Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by James Tiptree Jr.

  Could it be that people were used to spaceships landing here? But no; the party gave no sign of familiarity with anything like Calgary.

  Their first act was to tour deliberately around the ship—CP saw that the ground had been cleared around her while she slept—looking gravely at every detail. CP followed them around from inside. On impulse, when they could see both her and the remaining wing, she raised her hand and moved an aileron control.

  There was a general, surprised backward start.

  By this time, CP was sure that some at least were telepathic. She sent them the strongest feeling of friendship she could project, and then pictures of herself moving controls. The “kangaroo” types seemed to respond with eagerness, as did the “Senior Tortoise.” They moved closer, eyeing her keenly. So CP spent a happy time moving and wiggling everything that functioned, at the same time naming it and its function through the speaker. The small red-veiled alien seemed particularly interested in her voice, often attempting to repeat words after her.

  They all had no hesitation in touching anything and everything; the agile web-footed ones clambered over the remains of Calgary’s top, and all came up and peered into the cabin ports by turn.

  Several times CP stopped herself from trying to warn them not to approach the “hot” thrust vents, or the debris of the reactor chamber. It was hard to realize that any residual radioactivity from Calgary was as nothing compared to the normal blizzard of hard radiation just outside, in which these visitors had evolved and lived.

  Presently the small red-veiled alien limped, or hobbled, to the extended speaker and laid a fragile, pale, apparently deformed hand on it. At the same time, a very clear image came to CP; she closed her eyes to concentrate on it, and “saw” herself with opening and moving mouth. The image flickered oddly. The alien had made the connection between her voice and the speaker. But how to transmit “yes” by mental imagery? She nodded her head vigorously—a meaningless gesture here, no doubt—and said verbally, “Yes! Yes. Uh . . . hello!” pointing to her mouth and the speaker.

  The little alien made a peculiar sound; was that a laugh? Next moment its hand moved to the auditory pickup, and CP experienced something new—a strikingly sharp image of the microphone, followed by a literal blanking of the mind—indescribable. As if an invisible blindfold had descended. Next instant came the mike image again, and again the blank—and back to the image; faster and faster, these two impressions alternated in her mind, to a flicker sequence that made her dizzy.

  But she grasped it—as clearly as a human voice, the alien was saying, “And this thing is—what?”

  So that was how questions were asked!

  How to answer? She tried everything she could think of, pointing to the alien, to her own ears (which were doubtless not ears to the alien), saying “Hello” repeatedly like a parrot, all the while trying to picture an alien’s mouth speaking. She’d never seen the red-veiled mouth, so she imaged another’s.

  Something worked—with apparent eagerness, the small alien put its face to the mike, and nearly blasted CP from her chair with “ER-ROW! ER-ROW! ES!”

  CP was childishly delighted. She and the alien exchanged several “Hellos” and “Errows” through speaker and mike.

  But shortly a new question emerged. She began to receive a strengthening picture—as if from several minds joining in—of herself coming out of Calgary and moving among them. After a few moments of her nonresponse, this image began to alternate slowly with a scene of the aliens inside Calgary with her. Again, the two images alternated faster and faster, to confusing flashes. But the meaning was plain—“Will you come out, or shall we come in?”

  It took her a long, laborious effort to try to transmit the possibility. She concentrated hard on forming images of the port opening and air coming in, herself falling down, pictures of radiation (she hoped) coming from the ground. Suddenly, at those last pictures the old tortoise seemed to understand. He advanced and laid one heavy paw on Calgary, and then made a sweeping gesture that CP read as negation. Of course: Calgary, alone of most of this world, was inert, nonradioactive.

  At this point they seemed to have had enough, or were tired; in very human fashion they drew off to sit in a group at the edge of the clearing with the tree-fellers, and produced packets of edibles. CP stared eagerly, wishing she could see and taste. As far as she could make out, most of them ate with more or less Earth-like mouths, but the veiled persons inserted their food beneath their throat veils.

  Then the small red-clad alien seemed to notice her staring and CP suddenly felt her mouth and nose filled with an extraordinary alien sensation—neither good nor bad, but quite unknown—which must be the taste of what they were eating. She laughed again, and daringly transmitted a faint replica of the cheese-and-peanut-butter packet she was eating.

  Refreshments were soon over. Now the large blue-veiled alien and the kangaroo-types came forward to the window. Looking directly at CP, the veiled one stood up and made motions of turning. CP understood; it was her time to be inspected. Obediently she turned, extended an arm, opened her mouth to show her teeth, wiggled her fingers.

  Then the veiled one raised her top arm, unfastened something, and deliberately let drop a veil. The implication was plain: undress. For a moment CP was overcome with an ugly memory of Meich, the countless other humiliations she had undergone. She hesitated. But the alien eyes were insistent and seemed friendly. When CP didn’t move, the big alien pulled off another veil, exposing this time its own bare and furless belly and haunches. A strong feeling of reassurance came to her—of course, to these people her body was as neutral as a mollusk or a map. She unzipped her suit and stepped out of it and her underclothes. At the same time, as if to encourage her, the alien removed its own upper-body covering. CP noticed that the others in its group had turned tactfully away.

  CP was amazed—in the crotch where human sex and excretory organs would be, the alien had nothing but smooth muscle. But its chest region was as complex as a group of sea creatures; valves, lips, unidentifiable moist flaps and protrusions—clearly its intimate parts. CP could form no idea of its gender, if any.

  Not to be outdone in scientific detachment, CP demonstrated her own nude self, and made an attempt at transmitting images of the human reproductive process. She got nothing in reply—or rather, nothing she could interpret. She and the alien apparently diverged so widely here that thought could not carry across the gulf. Only excretion seemed sufficiently similar to be at least referable to.

  At length the alien gave it up, resuming its own veiling and indicating that CP should do likewise.

  Then the whole group gathered round her windows and CP was astounded. Abruptly she was assailed by a thought-image that said, as plainly as a shout, “Go away!”

  The image was of Calgary again taking to the air, and spiraling up and away. The feeling-tone wasn’t hostile or threatening, merely practical. If she couldn’t live here, she should go elsewhere.

  “But I can’t!”

  Desperately she pointed to the wrecked wing, sent images of the empty fuel reserve.

  A counterimage, of Calgary being literally lifted off and flung out of atmosphere, came back. Did they propose that the same presumably “mental” force that had slowed her should lift her back to orbit?

  “No—no! It wouldn’t work!” She sent images of Calgary, released in space, falling helplessly back upon them.

  But the thought-send persisted. “You-go-away”—and the sequence repeated itself.

  Then CP had an idea. But how to indicate time here in this never-changing world? Oh, for an hourglass! Finally she gathered up a handful of crumbs, broken glass, and other small debris of the wreck and let them trickle slowly and deliberately from one hand to the other. She held up her fingers, counting off a dozen or so—and acted out a scene of herself strangling in foul air, collapsing and dying. As an afterthought, she tried to express a feeling of contentment, even joy.

  The Senior Tortoise got it first, a
nd seemed to enlighten the others.

  She would not be here long alive.

  There ensued a brief colloquy among the aliens. Then one after the other came to her window, put up its “hands” to take a look around, and seemed to transmit something grave, and faint. She was not even sure she was receiving. The old tortoise-person came last, its great hands heavy on the glass as it shaded out reflections to look in. From it CP was sure something emanated to her. But she could not name it.

  Then they all turned and walked, ambled, or hopped away as they had come, taking the “Watcher” with them. The tree-fellers brought up the rear. CP stared after them, surprised.

  They had simply departed, leaving her alone to die.

  Well, what more could she have expected?

  But it was strange; no curiosity about the stars, for instance, nor whence she had come.

  And what had they been trying to impart, there at the last? Of course: “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” CP said through the speaker softly, into the alien air.

  Then began an unadmittedly lonely time, waiting to die there in the beauty of the swamp. CP began to wish it wasn’t so viewless and closed in. She decided that soon, before the air was all gone, she would go out, and try to climb to some sort of view before she died.

  On impulse, she set her Earth-day timer, which had ceased in the crash, to manual-battery operation. She who had fled the world of Earth forever yet had the whim to perish on Earth’s time. Only so much of nostalgia persisted. That and her little copybook of poems.

  She had long since smoothed out and repaired the captain’s damage. Only one page was lost. She occupied herself in reconstructing it from memory:

  With delicate mad hands against the sordid bars,

  Surely he hath his posies, which they tear and twine—

  Those—something—wisps of straw that miserably line

  His strait caged universe, whereon the dull world stares.

  Pedant and pitiful. Oh—something—something—

  Know they what dreams divine

  Something—like enchanted wine—

  And make his melancholy germane to the stars?

  Oh, lamentable brother, if these pity thee,

  Am I not fain of all thy lost eyes promise me?

  Half a fool’s kingdom, far from—something—all their days vanity.

  Oh, better than mortal flowers

  Thy moon-kissed roses seem;

  Better than love or sleep,

  The star-crowned solitude of thine oblivious hours!

  Much was muddled, but she had the essential lines. They had kept her company all those years behind her sordid bars. Well, she had had the stars, and now she had the moon-kissed roses, and the fool’s kingdom. Presently she would open the port and go out to possess it. . . .

  It was late on Day Six, of the perhaps fifteen left to her, that someone else came. She had long ceased to watch the path, but now she felt a tug at her attention. At first there was nothing, and she almost turned away. And then, in the far distance, she made out a single, oddly-shaped figure. Quick, the binoculars. It became an alien something like the former Watcher, but ruddy and—yes—carrying or being ridden by a much smaller alien on its back. More—she saw the small alien was legless, with very tiny arms. She had the strong impression of fatigue, of a long-distant goal reached. They had, she thought, come a long, long way.

  Then she understood: this world was huge, and she knew nothing of their means of transport, if any. Perhaps those who wished to see Calgary must walk so, even from the far side?

  She watched, scarcely daring to blink, as these new aliens continued their weary way toward her into naked-eye view. The larger alien raised its head, and must have seen her waiting. She was quite unprepared for the jolt of feeling that shook her—like a shout of welcome and joy.

  That she still lived! Had this alien been fearful it was too late, that she would have died before he or she could get here? That must be it.

  As the alien came closer yet, she noticed an oddity about the big one’s head—where others had had upstanding “ears” or antlerlike antennae, this one had large, triangular velvety flaps that drooped toward its eyes. Where had she seen these before? Oh, god—aching half with laughter, half pain, she recognized—the large, folded, triangular earflaps of a pig! And the alien’s muzzle was pugged, like hers.

  Dear stars, what cosmic joke was this?

  The rest of the alien’s body was not at all porcine, but seemed worn and gaunt from travel and bearing the weight of its companion. Built more ruggedly than the original Watcher, its pelt was dusty red and it was wearing a thin vest that covered the chest area and tied behind as a knot which its rider clung to. A cloak was also tied round it. Its eyes were not abnormally large, more like pale human eyes without visible whites. Walking quadrupedally, or walk-hopping as it was now, its shoulders were lower than its rump, and the stumpy tail stuck straight out behind, possibly from excitement.

  As it approached Calgary its gaze shifted from her to the wrecked ship, and images of the starry night of space filled her head, alternating occasionally with a vision of the lavender cloud ceiling overhead, and the 200-kilometer thickness of cloud that had blanked her view coming down—and then back again to the stars—the stars as she had seen them in a hundred shifting views.

  She began to receive a curious new impression.

  When the creature, or person, came slowly right to Calgary, it sat up as far as it could without spilling its rider, and laid first one thin hand and then the other on Calgary’s broken wing. She became sure.

  This was reverence. Here was a longing for the stars that filled its soul, the stars from which it was closed away forever by the implacable, never-ending cloud. As plainly as speech, its gesture said, “This—this came from the stars!”

  When it raised its gaze to her, its face had changed to a strange openmouthed pursing, like a child trying to pronounce “th”; denoting she knew not what, until she received the image of what must be herself, weirdly exaggerated, among the stars; and understood, from her own experience.

  “You—you, an intelligent alien—have come here from the stars! Life is out there, beyond our heavy sky!”

  It was almost as if it were worshiping Calgary and herself—no, it was just that she and it were the most precious, exciting things in life to it. Perhaps, alone of its kind, it had insisted that there was life beyond the sky? And was now proved right? She had met a human astronomer who would have felt this way.

  The alien had now clambered up onto the wing stub to peer in, pushing back its beautiful ears to see better. Close up, its muzzle was complex and pleasingly furred. As it alternately inspected the cabin and gazed at her, its small companion clambered off onto the wing, agilely pulling itself by its shrunken arms. She saw that it had a large, thick, apparently partly prehensile tail, which served to boost it along in place of the missing legs. Its bare skin was scurfy and wrinkled; CP understood that it was very old. It seemed to be interested in the length, the width, the sheer size, of Calgary.

  But the larger alien’s head kept sagging; it was spent with exhaustion, she saw its eyelids droop, pull open again, and reclose despite itself. It sank down into the uncomfortable corner between the wing stub and the window, not even untying its cloak, looking toward her as long as it could stay conscious. For a moment CP feared it was ill or dying, but received a faint image of it waking up animatedly.

  She wished she could at least undo its cloak to cushion its head. A moment later the little old alien dragged itself over and did just that, as if “hearing” her.

  Then it turned its bright eyes on her, far less tired than its friend. It seemed to have something to convey: images of herself, her hands as she fought Calgary down, came to her. What could this mean?

  As if exasperated, the little being pulled itself to the remains of the booster rocket by the wing base; showing an odd combination of the activity of a child with great age. There it patted the boos
ter, pointing first to her and then to itself. This was the first time she’d seen anyone here point manually.

  Images of Calgary descending came again. She was baffled. Sensing this, the old creature seized a stout twig lying on the wing, raised it high, and dropped it.

  The twig fell briskly—then slowed, slowed, halted before touching down—and as she stared, it reversed course and slowly rose upward, back to the alien’s hand.

  CP’s eyes smarted with staring, she had consciously to blink. What had she seen if not movement-by-remote-will—telekinesis!

  The act seemed to have tired the alien, but it looked at her intently, holding up one hand. In human gesture-language this would say, “Attend!”

  CP “attended.” The alien screwed up its small, wrinkled face, closed its eyes.

  And Calgary rocked. A single startling lurch.

  There was no question of some physical shift of weight doing it—the ship took a pull so strong she could hear mud sucking under the crushed hull.

  She had to believe.

  Incredible as it was, this tiny old being was, or exerted, the force that had slowed Calgary and brought her safely in. Somehow it had reached out all those thousands of kilometers, to the heavy, hurtling ship, and slowed it.

  Saved her life.

  She didn’t know how to say thank you, even to show gratitude. She could only point to it and bow her head ignorantly, stammering, “Thank you, oh, thank you!” through the speaker. In the end she actually knelt on the tilted deck, but was not satisfied.

  The little old being shied away from the speaker, but seemed to understand that she understood. It was panting with fatigue. But after a few moments’ rest it did something new. Advancing to the speaker, it pointed to itself and said loudly, “Tadak.”