that the reason for their restlessness lay in the fact that they wanted to be out in the large hall where festivities or the preparation for festivities were going on rather than being in a classroom that was shut away from the action and the crowds.
All the time Peter was looking around and thinking his various thoughts, Sylvia was standing in front of the teacher’s desk, talking to him. The teacher made some noises. Then Sylvia made very similar noises. At some point, the teacher interrupted their conversation and made much louder noises, directed at the other students and at the guards standing at the door. Pointing first to the guards with its stick and then at the students, it made grunting and bellowing noises which resulted in the guards pulling the sliding doors open and the students emitting a very loud noise, the same from all the students, that seemed to Peter to be the equivalent of a cheer.
Then there was a lot of noise and confusion while students pulled themselves up out of their seats and either fell to the floor and started crawling to the door or crawled up inside of a motorized cart and, by pushing buttons on the armrests, propelled themselves to the door.
The noise outside was as deafening as before. The guards had to push heaps of creatures away from the doorway to make room for the departing students. When they got to the doorway, the students turned around and directed one last gush of sound into the classroom before rolling and crawling to whichever part of the big room seemed to appeal to them the most.
After the students left, Sylvia and the teacher continued talking for a while. When they finished, Sylvia returned to Peter and sat down beside him. “I think everything is resolved. I explained what we have decided to do. It has accepted our decision but refuses to let a message go out to the rocket ships which I think is not a big deal: the ships have been programmed to wait for as long as twenty years before taking off and, even then, will only take off if the people back on Earth agree.”
“The teacher was very disappointed that we had not chosen the second or third options; but, after I talked to it for a while and explained why we reached the conclusion we did, the teacher just banged his stick against its desk—a sign of resignation. It could tell from the way I talked more than probably from what I said that we were determined to go. So it is going along—at least for the present.”
“Did you see us glance at the clock?” she asked Peter. “We were looking at circles that have something to do with larger blocks of time than minutes or hours. The teacher showed me the circle that we could use to measure the time until our planned departure. So, just by telling him what decided, I got a lesson on how to use the clock.”
Peter explained that he was too lost in his own thoughts and too busy looking at the other students to keep his eye on them. So he didn’t see Sylvia and the teacher look at the clock.
“In any case,” Sylvia said, the teacher wants to have a short class today. He feels that it is especially important that you get used to the equipment. The class will be short. Before long, the three bells will sound again, and we’ll be escorted to the dining room where soup will be waiting. From now on, day after day, we will do the same thing though, of course, class time will be longer. This will be our routine. It won’t be bad. I don’t mind it. In fact, I like it.”
“It will be fun,” Peter said, “Before long, we will be living the life of a long-married couple who have forgotten what it is like to live any other way.”
She said, “There is danger in such a life too. It is a one-edge sword that, unless you are capable, can hit you with the sharp edge. But, with some thought, I think we can avoid that sharp-edged touch and settle into a nice life like that of the proverbial married couple who lived happily ever after.”
Mention of marriage made Peter think for perhaps the first time about the possibility of their getting married. He thought of a ceremony attending only by the two of them with each reciting vows of their own devising. Then, when they got back to Earth, they could go to a courthouse and have an impromptu civil ceremony and then, after that, have one ceremony after another to which the members of whatever groups they belonged to would be separately invited.
He’d have to ask her if she had such things as relatives, old friends, and old acquaintances. He’d have to think about which of those, if any, he had. Then it occurred to him that, because they would be celebrities once they returned, a lot of people would flock to them and, even though these others would be drawn to them just as surely as iron filings are drawn to magnets, the friendship conveyed might nevertheless by genuine or genuine enough or so close to being genuine as to be indistinguishable from the real thing.
But, he wondered, can friendship be “so close to being genuine as to be indistinguishable from the real thing?” On second thought, he reasoned, there have to be ways to differentiate between the two kinds of friendship.
He wondered: If someone showed an interest in one’s past and asked a lot of questions about it, would that be a sign of friendship? At first he thought it would. But, after thinking about the question for a little while, he decided it would not necessarily be a sign of friendship because someone with an ulterior motive far removed from true friendship might well seem to be interested in one’s past and ask a lot of questions but only because such a person’s apparent curiosity might be attached to another motive than compassion or friendship: such a person might instead be looking for a point of vulnerability that might be usefully exploited while someone who asks no questions might just want to focus on the present and future and not risk finding out something that another person might regard as embarrassing or compromising.
No, he reasoned, the asking of questions about one’s past would not separate true friend from pretend friend or even from an enemy. A better way of picking out a true friend from the rest, he decided, might have to do with how the other person reacts when you present them with a problem you confront that you consider serious. The false friend might snicker or casually throw out whatever idea for a solution came impulsively to mind and then never refer to the problem again unless you brought it up while the true friend would take the problem seriously, think about it, and bring it up again hours or days later.
The true friend, on the other hand, would try to comfort and would try to come up with a well-thought-out solution and would from time to time ask how things were going. Very few such true
friends exist, Peter reflected, based on his own bitter experiences back on Earth. This discovery of his was one more reason why he had volunteered to be an astronaut.
He had doubts even about how to take people’s reaction to a statement of a problem since, as he well knew, some people are oriented to problem-solving and would be interested in thinking about solutions to your problems even if they did not care for you personally while others, not oriented to problem solving, might not suggest solutions. But, he asked himself, can someone not at all oriented to problem-solving really be a true friend in the first place?
Nevertheless, he thought, during the time they were celebrities, a lot of people and a lot of circles of people, all claiming to be friends, would surround them. And, if they announced their plans to marry during the time of their fame and were unable to take the time or go through the experiences that would make possible the testing of these friendships, there would be a round of celebrations.
To satisfy social obligations, they might even decide to have a public ceremony on top of all of the private ones. Peter knew that the time of being celebrities would eventually fade and, when that happened, some would fall away on their own while others would have to be shunned. He expected that, because of his and Sylvia’s eccentricities, they would eventually find themselves alone together which would be a shame because he felt people needed to be part of a close group of at six or eight people if they were to be truly happy. He doubted a group of even so modest a size would remain after the time of their celebrity ended.
Peter wondered what he might say during an impromptu or informal wedding ceremony. He did not want simply to listen to the standard wedding recital delivered by a justice of the peace or member of the clergy. He wanted something more personal instead. He did not like the idea that certain phrases had become so standard that they were repeated by rote without anyone really reflecting on what was being said. Take the sentence about accepting the other “for better or worse until death do us part.” Does anybody really think about what they’re saying? Does anyone stop to consider close such a sentence comes to enormous mysteries?
Did the statement mean that a married couple’s obligations to one another ended once one or another of them died and, if so, what followed? Did the statement imply that, once an afterlife began, the couple were free to decide to no longer have anything to do with each other if they wished? Or did it imply that, after both died, they could stay together but would have no obligations towards one another? And, if the statement, referred, however obliquely to an after-life, then would it not make sense to talk more about the after-life and what it might entail?
No, he would substitute other words for those. He’d talk about his feelings about his spouse and about the circumstances of his meeting her and about the plans they thought would help them avoid the usual bickering and misunderstandings that invariably affect (or infect) all marriages. He had an idea for a poem which he was going to try out that very night before soup. He wondered if a poem like that might not do double duty as words he could recite during a marriage ceremony.
While Peter thought about marriage, the two guards rolled up beside them, pulled the nozzles that were at the front ends of tubes that were set into the wall that was behind them. The pulled on the nozzles and attached them to various parts of their bodies. The nozzles had some sort of sticky substance on them that caused the nozzles to stick to wherever on their bodies they were placed.
When that was done (Sylvia explained to Peter while nozzles were being attached to him that the position of the nozzles changed from day to day), the guards turned towards the teacher, bowed to the teacher, made some noise, and then returned to their position beside the sliding doors.
After the guards resumed their positions next to the doors, the teacher rolled its cart behind the desk and pulled a long drawer just beneath the surface of the desk open with two of its eight limbs. It then leaned forward and began punching at something inside of the drawer with all eight of its limbs, the limbs moving so fast that Peter sometimes had trouble seeing them clearly. It was like watching the blades of a rotating fan.
The teacher leaned forward and also twisted from side to side while moving those limbs at such lightning speed. The teacher reminded Peter of a concert pianist or orchestra conductor because of how focused on its job it seemed to be and also because of how it underscored that focus with occasional dramatic flourishes.
Nozzles had been put into their ears. Through these nozzles, sounds started coming. Through nozzles attached to their foreheads above their eyes, pictures seemed to come. The pictures filled their minds. They would hear a sound or combination of sounds and see a picture.
The sounds would change and so would the pictures. This process of hearing sounds and seeing pictures went on for maybe an hour or two.
Then, behind or in the back of the sounds and pictures, three bells rang, and the teacher backed away from the desk and pushed the drawer shut, picked up its stick and began rubbing it all along its length with a number of its limbs.
The guards returned to attend to the two humans. Carefully, they pulled the nozzles off of the various parts of the skin to which they had been attached and helped the tubes to which the nozzles were attached return to their places on the wall without getting entangled.
Time spent seeing visions, hearing voices, and feeling a host of sensations that resulted from being attached to the nozzles put Peter and Sylvia in a dreamy state. It took them a while to return to normal waking consciousness. It took them a few minutes to return to normal waking consciousness. When they did, the two astronauts stood up. Seeing them awake and standing, one of the guards rolled up next to Peter and another next to Sylvia. Sylvia whispered, “Turn right, Peter. They want to escort us to the door.” Peter did as Sylvia suggested. Then the four of them (two humans and two creatures) went to the classroom’s door, the humans marching and the guards rolling on their carts.
At the door of the classroom, the escorts of the night before waited. They were lined up with space left in the middle for the two humans.
As was the case the night before, one of the escorts had a musical instrument like a bagpipe attached to the slits on its chest. Two supported each end of a table. Two carried chairs. And two carried a tureen of soup, two bowls, silverware, and napkins.
The creature standing next to the one with the musical instrument bowed first to Sylvia and then to Peter and made some noises which Peter supposed must mean, “Dinner is ready.” Then all began moving towards the dining room being careful to step around or wait to let pass the creatures who occupied the part of the large meeting room that they had to cross. By this time, the meeting room was so filled with the creatures that any passage through it in a cart or on two feet was very difficult.
When they got to the dining room, they marched inside. The escorts who carried the table and chairs moved very quickly to arrange the tables and chairs.
Peter and Sylvia sat down at opposite ends of the table as before and watched patiently and gratefully as bowls and spoons and napkins were put down in front of them. The creature who came last in the procession took out a ladle and filled Sylvia’s and Peter’s bowl full of soup that this night was pale blue. When all of that was done, the creatures rolled to the wall at the back of the dining room and stood idly, barely moving, while Peter and Sylvia prepared to eat their dinner.
Peter looked at the soup and smelled it. He enjoyed the warmth that wafted out of the bowl. Though the color was strange, the soup looked good. It might have been some kind of mushroom soup. It also smelled really good. It was thick and creamy. Bits of some sort of green stuff like an herb floated on the surface.
After smelling the soup, Peter sat up, looked tenderly at Sylvia who sat calmly staring at him with her head resting on the hands of her folded arms. “Time for a poem?” he asked her. “Yes, I have one in mind and will recite it today unless you feel ready to recite one.” He said, “In fact, I do feel ready. I have a poem I want b
oth of us to hear. Last night, while you were sleeping, I got up and jotted it down and I stole some moments during today to look it over and memorize it. I think I’ve gotten it and would like to say it. Do you mind?”
“I don’t mind at all. In fact, I’m delighted—the opposite of minding. I can’t wait to hear it. Go ahead.”
Peter cleared his throat, looked up towards the ceiling for a couple of seconds before closing his eyes, and said this:
“I know full well what it is like to be alone but,
Until now, have had to imagine what it is like
To be together with someone as special as you
Are to me. It is as if your soul beats in rhythm with mine.
It is as if I possessed a sixth sense that is so rarely
Activated that I was not until now aware of its existence.
And, now I know that something more exists besides
My sixth sense—a seventh sense also only rarely activated
That perceives an aura that surrounds the
Body of a special one. Your aura extends out beyond
Your body and soul. How far does it extend?
It goes out at least as far as the walls of this room.
It may be as large as this asteroid.
It may extend out in space.
So, when I step inside of the space
Your aura fills, a feeling of great calm, of much patience,
And of considerable comfort and joy fills me.
I have to confess that, your presence, even more
Than any words you might say
Or gestures you might make, give me much joy.”
A Theory of Gravity Page 27