A Handful of Time (9 page)

I began to move my left arm now, slowly, slowly stretching it out from my shoulder, I imagined, damping the sense of excitement that wanted to boil within me, the green planet rushing out to meet me. Or my windowless monad falling down to meet the planet. It doesn’t matter, of course, which way you look at it.

Because each of us, locked in the windowless monads of our senses, sees only what his brain chooses to record. And if we reach out, for reassurance, to touch the hand of a friend, there are only the empty spaces between the atoms that touch, and the little deceit our senses practice.

So used am I to the deceits of my senses, that I act as though I can communicate not only with my fellow man, but also with those other races of the galaxy whom we have not known well enough to call fellow man.

I did not know whether there would be intelligent life on Algol II or not. All I had was a chemical analysis of the atmosphere, the temperature and the gravity. But it was such a planet where, in blithe disregard of Lecomte du Noüy, life might very well evolve.

If there were nothing to eat on the planet, I would die. For my windowless monad was not a little cruiser I could navigate around space like a boat on a pond. That sort of thing was a government project all by itself. My monad would set me down, cough me up, let me back in after five years, Terran time, and take off again. With exactly and only enough energy for take off. Lots of them came back empty.

I faced it, in the dark dream where I floated to my sluggish exercises. Most of them came back empty.

After long, heavy hours that faded past uncounted, when I wondered if perhaps the mechanism had failed and I would hurtle through space forever, without warning I was ejected into a world of brilliant sunshine, green trees and moving figures.

My first reactions were instinctive. I rolled over on my stomach and coughed the fluid out of my throat, my eyes tightly closed against the unaccustomed light. The sun was hot, but I felt cold, dreadfully cold, and naked in the empty air, uncontrolled breezes blowing over my damp body, the long, wet strands of my hair hanging down my neck, for my hair had grown long, even at the slow rate of life in Suspension.

I lay there, in a state of partial shock, unable for a while to think of anything but my own acute discomfort. Then my body chemistry must have adjusted itself to the new environment, for I became aware of two sensations, as I lay with my head down in my hands, my eyes closed.

First and foremost, I was terribly hungry. Hunger was clawing at my innards and I felt that my very stomach was being ripped and torn. I was trembling with it.

The other thing I was aware of was a sound, a rushing sea sound, such as a sea shell makes in the ear.

I turned over weakly and looked at the moving figures. The sunlight flashed and danced crazily in my eyes, for they were still shocked by it. Through half-closed lids I saw figures that were unmistakably humanoid.

A grey, attenuated face came near mine. “Food!” I said, and pointed at my mouth.

A hand, too smooth and slightly scaled, helped me up. The hand wrapped twice around mine and I saw it was opposed thumb and tentacle. I believe that’s all I noticed until something liquid was handed to me. I drank it and went to sleep with my head on a table.

I woke up on a couch, feeling a great deal stronger and with my eyes focusing properly.

There was a girl sitting beside me. I’m not sure how I knew it was a girl, for it was some time before I could tell one of these natives from another.

Up close she looked silvery and I saw the skin was not really scaled. It was composed of large, slightly thickened epithelial cells. She stared at me from cool, bluish eyes. This stare was one of the most difficult things I had to adjust to on Algol II. The natives stared openly and starkly, like a cat or a child. It was because they had no eyelids and in sleep the pupils contracted to shut out the light. The eyes were covered with a thick, translucent lens.

She spoke‌—‌a stream of glottal noises that sounded a little like German. Behind the noise: of her speech was the muffled power of the sea sound.

I spoke, simply because it would seem ungracious not to, and she nodded her smooth, silver head, a gesture which I took to mean she did not understand me.

She handed me a white, stone bowl of liquid, which I drank. It was the same as I had had before. It tasted a little like barley. It was warm and good.

She pointed at some material hung over the back of my couch, rose and left the room. I noticed then that I had been covered with a sheet of soft fiber. I stood and put on what was obviously a garment. It was of a simple design of the sort found over and over in temperate climates. It was two pieces of material clasped at the shoulders and tied up at the waist with a sash. It was a little long, for these people were taller than I, but I pulled it over the sash at the waist and found it quite comfortable.

I wondered whether I should go out. It occurred to me that I was still barefooted and I looked about the couch and found a pair of sandals. They were large but the leather thongs held them on securely.

It would be better to stay where I was, I decided. Obviously the natives were friendly and solicitous of me, but I had no way of knowing what taboos I might break merely by the way I tied my sash or the position in which I held my arms.

I was, I noticed, not in a room but in a tent. The floor was sand. Green sand, rather coarse, and flashing like emerald where the sun caught it. For all I cared it
could
be emeralds. I could take nothing back with me in my window-less monad. Nothing but my knowledge, that is.

The tent was white leather, well made and carefully stitched. My first deduction was that I had found a desert nomad culture. There was the tent and the sand. But I had a vague memory of trees, where I had landed. And when I looked closely at the furniture I saw it was such as no pack animal could carry. The table and couch were solid rock, though the couch was, of course, cushioned.

I tried to lift the table, for I was amazed at how heavy it looked. I could not budge it. I dug down in the sand to find that it was carved from the living stone. So was the couch.

This was no nomad culture. There was the soup, too. A nomad culture does not cultivate grain, though of course they could steal it from neighboring peoples.

Still, despite the embedded furniture, there was a feeling of transience about the room. Perhaps I had been put into a vacant tent. Perhaps that was why there was nothing personalized about it. No unguent jars, no stray clothing hung up, no pictures, no statuary, no weapons.

But there was something about the tent that kept recalling the girl. The odor. That was it. A light fragrance that had been strong when she was near and I had only now remembered it. An odor like the crushed leaves of some plant whose name I had forgotten. An odor, really, more like herbs than flowers.

I hoped she would come back. There had been a grace and gentleness about her I had liked. The way she had offered the soup. The casualness with which she had spoken‌—‌simply to give me the reassurance of speech. And the modesty she had displayed in leaving the room when I dressed. Even these little things had told me a lot about the culture in which I found myself.

I heard the deep, sighing sea sound again and three natives entered. Not the girl. I discovered then where the sound came from. It was the noise they made breathing.

Then began the long, slow process of learning the language. If only I could have brought a linguaphone with me, it would have been merely a matter of hours. But an explorer can take nothing but his body and mind in a windowless monad. That is the challenge of the job.

And, in a way, it makes things easier. You do not find yourself looking at a crystal picturama and longing for home, or strapping on a ray gun and feeling superior to the natives. It is not possible to play God. There is no temptation to offer colored beads. You have nothing to offer but yourself. So you try to make that good.

That night the tall, silver girl came back and motioned me to follow her. We stood in line and were given a bowl and food of a more solid sort than I had had before. I followed her back to the tent and we ate in silence except for the sea sound of her breathing.

This, I discovered, was the Way to dine. The bowl never varied. Nor did the food, with slight exceptions.

She took my hand and led me outside. She pointed upward and we watched a yellow moon chase a green one slowly across forty degrees of sky. Then we took our bowls and returned them to the washing place and kitchen‌—‌a spring within the stand of trees near where I had fallen. The water was brought down to a huge, white bowl carved into the bedrock that was close to the surface. There was no artificial light, but the light of the twin moons gave this whole world a muted glow. The water flashed with colored bubbles and hung like jewels off the washed bowls.

It seemed tome everyone we passed stared at me with violent curiosity. But I later discovered their sentiment was one of only mild interest. The rest was the effect of those lidless eyes.

By the time we returned to the tent again the moons were about to set. The girl stood for a moment in the moonlight, her face holding an expression I could sense as different from the ordinary expression, but whose meaning I could, of course, not fathom.

“Grecthchra,” she said, pointing at herself. This was obviously her name.

“David,” I said, in turn, pointing at myself. She shook her head, meaning, I understood by now, she already knew my name. She had for some reason refrained from using it. Perhaps out of delicacy, when she had not yet made herself known to me.

She followed me into the tent and I realized, with horror, that she had probably been assigned to me for a wife. Such a custom is not unusual.

It was unthinkable, of course. I stood there in the dark, knowing there was no way I could explain it to her, but not wanting to hurt her feelings.

She led me to the couch, removed the coverlet and laid it on the sand. She slept on the coverlet. I would rather she had slept on the couch, but I did not know how to indicate this without possible misunderstanding. So I slept all night on the pillowed couch and felt almost as if I were in a ship, with the soft sea sound of her breathing in my ears.

Most of my days thereafter were full of language lessons, and someone, I’m not sure it was always the same person, took me about the village. It was a simple society, but very highly organized. The red-tinted tents of the hunters, looking like a Christmas decoration in the emerald sand, stood all together, farthest from the spring, or oasis. Closer were the clustered tents of the weavers. The potters did not make bowls of clay. They carved them from the hard stone and it was obviously slow, weary work.

I never saw the least sign of violence in the community. Nor the least expression of discontent, though I was never able fully to fathom the expressions of these mammalian-reptile-humanoids.

Everyone seemed to be occupied, each in his cluster of tents. Male and female worked equally and I learned to distinguish the slight female characteristics these creatures bore.

I found myself, even after weeks of living with these people, still thinking of them as animals. I took myself to task about it. Was it prejudice? I have lived with animals, as a matter of fact, and thought of them as people. Why was I doing less for these intelligent, friendly creatures?

It struck me, finally, that just as the structure of their eyes deceived me into thinking they were staring, so the customs of their society deceived me into thinking they were depersonalized to such an extent that they called to mind an ant hill. They all wore, for instance, exactly the same kind of garment. In the morning it was returned to the Washing Place and turned in for a fresh garment. No one wore jewelry or ornamentation of any kind. They did not paint their faces or their bodies. Nor did they carry things about with them, such as we Terrans always do. No book, no wallet, no keys.

It is an odd feeling to possess nothing, to have no pockets and carry no pouch or purse. I would reach about unconsciously, when I prepared to go for a walk, for the things a civilized man needs to go about with. Money, keys, tickets, those minimal things. I had constantly, on this planet, the irritating feeling that I had forgotten something.

There was something about these people that still, even after weeks of living with them and even when I knew the language, eluded me. It is the ignorance a child feels in a room full of adults. As though there is some common, tacit knowledge available to everyone but him. And he doesn’t even know how to ask for this knowledge, for he doesn’t know the nature of it.

When, therefore, Grecthchra asked if I would like to visit the Temple, I was delighted. I had noticed not the least sign of religion in the community. There was a great deal of formality, but I could see no sacred significance to it. The Temple would perhaps, communicate to me some meaning about these people I had missed.

I tried to ask Grecthchra about it as we walked over the green sands toward a dull red hill in the distance.

“What is your
purpose
in life?”

She was silent, as is customary when a question is asked to which one does not know the answer.

“What do your people hope to achieve?”

Indeed, these were clumsy questions to ask. It occurred to me that I would not quite know what to say if someone asked
me
these kinds of questions.

We passed a band of hunters, going out on foot to spear the hard-shelled desert animals that went into our one dish.

“We want,” Grecthchra finally said, “to eat each day and in the end to procreate. That is the Way.”

But I knew still there was something I did not understand. And I felt like pounding on the invisible walls that separate one consciousness from another, and demanding knowledge.

The entrance to the temple, I saw as we drew near it, was a huge, square orifice, carved into the rock, and completely bare of ornament. The rock was, however, squared off to a perfect edge and beautifully polished. I became very curious as to what kind of a god would be imagined by these people whose art was restricted to the most fundamental simplicity. A monolith? Or perfectly life-like statues?