A Way Home

by Theodore Sturgeon

“That’s what the man in the street said—in Hiroshima. That’s what the old-time aeronaut said from the basket of his balloon when they told him about heavier-than-air craft. That’s what—”

  “All right, all right, Jack. I know the rest of the speech. If you want dialectics instead of what’s left of a night’s sleep, I might point out that the things you have mentioned have all concerned human endeavors. Show me any new plastic, a new metal, a new kind of engine, and though I may not begin to understand it, I can accept it because it is of human origin. But this, this man, or whatever he is—”

  “I know,” said Jack, more gently. “It’s frightening because it’s strange, and away down underneath we feel that anything strange is necessarily dangerous. That’s why we wear our best manners for strangers and not for our friends. But I still don’t think we should give this character any aspirin.”

  “He seems to breathe the same air we do. He perspires, he talks...I think he talks.”

  “You have a point. Well, if it’ll ease his pain at all, it may be worth trying. Give him just one.”

  Iris went to the pump with a collapsible cup from her first-aid kit, and filled it. Kneeling by the silver-skinned man, she propped up his head, gently put the aspirin between his lips, and brought the cup to his mouth. He sucked the water in greedily, and then went completely limp.

  “Oh-oh. I was afraid of that.”

  Iris put her hand over the man’s heart. “Jack!”

  “Is he...what is it, Iris?”

  “Not dead,-if that’s what you mean. Will you feel this?” Jack put his hand beside Iris’. The heart was beating with massive, slow blows, about eight to the minute. Under it, out of phase completely with the main beat, was another, an extremely fast, sharp beat, which felt as if it were going about three hundred.

  “He’s having some sort of palpitation,” Jack said.

  “And in two hearts at once!”

  Suddenly the man raised his head and uttered a series of ululating shrieks and howls. His eyes opened wide, and across them fluttered a translucent nicitating membrane. He lay perfectly still with his mouth open, shrieking and gargling. Then with a lightning movement he snatched Jack’s hand to his mouth. A pointed tongue, light-orange and four inches longer than it had any right to be, flicked out and licked Jack’s hand. Then the strange eyes closed, the shrieks died to a whimper and faded out, and the man relaxed.

  “Sleeping now,” said Iris. “Oh, I hope we haven’t done anything to him!”

  “We’ve done something. I just hope it isn’t serious. Anyhow, his arm isn’t bothering him any. That’s all we were worried about in the first place.”

  Iris put a cushion under the man’s oddly planed head and touched the beach mattress he was lying on. “He has a beautiful mustache,” she said. “Like silver. He looks very old and wise.”

  “So does an owl. Let’s go to bed.”

  Jack woke early, from a dream in which he had bailed out of a flying motorcycle with an umbrella that turned into a candy cane as he fell. He landed in the middle of some sharp-toothed crags which gave like sponge rubber. He was immediately surrounded by mermaids who looked like Iris and who had hands shaped like spur gears. But nothing frightened him. He awoke smiling, inordinately happy.

  Iris was still asleep. Outside somewhere he heard the tinkle of Molly’s laugh. He sat up and looked at Molly’s camp cot. It was empty. Moving quietly, so as not to disturb his wife, he slid his feet into moccasins and went out.

  Molly was on her knees beside their strange visitor, who was squatting on his haunches and—

  They were playing patty-cake.

  “Molly!”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “What are you trying to do? Don’t you realize that that man has a broken arm?”

  “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. Do you s’pose I hurt him?”

  “I don’t know. It’s very possible,” said Jack Garry testily. He went to the alien, took his good hand.

  The man looked up at him and smiled. His smile was peculiarly engaging. All of his teeth were pointed, and they were very widely spaced. “Eeee-yu mow madibu Mewhu,” he said.

  “That’s his name,” Molly said excitedly. She leaned forward and tugged at the man’s sleeve. “Mewhu. Hey, Mewhu!” And she pointed at her chest.

  “Mooly,” said Mewhu. “Mooly—Geery.”

  “See, Daddy?” Molly said ecstatically. “See?” She pointed at her father. “Daddy. Dah—dee.”

  “Deedy,” said Mewhu.

  “No, silly. Daddy.”

  “Dewdy.”

  “Dah-dy!”

  Jack, quite entranced, pointed at himself and said, “Jack.”

  “Jeek.”

  “Good enough. Molly, the man can’t say ‘ah.’ He can say ‘oo’ or ‘ee’ but not ‘ah.’ That’s good enough.”

  Jack examined the splints. Iris had done a very competent job. When she realized that instead of the radius-ulna development of a true human, Mewhu had only one bone in his forearm, she had set the arm and laid on two splints instead of one. Jack grinned. Intellectually, Iris would not accept Mewhu’s existence even as a possibility; but as a nurse, she not only accepted his body structure but skillfully compensated for its differences.

  “I guess he wants to be polite,” said Jack to his repentant daughter, “and if you want to play patty-cake he’ll go along with you, even if it hurts. Don’t take advantage of him, chicken.”

  “I won’t, Daddy.”

  Jack started up the fire and had a stick crane built and hot water bubbling by the time Iris emerged. “Takes a cataclysm to get you to start breakfast,” she grumbled through a pleased smile. “When were you a Boy Scout?”

  “Matter of fact,” said Garry, “I was once. Will modom now take over?”

  “Modom will. How’s the patient?”

  “Thriving. He and Molly had a patty-cake tournament this morning. His clothes, by the way, are red again.”

  “Jack, where does he come from?”

  “I haven’t asked him yet. When I learn to caterwaul, or he learns to talk, perhaps we’ll find out. Molly has already elicited the information that his name’s Mewhu.” Garry grinned. “And he calls me ‘Jeek.’”

  “Can’t pronounce an ‘r,’ hm?”

  “That’ll do, woman. Get on with the breakfast.”

  While Iris busied herself over the fire, Jack went to look at the house. It wasn’t as bad as he had thought—a credit to poor construction. Apparently the upper two rooms were a late addition and had just been perched onto the older, comparatively flat-topped lower section. The frame of Molly’s bed was bent beyond repair, but the box spring and mattress were intact. The old roof seemed fairly sound, where the removal of the jerry-built little top story had exposed it. The living room would be big enough for him and Iris, and Molly’s bed could be set up in the study. There were tools and lumber in the garage, the weather was warm and clear, and Jack Garry was very much attracted by the prospect of hard work for which he would not get paid, as long as it wasn’t writing. By the time Iris called him for breakfast, he had most of the debris cleared from the roof and a plan of action mapped out. All he would have to do would be to cover the hole where the stairway landing had been and go over the roof for potential leaks. A good rain, he reflected, would search those out for him quickly enough.

  “What about Mewhu?” Iris asked as she handed him an aromatic plate of eggs and bacon. “If we feed him any of this, do you think he’ll throw another fit?”

  Jack looked at their visitor, who sat on the other side of the fire, very close to Molly, gazing big-eyed at their breakfasts.

  “I don’t know. We could give him a little, I suppose.”

  Mewhu inhaled his sample and wailed for more. He ate a second helping, and when Iris refused to fry more eggs, he gobbled toast and jam. Each new thing he tasted he would nibble at, then he would blink twice and bolt it down. The only exception was the coffee. One taste was sufficient. He put it down on the ground and ve
ry carefully, very delicately overturned it.

  “Can you talk to him?” Iris asked suddenly.

  “He can talk to me,” declared Molly.

  “I’ve heard him,” Jack said.

  “Oh, no. I don’t mean that,” Molly denied vehemently. “I can’t make any sense out of that stuff.”

  “What do you mean, then?”

  “I...I dunno, Mommy. He just—talks to me, that’s all.” Jack and Iris looked at each other. “Oh,” said Iris. Jack shook his head, looking at his daughter carefully, as if he had not really seen her before. He could think of nothing to say, and rose.

  “Think the house can be patched up?”

  “Oh, sure.” He laughed. “You never did like the color of the upstairs rooms, anyway.”

  “I don’t know what’s got into me,” Iris said thoughtfully. “I’d have kicked like a mule at any part of this. I’d have packed up and gone home if, say, just a wall was gone upstairs, or if there were just a hole in the roof, or if this...this android phenomenon arrived suddenly. But when it all happens at once—I can take it all.”

  “Question of perspective. Show me a nagging woman and I’ll show you one who hasn’t enough to worry about.”

  “You’ll get out of my sight or you’ll have this frying pan bounced off your skull,” said Iris steadily. Jack got.

  Molly and Mewhu trailed after him as he returned to the house—and stood side by side goggling at him as he mounted the ladder.

  “Whatsha doing, Daddy?”

  “Marking off the edges of this hole where the stairway hits the place where the roof isn’t, so I can clean up the edges with a saw.”

  “Oh.”

  Jack roughed out the area with a piece of charcoal, lopped off the more manageable rough edges with a hatchet, cast about for his saw. It was still in the garage. He climbed down, got it, climbed up again, and began to saw. Twenty minutes of this, and sweat was streaming down his face. He knocked off, climbed down, doused his head at the pump, lit a cigarette, climbed back up on the roof.

  “Why don’t you jump off and back?”

  The roofing job was looking larger and the day seemed warmer than it had. Jack’s enthusiasm was in inverse proportion to these factors. “Don’t be funny, Molly.”

  “Yes, but Mewhu wants to know.”

  “Oh, he does. Ask him to try it.”

  He went back to work. A few minutes later, when he paused for a breath, Mewhu and Molly were nowhere to be seen. Probably over by the tent, in Iris’ hair, he thought, and went on sawing.

  “Daddy!”

  Daddy’s unaccustomed arm and shoulder were, by this time, yelling for help. The dry softwood alternately cheesed the saw out of line and bound it. He answered impatiently, “Well, what?”

  “Mewhu says to come. He wants to show you something.”

  “Show me what? I haven’t time to play now, Molly. I’ll attend to Mewhu when we get a roof over our heads again.”

  “But it’s for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “The thing in the tree.”

  “Oh, all right.” Prompted more by laziness than by curiosity, Jack climbed back down the ladder. Molly was waiting. Mewhu was not in sight.

  “Where is he?”

  “By the tree,” she said with exaggerated patience, taking his hand. “Come on. It’s not far.”

  She led him around the house and across the bumpy track that was euphemistically known as a road. There was a tree down on the other side. He looked from it to the house, saw that in line with the felled tree and his damaged roof were more broken trees, where something had come down out of the sky, skimmed the tops of the trees, angling closer to the ground until it wiped the top off his house, and had then risen up and up—to where?

  They went deeper into the woods for ten minutes, skirting an occasional branch or fallen tree top, until they came to Mewhu, who was leaning against a young maple. He smiled, pointed up into a tree, pointed to his arm, to the ground. Jack looked at him in puzzlement.

  “He fell out of the tree and broke his arm,” said Molly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, he just did. Daddy.”

  “Nice to know. Now can I get back to work?”

  “He wants you to get the thing in the tree.”

  Jack looked upward. Hung on a fork two thirds of the way up the tree was a gleaming object, a stick about five feet long with a streamlined shape on each end. rather like the wingtip tanks of a P-80. “What on earth is that?”

  “I dunno. I Can’t—He tol’ me, but I dunno. Anyway, it’s for you, so you don’t...so you don’t…” She looked at Mewhu for a moment. The alien’s silver mustache seemed to swell a little. “—so you don’t have to climb the ladder so much.”

  “Molly, how did you know that?”

  “He told me, that’s all. Gosh, Daddy, don’t be mad. I don’t know how, honest; he just did, that’s all.”

  “I don’t get it,” muttered Jack. “Anyhow, what’s this about that thing in the tree? I’m supposed to break my arm too?”

  “It isn’t dark.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Molly shrugged. “Ask him.”

  “Oh, I think I catch that. He fell out of the tree because it was dark. He thinks I can get up there and get the whatzit without hurting myself because I can see what I am doing. He also flatters me. Or is it flattery? How close to the apes does he think we are?”

  “What are you talking about, Daddy?”

  “Never mind. Why am I supposed to get that thing, anyway?”

  “Uh—so’s you can jump off the roof.”

  “That is just silly. However, I do want a look at that thing. Since his ship is gone, that object up there seems to be the only artifact he brought with him except his clothes.”

  “What’s an artifact?”

  “Second cousin to an artichoke. Here goes nothin’,” and he swung up into the tree. He had not climbed a tree for years, and as he carefully chose his way, it occurred to him that there were probably more efficient ways of gaining altitude.

  The tree began to shiver and sway with his weight. He looked down once and decided instantly not to do it again. He looked up and was gratified to see how close he was to the object he was after. He pulled himself up another three feet and was horrified at how far away it was, for the branches were very small up here. He squirmed upward, reached, and his fingers just brushed against the shank of the thing. It had two rings fastened to it, he noticed, each about a foot from the center, large enough to get an arm through. It was one of these which was hung up on a branch. He chinned himself, then, with his unpracticed muscles cracking, took one hand off and reached.

  The one-hand chinning didn’t come off so well. His arm began to sag. The ring broke off its branch as his weight came on it. He was immediately surrounded by the enthusiastic crackling of breaking shrubbery. He folded his tongue over and got his teeth on it. Since he had a grip on Mewhu’s artifact, he held on—even when it came free. He began to fall, tensing himself for the bone-breaking jolt he would get at the bottom.

  He fell quite fast at first, and then the stick he was holding began to bear him up. He thought it must have caught on a branch, by some miracle—but it hadn’t! He was drifting down like a thistle seed, hanging from the rod, which in some impossible fashion was supporting itself in mid-air. There was a shrill, faint whooshing sound from the two streamlined fixtures at the ends of the rod. He looked down, blinked sweat out of his eyes, and looked again. Mewhu was grinning a broad and happy grin; Molly was slack-jawed with astonishment.

  The closer he came to the ground the slower he went. When, after what seemed an eternity, he felt the blessed pressure of earth under his feet, he had to stand and pull the rod down. It yielded slowly, like an eddy-current brake. Dry leaves danced and whirled under the end pieces.

  “Gee, Daddy, that was wonderful!”

  He swallowed twice to wet down his dry esophagus, and pulled his eyes bac
k in. “Yeah. Fun,” he said weakly.

  Mewhu came and took the rod out of his hand, and dropped it. It stayed perfectly horizontal, and sank slowly down to the ground, where it lay. Mewhu pointed at it, at the tree, and grinned.

  “Just like a parachute. Oh, gee, Daddy!”

  “You keep away from it,” said Jack, familiar with youthful intonation. “Heaven knows what it is. It might go off, or something.”

  He looked fearfully at the object. It lay quietly,’ the hissing of the end pieces stilled. Mewhu bent suddenly and picked it up, held it over his head with one hand. Then he calmly lifted his feet and hung from it. It lowered him gently, butt first, until he sat on the ground, in a welter of dead leaves; as soon as he picked it up, the streamlined end pieces had begun to blast again.

  “That’s the silliest thing I ever saw. Here—let me see it.” It was floating about waist-high. He leaned over one of the ends. It had a fine round grille over it. He put out a hand. Mewhu reached out and caught his wrist, shaking his head. Apparently it was dangerous to go too near those ends. Garry suddenly saw why. They were tiny, powerful jet motors of some kind. If the jet was powerful enough to support a man’s weight, the intake must be drawing like mad—probably enough to snap a hole through a man’s hand like a giant ticket-puncher.

  But what controlled it? How was the jet strength adjusted to the weight borne by the device, and to the altitude? He remembered without pleasure that when he had fallen with it from the treetop, he had dropped quite fast, and that he went slower and slower as he approached the ground. And yet when Mewhu had held it over his head, it had borne his weight instantly and lowered him very slowly. And besides, how was it so stable? Why didn’t it turn upside down and blast itself and passenger down to earth?

  He looked at Mewhu with some increase of awe. Obviously he came from a place where the science was really advanced. He wondered if he would ever be able to get any technical information from his visitor—and if he would be able to understand it. Of course, Molly seemed to be able to—

  “He wants you to take it back and try it on the roof,” said Molly.

  “How can that refugee from a Kuttner opus help me?”

  Immediately Mewhu took the rod, lifted it, ducked under it, and slipped his arms through the two rings, so that it crossed his back like a water-bucket yoke. Peering around, he turned to face a clearing in the trees, and before their startled eyes he leaped thirty feet in the air, drifted away in a great arc, and came gently to rest twenty yards away.