I couldn't tell whether it was the sight of the natives, or my remark
which indicated I knew they had legs to pull.
For the first time in my life I saw uncertainty in Aunt Mattie's eyes
as she looked, startled, at me, and then at Johnny. Then her chin
squared, her back straightened still more, the shelf of her bosom
firmed.
"It really won't be too much of a problem, girls," she said. "Actually
simpler than some we've solved. Take a square of cloth, cut a hole in
the center for that headlike pouch to come through where its eye is,
put in a draw string to cinch it up tight, above those--ah--those
protuberances, and let it flow out over those--ah--legs. Simple, and
quite attractive, don't you think?"
The girls nodded happily, and Johnny just stood there gasping for
breath.
* * * * *
It was simpler than any of us had thought.
Johnny looked at me desperately when Aunt Mattie told him to have one
of the natives come in so she could fit a pattern on it, to see if any
gussets would be needed for fullness--whatever gussets might be.
"One of them came inside before," I said in answer to Johnny's
pleading look. "Ask him again. If he refuses, Mohammed will go to the
mountain. I'm sure you have extra space suits. I'm sure the ladies
won't mind going out to the natives if the natives won't come to
them."
"I don't know," Johnny said miserably. "He may have had sufficient
curiosity to come inside once, but not sufficient to bring him in
again. You see, ladies," he turned to them desperately. "They don't
seem to care about us, one way or the other."
The two committee women looked apprehensively at Aunt Mattie. Not to
care about her, one way or the other? This was beyond comprehension.
But Aunt Mattie was equal to it.
"Very well," she said crisply. "We shall not ask them to come to us.
We shall go to them. It is our duty to carry enlightenment to the
ignorant, wherever they may be, so that they can be taught to care. In
the performance of our duty, we have no room for pride. We shall go
to them, humbly, happily."
We did, too.
By the time we'd got into space suits and through the bubble lock out
into the ordinary landscape of Capella IV, Capella, the sun, was
sinking rapidly.
"We will just have time," Aunt Mattie said crisply, through the
intercom of our suits, "To set the pattern and get some idea of the
sizes needed. Then tomorrow we can begin our work."
Through his face plate I got a look at Johnny's wide, apprehensive
eyes.
"Ladies," he said desperately. "I must warn you again. I've never
tried to touch one of them. I don't know what will happen. I can't be
held responsible."
"You have been most remiss, young man," Aunt Mattie said sternly. "But
then," she added, as if remembering that he had gone to a proper
school, "you're young. No doubt overburdened by nonsensical red tape
in your administrative duties. And--if you had done this already,
there'd be no reason for my being here. I am always willing to help
wherever I'm needed."
All five of us marched silently, and bravely, on after that. A hundred
yards brought us to the first native. It lay there, spread eagled in
eight directions, on the salt. In the center of the tentacles there
arose a column of black rubbery flesh, topped by a rounded dome in the
center of which was one huge liquid black eye. There was not a twitch
of a tentacle as we came to a halt beside it.
"Is this the one you talked to, Johnny?" I asked.
"How should I know?" he asked bitterly. "I never knew if I talked to
the same one twice."
"They're much bigger than I thought," Miss Point said with a little
dismay in her voice.
"Some of them are ten feet in diameter," Johnny said, I thought with a
bit of vindictiveness in his tone.
"Never mind," Aunt Mattie said. "We'll simply sew three lengths of
cloth together to get our square. I'm sure they won't mind a neatly
done seam."
She had a length of cloth in one arm of her space suit, and a pair of
scissors in the mechanical claw of the other hand. With her eye she
seemed to measure the diameter of the dome and, manipulating the
scissors with the claw like an expert space mechanic, she cut a
sizable hole in the center of the cloth.
Entirely without fear or hesitation, she stepped into the triangle
between two long black tentacles that lay on the salt and walked up to
the erect column at the center. Expertly, she flipped the cloth so
that the hole settled over the creature's head, or whatever it was.
Fore and aft, the cloth rippled out to cover the tentacles. The
creature did not move.
With an amazing speed, she took some bundles of cloth from the arms of
Mrs. Waddle, and with even more amazing dexterity of the space claw,
which showed she was no amateur, she basted a length of cloth on
either side of the first strip. Then with her scissors, careful not to
gouge his hide, she cut off the corners so that the eight tentacles
barely peeped out from underneath the cloth.
Somehow, it reminded me of a huge red flower with a black pistil
laying there on the white salt.
"There, sir," my aunt said with satisfaction to the monster. "This
will hide your nakedness, instill in you a sense of true modesty." She
turned to Johnny. "They must not only know what," she instructed.
"They must also know why." She turned back and faced the monster
again. "It is not your fault," she said to it, "That you have been
living in a state of sin. On Earth, where I come from, we have a code
which must be followed. Do unto others as you would have them do unto
you. I'm sure that if I lived in a state of ignorant sin, I would
humbly appreciate the kindness of someone letting me know. I'm sure
that, in time, you will also come to appreciate it."
It was quite a noble speech, and her two companions bowed their space
suit helmets in acknowledgement. Johnny's mouth and eyes were wide,
and desperate. She stepped back then and we all stood there looking at
the monster.
The dome of its head began to tilt until the eye was fastened upon us.
It swept over the three ladies, hesitated on Johnny as if recognizing
him, but came to rest upon me. It stared at me for a full minute. I
stared back. In some strange way I felt as if my psychiatrist were
staring at me, as he often did.
Then the great eye slowly closed, and opened again. As slowly, and
somewhat to my amazement, I felt one of my eyes close and open. I
winked at it.
"That's all for this evening," Aunt Mattie said crisply. "Let it have
its clothes, get used to them. I have the pattern in my mind. Tomorrow
we will get out our sewing machines, and really get busy, girls."
All the way back to the entrance of the bubble, I felt that huge eye
upon me, following me.
Why me?
* * * * *
The girls did not need to get busy the next morning.
I was awakened by a shout, there was the sound of running feet in the
hall, and a pounding on my door. Sleepy eyed, for I had dreamed of the
monster's eye all night long, I opened the door as soon as I had found
a robe to cover my own nakedness. It was Johnny, of course.
"Most amazing thing," he rushed in and collapsed into a sitting
position on the side of my bed. "Absolutely amazing. You should see
them."
"What?" I asked.
The rumpus must have disturbed the ladies, too, for there came another
knock on my door, and when I opened it all three of them stood there
fully dressed. Apparently they had arisen at the crack of dawn to get
busy with their sewing. Miss Point and Mrs. Waddle averted their eyes
modestly from the V neck of my robe and my bare legs. Aunt Mattie was
used to my shameless ways.
"What is it?" Aunt Mattie asked crisply.
Johnny leaped to his feet again.
"Amazing," he said again. "I'll have to show you. You'll never believe
it."
"Young man," Aunt Mattie said sharply. "No one has accused you of
untruthfulness, and you are hardly a judge of what we are capable of
believing."
He stood looking at her with his mouth open.
"Now ladies," I said, and started closing the door. "If you'll excuse
me for two minutes I'll dress and we'll go see what Mr. McCabe wants
to show us."
The door clicked on my last words, and I hastily doffed the robe and
slid into pants and a shirt. Oddly enough, I knew what he was going to
show us. I just knew. I slipped on some shoes without bothering about
socks.
"All right," I said. "I'm ready."
They had started down the hall, and we quickly overtook them. Johnny
went ahead, led us out of the hotel, around its side, and when we came
around the corner of the outbuilding which obscured the view, there
before us, through the bubble wall, we saw what I had expected.
As far as the eye could see, dotted here and there like poppies on
snow, the natives lay in the early sun, each dressed in flaring cloth
like that Aunt Mattie had designed the night before.
"You see?" Johnny cried out. "It's the same as with the lighter. One
liked it, so they all have it!"
By now we were up against the plastic barrier. The two subordinates
were gasping such words as "Fantastic, amazing, astounding,
incredible, wondrous, weird".
Aunt Mattie took it all in, and her face lit into a beatific smile.
"You see, young man," she said to Johnny. "They needed only to be
shown right from wrong. Let this be a lesson to you."
"But how did they do it?" Mrs. Waddle gasped.
"Give them some credit for diligence and ingenuity," Aunt Mattie
almost snapped at her assistant. "I always say we underrate the
intelligence and ingenuity of the lesser orders, and that it saps
their strengths if we are overprotective. I admire self-reliance, and
these have shown they have it. So we will not have to do the sewing
after all. Come girls, we must pack and be on our way back to Earth.
Our mission here is accomplished."
The two ladies obeyed their leader without question. The three of
them, in their sturdy walking shoes and their tweed suits, crunched
off across the salt back to their rooms to start packing.
Johnny and I walked along more slowly behind.
"The incredible Matthewa H. Tombs!" he breathed. "She's a legend, you
know, Hap. But I never believed it before." Then, in a complete and
sudden change of mood he snickered. Or, at least, it was the nearest
thing to a small boy snicker I'd heard since prep school. The snicker
turned into a roar of laughter, a grown man's laughter. "If they only
knew!" he shouted, apparently feeling secure because they'd turned the
corner and gone out of sight.
"Knew what?" I asked.
"Why," he said, and doubled up with laughter again. "They've covered
up all the innocent parts and left the reprehensible part, which is
right behind the eye, fully exposed."
"Johnny, my boy," I said with a chuckle. "Do you really believe there
are innocent parts and reprehensible parts of any creature in the
universe?"
He stood stock still and stared at me.
"It takes a nasty, salacious mind to make that kind of separation," I
said.
"But your aun ... the Daughters of...."
"I know my aunt and the Daughters of Terra," I said. "I've lived with
them for years. I know their kind of mind. Who would know it better?"
"But you...."
"The human race," I said, "is very young. It's only in the last few
thousand years that it has discovered sex as a concept. So like little
kids in kindergarten it goes around being embarrassed and snickering.
But we'll grow up. Give us time."
"But you...." he said again. "But they.... That's the kind of
organization that keeps us from growing up, Hap. Don't you see that?
They've kept us mentally retarded for generations, centuries. How can
we make progress when...."
"What's the hurry, Johnny? We've got millions of years, billions,
eternity."
He looked at me again, sharply, shrewdly.
"I've underestimated you, Hap," he said. "I'm afraid I always did. I
had no idea you...."
I shrugged and passed it off. I'd had no idea either, not until this
morning, last night, yesterday evening when that eye had turned on
me--and I'd winked back.
I didn't know how to tell him, or any reason why I should, that there
couldn't be anything right or wrong, good or bad; that nothing could
happen, nothing at all, excepting through the working of the law of
nature. Could one say that water running down hill is good, and water
being pumped up hill is bad? Both are operating within known physical
laws. With millions of years to go, wasn't it likely we would go on
discovering the laws governing how things worked? Until one by one we
had to give up all notion of good and bad happenings? Understood them
as only the operation of natural law? In all the universe, how could
there be any such thing as unnatural happenings?
"Don't worry about it, Johnny," I said as we started walking again.
"And don't worry about your career, either. Aunt Mattie likes you, and
she's mighty pleased with the results of her work out here. Certain
people in the State Department may consider her a bit of a meddlesome
pest, but make no mistake about it, every politician in the universe
trembles in his boots at the very mention of the D.T.'s. And she likes
you, Johnny."
"Thanks, Hap," he said as we came to a stop before the doorway of the
hotel. "I'll see you before your ship takes off. Oh--ah--you won't
tell her she covered up the wrong--well what she would think was the
wrong part?"
"I could have told her that last night," I said.
He walked away with that startled, incredulous look he'd worn ever
since our arrival.
* * * * *
On Earth Aunt Mattie had to rush off to a convention of D.T.'s, where
I had no doubt her latest exploit in combating ignorance and sin would
be the main topic of conversation and add to the triumph of her
lionization. To give her credit, I think this lionization bothered
her, embarrassed her a little, and she probably wondered at times if
it were all sincere. But I also think she would have been lonely and
disappointed without it. When one is doing all he can to make the
universe we have inherited a better place for our posterity to inherit
one likes it to be appreciated.
For two or three weeks after she came back home, she was immersed in
administrative duties for the D.T., setting wheels in motion to carry
out all the promises she'd made at the convention.
I spent the time in my own suite in the south wing of our house.
Mostly, I just sat. No one bothered me except the servants necessary
to eating, dressing, sleeping, and they were all but mute about it. My
psychiatrist called once, but I sent word that I didn't need any
today. I called none of my regular friends and did not answer their
messages.
I did send to the Library of Science in Washington for the original
science survey report on Capella IV. It told me little, but allowed me
to surmise some things. Apparently the original scientists were
singularly uncurious about the octopoids, perhaps because they didn't
have five years to hang around and wait for one to blink an eye, as
Johnny had. As always, they were overworked and understaffed, they did
their quick survey and rushed on to some new planet job. If one hoped
that someday somebody might go back and take another look at the
octopoids I found no burning yearning for it in the dry reports.
As far as they went, their surmise was accurate. Some millions, many
millions of years ago, the planet had lost the last of its ocean
water. Apparently, as they failed to adapt to the increasing salinity
of the little left, one by one the original life forms died out.
Something in the octopoid metabolism (or mentality?) allowed them to
survive, to become land instead of water animals. Something in their
metabolism (or mentality?) allowed them to subsist on the air and
sunlight. (Really now? Did they even need these?) That was as far as
the reports went.
They did not draw the picture of highly developed mentalities who lay
there for millions of years and thought about the nature of being.
Such things as how mental manipulation of force fields can provide
each of them with a cigarette lighter that burns without any fluid in
it and any oxygen around its wick, or such things as mother hubbards
which had caught their fancy, or perhaps gave them some kind of
sensual kick caused by heat filtering through red cloth.
But mostly I just sat.
I went to see Aunt Mattie when she came back from the convention, of
course. She had the west wing where her sitting room looked out upon
her flora collection--and the gardeners who were supposed to keep
busy. Our greeting was fond, but brief. She did look at me rather
quizzically, rather shrewdly, but she made no comment. She did not
return my visit.
This was not unusual. She never visited my suite. When I was
twenty-one she took me into the south wing and said, "Choose your own
suite, Hapland. You are a man now, and I understand about young men."
If she had in mind what I thought she had it was a mighty big
concession to reality, although, of course, she was five years late in
coming around to it.
This older generation--so wise, so naive. She probably resolutely
refrained from imagining far worse things than really went on.
About two weeks after she'd come back from the convention, a month
since we returned from Capella IV, there was an interruption, an
excited one. For once in his life the butler forgot to touch my door
with feather fingertips and cough discreetly. Instead he knocked two
sharp raps, and opened the door without invitation.
"Come quickly, Master Hapland," he chittered urgently. "There are
creatures on our private landing field."
There were, too.
When I got there in my garden scooter, and pushed my way through the
crowd of gardeners who were clustered on the path and around the gate
to the landing field, I saw them. At least a dozen of the Capella IV
octopoids were spread eagled, their tentacles out flat on the hot
cement of the runway. Their eye stared unblinking into the sun. Over
their spread of tentacles, like inverted hibiscus blossoms, they wore
their mother hubbards.
Behind them, over at the far edge of the field, was an exact duplicate
of our own space yacht. I wondered, rather hysterically perhaps, if
each of them on Capella IV now had one. I suspected the yacht was
simply there for show, that they hadn't needed it, not any more than
they needed the mother hubbards.
There was the hiss of another scooter, and I turned around to see Aunt
Mattie come to a stop. She stepped out and came over to me.
"Our social call on Capella IV is being returned," I said with a grin
and twinkle at her.
She took in the sight with only one blink.
"Very well," she answered. "I shall receive them, of course." Somebody
once said that the most snobbish thing about the whole tribe of Tombs
was that they'd never learned the meaning of the word, or had to. But
I did wonder what the servants would think when the creatures started
slithering into our drawing room.
There was a gasp and a low rumble of protesting voices from the
gardeners as Aunt Mattie opened the gate and walked through it. I
followed, of course. We walked up to the nearest monster and came to
stop at the edge of its skirt.
"I'm deeply honored," Aunt Mattie said with more cordiality than I'd
seen her use on a Secretary of State. "What can I do to make your
visit to Earth more comfortable?"
There was no reply, not even the flicker of a tentacle.
They were even more unusual than one might expect. Aunt Mattie
resolutely went to each of the dozen and gave the same greeting. She
felt her duty as a hostess required it, although I knew that a
greeting to one was a greeting to all. Not one of them responded. It
seemed rather ridiculous. They'd come all this way to see us, then
didn't bother to acknowledge that we were there.
We spent more than an hour waiting for some kind of a response. None
came. Aunt Mattie showed no sign of impatience, which I thought was
rather praiseworthy, all things considered. But finally we left. She
didn't show what she felt, perhaps felt only that one had to be
patient with the lack of manners in the lower orders.
I was more interested in another kind of feeling, the one we left
behind. What was it? I couldn't put my finger on it. Sadness? Regret?
Distaste? Pity? Magnanimity? Give a basket of goodies to the poor at
Christmas? Give them some clothes to cover their nakedness? Teach them
a sense of shame?
No, I couldn't put my finger on it.
Hilarity?
I found myself regretting that back there on Capella IV, when Aunt
Mattie put clothes on him, and the monster had looked at me, I winked.