“You say, the other-one-like-me said there are many worlds, many peoples?”
Enthusiastic assent. I’ve hit it.
And from then on, we converse in an irreproducible mix of verbal and transmitted speech, unmatched for fluency and ease. I report it here as close as purely spoken speech can come.
“Yes, that’s true,” I tell the alien. “There are many races. Some stay on their worlds, others travel much—like me.”
The alien smiles broadly, the blue eyes in what I realize is a very beautiful face bright with pleasure. He snuggles down into a comfortable position in the bow, reaching for my rejected crab claw.
“Show me! Show me all!”
He is evidently prepared for a long session of entertainment. But the sunset is casting great golden rays across the sky, tinting the flocks of little island-born cumuli and generating lavender shadows on the blue-green sea. I must prepare for the night.
“Too many to show all. Too many to know all. I will show you one, others later. The night comes.”
“Yes, I know how you do in the night. You take this”—he slaps the boat with the knife—“onto land, and sleep. I have watched you two days.” There is a smile of mischief in his blue eyes.
What? But I only spotted him this noon. However, I recall some vague impressions of sentience nearby that had caused me momentary disquiet. So that’s what they were—emanations of my new acquaintance, watching!
“Good. Here is one other world.” I send a nice detailed view of the fiery planet of the Comenor, with a few of its highly intelligent natives hopping about or resting alertly, tripedal, on their large, kangaroolike tails. The Comenor had been one of the races I trained on.
“Ah! And they think, they speak? Do they make music?” The alien raises its voice in a provocative little chant.
“Yes… yes… let me remember—” I try to render one of the Comenor’s pastoral airs.
“Hmm…”
As he sits there reflecting, with the golden light playing on his flaming hair, I realize I may be mistaken. I have been calling him “he” because of his breastless body, flat belly, and slim hips, and perhaps also because he is apparently alone in the open sea. But that face could belong to a beautiful woman. And he is
not
Human; there is a strange fold running down the throat, and the pupils of his eyes are hourglass-shaped. Nor is he even mammalian; no nipples mar the pale green curves of his pectoral muscles, although he has a small navel. Perhaps “he” is female, or epicene, perhaps it is the custom of his race for females to wander far alone. Whatever, my new friend is enchanting to look at; even his accoutrements of knife, belt, and loincloth are charmingly carved and decorated.
“Wonderful,” he says at length. “And you have seen this and more?”
“Yes.”
“I would like to do so.”
“It might be possible, someday. Maybe. But now I must go ashore.” I send him an image of himself getting out of the boat so I can drive the bow up the beach.
“Yes, I know.” Again the hint of mischief in the smile. He pops the remains of the crab claw in his belt, and in one graceful flash is overboard. As he sails past I glimpse that strange fold on his neck opening to show a feathery purple lining. Gills! So he is truly aquatic. No wonder I didn’t see him until he decided to show.
I start the motor and examine the beach. As often here, a small stream meanders to the bay in its center, marked by clumps of the tall, plumy papyruslike plants. I’ll have fresh water to top off my canteens.
I choose the larger expanse of beach and head for its center, where I’ll have maximum warning if anything approaches. I’ve searched inland on several atolls, and so far found no sign of any predators—indeed, of anything larger than a kind of hopping mouse and a wealth of attractive semi-birds. But I’d prefer not to have even hop-mice investigate me in the night.
I rush the dinghy up a smooth place, jump out, and drag it beyond the tideline. There are low, frequent tides in this part of Wet, generated by a trio of little moons that sail across the sky three times a night, revolving around each other. Like everything else here, they are attractive—one is sulfur-yellow, another rusty pink, the third a blue-white.
The alien offers to help me with the boat. I warn him about punctures and letting the air out. He steps back, warily.
“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?”
“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.