He grabbed first one hand and then another, counting the fingers. He grabbed the feet and counted the toes. The child had a fuzz of light brown hair on its head. It opened its eyes and began reaching with one of its hands for something in front of it. When Peter held out his little finger, the child grabbed it and squeezed it for a moment before returning its arms and hands to its side and closing its eyes again.
Peter ran to Sylvia’s bed. She too was sleeping. When he put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her on her forehead, she opened her eyes and asked, sounding very sleepy, “What’s the matter?” “Nothing is the matter,” Peter whispered. “A child, a seemingly healthy and perfectly normal child, is born.”
“Whose is it?” She asked. “It’s ours,” he answered, smiling. “That’s good,” she said and, as she said that, she closed her eyes again and began breathing very regularly. She was asleep.
He turned around and saw the creatures that pushed the child in its egg-shaped bassinet over to the raised platform where the creatures that surrounded it, both the magicians and the others, backed away after leaning over and taking a good look at the child. Then the king pressed a couple of buttons on the armrests of its throne which caused the throne to rise a couple of inches off the floor while wheels descended.
Then the king pushed other buttons that made the throne, now also a wheeled cart, move to the very edge of the raised platform and look down at the baby. Then creatures standing below grabbed hold of the egg-shaped object and lifted it up so that the king could get a good look. Peter saw the stalks that supported its eyes jut forward while the eyes themselves swelled to become twice the size they normally were.
The king spoke, saying, “Thus is a human child born this day. Though to us strange in shape and odd in behavior, it emerges from the body of a good friend and precocious student of ours. Also, seen from another perspective, the child is the joint product of two humans, both good friends and precocious human students of ours. Let us rejoice at this.”
The king then reached with its lowest limbs into a pouch that was connected to the right-front leg of its throne and pulled out of the pouch a strange sphere, about 9” inches in diameter, that Peter could see was really a number of spheres concentrically arranged, each one having pale blue and pink squares filled with symbols scattered across its surface. Dangling down the side of the sphere was a yellow and a silvery ring connected to one end of a red string which, had at its other end, another ring attached to an indentation at the top of the sphere.
With its middle limbs, the king reached for the end of the string and pulled on it as the lower limbs let go of the sphere, thus suspending the sphere in mid-air. The sphere then began slowly spinning from right to left and then from left to right, with each of the spheres inside of the outer one spinning at a different speed.
“This is our gift to the child,” the king said, looking momentarily in Peter’s direction as he said it and then at one of the attendants who said, “And so it shall be” as it grabbed with its lowest and middle limbs the ring at end of the sphere farthest from the sphere, leaned forward, and somehow as if by magic put the ring around a bar that ran from one end of the egg-shaped object to another in such a way as to enable it to slide across the baby’s line of sight. Then, as the sphere slid across the bar from which it hung for the first time, Peter was surprised to see the baby open its eyes, notice the sphere, and placidly follow it with its eyes.
The king’s presentation of a gift, its few words, and the attendant’s five-word refrain seemed to serve as a cue to the musicians because, as soon as it was uttered, they pointed their various horns and tubes upwards and exhaled through their chest slits with all their might, making loud sounds that, given the way the creatures began swaying back and forth, must have sounded majestic and stirring to them.
The child in its egg-shaped bassinet was then rolled all around the large meeting room so that every one of the creatures that had assembled there and wanted to take a look would be given a chance to get a glance of the baby.
From the way they gathered around, it seemed that indeed they all wanted to get a look with those on wheeled carts leaning forward and those clinging to the walls or ceiling looking down and those crawling on the ground propping themselves up by grabbing onto top edge of the egg-shaped object with their top two or four limbs and pushing their eyes into the space above which the baby slept.
At one point, the baby closed its eyes, yawned and clenched its fists and bent and unbent its legs, one after another. The creatures found that very exciting. A great roar went up.
Part of the reason the creatures found the baby to be so fascinating had to do with the fact that it was so different from the adults who had given birth to it whereas their babies were identical in shape to adults only smaller. The creatures knew that creatures of species other than their own existed on their home planet that underwent metamorphoses but, since none of them had actually ever lived there and seen such creatures in the flesh, they found the baby so different in shape and proportion from the adults of its species to be utterly incredible.
After making the rounds of the room, the baby in its little egg-shaped bassinet was rolled to the back of the line that included Peter and Sylvia on her bed and the creatures that attended to them. At the front of the line was the door that led to the corridor of bedrooms. The door opened, the convoy marched through it, the door to Sylvia’s room opened, and everyone marched through.
Sylvia was put in her bed. The baby was taken out of the bassinet and put in her arms. Peter sat down in the soft chair beside the bed and waited until the creatures marched out of the room before slipping onto Sylvia’s bed and hugging her and their child, Kory, and saying over and over again, “I am so happy. This happiness of mine comes close to being too much for me to bear.” He cried and, looking over in Sylvia’s direction, saw that she was crying too while hugging the child.
Meanwhile, the baby began to test the powers of its new body by first pushing the blanket that had been wrapped around its shoulders down onto its belly and second by reaching upwards with an open palm. Peter put the index finger of his left hand against that open palm mainly to see what the baby might do and was delighted to see the child enclose his finger in a tight grip.
Still holding onto the finger, the child looked vaguely into space, opened and closed its mouth, squeezed its little eyes closed, and began to cry. Crying, it let go of the finger, reached out with both hands until one touched Sylvia’s breast and pushed against her breast as if wishing to test the elasticity of the flesh.
It kept crying. The cry was like a siren that weakened when the baby started running out of air but would be renewed after the baby gulped for air a couple of times.
Peter wondered if the child cried for its errors and losses during its last life, the events of which would be weakly present in its mind for just a little while before being utterly forgotten.
Sylvia wiped away the tears that had fallen down her own cheeks with a cloth that lay on the bed beside her. She then concentrated her complete attention to the child, bringing it up to her cheek, rubbing its other cheek and brow and chin with the forefinger of her free hand, and, speaking quietly and very melodically to it, saying, “What’s the matter, little one? Do you miss your other life? Did you fly free in that place that separates one life from another and now are bothered by being so limited and confined? Or do you think about your past life, perhaps missing it and perhaps upset by its injustices?”
Peter was pleased to hear that Sylvia’s and his thoughts ran down the same channels as much as they did. Her first thoughts, on seeing the child cry, also had to do with reincarnation and the possibility that memories of a past life linger but just for a little while in a newborn baby’s mind.
He asked, “Let me hold it. Please?” And, when Sylvia handed the child to him, he too held it up to his cheek and cooed to it, saying, “Do not cry my little star child. Being the first human to be born outside of the planet is not suc
h a bad thing. You will be a celebrity wined and dined by other celebrities who will feel privileged to know you. You will dream strange dreams of which this asteroid with its giant mite-like creatures will be one and the Earth with its green trees, huge cities, fast rivers, and terrible injustices will be another and life aboard a space ship that hurtles through space will be a third. Dream on, my star child, dream on my little asteroid boy, dream on.”
“Give him to me,” Sylvia said, holding out her arms much in the same way that the child had just held out its arms. Then, after Peter handed it to her, she held it up against her cheek again and began rocking with it back and forth while reciting one of the poems Peter remembered her reciting before dinner, only this time putting the words to music, a melody she was only just then improvising. The baby obviously liked being rocked back and forth and obviously liked the rhythm or melody of the music. It bent and unbent its limbs and began to push its cheeks in and out while alternately relaxing and pursing its lips.
“I think it wants to drink,” Sylvia said as she pulled down the shoulder strap of her blouse, exposing her left breast while pushing the baby’s mouth up against her nipple. Without further coaxing, the child put its lips around her nipple and began sucking away with its eyes closed and one arm wrapped around Sylvia’s waist.
Peter saw in his mind’s eye a lovely picture that he would not draw now but would draw very soon. In his mind’s eye, he saw the picture cropped so that only the baby’s head, shoulders, and mid-section and Sylvia’s inclined head, shoulders, left breast, and left side of her midriff showed.
He wanted to draw such a picture and then make a copy (that would invariably be also a second original because no two drawings done by hand could possibly be identical). The reason he wanted to make a copy was so that he could color it. He wanted to experiment with color. He imagined shades of pink and red filling the space inside of the lines that defined the edges of the images of Sylvia and the baby and shades of light and dark blue for the clothes and for the background.
His problem was that he had no colors. He resolved to ask the teacher first thing next morning if there were any watercolor sets around anywhere and, if not, if there were any pigments or some substances that would function as pigments if mixed with water and wiped onto or brushed onto paper. He figured he had either to use very little water or somehow wet and stretch paper to keep it from warping. There were a lot of technical challenges, he knew, and yet these had to take second place to his esthetic sense. Or the two things had to develop side by side.
He did not want to make things too complicated or get too terribly sidetracked. He knew from past experience that a lot of artists did get sidetracked and that a lot of art education unfortunately amounted to little more than diverting their students from their original purposes and sources of inspiration and getting them to think only about technique and trends and a supposed historical arc instead.
What took his mind off the problems of making art was the sheer majesty of what was occurring in front of him. He knew that any kind of drawing or painting he did would be wonderful as long as it managed to convey even a fraction of the beauty that was playing out in front of his eyes this very moment. And he knew that, in order to do the conveying, he had somehow to do what seemed to him to be the simplest thing to do while letting any so-called notions of historical arcs and technical options flip freely in his subconscious.
Chapter 59: Negotiating a Return
The very next morning after the childbirth, they were expected to return to the classroom. They had to go anyway because that is where the morning drinks were. They had to go, especially Sylvia’s sake. She needed the nourishment.
So, after the three bells rang in the morning, they got dressed, wrapped the baby in the swaddling clothes they had been given, put the baby in the egg-shaped bassinet, and, pushing the bassinet ahead of them, marched out of the door in front of Sylvia’s room, turned left, marched down the corridor of the bedrooms, and out into the big meeting room.
Things were fairly quiet there. The raised platform was empty. Only a few of the creatures crawled around or rolled around the large meeting room. Everything seemed perfectly normal in the classroom, with the usual students present, the teacher sitting behind the desk on its cart and sorting through the sticks it liked to play with, the sticks that were like pool cues but with a series of painted stripes running around it at one end. Also, there was the table set to the left of the doorway, against the wall there, with glasses full of energy drink against one wall.
Sylvia pushed the bassinet against the side of the table, pushed down the transparent pieces of the egg-shaped case, and bent over the baby. It was playing with the glass sphere the king had given it.
The baby reached for the sphere and pushed a tiny pudgy forefinger onto and actually through its surface causing a cone of light to beam out from a point on the sphere opposite the point touched by the baby. Where the cone of light touched the opaque side of the bassinet, a moving image of a plant with intricately shaped leaves swinging back and forth as if it was being buffeted by an erratic wind played.
Sylvia beckoned to Peter to come over. She put her arm around his shoulder when he fell to his knees and peered inside the bassinet. “Look at that,” she said. “Oh, my,” Peter said while the baby pushed its finger a second time through the surface of the sphere, causing the picture to change into that of a choppy ocean’s surface with light playing across its mosaic surface.
“Let me try that,” Peter said while pushing the forefinger of his right hand against the surface of the sphere. But his finger would not go through the surface. Instead, his touch caused the sphere to bounce away with the various spheres that lay one after another inside of the outer surface revolving in different ways and at different angles while the sphere as a whole rocked back and forth.
Peter then held the sphere with his left hand while he pushed with the forefinger of his right hand, thinking that preventing the sphere from bouncing would insure his being able to push through the surface. However, his idea did not work. He was still unable to push a finger through the surface. He tried pushing with different fingers and tried exerting different amounts of pressure. Nothing worked. The sphere just stayed round, solid, and impenetrable.
“Give up, Peter,” Sylvia said, “The mysterious thing was made for the baby and only admits into its interior any little finger of his. The sphere’s surface is like one of those locked doors you found in that maze of yours. You just can’t get in.
“Somehow,” she added, “the mechanism that controls surface quality has been adjusted in such a way that only the pressure of a finger of this particular child gets it to turn on and make the surface turn from something solid into a kind of gel.”
Peter said, “The sphere seems so powerful and mysterious and so full of surprises. And the child, because the sphere’s attributes respond only to his touch, is made to seem powerful and mysterious too. We can only imagine what will come of the child’s learning how to master the object over time.”
There were three glasses. Two had been placed so close to each other that they nearly touched. These were presumably meant for Sylvia and, if looked at from above, consisted of concentric rings of creamy liquid, each ring a different color, or, if looked at from the side, consisted of layers of different colors and thicknesses and consistencies of creamy liquid. The third glass, standing at some distance from the other two and, they thought, obviously meant for Peter was filled with a creamy orange liquid.
Sylvia said, “I am famished and thirsty.” Realizing that the two glasses were meant for her, she picked one up and emptied it in a few gulps. “I needed that,” she said as she wiped her mouth with one of the napkins set on a pile at the side of the table. She put the first glass down and swallowed the contents of the second glass just as quickly as she had swallowed the contents of the first.
Peter watched her drink down the contents of the two glasses while he drank from his own glass. He was imag
ining a simple drawing of a woman, cropped at the waist, holding a partially inverted glass to her lips, to an empty background. He felt the colors and shading he pictured in his mind would be perfect choices. He had only to find the pigments that came close to if not exactly matched what he pictured in his mind.
After finishing their morning repast, they pushed the baby in between the two seats where they sat during class. But, instead of taking their seats, Sylvia nudged Peter and pointed towards the teacher. “It might be too soon. Let’s wait until tomorrow at least,” he said. “No, let’s do it now. It’s now or never,” Sylvia said. “Come on,” she said and took Peter’s hand and tried pulling him towards the teacher. “Alright,” Peter said. “I guess we might as well get this over with now.”
They walked up to the teacher and Sylvia explained that now that the child was born the time had come to make specific plans for their return to Earth. She explained that they did not want to wait too long, not more than a couple of months from today. She said that they wanted to leave soon, not later than a couple of months from today for a number of reasons, one being that the child, in their opinion, needed to be stably situated at the time that it began to be aware of what surrounded it.
She explained that they feared that, if the child began to be aware of the surroundings here without having enough time really to familiarize itself with this place and then got suddenly uprooted, meaning that there would be another place (the inside of the space ship) and another (wherever they lived after first arriving on Earth and then possibly another and another (as they shopped around for and picked a particular place to live on Earth, they felt the child would get confused and become indifferent to its surroundings. She explained that there might be other ramifications, some of which they could imagine and none of them—in their opinion—good.
The teacher kept in mind what she said, even from the first sentence. She had said that they wanted to leave for a number of reasons but had talked about only one reason. Not having forgotten her preamble, the teacher said, “And there are other reasons besides the child’s acquisition of a sense of place.”
A Theory of Gravity Page 39