Meet Me at Infinity

by James Tiptree Jr.

  “Thank you.”

  When I detach the motor and batteries, he comes to examine them.

  “More wonders. How does this work?”

  “Later, later.” I am puffing with exertion as I take out all my gear and turn the boat over to make a bed, hopefully out of reach of the little nocturnal crabs and lizards on these beaches. The alien watches everything closely, nodding to himself. When I have dried the dinghy’s bottom and laid out my sleep shelter, he sits down on the sand alongside.

  “Now you will—” Quick images of me relieving myself among the papyrus and returning to sit on the boat and eat.

  I laugh; the pictures are deft cartoons, emphasizing our mutual differences and also the—I fear—growing plumpness around my belt.

  “Yes. And I fill my canteens. The beach last night had no fresh water.”

  “Good. I, too, will eat.” He opens his belt pouch and extracts the crabmeat, together with two neatly cleaned little reef fish. Raw fish must be a staple here.

  When I return, he is still delicately eating. I offer him water but it is refused. “You don’t need fresh water after such a long time in the salt sea?”

  “Oh, no.” I reflect that their bodies must have solved the problem of osmosis, which dehydrates seagoing Humans. Perhaps that beautiful pale greenish, velvety-looking skin is in fact some sort of osmotic organ.

  I settle down with my food bars, enjoying the unmistakable sense of companionship that emanates from the alien. We are both examining each other between bites, and I find that his smile is contagious; I am grinning, too. Extraordinary! Especially after my last aliens.

  Now I can see more signs of his—or her—aquatic origins. A rudimentary, charmingly tinted dorsal fin shows at the back of his neck, running down his spine to surface again just above its end. There is a frilly little fin on the outside of each wrist. All these fishlike trappings fold away neatly when not in use. The flipper-fins on his feet fold over the toes so as to appear as merely decorations. And his hair isn’t true hair, I see, but more like the very thin tendrils of a rosy anemone; a sensory organ, perhaps. Am I seeing a member of a race that has evolved directly from fishes? I think so; these appendages look more like evolutionary remnants than new developments to my untrained eye. He is on his way out of, rather than back to, the sea. But could he be cold-blooded? No; when our bodies had brushed together, I had felt solid warmth under the thick, cool integument.

  But perhaps he is not “on his way” at all; on this world, his adaptations seem perfect. There is every reason to retain his aquatic features, and none at all to lose them. I think I am seeing a culminant form, which will not change much, at least from natural pressures.

  He for his part is looking me over with care.

  “You do not swim well,” he concludes, extending one foot and flicking the flippers open.

  “No, but we have these.” I reach under the dinghy and pull out my swim fins to show him. He laughs appreciatively, and I reflect that my race, like seals, is returning to the sea—by prosthesis.

  “My world has much dry land,” I explain. “My race grew up from land animals who never went to sea.” What am I doing, assuming a grasp of evolution theory on the part of one whose mind may not be much more than a fish’s? Yet he seems to understand.

  “Wonders.”’ He smiles.

  Next he is fascinated by my teeth. I show him all I can, and he in turn displays the ridges of hard white cartilage I had taken for teeth.

  And so we pass the evening, chatting like amiable strangers, while the golden sun turns red and sinks, silhouetting the fronds of the papyrus. We exchange names late, as is customary with telepaths. His is Kamir. He has a little trouble with mine, Tom Jared. His people, he tells me, are three days’ travel away, to the east. Why is he alone? That one is difficult; I can only guess that he means he is exploring for pleasure. “It is the custom.”

  Somehow I cannot bring myself to take up the question of sex, even though I know he is curious, too; once or twice I catch a tendril of his thought lingering around my swim trunks.

  But through all our talk, I am amazed by what can only be called its courtesy. Its civility. Never do I strike a hostile or “primitive” reaction. It is a little like being questioned by a bright, well-brought-up child. Innocence, curiosity, those are neotenic—childlike—traits. Neotenia has been a feature of Human development. Kamir’s race is neotenic, too. But beyond that, he is indefinably but unmistakably civilized. Whatever may turn out to be his technological level, I am communing with a civilized mind.

  It grows darker, and a myriad of unknown stars come out. I grow sleepy, despite the interest of the occasion. Kamir notices it.

  “Now you desire sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We sleep.” And he pulls up the back flap of his loincloth to make a pad for his head and simply lies back peacefully. I wriggle round in my sleep shelter and do the same.

  “Good night, sleep well, Kamir.”

  “Sleep well, ‘Om Jhared.” Then suddenly he adds a question I sense as deadly serious: “Will more like you come?”

  I am glad to be able to reassure him. “No, unless you ask. Oh, maybe once a small party to record your world, if you do not object.”

  “Why should we?”

  And so we both relax, the alien on his warm white sand, me on my galactic dinghy, and the little crabs and lizards and other creatures of the night come out and sing or fiddle or chirrup their immemorial chorus. I remember thinking as I drift off that they are a good warning system; only when all is still do they sing.

  When I waken in full sunlight, all is calm and still. Too still; the sea is like glass. I check my barometer. Yes, it has started downward.

  Kamir is nowhere in sight. I feel a sense of loss. What, has he abandoned interest in me to return to his watery world? I hope not.

  And—good!—in a moment or two there’s a splash out on the reef. Kamir surfaces. He comes quickly back to shore, towing something. When I go to meet him, I see that it is a silky purse-net, full of flapping fish.

  Too preoccupied to greet me, he hurries up the beach and kneels over his catch, his beautiful face tense. He begins quickly decapitating them, finishing the last one before cleaning any. Then he sits back, sighing relievedly.

  “Their pain and confusion are hard to bear,” he tells me. Then, smiling, “Morning greetings, ‘Om Jhared!”

  “Greetings.” I know what he means. I once made the error of going too near a meat-killing place; it had taken me a fortnight to recover.

  “I wish we could eat some other way. We all do,” Kamir tells me, working on the fish. “But plants are not enough.”

  I agree, looking over his net. An elegant little artifact, clearly handmade. His is not a machine culture. “I think there is a storm coming.”

  “Oh yes.” He touches his shining hair. “My head is full of it.”

  “When?”

  “This evening for sure.” He looks me over again, curiously. “What will you do in the storm, ‘Om Jhared?”

  “Take my stuff farther up on land and wait it out. What will you do?”

  “Well, of course, we go down into the deep water where all is calm and wait it out, as you say. Very boring… But today I think I will stay with you. I haven’t seen a storm on top since I was a child. Would you like me to be with you? I can help carry your things.” His head cocks to the side as he looks up, shy, coy, absolutely charming. I can no longer stand this convention of “he.”

  “Kamir—”

  “Yes?”

  “Kamir, in my race there are two types of people, because of our way of reproduction—” I begin a clumsy exposition of gender and sex. What’s the matter with me? I never have trouble with this part of Contact, never thought about it before.

  I am halfway through when Kamir bursts out laughing. “Yes… yes… We also have two. And… ?” Another of those killing smiles.

  “And which are you?”

  “Do you ask?�
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  “Yes.”

  “I thought it was plain. Perhaps because I am so ugly it is not.”

  “Ugly? But you are very beautiful, Kamir.”

  The lovely face turns on me, the incredible deep blue eyes wide. “Do you mean that, ‘Om Jhared?” A hand comes timidly to clasp my forearm.

  “I mean it. Yes”

  Very softly Kamir says, “I thought never to hear those words.” Then whispering, “I am an egg-bearer. What you call a female.”

  And her—her!—red head goes down on my forearm, hiding her face.

  I can only stammer, “Ah, Kamir, I wish we were not of different races!”

  “I too,” she breathes.

  It is incredible, whether a chance match of pheromones across the light-years, whatever, I am trembling. I look down her graceful back, with its lacy frill proclaiming her alienness, and it does not seem alien at all. My mermaiden.

  But I am in mortal danger, I must straighten up and fly right.

  “Kamir, I do not think you should stay with me through the storm.”

  “Why not?”

  “It—there might be dangers—” It is impossible to lie to a telepath.

  “If you can endure them, so can I! Ah, why do we speak nonsense? For some reason you are afraid of my nearness.”

  “Yes,” I say miserably. What can I tell her convincingly? Of the iron Rule Number One in ET contacts? Of the follies that Humans, men and women alike, succumb to? Of the fact which I have just realized, that I have been a very lonely man? Why else, I ask myself, should I be so smitten by a purely chance resemblance to Human beauty?

  “Look,” she says, lifting her head to the sky. “The storm is coming much faster… I don’t think I will have time to swim to a really safe place. If my presence disturbs you, I will stay far, very far away. When we have moved your things.”

  Little mischief, is she lying? My senses tell me so. But when I, too, look up, I see that the sky has taken on a curiously yellowish tint, though no clouds show yet. The sea is so flat it looks oily, and the air is ominously still and hot. She is right, whatever is coming is moving fast. And these seas are shallow, it may be a long way to a deep place. In any event, it is time to secure my possessions.

  “Very well,” I say with profound unwisdom. “Then if you want to help me, we will move my boat and the rest up into the dunes behind the beach.”

  She smiles radiantly, and we go to it.

  But it is a slow process; she exclaims with interest and curiosity over all my things, wet suit, waterproof recorder, pump, repair kit, camera, lights, charging device, scuba gear, first-aid kit, my lighter—I find she knows fire, which her people accomplish by twirling hardwood sticks—and all, down to the binoculars, which charm her, and the harpoons, which turn her very sober.

  “You kill much.”

  “Only for food, like you. Or to save my life.”

  “But this is so big.”

  “Well, I might be attacked by something big, like the crab. You killed it, you know. Without claws it will die of starvation.”

  “Oh, no! It will eat algae. And the claws will grow again. We use them like that to pull building supplies.” Image of a big crab with a harness hooked on its carapace, hauling a laden travois. “When they get dangerous, we chase them back to sea.”

  “Ah.”

  Some perverse honesty compels me to show her my waterproof laser, which I carry in my swim trunks.

  “This is for use if I am attacked on land.” I demonstrate on a nearby shell. She runs to examine the burn.

  “It would do this to flesh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, when I came in your boat, you might have done this to me?”

  Blue, blue eyes gaze at me, horrified.

  “Not unless you attacked me so viciously that my life was in danger.”

  “Oh, but could you not feel the warmth?” She flutters her hand from herself to me and back. I think. Yes—from the first moment, I could. Damn it.

  “Well! You are strange.” Shaking her head, she resumes lugging a battery up the dune. She is very strong, I notice.

  We have found a splendid hollow in the high dunes in which to ride out the storm. Somehow nothing more is said about her staying far, far away.

  Finally, we stake my big tarpaulin over the heap of belongings and bring up the boat. I rope it upside down to three stout plant roots. The scrub “trees” growing here resemble giant beach gorse and have great hold-fast roots.

  By now, the air is so humid and strange that our voices seem to reverberate on the still beach. And we can see a level line of white cloud rising up at us from the horizon, growing against the upper wind. Under it is a tinge of darkness, the first sight of the squall line. And in the far distance beyond towers pale cumulus. It looks like a whole frontal system coming on us. Will the weather change?

  “You may grow cold here, Kamir.”

  “Oh, I am used to that.”

  “You could put on my wet suit.” (What, and leave me naked? I am mad.)

  “No, when we cover our skins, we grow too thirsty.”

  Aha, I was right about the osmotic protection in the skin. Perfect adaptation.

  “Well, if it turns cold, we can always make a fire. Let’s gather some of these heavy stalks and stems.”

  When all is ready, we sit on the dune top, swinging our legs and eating our respective provisions, watching the squall line rise until it divides the visible world. On our side all is still and sunny and hot; we are caught in an eerie stasis. A kind of water animal I haven’t seen before paddles about in the bay, followed by a line of small ones.

  “Jurros,” Kamir observes. “They are very tame. Only the big fish bother them.”

  I wonder about those “big fish.” Are they sharklike? But in response to my query Kamir only laughs.

  “Oh, you pop them on the nose. They run away.”

  Well, I have heard people say that about white sharks. I resolve to watch out for any “big fish.”

  The storm is closer and closer, but still nothing stirs around us. Half the sky is shuttered with black roiling clouds, yet here it is impossibly bright and calm. The barometer must be falling through the deck, it is suddenly a little hard to breathe. I check it; yes, it’s at the lowest point I’ve seen it. This is going to be ferocious.

  We watch quietly, gripped by the drama of the scene. The water animal has now disappeared.

  Just as it seems that nothing will ever happen, a shudder runs through the world. Still in total calm, the sea wrinkles itself like the skin of a great beast. A tiny puff of cool wind lifts our hair. And a few big drops of rain, or perhaps hailstones, plop into the surface of the water and onto the beach.

  And then, with a rush and a bellow, the storm hits.

  In a moment the flat water has reared itself into a thousand billows two meters high, running unbroken from shore to shore. The breeze becomes a blast of wind against us. In the last rays of sunlight, a million specks of diamond flash from the waves into darkness. And then the sun is eclipsed by cloud, the world is twilight-dark.

  Eerily, the papyrus plants all bend over with a whipping sound before we feel the wind that bent them. And then it hits, and the boat bangs up and down as if it will tear from the earth.

  We scramble back from the dune-top and get under cover of the boat, holding it down over our heads. Then the sky opens, and tons of water dump on us, drumming intolerably on the boat. I am sure it is hail that will tear the boat, but when I stick out a hand, it is not. The world is in uproar around us.

  Kamir is going excitedly “Whoo! Whee!” I can barely hear her over the storm, but I can see her eyes flashing blue fire and her little back fin standing straight up.

  “This is not boring?” I yell.

  “No!” Laughing, grinning with excitement.

  “But—” I begin and am drowned out by a crack! of lightning, and thunder like a gigantic bolt of tearing silk. Then the cracks and flashes and roars and rumbles are all
about us. The strikes seem to be hitting the beach and the dunes. I see Kamir’s fin suddenly clamp itself into her back, and her laughter changes to a squeal. I realize she hasn’t seen, or has forgotten, the lightning part of a storm. She hangs on to my arm, quaking as each bolt hits. And then, somehow, she is in my arm, her face pressed against my chest, while I hang on to the boat for dear life with the other arm.

  “It won’t hit us, the boat will stop it,” I howl at her.

  Water is coursing down the sides of the hollow we are in. Down below, the beach has disappeared under a wilderness of sinister yellow-gray breakers that are striking and tearing against the dunes, and throwing spray to mingle with the rain on us.

  But by degrees, the wind changes from a wild whirl to a steady blow, driving the rain across us, and I am able to release my aching arm and rope the boat more securely.

  That was, I think, my last chance to escape.

  But I do not take it. That arm joins the other around the slender quivering Kamir, and she clamps her whole body against me. For warmth.

  Her back is cold. I rub it to warm her, cannot resist fingering the pretty little fin, which makes her giggle. I rub, stroke, but the coolness seems to be in her skin. It feels thick, a pale green velour over soft curves. I try to concentrate on its interest, its prevention of dehydration. Yes, I see there are tiny pores, but how they function is beyond me. I am stroking rhythmically now, unable to keep from enjoying the exquisite forms of her back and flanks.

  And oh! Warmth comes, but not the warmth I wanted. Her shivers have turned into unmistakable, sinuous wiggles under my hand. She is whispering something, her free hand feeling for my swim trunks. And, gods! Her silken loincloth seems to have come undone.… Tom Jared, what are you doing? Stop now, you fool. This is no girl, but a grown alien—a god-lost fish!

  There is no stopping. I have only time to glimpse what seems to be an organ on the front of her lower belly, a solid mounded track running up to her navel, like a newly healed scar. My body has taken me over, relieved me of the cold swim trunks, and is longing to press into her.