Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe November 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
[_"They" worried about the impression she'd make. Who_ could
_imagine that she'd fall in love, passionately, the way others of her
blood must have done?_]
exile from space
_by ... Judith Merril_
Who _was_ this strange girl who had been born in this
place--and still it wasn't her home?...
* * * * *
I don't know where they got the car. We made three or four stops
before the last one, and they must have picked it up one of those
times. Anyhow, they got it, but they had to make a license plate,
because it had the wrong kind on it.
They made me some clothes, too--a skirt and blouse and shoes that
looked just like the ones we saw on television. They couldn't make me
a lipstick or any of those things, because there was no way to figure
out just what the chemical composition was. And they decided I'd be as
well off without any driver's license or automobile registration as I
would be with papers that weren't exactly perfect, so they didn't
bother about making those either.
They were worried about what to do with my hair, and even thought
about cutting it short, so it would look more like the women on
television, but that was one time I was way ahead of them. I'd seen
more shows than anyone else, of course--I watched them almost every
minute, from the time they told me I was going--and there was one
where I'd seen a way to make braids and put them around the top of
your head. It wasn't very comfortable, but I practiced at it until it
looked pretty good.
They made me a purse, too. It didn't have anything in it except the
diamonds, but the women we saw always seemed to carry them, and they
thought it might be a sort of superstition or ritual necessity, and
that we'd better not take a chance on violating anything like that.
They made me spend a lot of time practicing with the car, because
without a license, I couldn't take a chance on getting into any
trouble. I must have put in the better part of an hour starting and
stopping and backing that thing, and turning it around, and weaving
through trees and rocks, before they were satisfied.
Then, all of a sudden, there was nothing left to do except _go_. They
made me repeat everything one more time, about selling the diamonds,
and how to register at the hotel, and what to do if I got into
trouble, and how to get in touch with them when I wanted to come back.
Then they said good-bye, and made me promise not to stay _too_ long,
and said they'd keep in touch the best they could. And then I got in
the car, and drove down the hill into town.
I knew they didn't want to let me go. They were worried, maybe even a
little afraid I wouldn't want to come back, but mostly worried that I
might say something I shouldn't, or run into some difficulties they
hadn't anticipated. And outside of that, they knew they were going to
miss me. Yet they'd made up their minds to it; they planned it this
way, and they felt it was the right thing to do, and certainly they'd
put an awful lot of thought and effort and preparation into it.
If it hadn't been for that, I might have turned back at the last
minute. Maybe they were worried; but _I_ was petrified. Only of
course, I wanted to go, really. I couldn't help being curious, and it
never occurred to me then that I might miss them. It was the first
time I'd ever been out on my own, and they'd promised me, for years
and years, as far back as I could remember, that some day I'd go back,
like this, by myself. But....
Going back, when you've been away long enough, is not so much a
homecoming as a dream _deja vu_. And for me, at least, the dream was
not entirely a happy one. Everything I saw or heard or touched had a
sense of haunting familiarity, and yet of _wrongness_, too--almost a
nightmare feeling of the oppressively inevitable sequence of events,
of faces and features and events just not-quite-remembered and
not-quite-known.
I was born in this place, but it was not my home. Its people were not
mine; its ways were not mine. All I knew of it was what I had been
told, and what I had seen for myself these last weeks of preparation,
on the television screen. And the dream-feeling was intensified, at
first, by the fact that I did not know _why_ I was there. I knew it
had been planned this way, and I had been told it was necessary to
complete my education. Certainly I was aware of the great effort that
had been made to make the trip possible. But I did not yet understand
just _why_.
Perhaps it was just that I had heard and watched and thought and
dreamed too much about this place, and now I was actually there, the
reality was--not so much a disappointment as--just sort of _unreal_.
Different from what I knew when I _didn't_ know.
The road unwound in a spreading spiral down the mountainside. Each
time I came round, I could see the city below, closer and larger, and
less distinct. From the top, with the sunlight sparkling on it, it had
been a clean and gleaming pattern of human civilization. Halfway down,
the symmetry was lost, and the smudge and smoke began to show.
Halfway down, too, I began to pass places of business: restaurants and
gas stations and handicraft shops. I wanted to stop. For half an hour
now I had been out on my own, and I still hadn't seen any of the
people, except the three who had passed me behind the wheels of their
cars, going up the road. One of the shops had a big sign on it, "COME
IN AND LOOK AROUND." But I kept going. One thing I understood was that
it was absolutely necessary to have money, and that I must stop
nowhere, and attempt nothing, till after I had gotten some.
Farther down, the houses began coming closer together, and then the
road stopped winding around, and became almost straight. By that time,
I was used to the car, and didn't have to think about it much, and for
a little while I really enjoyed myself. I could see into the houses
sometimes, through the windows, and at one, a woman was opening the
door, coming out with a broom in her hand. There were children playing
in the yards. There were cars of all kinds parked around the houses,
and I saw dogs and a couple of horses, and once a whole flock of
chickens.
But just where it was beginning to get really interesting, when I was
coming into the little town before the city, I had to stop watching it
all, because there were too many other people driving. That was when I
began to understand all the fuss about licenses and tests and traffic
regulations. Watching it on television, it wasn't anything like being
in the middle of it!
Of course, what I ran into there was really nothing; I found that out
when I got into the city itself. But just at first, it seemed pretty
bad. And I still don't understand it. These people are pretty bright
mechanically. You'd think anybody who could _build_ an automobile--let
alone an atom bomb--could _drive_ one easily enough. Especially with a
lifetime to learn in. Maybe they just like to live dangerously....
It was a good thing, though, that I'd already started watching out for
what the other drivers were doing when I hit my first red light. That
was something I'd overlooked entirely, watching street scenes on the
screen, and I guess they'd never noticed either. They must have taken
it for granted, the way I did, that people stopped their cars out of
courtesy from time to time to let the others go by. As it was, I
stopped because the others did, and just happened to notice that they
began again when the light changed to green. It's really a very good
system; I don't see why they don't have them at all the intersections.
* * * * *
From the first light, it was eight miles into the center of Colorado
Springs. A sign on the road said so, and I was irrationally pleased
when the speedometer on the car confirmed it. Proud, I suppose, that
these natives from my own birth-place were such good gadgeteers. The
road was better after that, too, and the cars didn't dart in and out
off the sidestreets the way they had before. There was more traffic on
the highway, but most of them behaved fairly intelligently. Until we
got into town, that is. After that, it was everybody-for-himself, but
by then I was prepared for it.
I found a place to park the car near a drugstore. That was the first
thing I was supposed to do. Find a drugstore, where there would likely
be a telephone directory, and go in and look up the address of a hock
shop. I had a little trouble parking the car in the space they had
marked off, but I could see from the way the others were stationed
that you were supposed to get in between the white lines, with the
front of the car next to the post on the sidewalk. I didn't know what
the post was for, until I got out and read what it said, and then I
didn't know what to do, because I didn't _have_ any money. Not yet.
And I didn't dare get into any trouble that might end up with a
policeman asking to see my license, which always seemed to be the
first thing they did on television, when they talked to anybody who
was driving a car. I got back in the car and wriggled my way out of
the hole between the other cars, and tried to think what to do. Then I
remembered seeing a sign that said "Free Parking" somewhere, not too
far away, and went back the way I'd come.
There was a sort of park, with a fountain spraying water all over the
grass, and a big building opposite, and the white lines here were much
more sensible. They were painted in diagonal strips, so you could get
in and out quite easily, without all that backing and twisting and
turning. I left the car there, and remembered to take the keys with
me, and started walking back to the drugstore.
* * * * *
That was when it hit me.
Up to then, beginning I guess when I drove that little stretch coming
into Manitou, with the houses on the hills, and the children and yards
and dogs and chickens, I'd begun to feel almost as if I belonged here.
The people seemed so _much_ like me--as long as I wasn't right up
against them. From a little distance, you'd think there was no
difference at all. Then, I guess, when I was close enough to notice,
driving through town, I'd been too much preoccupied with the car. It
didn't really get to me till I got out and started walking.
They were all so _big_....
They were big, and their faces and noses and even the pores of their
skin were too big. And their voices were too loud. And they _smelled_.
I didn't notice that last much till I got into the drugstore. Then I
thought I was going to suffocate, and I had a kind of squeezing
upside-down feeling in my stomach and diaphragm and throat, which I
didn't realize till later was what they meant by "being sick." I stood
over the directory rack, pretending to read, but really just
struggling with my insides, and a man came along and shouted in my ear
something that sounded like, "Vvvm trubbb lll-lll-lll ay-dee?" (I
didn't get that sorted out for hours afterwards, but I don't think
I'll ever forget just the way it sounded at the time. Of course, he
meant, "Having trouble, little lady?") But all I knew at the time was
he was too big and smelled of all kinds of things that were unfamiliar
and slightly sickening. I couldn't answer him. All I could do was turn
away so as not to breathe him, and try to pretend I knew what I was
doing with the directory. Then he hissed at me ("Sorry, no offense," I
figured out later), and said clearly enough so I could understand even
then, "Just trying to help," and walked away.
As soon as he was gone, I walked out myself. Directory or no
directory, I had to get out of that store. I went back to where I'd
left the car, but instead of getting in it, I sat down on a bench in
the park, and waited till the turmoil inside me began to quiet down.
I went back into that drugstore once before I left, purposely, just to
see if I could pin down what it was that had bothered me so much,
because I never reacted that strongly afterwards, and I wondered if
maybe it was just that it was the first time I was inside one of their
buildings. But it was more than that; that place was a regular
snake-pit of a treatment for a stranger, believe me! They had a
tobacco counter, and a lunch counter and a perfume-and-toiletries
section, and a nut-roasting machine, and just to top it off, in the
back of the store, an open-to-look-at (_and_ smell) pharmaceutical
center! Everything, all mixed together, and compounded with stale
human sweat, which was also new to me at the time. And no air
conditioning.
Most of the air conditioning they have is bad enough on its own, with
chemical smells, but those are comparatively easy to get used to ...
and I'll take them _any_ time, over what I got in that first dose of
_Odeur d'Earth_.
* * * * *
Anyhow, I sat on the park bench about fifteen minutes, I guess,
letting the sun and fresh air seep in, and trying to tabulate and
memorize as many of the components of that drugstore smell as I could,
for future reference. I was simply going to have to adjust to them,
and next time I wanted to be prepared.
All the same, I didn't feel prepared to go back into the same place.
Maybe another store wouldn't be quite as bad. I started walking in the
opposite direction, staying on the wide main street, where all the big
stores seemed to be, and two blocks down, I ran into luck, because
there was a big bracket sticking out over the sidewalk from the front
of a store halfway down a side street, and it had the three gold balls
hanging from it that I knew, from television, meant the kind of place
I wanted. When I walked down to it, I saw too that they had a sign
painted over the window: "We buy old gold and diamonds."
Just _how_ lucky that was, I didn't realize till quite some time
later. I was going to look in the Classified Directory for "Hock
Shops." I didn't know any other name for them then.
Inside, it looked exactly like what I expected, and even the smell was
nothing to complain about. Camphor and dust and mustiness were strong
enough to cover most of the sweaty smell, and those were smells of a
kind I'd experienced before, in other places.
The whole procedure was reassuring, because it all went just the way
it was supposed to, and I knew how to behave. I'd seen it in a show,
and the man behind the grilled window even _looked_ like the man on
the screen, and talked the same way.
"What can we do for you, girlie?"
"I'd like to sell a diamond," I told him.
He didn't say anything at first, then he looked impatient. "You got it
with you?"
"Oh ... yes!" I opened my purse, and took out one of the little
packages, and unwrapped it, and handed it to him. He screwed the lens
into his eye, and walked back from the window and put it on a little
scale, and turned back and unscrewed the lens and looked at me.
"Where'd you get this, lady?" he asked me.
"It's mine," I said. I knew just how to do it. We'd gone over this
half a dozen times before I left, and he was behaving exactly the way
we'd expected.
"I don't know," he said. "Can't do much with an unset stone like
this...." He pursed his lips, tossed the diamond carelessly in his
hand, and then pushed it back at me across the counter. I had to keep
myself from smiling. It was just the way they'd said it would be. The
people here were still in the Mech Age, of course, and not nearly
conscious enough to communicate anything at all complex or abstract
any way except verbally. But there is nothing abstract about avarice,
and between what I'd been told to expect, and what I could feel
pouring out of him, I knew precisely what was going on in his mind.
"You mean you don't _want_ it?" I said. "I thought it was worth quite
a lot...."
"Might have been once." He shrugged. "You can't do much with a stone
like that any more. Where'd you get it, girlie?"
"My mother gave it to me. A long time ago. I wouldn't sell it,
except.... Look," I said, and didn't have to work hard to sound
desperate, because in a way I was. "Look, it must be worth
_some_thing?"
He picked it up again. "Well ... what do you want for it?"
That went on for quite a while. I knew what it was supposed to be
worth, of course, but I didn't hope to get even half of that. He
offered seventy dollars, and I asked for five hundred, and after a
while he gave me three-fifty, and I felt I'd done pretty well--for a
greenhorn. I put the money in my purse, and went back to the car, and
on the way I saw a policeman, so I stopped and asked him about a
hotel. He looked me up and down, and started asking questions about
how old I was, and what was my name and where did I live, and I began
to realize that being so much smaller than the other people was going
to make life complicated. I told him I'd come to visit my brother in
the Academy, and he smiled, and said, "Your _brother_, is it?" Then he
told me the name of a place just outside of town, near the Academy. It
wasn't a hotel; it was a _mo_tel, which I didn't know about at that
time, but he said I'd be better off there. A lot of what he said went
right over my head at the time; later I realized what he meant about
"a nice respectable couple" running the place. I found out later on,
too, that he called them up to ask them to keep an eye on me; he
thought I was a nice girl, but he was worried about my being alone
there.
By this time, I was getting hungry, but I thought I'd better go and
arrange about a place to stay first. I found the motel without much
trouble, and went in and registered; I knew how to do that, at
least--I'd seen it plenty of times. They gave me a key, and the man
who ran the place asked me did I want any help with my bags.
"Oh, no," I said. "No, thanks. I haven't got much."
I'd forgotten all about that, and they'd never thought about it
either! These people always have a lot of different clothes, not just
one set, and you're supposed to have a suitcase full of things when
you go to stay anyplace. I said I was hungry anyway, and wanted to go
get something to eat, and do a couple of other things--I didn't say
what--before I got settled. So the woman walked over with me, and
showed me which cabin it was, and asked was everything all right?
It looked all right to me. The room had a big bed in it, with sheets
and a blanket and pillows and a bedspread, just like the ones I'd seen
on television. And there was a chest of drawers, and a table with more
small drawers in it, and two chairs and a mirror and one door that
went into a closet and one that led to the bathroom. The fixtures in
there were a little different from the ones they'd made for me to
practice in, but functionally they seemed about the same.
I didn't look for any difficulty with anything there except the bed,
and that wasn't _her_ fault, so I assured her everything was just
fine, and let her show me how to operate the gas-burner that was set
in the wall for heat. Then we went out, and she very carefully locked
the door, and handed me the key.
"You better keep that door locked," she said, just a little sharply.
"You never know...."
I wanted to ask her _what_ you never know, but had the impression that
it was something _every_body was supposed to know, so I just nodded
and agreed instead.
"You want to get some lunch," she said then, "there's a place down the
road isn't too bad. Clean, anyhow, and they don't cater too much to
those ... well, it's clean." She pointed the way; you could see the
sign from where we were standing. I thanked her, and started the car,
and decided I might as well go there as anyplace else, especially
since I could see she was watching to find out whether I did or not.
* * * * *
These people are all too big. Or almost all of them. But the man
behind the counter at the diner was enormous. He was tall and fat with
a beefy red face and large open pores and a fleshy mound of a nose. I
didn't like to look at him, and when he talked, he boomed so loud I
could hardly understand him. On top of all that, the smell in that
place was awful: not quite as bad as the drugstore, but some ways
similar to it. I kept my eyes on the menu, which was full of
unfamiliar words, and tried to remember that I was hungry.
The man was shouting at me--or it was more like growling, I guess--and
I couldn't make out the words at first. He said it again, and I sorted
out syllables and matched them with the words on the card, and then I
got it:
"Goulash is nice today, miss...."
I didn't know what goulash was, and the state my stomach was in, with
the smells, I decided I'd better play safe, and ordered a glass of
milk, and some vegetable soup.
The milk had a strange taste to it. Not _bad_--just _different_. But
of course, this came from cows. That was all right. But the vegetable
soup...!
It was quite literally putrid, made as near as I could figure out from
dead animal juices, in which vegetables had been soaked and cooked
till any trace of flavor or nourishment was entirely removed. I took
one taste of that, and then I realized what the really nauseating part
of the odor was, in the diner and the drugstore both. It was rotten
meat, dead for some time, and then heated in preparation for eating.
The crackers that came with the soup were good; they had a nice salty
tang. I ordered more of those, with another glass of milk, and sat
back sipping slowly, trying to adjust to that smell, now that I
realized I'd probably find it anywhere I could find food.
After a while, I got my insides enough in order so that I could look
around a little and see the place, and the other people in it. That
was when I turned around and saw Larry sitting next to me.
He was beautiful. He _is_ beautiful. I know that's not what you're
supposed to say about a man, and he wouldn't like it, but I can only
say what I see, and of course that's partly a matter of my own
training and my own feelings about myself.
At home on the ship, I always wanted to cut off my hair, because it
was so black, and my skin was so white, and they didn't go together.
But they wouldn't let me; they liked it that way, I guess, but _I_
didn't. No child wants to feel like a freak, and nobody else had hair
like that, or dead-white colorless skin, either.
Then, when I went down there, and saw all the humans, I was still a
freak because I was so small.
Larry's small, too. Almost as small as I am. And he's all one color.
He has hair, of course, but it's so light, and his skin is so dark
(both from the sun, I found out), that he looks just about the same
lovely golden color all over. Or at least as much of him as showed
when I saw him that time, in the diner.
He was beautiful, and he was my size, and he didn't have ugly rough
skin or big heavy hands. I stared at him, and I felt like grabbing on
to him to make sure he didn't get away.
After a while I realized my mouth was half-open, and I was still
holding a cracker, and I remembered that this was very bad manners. I
put the cracker down and closed my mouth. He smiled. I didn't know if
he was laughing at the odd way I was acting, or just being friendly,
but I smiled back anyhow.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I mean, hello. How do you do, and I'm sorry if
I startled you. I shouldn't have been staring."
"_You_," I said, and meant to finish, _You were staring?_ But he went
right on talking, so that I couldn't finish.
"I don't know what else you can expect, if you go around looking like
that," he said.
"I'm sorry...." I started again.
"And you should be," he said sternly. "Anybody who walks into a place
like this in the middle of a day like this looking the way you do has
got to expect to get stared at a little."
The thing is, I wasn't used to the language; not used _enough_. I
could communicate all right, and even understand some jokes, and I
knew the spoken language, not some formal unusable version, because I
learned it mostly watching those shows on the television screen. But I
got confused this time, because "looking" means two different things,
active and passive, and I was thinking about how I'd been _looking at_
him, and....
That was my lucky day. I didn't want him to be angry at me, and the
way I saw it, he was perfectly justified in scolding me, which is what
I thought he was doing. But I _knew_ he wasn't really angry; I'd have
felt it if he was. So I said, "You're right. It was very rude of me,
and I don't blame you for being annoyed. I won't do it any more."
He started laughing, and this time I knew it was friendly. Like I
said, that was my lucky day; _he_ thought I was being witty. And, from
what he's told me since, I guess he realized then that _I_ felt
friendly too, because before that he'd just been bluffing it out, not
knowing how to get to know me, and afraid _I_'d be sore at _him_, just
for talking to me!
Which goes to show that sometimes you're better off not being _too_
familiar with the local customs.
* * * * *
The trouble was there were too many things I didn't know, too many
small ways to trip myself up. Things they couldn't have foreseen, or
if they did, couldn't have done much about. All it took was a little
caution and a lot of alertness, plus one big important item: staying
in the background--not getting to know any one person too well--not
giving any single individual a chance to observe too much about me.
But Larry didn't mean to let me do that. And ... I didn't want him to.
He asked questions; I tried to answer them. I did know enough at least
of the conventions to realize that I didn't have to give detailed
answers, or could, at any point, act offended at being questioned so
much. I _didn't_ know enough to realize that reluctance or irritation
on my part wouldn't have made him go away. We sat on those stools at
the diner for most of an hour, talking, and after a little while I
found I could keep the conversation on safer ground by asking _him_
about himself, and about the country thereabouts. He seemed to enjoy
talking.
Eventually, he had to go back to work. As near as I could make out, he
was a test-pilot, or something like it, for a small experimental
aircraft plant near the city. He lived not too far from where I was
staying, and he wanted to see me that evening.
I hadn't told him where the motel was, and I had at least enough
caution left not to tell him, even then. I did agree to meet him at
the diner, but for lunch the next day again, instead of that evening.
For one thing, I had a lot to do; and for another, I'd seen enough on
television shows to know that an evening date was likely to be pretty
long-drawn-out, and I wasn't sure I could stand up under that much
close scrutiny. I had some studying-up to do first. But the lunch-date
was fine; the thought of not seeing him at all was terrifying--as if
he were an old friend in a world full of strangers. That was how I
felt, that first time, maybe just because he was almost as small as I.
But I think it was more than that, really.
* * * * *
I drove downtown again, and found a store that seemed to sell all
kinds of clothing for women. Then when I got inside, I didn't know
where to start, or what to get. I thought of just buying one of
everything, so as to fill up a suitcase; the things I had on seemed to
be perfectly satisfactory for actual _wearing_ purposes. They were
quite remarkably--when you stopped to think of it--similar to what
most of the women I'd seen that day were wearing, and of course they
weren't subject to the same problems of dirtying and wrinkling and
such as the clothes in the store were.
I walked around for a while, trying to figure out what all the
different items, shapes, sizes, and colors, were for. Some racks and
counters had signs, but most of them were unfamiliar words like
_brunchies_, or _Bermudas_ or _scuffs_; or else they seemed to be
mislabeled, like _dusters_ for a sort of button-down dress, and
_Postage Stamp Girdles_ at one section of a long counter devoted to
"Foundation Garments." For half an hour or so, I wandered around in
there, shaking my head every time a saleswoman came up to me, because
I didn't know, and couldn't figure out, what to ask for, or how to ask
for it.
The thing was, I didn't dare draw too much attention to myself by
doing or saying the wrong things. I'd have to find out more about
clothes, somehow, before I could do much buying.
I went out, and on the same block I found a show-window full of
suitcases. That was easy. I went in and pointed to one I liked, and
paid for it, and walked out with it, feeling a little braver. After
all, nobody had to know there was nothing in it. On the corner, I saw
some books displayed in the window of a drug store. It took all the
courage I had to go in there, after my first trip into one that looked
very much like it, but I wanted a dictionary. This place didn't smell
quite so strong; I suppose the pharmacy was enclosed in back, and I
don't believe it had a lunch counter. Anyhow, I got in and out
quickly, and walked back to the car, and sat down with the dictionary.
It turned out to be entirely useless, at least as far as _brunchies_
and _Bermudas_ were concerned. It had "scuff, v.," with a definition;
"v.," I found out, meant _verb_, so that wasn't the word I wanted, but
when I remembered the slippers on the counter with the sign, it made
sense in a way.
Not enough sense, though. I decided to forget about the clothes for a
while. The next problem was a driver's license.
The policeman that morning had been helpful, if over-interested, and
since policemen directed traffic, they ought to have the information I
wanted. I found one of them standing on a streetcorner looking not too
busy, and asked him, and if his hair hadn't been brown instead of
reddish (and only half there) I'd have thought it was the same one I
talked to before. He wanted to know how old I was, and where was I
from, and what I was doing there, and did I have a car, and was I
_sure_ I was nineteen?
Well, of course, I wasn't sure, but they'd told me that by the local
reckoning, that was my approximate age. And I almost slipped and said
I _had_ a car, until I realized that I didn't have a right to drive
one till I had a license. After he asked that one question, I began to
feel suspicious about everything else he asked, and the interest he
expressed. He was helpful, but I had to remember too, that it was the
police who were charged with watching for suspicious characters,
and--well, it was the last time I asked a policeman for information.
He _did_ tell me where I could rent a car to take my road test,
though, and where to apply for the test. The Courthouse turned out to
be the big building behind the square where I'd parked the car that
morning, and arranging for the test turned out to be much simpler
than, by then, I expected it to be. In a way, I suppose, all the
questions I had to answer when I talked to the policeman had prepared
me for the official session--though they didn't seem nearly so
inquisitive there.
By this time, I'd come to expect that they wouldn't believe my age
when I told them. The woman at the window behind the counter wanted to
see a "birth certificate," and I produced the one piece of
identification I had; an ancient and yellowed document they had kept
for me all these years. From the information it contained, I suspected
it might even _be_ a birth certificate; whether or not, it apparently
satisfied her, and after that all she wanted was things like my
address and height and weight. Fortunately, they had taken the
trouble, back on the ship, to determine these statistics for me,
because things like that were always coming up on television shows,
especially when people were being questioned by the police. For the
address, of course, I used the motel. The rest I knew, and I guess we
had the figures close enough to right so that at least the woman
didn't question any of it.
I had my road test about half an hour later, in a rented car, and the
examiner said I did very well. He seemed surprised, and I don't
wonder, considering the way most of those people contrive to mismanage
a simple mechanism like an automobile. I guess when they say Earth is
still in the Mechanical Age, what they mean is that humans are just
_learning_ about machines.
* * * * *
The biggest single stroke of luck I had at any time came during that
road test. We passed a public-looking building with a sign in front
that I didn't understand.
"What's that place?" I asked the examiner, and he said, as if anyone
would know what he meant, "That? Oh--the Library."
I looked it up in my dictionary as soon as I was done at the License
Bureau, and when I found out what it was, everything became a great
deal simpler.
There was a woman who worked there, who showed me, without any
surprise at my ignorance, just how the card catalogue worked, and what
the numbering system meant; she didn't ask me how old I was, or any
other questions, or demand any proof of any kind to convince her I had
a right to use the place. She didn't even bother me much with
questions about what I was looking for. I told her there were a _lot_
of things I wanted to know, and she seemed to think that was a good
answer, and said if she could help me any way, not to hesitate to ask,
and then she left me alone with those drawers and drawers full of
letter-and-number keys to all the mysteries of an alien world.
I found a book on how to outfit your daughter for college, that
started with underwear and worked its way through to jewelry and
cosmetics. I also found a whole shelf full of law books, and in one of
them, specific information about the motor vehicle regulations in
different States. There was a wonderful book about diamonds and other
precious stones, particularly fascinating because it went into the
chemistry of the different stones, and gave me the best
measuring-stick I found at any time to judge the general level of
technology of that so-called Mechanical Age.
That was all I had time for, I couldn't believe it was so late, when
the librarian came and told me they were closing up, and I guess my
disappointment must have showed all over me, because she asked if I
wouldn't like to have a card, so I could take books home?
I found out all I needed to get a card was identification. I was
supposed to have a reference, too, but the woman said she thought
perhaps it would be all right without one, in my case. And then, when
I wanted to take a volume of the Encyclopedia Americana, she said they
didn't usually circulate that, but if I thought I could bring it back
within a day or two....
I promised to, and I never did, and out of everything that happened,
that's the one thing I feel badly about. I think she must have been a
very unusual and _good_ sort of woman, and I wish I had kept my
promise to her.
* * * * *
Some of the stores downtown were still open. I bought the things I'd be
expected to have, as near as I could make out from the book on college
girls: panties and a garter belt and a brassiere, and stockings. A slip
and another blouse, and a coat, because even in the early evening it was
beginning to get chilly. Then the salesgirl talked me into gloves and a
scarf and some earrings. I was halfway back to the car when I remembered
about night clothes, and went back for a gown and robe and slippers. That
didn't begin to complete the college girls' list, but it seemed like a
good start. I'd need a dress, too, I thought, if I ever did go out with
Larry in the evening ... but that could wait.
I put everything into the suitcase, and drove back to the motel. On
the way, I stopped at a food store, and bought a large container of
milk, and some crackers, and some fruit--oranges and bananas and
apples. Back in my room, I put everything away in the drawers, and
then sat down with my book and my food, and had a wonderful time. I
was hungry, and everything tasted good, away from the dead meat
smells, and what with clothes in the drawers and everything, I was
beginning to feel like a real Earth-girl.