by Paul Corey
I set the shutters for time exposure and open, and the aperture at f22. I held them up by the bows for a quick examination. An awkward looking gadget for certain.
I laid it gently on the table.
Had I created a device for vision? I stretched out on the couch and ignored it. I didn’t even look at this thing I had made.
I thought, well, the executioner hasn’t come yet. Then, through the walls, I saw Ello coming.
NINETEEN
For a moment I imagined her rushing into my arms. She would tell me how she had missed me all night. Her lips would frantically search for mine.
But before she even split out of the Science Building I saw that the beautiful eyes I had painted were gone. I was on my feet when she came in. She didn’t come near me.
“You must not touch me again,” she said. Her voice sounded thick with emotion. “Or put your lips on mine.”
That crumpled me. “If that’s the way you want it,” I said. But my hands reached out longingly towards her. She didn’t draw back and I didn’t quite touch her.
“I’ve told no one what you did,” she said. “They haven’t made up their minds what to do with you yet. You are still in my keeping.”
“Shouldn’t I have a right to say something about it, be given a trial or something?”
“Animals have no say on Grenda. They are not given trials.”
“But I’m not a Grendan. Hasn’t a person from another planet rights above and beyond the customs of your own planet?”
She was thoughtful. “My Father looks at it that way. But Zinzer says you are a threat to Our-Way-of-Life.”
“What about Mun?”
“He hasn’t made up his mind but he will today.”
“What do you want the decision to be, Ello?”
Her answer came quickly. I’d like to keep you for a pet. You’d make a wonderful pet. I could study you.”
“A pet?”
“Yes.” She started to turn away.
Being a household pet was an idea to think about. But at the moment I didn’t want her to go away again. My glance rested on the sun-glasses frames and camera lenses I had laid on the table.
“Ello, yesterday you said you wished you could see.”
She turned back to me, waiting. “Yes, I remember. I would like the experience of seeing.”
“I’ve rigged up something,” I said. “I don’t know if it’ll work. You—you got me thinking with your evolution story. Grendans were deprived of their sight, but it’s possible there remains an optical seat in your brain still.”
“That’s true,” she said. “Our anatomists say so. It’s like the appendix and the tail stump you Earth people have. Grendans don’t have tail stumps.”
“This probably won’t work,” I said. “Just an idea. I figured that if it were possible to put enough stimulation to that dormant centre it might be activated again. That’s what this device of mine is supposed to do.”
“I’d like to try it,” she said.
“You said I wasn’t to touch you again. But I’ll have to a little.”
Her breathing quickened, and when she spoke her voice trembled. “Bring on this gadget.”
She turned up her face to me, lips parted. Gently I placed the bows of the frames over her ears, keeping one hand covering the lenses all the time. I adjusted the bridge in position on the base of her nose.
Her hands fluttered up exploringly, then subsided.
“You are putting that thing on the same place on my face that you have eyes on yours,” she said. “Don’t tell me your eyes are removable like these.”
“No. Mine are fixed all right. It would be mighty painful to me to have them removed.” All the time I was keeping the lenses covered. “This thing is just the two lenses from my cameras put into my sun-glasses frames. Just an idea. It probably won’t work at all.”
I took a deep breath. “Hold quite still now. I’m going to take my hand away from the lenses. If you perceive anything don’t be frightened.”
Slowly I removed my hand. I was sweating, and I was scared. For the first time in my life I think I must have experienced some of the feelings of a creative person. I was still in the brain-picker class, but I had reached out a little. Of course, nothing might happen, but I was trying something without the help of a computer. If I failed, I would know the failure of a person who tries something new and has to face the fact that it doesn’t work.
Ello remained quite still. She didn’t say anything. Then her hands came up and fingered lightly over those strange spectacles. I knew she was interpreting them with her acutely sensitive touch. But if there was an unused optical nerve the concentrated light waves from the lenses weren’t arousing it.
I was standing quite close to her. The glasses seemed firmly set in place. They successfully replaced the painted-on-eyes of yesterday. The blue coating of the lenses gave her a slightly cow-like look. But that didn’t make her as unattractive as it sounds. Cows have very beautiful eyes.
I stepped back and she gave a sudden gasp. Fear tensed the corners of her mouth and quivered her nostrils.
“Is this seeing?” she whispered.
Her hands came up and covered the lenses.
I took them gently away. I held up one finger about two feet from her nose.
“Do you see my finger?” I hardly dared breathe.
She stared at it a moment, or she seemed to be staring.
Then her fingers brushed swiftly around it.
“These things tell me there are two fingers when I perceive there is only one.”
“Hold still a minute,” I said.
Very carefully I adjusted the frames until I guessed that the lenses would focus the two images on the same spot in her head. I hoped it would be somewhere near accurate. She was at least getting something of an image. I didn’t dare believe that I had really succeeded. I stepped back again and waited.
Her lips softened and over her face spread wonder. She was seeing for the first time. Then she began running about peering closely at everything. She had forgotten Earth talk and twittered like a bird in her excitement. Everything had to be examined and re-examined, the table, couch, my kit, the guard through the wall, me standing in the centre of the room.
At last she whispered, “I can see. I can see.”
I led her to a section of the partition wall to the bathroom and stood her close, facing it. Then I held my survival kit flat against the opposite side so that she would get a reflection.
Her mouth dropped open. Then she said, “I’m seeing me?” There was a kind of awe in her voice now.
Taking a step backward, she tipped her head up and down so that she could see all of herself from head to toe. Then she turned to me and did the same thing.
“I’m seeing you.” A glowing smile broke over her face. “But you’re not an animal. You look just like I perceive the people of my planet.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get across to you. I’m not an animal in the sense you people think of animals.”
She looked back at her reflection again.
There must have been other vestigial reactions from the past because her hands came up and began arranging her hair. It was a gesture I had seen Karen make many times.
My arm tired of holding the kit and I let it drop. Like any woman on Earth she seemed annoyed that she had been abruptly deprived of an image of herself to admire.
She faced me again and murmured,“I can see.”
As I watched, a new expression took over her whole face. Her lips grew full. Then she flung her arms around my neck and kissed me.
She drew back, her arms still around my neck. “Oh, Doctor Stone, you’re the most wonderful thing that ever happened. You’ve made me see. See. See. See.” She kissed me again, then pressed her face into the hollow of my neck whispering, “I see and I believe.”
The hard frames of those glasses gouged me. I thought, something needs to be done about that before they’re reall
y successful.
I whispered in her ear, “Ello, I love you.”
She buzzed softly. She raised her head. “Love?” She gave a cooing sound. “Love? Oh, Doctor Stone, I’ve never felt like this before.”
And I felt ten years younger. “Darling, please call me Thur,” I said.
“Darling? Is that a love word?”
“There are a lot of others I can teach you,” I said.
She buzzed, then twittered. “I mean,” she said, “Thur, darling, you’ve really done something for me.”
Her head tilted and I knew she was looking up through the pale green roof to the sun climbing the sky. A cloud drifted in from the west, high and self-satisfied.
“And that is what beauty is. The people of Grenda have lost all that.”
Her hands gently adjusted the glasses. Then she kissed me hard again.
“Darling.” The word was a whisper. “Is that the right way to use the word?” Her voice quickened. “We will make many of these gadgets. All the people on Grenda will see again. They will see beauty and believe. I must tell my father.”
Before I could stop her, she ran through the wall.
TWENTY
The scene over in the lab was unclear to say the least.
I saw Doctor Rhoa and the other two scientists. Others were present as well. When Ello and the glasses hit that crowd they will blow up like a nova, I told myself, a little nova anyhow.
I tried to grasp something for reassurance. Now they will know what seeing means, I thought. They’ll understand my intelligence.
Through the walls I saw Ello reach the lab. The distance and the confusion of classes and other activity between didn’t let me have too clear a picture. I saw her standing among the scientists.
That room must have sounded like a tipped over beehive, plus squeaks and twitters and the many other sounds these people can make when they get excited. I saw arms waving. Then a big Grendan cut across my view. When he passed, I saw that Ello no longer wore the glasses.
The were examining them, I told myself. Let them try the things on. Let them do a little invading of privacy. They’d see it wasn’t so bad.
Suddenly, I saw them spilling out of the lab. At first I thought they were heading my way. But they were leaving the building, going in the other direction.
Once, I saw a commotion over by a larger building—an administration building maybe—and I thought I saw Doctor Rhoa elevated above the others a little as if he were standing on some steps. Then he, or whoever it was, became lost in the confusion of moving people.
Maybe they were considering me, the glasses, the Earth, the Universe. This was bound to upset their idea of things. There’d be confusion and excitement all over the place. Then I lost sight of the group completely.
A low rumbling sound caught my attention. I couldn’t make it out.
Just relax and wait, I told myself, and sat down on the couch. Once they get it through their heads what this business of seeing really is, they’ll let me free and accept me among them.
I hoped they would send Ello to get me. The thought of her lips and her body sent my blood pressure up. The odour of heather seemed all around me and for the first time I realised that that was how she smelled.
But there was no sign of anyone coming back to the laboratory.
Lal brought my lunch. He seemed uncommunicative.
When I said, “It looks wonderful,” he said, “Thank you,” no more.
I buzzed at him, but he only gave a little shake to his head and went out.
I ate. It was a good meal, light but tasty enough. Lal didn’t come for the empty tray. I paced the room waiting for some report from Ello and the scientists.
The rumbling increased. I tried to determine the cause. Then, for the first time, since I had been on Grenda, I realised that a storm was building up.
Clouds, looking terrifyingly black through the pale green roof, boiled up from the west. The jagged lightning and the sharp-cracking thunder increased until the light and the sound seemed continuous, relieved only by brighter and louder instances. This was a display like nothing I had ever seen on Earth.
As the storm approached I could see the lightning strike through to the ground between the transparent buildings. Sometimes a bolt hit one of the roofs and great balls of fire bounced and splattered over the surrounding area. But mostly the bolts hit the ground. They hit around the Annex until I felt like the target of a colossal knife thrower.
For a moment I felt a paralysing terror. Crash! Crash! Crash! All around. On every side. I became stone.
Then the rain came. I could see the huge drops, cupsized, strike the roof above me, strike and splash upward, and be beaten down by more drops until the surface quivered to the depth of several inches of water. I stared up at this deluge, gnawing at my knuckles and not knowing it.
Except for the lightning this world had become as dark as night. I seemed blind. The roar of thunder and rain was so continuous and loud, and louder still, that it seemed almost like an absence of sound. So much sound that my ears would not register that sound.
Some time during it all there came an even brighter flash and a louder crash. The Annex shook. My room shivered all around me. That had been the best it could do. The din of the storm gradually passed after that.
It seemed like hours, and it was a long time, before the ragged edge of thicker darkness moved up the sky and let faint light filter through. As visibility increased, I saw Grendans going about their work, seeming only slightly disturbed. My guards were changed. They buzzed together for a minute or two before the new watch took over. They were gossiping about the extent of the storm, I concluded.
At last the rain stopped and the sky swallowed its thunder. Daylight returned and I saw that the roof was no longer pale green and the pink had gone from the wall. I felt cold and wrapped myself in my fallon cape.
Thus I waited. There was no evidence of the scientists coming back. What had happened to them? Where was Ello?
I saw workers in the Science Building putting away their files and tasks for the day. When the sky finally cleared, the sun was already below the edge of the mountains.
Lal came with my dinner. He seemed a little surprised that my lunch tray was still there.
“I forgot,” he said, but went no farther with an apology. Of course not—animals don’t rate apologies.
A glance at the meal told me that it was some kind of pressed meat and biscuits, plus a large glass of liquid with a head on it like Earth beer. There was certainly little variety to it, and everything was obviously cold.
“Don’t I rate a hot meal tonight?” I asked.
“The storm knocked the converter out,” he said.
That didn’t surprise me. That sort of thing still happened to our power sources on Earth when we had violent electrical storms.
“How long will it be out?"
“Usually several hours.”
“Does this sort of thing occur often here?”
He hesitated. “Almost always when we have a storm like the one this afternoon.”
“How often is that?”
“Two or three times at this season of the year.”
He picked up my lunch tray, obviously anxious to get away and avoid answering more questions. I buzzed at him and he buzzed back. Then he split out. I had a feeling that what he had buzzed back hadn’t been too friendly.
I ate my cold meal. The drink was strong. It was the first beverage with a kick I had drunk on this planet. I wished there was some way to get more.
Darkness came down and I turned on my sun-torch.
What happens now, I wondered. Maybe Ello will come around this evening and fill me in on what has been going on, I thought. But she didn’t show up.
After a while, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. There was no water pressure—only a tiny trickle that stopped almost at once.
The temperature had dropped noticeably in the room. I paced about partly to keep warm, partly to reduce
the tension of not knowing what had happened or was happening. Finally I curled up on my couch, covered myself with my fallon cape and went to sleep.
Some time during the night I woke up in a sweat and flung off the cape. I was briefly aware of the faint pink glow of the walls. The converter had been repaired, evidently. But how long it had taken I didn’t check. When I awakened in the morning the roof was again a pale green.
In the bathroom everything functioned as usual. Once again I felt self-conscious surrounded by transparent walls. I had cause this time. After all, I had given Ello eyes. Sight was loose on Grenda this morning.
“The hell with privacy,” I said aloud and did my usual in the bathroom.
My breakfast was late this morning and Lal didn’t bring it. I asked the new waiter, “What’s going on outside?”
He didn’t reply. Quite obviously he didn’t understand me. So I buzzed twice at him. He began shaking violently and ran from the room. I wondered what I had said to him. Something scurrilous, I hoped.
It was a hot meal again, good pancakes and meat and some kind of marmalade, and the usual clear hot drink. I ate heartily and resumed waiting.
There was no sign of any activity over in the lab.
I got up and did my exercises and took a shower. I paced the floor for a while. My impatience began to blow up to fury. Great Galaxy! What was going on here? I tried to split the wall. I waved my arm up and down at it. I buzzed at it. I hunted for a seam of some kind where the Grendans had been splitting in and out. Finally I kicked it as hard as I could. The guards didn’t even bother to turn round.
Lunch came. Still a different waiter. He was very sloppily dressed and his forehead had the conspicuous suggestion of eyebrows like those of the guards.
I buzzed at him. Instantly, I felt the beam tearing through my chest. He wasn’t going to take any guff off me. But it vanished as quickly as it came and he fled.